Please inform me if you find an error anywhere at Wilson's Almanac. It's almost certainly because I'm a half-blind, 24-carat idiot ... and need HELP!!!!!!!!! I intendthat many anecdotes from my whole life in its various vaguely interesting aspects, will be recounted in these memoirs, and  that they'll keep growing, almost day by day, for years, perhaps decades. So I hope you'll drop in from time to time, dear reader, and keep an eye on my weitings, additions and amendments. I already have more than 25,000 words of notes, collected over a lifetime. The entire website is 16 hours of fun and challenges for me, every day , each week and month of the year. Thank you, and I hope you enjoy your time here and learn something, and please advise the Almy of any errors, or ways to improve it. I want to improve the Almy all my life, and I plan to live to at least 100. I think. Born an optimist, I intend to die one.

Pip Wilson
106,000 results on Google, 2/02/2012

Welcome, honoured guest. I intend, over some time, to place this introductory matter beneath the animated masthead above, on virtually every page of Wilson's Almanac, though possibly it's temporarily missing (or badly busted, due to my months of non-attention, long away from home in hospital with my Extreme TBI), because many readers arrive on a certain page here, for their first time, and don't know their way around as I do. I'm well aware that it might be a nuisance to some, but please feel free to use, or ignore, any links, and scroll down to other matters if you wish.
Kindly ignore misaligne tezt, an do on ny errors. It's gradually improving this site. Gradual being the operative word, because It's a big job for me. You'll generally know when you've reached the foot of the page when you see a mauve Almanac directory bar. The whole almanac, and I, are under reconstruction. A big thankyou, and bright blessings to you.

          

The Almanac's
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Everything

Pip Wilson, your very fortunate almanackist. November 26, 2011. Carpe diem!

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reetings from Bellingen, Australia.

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Carpe diem! (Seize the day!) And, as they say in McDonald's, 'have a nice da-ay' (add plastic smile). Nup. Make a great day.

Pip Wilson

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It's no big deal.

  

Pip

The actual memoirs junk starts lower down the page, where it says 'Here are some snippets'. Gotta fix all that. Speeg! (Please.)

I love Talisker! Will explain to anyone who asks.

Hello, thrillseekers! I'm here to inspire the rugrats and all my descendants. And, I hope,  anyone. I won't put much here. Just a few pars once I've done my intro palaver. I have in one file 27,769 words of meticulous notes, all on my puter. Some friends have backup copies. Refresh often, if you like; I usually only sleep 6 hours a day, got TBI, this is priority ... I want to do 20 items. We might get lucky :) Kindly tell someone soon about Microminibliss soon if you are able.

I'll be back often till I have 20 of my snippets to share. I believe some my be reading RIGHT NOW in some corner of this big planet. G'day, mate! Pass it on! Maybe this is the way The Beatles and Barack Obama did it. My fanhood of The Fab Four is quite profound, and, although I missed seeing them when they toured Oz (see Search),  I intend to make a few Beatles anecdotes available here among my 20 here.

Until just a few months ago, as Baz le Tuff will attest, I said I thought I’d led a very boring life. But I’ve changed since then, and though I don’t like lots of stuff about Pip, and it seems to me that’s mostly immutable except by improving my own attitude, I think it’s not been totally boring. I haven’t met many famous people at all, but I find the ones I’ve met interesting in different ways, as people, and because they are so varied as people. I have written references from Dr Bob Brown, Rev. Fred Nile, the late Tim Anderson and the late Alistair Hulett (both quite good mates years ago), the late Prof. Julius Sumner Miller and Richard Neville .

I haven't seen Ian Cohen for years, but we were on very good terms, for a few years (reminder to myself, some anecdotes about Ian would be good) -- rather a mixture. Ha! Don't think one of them ever helped me get a job. I became resigned to the dole long before I went on the pension ... I remember in one stint doing 200 job applications in a month, all with different plus from different people. That was one of lots of long stints. Each application cost me nearly $10 and I made each one myself, had smart people check - even a close mate with 10 or 15 years at what is now Centrelink (I call it Clink), in a job helping people get jobs. Sheesh! Some country! Poor is what the big fella upstairs wanted, I guess. (He loathes atheists.) And you wouldn't believe the people I've been close to ... not famous people, but real characters from many races and backgrounds. And some very funny stories if you like black humour. My grandkids will read about them all, if they want, each on their 21st birthday. (Cheapskate.) Dad tells me we have good genes ... we know exactly when to stop skiting.

