A screenshot of half a day’s worth of blog traffic.

A pattern that started 5/6 months ago. A whole lot of new customers in China … interested in the Australian bush, Lake Eyre, travel in Japan, family history, Warrnambool, hyper processed food, Aboriginal art. You name it really.

Isn’t that good I thought. Genuine cross-culturalism. Absorbed by the details of how other people live. That is proper preparation for an … er hem … increasingly globalised world.

Didn’t think anything more about it till I had dinner recently with a friend with his own classy website, the sine qua non of finding out about Australian film stars from other times. He asked me how my traffic from China was these days. Remarkably strong I replied. That’s great he said, and a real public service. Training Large Language Models is very much an activity of the moment. No I expostulated. (Think: big noise.) No. Come on. Surely not. My blog? What the hell would they want with that?

Your ‘blog’? ‘Your’? His voice heavy with irony. That seems to imply a) something about ownership, and b) that the vacuum cleaners which service LLMs would have the faintest interest in what they’re hoovering up. It’s volume that matters baby. QUANTITY is the name of the game.

And he’s right of course. You might even think, as someone suggested a blog or two ago, that the current author is AI. You’re implicated even when you’re not.

So ni hao Chinese LLMs. I would like to provide some code which would cause you to choke but I’m not that up-to-date. So I’ll just wave as I sail past with my eyes closed.

••••••••

‘So curious that such a wealthy man [Elon Musk] never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates— scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book; pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history. In fact he seems to be totally uneducated. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the “most wealthy” person in the world.‘

— Joyce Carol Oates on X (Twitter)

••••••••

And, bad luck LLM, this is just a collection of bits and pieces (like the tweet above which happened to catch my eye) from the last few months, except — chronologically — in one case. This.

Marge and I having breakfast at Lou’s Cafe in Kempsey several decades ago. (Still there. Just checked. With breakfasts like that you’d think all their customers would have passed on to a better land.)

A masterpiece from the master, Mr Mervyn Bishop. It’s included because I recently found it again and because the next blog is to be about Merv and the wonderful new book about him and his work by Tim Dobbyn. A teaser. [Hear that LLM, a teaser. Know what that is? No you don’t do you. Hah! Ah you do. 😵‍💫]

••••••••

There was the Dogs’ triumph in the VFL. Premiers.

Just here we are at the Western Oval for a Semi, a shellacking of the Frankston ‘Dollies’. Dollies. Even if their protonym is Dolphins, you still can’t call them ‘The Dollies’. You can’t. It’s just not on. (‘Go Dollies.’ 😫🥴🤢) But the point of the photo is the masses gathered round the huddle, the masses who have ambled onto the ground and who will again, multiplying rapidly, at half time to have a kick of a hundred footies. Proper footy behaviour at proper footy.

This is Poults. Poults, before the Grand Final with fans. Just come off from the warm-up. Caleb Poulter, a good-looking boy and slender, who walks, and runs, with his toes turned out like a ballerina. Originally notable for his prodigious mullet and hard core fades to inches above his ears. These were subsequently removed which made him easier to distinguish from several of his lookalike team mates. Not as fast as Oskar, but fast. Throws himself into it. Can take surprising marks in the middle of packs, and on this occasion nailed two very difficult set shots. For all those reasons, and the fact that he has to deal with being called Caleb, we love him.

But it is Footscray who are this year’s VFL premiers, the Seconds, the ‘Reserves’ of the Western Bulldogs. He is in the Firsts’ bottom 10 from whom five are chosen in any given week. He might have had ten games this year.

We now have to say he was in the Firsts’ bottom ten. Along with JJ, he’s been de-listed. Cut. Jonesy and others have retired. Jamarra has been exported in a somewhat ambiguous gesture — possibly good will, possibly good riddance — to the Suns. The Dogs got nothing during the trade period. And they have dumped Poults! What the hell!!! What were they thinking!!

I don’t know exactly what being de-listed would be like, but you’d have to pick yourself up off the floor pretty smartly. The community around which you’ve built your life and your identity has just ejected you. You’re gone. Poults! Mate. You’ve left a hole in our hearts at least.

