Shower or two. Windy.

Maya and Buddha; Isis and Horus; Mary and Jesus; Devaki and Krishna

It's no big deal.

Schooldaze

 But I hated school. I'll write more as I get proper computer use. This machine has been so problematic, sometimes I've written the same paragraph, and stuck in up to five images. and lost the lot, without turning it off, in five minutes. Losing up to two hours of work on that paragraph, each time. So I'm not touching it, except maybe to watch a TV show, or a movie. No more About Pip till the machine's fixed and I know, after months of doing all I can to get it fixed, I need it properly fixed. This paragraph alone, was written and uploaded, September 12, 2011, 9:50 pm.

At Normo we all hate a mate named Beefy, aka The Beef. The wasn't beefy. He was a lot shorter than me, and just as slender. But everyone called him that, even his parents. I don't to this day think he had another name. The Beef was incredibly funny and out of control. He used to drop rocks on the VW Kombi van of a teacher by the name of Miller, but everyone called The Toad. He had hi own saying, which was, "Whip the body!" and also sounded something like, "Whoopa-the bo-day!!!" He lived at Cheltenham and lived near Ahimsa, with its esoteric associations, and near The Cave, where groups of us would sleep much to some parents' consternation. Many amazing things at The Cave, and The Waterhole. Much, much more in my Memoirs, and I tell all, some of it ... risqué, or riskyqueue as some Aussies say.

I was good at French at Normo. I still am to a certain extent. I can read most of a French newspaper, and try to get one when I can. Normo was weird in a way, for French teaching. We had a teacher we called Mr McMurtrey, but we called him Poofy McMurtrey. He lived with his mother, and was obviously gay. He made us translate all of L'Etranger by Albert Camus. But he wanted to put the good kids into Level One French rather than Level Two in the HSC. I protested. And I got Level One.

Bob Goode was an hilarious French teacher. I recall him saying, "Animals are better than humans, on the whole", and we all laughed. Most of us, probably. Some boys were very straight. He was the organist at a church in the area and most thought he was a funny bloke. In those days, boys were trained by media to worry about a woman's breast size, which is ridiculous. But Bob Goode was a friend of one of only about three females out of about 50 teahers. Her name was Miss Liszt, and most of the boys called her Miss Tits. We also had a Tits McCoy. Interestingly, Miss Clettenberg-Nobbs was called Miss Clitoris-Norks. Not funny for te poor woman. We also had a strange woman teacher. We called her Mongol Maclean. She wasn't easy to take. She called me, "Nuisance!" Wonder why.

There were quite a few nicknames for both teachers and boys. Among pupils, I especially remember Thrancis S. and Boo-Boo B.. Thrancis's real name was Francis, but he was not a 'Frank' kind of Francis. Thrancis and Boo-Boo would walk around the quadrangle for half an hour or so, while most boys would go to the tuckshop, or sit under a large coral tree we called 'the smoking tree', which teachers regularly raided in order to catch large numbers of boys smoking. Thrancis carried a tightly-rolled umbrella, rain or shine, and had his hair combed like a girl. He was obiously gay. We knew it, and discussed it, but we knew such things were almost even too taboo to be discussed in the nepaper. Boo-Boo just seemed to follow Thrancis around. Which is why we called him Boo-Boo. He reminded us of Yogi Bear's offsider. We had a teacher we called Dynamite Brains Taylor, a deputy head master we called Rupert, because he rminded us of Rupert Bear. Mr Fogliani had a bit of a speech impediment, so he was Mr Fobaloffami. One man had huge tufts of hair growing out of his ears, so we called him Blinky Bill. And so on, and so on.

We had a wonderful teacher, a published poet, name David Malick. When we left high school, my friend Rob Brown had gone to his place, been able to have a smoke and a drink - verboten in those days - and I asked if I might come too.
I took 70 poems. He said, did you write these under the desk in poetry classes at school? While I was teaching poetry?" And a tear came to his eye. He said, "I'm so sorry. We had to teach the curriculum. I had no idea." And a tear came to his eye. Some of those poems are in my Poetry section in the Almanac. I worked as a gardener for Brian J O'Brien, a NASA scientist who trained the astronauts for Apollo 13, Neil Armstrong, etc. Probably sounds like shit, but it's true. I wrote children's poetry for his children, and turned me onto herbs, and some of those are in Children's Poetry at the Almanac, but I am still writing kids' poetry for my grandkids, despite my injury. Slowly but slowly asking my way through the underpants. Other interesting anecdotes in Memoirs.

Speaking of kids, they’re extremely important to me, thank God. I found it absolutely fascinating to hear on ABC’s All In The Mind a remarkably cluey young woman say that as a therapist, she once got as a new patient a young child who defecated in his pants instead of in the loo bowl. She soon heard the kid talk about Transformer toys – I well remember Remy doing it when he was a young boy. The very smart woman twigged straight away. She said, “Well, you could be a Transformer too. If anything dangerous, like an enemy ship, is in the water in the toilet bowl, you could bomb it.” The lad’s mother brought him back one month later, and was asked how he was getting on. She said that after he’d left the therapist’s place, he had never done it again. The therapist postulated that it was a form of hypnosis, children apparently being more susceptible to it. I know a wee bit about childrearing, but I never would have thought of her great strategy.

It's interesting to have heard on ABC that shy kids can grow up not to be shy. I'm not shy at all now, but as a child I was terribly shy. I hid behind a tree when I lived at Pennant Hills and some new neighbour children moved in. I'm not shy at all now. But I didn't want them to see me in my pyjamas. Yet, in my 40s I went to a couple of nude beaches in Sydney with my wife Fernanda. I admit I was still very embarrassed, to be publicly nude, but at least I did it. Some people are afraid of public speaking, but it's one of my favourite activities. at high school, my debating team won 'the zone' for the Cramp debating competition. The adjudicator was a Sydney radio announcer with the moniker 'Lawyer Sawer'. As some of my mates had been shaving when they were in primary school, and I wasn't pubescent till I was 17, causing much embarrasment for me with other boys in the change room for OE, sport ˗which I pointedly and 'illegally' stopped going to for all but the first 18 months of secondar education, and at Non Swimming ˗ Lawyer Sawyer called me "smoothe". It was the classroom and playground joke for days. Anyway, Penno was a very different place in those days (my family moved there in 1959, but had been associated with the suburb since the 1920s) and had quite a few bullies, rich and poor. (The school's intake zone included Thornleigh, where some of the boys' fathers worked as railway fettlers, and lived in tiny buildings little better than fibro workers' huts (one boy who was mockingly nicknamed "Awww ... Ferrel!, had a tap over his bed), and Wahroonga, where some of the kids lived in huge mansions in posh locations such as Burns Road and Water Street. Unlike some locals, I didn't eschew Thornleigh, although Thornleigh was so much poorer (more at my Memoirs), but often went there to 'the flicks' and saw movies. For a few years I went with my mate Fatty Farrar (people of all ages tended not to be as fat in thoe ante-fast food day as they are in Australia today ˗ Fatty Farrar was thinner than most kids today, and so was Fat Ayling). Fatty Farrar and I went on every Saturday afternoon to the Thornleigh Astra and saw a 'matinee', two cheap new-release films like James Bond pictures, and about half an hour of cartoons, mostly Warner Bros, like Bugs Bunny, and so on. If you didn't stand up for the national anthem, God Save the Queen, the old bloke with waxed eyebrows who ran, and probably owned, the place, would come with a torch and throw you out of the building. I usually got thrown out, as I did for rolling Jaffas down the aisle, and was a popular Australian pastime, and throwing tiny balls of chewed chewing gum into the hair of a girl sitting in front of me, who wouldn't stop talking. By the time I was 17, I'd go with Baz le Tuff and other mates to the same cinema, which we now call 'The Bojou' for fun, on schoolday-free nights and we'd tell our parents we'd seen new movies like The Bridge Over the River Kwai, If (I wish I'd actually seen it), and especially things of which we knew our Baptist parents would disapprove, like, M*A*S*H, Diamonds Are Forever, Airport, etc. Baz and I found our parents very disapproving of us seeing The Graduate with its "digusting promotion of smoking, sex outside marrige and even adultery!", so we felt required to invent movies we'd seen, in order to escape parental wrath. We often bought bottles of alcohol, usually Lilydale or Mercury Cider ) the cheapest way to get drunk), and drank those around the streets of Thornleigh and Pennant Hills. If we all had forgotten to bring a bottle opener, which was usually the case, we'd smash the neck off the bottle on people's front walls, and drink it through a handkerchief (tissues were new as well, so every bloke had a hankie in his pocket). The main goals were to get drunk, and not get 'sprung' by your parents.

I add that one lad I travelled with by train to school was a very nice bloke named Mackenzie, who assured me that husbands and wives went to hospital to conceive babies ˗ his elder brother was a medical student, and had told him, so he believed his brother, and not me. I wonder if Mackenzie (we only ever used surnames at school, unless rebellious, which I was in every way I could dream up) ever found out what to do at home with his sheila.

I still travel a lot by bus, and while it's smetimes a huge hassle, I've done so much over the decades, I guess I have to put up with it until my eyes improve a lot. I definitely can't drive, so I get around by public transport wherever I am if I have to o more than a very few kilometres. But I'm not a great traveller. When I was in Libya, there were some gumtrees at Leptis Magna, and like a typical homesick Aussie, I just wanted to smell the leaves. I've only been overseas for six days, but my brother, John, regularly takes off the different part of the world, usually with his wife and kids. He mixes with men, women and children from any culture, very easily, and gets to know the land and it's customs. But once, in London, he asked for some Yorkshire pudding off the menu. 'Pudding' is what Australians call what Americans call 'dessert', a sweet dish at the end of a main course. (As I'm sure you lnow, many things are said differently, by Americans and Australians, as we say 'lollies', 'sweets', 'sweeties', and so on. and Americans say 'candy' (see Australian-American English on this site for more examples). At the end of the meal the waiter brought the bill, which John looked at, and was quite concerned, perhaps a bit annoyed. He said to the waiter, "Excuse me, mate. You've charged me a few quid for Yorkshire pudding. But we haven't had any pudding yet." The waiter explained that Yorkshire pudding is a dish which originated in Yorkshire, made from batter, and usually served with roast meat and gravy. I think he ended up more embarrassed than the waiter he'd been questioning, albeit affably, as is his wont. He had 'egg on his face'.

In my time at West Penno, we not only didn't have a bus to go to Penno in, and unless you had use of a car, we walked quite long distances every day, to the station, school and the shops, a bloke driving a horse-drawn surrey would ride by our house. Similarly, nuns in habits walked past out house on their weekly stroll from 'Mount Saint High Brick Wall', as we lads called Mount St Benedict Convent, where we couldn't get in to meet girls. A farm was across the road from where I lived - I would steal sometimes eggs from its chooks, which probably explains my adult love of hens, and my predilection for sucking the yolk and white out of eggs, without salt. Some people find it disgusting. But as far as I have been able to determine, it is not harmful to health, and quite nutritious. I do one a day. I 'suck eggs', as they say. I'd like to hear if this is not the case, thank you.

I’ve written about Fernanda previously, but have lost so many thousands of words about her, and lost them because of computer hassles, please excuse if this is a repeat from another page I can’t locate with my damaged eyesight. Fernanda did a PhD in Sociology at UNSW University, and was a friend of the sociologist who invented the term ‘economic rationalism’. He was a dinner guest in our home. She could dance, and sing, and cook, and speak English possibly better than I. She knew, among many interesting people, Ted Trainer, to whose place we drove one weekend. I proofread her PhD on ‘Globality and globalisation’ ˗ very different matters  ˗ and her English was exceptional for someone who had learned the language in adulthood. I’m not too bad at that sort of task, and couldn’t find an error. (I add that the University of New South Wales Sociology Department, and to a lesser degree, the Anthopology Department, were at the time in some internecine battle between the Marxist establishment, and the upstart postmodernists. Despite my rather complex, well-studied and personal  views about Marxism, especially when mingled with Leninism, I fell in with the Marxists, with dinner parties and coffees, as I don't hold PoMo in great esteem.) We had a wonderful double wedding with my daughter Julia, and Kismal, at my friend Mark Kennedy’s home, in the backyard in Ashmore Avenue, Pymble, not very far from where I'd lived at Wyomee Ave, shortly before my first marriage. I got the wedding cheaply catered for by the North Sydney Hare Krsna temple, and there was plenty of the nice tucker left over. Mark supplied a case of champagne. (I had already been best man at Mark’s wedding, for which I had drawn a framed picture with Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, ‘Let us not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments’ – I must have been ok as Best Man, because his wife’s grandmother said it was the best ‘best man speech’ she had ever heard). At our engagement party, also at Mark's place, I'd learned some Portuguese, and spoke of our ‘impetuosidade’ (pronounced - at least by me - something like ‘impetuosidadji’) – our impetuosity. History proved it. Some was very interesting, not just to Pip, I trust, despite our ruined marriage. I shall add more Fernanda-related memories here to this paragraph, or immediately below, rather then on my Memoirs pages, bit by bit. If I never hear a Portuguese word again, I’ll never forget ‘impetuosidade’. I try very hard to deal with impetuosidade.

I hear a lot of things on ABC that interest me a great deal. Phillip Adams said that he was once in a restaurant with Ralph Nader, when Nader was in his heyday and Adams was directing the Commission for the Future. He said that Nader drew a map of the Nullarbor Plain on a serviette, and said that if a solar power station was built there, it could create enough power for the entire world. In my view, Nader’s no idiot. I presume the power station would have to be large, but perhaps very few staff could maintain it if it was built well. This would put an end to the polluting coal industry, petrol industry, personal expenses for petrol, and so on. An end to global warming … the list is endless. Unless it’s bombed, it would be hard to ruin out there. Makes sense to me.

Sometimes PIp hears things which concern him on ABC, like unbelievable malapropisms. He also heard that a program was coming up that said wasabi in Australia was not wasabi. He researched the whole thing. I love sushi, and I love wasabi. I like all hot stuff. At 2:15 am I read the transcript of the program. It said that the problem was that wasabi was grown in Tasmania. It seems perfectly reasonable to me. Practically the whole of Japan is contaminated with nuclear fallout after the tsunami. We’re maybe entering another recession. It seems reasonable if blokes want to grow uncontaminated, harmless plants in Tasmania, they should do it. Later I told my housemate I wouldn’t eat anything from Japan unless I was sure it was pre-tsunami, and safe.

Excellent list of disasters in Australia by death toll, at Wikipedia. And might I suggest you say the Ode, to yourself (though, preferably with others), each morning? I so, and intend to do it always. I've said it often, and can remember it clearly:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

It's as cool a stanza of poetry as I've ever heard in my life. It's almost beatnik, or peacenik stuff. It gets better every day, if you say it with understanding, and deep feeling, from heart and brain. Like everything. Use brain and heart. Always. No excuses. That's all I know.

Got enough problems. I quietly went downstairs in total darkness, my new trick, at about 2:30 am and got some wasabi and mustard to celebrate.

I like food very hot, sometimes, sweet tooth notwithstanding. And we’re going to grow wasabi here. I also love to eat fish, very much.

I made a fish fillet meal and made it very hot. I also had lots of rice. I said to my housemate, “I didn’t like rice as a kid, but I do now. Anyone who calls Asians rice eaters has never lived with a Brazilian who could cook well. Fernanda converted me to rice, common in Brazil. But I made it really hot.” I said I’d had to use one and a half tea cups of milk from the fridge, just to cool my mouth down, but it was a great meal for me. (I love fish and seafood of all kinds.) She probably didn’t know, but I softly hummed the “glass and a half of that rich, full cream milk” from the old Cadbury’s commercial. I felt replete, and was in a very good mood. Happy I had some cheap, frozen New Zealand hoki fish from the butcher shop ready to do it again soon. Too dear elsewhere for me. ”Good that it didn’t come from the Mekong River in Vietnam, like some fish shops sell,” I said. “NZ sounds great to me.” If I die of NZ hoki poisoning, I’ll tell you without delay.

Pip is thrifty. He rather has to be. He's not a spendthrift. If there were another way, perhaps he'd follow that path. And, he's just going outside and might be some time.

Do you ever get the words 'flora' and 'fauna' mixed up? I used to, until I was about 20. I think I've got it sorted out now.

I think like an artisan. I think like an immigrant. I think like a professor, etc, etc. I think like Pip. I humbly suggest that you will also think like yourself. And like a pope. And like a ditch-digger. Like a grandmother. An astronaut. Think like a grandfather. An explorer. A scholar. An idiot. A sailor. Think like a kid. Think like a bird, like an insect, fish, mammal, like a rabbit (or a marsupial maybe, like a kangaroo). Like ... a waitress. Think like someone from medieval times, or prehistoric times, like an alien, like someone from the future. Someone in poverty, and hunger. Think like a fat billionaire on a yacht. Think like his or her brother or sister. Think like his or her uncle or aunt. Think like a poet. Think like an artist. And so on. But, whatever you do, please, thimk, and never give up! It might take quite a few months to get there, but in time (there's that hyperlink to 'time' again, because Wilson's Almanac is almost entirely about time, how people have used it for millennia, and how you and I might use ours much better today), overall, and you and I shall probably get there, if we try hard to get there. Think for yourself, and trust yourself. But be careful about it.

My name is Ozymandias. Aka Pip, same forwards and backwards. That's my name. Don't wear it out. I'm Fiftysomething. Lord bless you and keep you. Pip has the best friends, the best family, the best life in the universe. But don’t blame Pip, he didn’t plan it that way. Reminds him of the MAD sticker, ‘UNDER NEW MISMANAGEMENT. WE DIDN’T PLAN IT THAT WAY’. And this is about Pip.  I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told. Sometimes, I'm Grandpa Pip. About twenty kids have been asked to call me that. As I told my daughter, who I call Toots, so named by my 50-year mate, Mister Peg, when she was an infant, maybe some day I'll have a few new names. Mamma and Pampa were my grandparents' names. But it's the woman's choice what we're called when we're old. Pampa was a conshy - a conscientious objector, very loving. Hence moi, j'espere. With all those surviving kids of 11, he risked going to prison for a year. He's one of the most influential people to have made me a peacenik. And sometimes, I call myself Pippin. Occasionally, just 'Wilson'. On some other occasions, it might be 'Hey You!', although I try to reserve that sobriquet for a hen. I hope all that name stuff is OK with you. I wouldn't wish to offend. And I tell adults I meet, to the point of ennui, "I'm not half-blind drunk, I'm half-blind, and I have no dentures that work" - yet. I'm told I have an impediment. I do whatever I want. I consider others' opinions and advice, then I still do what I've decided, anyway. Many people don't, it seems, so it must be me who's sick.

Sometimes I get called 'Tip'. Maybe I should live in one - what the Americans call a dump - but that's not my name.

A good friend of mine was talking about depression. When I said, "I’ve never had a minute’s depression in my life, as I think you know", the person said, “Yeah. But sometimes you can seem a bit overinflated”. I thought she probably meant ego. And I said, “Yeah, I know. But I’m watching it.” For me, it was a wonderful evening, for lots of reasons. Among them, it offered me insights into my friends, and into me. I’m truly doing lots about that ego stuff.

I steal things, as long as I think it's garbage. That's what I did twice on June 19, 2011, first in the daylight, then secondly after dark. I'm quite good at doing things in the dark, especially after my Extreme Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) - the official grades are Mild, Moderate, Severe, and Extreme - some people get a bump on the head, or have some kind of brain injury that has them hospitalised (in 'PTA') with Post-Traumatic Amnesia, for a few days - mine was 71 days. It wasn't fun. At about midday, I walked from my rented house to the Showground in Bellingen. It was a Sunday, and I thought it was a good time, not only to pick up cones from under the trees, Phoenix palms, I think, but also to use in my home's rather inferior slow-combustion stove, which really needs a chimneysweep, or someone who can see well enough to climb up the chimney and dangle a chain down the flu to clear it. And not kill himself, as I might. The days are fine, but the nights can be cold. I found at lunchtime there were two large, heavy pieces of timber, one masonite, and the other a lattice. Both appealed to me, for my garden - maybe a new potting table, maybe something for my vegies or the chooks). I only fell over once, in the mud in the Showground shed (where I'd done my deed as quietly as possible not to disturb the neighbours, and not get caught) - my ugh boots got caught under the heavy lattice. Since I lost much of my sight, and memory (fortunately, my almanacking memory is excellent), I couldn't find my place easily in the dark. I just stopped wherever I could, redubled my steps, took deep breaths ('breathe" has become a regular instruction to myself, especially when carrying heavy things, like an air conditioner that almost weighs as much as me, up my slippery twelve-step staircase with its 12 steps and a hardwood floor below. That's the kind of hairpin I am. My computer was infected with a virus, or Trojan, or something with "800 infected files". Wiring and USBs can fool me. Caches can fool me. Dishonesty fools me. People promising to visit, help with stuff, or to phone - hmmm, that fools me too. But I'm a "tenacious so-and-so", as Mum called Dad. And I often think, "It'd be good if the police - right up to the office of the Minister or Police - would phone as they've promised me, promised the company handling my Victims of Crime Compensation, the Sawtell witness, anyone associated with this nasty stuff. I still have severe, debilitating symptoms. Some are private, but some aren't. I mention some on this page, and shan't remove this About Pip for a long time. For example, because criminals took away vital aspects of memory, I do criminal things. For example, going to bed, leaving on a sink tap that's been heavily dripping for four years, a plug in the sink, and going to bed. I believe there's a law against it somewhere. I flounder in a fool's paradise.

 

Some of my neighbours are almost blind as well. Jeanette also got bashed in Bello, outside the Diggers Club. Brian, her father-in-law is quite old as well, and totally blind, and an inspiration to me, climbing onto his roof. Jeanette has a few Brians in her life. I call her The Brianess of Bellingen.

I don't wish to brag. OK, thanks for asking me to. I was one of the first people in Australia, probably anywhere in the world, to advocate eating kangaroo meat. Some people opposed me for it, but now it's seen by almost everyone as wholesome, and good for the environment.

I still live at The Ponderosa, but as of early July, 2011, I considered changing her name to the Vexorium, Frustalot, Foolawatha, something like that, if she didn't mind. She'll always be Ponderosa to me. But for me, at least, her better name is now, 'Paradise'.

