Our news was interrupted last night

to announce the death of Hazel Hawke. If you are outside Australia you may not know her. She was once the wife of Bob Hawke, a Prime Minister of Australia.
I do not like Bob Hawke. I did like Hazel Hawke. She stuck by him despite the fact that he was a heavy drinker and a "womaniser". He eventually divorced her and, the following year, married his biographer. 
But, while he was Prime Minister, Bob had Hazel by his side. She was a good partner. She supported him. She supported the office of Prime Minister. She was involved. She was "hands on" and did things. 
There have been other Prime Minister's wives like that - in Australia Margaret Whitlam, Tammie Fraser and, in her own quiet way, Jeanette Howard all supported their partners and used the office to support other things as well. They could also keep their husbands in check! 
I can remember standing in the dining room of my university hall of residence in Canberra one vacation time. Most of the students had gone home and the place was full of actors and writers - yhere was a big Playwright's Conference taking place. Margaret Whitlam was staying in the residence and Gough Whitlam (by then retired) had come in for a meal as well. 
Suddenly, above the chatter, we heard "Absolute nonsense Gough! Absolute nonsense." Margaret was telling him she did not agree with something. Later that day she introduced me to him so I could talk to him about my hopes for International Literacy Year. "And listen carefully to what she has to say..." You could almost see him snap to attention - and yes, he listened.
I have known many people who need the support of their partners in order to do their job. It is something that is not often recognised. I can remember someone I once knew whose husband thought he had been "called" into the Church of England ministry. Someone else said to me with a smile, "I can't see her on the Mother's Union and cucumber sandwich circuit." Neither could I. She was, quite simply, unsuited to the role. He was not accepted for training and I suspect that she was one of the reasons.
The partners of diplomats get interviewed before they are given a posting. They are expected to play a role too - hostess, host, committee person etc. 
Such expectations appear everywhere. My mother was always one of the teachers in rural schools but she was also the headmaster's wife - and expected to act accordingly. It was the same for many other women and, sometimes, men. 
It is a role still given insufficient attention and consideration in respect of the personal commitment involved. It is a role that can continue even after the death of the partner. The person remains someone else's partner and there is a belief they can still be called on. 
Sadly, Hazel Hawke had Alzheimer's. In the end she was unable to do anything, even for herself. But perhaps some good can come even of that if it raises awareness of the condition. Like the woman in Woolwich who faced up to the young man who had just killed in cold blood she faced death head on. Both of them, in different ways, showed extraordinary courage. I am not brave. All I can do is admire them for it.

There is a letter in

this morning's paper in which the writer claims that "if a study has been accepted by a prestigious peer reviewed journal then that study is scientifically valid". 
Clearly the writer of the letter has not read Ben Goldacre or Imogen Evans on the topic - or a number of other authors. Perhaps they know very little about statistics. I don't know.
It would seem from the rest of the letter that the study the writer quotes supports his point of view on a certain topic. For him it also appears that is an end to the matter. Just one study is sufficient to support his belief and, from the strength of his language, it would seem unlikely that he is going to change his mind on the topic he is so passionate about.
It is a bit like the anti-vaccination campaigners. Much of their strength has relied on one now discredited paper. I do not need to say more about that.
It is hard to keep an open mind when you feel passionately about something. Not so long ago someone accosted me and gave me a very public dressing down because they disagreed with something they thought I had said. It was something I know they feel so strongly about I would never discuss the issue with them. There would be no point in trying to change their mind. It simply is not going to happen. In that particular case I finally managed to get a word in and point out that I was not the author of the article. The response was, "Well, it's still what you think!"
Actually it is not what I think about that issue at all but nothing is going to change their mind. 
I think I can guess what will now happen because of the letter I have just quoted above. People will read it and say, "Oooh, there is a "scientific study" on that issue and it is in a "scientific journal" and other scientists have said it is right so it must be right." 
They will stop thinking right there. It will not altogether be their fault. They have not been taught critical thinking. Emotions can get in the way of critical thinking too. As a friend of mine says, "Smart people can believe dumb things."
Is it dumb not to believe the validity of those "prestigious peer reviewed papers" in the wildest and wackiest social science topics? 

