Back in January I bought a Venus Fly Trap as a gift for a friend (I make such heartfelt gestures from time to time), and decided that I wanted to find it some food.

So I went looking around my front verandah and garden for some insects or other bugs I could feed to it (I admit, I would like to see a Venus Fly Trap leaf close around it’s prey) and to my chagrin, I could find nothing.

Which got me to thinking that maybe those environmentalists were right, that the Insect Apocalypse is upon us and all those bugs we usually regard as a nuisance when we take their role in the balance of nature for granted have been disappearing at an unhealthy rate.

Since then, I have seen plenty of bugs in my garden, to my relief, and even mosquitoes buzzing around my home at night (thankfully my blood group is not as attractive to getting stung by mozzies).

But I did reflect on this, and how maybe it is time to make my garden more bee friendly. I am not going to go so far as to get a full beehive (I know someone who has though) – I don’t like honey very much. But I asked my mother to grow some lavender cuttings for me from one of the bushes she has in her garden.

Hence this morning, I have just planted four lavender plants in my front garden along the fence line, to form the start of a lavender hedge for my home. That is just the start. I will plant more cuttings and grow those , until my front fence line is fully covered by lavender plants.

It is a little thing, but I don’t like roses, and I want to do my bit for the survival of bees, even if I don’ get to feed them to a Venus Fly Trap.

I’ve never been an Age reader. My father always used to bring the Herald (an evening newspaper) home each night after work, and from the age of nine onward, I got into the habit of buying what was then called the Sun News-Pictorial (a morning newspaper) on the way to school. In 1990, they were merged into the supposedly 24 hour (ie morning and afternoon edition) Herald-Sun, which I believe no longer has an afternoon edition. (Not, aside from Business Editor Terry McCrann and the Garfield comic strip – and a relatively recently resurrected ‘In Black and White’ column – does this newspaper have much in common with the old evening Herald newspaper either, which tended to have deeper journalism than the Sun.)

So I have been reading what is now the Herald-Sun and its predecessor papers for over forty years.

One thing that has never changed is the Easter Saturday headline for the Herald-Sun. Every year, it’s Good Friday appeal for the Royal Childrens’ Hospital sets a new record of money raised.

That is a good thing – even though everyone is shut up at home and people are not rattling tins for the appeal, more money is still being raised by the people of Melbourne for our children’ hospital. Especially this year, when people are closed up at home and things look a lot darker than usual.

But I do lament the predictability and shallowness of the journalism at the Herald-Sun. I doubt that any news publication that I semi-regularly read can be as predictable as it is, except for Money Magazine.

I went for a walk last night around sunset, to get some exercise. Being cooped up in the house all day got a bit dull, particularly as I did not trigger my Amazon Prime trial til this morning (binge watched The Boys most of today).

I walked til the McDonalds in Military Road, which had the drive thru extremely busy, with cars banked up right til the entrance from the street, the busiest I have ever noticed.

I think this was because it being Good Friday, there was nothing else open, and no other reminders of normality in this time of pandemic. So people, seeking a respite from cabin fever, got into their cars and drove to the nearest McDonalds to get some semblance of normality, in the form of comfort food.

For me, normal is eating at least once at the local Thai restaurant each week, with a bottle of decent red wine to accompany the food. That is not possible right now, and I do miss it. I grazed today on a succession of toasted cheese, tomato and onion sandwiches, and on some yoghurt. But I can see how for many people, McDonalds is a tie to the sanity and mundane stability of normal life. Especially as not only has the local fish and chip shop closed for the duration, but also the kebab caravan permanently parked at the service station.

For the duration, I work in the office in Wednesday and Thursday each week. Seeing two separate sets of wine deliveries on my doorstep this evening was a rare treat!

And just in time for Easter!

I have been fascinated by Ancient History since my childhood. As a result, I spent four years as an adult trying to learn Latin at the Centre for Adult Education (even as a fluent Italian speaker, Latin is extremely hard to learn!). I have three feet worth of shelf space dedicated to books on Ancient Carthage, the Punic Wars, and the greatest Carthaginian general, Hannibal (he who took all the elephants over the Alps to invade Italy), against the day I might write a novel about Hannibal (a cherished future project on my to do list since I was 16). And almost the first thing I did when I bought my iMac in December 2018 was to write my own Greek Tragedy Ghosts, emulating the themes espoused in Euripedes, Aesychelus, and Sophocles (and Sartre too – that he wrote Flies in the 1940s showed me that you don’t have to be in Ancient Athens to write like an Ancient Athenian).

Where it all comes from, really, is watching epic theatre on Channel 9 on Sunday afternoons in the mid to late 1970s. Right after World Championship Wrestling from Festival Hall, hosted by Ted Whitten, there would be some sword and sandal movie set in Ancient Rome (mostly) or Greece. Some were myth based, and some were rooted in history (assuming you can call Livy’s writings history). There were heaps of them, made in Italy in the 1960s and dubbed into English.