Luck rolls downhill to me. The night I was inducted into Avalon RSL Club (the Arry), when I left the upstairs room where the old blokes had said their nice induction and 'Ode to the Fallen' stuff, I walked downstairs and had almost the first poker machine gamble in my life. Twenty cents in, $100 out in one hit. Hardly had a flutter after that. The first time I did a Rubik's Cube, I had it in five minutes - could never do it again no matter how long or hard I tried. And I'm luckier to be alive than I can begin to tell.

Just after I'd written these words above, after Poetry Night, where I'd read 'Gerard', I walked home across Lavenders Bridge. Not far from the bridge, I was almost surrounded by six men. I was walking north, they south. They were, lean, beautifully quaffed, well casually dressed, about 18, probably different blokes from the ones who threatened to murder my partner and I about two years ago as we walked across the same bridge, and no young women this time Wow, they're dropping their game. Come on, sheilas! Don't let the side down. One of the men said to me, "Why're ya avoiding us?" I had a pencil in my pocket and prepared to kill or be killed if I had to. In Dowle Street, I saw man walk towards me, no matter how much I moved on the road. Fortunately, he was older, half drunk and found his way up Vale Street. I had the pencil ready again. I decided that this state is intolerable for people in Bellingen. If I don't hear from these the police by August 6, the anniversary of the day I was almost murdered, I shall write to and phone every journalist in Australian media and mention the name and phone number of every cop within 50 km of my home. And boy, I've had a gutful of doing this all on my own after a few weeks less than a year. Is everyone playing tiddlywinks? But I won't give up. It's not how I am (sometimes), unfortunately. I had briefly pasted some insults here, but removed them. I want the police to know it's my intention to be polite, friendly, but forthright. I haven't yet decided whether to remove all the matter from Wilson's Almanac. I certainly have decided that I don't want to have such dealings any more and will avoid them. I shan't walk to the public phone box and call. Not good for my system.

And it's not just happening in Bello. The family of five who lived around leafy North Epping where I lived from 1965 till 1970 is another example. Murdered by home invaders. Even Penno. Barely heard a word in anger in my childhood, and surely that's not very long ago. I love my daughter calling me "Foss", for 'fossil', but if anyone thinks that Australia hasn't gone mental in a very short time and is failing to do something real about it, they don't have my concurrence. I believe that telly sure is great entertainment. Helps you chill out and not think. I still have family in the district, and I'm told there have been orther murders. Never heard of one in my childhood. It was front-page news when there was a bank robbery. Am I an old-fashioned hippie? Good! I believe, for one thing, that people never have to work in jobs for food. I believe in Permaculture. I believe in love - all the virtues. I like being a hippie. If it weren't for hippies, there's be no fall of the Soviet Union, no Internet. I'm going to the Prov, but intend to rave on about all that when I get back soon. I might not get all that 'virtue' stuff right all the time, but I do my best, and I don't see enough brown rice around any more. I don't see enough people doing anything real. And it'd be nice to have someone pop in - a guest once a week would be nice, but apparently I'm boring talking about you know what. Been told once ... slow learner. And unless someone tells me the page is so weighty it's cracked their computer, or mine crashes, I intend to keep talking about stuff on About Pip, Memoirs - anywhere I like, about stuff I like, on Wilson's Almanac for decades. Feel free to tell me it's a good idea or a bad idea. It's my idea. I think like myself, believe everyone does. Can't help it. I was very closely involved with the battle to save Terania Creek, start Bundagen, save the Franklin River from destruction. I have no regrets. Clearly, we were correct. Any opposing opinions are entertained and I promise to post them here with my reply.

And, once I heard Elvis, an awesome poem by Bono, I decided not to go to Poetry Night again, for some time. Other matters decided me. I'll just work away at home - I'm writing a lot. I'm working on a poem called Amy - my son was a friend of Amy Winehouse. And, of course, I've recently written Jezza for a laugh, but I have a few up my sleeve and working hard at it. I'm "getting better". Of course, I guess I might go to Poetry Night in a year or three. If people are interested, they know they can find stuff online at the Almy. And I'll go to the Poetry World Cup then. A Bello friend of mine, Liz Routledge, won it, and a mate was People's Choice. I'll let Marti Guy know. Just the basics.

I once read a poem at Poetry Night called 'Fuck me Dead'. And that was the refrain. I've never heard what people thought about it, but people seemed both shocked and amused. I wonder why.

Pip falls over a lot, especially in the dark of the moon after the Solstice. I'm now good in total darkness at home, but I fell in the dark near my home, also banged near my eye on my chook shed, because of my eyesight having been damaged by thugs, maybe yobbos. Prolly not derros. 'Brand Bellingen', I called it. Some people 'got it'. Most were dullards. Bello is half-turned into 'The Truman Show'. Time will show this.

I heard an African-American woman on Thugs say that for thirty years she's lost sleep wondering what she could have done about Kenneth, who killed people in cold blood. If I heard it correctly, I've rarely heard a more stupid person in my life, black, white or brindle. She could have got some mates to tie him up, and take him in the back of a car, maybe a taxi, to a police station. She might have drugged him to make it easier. As a last resort, she might have killed him, and spared the grieving of many families. Lost sleep, you callous, stupid person? I wonder how the families of Kenneth's victims are feeling. Don't lose any more sleep over it, darl. Maybe Kenneth won't get you. You should have stopped him killing defenceless people, you stupid, stupid, vain idiot. My second son is black - I wonder how he feels about you, ma'am, and what made you like that, and I wonder how he feels about all the Nigger brand names. It's all incredibly disgusting. Hang in there, Remy. Forget racism, if you read this. And fight it if you must.

 Asberger's Syndrome. I’ve heard it called Arseburners’ Syndrome. OK. That’s funny. But it’s not.

 

Pip really digs Herschel's views of the Milky Way.

I'm very Bello - Chrysalis started with my daughter (though someone has another view, and I hope we work out the facts) on my living-room floor at 21 Lyons St when it had a dunny man and a chip heater. (My first wife and I weren't 'Steiner', and still aren't). Now it's worth lots of bucks. I've done a lot of stuff in Bello. I first fell in love with the place in 1965 when Mum and Dad took me to see whare Mr Sara, father of the Sara Quads, worked at the ambulance station in Church Street. My mother made a thermos of tea under the camphor laurels. Dr Hewitt had delivered them - what an incredible bloke, so much long-range doctoring on horseback in such a huge area. He was still practising when I arrived - and soon after I was a patient at Bello hospital for six days with an infected finger from bush work. An amateur botanists, he's responsible for many of the town's exotic trees, especially on the path befind the hospital. I love and raise my own treeferns because we had a six-foot one when I was a kid, and because of Bello Hospital. I lived in Watson St near a kids' school they were worried about tetanus in, because it had been a cow paddock, watched bats circling Bat Island from Robert St (spent two Christmases alone there) in an amazing sunset, built, with a flute-playing (loved to hear it on the morning mist) bloke named Denny, a 2-storeyed shingle house I cut from bluegum when I lived alone at Boggy Creek, had to leave for about 20 years, been a married man, single parent and grandparent here ... it goes on and on. I'm very Bello. And I lose things. Since my "accident", I can lose my phone book, my spectacles, my $2.50 replacement specs, about three times a day. I need the exercise on the stairs. I've lost my beanie about seven times. I wear Reg Grundies (undies) over my head, when it's cold. But I'm happy, and brimming with love.

I had a wonderful time at the 2011 Energy Fair in Bellingen. A Pip Wilson’s Almanac sort of day, so, hyperlinks follow, not too excessively for me, and I trust not excessively for you, the reader. I was with Misty and Jeff, and it seemed we all liked being with each other. If I can get a photo, I’ll post it here – we watched a lovely play, with lovely costumes, based on Winter Solstice folklore, stories, songs, music and ideas, performed by Alice and Graham who were instrumental in the production of my Brand Bellingen musical play. Everyone around my orbit on that day, September 9, seemed to be in excellent spirits – It’s well known by those who know me that I’m not an astrology freek, but it was remarkable, so my mind is open to the influences which were occurring. These include bumping into many, many loved ones, including my granddaughter Briar. And I was able to buy for $20, a price I could afford, ‘Plants on the Forest Floor’, a book with a CD enclosed. It was a great day for all of us. When my next-door neighbour, Bill, who I love very much, came home later, I told him what a great day it had been, etc. And added, “Even good to see you, you cunt”. Both laughed. Am I making some errors in life, or the Almanac? Persuade me, if so, and I’ll fix them.

I recall I moved to Bello in about 1975, with my wife and young daughter, Julia, and it was a much more parochial place than it is now. A population sign on Hyde Street near Fernmount (it's now called 'Waterfall Way'), said the population was 1,648 (I don't know if it was for Bellingen township, but I presume the whole shire - and in trying to find out, thereby hangs a 'tail', but I won't bore you, nor have a nervous breadvan, with my yarnopathy. I add that I am known sometimes to 'yarn' or talk a great deal, and I like yarns very much, as Uncle Clarrie's Yarns on the Almanac shows. I intend to write many more, in time, and publish them at the Almy.) If you came from another town, you were universally called a newcomer, a new settler, or a hippie. Led by one of about two doctors in town, they very frighteningly tried to force the 'hippies' away, as I describe in the comedy, Brand Bellingen. If you came from Bellingen and had grown up here, you were called 'a local'. The hippies called them all 'rednecks'. Some of the terms still pertain.

I love a lot of humour, comedy. And I can be very corny. I well admit it, and hope I change. But it’s not as easy as it might seem to change one’s nature. So, I was listening to Guy Noir, Private eye, on ABC RN’s clever Garrison Keillor show too, and an actress said in an exaggerated accent, “You saved my life! My hero!” And I thought, it sounds like it could be, “You saved my life! And my hero’s!”

On my monitor I have a Google Desktop Gadget which gives those astrology/marketing-type pool balls. I mainly like it, not for the cute but schlock mottoes like astrology columns, I like it because it's 8 ball, and it's floating in the Bellinger, a photo I took from Lavenders Bridge. 8Ball aitken is not only a good friend, when I was in hospital two or three people came to see me in hospital apart from my own family. Our  friendship began with a Summer Solstice anecdote, going soon into my Memoirs, involving Fish, who has an amazing anecdote about meeting Werner Von Braun, who actually came to his home; Bird, into the Almy for so long, her partner 8 Ball and it makes one of thest anecdotes in my life. They seem to be half-foist on us, don't they? Some good, some not so good. This one was good. Gday, Fish. Ta, 8 and Bird.

In 2006 there were 12,416 usual residents living in Bellingen Shire. Of this count, 6,050 (or 49%) were males and 6,366 (or 51%) were females. By age, 20% of the population was under 15 years old, 62% were between 15 and 65, and 18% were over 65 years old. Most people living in Bellingen Shire were born in Australia (83%). The median age was 44 years.

Most Australian towns and suburbs have RSLs, railway stations, bus stops, bus inspectors, newpapers, radio stations, maybe a TV channel or two, op shops, churches - many even have pet shelters ... but they don't seem to spend a dollar on having a clearly marked Suicide Shelter in each suburb or town. If you google 'suicide statistics Australia', you'll find an incredible number of suicides. I think almost all Australians have somehow grown to have their priorities way out of kilter. What happened to mateship? Why do I care? Because quite a few years ago, I nearly topped myself. Over almost nothing, but incredibly hard times at the time, almost always the cause of suicide anywhere. If I had found a clearly marked suicide shelter with good people to talk to, I wouldn't even have come as close to it as I did. Like too many Aussies. I'm fine now, but I still think human beings are worth far more than cats and dogs. As much as I love quite a few dogs, particularly Buddha. And, wityh my cat allegy, I enjoy cats very much, ast some distance. But, maybe I'm wrong, but people matter more than any animal. I'm not a vegan. Tried that. Yuk.

So we move on to other matters, some of them also embarrassing for me. But as I've said, I intend be honest, no matter what the consequences, on About Pip, and, I hope, the whole Almanac and especially my dealings with human beings. Not frank and rude. But honest, if quizzed.

I'm old-fashioned, I guess. If you say you'll do something, and don't do it, you've broken a promise. One doesn't make excuses. It's not really relevant if you are friends, police, orthoptists, applicants for sub-letting your house ... you just don't do it. My sleep patterns have changed, and it can be a hassle, or it can be fun. Since I was assaulted, sometimes, I go two or three days without getting tired. I go to sleep if I think I ought to. I check the clock. I have a completely different feeling of cold and darkness from what I had. I wear $2.50 spectacles bought from a supermarket. Best I can do, I've lost my optical ones for the injuries by being bashed around my eyes and temples. You may call me Ralph, Bronwyn ... a taxi, anything you like. But I'd prefer 'Pip', and I'm not out of here yet. On my return to Bellingen from hospital, I had in my room a small number of videos I hadn't yet watched. Crank 2 High Voltage was one of them. I've never minded profanity or sex on the screen, but I've always hated violence. But because I've been beaten up so many times, I found this flick intriguing, and with some of the women who were easy on the eyes. The Asian kid making funny faces behind a woman being interviewed on TV was just as you'd see in Oz, and funny. I've done a similar thing. Years ago there were a lot of Japanese tourists beginning to arrive Sydney, and having cameras not the norm. I one older Australia man say in Hyde Park to another, who a Japanese couple had asked to photograph them with their camera, "Make sure you chop off their heads, mate. They did it to us in Changi." I used to make silly faces sometimes behind Japs taking portrait pix. Cringe, Toots.

Pip, or Pyoop, as Julia sometimes calls me, sometimes, would smile and wave. I'm sure Julia remembers. Anyway, I thought Crank 2 High Votage was mostly good, though all movies and shows were barely audible on my old computer, even if I watched from three feet away at my desk. It was built for me by my good longtime friend, Baz le Tuff, who went to Sunday School with me, and because Baptists 'inbreed' a lot, is related to me on both sides of the family. We are both cynical about the church stuff we endured. I have photos of my injuries I can't reduce. My Photoshop is missing. But Baz le Tuff has helped me work out the major computer/software problems, just as he built the computer. And all is mostly well with the computer, now, anyway. 

I'm very nearly blind, but I believe that, among other things. I'm affable. I went into an op shop recently, looking for a head cover that would keep my ears warm as well, because the nights can be cold in June, and for $1 I got one. The woman serving might have charged me five dollars. Although I believe we haven't met before, she said, "Because you're my mate". Women are generally friendly towards younger men who seem OK, and many of them like gardening. I had mentioned my five grandchildren, and she'd have seen me carrying a box of miniature agapanthus, much smaller than the tall ones which Australians call 'Star of Bethlehem', because they bloom at Christmas). I'm a keen gardener, and though I was self-employed for many years as maintenance or landscape gardener, I'm now amateur like most, and I've tried to grow them from seed before - I went to ask permission to take some roots, but the place said 'For Sale', and no one was home, there were hundreds, so I stole some. Regarding gardening, I went from having dirt under my nails and about $80 a week working as a maintenance gardener, to having within days a secretary, an office with a big desk, and $400 a week after tax, a lot in 1987. Simply Living magazine (we called it 'Simply', and sadly it's no longer extant) was a big break. By summer, I intend to have this long lawn fragrant, with prostrate herbs like Corsican mint, thyme, and many more - they're surviving winter well all about my place in cut-down milk cartons. I trust the owners won't mind having a lawn that smells great when you walk on it, and doesn't cost effort, nor money, to mow.

I was named 'Pip' in 1953, months after I was born, by nurses at the Camperdown Children's Hospital in Sydney, not long after my birth. It was the year of the Recipe for Murder, but I was born to loving and honest parents. I was a sick baby and my parents were told I'd die. I haven't yet, although I've had about 6 Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) - most people have none, or one. Just lucky I guess. There were four male Pips in my primary school class of 48 kids, because we were born months after Queen Elizabeth married Prince Phillip (I have a sister named Elizabeth - Lizzie - one named Rosemary - Rosie - and a brother named John), and Australia was a very monarchist country then - less so now. Now I believe I'm the only one in town. I've been associated with Bellingen for some 34 years, and believe I have some kudos. Recently in Hammond Street, near my rented home at 23 Dowle St, a man of about my father's age, early 80s, exclaimed, "So you're the famous Pip Wilson!"

My actual name is Philip Elton Hillis Wilson. I added the Hillis by deed poll when I was ten, because my mother's maiden name was Hillis, and I've always been particularly fond of her brother. Raymond Hillis was married to Auntie Norma (as I called them then; Norma, now deceased, was a home economics teacher, and Ray had been the No. 2 person in charge of what is commonly but not correctly called the Sydney Water Board, later (1925 - 1987) called the Metropolitan Water Sewerage and Drainage Board, and, typically now that the suits are running the world, and since called Sydney Water Corporation (ugh!), since the suits took over half of the world. Interestingly, No. 1 at the Board was Margaret Piper, as I found out when I went to work at Austcare. We at Austcare shared office space in Bay Street, Sydney, near Broadway, with the Refugee Council of Australia in the same premises, and Margaret is working there now. Norma and Ray were childless. We lived in Sydney, and Ray and Norma always seemed to have a special love for me, and not just at Christmas, when we always had lunch together. them and my immediate family. (When I was 12 or so, Norma was mortified when she'd forgotten to bring the book she had bought as my present, The Last of the Mohicans. They took me on a holiday to Dalmeny, on the South Coast of New South Wales, where they regularly holidayed. They were bush walkers, and showed me gold diggers' old mullock heaps, and a woman who wore shorts as we walked around the bush, trying to keep up with a local woman they nicknamed 'Long Legs'. Ray kept an avery, and gardened a lot - both a big influence on my life. Ray was one of the few people who visited me in the Royal 'Rehab', quite a few times, and we were taken by my father to a town on the South Coast to present to the library a most beautful painting of a river on the South Coast, from his own wall. We had a special tea put on for us by the librarians. Many people have even said that Ray and I look very alike. And Ray, if any family member ever shows you this paragraph, as I suppose is likely, I'm not trying to ingratiate myself for an inheritance, as some do, so I've been aware of that, and was hesitant to write this paragraph in your advanced years. I'm doing very well as it is, thanks Unk, I don't want a penny, and have had some trouble contacting you by phone, as I try almost every weekday. I just wanted to note what an important influence you have been in my life, on the About Pip page, where it belongs. The love is very profound, and I wanted to share what love has done for me. Thanks a lot. Bib, Cheryl or Lynette, should get it, I reckon. (Mum as a child was Bub, and her elder sister was, and still is, Bib. You might know Bib and Bub, the comic strip published in August, 1924, with its very great influence on the Australian book trade, and our culture. Our Bib's always battled, likewise her kids.)

Family resemblances fascinate your almanackist. I had three Uncle Rays, so my family and I always identified them by name, and still do. Our Uncle Rays reveal varied and interesting lives. Here the other two are descibed for your interest. Uncle Ray Harrison, my mother's uncle, who we also called 'Old Uncle Ray', was a veteran of WWI. He 'went to his maker' in the 1980s. His visits were quite frequent when I was a kid. He was single - had apparently been jilted during WWI. He grew beautiful flowers, such as roses and chrysanthemums, still among my favourites, and always brought flowers and licorice all-sorts when he came. I don't think he knew a lot about kids, and preferred to talk politics with my dad. In some ways, Dad might have thought he was tolerating Ray Harrison. For many years he lived in a boardinghouse in Burwood. I recall him saying that he wanted to walk along a Burwood footpath, and a gang of louts wouldn't get out of his way - just great for an old, frail man. By the way, I have a funny cartoon in this office, drawn by my friend Chris Dole in about 1970, showing my physical resemblance to him. Chris was one of my two 'best friends', as such people were always called, and I'd like to show him, but we're estranged. He became involved with Old Presbyterians. His grandfather, with whom he lived, Mr Jeske, was the NSW president of the Baptist Union, and his brother was a missionary at Yuendumu), and he threatened to punch me out when I said I thought Jesus was some kind of revolutioanry thinker. Old Uncle Ray always said he didn't believe in inheritances, and when he died, Mother, who went by public transport from West Pennant Hills to burwood many times, to help care for him. But Ray didn't leave a cent for my mother, nor for the female boarding house owner who cared for him.Uncle Ray Wilson, my father's brother, was for long the head doctor Rockhampton Hospital. He would drive down from Rocky with large family of kids in the car, or in a caravan. The kids hadn't seen TV before and would sit in front of it and be unable to speak to me. All of Old Uncle Ray's possessions fitted into a Globite schoolcase. All he owned, apart from two three old-fashioned suits, were the New Testament, and Emerson's essays. I enjoy the NT, and I love Emerson (especially the essay, 'Self-Reliance', and the Transcendentalist Circle, especially Thoreau), and I'm parsimonious, but I think that's ridiculous. I believe we all ought to read as much as we have time for, and that we should leave our money to struggling relatives, like Auntie Bib, struggling without a husband, a son dying before his time, two nice daughters and another son, all of whom she raised on her own, probably on a pension. You can't take it with you. It seems obvious to me. Old Uncle Ray was walking on a footpath as an old man in Burwood, where he had lived for decades, by a group of teenaged  thugs who would not let him pass (family resemblances, again).  He had a huge number of shares in Burns Philp and BHP, and left the lot to an RSPCA cats' home. To me, that's where the resemblances end. I think that's stupid, and selfish. But then, I'm not a cat lover. I'm terribly allergic to felines. But I can still reason, with love for people less fortunate than I, especially family members.

I never sign 'Pip'. It means 'lover of horses by the old farm in the hills, won of Will'. And I love horses. Until Sunday, October 9, 2011, the morning after my return from Sydney, a wonderful time with my extraordinary old friends, Jo, Sean, and their wonderful kids, Erin and Connor (and great friends like Sammie and Sal), I usually took Dakota, the mare, a carrot, plus, sometimes, half a Mars Bar, when I walked by their paddock off Redleaf Lane. I'd call Dakota, give her a pat. She seemed to expect me. But apparently has now left for good, the owner or trainer tells me. During my week away, I had a new horse to feed as I walked by with Buddha. A black mare, named Devil, had taken her place. I thought Dakota was a pretty cool name, but it seems to me that, for me (for reasons which my be apparent), Devil's a far better one. And she's just as keen to be called by name, walk across the paddock for a morsel, and a pat and a rub.

