Paul Carter's Blog

Sore Foot Paul Carter MD

Sore Foot

Paul Carter MD

02/12/2020

 

A few days ago we noticed that Nel was limping. I confidently diagnosed that she had pulled a shoulder muscle chasing ducks, and reassured Gilly that it would settle down on its own. But yesterday, after having had her feet trimmed, it became obvious that she had a swollen toe, and I took her to a local vet.  Nel had never needed any visits to a vet before, because on the couple of occasions when she had got into fights with kangaroos, it had been me who had stitched her back up again. On this occasion I felt out of my depth.

The vet was a delightful small child who smiled and chattered away as she examined Nel and then inserted a thermometer. Apart from looking back at the vet in mild surprise at the  temperature taking technique, Nel appeared to thoroughly enjoy the company of her new friend. The whole consultation was very efficient and professional, but it did leave met me slightly surprised, as I hadn’t realised that you can go to veterinary college directly from primary school.

I am not sure why it took me by such surprise, however, because on a helicopter ride over the Bungle Bungles my freckled, pig-tailed pilot was clearly on day release from her child care group, my financial adviser obviously managed to study for tax and estate planning while at her year nine camp, my IT guru still does colouring in, the guy who trims our hedges looks like he shouldn’t yet be allowed to play with power tools, and only a year or so ago I was stopped on my way home from the surgery by two fourteen year olds, who gave me a ticket simply for wanting to be reunited with the love of my life at the earliest possible moment.

The curly haired child was still smiling when she handed me some pills, indicating that we were all done. She told me that she wasn’t exactly sure what was wrong with my dog’s foot, but she thought that the pills would help anyway.

We walked back to the front desk where another teenager handed me a bill which fair  took my breath away. I initially thought that they must have got the decimal point in the wrong place, but apparently not. The waiting room was quite full at the time, and out of the corner of my eye I could see that many were leaning forward in interest to see how I would handle the situation. Many years before, I had acquired the completely unfair and untrue reputation of being a dog hater. Things had settled down over the years, but not being keen to pour any more fuel on that particular fire, I silently counted to three, swallowed a couple of times, put on a happy face, said ‘of course, not a problem’ and got out my credit card.

‘Don’t you dare die of whatever it is that you’ve got,’ I said to Nel in the car on the way home. ‘Not for a while, at least. I’d like to get some value for my money,’ I  added, and to be fair, she replied that she’d give it her best shot.

Anniversary Paul Carter MD Author

Anniversary

Paul Carter MD Author

27/11/2020

 

Exactly twenty-one years ago today, Gilly and I stood by the lake at the farm and pledged in front of all of our friends to spend the rest of our lives together.

Since the very first time that I first met her, my life has seemed like a magical stroll along a rainbow and, without being really clear where all the years have gone to, I nevertheless know that I have thoroughly enjoyed spending all of them with her. They have been wonderful, and I hope that there are many more still to come.

She is loving, loyal, nurturing, dependable, funny, and beautiful, and I could not even begin to imagine my life without her. She is my best friend and I love her.

I had been searching for some time for an emblem which adequately expresses how I feel about it all and then just the other day, driving through Ballarat, I found it. I am not sure how the local council discovered that it was our anniversary, but they clearly did and I would like to thank them for all the trouble they have gone to on our behalf.

And since I would have to be one of the easiest people ever to live with: even tempered, uncomplicated, always thoughtful, forever considerate, and with an invariably sunny disposition, then I can only imagine that Gilly feels exactly the same about the last twenty-one years as I do.

Good Fairy Dr Paul Carter MD

 

Good Fairy

Dr Paul Carter MD

26/11/2020

 

Gill’s arm, which she broke in a fall in the garden, is definitely getting better. It looks a slightly funny shape at the wrist, now that the cast is off, but it doesn’t trouble her nearly so much at as it used to. Despite all the healing, however, she still struggles to do many of her chores, and pep talks about how the only horizons are in our minds, and aphorisms about flying with eagles haven’t seemed to have helped.

I was not sure where to turn next, and related my woes to a friend.

‘Out of the question doing any of it yourself I suppose?’ they said.

