Mid Week Musings

I was reading earlier in the week a story an American man was telling of his 22 year old son asking him why he had never smoked.

“I told him that when I was a child I was always grossed out by ashtrays.” To his surprise he found that he was having to explain to his son what ashtrays were. When he did his son was flabbergasted, “you mean people smoked inside!”

I told an American friend this, and he said that he, a lifelong non-smoker, had vivid memories of being in the family car in Chicago winters, both parents up front and puffing away, and the window cracked perhaps an inch to let a very little bit of the smoke escape.

I have a recollection of going to the movies in Hammersmith, must have been 1994 as the rather racy novelist who I was with had wanted to see Four weddings and a Funeral. As we walked in she asked, smoking or non-smoking. As an uncouth colonial I was unaware that smoking was permitted on the right side of the aisle, but not on the left.

I’m not sure if it was the movie, the seating arrangements or the date, but I chuckled my way through the evening.

It wasn’t that Australians were not smoking by 1994, they still mainly were, including in the foyer in cinemas, but just not in the cinema itself.

On the Qantas 747 on the way over, easily the best seats on the plane were down the back in the smoking section. It was were all the drinking and smoking and partying on was happening, and even the non-smokers gravitated towards it.

You have to remember travel was different back in the 70s and 80s. Firstly it was more expensive and less common, and much more likely to be the great adventure of a young life, a right of passage, a coming of age moment.

It was rarely a routine business trip or two weeks in a villa in the south of France with the wife’s family.

I think there were two or three never-smokers in our extended family. My mother, the elder sister, and my first wife. Everyone else puffed away like chimneys at one time or another.

My sister tells me that on Mum and Dad’s wedding list was a Smokers Stand. A sort of chair side table, very solid base and round table at the top, with place for a drink to rest, and an ashtray that could be removed for cleaning, and a spot to put the lighter or the matches.

Someone ponied up for it as I remember it clearly.

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Cambridge Circus Research has published a report titled Breaking the Blob: A Study and Antidote to British Ungovernability (June 2026), which details how NGOs receive money from governments and then use that funding to campaign against government policies and frustrate their implementation once they become law.

Very little of the money donated to many NGOs actually reaches the intended recipients. Most people with direct contact with these organisations will tell you that they often function more as job creation programs for the less gifted offspring of the well-to-do, with high overheads, generous salaries, and administrative costs consuming the bulk of the funds.

It’s bit like the old habit of the younger sons of the nobility, they used to be sent off to the Army or the Navy, or into the Church to keep them occupied, at least if they were not smart enough for commerce.

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The cousin and I have been trying to schedule a time for a podcast this week, without much success. Too many medical consultations required, but that’s what you get from a couple of old crocks, a ten year cardio patient and a recovering cancer chap are bound to have appointments from time to time.

I thought we had it sorted for today but the cardio’s excellent staff whatsapped to say he was performing emergency surgery and could we put it off till Friday.

I suppose it’s possible that someone having emergency surgery had needs greater than mine so I thought I’d best agree as graciously as possible for a bloke who had spent a whole 60 cents on a bus fare to get there.

My appointment was more of a summons than a scheduled one. I have an implanted pacemaker, and it sends data to a device that sits on our sideboard, which in turn can send reports to my cardiologist.

This is like sitting next to the worst kid in class, the snitch, and not being able to give him the slip or threaten him with retribution. No matter what you do he can and will provide accurate information about whether you have really done that exercise or walked those steps that you claim you do.

There oughta be a law, I tell ya.

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The Welsh government has decided to turn it’s attention to the problem of racism. Wales has a total population of about 3.1 million, and is one of the least ethnically diverse parts of the UK, it’s 94% white.

But as always demand for anti-racism initiatives often exceeds the supply of the problem itself.

Governments are free to spend the voters money how they like, up to a point, but the bit that caught my eye here was that over a million GB pounds is being spent on creating a metaverse for teenagers to warn them against the evils of colonialism.

Shouldn’t we be defending colonialism, after all it brought the benefits of western civilisation to large numbers of people?

Western civilization — built on Enlightenment values, scientific method, the rule of law, secure property rights, capitalism, and empirical rationality — has produced the highest material living standards, health, longevity, and human welfare in recorded history.

Colonialism was the mechanism that transmitted many of those gains to large parts of the world, often at significant cost, but with outcomes that compare more than favorably to pre-colonial or non-Western alternatives.

If we don’t defend western civilisation we will lose it’s benefits. History shows civilisations decline when they lose confidence in their own values and institutions, and that’s the trajectory we are on.

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A bit of a kerfufle about the arrest of Melbourne man for being in possession of a brick size packet of cocaine, and the decision of the media to tell us that he was a De La boy, a student at De la Salle College. Not quite, but he had been at the school a decade or so ago.

Not in the public interest to disclose etc, on and on the rants on X appeared.

Did you know that you can introduce two Adelaide people to each other in a pub in Asia and I guarantee the “where did you go to school?” question will be asked inside five minutes.

We have run the test multiple times, and it never fails.

Substitute Sydney and it sometimes works, Melbourne more often than not, Adelaide, every time.

It’s our Provincialism Test for cities and it’s very scientific.

Perhaps the public are interested after all.

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The eight year old grandson was playing in the half-time game at the MCG on Sunday and his mum sent through a photo, which I forwarded on to the siblings. My sisters thought it looked very much like me from my 8 year old days.

I showed it to the lads at the pub, and they asked if it was really like me at that age.

I couldn’t quite recall, I doubt that 8 year old boys have all that much awareness of just what they look like in photos, and there were a lot fewer photos in the 1960s.

If he looks a bit of an arsehole of a kid I guess so, was my response.

Was I that bad?

You bet. After all, if you are going to make being a troublemaker your life’s work, it helps to get off to solid early start.

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Stay well