I really love old farms (over the years I've lived lived on two or three by choice - Shambhala, or Shamballa, at Boggy Creek, Bellingen/Thora was one - and hope I can have a house there again before long, unless some other place intervenes). And, I might be wrong, I probably am, but I think I have the strongest will of almost anyone I've met or read about. I do know that I do things, like pumping up every day, and not many men of 58 do it. I read more than most blokes do. I love organic stuff. I've been doing it since 1972. If I can get it, at a good price, cheaper than the other stuff, I get it. I almost never can. I suppose you know what much of it is prett expensive. I watch my pennies, as the pounds will look after themselves, if you do. So far, better than good. 'Poor as a churchmouse', but winning.

I know a bloke who has done many wonderful, intelligent, kind, self-sacrificing things for me. But he's also done some things to me which were stupid, unthinking, prejudiced, and unconscionably unkind, even cruel. I guess I'll just have to wear the second bit, but I reckon it lets me off the hook.

I link to sites a lot. I'm a linkaholic - please advise of busted links, or typos), in order to aid you and me (no one has to click anything and it doesn't kill anyone - I didn't link 'Sydney' because everyone with half a brain knows where it is, though I link NYC later, because it's an interesting place,. And I don’t actually link to Narcotics Anonymous, although I had help there, and many friends, about twenty, die because of the curse of heroin, invented by Bayer Pharmaceuticals and making money for everyone, including NA. I believe addiction's a myth, like Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy -  nonsense. (See We Are Not Powerless Over Our Emotions).  It’s not a disease like cancer or something. The worst that can happen to you with using heroin too often is you lock yourself in your room for four days. Big deal. Why use a fancy Franco-Latin term when you could just say “Want more”? It’s not a disease. It won’t kill you. They have Sex and Love Addiction groups, too, and a host of others. Give me a break. I don't believe anyone should use heroin heroin, until ninety and know they are OK financially able to do so, and don't have, in your own mind, belief you'd like to do it when, exit, stage left. Not right, I hope.

I think heroin is a disgusting drug. I admit I took it, because I lived with Afghans, and I was fooled. I have an 1890s Encyclopaedia Britannica, which says that they have a reputation for lying. That's what I found. Time and again. I would still love to see Parwiz and Bibi, but feel uncomfortable with a lot of Afghans. But mainly I write this par so I can help prevent other people trying it. I shot a lot, and it nearly ruined my life about ten times, and 20 of my junkie friends died. Don't try hammer, until ancient, and very rich. End of story.

I think it's fair to say that I think it's pretty obvious from the Almanac, that I hate racism. If you go to my Memoirs, you'll read about my beloved Uncle Fred Schwarz. One of the members of our extended family was John Whitehall, He's now an eminent paediatrician, and John Schwarz, both maybe 10 or 15 years older, were called 'the Two Johns'. Both are eminent doctors. John Whitehall comes to mind here. He has worked with children in an incredible number of places where children suffer, including Soweto, the Philippines, and the Mexico City Earthquake of September 19, 1985. He worked in Lebanon, and later confirmed my own experiences with people from Afghanistan, South Korea, and Lebanon. We are quite capable of being honest with each other, but there are cultural differences. He told me that in Lebanon, only the Christian parents of patients told the truth, and the Moslems all lied. I don't intend to become a Christian (Baptist), like the Two Johns, because it's not my way. I believe very much that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So far, no evidence which satisfies me, so I shan't eat. I am, however, prepared to change my views on anything, anything at all. Even my socks, if convinced otherwise. But the cultural differences, I've learned, twixt Moslems, and Christians, are very important for our planet.

And I talk about myself a lot on this page, lots of definite and indefinite articles. I hope you don't feel offended or pushed out. You can build a George or Bruce or Eloise page, and I won't complain. I'd even place it on this site for you, if you make it. How's that make you feel? You can even rustle up an About Pip page on yours ... or mine. No worries. Feel free, make a great day.

There is an incredible number of things I know nothing about, and don't understand. Some I just don't get. Three people have asked me if they may leave a message on my answerphone. Do they think I want it for cooking rice? Me dum. And I'm insufferably selfish. I walk around Bello quite often because I still can't drive, I love the place, and buy lots of coffees. I help despoil the environment by buying coffee in take-away paper cups, because I selfishly don't want to use a china cup and saucer and spill coffee. Everyone I've asked says that they don't want boiling hot coffee unless they're going for a long time. Just like me. And I tell waitresses, I prefer it cool but not tepid, and some of them give it to me boiling hot. Steaming. I nearly got run over by a driver when I had just left the Black Bear Cafe, where I go nearly every day, and ask for 'Pip's usual'. Almost all of the nice women working there know what that is: a flat white coffee, in a paper cup with a lid on it (because I'm half blind, and don't want to spill coffee on myself) and not too hot (in case I don't wish to stay very long). As I left the café, a driver roared around the corner, and I said to a young woman sitting neaby, "That's the third time I've been nealy run over in Bellingen in a month". She was also appalled, and said, "You get that". She was almost speechless, and so was I. I walked home, taking it very carefully as usual, most of the time on grass if possible, in case I fall over because of my poor eyesight.

Lots of people in Bello know me, and like to chat. One, confused things near the Bellingen toilets in Church Street, which now have a bubbler, as they should, and that not so long ago there was one every couple of metres in Sydney, not someone trying to rip off money. I said that because a letter I wrote to the Bellingen Courier-Sun was published, and a longtime architect mate of mine saw the letter about a bubbler, and put one in. I didn't know his name, but he knew mine and knew I'm recovering from a brain injury. I was perhaps awfully rude to show off trinkets, and he kept butting in, while I was chatting with girls and telling them about bashings in Bellingen, and advising that they don't walk at night, nor smoke. I politely cut off my conversation, said goodbye to the girls, and told the chap why I was leaving. I also told him that butting in and changing the subject wasn't good for someone with a brain injury and memory damage. He then told me that I seemed much better than a few months ago. I said goodbye and hurried off. Someone asked me three times in five minutes why I was going home from a function, and three times I said because I wanted to. (I still love him. and hope that he understood.) And with my Irish humour I laughingly said to a bloke, "Of all the dirty, rotten luck. Fancy bumping into you!" The same phrase can be much more scathing, with a reference to 'dirty cur'.  He told me he was offended. I promised not to say it to him again, ever. I shan't. But I might say it to you.

Malcolm Fraser, 1975

 For the interest of all of us: Please google Police shooting shot.

And I don't get why Dame Silvia Cartwright, in the Hawke Lecture explains the Khmer Rouge as though no one in the room knews enough about knows about the genocide of 2 or 3 million men, women, and children. She obviously has her heart in the right place, but the heart's not the only thinking organ. To me, it's like saying, "There once was a man in Austria named Adolphus, something like that, and he a very very naughty man." Perhaps because at the time I was at Shambhalla, Geoff Thomas proposed we get some train carriages for Vietnam refugees. I was all for it. Wouldn't have hurt anybody. I hated Malcolm, especially at around the time of the Dismissal - had  the poster of him poking an ice cream cone into his eye (wish I had it now). Like every progressive person I said that he looked like a goose sticking his nose down a pickle bottle. But big deal. As said above, I like people who can invoke the man's prerogative: to change his mind. Over the past few years, I believe he's turned out better than absolutely everyone but Gough himself, especially what I heard him say about politics in Australia on ABC RN, late on June 27. I stopped voting Labor at a propitious time. If Dame Silvia's audience had been comprised of utter, utter, utter, utter idiots, she wouldn't have used a big word like 'expeditious'. 'Fast' would have sufficed. It's all definitely associated with my Afghans experiences, and Austcare. But there's still a lot I don't get. Some won't agree with me (we all have our own opinions, anyway. And as with troubles, you've got your opinions, I've got mine.). I was in the last callup for Vietnam. If not for Gough, within weeks, I might have been dead, or killing kids. But Gough got me left right, left right out. My grandpa was a conshy in WWI, and married with kids, a year in prison wouldn't have been nice. Goodonya, Pampa. Goodonya, Malc.

I'm gregarious, and I love solitude. The note I used to have on my door said recently something about me being at a neighbour's. I want to be safe, after having been almost murdered several times by groups of people, and because so many people in my home town are being bashed, like me, brain-injured and half-blind (getting better, I trust). But I also believe in honesty, so I scrapped it. The new one said: WELCOME, FRIENDS. I DON'T BELIEVE IN PAYING FOR SECURITY, AND MY DOORS ARE ALL UNLOCKED, DAY AND NIGHT, AS LONG AS I LIVE ALONE. ALL I BELIEVE IN FOR SECURITY IS TO KEEP A KNIFE HANDY. SOMETIMES I'M OUT FOR A MINUTE, SOMETIMES FOR HOURS. IF YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF HONEST, FEEL FREE TO GO ANYWHERE YOU LIKE, UPSTAIRS OR DOWN. OTHERWISE, I SUGGEST YOU JUST LEAVE A NOTE. IF YOU LEAVE, PLEASE DEPART WITH MY BLESSINGS. Pip Wilson

But things got hairier. I don't mind dying, but in my time, not the thugs'. Now I lock every door day and night, no matter where I walk, and at what time, and if I stay home, most of the time.

I keep a kitchen knife in a secret place in my bedroom, and a bread and butter knife in my pocket when walking at night. The knife caused quite some consternation ("Put it away!") from an old mate when I was actually standing by a cutlery trolley in a local restaurant. I've since learned, from another friend, that NSW Police, our noble boys and lasses in blue, recently shot a man for angrily wielding a bread and butter knife. Brilliant! I know just a wee bit about shooting - when I was a kid I had a Gecado air rifle, and fired a .22 plenty of times, at birds, cans, bottles, and so on. If you shoot at a nutzo bloke with a revolver, or a rifle, and you're a good shot, you'll only cause agony. If you're not, you'll either miss him, or leave a grieving family. The capacity for thinking seems to have gone into eclipse in Australia. I almost dare not even utter my opinion. As I trudged back from the Prov, with 800 infected files on my computer, and no way to gmail nor hyperlink, I thought about this and more. It will pass. It's only a few days. I expect to be around for 30, maybe 60 years, still almanacking, still peace, love and brown rice.

My second wife was from Brazil, and has skewed my way of thinking. She was doing a PhD, which I proofread. She was raped at Easter Island when she took a bloke up to her room. An Irish friend of mine asked me where I would like to go in the world, and I said nowhere much. I love the Bellingen Shire too much to feel any pressing urge to leave for more than a few weeks, to certain places. I really dig it here. I've travelled around Australia, driven the Nullarbor when it was a dirt road (and hope to visit the Great Barrier Reef in a campervan, especially if I can go with Remy or other loved ones) - but I would like to go to Easter Island and Ireland, maybe for a week. A week in the Faro Islands in summer would be superb. But I'd want to be home in a month, because I really don't like very much travel, and I've had homesickness a couple of times. I really don't like it. I had it at Leptis Magna when I saw all the gumtrees. Maybe somewhere else, in the Pacific, would do. A mate of mine, who's another Jewish bloke I care for a lot, who wrote a very successful book called Martin Fartingale, sailed around Fiji, and had a stoke up the pole when he went to fix a turnbuckle. He didn't believe in getting help - he's independent, and took ten hours to climb down to the deck. Every one who knows Pip knows how important Steven Latowski is to me. He was my typesetter at Simply Living and is a remarkable man. I used to read poetry at his cafe called Hemingway's (he even looks a bit like Ernest Hemingway, with his great beard) with a sheila I was trying to crack on to (never had much luck at that). Maybe I'll see him at my next celebration. At time of writing, in early 2012, he's living in the Mediterranean, near Malta.

I enjoyed seeing the Harlem Globetrotters in Sydney whan I was a kid, I'm not a globetrotter myself. I like to stay put. Vancouver Island in Canada, particularly, appeals greatly to me. Some of my favourite people are globetrotters. My globetrotting sister is in Banff, Alberta, Canada, as I write. She would probably pay my fare. But I wish to remain. I can easily pay in a couple of years. Marti Guy is from New Zealand, and still gets around a lot, for family purposes. She loves me a great deal, and everyone who knows me knows I love Marti.

And why did I name is 'Maggie's'? It gained a circulation greater than that of Quadrant, which I like and so do many conservatives (it is conservative, and a national institution). It became rather well-known in Bello. A bus driver from the old Raleigh station even pointed to a farm and said "That's Maggie's Farm over there". It wasn't. I named it because of the Dylan song lyric from the song of the same name. Zimmy sang, "I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more". I came to Bellingen because of the hippie stuff. We all dug Dylan. I still do. Everyone was cool, and full of "Peace, love and brown rice, man" stuff. But this is what it was. If you can't use that particular word, it's your choice. I don't comprehend it, but respect it. Don't ask me how I speak. No one tells the truth all the time (I might bluff or lie). I'll send money if you ever find one.

I spent ages trying to come up with a name for the magazine, and had about 100 names jottefd down for consideration. At one stage, I considered calling it things like Yellow Delaney, and Runcible Spoon (I forget the other 98), but I chose Maggie's Farm. In the same year, Sunny, a friend of mine had started a restaurant at Ulmarra. By coincidence, it was called The Runcible Spoon. Sunny and I were both amazed. It just came out of the air, because we'd never used the term to each other, nor spoken of Edward Lear. We might have discussed Yellow Delaney, because we quite possibly had discussed Cat Stevens, as her partner was a journalist for Australian Rolling Stone magazine. A bit of a jealousy thing emerged around the relationship which Sunny and I had, although we never 'made out', as the Americans say. But we were, at the time, late-70s, amazingly good, loving friends. I don't need nor want to have a sexual relationship with a woman in order to love her very deeply. I dig close, loving friendships, with both men and women (and some kids and old people) very much. I find them beautiful, and honourable.

I sometimes wear a string around my pants, like Jethro Bodine and Ellie Mae Clampett. I made mine out of old shoelaces. One day I'll be able to find a belt in an op shop. I keep trying. I gather kindling from my garden, every time I walk about, to save money and have less chopping to do in colder months. I get pinecones for the same purposes, and because they look wonderful, for me and my grandkids.

I have on my desk a piece of ginger root that looks like the Buddha, or a dead body, like an Amazonian shrunken head. I'll eat him one day, and I hope he's dead. He looks it. Hope he forgives and forgets if he's not.

I have a forgettery and a very good memory. Even before the memory loss accompanied my 'accident', I've always, even before my accident, had trouble remembering certain names, like Lora, Paula (and BTW, Paula ... Oops, nothing - forget it. I'll try), Lorna, Nora, Mona, Moana - I know so many of them, and Carmel and Carmellita (same thing). Claudine, Claudette, Doug/Matt, Odelle, Melinda/Melissa, Odette (friendly with a few), Geoff/Jeff/Greg and so on. Attitude, love make no difference to it. At the Ryde Royal I couldn't even remember the name of my eldest grandchild,  and I stared at a photo for an hour trying to work it out. I knew it had a European association, and thought it might be Hermione, but it's Sienna. Some of the people are old friends, some are very beautiful women - it makes no difference.

I might have had an execrable time in the Ryde Royal Rehabilitation Centre, but so far, my life has been excellent since I got back to Bellingen. I'll give you just one example. I made pancakes, and served them with new-bought, pure maple syrup, from my seat was able to feed bits and pieces to the chooks, watching them getting fatter and stronger each day, and knowing we'll gets lots of eggs, for free. My neighbour, Jeanette, also half blinded by thugs in Bellingen, came across the road with food. She had more experience with the layers trying the arrange my Victims of Crime ccompensation, and with my concern about why I had a $51 bill for photocopying from them, and why I should have to pay it - couldn't the lawyers take it out of the compo? She agreed with my view, promised to try to sort it out with me, maybe the net day. I had an overdue bill for electricity. $314. I knew I could get some assistance from the Bellingen Neighbour Centre, and I asked specifically for J (Jethro), because he is one of my favourite Bellingen people - he was formerly Misty's partner. (On my walk to town I bumped into Jerome, and asked him if he could give a hand with some computer problems, in situ, and he said he's come tomorrow morning. In Hammond Street, passed Helen from the Prob, one of my many favourites working at the place I go to most days, and our greetings were warm. "Good morning Pip? How's it going?" I was wearing a Beatles Abbey Road T-shirt. J hadn't known Misty gave it to me a couple of years before. "I like your T-shirt", he said. Funny you should say that Jethro. I didn't wear it for you, nor Misty. I just like it too. I got $210 in vouchers, and had more than enough in my pocket from my partner's rent to pay $104 at the post office. I bumped into Jeff and asked him what day he and Misty were going to Adelaide, and I'd been correct. No one I'd asked at BBB-FM had known.It was rent day, and I still hadn't bought anything. I had chanced upon a sealed packet of Phalaris aquatica seeds that morning. Phalaris aquatica is not easy to get, and I'd tried without success for two weeks. Also, it's notoriously hard to propagate. My housemate at the time and I needed some potting mix, but had no car. I went across the road to Mitre 10 and asked if Mitre 10 could deliver it for free to Dowle Street. Very reasonably, he said there was a fee of $11. Just then, Rick Carr, who had done such a good job of doing the veranda, and attends the charismatic church heard me ask this, and said I could get a lift home with him in his ute. I got a lift home, was asked with interest for the occurrences that had occurred in my life with nearly getting murdered in Bellingen. He didn't think I yarned too much - he wanted to know more. And he even carried thee potting mix out of the car up the stairs and onto the veranda. Later, my excellent neighbour, Mike, was chopping wood and trimming his bananas, and we discussed gardening, and the possibiliy he might be throwing out a lattice we could use, and if Chels didn't want it, he would throw it over the fence. I told him  it was one of those rare mornings you get on which everything works better than you expect. My shoulder bag, Squaw, was really clean, and dry, after I'd washed and bleached her the day before. (I often wear Squaw, and an Apple backpack (which I wear in memory of Steve Jobs), which my very good friend Sean Mooney gave me, among other shoulder bags and backpacks, as I walk with quite a lot to carry.) When you get mornings like those, you wonder, how much better could the afternoon possibly be? I write on the day of the 75^th anniversary of the day the last Tasmanian tiger died in 1936, at 12:30 pm. Having read this paragraph, you might like now to go doo-doo-doo, doo-doo, doo in that Twilight Zone theme tune way. For about a month, it  has been extraordinarily good, and like that. Really good, and amazing. I still haven't bought anything else all day, except the post office bill stuff, and $4.50 for that bag of potting mix. And I feel very lucky, and blessed beyond measure for that. Now, to the Prov, and mention to Wen my run of  luck.

On the following day, within hours of talking to my housemate about Verna Simpson, and Richard Jones, my publishers at Simply Living magazine, Verna was on the radio, talking about, I believe (because I was almanacking, not listening closely), improvements with free-range eggs laws. It had been a week of remarkable coincidences.

I like unusual names. Tos is one. He's a mate of mine - it's short for Thomas. He fixes my lawnmower at a very reasonable rate, but I told him I'm planting a fragrant lawn, and by next year, I hope we'll never need a lawnmower again. Not pay for petrol, repairs, whatever. We'll see what happens. It might take a couple of years if I can get enough prostrate fragrant herbs. And Henry. It reminds me of Henry Lawson. He's Tos's son. I love the way he rides on his unicycle. He looks awesome. Maybe he'll visit as well with this amazing thing of having barely no visitors. Bring some herbs. Give me a hand with the garden. Henry's an awesome young man. I met a bloke named Nezzo. Another  named Eeky.  One named Fupper. A Goey (he took a lot of speed). A Chubby. A Manga. A bloke named Mammoth. One actually nicknamed Squelch. Not Philips and Susans any more. I've mentioned Mango Frangipani elsewhere.

I've always felt the cold a great deal, especially at the appalling Ryde Royal "Rehabilitation" Centre (had to find two cotton blankets - nothing woollen or acrylic because I felt I was freezing in September and November, and always slept fully dressed , clothes I had found from waste and was mocked for by a certain senior doctor, time and again, in company of staff, patients, visitors), but now I often wear a T-shirt, or no shirt at all (as I did recently at 9 am, a 15 degrees C Winter's day, but at 9 C, as it's getting to be overnight, I prayed for a cuddle tonight. Maybe another time. Maybe tomorrow. I'm for bed soon.). I believe it's because I was left to die at 0 degrees Celsius for 7 hours by "at least" two carloads of thugs. Police have promised to phone since December 19, but haven't. Why? I'm half blind, but slowly recovering. The detectives might be busy looking for evidence. Well, I'm not a policeman or a lawyer, I'm the victim (not the assailants), but I have some evidence I know they don't have. Why won't they ask me? Is there some hidden reason I mustn't tell them, or is it just incompetence?

I know some will think it mental. But even as a confirmed atheist, I pray silently every single day, in my own way. Quite often. I have for a long time. If you want to know how, and to whom, email. I think someone like Jesus Christ or the Buddha prayed in their own way.

Tell me if I'm wrong. Please explain. I do my best, almost always. Usually I am passionate about things I believe important. Rarely, I couldn't care less. But only for a minute or two. I always bounce back fast. And adore life. And adore love.

Those are some of Pip Wilson's attitudes. I hope people can accept them. If not, I hope they'll still benefit from other parts of the Almanac.

I've come out of the assault upon me just fine, IMHO, but I'm concerned about the many others in Bello, who are being assaulted, and their loved ones. Few seem to be very concerned. Why not?

I was walking down Hammond St and wondering why I love children and old people so much, why I'm forgiving, mind my own business, do some 'weird' but good-hearted things, say some things are 'private', regardless of the question - if it was weird. It bugged me, so I googled Genetic family characteristics values. I'm no scientist, but as far as I can make out, I got such things from Mum and Dad. Lucky. And I advise them to my progeny as well.

One thing about old people is that you can learn so much about Australia and its its slang. That stuff fascinates me. Phillip Adams interviewed "One of Australia's most significant and celebrated writers, Thomas Arthur Guy Hungerford" - if I'm a 'writer', how comes I'd never heard of him? Hungerford's way of speaking was a trip. "Doctors used to come to your homes in those days". Indeed they did, to West Pennant Hills in the 1960s. He might have said "In them days". Many Aussies do. Somewhat more if they're more than somewhat old.