••••••••

There was a visit to Queensland. One of our friends has tried to insist that this isn’t a real pineapple.

We experienced and admired the sinuous lines of a rainforest:

A buttress root; a very large fig tree; a monitor scrambling away from us at pace; and a 2.5m coastal carpet python slithering across the rocks to bask in the sun. Non-venomous and excellent pets: that’s what they say.

••••••••

Oh, and The Camp. The Camp, The Camp: once a year, Melbourne Cup weekend. The drumming and dancing hordes descend on the North Otways to have a transcendent experience, and generally it seems they do. “The best four days of my year.” That’s what she said. (A participant, not the organiser.) New Zealanders, Western Australians, Chileans, Columbians, someone from Singapore (for this purpose!), someone from Xinjiang.

They drum.

They dance.

They do both at the same time.

And, eventually, it’s over. (Exhalation of breath.) Till next year.

••••••••

You could think chronologically. You know, where did those years go? That type of thing. But a moment’s reflection indicates that quite a lot happened, both incident and accident, during those 13 years and not just to the girl in question.

Or you could be inclined to think where’s that little cutie gone? Why don’t kids stay the same, somewhere between 5 and 8 always? And that’s fairly pointless too. Genuinely wasted energy.

But I did get a shock when we got that photo. I suddenly remembered what a big step this one is, and not just for her.

Could you possibly be ready for this? Can anyone? No more teachers, no more timetables, a sudden withdrawal of all the structures that have held you in place. You could go crazy. That’s an option. Or you could withdraw into yourself and the shelter of home.

As a country boy who wanted further education that last wasn’t an option for me: I couldn’t stay home. I had to leave and that was generally understood. And I remember, like it was yesterday, the tremendous load which seemed to lift when my parents drove out the drive of Queens College leaving me behind. (My parents may have been feeling very much the same. I don’t think I was much fun in my late teens.) I could get on with my life, unconstrained. And, at the age of 17, I absolutely thought I was ready to do so. I had no doubts.

But, apart from everything, what did I know? The world is at your feet, but the closer you look the more like a morass it can seem. There are so many bits and pieces. So much detail. Do you know not to put a woollen jumper in a hot dryer? Do you know how often to change your sheets and for that matter, your underwear? Do you know not to vacuum wet material that will clog up the machine? So you want a car, do you know how to look after it? What type of petrol does it use? Do you even know how to open the petrol cap? Can you do your tax?

That’s the trivia, but the critical trivia, sometimes called life skills (and they should be in CAPITAL LETTERS).

My father wrote me a letter, quite a long letter, which he gave me just before they drove off. At the time I took it as an artefact of the things I wanted to leave behind. Not necessarily its contents, although at the time if I’d been as smart as I thought I was I would have understood it as advice to himself, if 50 years too late. It was good advice, solid advice, even if the style was oddly distant … as though he’d never met me.

“How would you like it yourself? is no bad rule. The positive side is even more important — noting and encouraging the shy person, bringing the whole circle into conversation … Ask questions, don’t make assertions. Be constructive rather than critical. Especially never tease children nor make fun of them. … Truth is many-sided, and therefore there is always a great need for tolerance and to attempt to appreciate other points of view of others. Don’t be afraid to differ, but let your differing be a matter of principled non-conformity and not just wilful eccentricity.

‘Women will intrigue you and often puzzle you. Interest in sex is natural, normal and right.   …

        REDACTED         

… Courtesy everywhere is most important — in prompt answers to correspondence, keeping faith in little things, acknowledging all the services given to one, the returning of books and so on. Don’t be a gossip.’

And so on indeed. Perhaps 1500 words. Very Dad, and I understood it as such and was appreciative of the gesture. But it was 1967, and I was 17 with the whole world in front of me.

None of this advice was about life skills, unless you count ‘Make light of injuries sustained’. It was all about relationships and human interactions. And you hope quite a bit has been learnt about those ever fluid mysteries by 17. But who’s ever got a fix on them, even after 70 years of practice?

