(September 1, 2021) Robert McQuillan ponders…

It’s Wednesday September 1, Australia’s first day of spring – and what a beautiful warm day it is, with happy walkers and chirping birds flying around, some even landing to bathe in our backyard fountain!

Actually, all round it’s been a pretty good winter here but now we can look forward to really warmer days and a good season of gardening time ahead!

Gardening! Umm… I must confess that I’m not a gardener!  Now we do have a beautiful garden but it’s the result of Maureen’s handiwork! I delight to see the flourishing new plants she has planted and the healthy growing trees that she has been well trimmed. And many more of Maureen’s gardening creations around our attractive property.

Gardener’s misinterpreted comments
Yesterday we watched that 1979 satire classic, Being There with Peter Sellers brilliantly playing Chance, a simpleminded, uneducated gardener.  After being accidentally hit by the car of Ben Rand, an advisor and confidant of the American president, he’s taken to Rand’s luxurious home to be cared for.

There he’s mistakenly called Chauncey Gardiner and assumed, from his oldish but expensive attire, that he’s an upper-class, highly educated businessman. In actual fact, his old employer/benefactor had just died and Chance, always allowed to wear some of the old man’s clothes, has walked out into a world he’d never, ever been in before.

Repeatedly, Chance’s simple words are misinterpreted, especially in a first meeting with the president who regards Chance’s words as being profound, especially his simplistic utterances about gardens and the weather. He and his confidant Rand, soon to die himself, interpret these as allegorical statements of the state of their country’s economy and business in general.

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