Tasmania

Great cat rescue

2012-02-08T15:49:00.002+11:00

I try to lead a dull and uneventful existence, but real life keeps finding me. Last month I stepped on a manhole cover, as I’d done a thousand times before -- but this time it gave way beneath me. I snatched my foot back just in time to watch the cover pivot on its axis and plunge down the shaft in front of me. I was unhurt but considerably startled.

Last week, I drove my sister back to her house after a morning playing croquet followed by lunch at my place. When we walked up to her front door, we were surprised to find a map of the world rolled up and sitting on the porch. “Isn’t this the map off my library wall?” said Julie. I had a look and replied “It certainly is. Look, you can see the x where as a child I marked the spot the Titanic sank.”

We entered the house cautiously and decided that although she had obviously had intruders, nothing obvious seemed to have been stolen. Things were moved about, drawers opened and a book on dogs sat on the couch where the burglar had apparently been reading it. We discovered later that the visitor had used a spade from the garden to prise open a side window out of view of the public.

That was unsettling but Julie was worried about something else. “Where’s my cat??”

The other animals around the property all seemed safe and well, but the senior cat Kes (aged 15 and known for her nervous disposition) was nowhere to be seen.

We did all the usual things. Walked around the house calling her. Consulted the pet-loving neighbour across the street. Waited to see if she came back for food. Called some more.

It was possible that she’d been scared out of the house by the burglar, but it seemed more likely that she was hiding somewhere inside. We called and listened, hoping for some response.

The only witness was Julie’s dog, chained up at the back door, but unfortunately she couldn’t tell us what had happened.

That was on Thursday afternoon. On Friday we continued searching on and off. No results.

Saturday afternoon, Julie planned to do some work on the front garden while I was at the supermarket. My phone buzzed and I read a text message telling me “I can hear her, but I can’t find her.”

When I reached the house, Julie was going up and down the stairs trying to work out where the distant meowing was coming from. Eventually she settled on the right-hand wall of the attic. We could peep through an opening and see into the space under the roof.

The meowing was louder whenever we called Kes, but we couldn’t see any sign of her even when we shone a light into the cavity. The sounds seemed to come from in front of us, though there was nothing to be seen. It was very Lewis Carroll. I even went across the street and looked back at the house from a distance, just to make sure the cat wasn’t up on the roof.

Not one to leave things hanging, Julie fetched a hammer and began working on enlarging the hole in the attic wall. After a few minutes work, there was a hole large enough for us to put our heads through and peer around. No sign of Kes though.

We took it in turns calling and looking. Our attention soon focussed on an opening in the floor next to the chimney which seemed to have no reason for being there. (We eventually decided it was the top of a blocked-up airshaft.) After a few minutes, I said to Julie “Lean in as far as you can and shine the light downwards. Can you see anything at the bottom of the brick wall?”

She looked and then gave a cry. “Oh Kes! I can see her. Puss, puss, puss!”

Kes looked up and gave a meow. She was alive and responded to our calls. That was good. What was more of an unknown quantity was how to get her out of there.

She was apparently unharmed, but surrounded on all sides by solid brickwork, and eight or ten feet down from us. “I wish we had a trained monkey that could climb down and put her in a sack for us,” I sighed, vague memories of a Poe story in my mind.

While Julie fetched a saw and worked on enlarging the hole in the wall, I went to a local store and bought some makeshift rescue equipment. Ropes, nets and something called a sea anchor which just looked as though it might be handy.

By the time I got back, Julie was sawing through one of the vertical beams in the wall, having first checked that it wasn’t holding anything up. With that out of the way, there was room for her to scramble through into the space beneath the roof.

“Careful where you put your feet,” I cautioned, having visions of her crashing through the ceiling of the kitchen.

There followed a protracted sequence with us putting cat food into various things and lowering them down the shaft to try and tempt Kes into climbing aboard. The sea anchor was the right size for hoisting her up, but she didn’t seem to want to get into it.

We lowered down a net but she sat on it instead of in it.

