Category Archives: Try Something Different

#112 Attempt a Resuscitation

It was late on a Sunday evening, after the chickens had been safely locked up and the final load of washing was happily swirling in its soapy juices, that I settled down to watch TV and simultaneously send a few text messages.

Except my iPhone was missing. Nowhere to be found, even after upending all the sofa cushions, checking every room I’d wandered into on the way towards relaxation time and dialling it from my landline.

I knew it couldn’t be lost. I’d had it not forty minutes ago, just before, just before … putting on the washing.

OMG the washing! Had the phone been in the pocket of my jeans?

#112 Attempt a Resuscitation

It’s hard to describe the feeling of watching your iPhone grinning gleefully at you as it sloshes around in sudsy water from inside your washing machine .

Did you know that interrupting front loading washing machines mid-cycle is not at all intuitive?

And it’s terribly stressful trying to locate a 10-year-old washing machine instruction manual in a hurry, find the section on “How to Add or Remove Items From Your Machine”, then discover it’s nigh on impossible if the drum is full of water. The internal screaming at your own stupidity doesn’t help either.

So I resigned the phone to its fate, managed to switch the washer to a shorter cycle and spin, all the while googling “Can a Drowned iPhone be saved?”

It turns out, that’s not as stupid as it sounds. If the immersion has been short-lived, there’s an outside chance of rescue. But there was no mention of “full cycle”, “soap”, “suds” and “high speed spinning”.

Following Google’s advice, I switched the phone off the second I could retrieve it (and it did look very clean) removed the SIM card, rinsed the phone of soapy residue and put it in a jar of rice.

The next morning, after further research told me that rice isn’t a good idea because small grains can get into the mechanism, I moved onto silica beads.

*DO NOT EAT ME … but do save me for a rainy day*

You know the ones. They come in little sachets slipped into various purchases to reduce damp spoilage and they have written exhortations on the packets not to ingest them on pain of death.

But the few packs I could scavenge didn’t seem enough, so I bought more from my friendly hardware monolith, slipped the phone into an old sock and buried it in a heap of the beads for 5 days.

*… and that’s the SIM card at the top, wrapped in a piece of tissue in an attempt to salvage it as well.*

The amount of water extracted after the first 5 days was surprising

so I repeated the process with fresh beads for another 5 days with similar results. (Being without your phone for ten days is a whole other story … )

Being loath to risk electrocution by turning it on or recharging it after such a soaking, I took it into a very brave iPhone repairer who did the deed for me. He, too, was mightily impressed with the silica beads’ water extraction capabilities and offered to nurse the phone on his bespoke temperature controlled warming-bed for another 24 hours.

I find this hard to believe, but my phone has been working since I picked it up from him.

Yes, really!

I’ll be honest, a machine can’t go through that much trauma and come out totally unscathed.

It can no longer manage facial recognition, take a screen shot or allow me to pay using the Visa card in my apple wallet, but these are minor issues and so far, everything else works pretty well.

HALLELUJAH!

And the major lesson I’ve learned from this adventure? (Well, apart from the obvious.)

Save up all the little sachets of DO NOT EAT silica beads you ever get, because who knows, one day the phone they save may be yours.

#110 Relearn a Language

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We’re constantly being exhorted to exercise our minds as well as our bodies, so when a friend told me a few months ago about Duolingo, “The World’s Best Way to Learn a Language” (according to Duolingo’s website), it sounded like an idea that was perfect for the times. Certainly a much better idea than exercising my body which wasn’t ready for anything as dangerous as say, walking.

So I promptly enrolled in their French course, a language I had once haltingly stammered over 50 years ago, and found myself ensnared in a juggernaut of relentless encouragement.

#110 Relearn a Language

The Duo part of Duolingo, as well as meaning two, is also the website’s green owl, a mascot who keeps urging you on in that intermittent re-inforcement fashion that psychologists have shown to be most effective at keeping people trapped in their addictions.

When you least expect it, he pops up to your right

*… to give you that little frisson of satisfaction and convince you to keep going*

or to your left,

It’s much more interactive and engaging than the classes I remember at school in the ’60s taught by the rather quiet nun who’d never been within cooee of France, and the rewards (points to amass, promotion to a higher grade, or just flattering encouragement) are frequent enough to satisfy, but inconsistent enough to keep you returning.

Peer pressure works well, too. Other students will often follow you in the hope of being followed back, so you can send and receive congratulations when you both achieve your goals.

But after six months, and having successfully graduated from beginner’s to intermediate classes, it suddenly dawned on me that I wasn’t enjoying it so much any more.