‘I’d love to, and believe you me there have been times when I’ve really put my all in,’ I replied sadly, ‘but it’s like dancing and golf, however hard I try I just can’t get the hang of it. Perhaps I’ve just got the wrong anthropometrics.’

We sat in a reflective silence for a while and then suddenly my friend sat bolt upright in the chair. ‘I have just realised I have exactly the right solution for you,’ they exclaimed, ‘in a cupboard under the stairs back home,’ and the very next morning there was a large pizza shaped box on the  back doorstep.

And the present turned out, just as my friend promised, to be exactly what we needed. Apart from the fact that it gives the dog the heebie jeebies, occasionally gets caught up in all the wiring of the WiFi nest, jams itself under the settee, and sees it as its duty to escape through every door left open, it is perfect. It is always ready to get stuck in at a moment’s notice, tackling the house room by room, never complaining about the amount of work still to be done, and refreshing itself whenever it gets tired. It never smokes in the house, answers back, spills anything, breaks any heirlooms, or fails to turn up when we need it, and we don’t feel obliged to count the spoons at the end of a day’s work.

And, as a bonus,  not only does it pick up every atom of dust, but it also polishes the floors to such a brilliance that, if I had any, I would be able to part my hair in the reflection.

 

 

Coq au vin Dr Paul Carter MD

 

Coq au vin

Dr Paul Carter MD

5/12/2020

 

With Gilly down in town baby-sitting last night, it was necessary for me, yet again, to dig deep into my own culinary resources. I had not been particularly with how my recent efforts at Canard a L’orange had turned out, so on this occasion I decided to go back to one of my old fail-proof stand byes: Coq au Vin.

I am delighted to say that on this occasion the dish turned out exactly as I had hoped it would, and it was really yummy.

And just to add a little individual signature to the meal, I chose Chocolat au lait Balles as the dessert

Greenhouse Dr Paul Carter MD

Greenhouse

Dr Paul Carter MD

11/12/2020

 

I am not sure whether to call my new business Greenhouses Are Me, Greenhouses 4 U, or possibly even  Greenhouse Worx. Having now recently constructed three of my own, I am all fired up, the shirt sleeves are well and truly rolled, and I am ready to get stuck into helping build greenhouses for the great unwashed.

When I was a medical student, we were taught that there were three essential steps to mastering any medical procedure: See one, Do one, Teach one. And that is exactly the approach that I have applied to greenhouses: I watched the video and read the book, then I built three (not just one), and now I am ready to show the rest of the world how to do it.

When I say that I’ve built three greenhouses, I should perhaps clarify that I have built the same one three times. It came as a kit and I haven’t been as excited since I got my Meccano set. The boxes were bursting with parts like a previously undiscovered tomb, and over the next couple of days I meticulously worked my way through the instruction guide, carefully nutting and bolting them all together.

The finished product looked great but, as I was throwing the cardboard boxes in the back of the ute with a view to taking them off to the tip, I came across two small plastic bags I hadn’t seen before. One contained four pieces labelled GR-032 A and the other contained six pieces labelled GR-034 G.

Years of clinical training snapped into place and I didn’t panic. Just because there are parts left over at the end of an operation, I reasoned, doesn’t necessarily mean that anything has gone wrong.   They probably belong to someone later on the list, I reassured myself, but just to be on the safe side, I glanced back through the guide. What I found was not totally comforting. On the bottom of the very first page. In ridiculously small print, and tucked under lots of other instructions, the manual informed me that the moment to install GR 032s and GR 034s was right then, and that not doing so could only be regarded as reckless.

I looked at the greenhouse for quite a while, from every possible angle, and with every possible expletive, but it was always obvious what had to be done. As a result, and just over a day later, my greenhouse was back together again, this time with all its bits.

When I finished, I sat back with a beer looking at my creation, and felt the warm satisfied glow of a job well done. The greenhouse company had suggested getting their workmen out to do the construction, but I smiled to myself at the thought of how unnecessary that would have been.

