Post 149: Building

I woke this morning at 7am to the sound of an engine nearby, It turned out to be a pile driver on the vacant lot next door, which is approved for a 9 storey apartment block.

The top of the pile driver was about 2 metres from my balcony.

The pile driver itself made almost no noise but there was a motor, presumably powering it, that made a steady engine noise.

The work seemed concentrated in the corner of the site closest to me - the north east corner.




I was out much of the day. When I returned home this evening this was the result. I seem to remember the developer added a screening wall in this position. It looks as if the build is about to begin.

I rearranged my blocked shawl, removing the towel which holds moisture underneath. When I got it pinned out again, I recalled buying blocking wires last year.  They turned up in the last place I looked - under a sideboard cupboard right at the back against the skirting board.

They certainly made blocking more even.

I love the way garter stitch turns out in squares when blocked.




I left the blocked piece to dry out properly while I was out.


This is how it looked  when I removed the blocking pins this evening. It is quite large and wrappy.



I managed to complete a few more masks before heading off to my Sit'n Stitch with friends this afternoon. One of my stitching friends wanted to talk today about mask-making, so I left the last 4 in various stages of construction to demonstrate the process.















This worked quite well. I just need to finish these and I have another set for family to try out. 

Jennifer was at Sit'nStitch today. Our hostess made us a great lunch of pizza and her home-made pasties. Jennifer has some permanent heart damage from her Covid experience, which has resulted in fluid on her lungs. She is taking diuretics and limiting her fluid intake to get rid of this. She also has a thorax stenosis reducing her air passage by 50%. On 6 August she is booked to have a balloon inserted to widen the air passage and also have an angiogram.  The latter will provide more information about treatment. She gets exhausted and can't exercise or do anything strenuous. We has a good time stitching.

I worked on the owl today. It's coming along nicely.

This weekend I have a two-day class at the Guild with Christine Bishop. Six months ago this would have seemed routine, but right now it seems exciting and daring.

The biggest challenge will be waking up in time! I'm not sure pile drivers work on Saturdays!

Post 74: Mother, father, brother

I've had a very quiet day today - a Zoom celebration for my brother's birthday, some reading for my brother's writing task and a little stitching on the bag sampler.


The leaves need to be padded, then satin stitched and outlined. It’s slow but rewarding. It's a lovely rich blue

While I celebrated Mothers' Day for my own mother, I have discouraged it for myself. It seemed, and still seems, like a commercialisation of a priceless value.


I was  delighted to get messages and photos today of Katherine and her family walking part of the Heyson Trail in the Kuitpo Forest.
Way to go.


While there were some scenes of crowds in shopping centres, the activity I observed in the Square was encouragingly responsible.

The quiet day leaves  room for me to post my reflection on my father and VE Day 1945. It's a bit long, so feel free to skip. I was inspired by a FaceBook comment by Phillipa Turnbull that her parents never talked about the War.

Recent social media coverage of the 75th anniversary of VE Day caused me to reflect, not just on WWII but also on our current progress towards recovery from Corona virus. For Britons, and the citizens of many other European countries, VE day 1945 would have been a huge relief and cause for a much-needed celebration. So much had been achieved, at such community cost. Yet the job wasn't done.

I have no wish to be a party-pooper, nor to pour cold water on celebrations of a remarkable feat. I am cautious, however, of allowing celebration to overpower the memory, cost and horror that remained with the participants for the rest of their lives.

My father spent the War in the British navy, on ships in the North Sea and the Mediterranean before HMS Formidable, the aircraft carrier on which he was then serving, was assigned to join the war in the Pacific in 1945. I now know the story fairly well. Not that my father told it. He didn't. Ever. In the final years of his life, my brother and I got him to answer specific questions. His standard reply to being asked about it was "If you'd seen the man next to you blown into pieces no bigger than a threepence, you wouldn't talk about it either".

What we now know is based on searching written records, the book The Formidable Commission (1947),  written by the wardroom officers on the ship and illustrated by the ship's photographer, and the 57 letters my parents wrote to each other between when they met in June 1945 and December 1945 when my father was demobilised in Sydney to marry my mother.

 On 8 May 1945, now VE Day, my father was on the Formidable off the coast of Sakishima Gunto, a Japanese island to the east of Taipei. On 4 May the ship had been hit by a kamikazi delivering a 500lb bomb and machine-gunning the deck. 8 sailors died and 47 were injured. 11 aircraft were destroyed

The boiler room was damaged, and a lot of electrical equipment. As Leading Torpedo Man, my father would have been in the electrical repair crew. Power was restored the next day, and bombing raids continued.


On 9 May the ship was hit by a second kamikazi, this time with a 250lb bomb, killing 1 sailor and  destroying 6 Corsairs.

On 18 May a fire in the hangar damaged and destroyed 30 more planes. The ship went to Manus Island for basic repairs, then on to Sydney for major work.