Why do we build houses

mostly as squares and rectangles and variations on squares and rectangles? Just once in a while people have built houses in other shapes - such as the occasional round house "to keep the devil out".
I suspect the simple answer to that question is "it's easier and cheaper and our things fit more easily into those spaces".  Our house is exactly like that. It is, in a sense a squat rectangle with a longer rectangle on one side or the squat rectangle. 
As houses go it is not inconvenient and it is only about thirty years old. My parents built it for their retirement. 
It has certain features which were designed for their old age. Like most Australian houses it is all on one level. You do not climb the stairs to go to bed. The house is, as we have proved, accessible for someone in a wheelchair. (I cannot say the same of the back garden but you can get to the Senior Cat's workshop.) 
The house itself also has another important feature. The city I live in is built on a major fault line. There was a quite serious earthquake in the region when I was a small child. I can remember it in that I can remember lying in bed and watching the wardrobe swaying backwards and forwards before my father came and carried me out into the night. I can also remember putting my small hand into the crack in the wall of the house belonging to my godmother's mother.  Since then houses are supposed to have more protection against earthquakes. Of course not all of them do but ours was built with a particular type of foundations and the house itself rests on those in a way that is supposed to minimise earthquake damage. How much protection it would actually afford is something I hope we never have to find out. 
But, that is earthquakes. There is no such protection against something like a tornado. We do have tornadoes in Australia but, at least so far, we have not had the sort of appalling damage that they have just had in Oklahoma. 
It is that damage which makes me wonder about the way in which houses are built. The Whirlwind had a school project a little while back in which everyone had to design a house. They were told that money was no object but the house had to be environmentally friendly. There were some extraordinary ideas, interesting ideas, unworkable ideas, sound ideas and strange ideas. The Whirlwind's house was round, looking in on a central courtyard. She knew it would be expensive to build but, apart from that, it was a house that could well have been lived in. A friend of hers designed something that was similar but octagonal rather than circular. Again it would have been expensive to build but it could well have been lived in. 
Looking back on those houses I wondered whether they would be more earthquake proof or tornado proof or something else proof. There is a house not too far from here which is a dome shape. It was an architectural experiment. I have no idea what it is like inside or what it would be like to live in but the architect designed it with the fault line in mind.
And, looking at the horrendous damage in Oklahoma, I am wondering whether we should perhaps start to think about other shapes for building houses. Would round houses help to keep the devil-wind out? I don't know enough about physics but it is something I like to think about.

"She's a real twenty-first century

child," one of our neighbours told me. She had come over with her three year old granddaughter to deliver a "sick chair" for the Senior Cat to repair. 
Her granddaughter was dressed up as a doctor and was busy examining the teddy bear I keep, among other things, to amuse small children. Her chatter to the bear was about going for a "cat scan" and "pussy will not scratch and it doesn't hurt".
Her mother had recently had a CT scan and it had been explained that it did not hurt but no mention had been made of felines!
CT scans did not exist when her grandmother and I were three. When the Senior Cat was three even an x-ray was a major event. His grandparents did not even know about x-rays when they were three. The human body was even more mysterious then that it is now.
I had also been talking to a friend earlier in the day. She was about to take her cousin to the doctor. This morning there was an e-mail to say that she had taken her cousin for another CT scan in the afternoon. They are now waiting for the results. The results will probably be available today. It is one of the marvels of twenty-first century medicine.
The neighbour and I wondered though - what will medicine be like when her granddaughter is the age we are now? We think medicine has advanced dramatically - and it has - but it may seem primitive by then. 
We are a long way from being able to "cure everything". I doubt we will ever be able to do that. If we could find a cure for everything, including old age, we would surely cease appreciating how precious life is. There is also little point in living longer if we cannot live better. The increasing number of older people with dementia surely tells us this. 
A week or so ago someone was being interviewed on the television news service about some research being done on the brain. He was asked how much we knew about the brain. His reply would probably have startled many people because he said, "Almost nothing."
And perhaps that is one reason why living things are so interesting and why we have so many people interested in trying to find out more. It is because we do not know - and that can be the most interesting thing of all.

