TOWN NEEDS RACK

The township of Linton has several memorials and points of interest which are highlights for the casual visitor and occasional stopping tourist. But like signs, seats and bins the town also needs some practical trappings that its more active* residents can enjoy.

The Pioneer Memorial, the War Memorials, Letty Armstrongs’ Post Office Seat and the Water Point and Horse Trough near the Geelong Road are just a few.

One recent occurrence has prompted The Astonisher to shift it's main focus from a Town Hard Rubbish Skip to that of a Pool Cue Rack outside the Railway Hotel.

It came to pass recently that a well-known Eight Balls player in the town mislaid his very expensive hand-carved, homogenized, vitrified and petrified Pool Pole. Enquiries were made at several establishments, and even a thorough check inside the fireplace of their residence. To our relief, because he drove everyone berserk in their frenetic search, the Cue was to eventually be found outside the Bar Door of the Hotel just laying there feeling very, very dejected and unwanted.

To avoid any future difficulties with miscreant Pool Cues we believe it is the duty of this trustworthy (?) publication to earnestly put forward a request to the Progress Association for such a device to be installed so that waylaid or wayward pool cues can be detained for the collection of their rightfully registered owners without them having to be rounded up by the local Police.

This article was generated in part by a recent reading of an article called:-

Drinking Like a Man: the Paradox of Excessive Drinking for

Seventeenth-Century Dutch Youths

* Active (adjective) the antonym of Council.

Means working, involved or enthusiastic about one thing or another to benefit Linton.

It can also be an adjective for getting off your arse and doing something other than involve yourself in the X Factor, Biggest Loser and other vomit inducing TV shows.

DON'T EVER POKE A BULGE

Every now and then you look up at the ceiling and you see something different. A spider or their multiplying webs, an unexplained stain that may resemble the Virgin Mary, a broken light globe or a dislodged piece of plaster.

In my case it was a drip from my Office ceiling. Just one, two years ago, just the slightest little wet object about to descend as ordained by gravity. After a little while it fell onto the carpet and left a wet full stop. I did not notice the insignificant little drip till a year later on another rainy day. This time several drips in a row left a dollar size mark on the floor. Of course I ignored it thinking it maybe a condensation problem.

It was after the heavy rains that flooded Linton last year when I noticed the drips again. They seemed this time to descend from a slightly lowering paunch in the plaster. I tried to ignore it knowing that it meant having to do a bit of work.

After what seemed fourty days and nights I could not help but notice that the drip, although intermittent was falling from the middle of about a square metre of bulge. The ceiling may have descended only about a centimeter but it was now beginning to bug me, and despite all my efforts to resist I went to the shed and returned with a small ladder. Looking directly above me I realized the ceiling looked jolly nasty.

It was far too tempting to resist trying to push the bulge back to where it belonged. Thinking ‘delicate’ I raised my index finger above my head to the centre of the bulge and gently pushed upward.

What resulted was a sudden rush of around ten litres of freezing cold rainwater straight down the armpit of my overalls washing away any deodorant that was left, down through my underwear and finally gushing out both trouser legs onto the carpet of the Den.

As a Lintonian I’m sure that you would know exactly how cold that water was in the middle of winter. It was probably my body heat that prevented the water from creating two very long icicles clinging to my testicles.

My descent from the ladder was as swift as I have ever moved since throwing a live hand grenade in the Army. Poor Peppie the dog copped the brunt of it as he was laying quietly at the bottom of the ladder and two very wet objects sped off into the bathroom seeking to dry ourselves off. I took a hot shower to warm up, but Peppie who hated showers decided he would dry himself shivering in circles around the house.

Five hours later I summoned up the courage to ascend the ladder again and inspected the finger-sized hole. To see into the problem meant slightly enlarging the exit point of the water so my index finger again began probing the problem. Too late, the plaster was so wet that a soggy wad of it the size of my head descended directly down onto my surprised face. With it also came twenty years of accumulated dust, dead mites, spiders, and mouse poop, all of it sogging wet. Again Peppie copped it, but this time he was covered in a lot of goop that was not fox shit.

Another process of drying off and another examination while I still had the ladder out revealed to me that directly above the initial hole in the plaster there appeared a dripping nail. For years it seems that the nail had been mistakenly secured into the bottom of the steel gully of the roof contours and hidden under an edge cap. For years one or two drips every rainfall had begun to eat away at the ceiling timbers and insulation until eventually nothing existed below the nail but a dark, damp void above an equally rotted plaster ceiling.