That night it rained, and the greenhouse flooded. In the early light of dawn, searching for the cause of the problem I came across a decent sized rectangular gap in the middle of the roof. I initially thought it was just a poor piece of design, but the manual once again, sadly, informed me that this is exactly where SG- 16F fitted.

‘They can’t have sent it,’ I muttered to myself as I angrily completed a fruitless search through all the boxes again. Then, looking for some tape to put over the hole, I came across SG-16F sitting in the middle of the bench in my workshop all unwrapped and ready to rock and roll.

So there you have it. I am now extremely experienced, having built three greenhouses, and if anyone would like to employ me to put up theirs, not only am I very reasonably priced, but I am also prepared to give a discount for Health Care Card holders

Overalls Author Paul Carter MD

 

Overalls

Author Paul Carter MD

20/12/2020

Just a couple of weeks ago, I bit the bullet and treated myself to some new overalls.  My old ones had been looking very sorry for themselves for quite some time. Not only because of all the jobs I do around the place, but also since I occasionally set fire to them with angle grinders, pour toxic chemicals over them, cover them in mud, and get bits of them tangled up with fast moving machinery.

Gilly has voiced the opinion that they made me look like a ragbag who has slept under a hedge but, in all truth, wearing stained and shredded overalls has never bothered me in the slightest. Unfortunately, however, every pocket had also become very holey, and I realised that the time for an upgrade had come when I unthinkingly put the ute keys in one of the non-existent pockets one day, and have never seen them since.

I am not one for buying clothes off the net. I tried it once with shirts. They fitted okay, but I got fed up receiving a constant stream of shirt emails until I eventually learned how to block them. So I made my way to Castlemaine where there is a real workwear shop staffed by real people. I was pretty clear what I wanted, and I promised the very nice man behind the counter that I would look more excited with my new overalls that the men in the picture.

‘Perhaps something modern and young,’ I said to him. ‘Maybe even spunky.’

‘Not a problem,’ he smiled back and directed me to the changing room with a pair to try on.

It was nearly the last thing I ever did. I was struggling to get even one leg in, when I lost my balance in the cramped confines, fell over, and nearly brained myself.

‘You will find these more ample,’ my helper continued smiling when I explained what had happened. And indeed he was right, I was certainly able to get my legs into the next pair, just not the rest of me.

It was on my third try that I was able to get some buttons done up, and on the fourth that I finally found a comfortable fit. I just looked like a circus clown with a yard of extra leg hanging off the end of my feet.

‘Anything with a shorter leg?’ I asked.

‘In overalls as stout as that, sir, those are the shortest,’ he replied politely.

I will admit that, just for a moment, I was a bit taken aback. I’m fully aware that I not a giant and  that my grandchildren tower over me,  but I had never previously thought of myself as someone  who needed to have half the legs cut off his overalls. Nevertheless, I took blow like a man, kept a stiff upper lip, and made my purchase. But I did go on my way with my tail between my obviously very short legs.

In the car on the way home I also struggled with the idea of being stout. Comfortably rounded, I decided, I could come at, but stout seemed a bridge too far. Back at the house, I went into the en-suite, carefully closed the door and looked at myself sideways in the mirror. Not liking what I saw, I held in my breath, got the light from a favourable direction, and still said ‘shit’.

Coming to grips with being a bald fat dwarf rather took the wind out of my sails for a few moments, but then I cheered up because, just like Tutankhamen’s tomb, I remembered that I also have hidden treasures, and I smiled at myself with lips slightly parted, for I still have all my own teeth.