Here's one. A bloke I shared a place a house with -- he was a tough, strawberry-blonde gangster type with a shooter -- was once in the bath with his ‘partner’. She masturbated him with soap, and made his old fella red raw, so she packed it with vaseline and those pastel-coloured cotton-wool balls that women use. Then he puts his undies and pants on, but gets busted by the cops for some drugs that night (I don't take drugs, but I'm open-minded), and when he goes to Long Bay and has to strip in front of the cops and screws and other prisoners, you can imagine the hilarity! I'd better not tell my grandkids that one.

Anyways, as I was saying (sorry I'm raving), I guess I've led an ordinary, boring life, sometimes without money for a bus ticket, and I’m very shy. But I'm the sort of person who, if he sits on a park bench, will come home having had a yarn with someone extraordinary and possibly famous. Ain’t that strange? My 58 years make a life of anecdotes, and I like to yarn, as you’ll see if you use Search at the Almy. It’s in my genes. Some Wilson men I know are amazing with their anecdotes, and I had more uncles and aunties than you can poke a stick at. I don't even know why that should be. Life can be very mysterious. My Dad knew Billy Wentworth, a real Australian leader and eccentric, one Australia who did more for black/white relations than I can think of. Separately from that, I’ve been to the famous Billy’s house (unrelated to Dad's knowing him, but as a local) near which I lived when I was at Avalon, although never met him. I sure knew some Aussie celebs when I worked in PR. Off the top of my head, Sonia McMahon, Mario Fenech ... blah blah. It'll all be in my memoirs here or in what's private for the grandchildren. Sure, I want use the fame thing to entice readership, but I do it because I think it's interesting too, and might inspire the grandies. I really love doing it, I love just typing it. I don't give a toss if nobody but these five fingers get to read it in years to come. When I was at Avalon, I also lived nearby in a garage at 22 Bardo Road, Newport, and I  like living at  23 Dowle Steet, Bellingen, very much, but I think that was a cool address.

One of the good things about living in Sydney's Northern Beaches (''the Insular Peninsula', it's called), as a caretaker for a multi-millionaire, was the fame of those around. Paul McCartney was supposed to be living at 'Kalua', any day when I got my job. He didn't show up at Palmy, but Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman used to rent the house I was caretaking, for many thousands of dollars per week. And at the Whale Beach RSL, one could see many great rock acts, like Joe Walsh from The Eagles. I went to see a few of them. One night I think I'll never forget was dancing about five feet away from Ross Wilson of Daddy Cool, with him singing his signature tune, 'Daddy Cool'.

I might not have very much money, maybe I'm single. But I love the uke, and I found my love in Avalon, and I'm happy with that.

When Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, Dad was there and he was lost at sea on a refugee boat for two weeks. I used to pick up hitchhikers most weeks, and the stories I hear are sometimes amazing, chilling. I guess it's because I talk and listen to them. Some people do one or the other, or neither. I think it better to do both. One recently was the great-grand-nephew of Captain Thunderbolt, and I believed him. I've slept many times at Cockatoo Island, and Thunderbolt was the only prisoner ever to escape that hell hole. I've spent time recently with a history teacher guy my age whose great-aunt, who only died in the past decade, Henry Lawson fell in love with at Mallacoota in 1910, and I found for that guy the love poem that Henry wrote his "red-headed girl", or "red-haired girl" the family was delighted and so would I be if I get a copy again. Memo to self, write to the teacher. His name might be lost, but his street name isn't. Anyway, I must write these yarns down, just for my descendants. My best mate says I should write a book -- get an artist and do a comic book with one anecdote on each page. In about 1998, I had a Brazilian wife, and we both knew we were each impetuous. I can still barely speak a word of Portuguese, but I rehearsed a paragraph of my speech and read it at our engagement party, so one Portuguese word in particular sticks like that brown stuff to a blanket, to me. 'Impetuosidade'.

'Impetuosidade. ' is my word. I hope someone finds my memoirs interesting. I know I still have impetuosidade. And I'll never forget living at Bronte. It was quite incredible. Some of the old houses had been turned into cafes. And some of the neighbours were very interesting. Leo Schofield, the Sydney journalist, who had paid $100,000 to a restaurant when he and the Sydney Morning Herald were sued only for calling some lobster he's eaten in a restaurant 'stringy', lived next door. He'd had some large trees, Norfolk Island Pines I think they were, cut down, and the trunks were cut into pieces. I took one large piece to carve something, maybe an ocean scene, out of it. Unfortunately, when I moved from that house, I had too much to take with me, and I never got that big piece of wood. I wonder if it's still there.

