Music!

 in particular the pipes and drums of Scotland. I've always loved these and a friend of mine has been sharing a lot of videos of various bands recently. These've ranged from massed pipes and drum bands at various Highland games and gatherings to performances by individual bands. Because I've been watching so many along with her I've been paying closer attention to how a band works - and it turns out (unsurprisingly) that there's a lot more to it than individuals blowing on bagpipes in unison or bashing away on a drum. It's really all quite technical as well as spectacular. The drummers in particular make me wish I'd learned to play the drums when I was younger. They are so dramatic especially in marching bands where their flourishes add to the spectacle. The whole experience has reminded me of something I'd all but forgotten in these COVID times - my travel bucket list, a major part of which includes visiting Scotland and Ireland.

Here for your delight - assuming you love pipe bands as much as I do  - are some of the massed pipes and drums I've been enjoying. This was the Beating Retreat display after the 2019 Dufftown Highland Games and is particularly spectacular with its rows of drum majors at the front and so many pipers and drummers. Keep an eye out for the tiniest drummer at the rear with a drum to match his or her size.

It's A Bit Chilly Here.

 as low as 7° C some nights recently. Yes, I can hear the snorts of laughter from those of you in colder climes. I know by your standards this isn't all that cold but for Perth, Western Australia, it's exceptionally nippy for this time of the year. It's supposedly still autumn - a time when things start to cool down and we have some rain but not usually such low temperatures. 

The thing is the cooling down isn't usually so early or so dramatic and we're not set up for it yet. Well, truth be told, we never are quite ready for it. Winter always seems to catch Perth folk a bit by surprise. It's probably down to the fact that we have pleasantly warm temperatures for most of the year. That said, while average maximum temperatures are mostly low thirties in summer, we do get heatwave spikes of 38-39° C not infrequently these days so not always so pleasant. Then winter arrives and we're suddenly forced into digging out woolies, track pants and boots - and in my case fingerless gloves so I can type - plus change over from lightweight summer blankets to winter ready quilts and doonas. 

It's not as if we don't know this is going to happen at some point but when the maximum day time temperature was 30° C only a week ago a drop to an overnight low to around 7 or 8° C is a bit of a shock to the system. We've actually had the heater on in the evening, something I can't remember ever doing before earlier than mid June.

Then just when things had got a little warmer - the overnight temperatures having reached the teens - last night we had a succession of storms - lightning and thunder that made the house shake as well as heavy rain - the last has continued all morning. Sigh. I don't think we can delude ourselves any longer. Winter is here albeit a little early.

Do You Really Want To Know This Before a Medical Procedure?

 On a blog that I follow one of the bloggers shared that she was about to have surgery for the first time - and she was very nervous. She was obviously hoping for support and encouragement, something I can identify with. Even having had as many surgeries as I have - and it's a lot - and with complete confidence in the surgeon I still feel quite nervous as the time approaches because things can go wrong. 

My first thought was that the many other followers of the blog (who are generally supportive and thoughtful) would do their best to make her feel confident and better able to cope - and about half of them did just that. The others weren't as empathetic as they regaled her and her readers with all the things that had gone wrong for them with similar surgeries. I stopped reading when I was about half way through them. 

Honestly why anyone would do this? The last thing someone needs at a time like this to hear horror stories but there's always a group whether on social media or anywhere else people meet up - sometimes quite a large number of people, too - who feel compelled to share just what you don't want or need to hear at the time. 

This urge to share the worst seems particularly strong when it comes to medical matters. When a woman nears the end of pregnancy there's a rush of people wanting to tell her exactly how awful it all was for them and what went wrong in how their birth was handled. Mention you're having your tonsils out and you'll be regaled with stories of how they couldn't stop the bleeding or their throat was so swollen that drinking or eating was impossible for days or the sedation made them throw up for hours and the list goes on. Why? By all means share these kinds of stories once the operation is over but not beforehand.

In the past year four of my friends have been being treated for cancer. It's been life threatening and life changing for them and they've wanted to share their experiences of chemo, radiation therapy and surgery (and I have to say that some of it has been harrowing). I've been more than happy to listen because they are my friends and I care about them but had I been about to undergo treatment for the same thing myself hearing how the treatment had been very painful and resulted in permanent damage for some of them would have been frankly terrifying.