Summer solstice Dr Paul Carter MD

Summer Solstice

Dr Paul Carter MD

21/12/2020

As our tiny glob of mud spins and wobbles about on its endless journey through space, the sun shines down on us from different angles, and for a different number of hours each day. Today is the solstice for the bottom half of the Earth – when we are bathed in life-giving sunshine for the longest time of any day of the year. And it is also the day when the sun rises from the most easterly position it ever reaches, as far as we are concerned. Sunrise has been gradually getting further and further east for some months now, and today it has gone as far as it gets. Tomorrow it will rise a little further north. And early this morning, as Sol nudged its noggin over the horizon, just like it did last year and for many years before that, it found a way to shine between all the trees that have sprouted up along the creek line, over the top of the porch to my art room, in through the glass panel on the door behind the kitchen, up the corridor that runs through the middle of the house, and all the way up to the front door. In a line that perfectly bisects the rugs we brought back with us from Turkey, and makes the lead-lights around our entrance burst into flame. And then, just a few seconds later, as the angles shift ever so slightly, it lights up the pictures we have hanging in the hallway with a brilliance matched only by supernovae. It is so perfect that I suspect the house was designed and built with exactly all this in mind. As with that other place in Wiltshire, however, I suspect that the whole story may never be fully unraveled.

So, the northern hemisphere might have Stonehenge, but the Southern hemisphere has our hallway. There are just so many parallels that I am thinking of approaching whoever it is that looks after these things with a view to making it into a major tourist attraction. But then I guess I’d have to put in a coach park. And maybe even some toilets and a gift shop.

Spiral Dr Paul Carter MD

Spiral

Dr Paul Carter MD

02/01/2021

Not only is Gilly the love of my life, but she is also my best friend and one of the very few people I would want at my side if I ever had to go into battle. Someone I had always thought I could trust implicitly. Someone who would always have my back.  I still feel like that but, in all truth, a recent event has badly rattled me.

Just after Christmas I flew to Brisbane to catch up with my banana-bender grandchildren for a few days. It was a delightful trip, despite Gilly staying behind because Queensland Christmas humidity does funny things to her hair, for they are all lovely young people. During my stay, and not for the first time, I pondered on whether, in my next reincarnation, it might be just so much easier to skip past all the children stuff and jump directly into grandchildren. Though I also learned on this trip that I have no ambition for the skipping thing to also include grand-dogs.

I flew back yesterday on a more than half empty plane and arrived at Tullamarine as fresh as a daisy, and with no Covid worries, having been able to stretch out on the empty seats next to me, and never having come within 39,000 feet of New South Wales.

Gilly and I dined off sushi and sashimi, whilst catching up on all our respective news in a very pleasantly leisurely way. When we were all done, and the meal had been cleared away, I suggested that perhaps we could kick back with a glass of pink bubbles, and relax in front of the idiot box.

Gilly didn’t reply to begin with, but instead turned bright red. I sensed that there was something very wrong, so I gave her some space to speak into.

‘I have something to tell you,’ she said quietly after a few moments silence. ‘You are not going to like what I am about to say,’ she continued, and I carefully put my wine glass down. ‘While you were away,’ she continued, ‘I got very lonely all on my own. I tried to hold out, I really did, and maybe you will think I am weak, but I have to tell you that I did have some company.’

‘What is it you are trying to tell me?’ I asked with a slightly faltering voice.

‘You remember that series we have been watching on SBS On Demand ?’ she whispered as she looked down at her hands. ‘Well,’ she finally continued after a long pause as I held my breath, ‘I have watched some more episodes on my own.’

Blueberries Author Paul Carter

Blueberries

Author Paul Carter – Paul Carter Books

6/01/2021

 

Whilst everyone else was sorting out photographs on their i-pads, renovating their bathrooms and  getting fit on-line, I spent the Corona months in our garden. I worked in the area behind the hawthorn hedge, where I converted a weedy slope of clay into a terraced, loamy wonderland, bordered by a bluestone piece de resistance:  The Great Wall of Covid. My wall may not be visible from space, but it hasn’t fallen over, and I am mightily pleased with it. The transformation behind the hedge is now complete, so that we now have an embryonic kitchen garden, complete with greenhouse and berry tube, which is potentially capable of producing un repas de roi.

For months I pushed and pulled, raked and shovelled, lifted and barrowed, and then pushed and pulled again. It was all very zen and enjoyable, especially the bit which involved gradually lowering myself into a hot bath at the end of each day’s work.