“She knows we’re trying to help her,” said Julie, peering down the shaft while I looked on warily. “If only we could explain it to her!”

What finally did the job for a hair-raising trick in which Julie attached the rope to the net and then lowered it under the cat before slowly raising it up. It took a couple of minutes, but finally she was able to slowly pull the unresisting cat up the shaft and grab hold of her.

There followed a couple of minutes of hugging and celebration before she let go of the cat. Kes promptly shot out of the room and down the stairs, as though she wanted to get away from her prison as far as possible.

Julie looked at the large rectangular hole we’d made in the attic wall. “I’ll block that up,” she said. “But not tonight.”

I looked at my watch. From locating Kes to the successful rescue had taken four hours.

POSTSCRIPT

Kes appears to be unharmed, though hungry and thirsty. Her ordeal doesn’t seem to have left any lasting problems.

The burglars haven’t been identified.

Plans are underway to cap the top of the airshaft to prevent any more such incidents.

The year 2012

2012-01-22T23:44:00.005+11:00

2012 is the year we will see the temperatures rise, and the seas advance ...
Temperatures will rise until July / August when they will start to decline.

Unless of course you live in the Southern Hemisphere, then it's the other way around.

And as for the seas? ... well you'll have to check your local tide tables to know when they will begin to recede.

(Copied from the OTRplus forum)

Who is the Doctor

2012-01-05T23:37:00.001+11:00

Enjoying the five-part Doctor Who audio adventure recently broadcast on BBC radio (it has been available on CD for some time, aimed at the audiobook market). Hornets' Nest is... well, let the author explain it: "An intricate and macabre series of interlinking tales perhaps best listened to on winter evenings. This creepy epic leads us step by spooky step towards the darkest nights of Christmas as the Doctor tells tales of his most recent escapades to his old friend and colleague Mike Yates and together they prepare to fend back the deadly and bizarre forces of darkness."

It's really nice to hear Tom Baker and Richard Franklin reprise their roles from the old television series. Even after all these years, they slip back into the old characters straightaway. Maybe I'm blinded by nostalgia, but I thought this was a very entertaining series so far.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T18:00:00.000+11:00

.
A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all from Michael (words) and Julie (pictures)

What did you do today?

2011-12-23T14:03:00.000+11:00

The other day, I was complaining how busy I was to somebody and they said “So what do you do all day now that you’re retired?”

Let’s take yesterday, which happens to be a Thursday. I had been late getting to sleep the night before, but I had to be up on time to wake my sister Julie and feed the poultry in the backyard. We needed to be at the Croquet Club on time for the Thursday morning golf croquet game.

The game went off well, but we spent so much time gossiping and exchanging Christmas greetings that we didn’t have time for a second game before we had to leave for a lunch date.

Julie’s old school friend (and fourth cousin) Madeleine was in town and had a small window for lunch while her mother was at the hairdresser. We met at the Green Store cafe in New Town and caught up over a meal. She needed a few extra Christmas lights, so we suggested dropping in to Chickenfeed in Moonah.

That didn’t help much, since we discovered the Chickenfeed store had been closed for flood-related reasons since the torrential downpour on Monday. Fortunately the very similar Reject Shop is just across the road.

After Madeleine had hurried off with her purchases, Julie remembered she wanted to drop off a Christmas card at the Croatian restaurant down the street. We wandered in there to find them busily cleaning up and putting everything away, ready to leave for their Christmas holiday. “Come in, come in!” they said cheerily and we ended up sitting in the darkened restaurant with a glass of champagne while we discussed their holiday plans.

We left with a large plate of cakes that they’d cleared out of the display at closing time. “That will do us for dinner,” I observed, hefting the weight of the platter.

The next detour was in to the St Vincent de Paul shop, so Julie could go through the $1 bargain rack and look around for any knickknacks suitable for last minute Christmas presents.

From there we drove to the feed store to pick up some wheat, and then on to Julie’s property to feed her animals. After I had walked the dog, I sat down for a few minutes to wait for Julie and felt very tired. The five hours sleep I had last night seemed to have been not quite enough to recharge my batteries.