I love almost all voices, from Fran Kelly and Paul Keating, to Ed Sullivan and Maggie Thatcher (and I suppose I'm one of few people to have personal references from Australian Greens Party MP Bob Brown, Australian media identity, OZ magazine's Richard Neville, and clergyman/politician, Rev. Fred Nile, all politically at odds on most occasions). I'm unconcerned by the person's political orientation, malapropisms, religion, intelligence. I just love listening, like I love watching birds, kids, ants and weather. Having been a gardener (for an income) and fisherman (because I love fishing, and fish) for many years, I observe weather a lot. I also 'love love' (for a wealth of reasons) and observe the ocean closely as well. It seems to me that both love and weather are like pendulums. To and fro, one or off. You know, that's Pip. I tend to talk a great deal, but I can also be quite silent and enjoy staying shut up and listening. It tends to confuse some people sometimes, and I try to balance both. Click here and here if you want to hear mine, from 2009, Bellingen's incredible year of five floods and one dust storm. I'm not too crazy about it, but at least I don't sound like Lorraine Bruce any longer when I'm recorded. All the kids in 4^th Class thought I did, and I did too, dammit. Nice person. Nice voice. But a sheila.

On September 16, 2011, at about 9 am, I heard a knowledgeable bloke from Greenpeace. He said something like, "The fact that the Nullarbor, the world's most pristine enyironment, is going to have an oil industry, run by BP, the corporation with the worst environmental record in the world, staggers the belief, and leaves me almost speechless." And I wholeheartedly agree. We are ruled by greedy idiots, but not for long. The volume of oil spilled by BP in the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill was 17 time worse than the Exxon Valdez  disaster. We've gotta get a grip. Fast! 

If you're an Almanac Search user, you'll see they call me the Poet Lorikeet of Bellingen. I'll fess up, I'm a poetry nutter. I'm not going to Poetry Night in Bellingen for a while. I'm busy writing poetry, including a series of poems about people associated with my life. This series has a one-name theme, people I know, or admire. They include Baz, Bill, Cathy, Chris, Gus, Ray, Pat, Ronnie, Chelsea, John, Fernanda, Jeanette, Gemma, Geoff, Jean-Paul, Jezza, June, Kanaga, Abraham, Mike, Misty, Pip, Marti, Chris, Liz, Nigella, Odille, Rhino, Wazza, and so on. (Excuse, please. Afferbeck Lauder means little to me.) All of these names are in Search. There will be one called Rosie. My sister is called Rosie. She's a Christian, and I spontaneously said, after the subject had come up, "I think there are only three rules for religion. Love. Love And love. She liked it, and thanked me for it. A new friend is called Rosie. Ironically, she had a croaking voice for a short while around the time I met her, due to an iatrogenic infection, and one if the first things I wrote on Wilson’s Almanac in 2010 was Kroakin' Rosie. My life has been remarkably enhanced by synchronicity, time and again. That’s partly why there are links to the site I operate, Aha! : Synchronicity Central.

Being an almanackist, the thought just occurred to me. I haven't considered it for long at all, and might not do it, but I might also have dates. Some dates, like 1984, 9/11, Xmas Day, July 4, April 25, Jan. 26, Nov.11, and so on, resonate with readers, especially Aussies.

And years ago I had a brief affair with a woman named Rosie, in Sydney.  I already knew her from Bello and somehow we hooked up when I was selling jewellery at Paddington Markets. She slipped a piece of paper in my hand, so I phoned her. It was all pretty weird given my poor flirting skills, especially on those days. At that time, some moteliers were stricter on moral issues. We booked into a motel under the name of Mr and Mrs Finch, because I’d just seen the Peter Finch film ‘Network’, and I like finches. She was a lesbian, and the first bloke I’d been with for years. Later, we stayed at a place she rented in a banana plantation not far from Bello. She’d been a nurse and had tipped a boiling hot autoclave over herself, and was badly scarred. But I dug Rosie a lot. She had a warm and kind personality. I add to that that I was quite early to be a Bruce Springsteen fan in Australia, and appreciated a graffitist’s art near Glebe in Sydney that said ‘Bored with the USA’. I like Springsteen’s early stuff the most, as I think he started brilliantly and became commercialised. Even just before Born in the USA, it was ‘BORED WITH THE USA’, some huge graffiti I saw on a wall by Victoria Road near Glebe. My favourites were and still are the album Greetings from Asbury Park, and his second album, The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, both released in 1973. I particularly like the song Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) . You will see that its lyrics are appropriate to this envisaged poem. No need to list all the intended poems anyway. They might or might not happen, depending on life’s circumstances, and I think any poet has to have that view, and the best do. Anyway, I'm slowly but slowly asking my way through the underpants, as my masthead says. I'm considering singing the poems if I ever perform poetry again, and I'm working on my voice. I'm also writing a series of poems on the virtues, such as honesty, loyalty, and so on. It will take a long time. But if anyone wishes to find me, I'm on the Almanac. I like performing poetry, but time is of the essence. Often a poem can be in the head for weeks, as all poets know. My poetry teacher Dave Malick said she could work on one line for a month. I thought it was ridiculous, but now I know. Anyway, that series of poems will be a year or two, and I’m in no hurry.

Patti Smith performing at Bowery Ballroom, NYC

I became a Patti Smith fan around the same time. And I still adore Patti. I saw her play with Dylan at the Hordern Centre in Sydney, on a double bill. I think everyone thought they would sing together. But it was one after the other. Despite my love of Dylan, I wasn’t surprised when about 70 people walked out. He was woeful. But Patti was completely inspiring.

Recently I walked to our monthly Bello Bards (a site and name I initiated, winners of the World Cup) night, formerly at BellaBookCafe on Church St, Bellingen. 'Will Rogers' (poetry17.html) will be in Brummer Striving Poems, free online. I know I can be a bucket mouth, so I decided just to read one poem, or 'pome', as they say (ok, I do too), as were spoke by Harry Lawson, who, I believe from my long research, was the man, who, at 25 years of age (a drunk, an inebriate), was Australia's most famous person, more famous than Alfred Deakin the PM of the day, and whose mother, Louisa - dirt poor, single, with three kids - won for women in all countries the right to vote and be elected. I said to the assembled crew that I'd finally reached the pantheon of world poets. That I couldn't think of one poet or writer in the world, no matter how famous, be they Chaucer, Shakespeare, or William Wordsworth, could say, 'I don't know if this is crap, or part of the English canon. But I like it. I don't know if I'll like it forever, but I like it now". In my pea brain, I think they liked the pome (I always call them 'pomes'. I think I got that from Lawson). I have that attitude about many things (see Search, dear reader, if you want to) who didn't know whether his poetry or writing was a classic, or crap, but that he liked it. That's how I felt, and how I feel. And that if I felt tomorrow it was rubbish, garbage, I might throw it away. Seems reasonable to me. Does that make me a great writer? None of the brilliant bards, my dear friends, could dispute it. I'm a great writer, I trow!'"

Interviewed by ABC radio in his declining years, Lawson's bother-in-law Jack Lang said Lawson was very shy, but had said to him, "Give me mates. I believe in mateship." I'm not shy. But I sure believe in mates too.

My best friend at primary and high school only had a Fa-Fa, but I had a Pampa. He was a ledge to me. I think they're both great names for grandfathers. But I'm Grandpa Pip. I tell the grandies, when I think they're mature enough, they can call me Pip. But still I'm Grandpa. Even my eldest calls me Grandpa. I said, "Darling, you can call me anything you want. You can call me a taxi, call me a dinner, if you prefer. But I'm Pip. You're big enough. Grandpa's fine, if that's your trip." That's Pip's trip.

I believe Pampa was a most remarkable man. He had 11 children, four of whom died in infancy. One, Grace, died when she was playing with matches, in a shed Pampa was building in the backyard for a homeless man, rejected by all others. I believe he met Heny Lawson and gave him a meal. My research into Henry Lawson for my book Faces in the Street shows that at 25 he was the most famous man in Australia, even among the older, political, leaders, and far from being a bush poet, he had never spent more than a brief time west of the Blue Mountains. He spent two years in New Zealand and about the same in England. It's all in my book, which is substantially based on fact. Lawson was a drunk, and associated with drunks, many famous and influential - Sydney was renowned for its drunks in the 1890s. Pampa worked in the printing industry district of Sydney within metres of where Lawson begged. And it's easy to find that Lawson was inclined not to admit he was the famous Heny Lawson. Back to Pampa. He always felt remorse for Gracie’s death. He would weep when her name was mentioned. And I choked up a bit when I told the yarn to my flatmate. Because of his family background, virtue matters to Pip, and so does our Australian heritage.

 The Bellinger River at Fernmount, near my home. Scroll down for more local pictures. Photo by this Pip Wilson.

I live at Bellingen, 30 minutes south-west of Coffs (Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia). Thirty minutes east of the Great Divide, and 15 minutes west of the South Pacific.The latest stuff, including the almanackist's semi-private message (so posh, as I am!), is below.

The Coffs Harbour district has the best climate in Australia -- in my own opinion and that of many others -- so it's a popular tourist destination. Many microclimates, of course. When I lived at Sandy Beachevery Thusday night I would drive into Coffs to do my Flash animation course, and halfway between Sandy and Coffs it started raining, seven weeks in a row, but not a drop at Sandy. The Bellingen climate is the best I know, particularly in Autumn, Spring and early Winter. For example, on June 26, 2011, my desktop weather Google Gadget said it was -4 in Canbera. My office/bedroom thermometer said 17. In fact, outside, it got too hot and glary for me. T-shirts by about 8 or 10 if I'm outside. Maybe I'd better not plug it so much. I did that with Simply, and the place sure changed.

Coffs Harbour is about halfway between Sydney and Brisbane, both state capitals, each about a day's drive from Coffs. Bellingen, however, is of a very different character from Coffs, and most of us would like to keep it that way. By the way, the town is called Bellingen, and its river is the Bellinger. Nobody quite knows why the spelling difference. I wrote a musical comedy about my town, and it was performed in the Bellingen Memorial Hall.

On this site is my resume (I'm available for employment or consultancy locally or by Internet), my Blogger profile and my Flickr image gallery. Meet me at my Facebook. Now you know as much as anyone about me.

I'm a Baptist-Jewish-Irish-Australian-American-Scottish-Koori-Atheist cove, but I seem to get on OK. I'm Koori because most white Australians have a bit of Aboriginal in them -  I saw a photo of Mum when she was about five and she looked like a picanniny, and my eldest grandson is the son of a Koori. I'm very proud of it, with Aboriginal population estimates dating back as far as 125,000 years ago, and my people were present in Central and South America more than 11,000 years ago. OK, to continue. (Kindly excuse - this page is somewhat disarticulated due to the exigencies of building it), but if you have time, kindly listen to How politics neglects feelings: "... the other saying about Chicago is that it's a Baptist School where atheist professors teach Jewish students St Thomas Aquinas.

As for heredity, I've been told by my esteemed and much-loved cousin Geoff that as I've aged, I look more like Uncle Arthur than either Mum or Dad. Geoff won't mind me saying that Uncle Arthur was a lush, and smoked. I like a drop, especially a heart starter in the morning, but not smoking matters a lot to me. I might have the occasional one, and not inhale. But in my youth I was taught to smoke by TV. And Jimi used to look exactly like me. More at my Memoirs.

When I was in my 40s, I did about 100 push-ups a day, but as I got older, the number dwindled to zero. I'm older yet, but after three or more months of good physio, such as walking machines at Royal Rehabilitation Centre. Despite months of mental torture and times of being deprived of food for days on end, once four days (I've been on a fast before, six days back in 1980, but I liked that one, probably because I had choice in the matter, and I was younger), I'm up to 35, and counting. Virtually every day, and I still resist doing it, dammit.

I might be over-hyperlinking in this piece, but maybe you'll know why. The Almy is my life's work (unless it's spilling Horlicks, which I love), like that of a ploughman, seamstress or rocket scientist. If you don't want to click, don't click. It's fine by me, and I won't know anyway. But of all of the Almy's 3,659 members readers of the free daily almanac (and I gently challenge any doubter to show me where any of the nearly 7 billion inhabitants of Planet Earth do a more comprehensive or better-designed On This Day - I will thank them, and try to learn from them, not try to teach them), who is the past have sent up to $588 in one month when I launched the short-lived premium Almanac. You might also know that previously I've written that I suspected, though the media hadn't, that George Bush intended to invade Afghanistan and Iran. (Now an accused torturer, his reputation is in tatters.) In my Austcare/Refugee Council years in the 1980s I was very involved with Afghans and Afghan scholars, including William Maley, not a prof then, who is often interviewed about matters there. I sat on a committee with Bishop Gibran (always called him 'Your Grace'), and Major-General Paul Cullen, and represenntatives of ministers of the state, helping to found Refugee Week. And that at the time, the growth of the Almanac was so phenomenal that a mathematics professor mate (now more than 50 years) told me that if it continued at that rate, in another 4.25 years, the subscribership would be greater than the population of Planet Earth. Kindly click Support, then 'Here's how it works', and see what's happened. Ever been a freethinker, and never have people apparently try to murder you? It's not a good look. Taint a good idea. Yes it is. In my 58 years, I believe I've never thought nor felt so well in my life. I feel and think that every hour. Maybe a let-down is coming, but I'll tell Almaniacs. My Facbook is pretty bad but I still have gmail, and something to offer. I dig people. Speeg! Me freethinker. That I yam.

Recently I've changed a lot of my ways. Much of the time I say "I intend", rather than "I will". As it says in my new free e-book, being linked to remarkably quickly since Day 1, says, "My Swiss mate Regi's aunt and grandmother were killed when an air force jet crashed into their apartment. So the old Be Here Now makes sense. I practise many times a day and feel I'm getting better at it." But, as the famous Australian said, you get free steak knives, and there's more, much more.

Hiya, Joe. Hello, Mister Denahy. As anyone who knows me or uses SiteMap or Search to wend their way around this site will know, I love nicknames, I love my Celtic roots, and my Irishness and Jewish connection, and I love gardening and permaculture. My first mother-in-law, and my daughter and her five kids are all very happy that she's still with us, for years from about 1972 used to call me "Adam the gardener". That's my way to introduce myself, but, of course, there are more things to me than those three impairments. Sometimes I sign off emails and web pages, 'adidas, flamingos', 'adidas, amoeba'. Sometimes, 'tamara, banana'. It often depends on my computer problems. Seemingly insoluble at times, even after napping, especially with this text editor, and a Yahoo! Groups homepage that seemed to have disappeared, from Esmeralda my Computer, but my attitude was, "I'll get there - I'm in no hurry, and I've had help from a good mate to try NVU. I'll keep trying tomo if necessary." One step at a time is easy for someone who's half blind and has been tied into a bed and a wheelchair, and tried to cut himself out of both of them (thank ye gods I didn't while in that coma!). And I say "fret nyet!" - said that for years, long before this injury. Never try to crack on if you’re too thin. Been there. Done that. A beautiful young Serbian woman named Gordana. I still have her photo. See my Memoirs later. Tales to tell.

Because you've landed at Pip Wilson's Almanac (founded 01.01.01), and I'm such a Pip Wilson, probably an egotist, and this is my site, and this is About Pip, I intend to talk About Pip, as long as I choose, because you may click off. And if you've read my assault page, you'll know that I've had such a struggle with NSW police that it rather amuses me. (I've been told by a Ph.D friend studying drug culture that she believes even 72.6% of local police are using methamphetamines, or 'crystal meth', rife around the whole north coast of NSW, especially around Coffs). I've also suffered immensely. And if you've read much of my other stuff, you'll know I try to say "I'm very well, thank you", rather than "I'm good", as my beloved Baptist/Plymouth Brethren grandfather taught me (and that I'm not a Christian, I'm a Pip Wilsonian). Given my Irish heritage, I have an almost icorrigible playfulness. I said to one shop assistant at the Providore, who I thought knew my joke, “Well I’m good, darling, as is widely known. And how are you this morning?”.  Nada. She didn’t get it. But we see each other with pleasure, for each, I believe, almost every d

I find the concept, for anyone, of being someone who is in almost all ways one who is usually quite understanding, and forgiving, very occasionally might well be an opinionated egotist. For example, I noted that in the case of the expression "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die". I think people usually get it wrong. They seem to eschew such practices. If one's just using it as an old, common expression, that's OK. But I feel sure that some really mean it. If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, I'd do it. I can't think of a better way to check out. If you're a wowser, just eat and be merry. Better than being a drag. And I have many flaws, far too many for my liking, and I can be insufferably lazy sometimes. But can be brave sometimes, and there are some things I work extremely hard at, so I won't slip up on the job. I never tell anyone I've "got it", nor even that I've gone for it. I'm just trying to go for it, and get it the best way I can. I don't know if it's any good. Time will tell, I guess. And then I'll die. I'm not sure of much else.

Sometimes I whinge about walking too much these days, getting parched and footsore quite often. But one ebening I realised that the walking was really good for my brain. I often have excellent (for me) ideas when walking. It occuured to me that I'd long ago seen a Youtube of a reversed video, of a man singing. 'A Most Unusual Day'. The man sang all the words in reverse, and it looked like he was singing about it being a very unusual day. He had to learn a whole song in reverse. He was walking backwards, dropping things which looked like they were falling upwards into his hand, and so on. I think I can do such a video, in time, and if I can, I intend to post it on this page. It seems a very Almanac-appropriate thing to do. I exoect to have the equipment quite soon. Quite a challenge. I can sing a bit, and for some years, as my daughter knows, I've been able to say 'supercalifragilisticexpialidotious', backwards, sorta-kinda, but I don't know if I can walk and sing, and do other stuff, simultaneously, backwards. Only one way to find out.

Pip’s friends and family know that almost nothing bothers him. I’m not bragging. But this page is About Pip. And I’m very tenacious. I try not to bother anyone, but I’m tenacious. That’s my nature, thank ye gods and goddesses. I might have been born a quitter, like some I’ve met. I can still love those ones as well. Love and honesty are big deals for Pip Wilson. Sorry.

I add that I hardly ever say "I will" any more, if I can help it (sometimes I can't). I tend to say something like "I mean to", or "intend to" - usually the latter. I was born on March 1, 1953, which makes me born on the Australia's first day of Autumn, a Capricorn (j/k), and everyone knows Capricorns don't believe in astrology, but somehow the stars have been good to me and my life has been full of what's quite mysterious, to me, anyway. As well, I think it's mental that if a schoolteacher told his pupils that the 'C-word' was standard English only a few centuries ago not profanity, not even Australian Slang  (25,292 words, 3,189 lines and counting), but a regular word, and there was a C-word Street in London. I'll describe the history soon on the C page. I don't care about people's prejudice any more. Having had about 6 NDEs (Near Death Experiences - I'll put them in Memoirs), even before my weird latest one, been threatened with murder on Lavenders Bridge, Bellingen, by about five males and a young woman, all well-dressed, two years ago, then beaten to within seconds or minutes of one's life on August 5, 2011, changes one, but in my heart I believe it's because I was discovered after 7 hours on McNally St, frozen. Everyone in New South Wales probably knows it freezes here in winter. There are some new things about me that are wonderful, amazing, such that I promise I will discuss, in private, face to face (not on Facebook, sorry guys, through by ). I might add that I'll give you the 'headlines'. Nothing else makes sense to me. And I keep it private in the Bellinger River valley, ok?

I don't want to be an oddity, a guru, a freak, a Geek Who Walks, any more than as 'straight Oz' has seen my friends and I - all progressive people in Australia - since the 1960s. See Brand Bellingen about how we did here, and I believe still do - probably worse, more insidious.

Things were different being a Baptist kid and a lot of kids thought it was weird. We were 1% of the population, couldn't smoke, drink, take drugs, swear - Dad has never said 'bloody'. Not trying to whinge at this age, but it's true - plenty of kids would pick on you.As a Baptist kid in different places around Sydney, my friends and I would often attend Friday Night Youth Fellowships, a Saturday picnic (I've known plenty of Baptists who weren't even allowed to ride in a bus on a Sunday, because that was not keeping the Sabbath. Even as a kid that seemed strange to me,  because they also taught that Jesus said 'The Sabbath was made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath'. (Mark 2:27). Seemed strange then, seems strange now. Some people couldn't buy an iceblock on Sunday. Baz le Tuff had Bible readings around the table, as his father was a deacon of the church. We had Sunday school exams each year - I can still recite slabs of the Bible (like 'There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to Man. But God is faithful, and will not suffer you to be tempted beyond that which you are able". (No, I didn't look it up on Google, just wrote it.) And know my way around it. I remember the song that helped you remember the chapters ... 'Genesis, Exedus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, First Samuel, Second Samuel ...' Is fit for treasons, strategems, and spoils. (I was telling my flatmate that I know quite a bit of the Bard by rote, and the Bible too. So I checked. I was right. No big deal, but interesting, and useful.) I'm about to make dinner. (My attitude to the whole thing might not be right, but is exemplified at Jesus Similar, and I welcome any amendments, it's been up for a while and I shall be working on it. But there were some benefits, I suppose, or else I wouldn't be who I am. To continue, I went to Sunday School in the morning, often walking a mile and a half because the buses at West Pennant Hills were so erratic in those days - we didn't have a bus at all for years, many didn't drive, and Dad was always at work, except on the Sabbath. Maybe that explains why I walk so much and rather enjoy it. Being perpetually lean helps. But we sang all the time. Dad has a stentorian voice - he used to write five articles every week for the Christian Broadcasting Service a few miles from home, and do them all in an afternoon, which is probly where I got my Almanacking abilities from - heredity is all. And a good singing voice. I have been told I have a good speaking voice - Americans have told me they don't hear much of an Australian accent - and because of the rest of it, the morning church, the Christian Endeavour, Church yet again, After-Church Fellowship ... it goes on and on. One bloke used to drive some of us round and we think he was a poof. But the singing stuff sticks. I still sing a lot, broke into a bit of it at Poetry Night, and I want to sing more. I can take the criticism, I'd just like people to assess it as I practise. Then once a month there was BYF. They had it at Scots Church. Baz and I thought it was rubbish and would go into the park across the road and talk to winos before catching the church bus home. Or try to crack on to Jenny B, and Stephanie. Sometimes they would sit on our laps but we had no luck (usual story) cracking on. We used to call Stephanie 'Stiffen Me'. She was a spunk.

In later years, when I was about 19, I became very Christian, active in what was then called in a front-page TIME magazine story, 'The Jesus Movement'. I adapted the One Way (Jesus) slogan and had stickers printed at Patrick's Badges to that effect. The minister of the Baptist church came to my home to criticise me for telling some youth I thought Jesus was a revolutionary. It was in the middle of my Jesus freek days that I abandoned to faith. I had been asked by kids from Epping Boys' High School to speak at ISCF - when a few of them got 'saved', that's when I felt the whole thing was not my bag. The headmasetr of the school said that some of the pastors had asked me to cease. He said that the laws of NSW permitted it, but he regretted I would have to stop doing it, as pressure was mounting on him. After my wife and I fled the Christian congregation, we never heard from any of them again. Perhaps we'd become pariahs.

