Checking out what movies were on around the area on the weekend, I saw Hoyts Blacktown has as many Indian movies as English language ones. One that caught my eye was ‘Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (A Love Story), with the O in toilet depicted as a toilet seat. It’s a comedy based on the Indian government’s campaign to improve sanitation, as around half the population still “defecates in the open” one source said. The plot summary said “A woman leaves her husband on the first day of their marriage after discovering that he doesn't have a toilet in his village. He desperately sets out on a mission to win back his love by standing up to the age-old traditions and superstitions of India.” Apparently it’s been hugely successful and the reviews on IMdb and Rotten Tomatoes are pretty good. I couldn’t find out on the site though if it had subtitles.
Apricot trees surface
For those whose lives were empty enough to have read Hawkeye a couple of weeks ago, there was a piece about Bilpin orchardist John Galbraith’s apricot trees he ordered from a WA nursery never showing up, asking if anyone knew anything about their whereabouts. Apparently they never arrived at the post office, instead were sitting in a warehouse in WA for 10 days. And that was with a tracking number! They eventually made the journey to Bilpin and were received alive.
Awww, Mum!
I’ve included a couple of vignettes from Bilpin resident John Keeble’s wild child past. Here’s another. I found out recently that when he came out from England he got a job straight away as a carpenter on the Opera House, which was under construction at that time. When I asked him about it he sent me this story in relation to that: “I had a big embarrassment at the Opera House in later years. My mother was out here on a visit from England and we took her there and went on one of the guided tours. There were about 20 in the group plus a young girl as the guide. Half way through, my mother piped up with ‘my son here did all the toilet partitions in this building’. There was an awkward silence for a few seconds and then we all carried on the tour, the only problem now being that the poor girl acting as the guide was no longer sure about anything she said, knowing that she had one of the construction workers in the group. Everything she said after that she referred to me for confirmation.”
