I'm still looking for my ticket

 

 

There's this cute little story about Einstein when he took the train from Princeton University. As the conductor boarded the train to check the passengers' tickets. Einstein began to search his jacket pockets for his ticket but couldn't find it.

He then looked in his trouser pockets and in his small carry-on suitcase, without success. Finally, he started looking on the seat next to him ...

Seeing this, the controller said to him: "Dr. Einstein, I know who you are, everyone knows you, and I'm sure you bought a ticket. Don't worry".

Einstein nodded in gratitude. The conductor continued punching the tickets of the other passengers, but as he was about to leave the carriage, he saw Einstein on his knees, searching under his seat for his ticket. Intrigued, the controller turned to him and said: "As I told you, we know who you are. Forget about the ticket; it's not a problem!"

Einstein looked up at him and replied: "Thank you, young man, I too know who I am. But what I don't know is where I'm going! That's why I keep looking for my ticket!"

I'm certainly no Einstein but there are days when I'm also on my knees still looking for my ticket to find out where I'm going - although, with advancing age, the destination seems to become ominously clearer.

 

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The must-have desert island read

 

 

Your ship is sinking, you’re about to be stranded on a desert island, and instead of salvaging something sane like food or materials for shelter, you rescue one book to read on the beach. What would it be?

To me it's what people these days like to call a no-brainer: Tom Neale's AN ISLAND TO ONESELF. It's the story of a life well lived, and even though the book owes a lot to the practised hand of some professional writer (possibly Noel Barber), it is so well executed that it recaptures the childhood thrill of reading "Robinson Crusoe". Here we go:

 

"I was fifty when I went to live alone on Suvarov, after thirty years of roaming the Pacific, and in this story I will try to describe my feelings, try to put into words what was, for me, the most remarkable and worthwhile experience of my whole life. I chose to live in the Pacific islands because life there moves at the sort of pace which you feel God must have had in mind originally when He made the sun to keep us warm and provided the fruits of the earth for the taking; but though I came to know most of the islands, for the life of me I sometimes wonder what it was in my blood that had brought me to live among them."

 

I found this book many years ago in an old second-hand shop that has since disappeared. For the sum of a couple of dollars I held in my hands one man's South Pacific island dream, lived out in just under two hundred pages and perhaps a dozen black-and-white photographs.

The eccentric author was a humble 51-year-old New Zealander, Tom Neale, former navyman, storeman, and world-famous hermit. He has never written anything else except for this singular work of a lifetime.

I always keep my copy of the book nearby, and every once in a while when I need some solitude I open it up and go back with Tom to his shack perched on Anchorage Island. And so can you by clicking here.

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My family tree is more like a bonsai

 

My parents in Berlin in 1948

 

I blame two wars - the World War from 1939 to 1945, and the domestic family war which led to my parents' divorce in 1952 - for not having much of a family tree; in fact, the only "branch" there ever was and which I climbed were my grandfather's knees shortly before he died in the early 50s.

 

Moi in der Augustastraße in Berlin in 1948

 

I was a less-than-welcome "Peter-come-lately", born at the end of the war - after my "big brother" (1932), and three sisters (1934, 1940, and 1942) - in what was then the Russian-occupied "Ostzone" which in 1949 became the "German Democratic Republic". We had already escaped the "Workers' Paradise" the year before, during the Berlin Blockade, and joined the long queue of destitute refugees in West Germany waiting for anything, including housing. Back in the East, my father had been a "Volkswirt" (economist) with his own large entry in the telephone book; in the West we didn't even have a house, let alone a telephone.

 

 

For the first two years we lived "on the edge" in an unheated metal shack without toilet, kitchen, electricity, or running water, literally on the edge of town, that town being Braunschweig in the more benignly British-occupied Lower Saxony from where I eventually emigrated.

That was still fifteen years away. In the meantime, it was an ongoing battle for adequate housing, enough food, and warm clothing. Nothing like today's claimed "poverty" sitting in front of a flatscreen television; that was real hunger and cold nights and shoes with cardboard soles.

 

My first day at school in 1952

 

If this photo is anything to go by, things must've got a bit better by the time I entered school in 1952. Not that schooling ever interfered with my education: all I ever did were the compulsorary eight years of "Volksschule" (primary school), after which even the few Deutschmarks I earnt as an articled clerk helped to keep our bodies and souls together.

 

"Mein erster Schulgang" - My first day at school / Wouldn't it be fascinating to
know what happened to those forty-one eager faces in the past seventy-three years?

 

Ask me about geometree, symmetree, and treegonometree, but not about my family tree which is more like a bonsai which is like Chinese foot-binding except it's applied to a tree. Like foot-binding, my family tree kept me hobbling along for nineteen years until I hit my stride in my adopted new home Australia.

 

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The sun had barely risen ...

 

 

The sun had barely risen when I took this photo during this morning's walk past the turn-off to the Old Nelligen Road. There can't be more than a handful of properties along this road or hidden away in the forest, and three are for sale.

It's all very well to turn one's back on the world and live a life of self-imposed self-sufficiency, but when the money runs out or the wife or whatever else one runs out or low on, it's time to rejoin the 'real world'.

I suspect that the start of another ominous bushfire season may have something to do with it. After the disastrous bushfire on New Year's Eve six years ago, we drove up that road to see if an old friend who lived there was all right. We were stopped by burning trees that had fallen across the road. We couldn't get in and, of course, they couldn't get out.

The fuel load in the surrounding forest has only increased since then, and the smallest spark could see a repeat of that horrific event when we all thought the world had come to an end. Our walk hadn't yet, and we walked across the bridge and past the River Café which was already full of perfectly sane people who paid $5 for a drink they can make at home for a few cents - and don't even get me started on bottled water!

 

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Wenn wir den Krieg gewonnen hätten

 

 

Die andere Möglichkeit Erich Kästner   Wenn wir den Krieg gewonnen hätten, mit Wogenprall und Sturmgebraus, dann wäre Deutschland nicht zu retten und gliche einem Irrenhaus. Man würde uns nach Noten zähmen wie einen wilden Völkerstamm. Wir sprängen, wenn Sergeanten kämen, vom Trottoir und stünden stramm. Wenn wir den Krieg gewonnen hätten, dann wären wir ein stolzer Staat. Und pressten noch in unsern Betten die Hände an die Hosennaht. Die Frauen müssten Kinder werfen, Ein Kind im Jahre. Oder Haft. Der Staat braucht Kinder als Konserven. Und Blut schmeckt ihm wie Himbeersaft. Wenn wir den Krieg gewonnen hätten, dann wär der Himmel national. Die Pfarrer trügen Epauletten Und Gott wär deutscher General. Die Grenze wär ein Schützengraben. Der Mond wär ein Gefreitenknopf. Wir würden einen Kaiser haben und einen Helm statt einem Kopf. Wenn wir den Krieg gewonnen hätten, dann wäre jedermann Soldat. Ein Volk der Laffen und Lafetten! Und ringsherum wär Stacheldraht! Dann würde auf Befehl geboren. Weil Menschen ziemlich billig sind. Und weil man mit Kanonenrohren allein die Kriege nicht gewinnt. Dann läge die Vernunft in Ketten. Und stünde stündlich vor Gericht. Und Kriege gäb's wie Operetten. Wenn wir den Krieg gewonnen hätten - zum Glück gewannen wir ihn nicht!