The grump

When I encounter a grumpy person who is working in customer service I often try and present a happy demeanour.  I believe this serves three functions (1) It means I won't be dragged down by their lack of positivity; (2) It serves to possibly forestall something worse than grumpiness from the grump and (3) I may bring some happiness to the grump's apparently down tempo life.

In some ways I prefer to encounter grumps.  Amway up tempo personalities or the "Awesome" sayers worry me.  To bring these excessively glass half full types down to a more realistic level by giving them a serve of negativity risks over doing it, and making them surly, even angry or threatening.

When I meet a well known grump and the grump is uncharacteristically chirpy and cheery it can be quite off putting.  "Are they medicating?" I wonder.  A "you seem very happy today!?", which may be appropriate to those with the normal range of moods, is an observation or a question that can't be put to a grump because they are likely to revert to grumpiness.

The grump is valuable for reminding me of my own foul moods and how these should not be allowed to form a habit or pattern.  The grump is to be admired for not seemingly caring whether people like them.  The grump gives voice to the pressing burden of life we all sometimes feel.  But for the most part the grump closes the door to the joy of life.

Travel memories and nefarious name changes

After you travel through a place many times, the picture of it in your head becomes more consolidated.  That location mapped in your mind starts to develop its own set of thoughts and feelings, reinforced again and again by recollections of earlier transits.  For instance, when I start to approach border cities, bestriding the River Murray, from the south, I now always think of a recently retired Collingwood long kicking centre half forward.  However, I never think of that footballer, soon to try out in the NFL, when I approach the same place from the north.  But when I pass through a Victorian town demanding the State Government stops stealing its water, the name and image of a woman I knew at University invariably moves to front of mind no matter what direction that hamlet is approached from

On this theme, there's a road I travel two or three times a year and it goes through a small town with its own small public swimming pool.  Public swimming pools in villages are often things that show small communities are managing to do something between survive and thrive.  I thought I recalled the name on the wall of the pool, a male name and surname, which presumably honoured a founder of the pool.  Then one day, on another trip through this place, the given name seem to have changed, while the surname had stayed the same.  Was this really true?  And if so, why had it occured?

I've decided I can't innocently ask a local to confirm my recollection, but I could surreptitiously closely examine the wall of the pool to see if there are tell tale screw holes, now filled in, that might have at one time secured a different given name.  Only then can I speculate on motives for such a name change.  A building I once worked in was named after a formerly revered public official.  However once it was discovered that this man had harassed staff, naming of an errrection in his honour was made nugatory and the building took on more prosaic street numbers and name as its identifier.

A national icon

Dropped into today to the Canberra tourist attraction with the most statues by a country mile, the War memorial.  Very much a quiet day there, it being winter and between commemorative events so all volunteer guides seemed under utilised.  Lots of Asian tourists - it must be strange for Japanese tourists to visit the place.  I stood behind some who were taking in a small display about the Atom bomb. They may have felt the way I did when visiting the Japanese war memorial in Tokyo, that is unable to read a thing & getting a general impression of veneration for the home side.  My 8-y-o son and I discussed whether there should be an actual atom bomb on display, but we agreed it could pose a radiation hazard.  As you gaze from the front steps down to parliament houses, old and new, it's easy to theorize that the two sets of buildings opposite each other separated by lake and 3 kms might have something to do with the obscene amount spent on defence.  Wandering between medals and machine guns, I thought nothing of what my son from the war gaming generation thinks of the edifice and trappings of the war memorial - as it happened, while we sat in the cafe he was more interested in why there were holes in the outside wall and what different sorts of birds were doing poking around in them.  Outside on our way to the new underground car park, we noticed a large number of rabbits scurrying around, having made their homes in holes under the ground cover outside one of the buildings - it seems the war on rabbits by way of the calicivirus has not been a great success, with bunnies hopping around, feet away from bronze statues of Weary Dunlop and Simpson and his donkey.