We drove back to my house and I checked my e-mails and Facebook page while we had a cup of coffee. I stuck with the decaffeinated sort, since I was planning to take a nap for a while.

Two hours later I got up feeling a little better. I woke Julie, who had followed my example, and put the kettle on again. There was nothing on television we wanted to see, so I pottered about gathering up the week’s garbage, burning some audio files onto CD, and throwing together a makeshift supper. By then, it was time to switch on to listen to the Nightlife programme on ABC radio.

We listened to the late-night quiz segment, then went outside to feed the poultry in my backyard. After that we got back in the car and drove to Julie’s place to repeat the performance with her animals.

I walked the dog again, then shared an apple with her. The ginger cat wandered in and curled up on his blanket. I raised an eyebrow and said “What have you been doing today?” but there was no answer.

After Julie finished feeding the horse and checking on the new batch of ducklings, we went back to my house. I made a cup of tea, then set the computer to record this week’s episode of Those Were The Days for me overnight.

I looked at my watch and found it was very late again. What had I been doing all day? Blessed if I know.

Goodbye Insulin, Hello Bytetta

2011-12-08T17:04:00.000+11:00

OK, I haven’t been contributing much the last couple of months. This is partly due to the travails of the Australian winter, and partly due to some health problems.

Like a lot of people nowadays, I have type-2 diabetes. For a couple of years I’ve been taking insulin with moderate results. So I was surprised when my doctor told me that he was going to take me off the insulin and put me on something new, something called Byetta.

I was a bit surprised, since I was under the impression that once you went on to insulin you were on it for good. But I was willing to try something different. He gave me a prescription and I left it at the pharmacy to be filled.

While I waited for the Byetta to arrive, I did what you would have done - googled the name to find out what it was and how it worked.

My sister was sitting across from me and looked up when I gurgled. “What’s wrong?” she asked me.

Yes,folks, Byetta is in fact lizard spit! To be fair, it is a synthetic hormone, one that mimics a substance found in the saliva of the Gila Monster.

I had grown up reading Spiderman comics, so I knew what happens to people who inject themselves with lizard essence. I imagined looking at myself in the mirror every morning, waiting for the first scales to appear.

Despite my initial misgivings I started on the new drug and injected myself morning and night for a couple of months. My doctor was pleased with the results -- not only were my blood sugar levels as good or better than on insulin, but I lost nine pounds.

Before you all rush out looking for Byetta in your local drug store, I should say it isn’t available as a diet aid, and it has some unpleasant side-effects. Chief among these is nausea, though this eased off as the weeks went by.

The reason it is associated with weight loss is that at first it kills your appetite stone dead. Because of the effect it has on your digestive system, I always felt as though I’d just eaten. I had no interest in seeking food; if it was put on a plate in front of me at the table I’d eat it. I lost interest in tea and coffee almost completely.

The only things that I actually wanted to consume were water and fruit. I felt as though I was on one of those silly fad diets.

A couple of months have gone by, and things have changed only a little. I’m still eating less (and enjoying it less -- no “comfort eating” for me). I can tolerate a bit of coffee, though I drink almost no tea. In accordance with Murphy’s Laws, it was only a few months ago that I stocked up on my favorite brands of tea, meaning that I probably now have a life-time supply of tea-bags.

I do have a little appetite in the middle of the day, after the morning shot has started to wear off and before I take the evening shot. My between-meals snacking is a thing of the past though.

It will be interesting to see what the long-term results of the change in medication will be. If the weight loss continues, I may be able to get out those trousers that I banished to the back of the wardrobe a few years ago!

We shall see.

November is a novel month

2011-12-08T16:55:00.000+11:00

November is always a trying time of year, because it’s National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo). People all over the world set themselves to producing 50,000 words of fiction, starting on November 1st and going through to midnight on the last day of the month. It can be done, but it isn’t easy.

This was the seventh year I’ve taken part, and each year it seems to get a little harder. Last year was especially difficult and I felt a lot of dissatisfaction after cranking out a potboiler titled “The Purple Page.”