Each day became filled with too many messages urging me to do even better, work even harder, amass more points, and maintain my position. And if I slipped behind, or was about to be overtaken, the messages arrived as relentlessly as those in the opening scenes of Harry Potter, impossible to ignore.

But still they kept coming, reminding me what I’d achieved that week and what I could do the next:

Finally the shaming began. I was going backwards:

*Oh no! 93 minutes less than last week. A pathway to disgrace*

Things had to change.

I realised that something I was doing for pleasure, purely to keep my mind active—and to prove that I could almost recognise every fifth word spoken during an SBS French film—was turning into a nightmare. I had no time to sleep, no time to eat, no other enjoyments in life. And as I was never going to stroll along the Seine again on a warm Parisian afternoon, would I ever need to ask directions or enquire as to the cost of croissants?

Enough, I decided!

So I’m back to an enjoyable ten to fifteen minutes revision every day.

*Yes, every day. I’m on a roll, you see, and what would Duo think if I suddenly stopped?.*

Who cares about points and promotions?

Anyway, I have a new love now. A friend introduced me to Quordle, and I think I’m hooked.

#109 Play Around with Works of Art

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If you’re ever watched the UK programme Fake or Fortune, you’ll know it involves experts investigating the provenance of little known works of art submitted by the owners in the hope that their find is a long lost piece by a Great Master.

Am I the only one who, by the episode’s end, is thinking ‘if it’s so hard to tell the difference between the real thing and this newly discovered offering, does it really matter?’ Although this admission might suggest I know nothing about art.

But the show gave me the idea for a topic to interest my Discovery friends at one of our recent afternoon get-togethers. Why not—

#109 Play around with Works of Art

—to see if we can reproduce them, for better or worse?

The brief was broad. Take any work of art you like and using materials of your choice, recreate it. Then show us a photograph of the original art work and your copy.

To allay any anxiety about the need to create something wondrous, I provided a couple of examples of what could be achieved with simple tools:

On the left is **Untitled** by R Ryman. It sold for $3.9 Million USD. On the right is my copy—*Wall—* worth $0

And another:

On the left: **Still Life with Fruit** by artist Belinda Nott. On the right: **Lemons from the Garden**.

Everyone was given a couple of weeks to prepare their masterpiece, and they rose to the occasion with fabulous offerings. I challenge you to pick the original!

One of these is Margaret Olley’s **Pomegranates 1** and the other isn’t

Can you tell the real Kandinsky **Colour Study** from the fake?

The mood of Clarice Beckett’s **End of the Garden** has been cleverly reproduced.

Can you tell which is Whistler’s **Arrangement in Grey and Black** and which is the imposter?

An excellent reproduction of Picasso’s **Woman with Dove**

McCubbin’s **Lost (Child)** set among gum trees has morphed into **Lost (Wallaby)** in the scrub

A masterful recreation of part of Bosch’s **The Last Judgement** (top half)

Portion of **Blue Moon** by Mirka Mora—copied using Aldi crayons

Vermeer’s **Girl with a Pearl Earring**—and a few years later?

Art in nature. The rainbow lorikeet, but which one is the fake?

A lovingly recreated **Tea Set** by Charles Sluga

Impossible to pick the real Botticelli’s **Birth of Venus**

A little-known Chagall: **Composition with Goat** cleverly reproduced.

And another Clarice Beckett: **Moonlight and Calm Sea** beside smokey **Sunlight on Lagoon**

Despite the less than perfect results, our intentions were pure, so surely our imitations can be seen as flattery?

It’s not like a certain famous Swedish furniture company that recreated Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party and van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters so they could build the sets to advertise flat pack furniture no less!

The featured image is from a still life by painter Abraham Mignon (1640-1679). The bouquet to its right was gifted to one of our participants.

#108 Make Soap (yes, really!)

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It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

With the Omicron peak waning, most of us happily vaccinated and lockdowns and restrictions a thing of the past, adventures far from home beckoned. So this month’s blog should have been about fresh fields, exotic travel, excitement, restaurants and glamour.

And yet here I am, explaining how to

#108 Make Soap (yes, really!)

Constructing new cakes of soap out of neglected, leftover shards of old soaps is reminiscent of the sad, lonely, lockdown-type activities of 2020 or 2021, but due to a recent spontaneous fracture in my leg (insultingly called an ‘insufficiency fracture’ as though I neglected to care for my bones sufficiently) I’m on ‘minimal-weight-bearing-until-it-heals’ orders from the orthopaedic surgeon.

And so it’s back to finding new activities that can be done without venturing from home. Or walking really.

