The PR Blog

Some time ago a writer to these pages who is a grandmother to a young teenage family, visited her own Mother to catch up for a family get together.

  The youngsters were to have a pleasant visit, not only to Grandma, but to be part of a four generation ‘get together.’ Four generations together ...now that is something else and I would venture to suggest that is a fairly rare event in ones greater family. 

It should be an occasion to remember well into old age.In fact I am told that they are now up to five generations so let's hope they can get a photograph of that.

It reminded me of my Grandma Boddy.

It all started in 1452, when Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas addressed to King Alfonso V of Portugal, giving Portugal sovereignty over all non-Christian lands their inhabitants, everywhere.

" We grant to you full and free power ... to invade, conquer, fight, subjugate the Saracens and pagans... wherever established their Kingdoms ,,, and to lead their persons in perpetual servitude "

" I’m buggered ! It has been a great day for me."

The staff had races emulating the Melbourne Cup Day for the patients. One of the nurses was a kiwi and I piped up “we must have more kiwi representation “, Management who were all there frowned as no inmates were taking place. Given a handicap, I finished in front. 

A big cheer and excitement was a lot of fun. Like I have written you make your own fun in here.

But what happened here?

" Bugger it’ " was different. Bugger is a word we use quite frequently down under. 

" Buggered " means tired. " Bugger it " means " I am tired of it. " ,

" The white Western Culture is vastly superior to the other rabble cultures of the world. No wonder those human debris peoples hate the white people so much. "

I read this some time ago and realized that it is more than about time that the White Caucasian peoples of the world stopped their cringing at every brickbat that is thrown at them by the coloured races from Africa and the Middle East.

I have never had a tattoo. Nor am I likely to. I hate pain and am rather partial to my skin colour without feeling the need to change its colour or use it as a canvas for artistic expression.

It seems somehow foreign to me. I am rather appreciative of myself and what I look like and, though I may not be as I wish I appeared to others, I am what I am as Popeye used to say.  Because I am an Individual and you can't touch me. 

Why are people so eager to get branded these days? Tattoos? Vaccinations? Barcodes? Digital Identities? Why? 

Florence Nightingale is well remembered as the founder of a nursing order. She was also revered as a saintly vision by so many suffering and wounded soldiers during the bloody Crimean War of 1845. 

From her ministering to the sick by the feeble light of a hurricane lamp, Miss Nightingale became immortalised as, “The lady with the lamp.”

Soyer, on the other hand, was a Frenchman, an author, a flamboyant egocentric, also a culinary genius. So how did these two unlikely souls come together? Perhaps it is not as strange as it first appears.