This year I was hoping to produce something better. I had spent a lot of time during the year musing on the plot and I felt I had a reasonable plot skeleton worked out.

The title was “The Moonlight Visitors” and would concern a man who discovered that his house guests were actually from a parallel world - that explains the

Tasmanian Tiger he saw in the back garden.

Things would have worked out all right if I’d been able to write every day -- about 1700 words a day is recommended. But things distracted me, and I had three or four days when I didn’t write at all. I was short of sleep, averaging about five and a half hours a night. There are some things that you can still do on four hours sleep, but writing fiction is not one of them.

The end result was that I had half the novel written by the time we were two-thirds of the way through the month. My maths isn’t great, but I knew I was in trouble.

I re-organized my schedule for the last ten days of the month to allow me more time to write. Especially the last three or four days. Who was the author who said the secret of writing was applying the backside to the chair and the fingers to the keys?

A pleasant surprise, I managed to finish at 4:15 pm on the last day of the month. Story completed, and almost eight hours to spare. “Wow!” I thought.

Next year I’ll be better prepared.... But then I say that every year.

Goodbye to good books

2011-07-07T23:38:00.000+10:00

In the city this afternoon, we took a walk through a shop that had been there all our lives. Seeing it closing down was like losing an old friend.

OBM (Oldham, Beddome and Meredith) began business in 1922 selling books to the people of Hobart. As a schoolboy, I used to go through there whenever I passed the corner of Collins and Elizabeth Street. The shop was shaped like an L, so you could walk in through the Collins Street entrance (the bookshop) and walk out into Elizabeth Street (where they sold newspapers).

In the centre of the shop was the OBM Circulating Library. They had yards and yards of books that you could borrow for a week for sixpence or ninepence. I think I worked my way through their entire Crime and Science-Fiction sections over the years.

By the end of the twentieth century, the shop had been taken over by the old-established [founded 1884] chain Angus & Robertson. It seemed odd at first when they changed the name of the shop, but it was still referred to in our family as “the OBM arcade.”

Alas, like many bookstores the chain fell in to the hands of conglomerates whose business was business, not selling books. I guess the trend to on-line sale of books didn’t help either. Whatever the cause, the Angus & Robertson chain went under, something that would have seemed inconceivable a few years ago, and the Hobart store was dragged down with the rest.

Walking in from the Collins Street side, it seemed as though there was a sale going on, with prices slashed on everything. But walking on a bit further, the real situation became obvious -- acres of empty shelves, stripped of every volume.

The Elizabeth Street side was almost empty, with a few rows of greetings cards at 75% off and a pathetic little table of stationery items. Gone was the array of magazines from all over the world, the dozens of different calendars, the complex window displays.

A skeleton staff forlornly sold what they could. Asked how long they’d be there, they replied “Wednesday is our last day.”

Who would believe that it could end like this?

Goodbye Oldham.

Farewell Beddome.

So long Meredith.

We shall not see your like again.

They want your brain....

2011-04-03T22:40:00.000+10:00

Yesterday I was off to an early start so I could be at the Menzies Research Centre by 9:15. I was taking part in a study called CDOT (Cognition in Diabetic Older Tasmanians) which involved some physical measurements, blood tests and sessions in which I had to remember shapes and numbers.

The mental testing was more taxing than any of the physical things. I went through this three years ago, so I knew what was coming but that didn’t make it any easier.

Trying to remember a group of unrelated words was difficult enough, but I blew one question entirely I suspect -- “Tell me all the words you can think of that start with the letter A.” My mind went completely blank. “All right, there’s... well, there’s... umm...” I did manage to think up a few but I felt a bit foolish.

The one I dreaded was the numbers section. They tell you some numbers and you have to repeat them back. But then they ask you to repeat the numbers backwards ! Yikes!

In comparison, the MRI scan was quite restful. They now give you headphones and play music to you. This is an attempt to disguise the noises that sound like the USS Enterprise is being attacked by Klingons nearby.

on the road until...