So I scoured the internet to find instructions on how to convert all the bits and pieces of old soaps I’d found in the bathroom cabinet into brand new hearty bars of soap.

*Gather together about a cup of old leftovers. It speeds up the process to shave or grate them into smallish pieces, as I discovered too late.*

Place them in a saucepan, cover with cold water and leave overnight till the mixture becomes a slushy mess.

Add a tablespoon of olive or vegetable oil and a few drops of a fragrant essence or lemon zest and stir over medium heat until all the soap has melted. It can take a while —up to 30 minutes.

*It helps to have a jazzy stirrer like this, but a wooden spoon works too*

It ends up looking like the smooth custard you’d prepare for a Portuguese tart, but sadly cannot taste.

Add a few drops of food colouring and pour into silicon moulds to set:

Leave for 24 hours, then remove from the moulds and dry on a wire rack for a few more days before using.

The websites I found speak of packaging these small soaps in pretty shapes adorned with ribbons and giving them away as gifts,

but although they’ve been sterilised by boiling for ages, I’m a bit uncomfortable about forcing them onto unsuspecting friends. And they’d not win any beauty contests.

However, to my surprise, the fully dried cakes of soap work extremely well and I’m excited to see if I can collect all the shards from this lot to create even more batches in the future.

It will, of course, follow the laws of diminishing returns, but I’m hopeful it may be some time before I ever have to buy soap again.

#106 Try Calligraphy

#101 Finish a Blog

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Whoever claimed ‘It’s not about the destination, it’s all about the journey’ clearly never suffered from motion sickness. I have vivid memories of every childhood holiday (and fortunately they weren’t too frequent) spent in the back seat of a hot car with my head over a bucket wondering if I’d die before we made it to our destination.

And don’t remind me of the horrendous boat trip out to the Great Barrier Reef in the ’80s where I became that pariah below deck, throwing up her insides; nor that New Year’s Eve yachting party on Sydney Harbour in the ’90s where a water-taxi had to be called to ferry such an embarrassing guest away. Oh no, journeys have rarely held much pleasure for me.

So imagine my surprise to discover, on finally reaching my destination of completing 101 Fun and Frivolous Activities in Retirement—after almost 9 years—that I’ve actually loved this particular journey. Not a hint of travel sickness.

But where to from here?

#101 Finish a Blog

So for something a little different to celebrate this 101st and final blog post, I’ve created an interactive one for a change.

If you like quizzes, this one’s for you; if you love crosswords, it will fill in a few minutes of your day; and if you’re of a literary bent, you’ll enjoy recalling past reads because this one’s a literary-themed crossword.

And in a final twist, there’s a mystery message to be deciphered at the end.

*My apologies that it’s not a crossword where you can type in the answers, but that skill’s way above my pay grade.*

Clues:

Once you’ve found the answers, you can go on to solve the mystery message:

And if you think I have too much time on my hands, you may be right, but it sure beats travel sickness!

#99 Enjoy Age-Appropriate Activities—Without Shame

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Strange things happen as you age, and they’re not all as good as gaining wisdom and caring less about what people think.

For example, you become invisible while waiting in line for service; then one day, unexpectedly, the background noise in restaurants becomes intolerable; and there’s the moment when the thought of replacing your recently deceased, beloved pet raises questions like ‘do I have the energy for a puppy?’ and ‘who’ll look after it when I’m gone?’; and finally, you’re shocked out of every vestige of comfort you’ve ever known, when a news report speaks of someone who dies in their sixties as ‘elderly’.

This can only mean the time has come to

#99 Enjoy Age-Appropriate Activities—Without Shame

Becoming invisible after 60 can be partially overcome, I think, by wearing very bright colours, every single day.

In the first, hilarious episode of Fisk on the ABC last week, the main character, played by Kitty Flanagan, arrived for work in a gaudy shade of yellow. She was pilloried for looking like a ‘walking banana’,

but surely that’s got to be better than being mistaken for the office furniture and sat upon, which is what happened when she wore brown and beige?

“Blending into the chair like some sort of furniture chameleon”

At least when she looked like a banana, she became somebody, so bring out the colours and ignore any comments, I say.

————————————

The problem with background noise in restaurants is a tough one, because not only is it impossible to hear, it’s also so difficult to speak above the din that pretty soon, you end up with a husky voice and an inability to contribute to the conversation.

So if this means turning into your parents and dining at 6.30pm before the crowds, then so be it. Or do all your socialising early in the day. There is no shame after 60.