Not that there weren’t a few stumbles along the way: there were a few pieces left over after finishing building the greenhouse, one of the new water pipes decided to release more water through its sides that where it was supposed to, the mulch I have used seems to possess growth retardant properties, my diggings attracted every bug from within a kilometre radius, and every planting precipitated the heaviest frost of the season. Despite all of this, however, the only really big step backwards was digging through the power line to the house. I knew pretty much where it ran, and made the appropriate calculations to avoid it by a good Covid safety margin. What I didn’t do, as Gilly has pointed out to me since, however, was to dial before I dug. If I had, I might well have discovered that, right next to where I put my auger into the ground , the mains went through an unexpected right angle. If I had spent all day lining up the conduit, I couldn’t have hit the bullseye more on the nose. Fortunately neither I nor the auger lit up, which is good, and the problem has now been fixed, which is ever better.

And just two days ago we excitedly picked our first crop. It turned out to be blueberries. I don’t know if you have ever harvested blueberries, but it is quite fiddly, and since the berry tube was never really designed for two, we bumped into one another quite a bit as we worked away, looking for all the world like Millet’s gleaners. When we had finished, and back at the house, Gilly put all the berries in a dish and proudly showed them to me.  In all truth, I was the tinsiest bit underwhelmed. There were just the twenty-three of them. I found an old envelope and scribbled away on the back of it. Allowing for wonderland materials alone they were worth just a little over $ 500 each. If I then added in my labour, even at a very modest rate, they came out at something even more extraordinary. Fortunately, yesterday Gilly harvested a further seventeen, which brings the price down to a mere $ 273. We hesitated at first, but then last night  we ate them with  a scoop of ice cream. I am not sure what Gilly did with hers but, one at a time, I sucked on mine and then nibbled them very, very slowly.

Cockchafers Paul Carter Country Doctor

Cockchafers

Paul Carter Country Doctor

09/01/20121

In the garden at the farm we had grass. At the new house we have lawn, which is very different. When we first moved, never having had lawn before, I hadn’t appreciated just how big that difference is. Grass is something  you mow when it starts becoming a fire hazard, when the boss tells you to, or when there are folk coming over for a barbeque. Lawn is something on which you lavish constant love and attention, something you care for on a daily basis. At the farm, I rode on the mower every which way, but now I keep my lines as straight as straight. Friends and relatives will happily forgive you whatever your grass looks like, but they will look at your lawn and  frown and go ‘Tut, tut, letting standards slip a bit, are we?’ unless it is a smooth weed-free carpet of green, with not even a hint of shaggy bits around the edge. Something that would give the ‘G’ a bit of a nudge, something you could putt on at the US Masters, something that would have brought gasps of admiration from Capability Brown.

And I really did step up to the plate in regard to my new responsibilities, which made it all the more crushing when bare areas suddenly started appearing. I tried to fix the problem in my own amateurish way. I fed them, watered them, and aerated them but they just got bigger, so I eventually called in an expert. On the day of his visit, Gilly and I took him outside and showed him the problem. He walked around the edges of a couple of the areas for a while, and then he knelt down and poked at them with something he got out of his pocket. Eventually he stood up again, nodding his head.

‘Cockchafers,’ he turned to us and said, with a knowing wink.

‘Hey, steady on old man,’ I interrupted quickly before he could say anything else, and reminded him that we were in mixed company.

But apparently they are bugs. Apparently it is old English for big beetles. Apparently their hatchlings live in the ground and love nothing more than grass roots for breakfast.

‘So what do we do about it?’ we asked.

‘Put the kettle on,’ he smiled at us,’ and then went on to tell us that we would see all the beetles running away if we simply poured boiling water on the affected areas. He then gave us a surprisingly extensive list of chemicals with which to kill the abandoned offspring, gave us both an elbow nudge, got in his ute and left.

We did as instructed, and then went back out to the nearest bare patch. We emptied the kettle in breathless anticipation, i-phones set to camera, expecting fireworks, but nothing happened. A repeat performance on another area was also a total fizzer, so we went back inside more than a little disappointed , and we never did go and get all the chemicals.

I had all but forgotten about the entire episode until I got his bill just the other day. I snorted when I saw it, but then reflected that the bare patches had in fact all healed themselves up over the weeks after his visit. So, maybe the boiling water had worked. Maybe he had been right after all, I thought, and I got his bill back out of the bin.