Given that I am very likely to be spending much time in the coming winter months at home alone streaming movies and TV shows on my iMac, I decided to do a search through the Apple TV app to see what movies of the sword and sandal (aka pepla) genre I might find. I typed in Roger Moore (he did a few before he was Bond), and no luck. Likewise for the main pepla leading man, Steven Reeves. Zero for an actual film (my favourite actually) Amazons of Rome.

This does not look promising. There are more recent examples of this genre I might watch, like Xena Warrior Princess, or Gladiator, or the remake of Clash of the Titans. But these, whilst quite enjoyable, are not a part of my childhood which I would like to take the opportunity to recapture. Over Easter, I think I will sign up to Amazon Prime and see what I can find there (if I can tear myself away from binge watching Hunters and The Boys of course).

Old fashioned sword and sandal might be rather corny, but it was always good fun and entertaining, and the links to the past, whether it is myth or history, are always going to make at least some kid curious about the past and the origins of our civilisation.

Without at least some people having an ongoing interest in the Classics and in our past, where will we go in the future?

As far as the First World goes, this Pandemic is the first major challenge it has faced since the end of the Second World War 75 years ago.

It would have been different, if the Cold War had turned Hot, and Thermonuclear, as I feared in my teenage years, before the Berlin Wall suddenly collapsed in late 1989.

But you look at what we faced in the generation before the Cold War started. The First World War in 1914, the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1919-20, the Great Depression from 1929 until the Second World War broke out in 1939. And if you were in Europe, the period between the wars saw the rise of Fascism in Italy, Germany and Spain (which had an awful civil war to boot), plus the tyrannic excesses of Soviet Russia.

The outbreak of peace in 1945, and the economic prosperity which swept Western Europe, North America, and the rest of the Anglosphere (ie us here in Australia) caused us to live privileged and prosperous lives, with the Cold War as the only shadow of fear.

So, when I reflect on the coronavirus pandemic, I need to think about what my parents (born in Italy in the 1930s) and grandparents have lived through, and remember that it is important to be cautious, but not fearful.

My grandfathers had it far worse. They both fought in the First World War in the Italian army (one was a machine gunner and the other a corporal and POW), and then lived through the fighting around their villages (with their families) in the Second World War, as well as living out their lives in the Cold War. They participated in extreme violence, and then in their middle and old age lived through the threat of extreme and even ultimate (ie nuclear violence). And they lived through the Spanish Flu and the Great Depression, and Fascist Italy.

What we face now is nothing compared to all that.

It is important to self-isolate, and to be cautious, and to avoid behaving recklessly such as to become a victim of the pandemic, or to spread the disease. This is civic duty that everyone needs to take seriously at this time. But it is also important to not be fearful. There are worse things than a pandemic with a disease which has a 5% fatality rate (when you add in the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions) to fear.

At the moment, we have voluntarily and without dissent surrendered many of the liberties that we take for granted normally for the duration of the pandemic – things such as routine economic activity, the right to social contact, the right to peaceful protest. These matters effectively add up to a suspension of the economy and civil society. Such suspensions cannot endure for long without resulting in a significant decline in the long term freedoms of the people.

We need our small businesses, our political parties, our sporting clubs (especially the small ones who play on the local oval and do not appear on TV), our cultural groups and associations. These things, the micro-economy and civil society, are what keep us fed and free. These need to be immediately restored as soon as the pandemic is over.

Otherwise, we will just remain prisoners in our homes, like the denizens (I do not consider them to be citizens) of the Peoples Republic of China.

According to the new.com.au coronavirus tally open on my smart phone right now, there are 5,599 coronavirus cases in Australia, 311,544 in the USA, 126,168 in Spain, 124,632 in Italy, 96,092 in Germany, 90,848 in France, and 82,558 in China.

A few days ago, the number in China, according to that website, was 82301, and Wikipedia was reporting 81,554. Wikipedia is now reporting 81,669 cases in China.

On the other hand, Wikipedia’s numbers for the USA are 311,357, 126,168 for Spain, 124,632 for Italy, 96,108 for Germany, 89,953 for France, and of course, Australia is at 5,625.

Why are the figures for China lagging several days behind in accuracy compared to what is recorded for other countries in Wikipedia? I know that Wikipedia is not exactly a great source of truth, although it is a valuable resource, but in this case, I see more sinister agendas behind the obviously false number which is recorded for China, similar to the sinister agendas which have caused the world to believe that China has deliberately understated the number of cases by a factor of as much as forty.

I was watching a video presentation last night by a very pessimistic investment advisory service to which I subscribe.

They don’t exactly say to buy Gold, Guns, Toilet Paper, Tinned Food, and Banjos (well, they are pretty keen on Gold at least), but they did point out a few numbers which are a little more accurate than what I have been mentioning:

1. Between the Federal and State Governments of Australia, $330 Billion has been committed to addressing either the economic or medical aspects of the Coronavirus Pandemic
2. The US Government and Federal Reserve are going to be spending (or printing) $7 Trillion to address this same problem.

That’s so far.