—————————————

A solution to the replacement pet has turned out to be easier than I thought. I’m finding that no one rejects an offer to care for their dog when they’re away. This gives you wonderful bonding time with a much loved pet (one that quite possibly has been better trained than your own ever was), takes the worry away from your friends and, as a bonus, doesn’t stymie you if you want to go on a spontaneous holiday yourself.

And if the time between dog-sitting become too long and you’re missing that tactile interaction with a pet, I can thoroughly recommend finding a realistic model that looks just like the dog you’re missing, and patting him every time you walk past.

——————————

Advancing years bring out another fabulous age-appropriate trait to take your mind off the accelerating years, and that’s obsessively tracing your own family history after watching endless repeats of the SBS program Who Do You Think You Are?

I particularly enjoy seeing the participants of this show declare their ancestors to be quite blameless, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, or tear up over the death in childbirth of a great-great-grandmother, a woman unknown to them only a few minutes earlier.

My DNA analysis threw up Southern European ancestors as well as a side serve of Irish and Scottish ones, none of which came as a surprise.

But when I discovered that my grand-mother’s 9 year-old sister, Marie-Louise, died of ‘Rheumatic Endocarditis and Exhaustion’ in 1915, what should happen but my eyes began to glisten for a little girl I never knew existed!

Although nothing prepared me for the shock of my great-grandfather’s death certificate, where the cause of his demise was claimed to be ‘senility’. He was only 69!

My mother NEVER mentioned that her beloved Pop was senile. They must have that one wrong.

My great-grandfather would never have died with such a condition.

#98 Allow yourself to be seduced

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Once you reach a certain age, it’s easy to forget what it’s like to fall in love.

That excited fluttering in the stomach when thinking about the object of your affections, the anticipation of sharing time together, the sheer joy of knowing you’ve met your perfect match at last.

I thought it was too late for this to happen again, but now realise there’s no age limit to infatuation:

#98 Allow yourself to be seduced

Harris Farm Markets has decided to favour our town with its presence and I’m smitten.

I’d heard about this market for years from family and friends in Sydney. They’d regale me with stories of the freshest of local fruit and vegetables, the most exotic groceries imaginable, displays to make your head spin, anything and everything a foodie ever dreamed of, and all coming together under one roof. A magical land akin to a Willie Wonka factory but designed for adults.

AND NOW IT’S IN MY TOWN AND IT’S WALKING DISTANCE FROM HOME!

As I think about it, all the adjectives, adverbs, similes and metaphors in my repertoire don’t do it justice. Instead, sit back, relax, and enjoy photographs that display the long lost art of effortless seduction.

From fruit and vegetables …

Assorted heirloom tomatoes to make Maggie Beer envious

Can you get fresher than Living Lettuce?

To deli items …

…to coffee and desserts

Organic single herd milk. (Yes, it’s really a thing!)

… not forgetting a seafood stall and a butchery, a smokehouse and a florist, a juice bar and an on-site baker’s mill—among too many other delights to mention.

I realise I’m in the early days of my infatuation and that the shine will inevitably fade. I’ll emerge from these crazy, heady days of unbridled pleasure with an overstocked pantry, feeling a tad guilty about neglecting the lovely Swedish baker and the excellent bulk food store to the south of the town, the well stocked essential ingredient shop in the town centre and the European deli to the north.

But until that happens, I’m basking in this flood of oxytocin.

And did I mention it’s walking distance from home?

#94 Practise ‘The Science of Wellbeing’

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The image above, of the dog contemplating his happiness in the moment while his master dreams of unattainable goals, is a well-known meme for mindfulness and savouring life as it happens.

Having immersed myself over the past 5 weeks in an on-line course run by Yale University through Coursera, it neatly sums up the essence of what I’m learning:

#94 Practise ‘The Science of Wellbeing’

Contrary to what I’ve always thought, studying at Yale isn’t stressful at all. The course is free, I’m doing it from home, and as the professor taking it is a young woman who looks a little like the daughter of a friend, she’s nowhere near as scary as the professors who taught me aeons ago.

Dr Laurie Santos, Yale Professor of Psychology

She sits in a comfy chair with the students around her, peppers her tutorials with phrases like ‘this is so cool’ or ‘you’re gonna love this’, and sets multiple choice exams at the end of each week that mirror her tutorials word for word.

As the course had the word ‘Science’ in its title, I believed in it immediately, and although there’s an element of rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens, if the science says it works, who am I to roll my eyes and wonder if it may be a bit too Pollyanna-esque?

Anyway, what’s wrong with roses and kittens?

So what does the science tell us?

Let me summarise to save you the trouble of going to Yale.