One of my mates in those days was Assemblies of God. He was a very handsome man, and grew a beard because he was concerned about vanity, as many young women found him so attractive. It seems odd to me, and did at the time. But I still respect his devotion to his faith. And I'm asking the pastor of a local church if I might address the congregation for a minute to thank them for praying for me and Toots - especially Toots - after I was assaulted. I was prayed for by Christians, pagans, Buddhists - I have no idea if any of it had any effect. But I'm incredibly grateful for the help they gave my daughter in that awfully hard time for us, and I hope it continues and I get visits. We might pray together. But I'm fed up with walking and getting parched. I intend to go most weeks. But they'd better not let me address the congregation again. As I said, I could talk the bark off a tree. Don't want them to go to sleep. And I don't want to talk about my faith again. I'll say, "It's all on About Pip at wilsonsalmanac.com."

That area around Wynyard Station I mentioned has been big in many ways in About Pip. When I lived at Avalon, I would spend two hours each way on the bus each way to work either at Austcare or POWCH. I got bus lag - and a really crook back out of it and couldn't walk for a week. I don't believe in chiropracters, just osteos, and he cracked my back in 10 mins so I could play beach volleyball the next day at The Basin with friends on my 40th birthdave (as Lennon called it). A week before, I was in too much pain to appear in court and walk properly. More in my Memoirs. But also, I used to go to Margaret Street and watch comics in the tiny Comedy Club, probably after a feed at Soup Plus. I saw Austen Tayshus (he always said "I'm Austen Tayshus from Austin Texas" before he did Australiana (nor been on TV), stuff like that. But much more of this malarkey over time in my Memoirs.

In winter, when it might be a bit cold at night, I keep a big woollen, or near-woollen shawl on my bed. It was made by a lovely woman name Mary. She flew all the way from New York just to see me, because she was an Almaniac. She knitted or crocheted the shawl for me during the flight. We went to the Blue Mountains, and I photographed her in various places, such as under a kangaroo road sign. She said she'd never seen so many stars in a night sky, as we drove back from Jenolan Caves. But she used my computer while I was asleep, and commenced sending poison-pen emails to my friends. She denied having done it, but I found that the IP address was that of the same NYC building in which she worked. She was busted. But she'd had an awful early childhood, locked in a playpen by her aunt and uncle, developing impetigo, bad feet and a half-wrecked life at the time. I found her easy to forgive, and would love to see her again. I love the shawl, and I care for Mary.

Speaking of the shawl, I'll let you know that sometimes I briefly berate myself for a thought that might flash through my head, even if it's stupid one, as I had for a second while washing the shawl. From what I can gether with a google, of course those very rare thought flashes constitute part of the human condition. I might even momenetarily berate myself for losing things like spectacles, or missing seeing something The Benzine molecule was dicovered in a dream. So, as Shakespeare said in Hamlet, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Hamlet Act 1, scene 5.

And I believe that if you don't know a bit of Shakespeare, a bit of Bible (preferably, a lot of each one), you don't know much about English.

And what do I think about slavery? I detest it. A search of the word in the Almanac reveals, at time of writing, 137 references, and none of them is favourable. But when I heard about schoolgirl Madeleine Pulver, that poor young woman who had had a fake bomb tied around her neck, I don't think the taxpayer should pay exorbitant public purse costs to house, day and night whoever did it (if it happened as we have heard) in prison. I think she should have a slave for about five years, for 5, 8-hour days a week, and well fed by the State, mowing her lawn, digging her garden, washing the walls - whatever she wants, within reason. I think it should be closely monitored, not by one, but about five, public servants of proven merit. And, by law, each evening, be returned to his cell, and at all times, treated not only humanely, but forgivingly by the warders, and the victim. And, again by law, they ought both to be required to do an ethics course at some free educational facility (and such exist, in Australia), or a very cheap one. One would hope they'd become lifelong friends. It would save a fortune for the State, help the woman with the hard stuff which so many women have to do with no man around (good for lifting heavy things), and for one or two other reasons, it makes more sense to me. Under such circumstances as Madelaine's, I approve of slavery. Madeline quite possibly will never want to see this miscreant again, which is entirely within her rights as a citizen, but when one considers the Stockholm Syndrome, miracles of love are possible, if not even likely.

I’d thought Anthony Robbins was a gigantic, big-toothed, money grabbing yank shonk, until I found his stuff in a Buddhist magazine, read him, and about him. At about the same time, while living in Bronte, my flatmate had on a shelf Robbins’s cds Personal Power 2. I did the course. I had never felt so good about my life before. Not only do I no longer think Anthony Robbins is a shonk, I promote his stuff. He was already a kinda self-help guru-type bloke at a young age. Was making some dough, going on telly and stuff like that. But then he went into a slump. Soe he read many hundreds of books on self help, wisdom, compassion, self-advancement, Buddhism, and so on. The stuff sure helped me. You’ll find Anthony Robbins books all around the Almanac. I recommend you buy some, help the Almy and yourself at the same time. You could be a garrulous, egotistical show-off like Pip. Only if you have enough Irish, Jewish and Koori in you. Otherwise, forget it. Try something else. There are plenty of religions, gurus, astrologers, and people like that. This stuff’s about thinking for yourself, improving self esteem and being compassionate, more or less. I’ll even lend you the tapes, if you pay postage and send the tapes back after a month. As a younger man I lived in Perth at David Drew’s place in a garage. He was also called David Rockford, a super-modified car champion. He had a business called Personal Dynamics and a big car with that emblazoned on the side, He was quite early at having car phones phones, and sometimes I would try to impress the chicks at traffic lights. I’m glad that when I got back to Sydney I married June, but I had some interesting experiences in Perth as well that I intend to put in my Memoirs as well. That’s what online memoirs are for. If you’re honest and not ashamed to admit you’ve made many errors in your life but then decided not to. And not to hide it from the suckers. Personally, my trust level for humanity has gone down pretty low, and honesty means more than pussyfooting around. We’re here to be honest, and I know there  to another person are a zillion other opinions, such as being incredibly private, like some film star, and I can respect them, but that’s Pip.  I can’t stop being Pip. Please live with it. Thanks. I believe that anyone should reveal to another person, or millions of people, whatever he or she decides to reveal. I believe we sgould trust our own decisions, but to spend as much time and effort as necessary, and not harmful in any way, to consider, meditate upon, and generally try to grok that decision, then stick to it, and only radically change your mind if you've worked hard to grok that too.

And I’d be grateful if you keep reading this crap to the end. It’s About Pip. That’s why I do it. So you’ll know what you’re dealing with when you read the Almy or bump into me in the street.

And this is a cautionary tale, and I’m not putting any of this stough in my Memoirs. When I was a sales rep, I was very young. About 20 or 21 years old or so, about 1974, I travelled all over NSW, 90,000 miles of driving in 20 months. I felt like a centaur, half man, half car. I went from Deniliquin, up to the border (rediscovering Bellingen and deciding to live here), and out to Lake Cargelligo, sleeping in a pub where the men sounded like sheep as I tried to sleep upstairs. I don’t think June will mind me saying this, because she knows I dig her a lot and this page is supposed to be honest. Likewise Toots. (I consider June one of very few women in the world I’ll always love.) I had a few love affairs. I had a brief affair with a very nice librarian named Sandy Shore. We swam nude with a friend at Halliday’s Beach near Taree. I had an affair with a librarian in many country towns, including Wagga and so on. I told all to June, and she had felt our marriage was on the rocks anyway, and a German bloke named Henry had used my daughter to crack onto June when I’d asked him to look after my wife in the bush at Boggy Creek. The adults even slept in the same bed with my daughter, and Toots called him ‘Dad’. All I can say is, if you’re not a young man or woman, or even if you are, this sort of thing is mad. Stay close to those you love. Life’s done in a flash.

Sydney Harbour Bridge The view the same as where I lived in Kings Cross, thanks to Leon Fink and Margaret Fink,
and their incredible and talented son, John, godson of Germaine Greer, who I didn’t have dinner with one night, when I was invited,
but didn’t want an argument with at the time, because I disagreed and still do, with some of her views, and still do,
including her criticising of her parent, which she did in her 1989 memoir, Daddy, I Hardly Knew You.
Too much publicly, while they are still alive,. And her feminism was extreme in the minds of everyone I knew.
It's so hard to know now. It was verboten for men to say 'lady' instead of 'woman', or 'Women' instead of 'wimmin',
but adult females in America and Australia are still saying 'ladies\'. I hope no one spits on them as I was spat upon for being 'sexist'.

I think that as this page stresses that we are different in our younger years, maybe make many mistakes, but as we mature, it’s better if we’re honest, and not hurt anyone, but if you’re sued, be honest, and wear any imprisonment or other punishment, so I’ll tell you about Ruth. We’re both much older now. We were lovers for quite a long while. I sometimes think of her as ‘Ruthless’, but we were both sometimes out of control. Ruth was an amazing artist. She’d learned at the galleries in Harrington St, The Rocks, in Sydney. Ruth was amazing. One day on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, she did a three-point turn over a concrete centre strip. She had an incredible way of dealing with anger. She once threw a cup of coffee in the face of our friend, whose was giving us macrobiotics classes. I went only because it was vegetarian.) She once lay on her parents’ kitchen floor and chucked some sort of wobbly' ˗ a tantrum. We went to Kangaroo Valley together during a flood. I was happy to stay in the caravan, but she wanted to kayak. I joined her, the idiot I was at that age, and nearly got drowned, chasing my kayak downstream for about 100 metres, dripping wet, after having been in the fast-flowing river. It was the only graffiti I’ve done in my life: I wrote on a concrete path in Crows Nest, “PIP L RH”. A cop hassled me for it. I put in the bedroom window, a sign saying “fuck off” (excuse the French), because my bedroom in the commune was just below the Ramada Inn in Crows Nest, and people were staring down at us.

I haven't done much graffiti in my life (though I've long loved what the Eternity man did), although from time to time it'ss been suggested that I had done some. Before the graffiti craze had really taken off in Australia, in about 1980, I bought in a Strand Arcade (Sydney) fire sale a coffee table book from the US, about graffiti in New York. If it' not destructive, dangerous, or disfiguring of the landscape, I often like it.  I love what someone has written on the footpath crossing Lavenders Bridge, which I cross almost every day, a few times. Someone has painted HAL'S BRIDGE in black paint on the path. I think it's wonderful. If you're reading this, Hal, g'day, mate. How ya goin? Orright?

While I was out, the cops came into my room because of complaints. OK, I've had a few women in my time. And they've had me. Big deal. God bless them all, each one of them. Love never fails. Love is all that matters. Except maybe lots of money. That would be cool. (J/K.)

The thing that worked so well in the commune in Sydney was not to live in each others’ pocket, approximately seven adults and a few kids in nine rooms, depending on what was happening with us all, but to keep a roster - which I keep on our lounge room wall at home as I build the wall’s images and posters – perhaps la piece de resistance - for cleaning, paying the rent, shopping for groceries, having your meals cooked for you five nights a week. I ended up having more good food, and probably more privacy, certainly a cleaner house and garden, better companionship, more intelligent conversation, more wisdom, than I’ve ever had in my life since I was looked after by Mum and Dad. Communes don’t have to be in the bush. I’m sure others can still live like that, as I wish. So much fun and mutual support. The place was also the Sydney HQ for Bundagen, near Bellingen. I was one of a few who didn’t become an Orange Person. But I’m still a hippie, sorry. I'm liberal, but to a degree.

One of my favourite people in the commune was the astrologer Pete Walker, and as an exhange for him doing my chart, which I still have, I took 85 hours to do a pen-and-ink drawing of New York, his home, the signs of the zodiac with sexes reversed, and so on. I still have both, with the latter being framed as I write. It means a lot to me. When this page is uploaded, I'll somehow try to track down Pete on the Net and draw it to his attention. I still owe him some money from selling his highly acclaimed counselling book.

At about that time, my daughter was living there quite often with my baby son James (I still have photos). Julia slept in a small room I painted up with a Mickey Mouse motif. At about that time, I tried to go on a school excursion, but because they were very feminist days, the headmistress forbade it, even though it was obvious that I love Julia and Jimi. (I had more than enough trouble with Remy, with all the feminazis with droopy earrings at the Department of Community Services.) So that’s a bit about Ruth. She's welcome at my home any time for a cuppa or three.

Leon Fink had owned Luna Park on Sydney Harbour when the awful fire occurred in the Ghost Train, and my mate Baz le Tuff had worked there at the same time. More in my Memoirs.

I've always wanted two pets, and now I only have one, but it has two names. 'Chase or Chutney', and 'Chutney or Chase'. These two are two chooks (if you're unfamiliar with the word, come back soon for Australian Slang - at time of writing this paragraph, the morning of June 4 (my late mother's birthday), 2011, there were 23,745 words (increased by thousands in four days) in 2,510 lines - increased by about 500 in same time- (each one a slang word or term definition), and the dictionary itself, spread over 26 alphabetically labelled pages, not the 'Slang', 'More Slang', and 'Yet More Slang' (then, 'Even Yet More Slang') that I'd planned. But I've been using FrontPage for text editing, and if I placed a full stop, it would take more than 20 minutes to appear, so I'd go and have lunch, or a cuppa, or a coffee. About four people didn't keep their word. A Bellingen woman with computer skills - I'm friendly with this person - didn't show up after having told me that she'd come at 9 am last Friday. Another Bellingen person promised to come at 9 am. She didn't show up. Yet a third promised to come at 9, then a fourth. I was wondering how to fit them all in, how to help them feel comfortable with each other, and I walked incredibly fast all over Bello. No one ever showed up. Four of them. Nobody's phoned. It made me wonder if idiocracy has taken root even more than I believed, even here. Hard for an old Bello boy to believe. Am I a schmoe because "at least two carloads" of people tried to kill me? Scroll down about my own investigation, which I've made while the cops sleep, tell lies and make false promises. And I think that Slobodan Milošević sounds like something you'd eat at Macca's. As we say in Australia: "Don't get me started!".

There are some things Pip's commonly said on the Almy alone, on pages you can find in my Search. SiteMap, or the javascript menu at the header of most pages. One is that in about my first year of almanacking, I was taken aback by the GeekCode emoticon </>. I thought the bloke was just being rude, and so did most members. He explained he was trying to be funny. I believed him, so, I believe, did most of the 150 or so who read him. I apologised quite profusely, but he unsubscribed.group had 8 topics for discussion, and one of them was Humour. A shame we all lost that bloke. Pip's view is that if he puts </> on an email, he has stuff to do. It's not that he wants you to shut up now. He's busy with stuff. Maybe meaningless to others. But it's Pip's stuff. Pip has a life, too. He's sure people will understand if he doesn't email every minute, even every day. Shit, excuse the French, happens.

I tend to believe some rather unusual things. You'll see this by looking around Wilson's Almanac. I believe that all of the nearly 7 billion people of this planet believe what they want to believe, and the two main influences are upbringing and personal experience. Mine is that ethics matter, and that Bellingen is not anywhere near what was when I moved here in 1974. Use Search on my site to find out Bellingen's importance in my life. I don't intend to give all my life story - I have 24,000 words of autobiography notes for my children, where I'm slowly but slowly with a sometimes brain-damaged computer assembling, at Memoirs. And if someone asks me how I am, or why I'm leaving a function, or if I'm well, three times in one short conversation, and if my answers are that I'm well, I want to, and I'm well, and if the British, Americans, Koreans and so on want to murder large numbers of Libyan civilians, rather take a few hundred thousand dollars of Gaddafi's billions, which they helped him steal from the poor Libyan people, and if one is abandoned by family members, some friends and acquaintances, I really wonder who's brain damaged. I was imprisoned in a place in which if I asserted that I had two children and not two, and that I was 57 and not 48, because the hospital notes said, it must be my brain damage. Yet certain of these university-trained doctors continually ridiculed me for my home town of Bellingen, my clothing (garbage from the laundry room), looked in garbage bins for food; I had weekend homework, a Phillipino wardsman who pretended hours after I slept to stab me with a sabre (I still love the company of Phillipinos, as I have for four decades or so), room mates who were criminals ... and they very nearly had me incarcerated with three men in a house in Sydney, which I'd escaped decades ago.

The Bellingen Show, which I adore, two days ago was a case in point. I spoke with a Shire elder, to whom I introduced myself - there's some dispute whether it celebrates its 150^th birthday in 2013 or another date, but he convinced me of 2013. I introduced myself as Pip Wilson, and that I was a 'newcomer', a newchum, and he tried to give me the flick as soon as I mentioned assault in Bellingen. I asked for two minutes of his time, but he dismissed me in about one, and brushed me aside, after I told him I had this eyesight problem. I was very embarrassed. Would you not be? Has etiquette changed so much? In Bello! Apparently. But it's everyone (so far). If you discuss such things with anyone, friend or foe, Sydney, Madagascar or New York, that you have good reasons not to believe in God, or such-and-such a kind of music, or Buddha, Mohammed, or the Tooth Fairy, they brush you aside, as quick as you wink. No debate. You're 48, not 57. You have brain damage!

This is a memoirs type of thing I suppose, but things like the busy weekend in Bellingen bring back to mind azaleas. When I was looking with my Sydney wife for some country place to live, we put a deposit on block of land high above Wallace Lake. We didn't meet them, but Mike and Mal Leyland had just bought the acreage next door. I was a commercial traveller - a 'rep' - for Viking Books at Manly (another clever money-spinning use of an American name by Australians, such as Winnebago (the ones in Australia are not the same as the American legends, but I subbed for an editor -a good mate - an editor who complained that they mag and he had to praise them because they took a full-page ad), Woolworths, and so on. Not that American, European, probably Asian, multinationals haven't purloined Australian ones.

I won't bore you with my autobiography. I have the Memoirs page to bore you with that. And because I'm brain damaged, I have 24,200 words of meticulously kept notes over years, more about interesting people I've known, or with whom I had quite close associations, than about me. Such as Australian refugees important in my life. Having people in a Leaky Boat is horrible, just like the Pacific Solution. I'm appalled that Australians allowed it, dumbstruck Little Johnny's proud. Others in the memoirs are Fusebox, Barbara Bush, Paul Keating, Tim Anderson, old people, kids, Bill Mollison (spoke to him for an hour by phone recently, and I was a Sydney Permaculture foundation member, prob. second in the world outside Tasmania), Ronald Reagan and his 'Evil Empire' speech, Dan Quayle ... a long list. You can read on at that page. Don't get your hopes up, but there are 20 anecdotes I think you'll find interesting. I like to spin a yarn, but I tell the truth. I knew that from upbringing, the profound effect of the Brethren Baptist thing. But also seeing things like its attempted murder (like mine) in recent years, with Vietnam, WikiLeaks, the Korean War. Experience has confirmed it. Honesty is my new keystone. Feels a bit silly, but that's how it is.

I'm very Australian, although I was long more enamoured of what I see as my three totems, the kookaburra, the platypus, and hail, and some people of the Henry Lawson ilk (my big novel 'Faces in the Street' is about him and his hated mum, who won the right for women to vote and stand for election in every country in the world), than I have been since Australian Idiocracy took hold, and some good blokes and sheilas threatened me with murder on Lavenders Bridge, and then at least two carloads of blokes (I found this from a near neighbour, now in Sawtell - took me yonks, and at time of writing, I've had nothing but broken promises from constables and senior detectives to phone me and chat) but an Australian Jewish-Jewish-Irish-Scottish man, and I feel rather sad for people who are only identified with the Great Southern Land. (Use Search and you might learn more about my interests, or email me and ask if you like.) On the Hebraic side of things, there are a few reasons. My family are not ethnically Jewish, but we have had a long family association with the family of Dr Fred Schwarz (pictured; pron. 'Swortz') , and his wife Auntie Lillian and Uncle Fred I still call them, although Fred has 'gone to meet his Maker'. When I built my shingled 'The Cubby House' out of shingles and hardwood posts I got and chainsawed out of the bush, at Boggy Creek, two storeys high, with the aid and often direction of a builder mate (Denny), I had a signed photo of Pat Boone that said 'To Pippy'. I'd had it for years, it's sadly lost now. We were an extended family, my parents having been close to them for decades and living 200 metres from each other, sharing cabins at beautiful Lake Conjola in winter, and every summer, for weeks, in their large fibro house in Ash St, Terrigal. Their eldest son taught me to swim in one of Australia's first domestic swimming pools. More anecdotes in my Memoirs page, including Uncle Fred's influence on, and close association with Ronald Reagan, among other globally famous people and companies. (Some are in my Memoirs already, but I do have more interesting stuff to add.) Find bad ideas? Crook links? Speak! Back soon with your daily Almy, not About Pip.  Shall I keep editing? With this eyesight? Crikey, I don't know. I also lived for some time in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, which is quite celebrated, not  just in NSW, but Australia wide, as a Jewish enclave. I worked as the PR manage for the Eastern Suburbs Area Health Service, particularly managing all the PR for Sydney Children's Hospital (a name I invented, because taxi drivers were confused by 'POWCH', and was strenuously opposed in ... more anecdotes in my Memoirs) for long enough to make many Jewish friends. About ten of my best friends are Jewish. Margaret Fink, who rekindled the Australian film industry, and Leon Fink, who'd owned Luna Park in earlier days, at the time of the Ghost Train fire, in which he was anything but complicit, and much more besides, were my landlords and close friends. As I am wont to say, more in my Memoirs, and salient, discrete points about my close association with their son and my friend to this day, Australian documentary maker, John Fink (see the Beautiful Dreamers website). I'll phone Johnny for his permission for all this palaver, and will pull it down if he asks me, or if Margaret or Leon ask me through John or separately. It was an amazing household. John's brother, Ben, was launching the careers of the Stiff Gins, Vika and Linda Bull, wonderful performers. His partner was Solly, a female stiltwalker. There is so much more interesting stuff about when I lived at Bronte during the Sydney Olympics. Maybe some Memoirs stuff sometime.