A very old friend of mine this morning texted me the link to some other video on You Tube which has some chap decoding Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke’s monetary policies in terms of Keynesianism (with an Austrian critique), and talking about the wisdom of buying – you guessed it – Gold.

Richard Nixon, who put the Gold Standard ultimately to rest about 50 years ago, is famous for saying (aside from ‘I am not a crook’) ‘We are all Keynesians now’.

That is the sticking point, as Lady Macbeth might say. It is always a little bewildering, given that I am a believer in free market economics (albeit one whose only economic education is the self education that comes from reading Ludwig Von Mises, John Kenneth Galbraith, Milton Friedman, Von Hayek, two or three random introductory economics texts, and the Freakonomics books), when I see governments which are led by political parties who espouse free market economics most of the time, then turning to Keynesianism.

J.M. Keynes was a complex thinker and individual. It would be an injustice to that very clever man to simplify his ideas, but that is what politicians of all colours do. Their interpretation of his ideas is that the way to solve any problem is for government to SPEND SPEND SPEND. If that does not worth, then SPEND SPEND SPEND MORE.

To do this, governments borrow, or they raise taxes, or both. Borrowing is a form of money printing. It will cause inflation. This is not always obvious to the average mug punter in the street.

In the past twenty years, consumer staples, which are what inflation is measured against, has been extremely low. You can get a loaf of bread for under $3, or a litre of milk for under $2. Compare that to 1976, when a litre of milk cost 40 cents. However, where the inflation has been manifest is in house prices and in the share market – that is, assets rather than consumables are where the inflation occurs. My family home growing up, which cost my parents just under $30,000 in 1976, now is probably worth $900,000, thirty times what it cost 44 years ago. Imagine if milk now cost $12 per litre. You would notice that.

However, when you go to buy a house, as whilst not a consumable, a roof over your head is one of those intrinsic things that you probably need, given that it is either 6000 years since we left the Garden of Eden (if you are a creationist) or about 5000 years since most of our ancestors ceased to be nomadic hunter-gatherers, you will notice that hidden inflation.

Explaining these stark realities to people is hard, and complicated. Politicians of all colours, and most of the media, see this as too hard. Spending, which shows immediate action and immediate gratification (which our minds are hard wired towards favouring over long term rewards), is far easier to do and to announce. This is why Keynesianism always trumps (sic) Austrian economics in terms of fiscal and monetary policy.

Those videos I was watching today and yesterday suggest that the Elites are going to benefit from this, as if this is a conspiracy to inflate assets with governmental largesse for their benefit. I do not believe that this is a conspiracy of the Elites. I think it is simply human behaviour. Our politicians are human, and whilst most of them are probably smarter and better educated and informed than the average person in the street, they are not philosopher-kings. They are there to give the people what they think the people want, in order to keep the people voting for them.

It was thus in Ancient Greece and in the Roman Republic, and it is thus now. The hoi-poloi will be kept happy for today with bread and circuses (as Juvenal put it), and will worry less about tomorrow, when taxes rise and real assets (like homes) become increasingly hard to attain.

The share market’s ups and downs fascinate me, and have ever since I got my first minuscule parcel of Mayne Nickless shares almost 24 years ago.

Staying out of the market bugs me a lot – it is like not having any red wine in the house, a state of affairs which is quite askew.

So this morning, amidst all the volatility, I placed a low ball offer on 500 shares in Washington Soul H Pattison (SOL), a company in which I have on-off been a share holder most of the past 6 years. The share price rose to around $18 in early trading, and then sank to about $16.86. My low ball offer was $16.90, so I was able to get back in at about 3.40pm.

The fluctuation was about 5.5% in price across the entire day.

What does that mean going forward? On Monday, I intend to place a medium ball sell order and see what happens. I am still carrying some capital losses from about six years ago which I have not been able to offset (even with my recent bailing out of the market), so if I can make some capital gains and square the ledger a little, that will be good.

Otherwise, Washington Soul H Pattison remains one of those companies I intend to hold in my long term share portfolio when the madness ends, so I have no problem with continuing to own them.

In any event, investing relatively small amounts in the share market right now is the kind of retail therapy which may prevent me from making a big mistake and throwing everything I have right back into the market prematurely!

I have an olive tree in my front garden. It was a housewarming gift 17 years ago from my then boss.

Most years, I get some olives. Last year, they were very puny in size. This year, I just had a look at the ripening fruit and as you can see from the photo, there are some lush fat olives on the tree, and I will have a fine harvest worth pickling around Anzac Day.

I suppose the reasons for the larger fruits this year (if you can call something so bitter a fruit) are that it has rained a whole lot over what, bushfires aside, was a pretty mild summer, and that I aggressively pruned the tree last winter.

Of course, there are many olive trees in my suburb. People grow them on their nature strips. I think my olive tree is not going to produce enough fruit for me. I will map out where all the olive trees are in my immediate proximity and then, when it gets close to the time for picking them, I should dress in dark clothing like a ninja and go around after dark picking a few olives from each of them….