2011-03-10T23:14:00.000+11:00

The message this month, boys and girls, is “Never leave home without fastening your seat belt.” Let me tell you why.

They say that a lot of car accidents happen within a few blocks of home, and it seems that this is true. One Thursday afternoon last month I drove out of my street and turned left down the main road in my Toyota Corolla. I had travelled only half a block when I heard my sister (sitting in the passenger seat) give a gasp of horror.

I started to turn to see what she was looking at, but at that moment there was an almighty impact. A green Mazda, trying to get across the traffic and turn into the other lane, had driven straight into the left side of my car.

I don’t remember if I tried to brake or not, I was just conscious that my car was spinning to the left and there was a loud grinding noise.

It’s not like they show you in the movies. Time didn’t draw out into a slow-motion scene or anything like that. It was all over in the space of five or ten seconds. What was most startling was the sudden cessation of motion and sound. My sister and I just sat there not moving for a few seconds, stunned by the unexpectedness of what had just happened.

What had happened was that the green Mazda had collided with my passenger side door and scraped along the left side. My car spun sideways, bouncing off the bull bar of the Tarago van beside me; this impact forced me forwards into the rear right hand corner of the blue car in front of the Tarago. The Mazda must have been trying to turn right because my car spun sideways and ended up facing left in the middle of the road.

There was minor damage to the blue car’s rear but apparently no damage to the Tarago. The Mazda’s front bumper bar was detached and hanging down. My car suffered an impact to the passenger door and that side, and to the back wheel on that side. The bonnet was crumpled up concertina-fashion in front of the windscreen.

After a few seconds, my sister and I emerged from the car and looked about blankly. Strangely neither of us seemed to think about whether we were injured (I had a scratch on my right elbow, but incredibly that seemed to be the only physical sign of the crash). I suspect we were both in shock, because we were also oblivious to the fact that we were standing in the middle of a main road at rush hour, with cars trying to get past the accident scene. We just stood there, staring at the damage, joined by the drivers of the other vehicles.

The police turned up -- well, one of them did -- and a tow-truck to take my car away. It was obvious that it wasn’t going anywhere under its own power, since the left rear wheel looked as though it would fall off if you tried to move the car.

I felt sorry for the driver of the Mazda. He was a young African guy, and he looked as glum and unhappy as you would be in his place. I went over and spoke to him a couple of times, but the body language of the others standing around obviously spelled out who they thought was responsible.

The driver of the Tarago van was amazed that I had stopped against his bull-bar but without actually crashing into his vehicle. He had watched me spin into his path and was sure that we were going to collide. In fact it was only later that we absorbed the unbelievable truth that nobody had been injured at all in any of the automobiles involved. That was our miracle for the week, maybe for the year.

As they towed our car away, my sister and I were still wandering about vaguely wondering what to do next. Fortunately a friend named Leon had been driving past and had spotted us standing next to our wrecked car. He turned around at the first opportunity and came back to offer us a lift home.

Leon helped us gather up the stuff we’d removed from the car and drove us to our destination (Julie’s house to feed her animals), returning to take us back to my house. He stressed that we needed to take it easy and suggested we might want to get checked out by a doctor the next day.

It all seemed unbelievable as we sat in our familiar armchairs that evening. Had it all really happened just hours earlier? Was my garage really empty? Perhaps this was all some sort of dream and I’d wake up to find it hadn’t really happened.

The next day was taken up with the usual business. I contacted the insurance company. We notified friends that we wouldn’t be able to join them for dinner, since our movements were now restricted to places within walking distance.

It all worked out all right in the end. The insurance company wrote off the Corolla and I used the money to buy a Hyundai Lantra. Neither my sister nor I seemed to suffer any aches or pains from the impact. If there were any legal problems resulting from the accident they obviously didn’t involve me.

Only gradually did I try and process what happened. The possibility that one or both of us might have been killed was almost impossible to take in. It’s a cliche, but I didn’t seem to be able to comprehend my own mortality.