My item at May 5 in the BoD says, slightly amended: 1973 Your almanackist was married for the first time, to a woman who also was married for the first time, and bore him the two remarkable children, Jimi and Jools Wilson. Remy is my other beloved son, from another woman, a Tamil, who I still care for very much. Remy lives elsewhere, and digs the idea that he's very welcome any time, but I don't want any visitors for more than about four days, because it can become tiresome, no matter who they are, and I have plenty of bedding. My second wife (the tem is mentioned, but only in poets' llicence allusion, at the Almanac's Poetry 14) was from another Bello - Belo Horizonte in Brazil. My Mamma (grandmother) was Isabella - a real Irish name, as she was. My granddaughter is (Mia)bella, a friend is Annabella Breadagh (that tickles my Irish heritage), I have a friend named 'Belle' ... and the list does go on. 'Wilson', apparently, is the fourth-most common name in Scotland, before dozens of Macs and Mcs. My best ex, June, is now my very good friend, and co-owner-proprietor of Kalang River Motel, equal-first best motel I know in the Bellingen Shire. On this day in 2011, despite my normally abstemious and frugal ways, I celebrated a number of things, including that day, June's Scots heritage, my own much more Irish, but also very Scottish heritage (my second ex is very Scottish/Australian, and my daughter can speak with a Scots accent well enough to play an Aussie Scot on stage ... I told her, and she had already considered that), with a grog. (I thought that after sharing those facts with a Sutherland friend - a Scottish surname, same as my grandmother's) I might continue to celebrate them with a Scots mate with whom I've had a longstanding deal to have some wonderful Talisker ("The king o’ drinks, as I conceive it, Talisker, Isla, or Glenlivet!" Robert Louis Stevenson." He'd left a few drams at my place for that time, and I admit I'd quaffed it in March, but I squandered $81 on a bottle, and drank a few inches. My mate was expected, but no show - Dave, if you're reading, are you regretting it yet? All this took place at the time I bumped into a Belfast mate of mine, a former inmate of the same prison (HM Prison Maze) in which Bobby Sands died, thirty years to the very day before. My mate promised to beat up any of the men who left me to die in 2010. May 5 was ALSO the anniversary of Sands's death. Since I had my ETBI, some of my friends and money seem to have disappeared, and I might have to live in a tent (which I don't mind, much, but I'm too 'optically challenged' to move my furniture), and the Talisker (not the $400 bottle) was frightfully expensive - but well worth it!

At the same time we were married, it was quite early in David Bowie's career, and not many people in Sydney had heard of him. A close friend of mine (he only dressed in black, like Phillip Adams and the late Paddy McGuinness) - we used to do silkscreening together and so on, was a Bowie fan and he turned me on to the man, and I'm still a fan. I feel quite sure that the song 'Fascination' influenced me greatly, as fascination is very much part of my makeup.

I’ve known some interesting people. In about 1972 had a good mate who only wore orange. His shirts, socks, trousers - everything. Even the inside of his Kombi was orange. He slept in it near the girls' school he taught at. I've had some weird freinds. I've had some Kombis as well. In one, I drove four or five people without seats to Mulwala, which was called 'Mud Wallow' by people at the time. It was the first big outdoor rock concert in Australia after Sunbury.

I've never been much into sport. My sport at high school was 'racking off' - what Americans call wagging. But I was a good tennis player whan I was about ten. Tennis was a big part of my life in my youth. The first time I ever got lost was when I was about three or four, down a lane near where Dad was playing. He was an excellent play. He had once beaten the Australian Women's Champion, no mean feat. At the age of 10 or so my elder sister and I would walk (no buses in those days) a mile and a half to 'Penno' station to North Strathfield (where I had spent my first five years living above our TV shop) and get lessons from Dinny Pails, a former Australian champion. We had a lawn court in this days.

I heard Warwick Hadfield on ABC Radio National say 'coaching jigsaw'. As I said, I'm not much of a sports buff, but I do think Hadfield's a clever, articulate bloke. In fact, I'm not a sports nut at all. I think sport is out of control in the world, from local footy matches, to the Olympics. I was hoping it might be a usually power-driven saw with a narrow vertical blade, used to cut sharp curve, for things such as jigsaw puzzles, and that they're cutting up football coaches with them, and making jigsaws out of the boring codgers. But I googled it.

Nature, or nurture? Both, I believe. At West Penno, we had a tennis court fence about 10 or 12 feet high. I grew beans, because Mum had taught me how when I was about six, and would climb up barefoot, flexing my toes, to pick them. And we ate them. (I mention an aside here: Mum shelled peas almost every afternoon, in them days. There was no such thing as denatured, expensive, frozen peas from supermarkets. It was all cheap as chips.) Mum was a keen gardener, and I remember that when we were at North Strathfield she was often gardening, and sometimes used to dig up bits of green concrete which remained from an old mini-golf course. She taught me how to grow many vegetables. Dad was, I think, an early permaculturist. For example, he grew potatos in the bush at West Penno, from potato peels in the kitchen. And they grew. Many other examples. We had strawberries in an old bathtub, on a bench he built, so you could pick them without bending down. So, teach your kids to grow things to eat. They won't forget. Also, when we lived in Beecroft, my father used to mow the nature stips on his neighbour's propety, for 25 years, and the next-door neighbour didn't once return the favour. I believe my neighbours know I do it myself sometimes. I also believe we always seem to return the favour.

Fashions come and go with garden maintenance. I believe that a fragrant lawn is better and cheaper to maintain than a grass lawn, for example. At North Strathfield, fishbone fern was everywhere - my mother grew it. But I hate it with a vengeance and will get down for hours on my hands and knees to pull it out by the roots. And, I'm not anti-Semitic, but if I see Wandering Jew, it's gone. I pull out quite a lot of fishbone fern and bindiis with my fingernails, so I have to clean those each day very specially, if I remember. My housemate wanted a compost heap. My experience is that compost heaps can shelter rats, so I prefer sheet composting.

I played a lot of soccer, too, in those days. I used Readers' Digests rather than shin pads. I guess there was no leftfooter in the area Baptist Schools soccer comp, because I'm a right footer, and my playing was mediocre. The hardest thing was being ten and having to play kids of about 15, from Lutanda, the 'orphanage' in Boundary Road  Orphanage was the word universally used. (So many official words have changed. I write about suntan creams before they had an SPF.) I'm redoing a yarn about that for the slang dictionary. Still getting used to my sight ... I deleted it. Not the sort of thing I've ever done before ... like after about 13 years of wearing them, losing my specs.

When we first moved into that house, it was the first one around what was emerging as a housing estate, and people would sometimes wander in thinking the one on the corner of New Farm and Cherrybrook Rds was part of Cherrybook Estate. The whole suburb now, much bigger than the estate, is now called 'Cherrybrook'. The Wilsons have a long association with the whole Penno are ... Dad, one of 11 kids, was born in the family home in Thorn Street, and my brother lives just down the road. I would catch the train to Eastwood Primary School OC ('Opportunity Class').

Once, at Eastwood OC, I was beaten up by two kids I didn't know. Two of them held me down and one punched my balls repeatedly. I couldn't walk for four days. Thought I could never have children - I even thought this might be the case when I got married. Fortuna had other ideas in mind. The father of the kid who did the punching was in the paper not long after - he died when he opened a beer keg at a barbecue. I guess that kid got his comeuppance.

  

Pip likes The Beatles, a lot, a fan from even before their Aussie visit. When I was about 10, I had a wall covered in Beatles clippings from newspapers, much to my parents chagrin. I wanted to see them at their famous appearance at The Stadium in 1964; my elder sister, Rosemary, was allowed to go, but she was 13 and I was deemed too young, at 10. In the early 1980s, with John Lennon recently assassinated, I co-wrote with my long-time mate, Peg, a radio play for 2SER. Steve Ahern produced it, and it was replayed on 2BBB. I called it, 'John Lennon. Then and Now'. It had many gags. One was that John Lennon had always wanted to be bigger than Elvis, and he ate a lot to that effect. The play said, "There's no easy way out for a food addict, and John found that the only way he could lose weight was to go Cold Turkey, and eat less. Yoko thought he was overweight as well." Many liked the comedy. Having written it, the play still amuses me.

I like lots of other music, particularly Dylan and some other rock stuff – not a lot of jazz, and so on, but in recent days I’ve been listening to quite a lot of classical on radio. But I still like The Beatles a lot, especially John Lennon, as is easy to divine by looking around the Almanac. It seems odd to me that to me that Yoko Ono, George Martin, Neil Aspinall, and one or two others have all been called ‘the Fifth Beatle’. I wonder if there are ten Fifth Beatles. I’d stand in their queue if John were alive. And I still dig Yoko, though many don’t.

George Harrison and Ravi Shankar

While I lived near Boundary Road, on the corner of New Farm and Cherrybrook Roads, I saw one of only two dead bodies I've ever seen. One Cracker Night, we had the usual extended family situation around the bonfire I'd built on the half day off we got from school every May 24. A boy sat down with us and didn't say a word. Having been a nurse, Auntie Lillian could see the kid seemed to be in shock, and we followed the kid through the bush to Boundary Rd. Two boys had been throwing bungers at cars, and a neighbour of ours had swerved and run over a kid named Rory Tuck. The other was Farid, my Afghan friend. I lived with him and Bibi Akbar, his 70-year old mother (she used to say 'Kandor, Jamie', to my son. She couldn't speak English and I don't speak Pharsi. I really dug having Ravi Shankar’s tabla player playing for us in the house, though, as I’ve always loved ragas and stuff, especially Song From the Hills. I’m from the hills. I suppose "kandor’ meant 'you are beautiful', and he was - I thought he looked like a sea lion pup when he was a baby, and he developed a taste for olives when he was younger than two. He used to say 'yoyyie' when we walked past the fridge when we lived in the urban commune in Crows Nest. Farid had been imprisoned in Kabul by the Russians. He came from a prominent family - his uncle apparently had written the definitive history of Afghanistan, but the Russians had shot up their house with rifles and Bibi had hidden under a table. Farid was tortured by the Russians - made to stand on one leg for days - and, sadly, he was a bit mental. He died near El Alamein fountain. At the funeral at Rookwood, he was in a white shroud and I touched him and said goodbye. All the Afghans, most of whom didn't like him, or perhaps even know him, gathered around the shroud and jostled for his body. More about my Afghan housemates in my Memoirs.

I was Honorary Director of Refugee Resettlement for the Australian-Afghan Association for 12 years. I knew from my Afghan relationships and activities, way back in the 1980s, that some of the Mujahideen used guns they had made out of water pipes, or from captured English or American weapons. But it wasn't until September, 2011, that I found out that some still use Enfield rifles, from the US Civil War. That's 150 years ago! That really blew me away.

And I'll be frank. It means a lot to me to be frank. I learned something special from my Afghan experience. Many people in Afghanistan don't use toilet paper, but a wet rag, And I never use toilet paper if I can avoid it. Of course, I don’t use a wet rag, keep it meticulously clean, and hidden upstairs somewhere so it can’t be found. So that someone would have to be looking pretty hard to find it. Some despoil forests and increase the wealth of transnational corporations for toilet paper. Everyone defecates. It shouldn't be taboo, in my opinion. But that rag would stay hidden somewhere upstairs, clean as a whistle, or more likely in a discreet, hidden place outside the house. It would dry out after a day, kill all germs. The next day, I’d use it. I’d have plenty of toilet paper for guests. But I wouldn't use it myself. If  I used a rag. Better still, if you had five or ten pairs of black cotton or woollen socks, you could quietly was one sock, really meticulously, for up to 30 seconds. and let it dry out, maybe in a couple of hours, in your own washing basket. No one will ever know the duifference. Even you. You just know that all your socks are ready for a good wash, and you use a good, disinfecting liquid when you wash the laundy. Now, that was Number Two. For doing Number Ones, my attitude when living alone is, if it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, wash it down. With others in the house in which I live, I endeavour to be meticulous in all things. So far, I think I'm going quite well. Everyone defecates, but almost nobody ever wants to talk about it. So watch out. I might be lying to you about wet rag/sock stuff. Maybe I use one, or either. Maybe not. Shhh!!! It just has to be extremely clean and meticulous, never a whiff.

And if Pip Wilson were the sort of bloke who lived near Bat Island in Bellingen and had woken up one night at 2am and there were so many cracks in the house which real estate property managers had promised to fix for about four years, but hadn’t, that there was a six or eight foot carpet snake (aka Diamond python) coiled immediately underneath his genitals and looking up, looking like anything would make it plunge and bite, and he’d shooed it out, and was back again, possibly after rats, with a microbat running hell for leather through the air and near his long hair and temporarily freaking him out; and if he was the sort of bloke who thought about this on his way home, almost destitute, from a traumatic brain injury hospital in Sydney, and wondered what he would do if that happened when he was half blind; and if he went to the hardware store and the stuff to repel a diamond python was expensive and smelt bad, he probably piss in an old milk carton and tip it in a very discreet place in the garden and water and fertilise the plants well, and wash the bottle out thoroughly if he was alone, so it was meticulous and didn’t smell at all. And if someone was in the house and said they could barely hear him upstairs even late at night, not even when he harmlessly emptied a bottle of spoiled soft drink in the veranda gutter out the bedroom window, and didn’t want to fall to his death and break every bone in his body on a hardwood floor although he’s better than most at walking in the dark, he might do it late at night, or in the ‘wee wee hours’ of the morning, and rinse out the bottle again later, and hide it in a cupboard. If he were that sort of bloke. This was happening, but Pip now has such a competent and compassionate property manager now, some very important repairs have been done to the 23 Dowle St house, which I'm sure the owners will also be delighted with. It doesn't bother Pip, whether the light's on or not. But he can do a lot around the house in the dark, since the damage to his sight when he was assaulted. Best thing that ever happened to him. So far, all doctors, family and friends agree with this assertion.

There are several reasons for believing that being in this situation of recovering from nearly being murdered, by assault, is the best thing that ever happened to me, apart from having family members who I love, and who love me, and so many friends, readers, and especially helpful readers. For example, I had tinnitus. When one of my sons was young, about five or six, I took him to Sydney's Royal Easter Show. I bought him one of those long, plastic cylinders you can twirl around your head to make a whistling, or humming, sound. I asked him if he's like to say 'Hello', though the tube, when he put it to my ear. But, like a normal kid, he squealed like a banshee. I felt like my ears were bleeding. And I'd been a lawnmowing casual employee for many gardens in Sydney, and often had to take the lawnmower between a concrete and brick wall, and a paling fence. Some people I know have tinnitus, a huge problem. Now, I listen to mine as though it was an orchestra. In my teens, I damaged, or injured (I don't recall) my left knee. If I turned to the left, such as on a train, the kneecap on my left knee would cause me agony. A similar thing happened to my 50-year good friend, Peg, aka David, so I told him how mine had improved. I could be sitting at a table, and my left knee would seize up. It seized up one night when I was making the table for Mum, and I was in agony. Once it happened in the shower, and I was stuck. When I was at Royal Rehabilitation Centre, I had a very good physiotherapist, despite the fact that on my return from gymnasium, I was asked such appalling questions by my 'supervisor', having just walked, half blind, from gym, without having been served 'breakfast' until five minutes before gym, so far from my room, and breakfast room next door. One morning, in gym, my left knee cracked so loudly, I think you probably could have heard it from the other side of the room. Now, my knee feels not only repaired, I actually get a very good feeling from it when I walk. Every month or so, it still clicks loudly enough to hear from the next room, but it always feels and sounds great to me. And I lost my RSI, which I got from typing so much almanac stuff, while two email friends of mine had their arms in a sling. Being in hospital for so long with my two-fingered typing (I was hopeless at trying to learn to use eight, just as I was pathetic at learning to learn guitar with my dexterity, although I can draw and do woodwork, quite well, I'm told, and  other stuff - I'm even intending to learn knitting), must have helped. I have no RSI any more. For quite a few other reasons, many, actually, and many honestly too private to say publicly (which any reasonable person would understand, and not try to second guess), I think this assault was by far the best thing which has ever happened to me. And I celebrate it. I intend to, every single day, but especially each year on its anniversary. Especially then. Maybe yarn for a few minutes, then shut up, eat, drink, be merry, and mingle.

Moving right along, as some idiotic TV blokes say. Mum had been in OC in its early days, way back in the 1930s, at Fort Street, supported by a widowed mother, hard in the '30s. I was the only kid in my class and the only boy selected, until I found out only this year that Rob Brown, who I've always known to be just about the smartest person I've ever met (and after 50 years still my very close mate, with Mister Peg, rare visitors to me in hospital in Ryde (shudder) and regular contributor to the Slang Dictionary, had crook eyes at the time). Explains everything. Optometry was fairly new, and a big deal. Some kids wore brown-paper patches on one lens of their specs, particularly if they came to school from Lutanda. John Dease came to OC to select boys and girls for Quiz Kids ... can't recall what happened ... I think I was in a final list or something, all I can remember is that it never eventuated. My hopes were high, I know that. The girlfriend I had when I was 17 did pretty well on Sale of the Century, and my daughter lovingly pestered me to go on it, but about the very week I applied, the show folded. Maybe I'd have done OK, but I was a bit dubious, because sport and pop culture questions seemed regular. Enough reminiscing. Just doing some 'About Pip' stuff. I very much want people to know what's going on around the Almanac, and like it. Seems fair to me. As I said, it's my life's work. And I dig it. I don't even care if readers like me. I've got plenty of friends, three kids, five grandies. I've won enough awards. Pip likes Pip. I'd like them to like the Almy, maybe learn stuff.

As said, Pip's meticulous. But doesn't expect anyone else to be. That's Pip's trip. I usually clean my bedroom/office, in some way, many times a day, so in a few weeks or months, I'll never have to clean and tidy it again. (I mentioned that Pip's an idiot, no?)

Pip makes typos. Not because he's an idiot, but because he's half blind. Please advise. All of Pip's friends know he's a rock 'n' roll sort of bloke. But sometimes Pip listens to stuff like symphonies and hymns, and likes this place, and quite enjoys it. Being open-minded is the dream for Pip. Death-worthy? So kill him. Many have tried.

Pip likes Scrabble. The best score he ever got was about a hundred zillion for 'razorbacks', on a triple word score and triple letter score, or whatever they call it. But he's forgotten the rules. He even had a woman say she's play Scrabble with him. He didn't want to particularly crack onto her. He just wanted to play Scrabble. But like so many people, she never came. And Trivia Nights. I used to play at Trivia Night at Avalon RSL. Wingnut, as we called the compère, was an idiot. His wife set the questions. I was making plenty of dough each week, and stood to win $500. Wingnut asked "Who lived by Walden Pond and wrote about it?" His answer was Sir Henry David Thoreau. And Pip lost the $500. Wingnut wouldn't believe me when I said it was Henry David Thoreau. The only other American I'd known who was knighted was Ronald Reagan. Now, I might be wrong about all that, but I said I had the book by my bed. I could bring it in and show him. I was right. He wouldn't pay me. It's well known among those who know me that I don't expect anyone to be the brightest or best-educated person in the world. But I do believe in honesty and diligence. It seems a losing factor. He's had a few bright woman, some incredibly smart. It doesn't matter. When Pip is in love, he's in love for a long time, usually. It depends on the woman. Seems reasonable, or it's sexist. Had the sexism thing bashed into him by wife No. 2. But he was already non-sexist. His first wife had said she was about the only man she'd ever seen pushing a pram, when Jim was a baby. My first wife was foundation librarian at the Non-Sexist Resource Centre in Coffs, 1980. Brazil was called Lecturer in Non-Sexist Studies, at University of NSW. If you use Each in the Almanac you'll see my attitudes. I like people, babies, women, children and old people the most. Ask Toots and Misty. Anyone who have ever been told just once in their life, "The clucking sound that chook is making is because she's laying an egg, or is about to, or has just laid one", whill lnow the derivation of the word 'clucky'. I'm certain that at my age I don't want to father another baby, but once or twice, even in my 50s, I have had just a second or two of being clucky.

Pip was, frankly, incredibly surprised to find that a progressive Wide Brown Land person he knows and loves, actually hadn’t heard of GetUp!, when he mentioned that the ABC Radio had just said that 22 percent of Australians had used it. He could have said more than he did, but he’s always cautious not to talk too much, or even a lot, because of his Irish heritage, these days, a he might, even to those he cares for and loves. Even adores and intends always to adore and care for. He said that it’s bigger than any political party in the land! It’s the biggest thing since Australia's Vietnam War Moratorium marches, led by hpiiesque Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Jim Cairns (see my Memoirs). I said that if you wanted to say Julia Gillard’s an idiot, promote racial tolerance, help stop global warming here, stop refugees being tortured, let the rivers run free, have marriage equality, eradicate cluster bombs blowing the legs off children, stop the Harvey Norman chain from ruining forests etc, etc, etc,  you’d better get onto GetUp, fast! You too, dear reader, I suggest, if you’re not doing it, which apparently is possible, please get off your arse. Change the channel for Gawd’s sake. Time to get a wriggle on. Or has your getup got up and gone?

If you can’t do it because of personal circumstances, no worries. Leave it to Pip. If he loves you heaps.

Pip’s well aware that he hasn’t got the biggest brain in the world. But he knows how to use it. He knows a bit. Any artist knows it’s anathema to tell others how to think. But some advice I’ve had is good for me as it has long been, maybe it will be for you you as well. That is, ‘thimk’, outside several squares. Be able to change and learn from others. Do whatever you want. But thimk.

Let’s talk politics. And I hope you'll kindly bear in mind that I eschew almost all bureaucracies. If people got their act together, with permaculture, and an emphasis on telling the truth, and being anti-war, and loving others, no matter who or how ‘bad’, we’d live in a kind of paradise where town hall-type meetings would make important decisions for any locale on the planet. What do you think is the best agency in the world to run bureaucracies of all kinds in Australia, or the world? I’ll tell you first the ones I think it’s not. I don’t think it’s the NSW government. My experience of police and hospitals has been appalling. I don’t think it’s the Australian government. They denied Julian Assange of Wikileaks consular assistance for the first time in Australian history, when what he divulged probably saved lives. I don’t think it’s India, China (which is expanding almost out of control), or Afghanistan. I don’t think it’s the USA. They let Bradley Manning languish in an American prison for divulging important information. Like Assange, in solitary confinement, made a pariah by most of the world’s press, till his mind almost collapsed, or did. I could go on. I don’t think it’s the UK government. It still seems to be in a quandary.I think it’s the UN. They administer my mail, and the postie comes, five days a week, hail or shine, even if it’s to bring me a window envelope with a bill in it. The UN is my answer. Please explain in clear, convincing terms if you think I’m wrong. I’ll listen, and reply, admitting I’m my error if I am proven wrong. And maybe find a TV and watch the damned thing, like almost everybody else. Sounds like fun … until I die of old age, or utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter  boredom. I add that like perhaps billions of people, I thought Obama was White Man's Hope. Please excuse, it looks like I got mugged again. Lately I've thought he's a vain, utter, utter, utter idiot. It remains to be seen. But Michael J Pollard for President.

