It started with my fussing about how all you can find in the shops is swimsuits and sports shirts even though it’s cold enough to freeze the male gonads off a copper and zinc alloy primate.

                                                                                                                                                                                                      This is what’s missing

Then Mrs.Gagg jumped in with her anecdote about how when she was stationed in Panama, with her previous old man (who was in the army), all you could find in the commissary was down parka’s.

Why swimsuits in January and down parkas in the tropics? Read the rest of this post here »

 Posts have been a little thin on the ground, my time and attention having been taken up with a trip down under.

It was a family roots thing. My great-grandfather was an Irishman who immigrated to Australia in the gold rush in 1851. His daughter became a rather well known authoress (writing under the name of Henry Handel Richardson) and each year they have a celebration of her birthday on January 3^rd at this dinky-di little place called Chiltern in up state Victoria where the family lived - you know, two intersecting streets and a lot of pubs (or hotels as the Australians call them). Read the rest of this post here »