Milk has become an

issue - again.
One of the farmers to the south of us has become fed up with the poor quality of the product available on the supermarket shelves. His cows produce better milk than that and he believes it should be made available. 
Of course there are all sorts of rules and regulations surrounding the supply and consumption of milk so he hit on the idea of selling shares in a cow and allowing people to profit from their share - in the form of milk.  The government is not happy. I doubt he will be able to continue.
The reason of course is that the milk is not pasteurised, nor has it had the cream skimmed off.  People who drink it might become ill - or fat - or both.
When we lived in an adjacent dairy farming area we bought milk directly from one of the farmers. Our family of six consumed a gallon of milk a day. We ate it on cereal or as porridge and drank glasses or mugs of it for breakfast. We consumed more at the mid-morning school break, at lunch time, after school, at the evening meal and before we went to bed.
My brother would go down the road to the dairy every morning, rain or shine or hail. It was about three hundred yards down the road I suppose. He would take the "billy" and, if the farmer was not there, help himself from one of the big churns and then wash the big dipper in scalding hot water and leave the money on the shelf above the churns. 
When he brought it home my mother would heat it in a huge pan on the woodburning stove and, when she judged it was sufficiently warm to have killed off anything that needed to be killed off, it would go in the refrigerator. The cream would settle on the top and she would remove that later. 
As children we just drank it. My parents drank it too. We were all so busy and active that none of us had time to be fat. The only time we saw the doctor was the visit by the school doctor. The local children were almost never ill either. We did not become ill because of the milk and I can only remember one overweight child. He had what I now know to be a glandular condition.
And the milk tasted good. (The cream tasted even better.) It was not white but pale cream in colour. It was not watery thin but creamy thick.  Did it clog our arteries and do dreadful things to other internal organs? Perhaps it has - but we liked it. 
I can understand the fuss the government is making. There are people there who worry about our health. They take on the responsibility for keeping us healthy. It would be impossible to have a lack of regulation and people getting ill. It might lead to law suits and life long injury and... well, you get the picture.
So many other people will never experience the joy of drinking real milk. I have not forgotten it and, although I am good little cat in that I now drink the "light" version, given the chance of drinking just one saucer of real milk, I would drink it again.

Chaos? What chaos?

My sister was supposed to organise my youngest nephew into delivering me and the six large (and I mean large) bags of yarn to the mini-market venue yesterday. Did she want me to remind her? No. She would remember. 

Except that, she didn't. 

My nephew is an "on time" sort of boy. His mother has never been an "on time" sort of person. I think that both her children have rebelled against this. They both tend to be "on time" sort of people.

When he had not arrived I phoned. Fortunately he was home and was up and dressed and, when told what had happened, said,

"Not a problem, be there in five." Well it took slightly more than five minutes but it was pretty close to it.

He loaded the bags in the rear and we went to the venue. He unloaded. Helped put up a few trestle tables for us and disappeared. All that wool was not his idea of fun. As he left he said to me,

"Mum will be home in the afternoon. Ring her if you need a ride home." Right.

A good friend helped me unpack, put what we could on the table and the rest in the open bags (which were more like sacks) on the floor. Fortunately they were clear plastic so people could see they contained more yarn. 

I put up the notice that said the proceeds from this stall were going to the African charity. The Senior Cat's pens went next to the notice. The coned yarn went on the other side. We had full packets of yarn on the trestle. Organised. 

Other people were coming and going with all sorts of yarn and knitted items.  I kept my eyes averted. I do not need more yarn!

We were supposed to open at noon but some people were still unpacking. This was not their fault. The same hall is used for a dance class in the mornings and access to it is always delayed. Several Guild members had brought visitors. They had already begun to wander around. One or two of them helped stall holders. In order to be fair though there were no sales until we opened.

Eventually we did. 

I wondered if I would manage to sell anything at all. The Guild has been given yarn recently. Much of it has come from several deceased estates. It has been sold at low prices and the proceeds have gone to the Guild. Most Guild members suffer from what we fondly call "SABLE" - (Stash Advancement Beyond Life Expectancy). Nevertheless I had hopes of the general public who might wander in. 

And wander in they did. There must have been some word-of-mouth advertising in the adjacent shopping centre because people said, "I was doing some shopping and..."