It was in the three weeks it took to repair the ship in Sydney that my parents met. When the repaired Formidable  went back to conduct bombing raids on Japan they wrote to each other. The letters, of course, have no hint of where the ship was or what it was doing. It was off the coast of Japan when  the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Very late in his life in a rare comment, Dad confessed and expressed regret that he and his fellow sailors had cheered when they were told the bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. "We didn't know what it meant", he said sadly.


Formidable was back in Sydney in time to take part in the Victory parade on 18 August 1945. Their contingent is behind the band in this photograph.

The ship was quickly refitted for a trip to Manilla in September to pick up POWs and bring them to Sydney. The refit included a cinema. Dad was the projectionist.  My parents continue to write. This time there were fewer restriction on mentioning places.

My father demobilised in Sydney and married my mother. His father, brother and a sister had all enlisted in WWII. They all survived. A cousin was killed at Dunkirk. It was 22 years before Dad returned to England. He had no regrets about staying in Australia. For him it was a happy ending.

What the story says to me is that war has tentacles well beyond victory ceremonies. We can salvage benefits but damage and loss are irrevocable. 

Stories of crowds of people in shopping centres yesterday signal to me that we need to be cautious in celebration.  It goes hand in hand with remembrance -and eternal vigilance.

Lest we forget.

Post 72 Flowers

This is a photo I received last night, just after I had pressed the button on yesterday's blog post. It is from my friend Christine Thatcher in Watford, England. These are her irises now blooming in her garden in front of her grape vine.

It's lovely to have this evidence of Spring in the UK. I love irises, especially mauve ones. They are so flamboyant and bold - an excellent signal of VE Day, which I know is being celebrated today in the UK.











When I visited the shops two days ago, I indulged in a bunch of unopened oriental lilies, some of which are now open. I enjoy watching these open. Looking straight down into the flower provides great lessons in shading and I admire the way the pollen looks as if it is suspended . The side view is quite different, with those almost transparent stamens.

I also indulged in a pot of bloom for a spare container on my balcony. It looks lovely against the autumny foliage of the trees beyond.

There are a couple of succulents getting ready to bloom. I haven't taken a lot of notice of them before, but  they are now better established and I have plenty of time to do so.

This morning I had a long conversation with my friend Lorraine, who gave me cuttings for many of these succulents. Lorraine had a very bad fall several months ago, which put her in hospital with concussion. She has been housebound for months and still has headaches but she has been making short excursions for grocery shopping and even for fish and chips!

I don't usually discuss our Covid restrictions or management in this blog. I choose to think on, and share other things. I'm including the next bit of news because I think it might be of interest to some readers as a framework - and because watching it roll out occupied much of my day.

Our National Cabinet - the meeting of the heads of all States, Territories and the Commonwealth, agreed to a plan for easing restrictions for opening up to a 'Covid-safe economy'. The stages are agreed in framework form, and each State and Territory develops its own specific plan with timelines. As I have said before, I am a strong supporter of this very collaborative decision-making structure. I watched the Prime Minister's Press Conference then the various State Press Conferences.  State responses vary,  particularly in timelines, but they are all moving in the same direction. For those who might be interested, this is the South Australian version.

From next Monday cafes and restaurants can serve food outside and a number of activities can occur - but all in the context of no more than 10 people. The numbers increase somewhat in June and some indoor activities also open up.

I'm pretty hopeful of strong take-up by the South Australian community. I was confident enough to go out and buy some milk!

There is, by the way, a very strong message from all leaders, that international travel (with the possible exception of New Zealand)  is NOT likely for the foreseeable future.  Most commentators are taking this to mean not before 2021.

On my return with the milk I found the larger dove collecting the last of the seed on my balcony. He has a very dark tail and is long. His partner was cooing loudly all the time he was here.

Yesterday I made stock from the ham bones I bought on Wednesday. Today I skimmed the fat from the stock, discarded the bones after removing the flesh and added the vegetables. This is my mother's very old-fashioned vegetable soup with swede, turnip, parsnip and carrot. It's boiling away at the moment.

I was planning to begin the reading for my writing task for my brother, but I didn't make it. It's my weekend priority.

More good news of Jennifer this evening. She has moved to a respiratory ward and had 2 visits, one from a speech pathologist and one from Susan. She is tired but progressing well. She can speak in a very soft whisper. She was eating her dinner this evening when her nephew called. Susan will visit her again tomorrow before returning to Adelaide by plane via Melbourne on Sunday. This seems like miraculous progress and I am so grateful for the care, community and science that has made this happen.



In between Press Conferences, emails, phone calls and watching Poirot tonight,  I kept on with my hexies. I have a nice pile, ready to put together.

I hope that VE celebrations have brought much joy to all celebrating in the UK. I'm hoping to find some photos tomorrow of my father's RN ship on VE Day 1945.