Having a Rhodes Sholarship on your curriculum vitae must be like having a note from teacher, saying that you passed recess at primary school. Apparently Tony Abbott has one. I digress.

And who do you think I think would be the best three people to represent Australians, maybe form a party, even a triumvirate,
if they learned to agree to disagree, and work out a way to do the best for Australia and its people? They're Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull, and Bob Carr.
Rudd is not only an intelligent man, he knows how to work the media. He seems very qaffable, and I expect that many news editors and chiefs of staff like him.
I can't predict the future, but I think that Rudd will get Julia Gillard's job, and she won't be a souflé which rises twice.

From the Almanac’s Google Logos page. To get there, click the image.

Pip foolishly thinks he's a patient man, and has a good memory. He remembers a joke from his youth: "Patience, grandson. Jesus had patience." "Yes, Nanna, but Jesus never had his balls caught in a rabbit trap".  Patience matters above almost all else. That's how Pip thinks. Pip told his granddaughter, Briar, that technology is changing things fast, as is longevity. A woman who served Vincent Van Gogh in a shop died not long ago at 124. I would links it if I wasn't having so many computer hassles at times. We might live to 150 - don't smoke. Who knows what the future might bring? Google Maps with Street View is only five years old. A bloke I know had his same car photographed in Bellingen and Nimbin, because he moved when the vans with the cameras came around. With all the satellites, who knows that in five years we won't be able to get real-time, and watch a flock of kangaroos grazing, or butterflies fluttering in a Brazilian rainforest? They probably wouldn't look into people's houses, but what if they had a street view? You might see a bloke in the street in Misrata, Libya about to be murdered, find his mobile phone number through Telstra or something, and tell him to watch out. It might not happen, but what a dream. Yet, Pip is quite well known to Baz le Tuff and others as a technological zero, deservedly so.

While in Sydney, I hade a monthly column in Nimbin News, which I entitled, 'By a Sydney Cove'. Such were the times, about 1980, I was single, and became enamoured of a woman in Nimbin named Kerry Dell. I drew her a copy of this photo, of Dylan.

Pip's a late starter. It matters not. Live fast. But don't die young. Live to a ripe old age. Love the people you love. Be honest. And I suggest you be unstoppable in such matters. My unstoppability might be anathema to some. But there ya go.

Bellingen and nearby areas have a very high rate of admissions to Ryde Rehab Centre, and not all of them are from bashings, though my roommate for a week in the endless turnover, was beaten badly and left on the Pacific Highway at Macksville. He was the roommate I liked the most, far better than the one who'd tickle me night after night and wake me up while I was asleep (no, not False Memory Sydrome, any of this ... the guy was a bully, and I have a witness - the chief physiotherapist who was alongside us - that he kept trying to trip me as I walked half-blind in the concrete-walled corridors, and off a walking machine, day after day. I won't be putting any of this on my memoirs page. I'm such a brain-damaged person, I've kept copious notes and soon I'll be uploading, and linking from my homepage, a file called royal_rehab.html. In my own time, for a change, not those callous idiots mixed with angels. So, what to do about the outbreak of murderous violence in Bellingen? I wrote this to a friend last night, a mate and fellow poet, who commented to me in an email that as Bello poets has won the celebrated World Poetry Cup and that I'd set up the blog it must be time to meet again to pursue the other good ideas. I let him know this, below, following the very reasonable rule that I was taught at high school, that you can't share share a correspondence you've received from someone, but you own anything you've sent and can't breach your own privacy. And the rules that I've set myself: that I think the C-word and F-word are preposterous, but I'll continue to use them until persuaded otherwise. And that I'll do what I want with my own life after having so many influential and powerful people telling me what to do, being in an incredibly vulnerable situation, and having no alternative but to do, in my late 50s, what younger and older people told me to do. Pip's the boss of Pip. Why does that freak people out?! It still does, you know. But I value my opinion more than theirs. If you're grownup too, I hope you do. Here's my reply to the friend's email, very slightly edited but only to fix blindness-typos, and the privacy of others, and respect certain people with the slang-wowser folly, family and non-family alike, for a while. And to hype the Almy. "I ain't proud. I'm Mary.", as my first girlfriend often said.

I'm going ahead by leaps and bounds. Got a new schtick. Eight weeks ago I was so blind I wouldn't pull up a weed higher than my knee. Now I've got a new mattock, only $30 from Bunnings - probly $70 at Mitre 10. And bit by bit other tools, as so many were stolen while was gawn. And I was scared to walk in the dark, but I've been to the rubbidy a few nights this week. My new thing is, I think every man, woman in child should watch it in the dark, and most should avoid it ... people are being bashed within an inch of their lives, nearly blinded, memory impaired, and if you know, or recall, Misty and I were threatened with murder on Lavenders Bridge less than 2 years ago, by about six men and one woman, all about 17, who threatened to murder us. Bello's gone apeshit ... two more bashings in the Courier-Sun very recently, I'm told by my 70-year old neighbour, who also was bashed. The decades-long female owner of a tourist-attraction local shop was bashed in her shop, I was told, and called for help and nobody came. I was chased by two carloads of yobbos from my home, my elderly female nearby neighbour was also half blinded and memory-damaged, outside Diggers. Two more bashings in the Courier-Sun in the last fortnight, she said.

Pressed Rat and Warthog

Pressed Rat and Warthog have closed down thir shop.
Thet didn't want to. 'Twas all they had got.
Selling atonal apples, amplified heat,
And Pressed Rat's collection of dogs' legs and feet.

Speaking of stealing and such: I’m not a thief, but I can be a merry prankster, and as a prank, I once stole with a friend the St George Bank ‘Happy Dragon’ suit used in shopping malls, and held it for ransom. I still have the photos. More in my Memoirs.

I might be a bit relatively poor, but I don't live in abject poverty. Check out the 2011 Human Development Report. I live like a bloody king. Virtually all Australians live like royalty, compared with people in many benighted parts of the world. Help them, will you please?
 

I heard on ABC RN' Big Ideas, a very articulate and persuasive Zimbabwean Christian speaker (click) say that all but two of the parables of Jesus were about money and poverty. I believe it's worth considering, and acting upon, even if it seems to cost a lot at the time.

Anyway, I think everyone should stay out of the dark. I tell everyone to, or they should if they can't keep their eyes open, and if they see something suspicious, say something like, "If I ever see you or any of your mates again, anywhere in Bello, I'll kill you. I carry a knife. (True). I'm not scared of dying, and I'm not scared of you dying (true). I've been stabbed myself. (True.) I've spent a morning in Gadaffi's prison in Misrata, Libya, near the amazing Leptis Magna, where I toured the amazing ruins with  I saw with excited Philippinos from the Peoples Power Revolution, where he's killing civilians. (True.) I can run very fast (true). I'm not scared of the Bello or Coffs pigs - they keep promising to ring me, and never do. (True.) I've sat ten feet way from the head of the detectives in charge of my chase, and I had to give up waiting for him after he promised to talk to me (true). If you beat me or try to chase me, and I know Bello like the back of my hand after 45 years (true), you'll have to chase me into the bush, and you'll die. You'll die!. Now go, and move house. Fast!"

But how many people can say that sort of thing with a straight face? None I know.

So, I don't want to string anyone up, but some sort of group of men with knives in their pockets must be one of about 10 solutions I can think of. I think it's only reasonable that if anyone's got a better idea, he should make it clear to me. I don't think I'll ever have to use my tactic, but that's what it is.

I'm awake from 16 to 20 hours a day. I have a lot on my plate, if you look at wilsonsalmanac.com, but I would like to work on Bello Bards site, not to promote myself, but to have a go like anyone else.

My poetry could be about anything, stuff I like, like frogs and trees. But I won't pull my punches about Bellingen being so desperate.

Your views on my shtick? (I'll respect them. I might or might not take them, but I'll give no apology if I don't. I guess that that's OK under the circ's. I can't see either of us men of the world quibbling about that.) I have the keys to the site, and I'm hot to trot. Had enough links? Me three. Just this once. It's the only 'About Pip' I hope to write for quite a while, though editing continueth. I'd rather be sailing, as they say, and I hate sailing, not too keen on boats except at a distance, like I used to hate dogs, nut  think I've become, or are becoming, a dog whisperer.. One or two anecdotes about that to come soon in my memoirs, including working as sub-editor on a boating magazine. Any important updates, I'll post as addenda below. If you care about Bello, spread the word please. I hope you'll spread the word about the Almy too. The aim is to do what the song says below. And, rather to nicknames, today, May 22, 2011, I'll sit here pondering Squaw, my white shoulderbag, and other matters as important, until next time. Probably come back ten times in the next hour to find typos. Maybe if some nice, understanding person's sent a buck

And if police, or anyone, can ever explain the things taken from my home, I intend to thank them. I believe that digital cameras are cheaper now than the one I had, on which I taught myself photography at the age of 53. My sight's poor in many ways, a disgrace to the police service as well as to my assailants (and the 'hospital', at Ryde, which didn't know about my sight loss until I asked the head doctors when I might be able to see properly - this most usual symptom of TBI was not in the idiots' notes), but I'm told by some good photographers that my photography isn't too bad.

Moxie, by the way, as one or three have asked (that's a lie - true), is the word I type into FrontPage when I'm editing Almanac pages, as I do with much pleasure, some frustration with the world, day and night (that's all ridgy didge). I need a word to type into Design which I might easily find in Split or Code. I remembered Moxie from my Mad Magazine days. I had subscriptions to TIME and MAD in a bout 1965. Now you know the truth, Potrzebie. Sad to see how those great mags have become Idiocracy rubbish. Let's not get too cocky. I'll be back after a stroll in the dark, for a few more typo hunts, new links, etc - not much left. Watch out, bully would-be murderers! I have a knife. Time stamp: Monday, May 23 at 8:46 am. Last night I emailed Coffs on their website Contact page, told them yet again I have a right to have any police officer discuss this matter with me, and that I'm well connected with lawyers, barristers, journalists, the ABC (I used to be on the Lisa Forrest Show on radio each week - maybe I should have mentioned that), and that if I don't hear from anyone by May 25, I mean to use my contacts. This Monday has only started, but with us in our Australian's mentality now so flabby, especially among our 'leaders' (no word from the verb 'to lead' is in the Oz Constitution), witness the Christmas Island, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib matters, and we have entered Australian Idiocracy - I hope I don't have to say again, It's been a long Monday, Patrick. This stuff will stet irregardless.

And as I progressively change links from Wikipedia to Google, I hope you'll enjoy having up to 25,270,000,000 results to choose from, rather than one, five, six, or even about 100.

Announcing The Almies Award. Free entry, $1,000 prize. Christmas, 2012. Email Pip.

By nature and practice, I'm an archivist. I initiated the Rainbow Archives, at the Mitchell Library, Sydney. I used to travel around the Rainbow Region from about Taree to the Queensland border, once with the Mitchell Librarian, Margi Byrne. She and Senior Curator Paul Brunton came by ferry to see me, when I thought they'd think it was a dumb idea. Now I collect what I call 'Bellingen Shire Free Stuff.' Anything at all that is free from Dorrigo to Urunga, I'll take it. I intend to have a special page by that name. I've extended the things I'm collecting to north of Bellingen, as far as the Queensland border. A lot of Bello people go shopping in Coffs, and have friendships with people up north, particularly the Rainbow Region. I can't pick everything up yet, but people can post to PO Box 1246, Coffs Harbour, 2454 if they choose. Pretty cheap, and all useful. Slowly but slowly, I'm adding things to the Directory.

There are some beautiful things around Bellingen, old and new. (My scanner doesn't work at the moment, so I've pinched some from the Net.) I've told some shopkeepers and shop assistants that anything that portrays how the shire was in recent years will be of interest in the future - even old Orchy bottles, I will wash them. It will show how local people lived. I might die tomorrow, or I might lived for decades. I've explained it to my daughter and one of my grandchildren that I want it bequeathed to the Belligen Shire Library, or the Historical Society (maybe both, I'm collecting so much Bellingen Shire free stuff already) - anything at all that is free, whether a poster for a band I hate, or a travel brochure, a business card, a leaflet, a broken ornament of a frog - if it's free, I'll get it from anywhere from Dorrigo to Urunga. I have one box already, the Rainbow Archives has more than 60, and at last count I believe it to be the largest collection of alternative Australiana in the world. I even had the council title deeds of Findhorn under my bed. So, Belligen Shire Free Stuff. I hope you keep a box somewhere, and I'll get it. Naturally, I don't want an online image, I'd prefer the real thing, in hard copy: cards, brochures, stained glass ... anything you can find. Free stuff. Thanx, Pip speaking. Don't wear out my name, please.

I add that I like to collect autographs as well, and have been doing it since I was about 15. They always replied when I wrote to any famous person. Though I sold many when I was once stranded without money because of my 'addiction' to heroin, I still have and admire some of them, such as J Edgar Hoover's and Walt Disney's especially. Walt's was on a rather large photo with his familiar signature, signed with a felt-tipped pen, and I still have it framed on my wall. I feel that before his name was appropriated by greedy executives, and his films made more commercial, some of his media work was excellent.

Stupid. Anyone, even oneself. Have you thought about that, and bull lately? Like, a few times a day? A real lot? Because if you haven't, I think that's really stupid. I can't find much redemption in stupidity. I just try to keep an eye on my own stupidity, not yours.

Pip's been beaten up many times, but now I try to avoid it despite the indifference of others, such as Bellingen people, including friends, who appear to be foolish, maybe jealous. Sorry. But it's the fact. Bello is largely a stupid, avarice, yuppie place now. When I was a boy, there was a bloke I didn't know. He would come up to me and wrap his arm around my neck and say “G'day, cunt. I know you." (As Australians often say, "Pardon the French") Baz le Tuff and I called him 'G'day Cunt'. Seems fair, despite the profanity. Neither of us had ever seen him in our lives, as far as we knew. I thought of going to the Epping Hotel and putting some LSD into his glass of beer, to make him mental, but it never happened. I was beaten up with Rhino, a dear friend now deceased from  Multiple sclerosis (MS). When I can find 'The Ballad of Philip and Rhino', I'll post it at my Poetry pages.

Even on the Saturday night of the concert at Bellingen's Community Gardens in August, 2011, Pip found all his friends and family were indisposed. He sat on the grass and listened to the black reggae singer. He asked her if she had a bloke. She said no. He asked if she and her friends had a minute. "I used to work for Austcare and the Refugee Council of Australia. Some of my best friends are refugees. I've been into reg since about 1972. And I think you are one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. And I'm in love with another woman. But if you ever want to come around to 23 Dowle Street, you'd be more than welcome." She smiled from ear to ear, and said, "Thank you, Pip Wilson".

I meant it. The response was more than encouraging. All this is true. But Pip and Misty are 'an item'. In friendship. She knows.

The day after that was even more interesting to me. I walked to the Providore and thought I'd allowed Buddha, my flatmate's dog out of the house. Buddha likes to sleep on my bed, and I like it. The story is long and convoluted, with an 'all's well that ends well', and I was able to explain about some excellent neighbours in Redleaf Lane. One bloke there has the same name as one of my best childhood mates. Gus. This bloke has a hare lip, but I think Gus is great, as I told my flatmate. I chatted with Gus, as I do as often as I can, not because of his name, but because I admire and like him. But earlier, a woman had surprised me by running from behind. I said that she was beautiful and thought she ought to know. "Stay with me". Etc, etc. I suppose she saw the dog I was patting and thought I was a reasonable bloke. She laughed. But Misty was still the one for me. I came home after much stuff which was unrelated. I sorted out my post. Nothing but Williams delivered. That's what I call bills. And that's the name of a very good neighbour. One of many good neighbours.

Later on, I walked back into town for some vegies so my new flatmate would be happier. I hardly eat at all at home, nor in town. I told my flatmate she was the best I've ever had, and she was not only industrious, but kind as well. "Making me stuff for breakfast, sewing so much, knowing I have no intention to crack onto you, knowing I yarn so much, maybe too much ... You're like me. Good at pottering", I said. She's incredibly kind. (But I have my patient eyes elsewhere, though some think I should forget it. Unlikely. Things get worked out. I'm happy just to look at Misty and be very good friends. And I'll even remove this innocuous sentence if requested by her. In person.) One day, I flirted with the woman in the supermarket. I had a coffee at the Bean Cafe and asked the waitress if she knew what my usual is, and thank God somebody got it. "Flat white, in a paper cup, two sugars, not too hot." I asked her if she knew who I was, and she smiled and said, "Pip". In the supermarket I flirted with another woman, yet another Wendy in my life, and asked, "Do you know my name? She said, "Pip". I added my usual palaver, "Pip's my name. Same forwards and backwards. Don't wear it out." I already seem to have a coterie of people who either admire me, or at least tolerate me. They know me, and that's heartening. I'm very well known in Bellingen. Who would not like that? It's like a dream come true. Just some other minor matters to settle, and I'm the happiest bloke in the world. I'm only coming second, already. I added that I'm easy to find. If you ever leave your bloke, look me up. I stroked her arm. She smiled. Then I walked home yet again, and sucked on some watermelon, for the thirst came back, because I can suck on almost anything, and worked on the Australian Slang dictionary. Stuff like that. I'm a very desirable Pip. Willing to be corrected. Later that day, I did it at the Prov yet again. I'm incorrigible. But in love with Misty. In a nice way.

And I'll remove any word, phrase, sentence or photo Misty requests from this site. I think it's been made clear. I hope so. But Pip wishes to remain Misty's beau, and is very patient, always patient about her. It's widely known they are no longer 'an item', but how I feel about her. They 'click'. No hurry. Pip's in love with Misty. He doesn't know why, but he is. And likes it. Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...

Pip’s not much of a flirt, but he doesn’t mind looking at beautiful women, when he’s not in a relationship. He heard on ABC RN that Pitt Street Mall in Sydney has the forth most expensive rents in the world. He gets it. I wonder about North Sydney Post office near all the ad agencies. They’ll give a beautiful woman a job typing at the front desk, whether she can type or not, if she keeps her fingernails clean and polished.

Pip's a chook sort of bloke. He had bantams when he was a kid. He bought a car off Chook Hennessy. (Pip also found a kilo of dope in a car on Boggy Creek Road, gave it to the woman who owned it and had forgotten it for years - she gave him four joints. Pip is a forgiving sort of bloke. A bit mental.) He sucks eggs - no salt. He's always done it. Saves money, and he digs the taste. Some think it's weird. Pip doesn't get it. He's apparently weird in many ways. But unstoppable. He can suck eggs, if he wants to.

Pip’s a Coles Funny Picture book sort of bloke. He had the ABC Radio National documentary on twice while writing the About Pip page over two busy days. He’ll have to listen to it again because he didn’t concentrate on much. The man was remarkable, the book was remarkable, and I can’t find mine. I’m trying to get another. It’s great for this almanackist, with some text and pix that suit my purposes.

Pip won't mention anyone, nor any matter, if asked. It's not Pip's choice. He does what people ask with reason.

Find a dead or wrong link? Please tell Pip. He knows there must be plenty of typos, and would like to repair them. The almy should be fact-free and typo-free and have the latest in good info. It will be around for a long time. Please advise Pip of any errors. But please be gentle. He’s a sensitive bloke.

OK, enough of talking about Pip. What do you like about Pip?

Almost forgot to thank you for reading this far. Brain damage, prolly.

Thanks very much for reading all that palaver.

And make a great day, friends!:) LOL Insert an American-style '!', 'LOL' and :) now.

And, almost finally, if you find errors, please email me at wilsonsalmanac@gmail.com. It would help Pippin, and other readers like you. I know some must exist.

Self-obsessed? Moi? All typos due to computer. Not Wilson. I can spell and order lines, like a typographer. It’s in me blood. God help me, I was only nineteen. Older now. Wiser now, maybe.

And Pip Wilson hopes to do a regular daily Almanac. Sometimes he can, sometimes not. But that's  the goal. Be Here Now, as Baba Ram Dass said, and walk on with love. Make a great day. blokes and sheilas. Pipster.

Pip likes to pick stuff off the roadside. He will often pick up interesting, useful stuff for himself and his loved ones. He even picks up lots of broken class and old beer cans and bottles. Especially in Dowle Street, where they abound, and put it in the bin of the house. He’ll often do it a couple of times. He’ll even pick up broken beer bottle glass when it’s raining and he has some nice booklet he’s bought at the Growers Market and other stuff in his hands. Being so ridiculously modest, he doesn’t like to brag about it. Ummmmm … well, yes he does, actually.

And please keep up with the Almanac, especially About Pip, Pip's Links, etc. Because Pip is keeping up with news about about ice, ecstasy, and other drugs north of Sydney which are responsible for Pip and Misty nearly being murdered, and he's going to nail the cops with the fact, to media around the world, especially on the north coast of NSW. They can put me in prison if they want. Been there, done that.

Julia said of Pip, "You and that finger, Dad". I sometimes give the finger. But only when I think people are glaringly, and sometimes unkindly, wrong. Sometimes like Nelson Rockefeller, I flip the bird. So sue me.

Former USA V-P Nelson Rockefeller flips the bird

I don't believe I'm known as a vindictive bloke, but I can't abide callous lack of virtue. When I was at high school, the janitor was incredibly unkind to a cleaning woman. I organised to surround his house with bungers on mosquito coil fuses, and a couple of friends and I waited nearby in Denman Parade to listen to them go off. We had a hoot when they did. Why not? He was the cruel one, we the avengers. Juvenile? I can be.

* September 13, 2011, was a big day for Pip, and his Almanac:

Birds flying high you know how I feel.
Sun in the sky you know how I feel.
Breeze driftin' on by, you know how I feel.

It's a new dawn,
It's a new day.
It's a new life,
For me.
And I'm feelin' good.

Fish in the sea, you know how I feel.
River running free, you know how I feel.
Blossom in the trees, you know how I feel.

It's a new dawn,
It's a new day,
It's a new life,
For me.
And I'm feelin' good.

Dragonflies out in the sun, you know what I mean, don't you know.
Butterflies all havin' fun you know what I mean.
Sleep in peace, when the day is done.
And this old world, is a new world,
And a bold world,
For me.