Good. We were kept steadily busy throughout the day. The twelve pens the Senior Cat had made sold quickly. The yarn was picked up and put down and then picked up by someone else. I had kept the prices low - better to sell it than bring it home? I thought so. One woman bought a big skein of yarn saying, "I have a room full of wool but I have to have this..."  I know she has a room full of wool - more than anyone else I know.

Other people bought yarn when they realised that the proceeds were going to help children. Some bought because they liked it others had a specific project in mind or because they thought a couple of balls might make a beanie or go with something they already had. I think it also sold because it was good quality yarn. I hope people were happy with their purchases.

I went with six large bags and came home with just one. It was mostly coned yarn and just a few odds and ends. We can, I think, do something about the coned yarn in another group. 

At the end, after a 10% commission to the Guild, we had raised $542.  I wonder what the other stall holders raised. I did not dare look at some of the beautiful yarn there. (Yes, it was tempting!) 

My sister was, of course, not home when I tried to call her. 

     "I'll take you home Cat. Your sister will owe me - big time," someone told me. It is out of her way but I accepted gratefully. I will try to do something for her later - or perhaps I should get my sister to do it? 

Today I am planning to spend the afternoon at

knitting Guild I belong to. It is the one formal "social" group I have joined. I lead a knitting group at the local independent bookshop and do some teaching at the local library. The Guild group is slightly different. 
I believe there is a need to contribute to a group if you belong to it so I act as the Librarian for the several hundred books the Guild owns. It should not be a particularly onerous task but, unlike most libraries, I need to know the content of the books because I am more likely to be asked, "Cat have we got a pattern for..." or "I have X wool and I want to make..." etc. Yes, most people knit to patterns. There are very few people who do not. I understand that even though I last used a pattern (and adapted that) when I was in my teens. I am, quite simply, too lazy to use a pattern. It is too much work.
Today though the Guild is having a mini-market open to the public. The "library" will not be open.
I am hoping to sell some yarn, mostly wool and wool/silk mixtures. It was given to me some time ago. It was given to me by someone I did not know at all. A friend 'phoned and asked if she could pass on my number to someone "who's got some wool and stuff they want to get rid of. I suggested you might be able to use it for the kids".  
This sort of thing has happened before. It is usually because someone is clearing out a cupboard, has decided they are not going to knit whatever it was they had started, is going into a nursing home and will not have the space (or perhaps the time and energy) to go on knitting all they have. People give it to me "for the kids" - by which the mean the unaccompanied children my friend in Africa cares for. 
I have no idea how people believe I would actually be able to knit all they give me. I am not a fast knitter, not nearly as fast as people who have more time than I do to spend at the craft. Some people do understand that and I try to explain to others. I tell them I will try and sell whatever they have given me and donate the money instead. Nobody has objected so far. Most people seem more than happy it is going to be used in some way. 
This last time though even I was stunned. There was a knock at our door and someone stood there surrounded by four large black bags - the sort you use for garden rubbish. Each of them was about two thirds full and then tied at the top.
      "Er...you are the person who will take the wool?" he asked. I nodded and managed to say "Yes. Please come in."
He hestitated and then said, 
       "I have to get a box as well."
He dumped the four bags inside the front door and dashed off. A moment later he came back with a box, fortunately it was a small box.
      "That's just a few patterns and needles and stuff. If you can't use any of it then just give it to someone who can."
       "That's very generous of you," I told him.
He shrugged and said, "It belonged to my Mum and and my wife. It's nice to think it is going to be used for those kids.  I can't stop."
He was gone. The only thing I knew about him was his first name. He obviously did not want to hang around.
I thought the bags would be full of the usual cheap acrylics that people want to get rid of because they have discovered it is not nice to knit. We donate most of that to people who knit small blankets for animals. 
This time though it was different. There was some beautiful yarn there. Most of it was no more than a ball or two but there were several unopened packs of yarn and some other garment sized lots. I have sorted, labelled and priced. I hope I can sell at least some (and preferably most) of it today. 
I know that, if I do, there will be people who will be asking for patterns and help at our little library. I won't mind in the least. The money will be helping to keep "the kids" warm in other ways.