Monday 25^th of April 2022 (Anzac Day), Morayfield.

It’s only been a month this time. We have just had a visit from Narrelle, Matt and the kids for a very enjoyable week. This was Matt’s first visit to this house, and he seemed satisfied, the only thing I heard him mention was that is a little smaller than he imagined. It is amazing what they can do with photographs when advertising something. I do believe they were happy with the location as it is reasonably centrally situated to most things around the area. It is now hopeful that they, including Matt, will visit more often. We managed to cut down several of the largest palm trees while he was here, I wouldn’t do it on my own as one had to make the first cut from atop a ladder, and I am too old for that.

The Men’s Shed is progressing, but with shed 3 being put back another month, it should be built soon though. We have a special meeting on Thursday this week as there has been a proposal put forward to the committee nominating several of our members for ‘life membership’, yours truly included. As the five nominations are current committee members it was decided to put it to the general membership for approval to remove the possible thoughts that we are self gratifying. I would be honoured to receive this award in appreciation for the work done for the shed. Three of the five are foundation members, still active in the shed, and will be alongside another foundation member given the award last year.

The Communications Museum has had a few hiccups lately with the treasurer in Melbourne not on the job anymore. I am not completely sure why he left, so I will leave it there. Now Melbourne is arranging the task to be outsourced to a contractor, so our finances are not running properly at the moment. For explanation, in short form, we and Sydney Museum receive funding from Melbourne to run the museum, and whatever donations we receive are paid back to them. All is supposed to return to somewhat normal this week, we will see.

Men’s Shed Newsletter Number 43.

Monday 14^th of March 2022, Caboolture.

Another three months has passed, but I do intend keeping up the reports, and I still would hope to do it more often.

COVID has been the biggest influence on our lives, as one would imagine, it has prevented us going to Melbourne for the combined Birthdays of Linda and Narrelle. They are a couple of days apart, 21^st and 23^rd of February, but are usually celebrated together. We had planned to go to Melbourne for the celebrations because Narrelle and family had problems being able to come up here, but just before we were due to go Callan picked up COVID. After his period of lock-down Alicia picked it up, and would you believe after her lock-down Narrelle got it. After all this there was too much uncertainty with our plans so we had to cancel, more the pity. With all this happening we are well and have, to our knowledge, have not been infected, touch wood.

The other major event that has slowed me down with reporting, well I will use it as an excuse, is the floods we have had in the area of late. We have had a fair bit of rain this year, and just when you think it might be over it started to bucket down. One Friday late in February it started and Linda and I were literally stuck in the house for three days as the rain just poured and poured non stop. We had great puddles outside both our exit doors so would have gotten very wet if we had attempted to venture outside. We were fortunate I guess as the 100 year event affected towns and cities from Gympie above the Sunshine Coast all the way to well South of Sydney, with thousands of households being inundated by the waters that caught everybody by surprise. We were expecting heavy rain, but none thought it would be that bad. I now feel sorry for the thousands of people who will now take months to re-establish themselves either rebuilding or finding elsewhere to move to. Once again I say we were very lucky that the local drainage system coped with the deluge that we received, and we suffered no damage at all, to speak of.

Other than this we are now back to whatever normal can be nowadays, with wondering how bad the war in Russia is going to effect us other than fuel prices.

Men’s Shed Newsletters Number 41 and Number 42.

Friday 24^th December 2021, Morayfield.

I again have no explanation, other than old age, for neglecting to put words down. I really can’t think of a way to remind myself on a regular basis. It could be because I have been flat out with the Men’s Shed with different functions coming up at this time of year which consequently gives me a lot more work to do. Seeing that it has been two months, there are two newsletters at the bottom of the report. These newsletters themselves have kept me quite busy, it is just as well I work on them on a daily basis else I would never get them done. The museum also has been keeping me busy, but that does not occupy as much home time as the shed does.

This is my first report on a new computer. The old one was starting to show signs of strange things happening, one of which was intermittently not turning on, repeated tries generally ended up with a start.

Shed newsletters Number 039 and Number 40.

Sunday 24^th October 2021, Morayfield.

Yet another period of nothing written down, it seems as if I am too busy, but nothing is different than usual. I suppose I have been a little busier at the Museum with Don, our President, away for a few weeks and things that are happening like freight deliveries from Melbourne being directed to me rather than the Vice-President. We take it our stride though. I am trying not to be so busy at the men’s shed though with not doing several jobs and deliberately leaving them for somebody else to do, e.g., dish washing, everybody happily makes their coffee or tea and then leaves the teaspoons on the sink for washing. I have been coming along and filling the sink with washing water and washing the spoons ready for the next group, but now that has ceased, yet the spoons seem to get washed sometime. Then we get a surprise busy day one Saturday when our local Bunnings store calls our sizzle man at 8:00am and asks if we could be ready in an hour to do a sausage sizzle at their store because someone cancelled. We do get these calls, it has happened before, because they do know we can do it and are fully prepared for it, we sold the first sausage before 9:30am, and it was quite a profitable day for us.

Another Men’s Shed newsletter being 038_Newsletter.

Sunday 12^th of September 2021, Morayfield.

A somewhat normal week, or two, since last report, with the exception of what I would have to call one of the worst shopping experiences I have ever had.

I had to send a small package to Melbourne and rather than wrap it I thought I would go to the Post Office and put it in a post bag, and Caboolture Post Office was the choice because of the better results Linda has had from that shop. I will add at this stage that I had partially inserted into my box a list of addresses for the package, one being the ‘TO’ address, one being the ‘FROM’ address, and the other being the ‘RETURN TO’ address with the intention of this list to be inserted into the package for the benefit of the package receiver, and I had another copy in my pocket for my information to address the package. I arrive to find that I had to talk to the teller through a Perspex screen, a mask and with her having a foreign accent, and with all this I found it impossible to hear and understand a word she was saying. She removed her mask only to make her voice more audible, but still not understandable. In the meantime, another teller came to assist and took me to the shelves to select a bag, then upon returning I continued to try to deal with the original teller while the second started to package my box. I noted that the second teller found my address note and commenced to tear it into sections. Asked what she was doing she replied that she was using the notes to address the package, but I had noticed that she was using the ‘RETURN TO’ address as the ‘TO’ address which would have resulted in the package being delivered to Brisbane instead of Melbourne. Now the fun started: – I now found it next to impossible to try to talk to teller number one, I think trying to sell me extra insurance, while trying to explain to teller number two what the notes were for and that I had another copy for the purpose of addressing the package. You would have thought from their response that I was trying to tell them how to do their jobs, and probably was, only then having to literally raise my voice in insistence of what my requirement were, and only then would they stop and listen. Now once everyone calmed down, we were all prepared to discuss the matter, but in the end after leaving the shop I was still wondering if the correct ‘TO’ address was actually placed on the package, but as the package arrive where it was supposed to all ended well.

At this current time with NSW and VIC in lockdown we, QLD, have had yet another scare, but with having been able to track the source of the cases we have so far been relieved of our own lockdown.

Another Men’s Shed newsletter being 037_Newsletter.