The things we think we want are not the things that make us happy. In fact, just about everything our brain tells us that we need to be happier is wrong. This is known as mis-wanting. Analysis of studies (demonstrated by impressive graphs), has shown time and again that beyond a certain income, more money and possessions do not make us any happier.

Hedonic adaptation then means we get blasé about the good things we have in life and stop appreciating them. This puts us on the treadmill of striving for something more, even though that, too, will be subject to hedonic adaptation in time.

So how do we overcome the fault in our brains?

It takes practice, and that seems to be the overarching message of this course.

Determine your top signature strengths (as assessed by a questionnaire, or you could ask your friends) and focus on them, as they will lead to the most satisfaction in your life:

I so wanted bravery and zest but got stuck with self-regulation and humour

Have experiences, rather than buying ‘stuff’. Experiences have been shown to create greater satisfaction in life.
Take a moment each day to savour something special, no matter how small. (Spotted a blue tongue lizard in your garden? That will do it, so make a note of it or take a photo.)

Keep a gratitude journal by the bed to write down at least 3 things you’re grateful for. Every. Single. Day. Because even a bad day will have some little kernel of goodness;
Make and maintain social connections. While this may not work so well face-to-face during a pandemic, at least we have any number of electronic ways to help us (which is something to be grateful for…)
Find a good mindfulness tape and practise regularly, even if only for ten minutes a day. (More clever graphs show that this works wonders!)
Prioritise sleep (now you’re talking … )
Exercise regularly (or perhaps not … )
Smile or chat—even briefly—to a stranger, because it makes both you and them feel better;
Express gratitude to other people;
Make the time to do the things you enjoy. In other words, work at becoming ‘time affluent’;
Repeat all of the above.

It makes sense that practising positive, life affirming habits will improve wellbeing. I have a neighbour whose raison d’être is to assail me with tales of what’s gone wrong in his life, through no fault of his own, interspersed with stories of who in the vicinity of our street has died, who’s had a fall, and who’s been moved into a nursing home. It’s exhausting spending time with him but thanks to this course, I now realise why he does it. He’s trained himself so well, practised being like this for so long, that he’s become an absolute expert in misery and discontent. So practise does make perfect.

The course has reminded me of something else, too. To find answers, I could’ve just re-watched the closing credits of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.

As Michael Palin said, ‘well, it’s nothing very special’.

If you follow these guidelines, and also remember—when you’re feeling very small and insecure—how amazing and unlikely is your birth, you’ve got it covered.

#93 Try your Hand at Amateur Cinematography

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It was an offer too good to refuse.

BB, my Bunnings buddy, asked me if I knew how to film and edit a video to post on YouTube.

Now I’d read about actors who, when quizzed as to whether they could ride a horse bareback, had brazenly told the director ‘of course I can’. Even though they’d never quite mastered their childhood rocking horse. So I immediately said to BB, ‘Of course I can!’.

It didn’t hurt that he’d also hinted it might make an interesting topic for a blog post.

And so … here we are:

#93 Try your Hand at Amateur Cinematography

Another reason the idea appealed was because BB had built a clever rotating soil sifter based on Costa Georgiadis’ instructions in a Gardening Australia episode,

a neat little contraption that sieves soil as it’s shovelled into a turning mesh barrel, before spitting weeds or big bits out the other end.

But BB had taken it a step further and come up with an ingenious method of automatically rotating the sieve without the need of an expensive motor (or an expensive helper for that matter).

This deserved a wider audience.

This had Oscar nominee written all over it.

After a morning’s filming using my trusty iPad, and a few hours editing the rushes (as we cinematographers call the unedited footage), I finalised the grand opus, ready for BB to post on YouTube.

There are a few important lessons I’ve been able to take away from the experience:

It’s probably not a bad idea to rehearse a script before shooting. Maybe even several times.
Keep each scene nice and short … so you can
Reshoot when you’re not happy with it (without driving everyone nuts).
When the Talent says “I’m not sure if you can see this,” make sure you move in for a close-up.
When the Talent proudly points to another part of his design, swing the camera in that direction as soon as you’re aware that’s what he wants. (So it’s important to PAY ATTENTION while filming)
Always make sure there’s a cute dog somewhere in the shoot.

So here it is: the DIY cordless rotating sieve or trommel

I predict a glowing future for BB, now known as the Talent.

Not so sure about the cinematographer …

[Masterful cameo of fed-up trammel turner played by Mrs BB]
[Cute dog played by Captain Oats (without-an-e)]

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101 fun and frivolous things to try in retirement: a single's guide