I haven’t written for a whole month because my friend’s husband was seriously ill and I was very distressed at their plight. She and her husband had been living in a small Australian town, population 3000. They both loved country life. Neither of them wanted to return to the big smoke.

But he became ill as older people do. His knees gave out and he had to wait a year to have a replacement. Once that was done, there were the melanomas followed by all sorts of horrid symptoms.

This bush town has only one doctor who is not popular with the residents so that some choose to travel to the next town for medical attention.

Specialist treatment is unavailable and my friend had to go to a medical centre, three hours drive away or Sydney (6 hours) for surgery for his melanomas. The waiting list is long and something went terrible wrong for my friend’s husband.

He stopped talking, he couldn’t hear, his body was covered in all sorts of weeping lesions. My friend begged the local GP to visit her husband but this fellow refused to come unless the patient requested it personally.

It was going to take months before the dermatologist could see him. Finally, he was driven to Sydney by his desperate family. The medicos admitted him immediately and wondered why it had taken so long for him to get proper attention.

He lingered for six long weeks at St Vincent’s Hospital and then he died. There is an autopsy going on right now.

I have no idea why the poor man died but a major contributing factor was the handicap that he lived in the bush. Away from proper medical treatment, a victim of the long waiting list in the N.S.W hospital system.

My friend and her husband dreamed of retiring happily in the country. They were tree changers but the country is no country for old men.

Imagine you are driving along the streets of Melbourne, Australia. You would like to know where you are. What suburb are you in?

If you are in the latest model of the BMW Series 5, forget it. The main screen will not easily display the suburb or the street you are in. To find out the name of the street you have to look at the adjacent split screen because the main screen will not give you that information. Moreover, neither screen will tell you what suburb you are in.

So you are stuck with only knowing that you are in High Street, Melbourne, for example, but this street is so long and cuts through so many unnamed suburbs that you are none the wiser. “High Street, where?” Malvern? Toorak? Prahran” Hawthorn? And then there’s the problem of other High Streets scattered all over Melbourne

Sure, the system can navigate you to a selected destination. It can even tell you what your altitude, longitude and latitude are, so that a search party may find you in the wilderness. BUT if you are just taking a normal drive in a city or town, then the screen will not tell you what suburb you are in.

This is very frustrating since we would like to know where we are. We don’t care whether we are 30 metres above sea level. Of what use is that to us for everyday driving? And why have the main street names on the screen been changed to numbers? Why do we have to look at the adjacent screen to translate what S21 or S26 refers to?

Ironically, in our previous Series 5 BMW we could look at the screen and read the name of the suburb and the street that we were in. In other words, we knew where we were and we knew which was the neighbouring suburb. After all, location, in my opinion, is just as important as destination when you are driving. Oh how I miss that!

I also miss the pleasant voice on the earlier model navigator. The current one is robotic and offputting. It always makes me bristle with an urge to stand to attention and click my heels.

I have no idea why BMW went backwards in this latest Professional Navigation System. They wanted a change, I guess, but not all change is for the better.

The rest of the car’s features are good. It’s beautiful to look at and drives well, but the problem with the navigator is constantly there, in your face, reminding you of its failing.

We have complained to BMW Australia and they told us we are stuck with it. What a pity!

I wish that Australia had not fallen for the bribery fest of bidding for the FIFA World Soccer competition in 2022. I wish that Australia had decided not to suck up to the selection committee. Instead, it should have taken the moral high ground and refused to pay for all those those greedy demands of the selectors. The entire process has an unpleasant stench about it.

We stooped to conquer and were outbid by those nations who were prepared to pay more to hold the soccer matches in their country. Surely, something that has to be bought from people who have demonstrated a lack of moral principles, should be rejected.

I would like to think that Australia is above such activities.

If you have to buy someone’s vote then you really can’t trust that voter. How do you know that the nation which has been bribed will not betray you? Well, you don’t know and that’s what happened to the U.K and to Australia. And I say it serves them both right.

What we have learned from the FIFA fiasco is that the selection process should be changed if the stink of corruption is to be eradicated. In future, perhaps a few interested nations who can provide the facilities should throw their names into a hat and then the winner will be randomly drawn out of it. This should offer poorer nations who love soccer a fairer chance at the “coveted prize”.

Better still, isn’t it time we grew up and stopped competing over stuff that’s as trivial as hosting a ball game? The cost of selling your soul for that privilege is way too high.

There are some pretentious people around. You know the ones I mean. They figure in that aspirational waste of paper called “Wish” published monthly by The Australian. In it you will find ads for luxury items as well as interviews with “names” who are into meditation and Zen and organic carrots.

They are the ones who have made it, so to speak. We apparently want to know what they are reading, eating, wearing and driving. How do they cope with their success? It can be a problem, you know, and my heart goes out to them.

Well, they seem to be doing quite well, really. Bravo! And if life gets too hectic they escape to their hobby farms where they grow their carrots and herbs. We used to say that everything was rosy but now it’s green. Green this green that. Quite frankly, I’m a little bit tired of all things green.

Above all, what really intrigues me about the glitterati is their choice of reading matter. It’s never Mills and Boon. Not for them the dime novels. As relaxation they prefer to read the entire Oxford Dictionary, all twelve tomes of it. I wonder if they ever get past B for BS. And if it’s not a dictionary then it’s the latest thriller by Kierkegaard or that other barrel of laughs, Nietzsche. How impressive is that? I’m quite green with envy.

Call me a cynic but I don’t believe them for one second. Those are the books they display and yes, they mean to read them one day. Of course they do. Or rather they intend to when they have a decade to spare. But meanwhile they’re into the Hello magazines and Who Weekly.

So what am I reading? How about the Target catalogue? My favourite restaurant? The Felafel Place or Grill’d. My favourite tipple? Bud Lite which I can’t even buy in Australia, so I go for Ginger Beer or tomato juice. My latest gadget? Kindle, so that I can get all the free books online, even the Complete Oxford Dictionary should I want it. Somehow, that doesn’t have the same cachet as having a dozen dictionaries strewn around that trendy coffee table.