By 17 you might have had your heart broken. I’m pretty sure that should be seen as a useful enrichment of your emotional education, widening your landscape and signalling business you might have to learn to manage, toughening you up in useful ways. But it is hardly something to encourage.

In another blog I have written: “Perhaps everyone has stories to tell of their 20s: the dangerous years, the careless years, when you knew everything, alert to neither Scylla nor Charybdis, scarcely aware of their existence so immersed are you in your own immediate framework of concerns — relationships, friends, trying to find a job, brooding about who you are and what you should be doing.” None of this takes 10 minutes. It might be 10 or 15 years before things shake down into some sort of stable shape.

Looking outwards from the Late Teen Ledge, a relationship is just one of the big three along with a job and somewhere to live. (The need for friends I have taken for granted.) But is a spouse and house still a benchmark?

When one of my sisters was about this age (a long time ago now) it was fashionably correct for a young woman to be engaged at 19, married at 20 and a mother at 21. She hit the trifecta of what might be seen as a protective social ritual, but frankly how spooky. We should be glad that at least some expectations change and quite dramatically. That’s one.

The blog I referred to was part of a series about our choice to build a house. By ourselves that is. We did, and with our 58 acres of land it cost $11,752-ish, equivalent today to $102,124. We built it for complex reasons only one of which was cost. We started with just $1000 (prize money for a film) and were able to pay the rest off as we went. This is an unsuitable comparison for many reasons, but at the end of September this year the median house price in Australia was approximately $929,495, with capital cities having a median of about $1,068,696 and regional areas around $715,916. Might you have to be a millionaire to own a house now? Well … maybe. In the US the median age of first-time homebuyers in 1990 was 28. It is now 40.

And you can only assume job churn, and that where your thinking starts at 17 or 18 will probably be nowhere near some of the places you end up. You are likely to have had 8 or 9 jobs by the time you’re 35, some of which you probably had never even heard of when you were a late teenager.

And then, perhaps speaking as an older person, you lift your eyes a bit higher and see the monsters on the horizon, the Creatures of the News: the predations of climate change, AI, social media, the wars, regional espionage, appalling politicians.

Let’s lower them again. Quickly. A clinical psychologist who spends most of her time with 20 somethings suggests: “Young adults may no longer have work and love sorted out in their 20s, but they can use their early adult years to build the kinds of skills and relationships they will still feel good about as they age. This is what we ought to be telling them. They’re not delayed or damaged or doomed. They’re digging in. I don’t expect my 20-something clients to have it all. I do expect them, and 20-somethings everywhere, to become happier and healthier over time, as they become more likely to have—and do—what makes people happier and healthier.” (Meg Jay ‘We’re Thinking About Young Adulthood All Wrong’ The Atlantic 15/11/25) After digging through the hot air and the failure to confront the facts of biology and reproduction, that all seems like a very good idea. Let’s say the arc of life is long but — generally, more often than not — it bends towards stability and improvement. We have to believe that.

Finally, it is important for me at least to note that something reciprocal is going on. That might have been what gave me the biggest shock. The girl in the pic is a kid. And isn’t. And that ‘isn’t’ requires a recalibration of our relationship, a different sort of equilibrium, increasingly and over time, as two adults. Over time. But, yes, that is what’s required. Lord almighty.

§§§§§§

Advice is a tricky and troubled genre, often being simply a waste of time (not that that in any way limits the immense volume of advisory endeavours). So what would I say to Rom? Be courageous. Give things a go. Be adventurous in thought, word and deed. Work hard. Exercise. I could say all that and I’d be right.

I could also say, stay friends with your grandparents. Be nice to them. They won’t be round for that much longer. But that’s special pleading rather than advice.

Maybe best — if you want some advice we’re always willing to try to help. Yeah that would probably be it. That, and the assurance that whatever happens we at the very least will still love you.

••••••••

In a lane near the market. And they think they’re going to keep kids off social media …