In the bookshop, an old bloke had bought something about WW2. For minute or two he reminisced about Churchill and Stalin and victory in Europe. The bookseller, a woman perhaps in her late 30s or 40s, nodded, being polite, fairly obviously not understanding the significance of the events he was describing.

When I was born it was 25 years after WW2 finished. Many veterans still lived among us. It was still there, prominent in people’s minds — you can see it today in episodes of Fawlty Towers made back then, or other writing of the time. My mother used to ponder what life would have been like if the Germans had won. The owner of the shop where I had a part time job in my teens had fought in WW2, on the Kokoda Trail.

This year it’ll be 62 years since WW2 finished. It’s further in the past than WW1 was when I was born. There are fewer veterans left, with them the memories of (almost) an entire planet at war are fading. Soon all will be left is SBS’s weekly Hitler documentary.

Of course there are those who have since fought in smaller conflicts, but it seems the firsthand experience of wartime is no longer part of the common collective consciousness.

Not that that’s entirely a bad thing, of course.

A big bunch of thumbs ups for all these, from the past couple of months.

The First Casualty by Ben Elton — a mystery set close to a century ago, a bit like Julian Barnes’ Arthur and George, and also very reminiscent of Black Adder 4, but with a much more serious look at the Great War. Elton’s usual humour is absent for this one, but it’s a great read.

High Society by Ben Elton — a look at drugs: the war against it, its presence in society both high and low. But unlike the above, plenty of humour.

Kenny — very very funny movie. Spotted a few locations I’m familiar with.

Junebug — what happens when white trash meets culture. Interesting.

Caffe Latte — Malvern Road, Toorak — work Christmas dinner was delicious. Very good. Probably expensive — I don’t know!

Wah Wah — Richard E Grant’s semi-auto-biographical film. Quite funny in parts, very dramatic in others. The DVD (at least, the Australian version) includes the interview from Enough Rope, which is fascinating.

PS Sunday night. Oh hooray, yet another full-page Barry Humphries article in the Sunday Age. We needed another one.

Is airconditioning turning us into wimps?

We (and I’m as guilty of this as anybody) go from our sometimes-airconditioned houses in our airconditioned cars or our airconditioned trains to airconditioned offices or airconditioned shopping centres.

If it’s not 20 degrees indoors, we’re complaining. If the train is not airconditioned, we’re complaining. If we have to walk around in the heat, we’re complaining.

And we abuse it. People drive along (on suburban roads, not at freeway speeds) in 25 degrees with the windows shut and the aircon on. On hot days shops leave their doors wide open and pump up the aircon to compensate — evidently they’re not brave enough to shut the doors (or use automatic ones) and put a big “Open” sign up.

And most new buildings are built with big windows and no shade, so they heat up quick. Seriously, I was in a friend’s apartment recently on a sub-20 degree day, but the sun was shining straight in and the aircon was running to keep it cool.

And why? Because energy is cheap, and we can afford it… though of course all that energy generation causes all those emissions, which is slowly making it even hotter…

(By the way, you can open the window. The cool change just came through.)

The mouse in my house previously spurned the poison put down for it.

Last week it managed to get bait out of the mouse trap without setting it off.

Then it managed to nibble away at bread that was left hanging in a shopping bag from a door handle. From the trail it left behind, looks like it got onto the kitchen bench, then leapt or climbed into the shopping bag, then ate its way into the plastic bag, then into the bread.

This is no ordinary mouse. I think I’m dealing with a super mouse.

(At least, the evidence left behind says it’s a mouse. Though I quite definitely spotted a rat by the garbage bins. Either way, I’m upping the trap/bait ante.)

Summer rolls on, with several hot days this week leaving us sweating.

On Thursday night we had an evening session of street cricket, always good when it’s warm and the sun goes down late. It’s not exactly The Ashes, and some fielding slip-ups meant one tennis ball went down a drain. Oh well. If we’d been bothering to count runs, that would have been six and out.

We eventually called it stumps when it was too dark to see properly.

Last week I took the opportunity to take the kids to the pool a couple of times. In the nearby industrial end of Moorabbin is a centre with a wave pool.