It was a month later that I again confronted the hole. This was a deliberate move as it meant the ceiling had time to dry out and allow some maintenance work to be done. It was not a good day to do it as it had reached the time I usually take my Nanny Nap.

Seven months  of naps later I still enter the room and contemplate the hole. I’ve really got used to it now, its like a reassuring friend always there and always constant, never offering praise nor condemnation. My next project is to purchase a suitable picture frame with which to lovingly decorate my friend the hole.

GABRIEL'S HORN

Every year the musical purists of Victoria get the opportunity to come together for a series of concerts inaccurately called ‘Organs Of The Ballarat Goldfields’. We say inaccurate as a great many recitals are held with not a Organ in sight. To be correct it should be called ‘Organs of the Goldfields and other Musical Indulgences’.  It is however the rare chance for the Carngham Uniting Church at Snake Valley to show off it’s wonderful instrument believed to be the largest village pipe organ in the State.

Just like old people, old instruments like pipe organs give a bit of a sigh every now and then, fall over and go silent for short periods of time. Some years they lose bits of pipe just like partial dentures and cannot give full voice to the pieces they wish to sing. As a result of this their had to be a few changes to the published program to exclude music requiring those few notes. Alas on top of this the Japanese violinist Miwako Abe was unable to appear due to the ground being shaken from under his feet a few months back. Fortunately at the last moment one of Australia’s top quasi-plumbers stepped in and impressed everyone with his ability to blow some extraordinary sounds through the twists and turns of a lot of brass tubing.

I only recognised three of the dozen or so numbers in the repertoire (mainly due to the fact that classical purists seem to prefer music written 500 years ago) but the programme suited those who like to sit quietly, stare at the high, beamed ceilings and just drink in the sound. That is until the Finale.

Of the several pieces he blew - from sweet dirges to awakening blasts - his parting party piece was a stunning number composed, I think, by Aaron Copeland which required a well-tongued eight notes a second that would have made Jean Simmons (of K.I.S.S) absolutely green with envy. If you have dribbled your fingers along a piano keyboard it would approximate the dexterity of this mans vocal appendage, and even at that speed was able to enunciate clearly each and every note. It’s disappointing to think that we don’t seem to be able to find anyone in Linton just as adventurous and daring to be different for the sake of the town. The result of his Finale left both myself and the rest of the capacity crowd (two performances were required) breathless and standing for his ovation.

Whether you like or dislike the scream of a trumpet, cornet, bugle or flugelhorn and even if you have to shade your ears from the sound of an organ the right piece of music on the right instrument be it electric guitar, bagpipe or bongo drums music brings joy to our sometimes mundane world in ways we don’t always expect.

Prior to this I attended the Minerva Space at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute (a little hidden gem) for Sydney-based ‘Ironwood’ to perform two Mozart Quartet pieces.( #428 for Strings and #478 for Pianoforte). It stunned me to realize that this group (complete with a 1791 Piano carted down from the Sydney Conservatorium) came to Ballarat to perform one concert of two pieces of music taking just over an hour to complete. It was worth the ticket price but what a waste of expensive resources.

In the end one doesn’t have to travel far and the ticket prices are minimal so we would recommend that you book a front row seat for next year at Snake Valley. Imagine being able to go to church with not a priest in sight. It’s like going to heaven and not having to put up with Jesus.

ONE MORE FOOT IN THE GRAVE

We always knew we had a Mrs. Bucket but it also appears up at Happy Valley we also have our own Victor ‘Murphy’s Law’ Meldrew. If it can be stuffed it will be stuffed. Maybe it was jet lag from the trip to Brisbane.

Happily unpacking his new high pressure hose to wash his Ute (pick-up) he methodically worked his way from the back bumper bar towards the front of the vehicle. All was going well, it was successfully removing mud from the wheels, sheep shit from the rear tray, and grass from the suspension. However, at a point half-way along the car he thought he heard the telephone ring. Half turning to the dog and asking it to confirm if the phone was indeed ringing, he paused a moment and heard the Nokia ring again. OK. So turning back to organize shutting off the thin stream of very high pressure water he noticed that the drivers window was still down and the hose was merrily filling up the CD Player and inundating the whole dashboard.

Needless to say he is still trying to turn on the radio and defuse the CD player which continually noisily attempts to eject discs that are not in it.