So my message is choose the time when you share what can or has gone wrong with a medical procedure carefully - and here's a hint - it's not just before someone is to undergo the same procedure.

Mothers' Day

 Because it's Mother's Day this weekend we've had the usual barrage of advertising of suitable gifts. Many are simply ludicrous. I cannot imagine why anyone would think that a vacuum cleaner (the house is filthy), a circular saw (get on with some heavy work), digital scales (you're overweight) or a posture trainer (your posture is terrible) would be appropriate gifts but I have seen them advertised. 

My family has never subscribed to the need for gifts for Mother's Day. I appreciate a bunch of flowers or a plant - the cymbidium Virgo gave me seven years ago is an annual delight - but other than that I'm just happy to see my kids on the day.

There is one thing I really do not like, though, and it seems to be increasing. This is the sending of personalised text messages and emails from companies where I've been obliged to provide a phone number or email address to use their services offering me ways to give my mother special gifts for Mother's Day. Quite apart from the fact that I wouldn't want to give the kinds of gifts they offer, my mother passed away some years ago. I cannot buy her a gift and go and see her however much I want to. 

As a result Mother's Day for me is a day of conflicting emotions. I'm very happy to see my children but it's also bittersweet because it reminds that my mother is gone. To have this avalanche of personalised messages only adds to that feeling of loss. That companies don't understand there are many like me who are motherless is distressing and, yes, I can suck it up and get on with my life but I shouldn't have to. Send out your advertising if you must or not (which would be preferable since I'm unlikely to buy anything you mention when it intrudes on my space as this does) - but don't send me messages saying Helen, here are some suggestions of gifts for your mother. It would be easy enough to phrase it differently. Leave out the salutation and make it generalised because in its current form it's a hurtful reminder that I have lost someone very dear to me.

My Latest Rabbit Hole

 is clothing in ancient Greece.  I mentioned I'd been dipping into a book on the history of textiles - this was as part of my research for a story - and that set me off in search of how such ancient garments worked. If you're interested the textile book is called Women's Work - The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Mayland Barber

I might have studied ancient Greece (starting with the writing of Homer) as part of my history degree way back when but the actual way people of the time wore clothes didn't register. I knew what the various garments looked like and, after seeing the white marble statues of the whole pantheon of gods and goddesses, of course, it would be impossible not to be aware of how these were clad in graceful draperies. Somehow, though, it had never occurred to me how these would all be held together. I just assumed they would be sewn. Not so - instead it was a complicated combination of pins, brooches and girdle which must have made dressing without assistance especially for a woman sometimes quite challenging.

Now, thanks to modern archaeological advances, we know that these sculptures were actually painted. You can read about it in this article in The New Yorker. Instead of the ancients all parading around like beautifully draped pale ghosts they were as fond of colour as we are. What we've admired for centuries were actually the bases for these works of art. It shouldn't be a surprise, of course. The gifts of robes and mantles handed out as gifts among royalty in Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey are rarely white, more usually purple, red and black while in The Odyssey Helen of Troy is described as spinning purple yarn with her golden spindle at one point and in The Iliad, when she is living in under siege Troy, she is making a purple double cloak. 

No doubt there were other colours. As any modern day spinner or weaver knows many plants produce colours used in dyeing and they vary widely. Woad, weld, madder, onion skins and lichens are just a few that come to mind. While according to Barber some cloth was made in workshops and traded over vast distances and between different groups of people, much was also made in the home where as now the creativity of the spinners and weavers would almost certainly have led to different and imaginative fabric being produced. I don't think we can assume either that ancient people weren't interested in other adornments like weaving coloured patterns into their handiwork and embroidery while Homer mentions tassels and beads.

