Christmas Cheer

Off to work in my local Bibliotheque in a couple of hours where I'll be entertaining the crowds till 8 pm with various shuffles and pleasant remarks.

In his semi-retirement my father used spend a bit of time in his local library. A rather severe character who harboured a lot of memories of blood and guts he once commented to a daughter in law after ordering a meal that the waitress was "unnecessarily cheerful".

I remember him smiling and laughing only a few times; once when one of his sons who had difficulty reading as a child married the niece of the heavy weight boxing champion of New South Wales.

Arthur's photo

Arthur Shera took this photo of his daddy and his brother Albert who may have been watching too many Peter Greenaway films. Perhaps Albert has watched Once were Warriors one too many times.

In this photo Geoffrey was concerned, as he has been for some time, at the illegitimate secrecy of public servants/government employees in their pursuit of their public roles.

He is concerned that people who are supposed to be representing the people or serving the people are becoming less and less accountable and more and more secretive in the representation of their views and their actions in the name of their people.

The question should be asked of these public servants who are you representing?

Pork-barrelling slush funds for local councillors, trinket gifts which encourage the raffle and the gamble by constituents and cosy relationships with developers spring to mind as does the obfusticated view of public servants' functions and actions and the unreported employment of anonymous troops on foreign soils under the banner of his native land.

It's about time a few of these public servants mowed the poorly tended grass at the local park rather than engage in all manner of Heath Robinson schemes to justify, it seems mainly to themselves, their existence on the public tick.

As well as this sad state of public servants, including politicians, being opaque Geoffrey can't believe that the French politicians (almost without a dissenting voice from any of them!) have gone out of their way to discriminate against people because of the way they dress.

Geoffrey is aware that the french National anthem, which is a stirring number, can be translated to render some pretty dodgy sentiments regarding the purity of blood. He is happy that in the public library where he works that people can wear whatever head gear they like and that he likes it that way.