It looks at first glance like a beach. A kind of hard, digital beach, with no litter in the sand (indeed, no sand), no jellyfish or shells, lifeguards everywhere, and the cleanest water you’ve ever seen. And it’s heated quite warmly, so unlike the other pools, so there’s a cold shock to the system when you go in.

I found my bathers ballooned up when I entered the water, somehow filling with air pockets. The only way I could get rid of them was to give them a slight tug to let the air escape, which had the unfortunate effect of releasing big bubbles of air to the surface, as if I’d done a massive fart underwater.

Evidently the sequence of events in the wave pool is random: the sessions of waves come at unpredictable times (heralded by an alarm, and almost unintelligible loudspeaker warnings about keeping away from the walls, lest you get washed into them and do yourself an injury). The waves are interspersed with automated rainshowers (very tropical) and bubbles from various locations. As each occurs, some of the pool (mostly the youngsters) would rush over to get prime position to enjoy them. Rather amusing to see the odd middle-aged man waddle over to try and get a spot amongst the bubbles though.

Eventually the chlorine started to take its toll, giving both Isaac and myself headaches. On the second visit we limited our pool time to a couple of hours, which seemed to get around that problem. Good fun though, and a great relief on hot days.

A stone’s throw from the exclusive boutiques of Chapel Street, South Yarra, next to the railway line near the underpass, between a set of signalling control boxes, and sheltered by an overhead structure, is a pile of mattresses, pillows, bedclothes, and assorted objects.

Occasionally you’ll see someone there, sleeping or awake, apparently as oblivious to the passing trains as those in the trains are to their makeshift home.

I suppose they’re not doing any harm. (I reckon the grafitti’s been there for a long time, and I’m sure if the railway infrastructure got damaged, they’d only draw attention to themselves.)

It must be a noisy place to sleep.

Just occasionally I feel like researching something to the Nth degree, gathering some stats, working it all out. Sometimes it’s useful; sometimes it’s really not. This probably falls into the latter camp.

Some may recall one day in December 2005 when I got 28 pieces of junk mail in my mailbox on a single day. (As it happens that post was noticed by a Sunday Herald-Sun journalist, who ended up doing an article — including a photo — though it never got printed.)

Last month I decided to do a survey of junk mail in the Christmas period. I tracked everything that came in during December.

The result? A grand total of 100 for the month.

Unlike last year, the peak was 12 on the 2nd of December.

Last of the Christmas brochures arrived on the 19th of December. Boxing Day sales ones started appearing on 23rd of December.

A number of vendors sent multiple brochures over the month:
Coles: 6
Safeway: 5
IGA, Big W, Target, Target Country: 4
K-Mart, Officeworks and Triple8 Cleaning: 3

The most notable? A brochure that externally looked like something for a local charity (with text referring to “sleeping rough” and the like), but which turned out to be for bedding retailer (Captain) Snooze. I know it got mentioned on talkback radio; I wouldn’t be surprised if there were complaints about it.

So there we go — that was junk mail in December. Fascinating, huh?

My next conundrum is: given I only read a fraction of it, should I get a No Junk Mail sticker? (If only one could nominate those one wanted to receive…)

Happy New Year!

The last one seems to have gone pretty quickly. Must be because I’ve been so busy.

Some followups from 2006:

• After driving a Prius a few weeks ago, I note Bill Shorten in The Age called for the car companies locally to work on hybrid cars.
• At the start of the Christmas season I ranted against useless gifts, and suggested donations to others as gifts. Happily Justine gave me three ducks from Oxfam Unwrapped! Excellent!
• I’ve read a heap of books and seen several movies that I meant to post quick reviews for in the last few months. Maybe I’ll just batch them all up together in the new year.

Some blog factoids:

• Posts for 2006: 298
• The posts with the most comments of the year: 18 each to Helping yourself (27th June) and My precious (8th June)

Thanks to all who have been reading, and have posted comments. (To the spammers and those posting nonsense, please go away.)

Hope everyone has a happy new year and a great 2007.

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