If we go further back in time the Minoans were already creating a range of textiles as we can see from their art. One of my favourite examples is a Minoan fresco known as The Saffron Gatherers found on Santorini. There are images of this fresco and other Minoan clothing at the end of this paper by Cristin J Donahue. The images of girls and young women gathering saffron (another plant dye and a very expensive one at that) are still clear enough for us to have an idea of some of what they are wearing. The range of colours is striking - red, blue, yellow, black and brown are obvious and there are others that have faded. To me the most interesting is a sheer yellow veil with a blue border and dotted with red (beads or embroidery perhaps) worn by one of the women. This shows considerable skill in weaving and I'd be very surprised if some of the skills to make such fabric hadn't survived the collapse of Minoan civilisation.

So my ideas about Mycenaean Greek clothing have undergone quite a change and I'm planning on going into my fabric stash and trying out a bit of draping of my own as soon as I can get someone to help me. There will not be pictures.

I'm Back!

 I've had a health issue which involved a hospital stay. It's all good now and while it'll take some weeks for me to be completely back to normal - I'm still crashing for a couple of hours sleep every afternoon - I'm starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Because I'm supposed to be resting I've been doing a lot of reading, much of it rereads. 

I started out with a reread of Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe. I've talked about this book before and if you happened to miss that it's about precolonial Australian indigenous society which was far more complex than my generation was taught about in school. Using the journals and other writings of the first Europeans here - settlers and explorers - Pascoe exposes the lie that was terra nullius, the claim by the British government of the time that the land belonged to no-one. According to this the inhabitants were primitive hunter gatherers who wandered around in search of game and therefore had no claim to the land. It's now clear this was not true. While it was very different from that of Europe the people here had a complex society, including trade, aquaculture, land management practices where individual groups had responsibility for particular areas and which had created the park-like landscapes that all newcomers commented on (and have now vanished), established villages in many areas, and, not least, they harvested and stored large quantities of different plants for food. 

Along with Dark Emu which is a very easy read I've been rereading Bill Gammage's The Biggest Estate on Earth which is also about Aboriginal precolonial land management but in a more academic form and is equally fascinating. 

When I needed a break from non-fiction - I was dipping into a history of textile making at the same time - I got an urge to read a bit of Scandinavian crime. I decided on another reread - Faceless Killers, the first book in the Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell about a police officer in the small town of Ystad in southern Sweden. I had a couple of other books from the series on my Kindle - The Dogs of Riga and The Fifth Woman - and realised that although I had watched both the Swedish and British series of the novels I hadn't actually read any more of the books. That was enough to send me off to get hold of the others and I binged on Wallander novels starting from the beginning to the end of the series. The TV series I'd watched it turns out diverged somewhat from the novels but they stayed true to the essence of the books. Mankell has made it clear in writing about the series that, apart from the crimes and their investigation, there's an underlying commentary on the changes in Swedish society in the latter part of the twentieth century particularly increasing violence, poverty, racism and the response to refugees both in the community and by government.

My only criticism of the novels is that, perhaps unfairly, I would have liked to have found out more about some of the other characters and how the differences they had with Wallander were or weren't resolved. Instead we move forward a few years into a new case with each book and some people have vanished - maybe moved on but we don't know why or how - and others with whom there was friction are still there and they're working together as if there had never been a problem.

I think the reason this bothers me is because Mankell does give us a brief explanation about others and where they fit into Wallander's life. He even brings in people from earlier novels to make a brief appearance when it's not necessary to the story. One example is when Wallander sees a young woman who smiles at him when he's at lunch and he remembers her part in solving a crime in an earlier novel. They don't speak and don't meet again. While I like this feeling of continuity in a small town where people are likely to meet up or be connected in some way I'd have liked a little more of an explanation however brief with regard to his work colleagues.

That whinge out of the way I have to say I really enjoyed my journey through the complex life of Kurt Wallander and the end of the series satisfied. I'm pleased to have now read all the novels and the novella An Event in Autumn - I've yet to read The Pyramid which is a collection of stories about Wallander as a young man which apparently fills out some of the backstory of how he ended up the man he is when the novels start. From various reviews I gather The Pyramid is not an essential read and for some even disappointing. For those reasons it's now in my To Be Read pile at some future date. That said, while bingeing isn't necessarily needed, I do recommend reading the novels in order to see how Kurt changes as he ages. 

I'm off now for a change of genre. I have a number of speculative fiction books ready to go and I might share something about them later.