 

So, thrillseekers, as Archibald Sarantoff once told me in his laconic but brilliant way, getting older is not all it’s cracked down to be. In a great quote I can’t find, and I hope someone can help me, Timothy Leary extolled senility and forgetting lots of things – he saw it as a blessing. He had extraordinary anecdotes of his own. Most of mine will be one paragraph after my death. Just thought I’d set up the Really Big Shoe. Adidas, flamingos. Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite, or make a great day. And to all the Eskimos reading: gday.

 

Here are some snippets:

One's advised to take the bad with the good, and if one doesn't, they're mentally mad. (That always used to be 'he or she is ...'; in many ways feminism did important good for the Mother Tongue, but in others it muddied the waters of English as she are spoke. Most people don't seem to have 'take the good with the bad' as a big issue in their lives, but I did. Circumstances, or their very nature have made them cotton onto that from an early age (I remember a middle-aged deli in Sydney whose incredibly deep smile lines were so incredibly deep and constant, they looked like they were engraved in the meat and skin of his face), but I'm a slow learner and it it took me decades to get the hang of it. But it's like riding a bike, you don't ever completely unlearn it. I don't expect to get a puss like that deli bloke's, but I know I've got the hang of taking the bad with the good.

For example, I first became enamoured of Bellingen and its Church Street camphor laurels (before 1980 I was aware of the battle to save them and still it continues with some of the same 'destroy them, don't save money by digging a small trench to contain the roots,  'cuz I disagree with 85% of Bellingenites surveyed' protagonists) in about 1963 when during a holiday in Sawtell - rich or poor, my family had at least a summer holiday (usually Ash St Terrigal) and a winter one (often Lake Conjola, from where I got my love of oysters; oystershells there after foods weren't as big as saucers, they were as big as bread and butter plates) when ... (Continuing very soon. Today, 'hopefully', as some staggeringly good English speakers say these days, rather than 'one hopes' or 'I hope'. Where did that gem come from? Crappy seppo telly's my guess.)

My mother's father was twice a veteran of the Boer War, and died when Mum was 6, leaving behind a widow with four children. As children, Mum was called Bub, and her elder sister, Bib. They were named after Bib and Bub. My mother is sadly now deceased, but her sister, my aunt, a single mother, is still Auntie Bib to us all. One of Bib's sons, now also deceased, I believe, was Dennis. The whole family, living at Narrabri, NSW, called him when he was a boy, Dennis the Menace. My grandmother died of a brain tumour when I was young, but I still remember walking with her and picking up blocks of wood from a joinery. Suppose it was seminal in my passion for collecting free stuff. Plastic toys and so on rather annoy me if not incredibly cheap.

The soldier above isn't my grandfather and I don't currently have one to show you, But I saw one of him and he looked just like me. Family resemblances are fascinating. I used to take my elder son Jimi to cricket matches by bus - I'm no sports guy, and barely knew the rules (once at the Cricket Ground in Sydney, I had been asked by my dad, Jimi and Uncle Ray Hillis to attend, and when a fielder caught a ball I thought it was great, and I clapped and shouted "Yes!", and people in the grandstand turned around and looked at me as though I were an idiot), but I went for Jimi, sat on the ground at cricket grounds around the northern beaches by bus, with my week's two bags of groceries, sometimes freezing cold, and read papers till Jimi was on. One woman said to me that Jimi looked and walked just like me. On my fridge I had a photo of me when I was a kid, and Jimi seemed pretty sure it was of him. Our family ties are strong. Jimi's off overseas soon, but will come to Bellingen from Sydney to attend the open-invitation barbecue I'm having on August 6 to commemoration the first anniversary of my being beaten up. More on that at About Pip. Hope we have a good crowd.