Stars when you shine, you know how I feel.
Scent of the pine, you know how I feel.
Oh freedom is mine,
And I know how I feel.

It's a new dawn,
It's a new day,
It's a new life,
For me.
And I'm feelin' good.

I first heard this song, Feeling Good, sung by Cammie Linden (a fine singer, and warm friend of mine, now deceased, and unable for me to find pages for on the Net), at the House of the New World, in West Ryde, Sydney, a very formative time in my life, including a trip to Perth, driving across the Nullarbor Plain on a dirt road, and my managing a youth centre, High House, while there. More in my Memoirs. *

When I was catetaker at the $25 million Palm Beach mansion, 'Kalua', in about 1988, for a couple of years, and started working really hard on the Almanac, I had a very interesting time, especially regarding hanging around with some very prominent Australian celebrities, and living near Madam Lash. I would love a photo of the wooden (radiata pine) sign I carved in Florida Road, Palm Beach, for Kalua's owners, with kookaburras and lorikeets (nearly chopped my finger off with a Stanley knife, or a scalpel) so if you might email me one, I'd be very, very grateful. More Kalua anecdotes are  in my Memoirs, including Barry Humphries, Malcolm Turnbull, Paul and Anita Keating (especially that one), and more.

When I was living in Bellingen before my 'incident', I woke up in the early hours of the morning. A carpet snake from Bat Island was between my legs, coiled on the floor. It happened on two nights in a row. A microbat flew out - I had four Gouldian finches flying and roosting wherever thy wanted (I love the name: John Gould named them after his wife, Elizabeth),and I have a John and Elizabeth as bother and sister, I love Bob Gould's Third World Bookshop, and his shop, The Pitt (and I am decorating the loungeroom walls with posters, like Gould's shops - I have lots of posters, like an Eric Bibb one, as Bibb comes to Bellingen quite often - and he knew half the pantheon of rock and folkrock-style music in his childhood - such as Pete Seeger, and Bibb was also the godson of Paul Robeson at the time), and I have a good friend from Sandy Beach, who is the elder sister of Australian champion swimmer, Shane Gould) and I think the birdies attracted the snake. All the birds were killed by a rat one night, when I was enduring Sydney to see my dying mother for a couple of weeks. I love visiting Sydney very much, because it's been such a big part of my life, and some of my best friends live there, but only for short visits, such as four or five days. On my return to Bellingen, I feared the python (not Monty) would threaten me again. I intend to get some more Gouldians in late-2011, and shall, if I can reduce it, post a photo here, now that after more than a year, I have a camera again, fortunately. I have no idea whether the police or my assailants took my old one.

Pip cleans spots of dust, or fallen paint, drops of coffee, whatever, off with bread-and-butter knives, or his fingernails, to keep the house meticulous. Enough is enough.

Pip has a P sticker on his bedroom wall. It represents two things – his initial, but also that when he got his licence there were no P plate stickers, yet he drove to Perth and over half of New South Wales on one hour’s driving instruction. I didn't have to log hundreds of hours of paid driving instruction, like NSW kids today. It was 'too easy'. Things made more sense, in many ways, in 1968 and ’69, Pip opines.

I was under the impression I was going to a free doctor at the medical centre. I'm on a disability pension for God's sake. I'm not paying that bill either. I simply wanted to go to the doctor. I only wanted to chat with him for five or ten minutes anyway, if could spare it because I like him a lot - I'm not ill. I would have liked two or three free sleeping tablets, samples or the like, due to thr fact my sleeping pattern is now so erratic because people threatened to murder me - three times in two years in the town I have done so much for in many ways for so long. Even outside my grandchildren's home, and I don't want to pay for grog or tablets to help that. I'm apparently an idiot. Try me.

I shan't even tell them to read this paragraph and visit them, because I'm sick of walking with worn out, sore feet, and emailing people at my own expense unless they reply, or visit me. They'll have to all work it out themselves. If I'm phoned by secretaries - also people of whom I'm very fond - with accruing bills, I'll tell them to read this page on the Net, especially the last par. But I won't pay for this stuff. Some might think I should. I'm perhaps stubborn. But I think it's ridiculous. All the rotten things that have happened to me have been not my fault, but other people's. Including unfair bills, which I have always paid. Maybe someone else will pay $30 bucks or so, because I'm so poor at the moment. I'd them.

But Pippin won't pay. They will never get a cent out of me. Wouldst thou wish more? Almost no visitors because others try to murder you three times you for being Pip Wilson? Wilson carries on. Faithful to love. As long as it's love - a bit.

Pip, aka Pyoop, wears T-shirts almost every day. One has an Abbey Road picture on it. The other says. "Why? Why not?" Makes no sense? Ask. He ain't proud, he's Mary.

Pip wishes now to say something which might strike you as very odd. But it’s true, and I hope you’ll take his word for it, and not judge it too harshly, though whether you do or not is your business, not Pip’s. He trusts you to discern. So hang onto your hats. Pip doesn’t care at all for notoriety, nor fame, having had a bit of both. And having known so many celebrated persons. But he does want to be very well known in Bellingen, and often uses a bent sense of humour, sometimes only for the nice reaction from the other human being. He’s not mental, AFAIK, but very focused on what he’s doing. It’s not for himself, especially, although he digs it, but for those he loves, in case they ever need help, or security. He mentions there names whenever possible. He’s made his peace with the Universe and is OK to live, or die, kill or be killed, if it helps other members of the human race who he deems worthy. And he likes stuff to be free or very cheap. On August 29, 2011, he walked into town and tried to get some cheap reading glasses. He found that the ones at the chemist and newsagent were $20 or $27.50. Someone suggested one of Pip’s favourite shops, Serendipity, had them for $2.50. Having lost so many specs and also wondering why they would make screws so hard for people with poor vision to screw in, he got some. He went for a coffee at one of his favourite coffee shops in town. Pip said to the waitress, “There’s an idiot named Pip Wilson of Bellingen who often says “Make a great day” and “Thank you, darling”. But you don’t know, when you look into his beautiful blue eyes, whether he means it or not.” And the waitress said, “I don’t know who Pip Wilson is”. And he tapped his chest and said, “Me, darling. Me. I’m Pip Wilson. Thanks a lot for knowing what Pip’s ‘usual’ is. Seeya next time. I might be here with my daughter, Julia Wilson.

* I was crossing Church Street, Bellingen,  and a council worker bullied me for walking in a bad part of the road. It wasn't dangerous. I sad, "Mate, I'm sorry I made that error, but I'm one of the many people being beaten up in Bellingen, and just for a second I couldn't see you because I'm nearly blind." "I don't wanna know", the man said. Then, after I'd crossed Hyde Street to my destination, I gave him the finger. A bus driver said my pension travel concession card had expired by two days (I later found it in my wallet, in my pocket,, lost because of my eyesight, haste, and weariness, and I had to pay full fare. I'd already walked over Coffs and was parched, and I was transporting, by myself, from Coffs Harbour to Bellingen a rather huge Ned Kelly poster I'd bought, at quite some expense to myself. No one had water, nor a mandarine. She kept on mocking me, when I asked if she would stop near a tap or toilet for half a minute. She mocked me, relentlessly. I gave her the finger when I said "Thank you Driver". (I always say that, and I've noticed that almost no one uses that courtesy any more in Sydney - it disappeared in the 1980s.) She would have seen my bruised eyes, from having fallen off dangerous stairs three times when stone-cold sobre, because the staircase is so dangerous for a nearly blind person. About a month later, I was in Coffs. I don't believe in lying, unless you do it to protect someone. And in Coffs, I thought that if I needed to protect myself again, and if she left me in Coffs having to book a hotel room, with almost no money, I would say, if she refused to let me on the bus, I would say, "If you don't let me on the bus right now, with this legal concession card, and because I gave you the finger, I shall write to your emploer, the media, and thousands of people in all sort of situations around the world. And although I don't know your name, I'll give the number of the bus, and the timetable, so they can work it out. I'll say that you gave me the finger, because I was one of the passengers terrified by your driving. On the other hand, just to show what sort of bloke I am, you can call me an arsehole, and give me the finger. Now, does that seem fair, Driver?". As it happens, she showed up with no sense of malice. More power to her arm. She accepted my concession card, and said, "Don't forget your ticket, darling". I said to her, "Thanks a lot, darling". And when I got off at Bellingen, I gave her a smile, looked into her eyes, and gave her a wink with those selfsame beautiful, blue eyes. (Might write a poem about my beautiful, blue eyes, unless Misty says I'm an idiot yet again.) The driver got it. She liked it. Honesty and love rule. On the same day, in Coffs, many, many fascinating things happened to me, but I'll mention only one. I needed a new pair of black trousers, so, among a plethora of activities, I went to one of the many op shops in Coffs. I met a woman who seemed great. When she invited me to use the change room, I said something like, "You know a lot more about this stuff than I do, darling. If you say these pants are too long, darl, they're too long. I don't need a change room. I'm sure you know more about such stuff than I do. If you say they're too short, they're too short. I'm a skinny bloke, and I think these pants will fit me around the middle. So I'll buy them, just help me stuff them in my shoulder bag, will you?" Some hours later, I found that the recommended pants had fake pockets. I said  later, when I got home after that interesting bus ride, after having already praised this op shop woman, regarding using water and salt for stretching Mary's shawl, from side to side, so it looks better on the bed, for me, if nobody else, "What use are fake pockets? For a bloke who wants to carry a wallet with folding money, coins, a pen, all his ID cards, paper to jot ideas on for the Almanac, keys ...", and I went on. "No wonder the daks were only $4.50." That's how life goes, friends. Something like that. It all happened on September 13, 2011. Meanwhile, Ms Day and I somewhat worked out some very salient points, concerning gardeners, and high treeholes. *

That’s Pip. That’s his name. Don’t wear it out. If you think that’s all mental, you might leave now. OK with me, but please come back. Lots happening at the Almanac.

Wilson said to his daughter, that maybe the doctor at the Children's Hospital told him blue eyes are more a determinant of skin cancer than skin colour:

"Don't worry about it, Toots. You have beautiful blue eyes. My eyes. You'll get a good bloke. You are so beautiful. It's AOK. You'll get a bloke. And soon. Who wouldn't love you? And me?"

And if you think I'm bullshitting about the 'Adam the Gardener' thing, you don't know how many hours I've spent underneath a stupid liquidambar, which should be planted by roads, but never in gardens, you don't know how many hours I've spent raking, and taking four wheelie bins of rubbish from my garden and house since I returned from Sydney. Largely to make the place look OK for my celebration. I'm a gardening sort of bloke. (I'm particularly fond of bamboo and magnolias.) Nor how many tools disappeared in my absence. And pruning a wonderful sign at 2BBB-FM every last day of the month because it might get destroyed by ficus, regardless of the fact that it was carved out of hardwood by one of the founders of the station. The Bs, which I helped found. Etc, etc. I still love the place and certain people there. One, very much. Now back to other, and more serious matters.

Pip's got a phone. He has email. He's almost always home, for personal reasons. The notice on the door is very inviting. It refers to one who is particularly welcome. He'll remove it if asked. As that hoary, corny chestnut says - if something can be both maize and a nut that falls from a tree: Why does an Irishman wear two condoms? To be sure to be sure. Jezza might know about that chestnut palaver. I'll arks him. Arks Julia, Jimi, Remy, and the five grandies.

Pip likes trick or treaters. As Wikipedia says,  "The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays dates back to the Middle Ages and includes Christmas wassailing". I told Julia, go your hardest. I even found a bloke in Queensland who celebrated it before some of the states of the USA. It's not American. And we had a Halloween party at Crows Nest and I dressed in a frock coat like Poe, and recited 'The Raven'. And I've still got it. despite all.

Wilson told many he would yarn at his first anniversary celebration. Some were concerned he might say all sorts of things mentioned on this page, and intends not to remove unless persuaded. But he happily decided he'd remain silent and

that the very most he intended to say was, "Thanks for coming, friends. Some are particularly welcome. You know who you are. Make a great day. Stay true to virtue." Something like that. Just a few seconds.

But it's a man's prerogative to change his mind. And he digs his daughter's Scottish accent. It'll probly make her Misty. Yet again. Stet again. Yet stet. I hope Toots reads a few pars of this malarkey.

Pip thinks he might be a C-word sometimes. But he's amenable to loving advice. He abides BS not at all. Love, honesty, and amazing, abundant humility - thaose are Pip Wilson.

Seriously, love and virtue are Pip's trip. Strange days indeed! Most peculiar, mama.

Pip likes a good laugh, and had one when he heard Paradoxical Undressing on ABC radio, and heard Kristin Hersh read her own words: “Either they’re very, very nice, or have brain damage”. Both things sounded like Pip, to Pip.

But love, that's almost all. Some might disagree. But that's Pip. Regardless of computer hassles. Just a nearly last word: If I meet that C-word head doctor from Ryde Royal, he'll get the finger too. That is my intention.

Roughly the end of About Pip, unless otherwise advised. That was About Pip. He could be Nicholas Baudin, but he's Pip. An impediment perhaps, but a nice bloke, he's told. There endeth the lesson, errors notwithstanding. (But Pip will keep on yarning, as is his wont.) Anything from the Almanac might be amended by Pip Wilson, if recommended by reasonable people, but all the Almanac is stet, unless otherwise advised. Harold birthdave, Baz le Tuff. Bright blessings to Peter the Gypsy. And a few other idiots I love. God knows why. I don't. Bless His holy Name.

Pip thinks that apart from being a loving bloke, he’s a funny bloke. Funny ha-ha, or funny peculiar, he won’t say here. It’s up to you to decide, and he’ll respect you decision (for you), whether he agrees or not.

And, if you check out his flickr, you'll see he likes fishing. But he gets seasick easily. He prefers to fish from shore.

This stuff is also dedicated to Toots, and some other estimable people. We're all into Permaculture. Sometimes with a capital 'P', sometimes not. No matter.

Pip thinks that certain stuff's quite widely known. Such things matter not. That's Pippin. Get to know Pip. He's an F2F bloke. He’d throw his answerphone, and any mobile phone, into landfill, if he thought he’d get away with it, and had a good arm on the day.

If anyone can't support Pip in his joys and aspirations, and trials and tribulations, and be his friend, they get the finger too. I mean anyone. Or they'll never talk to Pip again. That's it. But they may say that to me. It's fair enough.

And, addendum. Do you know how Pip Wilson of Bellingen might be concerned by all that malarkey? Not one iota. All reasonable people can work all things out. God bless.

En fin, almost. Pip's a postcard bloke. He particularly likes to get postcards of Bellingen and send them to his Dublin mate.

Pip has long been a fan of comics and particularly Patrick Cook. But having heard him talk on radio denying climate change, Pip now thinks he’s an idiot. Pip believes in it. He’s read up on it. I suggest you listen to Barry Jones's climate change debate? Pity about the pataphysical science on Ockham's Razor for fifteen minutes. When I was editing Simply Living, Barry Jones came bounding up the stairs, carrying armloads of notes, papers, books, and so on. I happily interviewed him, of course. As I am now, I was closely associated with various environmental activists. and it was suggested that I ask him why the Commonwealth government was going to use the Icebird for tourism. He said it wasn't. A day or two later, Barry phoned and said it was OK if I let the article stand, but to put a note that at about the time of the interview, he hadn't known about tourism plans for the Icebird, which I had known. There's no question that the Quiz Champion of the World is a brilliant bloke, but we all make mistakes, and we all can be snowed by bureaucrats. How are Tony Abbott and other politicians going to feel if they see their grandkids gasping for air, or freezing to death? Or be concerned that even if it's a very slim chance, even winning at a poker machine is a slim chance, but some people fluke it. Think 'flukes', Tony. No harm done if we do the proper thing in everything. But if you don't, the consequences might be unbearable. So, I intend always to do the best thing. I'll err, but not give up.

Pip hasn’t got as much faith in faiths as he has in faith itself.

Pip's very Irish. He tells people all the time. He can't shut up about lots of things. (And won't, unless powerfully persuaded. It's a character defect. He admits that much.) He nearly died of thirst getting a Ned Kelly picture about 5’ high, home by bus from Coffs Harbour.

And he told Mike from next door, he thinks he has the best neighbours on the planet. All the help with free firewood and so on. And that neighbours, and loved ones in general, mean everything.

The Australian Slang dictionary is in a .txt file on the Wilson's Almanac site, and very much in progress. But you can find it if you wish.

God bless you all. Enjoy the footsie. And never give up, unless shown you must.

And to the high school teacher who often called me Taylor! Brian Taylor! ... this is Brian Taylor saying goodbye.

Drugs? Forget it. But don't be unreasonable about them. Life is short, and we are reasonable human beings. But have whatever you want. Or not. It's your choice, but we all have to live with the consequences of our choices.

Abide with Me.

Close to the kingdom.

It does get curiouser and curiouser. Everything, I mean.

J'espère thou hast read Pip's Links and other stuff about the Almanac, as much as reason allows, and will contact Pip. He's easy to find. This isolation is criminal. He's a good bloke. So he's told.

Misty, I adore you still. And hope I might be with you, forever, in our way, some time. As best of friends till then. It's mental, but that's it. I tell everyone it's mental. But that's it.

Now, I quit till Reason and Love triumph. Pip's like that.

His upbringing was incredibly sexist. He's changed, grown away from it, as all his loved ones know.

Terminar de fazer algo.

And like everyone he's ever met, Pip has his preferences. But some people matter more than others. Then preferences might be discussed, in time. Discarded, if necessary. Not discussed. Tempo al tempo.

All in good time. Be reasonable.

The woman's choice. Might God and all your avatars bless you. And May the Long Time Sun Shine Upon You.

Goodnight, Misty. Loved ones in family come first. You second. They all know such stuff. Seeya, Mistyka, my adored one. May the Lord bless and keep you, all the days of your life. Look it up.

Love you, Toots. And Mistyka, et al. Especially Toots and Mistyka. Look at me. I'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree. But having the time of my life anyway.

Kindly refresh page next time, in case I've changed my mind as you read. I change it when I can, as my loved ones know. It's a man's prerogative. Tell me if I'm wrong. Gods and goddesses bless you, Mistyka.

I believe it'll happen again, Misty. Susan Hanley of McNalley St, North Bellingen. And that good people of belief in divinity and virtue will help it happen. We went awry, Misty. I leave it in the lap of the god/s. But be happy. I trust you will. I want it to be different. A good friendship we hope to last for a long time.

May God bless and keep you, all. Great expectations, Pip, and stuff. Big deal. Please just love each other, take care of each other, show your love with your arms, demeanour, words and actions, do things to help others, is my humble advice.

Let it be kind, true, real, honest, devoted, never failing. Think not of a man's or woman's physical nor intellectual attributes, but of the love in his or her heart and mind. Genuine love is all. Not plastic love.

Only those things matter in the end. We're here for a good time, not for a long time. Uh-oh, I said that corny thing. So be it. Amen. God bless you, again. God bless you. God bless youse all.

And if I've made an error of any kind, as Pauline Hanson said, please explain.

And I add that I really do talk too much. Given my Irish heritage, I say again, it seems there is not much I can do about it. And I might have lost so many visitors and friends because I talk so much. It bugs everyone in my life, so far. I could talk the legs off an iron pot. I'm honestly working on it, and often I just sit and listen, my loved ones know that because of my genuine, profound delight in people, sometimes I can virtually shut up and listen to my compadre. But I chat a helluva lot. It seems to me like being able to change the size of your feet (I wear 10.5 shoe size). It seems remarkable to me that in many ways my three children all look like me, in many ways, yet be so different in so many ways. Me so talkative but hating phones with a passion, while Julia admits she loves them. My beloved sister Rosie seems to enjoy them. Not Pip. I'm a face-to face bloke. It might bug some people, but that's how Piip is. Perhaps I have better eyes than ears. I don't know. I honestly don't, and I wonder if anyone else does. I'm entirely happy with solitude, despite my very gregarious nature, the ease with which I can address ten or ten million people. It really seems as if I can stop talking, and listening in good turn. And with that, I'll really say goodbye, and wish you brightest blessings for the rest of your lives. When I lived at Shambala at Boggy Creek in about 1979, I would sometimes put a sign at my gate saying something like 'NO VISITORS TODAY, THANK YOU', My daughter Toots was an infant then, and I believe sometimes she does something similar. I occasionally put a dated note on my door with words such as, "I have everything I need, thank you very much. I want solitude to remain one of those things today". Of course, it is not specifically any one person. I add that if anyone needed my help in a dangerous situation, I trust I'd do my very best to help them, if I heard a call for help, or found out in any other way. I can get "all peopled out". Like Greta Garbo, sometimes I simply vant to be a lawn (for just a day).

Frankly, I think that people who can't grok that we've had entirely different experiences of life and are entirely different individuals, haven't googled enough about individual differences. I yam what I yam. You? And don't forget that Google might one day want to screw us up as well. My attitude is, use it well, while you've got it. Please use Google (and libraries, etc) a lot. Get to know all that you can. Whatever happens to Planet Earth, it's a benefit. (And, of course, Wilson's Almanac Search. Not J/K (just kidding).

And haven't I got the most beautful hair and blue eyes? And the best physique around for a bloke of my age (thin as a rake though I be) who won't pay for gyms? Though I really do hate to skite.

And such an amazingly low and discreet ego? That "dirty word".  Any can advise, FTF, or keep it to themselves, ta.

Seeya, Misty, and all I love. May the thingos bless and keep you, all the days if your lives. Me three.

I've only got one or three problems, Houston. Not too bad for a bloke with an impossibly damaged computer.

So on we go, through many a winding turn. Pip likes a sense of humour. And he just keeps prattling on.

He liked it when a bloke on radio said he prefers to eat animals without faces. Like molluscs.

May you be able to spell. May you have a proper computer. May you not be abandoned by all in your plights. May you have love in your hearts.

May people read all of this whole page and not pretend to me that they have. I'm so sick of liars and pretenders.

And again, may God, or whatever, bless and keep you all, all the days of your life. Life goes on. Virtue is the path. Please tell me if I'm wrong. Please advise. OK?

But wait ... there's more! Plus a free set of steak knives.

Wikipedia and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed are both excellent resources which aid my research.
I frequently make use of their generously liberal 'fair use', 'copyleft' and 'anti-copyright' policies, with much gratitude.
© My own copyright policy is also liberal, but as this is my livelihood, conditions apply.

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