My paternal grandfather was William Lucas Wilson. We call him Pampa. He topped the state once in Pitman's Shorthand. His wife, née Isabella Peacock (interesting that someone on a plane once said my father looked like Andrew Peacock, without knowing of our heritage), we call Mamma. He taught her shorthand and she became Principal of Miss Hales College in Sydney, and ran a college called Bellevue, in Epping. More later, gotta go. I 've told my daughter that I've never heard of another Mamma and Pampa. It was made by one of Mamma and Pampa's 11 children (they had so many despite poverty, and Pampa being a conshy - Conscientious Objector in WWI, when you could go to prison for a year)  - and some of the kids died in childbirth and one died when Pampa was looking after her and she played with matches. He wept about it to his last days. I like to visit all of them at Rookwood when I visit. Mum's out there too, and some family and friends. My grandchildren know I like Grandpa Pip, until they reach 17, and have some maturity. Otherwise I'm Pip, or Grandpa. Nanna and Gramps are still used. I found that Mamma and Pampa, which came from a child learning to speak, and say "Grandma" and "Grandpa", is not unique. I thought it was a one-off, but it ain't. It googles 878,000 results! No Oscars for starting a trend. I still think it's a great couple of names. Julia would like to be Grandmama. We can't predict nothing, especially with thinking about young'uns, but I think I'd like both Grandpa Pip, and Pampa. Pampa seems pretty nice. He was a great peacenik.

Natch, I have many more family recollections to share in the future.

During Easter in 1974, I went to Mulwala. It was the second big rock festival in Australia, just after Sunbury. Everyone called it 'Mud Wallow', because it was like a swamp after all the rain it had received that week. I drove an old VW kombi van there, owned by my mate, Rick S (who only wore orange, and inside his vehicle was completely orange), with a few people. Two girls hitch-hiking snorted caffeine in the back of the van - I'd never snorted anything, till heroin when I was 20, so it sticks in my mind. Baz le Tuff came, and he'll remember BD (I'll just call her BD) tried to crack onto us. I had just broken up with my first wife, and BD was intensely ... she was bloody horrible. She couldn't keep her hands off me. I think I'll always remember her, and I don't think that I'll ever forget that crowd. Half of them shouted "Smoke more dope!", and the other half shouted "Suck more piss!" Stephen Stills and Manassas played there. Gerry Humphries performed as well, a real hit at that festival, and sang 'The Loved One', and 'Ongo Bongo Man', an expression which was repeated by the crowd all the time. It remains with me - I sometimes attend to my webpage, which I named 'Ongo Bongo' after that experience.

Working as a public relations officer at both Sydney Children's Hospital, in Randwick, and Austcare/the Refugee Council at Bay St, Broadway, Sydney, in the 1980s, was a very interesting time for me, and I met some interesting people.  Geoffrey Robertson's one. Geoffrey was born in Australia and grew up in the Sydney suburb of Eastwood, attending Epping Boys' High School. (I lived in Epping, but went to Normanhurst Boys' High School. Baz le Tuff went to both, over the years.) At 'Normo', my mates and I got up to a lot of mischief. One example is that we each had catapault, and tried to demolish the fibro (dangerous asbestos cement) shed of some people who lived near the playground, where we all use to smoke cigarettes under the coral tree. I'll be adding other anecdotes as they occur to me.

Geoffrey obtained his law degree from the Sydney Law School before winning a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford Uni, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Civil Law. In 2006 he obtained an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by the University of Sydney.

When we started Refugee Week in Australia, I gave Geoffrey some of my many media releases (I still have about 100), to help him write a short speech at the Canberra Press Club, and for radio. He's a very affable man, and did it very well. We had a great day. I was also a friend of Angela Bishop, Bronwyn Bishop's daughter. Other people of note were Tim Anderson (the 'Hilton Bomber', which he wasn't), and Rebecca Letourneau. Both Tim and Rebecca helped to launch my book of poetry, Avalon Justice, at no charge. I'd self-published, and only printed 100, but they all sold out at the launch, at Sydney's Botanic Gardens' restaurant.

Click for more snippets from my Memoirs, growing all the time.

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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Please only phone me 9-5, in business hours. I'm a 9-5 bloke. Thank you very much. Australia, (02) 6655 2785. All phone calls are very welcome in those hours.
With me, as with most Aussies, about 10pm is supper time, a good time for the last cuppa of the day. People should agree with that.
 

No, they don't. Not everyone loves that story. I don't love that story. I'm a footnote in that story. Which never happened, incidentally. I was selling novelty products in Wichita the day I was born.
In my opinion, and, in this case for once, believe it or not, it is IMHO, some expressions become cliches simply because they are true. And one of them is, 'Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger'.
Dr Michael Hfuhruhurr, Dr Necessiter and Anne Uumellmahaye all tell me that I might have a few problems, had my chest and teeth and temples smashed to smithereens,
and left to die on a road, frozen for seven hours, and so on, but at least I've still got a brain. Or two.
I know every punchline in that story. For one night in my entire life, the Universe did not revolve around Pip Wilson.