A few days later, the man at the supermarket check-out asked us if that had been our car he’d seen. When we said it was, he asked if we’d suffered any after-effects from the accident. “Surprisingly, no” I had to say. And it was true. I had expected to have some trouble sleeping that night, but I had dozed off after a few minutes. No dreams or troubled sleep.

Maybe I was made of sterner stuff than I had realised.

Or perhaps the ability of the human mind to avoid unpleasant subjects is even more powerful than I had imagined.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The King’s Speech won a load of Oscars last night. I saw it a couple of months ago and thought it was a fine film.

What struck me about it was that it was basically a movie about the power of radio. In an earlier generation, the speech impediment suffered by the new King would have been a difficulty for addressing visitors to the palace. Probably people attending a royal garden party would have been embarrassed by his problem, but the awkwardness would have been confined to a small number of people.

But speaking to the entire British Empire over the air made it even more important to find a way of dealing with his stutter. As war loomed, the ability of the King to speak to his nation became virtually part of the arsenal of freedom. This sounds like a job for Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue [Geoffrey Rush]. Great stuff.

Duck! There goes Christmas!

2010-12-29T23:10:00.002+11:00

Christmas is like a roller-coaster I feel sometimes. You start off quietly - Christmas is three or four weeks away. Then you start to pick up speed, but it’s still two weeks or more to go.

Then you go over the crest and suddenly you’re picking up more and more speed. A week? That’s no time at all! Each day just flies past and suddenly you’re bursting into the Yuletide festival, covered in tinsel, turkey and wrapping paper. You look about, thinking “What just happened?”

By the time we get to Boxing Day, you feel completely shattered. The suburbs are quiet and almost deserted while everyone is away. It’s like the silence after some awful catastrophe in an old disaster movie.

It doesn’t help that I’m still carrying a respiratory infection from the winter that I can’t get rid of. I was scheduled to read the lesson in church the week before Christmas, but my voice was so hoarse and croaking that I had to postpone it for a week. Not to mention the way my right ear keeps blocking up until I can only hear out of my left ear.

The answer for the latter problem seems to be steam inhalation. What a wonderfully old-fashioned cure! I thought my doctor was too young to have even heard of it, but he recommended I give it a try.

So if you’re looking for me, I’ll be out in the kitchen inhaling steam and looking at the pile of Christmas cards I never got motivated enough to post out.

Broken Things

2010-12-15T15:55:00.000+11:00

The other day I got up feeling very muddle-headed after sleeping for an hour in the afternoon of a very hot day. I blundered around in the kitchen, trying to make coffee, and ended up knocking my mug off the counter.

It was one of those big black mugs with your name lettered in gold on the side. I picked it up and at first it looked all right, but when I touched it, it broke in half.

My grandfather bought those mugs. He got three of them, one for me, my sister and my mother. Michael, Julie and Mary, they said in gleaming gold lettering. Now the gold was worn and almost illegible. He’s gone now and so is my mother.

My sister is three years younger than me, but her health is not 100%. I spent a lot of time looking out for her, and I wonder how she’ll go if I’m no longer around one day.

Coming up to Christmas, you tend to think a lot about the past.

And the future.

There’s my half-sister and her family. The youngest member of the family would be her grandson Nathan.

It’s funny to think that whatever we have will eventually belong to him. He doesn’t really know our generation. The people we knew and loved are just names to him, sometimes not even that. I guess it’s hard for him to understand a world and a century that he hardly remembers.

I sit there at family dinners sometimes and watch him. He’s big and tall and has a loud voice; he’s interested in cars and parties and his friends. Typical of his age, I guess.

It’s one of life’s little jokes that you only really feel connected to previous generations when your own has begun to fade away and drop out of circulation.

But for now I suppose I’ll take my tablets, watch my diet and see how far into the 21st century I can make it.

Farewell Don Tuck - SF's greatest chronicler passes

2010-10-19T15:51:00.000+11:00

The past is another country; they do things differently there.

That quote went through my mind when I recently heard of the passing of an old friend, trail-blazing bibliographer Don Tuck.

TUCK Don Henry

Passed away peacefully

at Ringwood Private

Hospital, Melbourne.

Formerly of Ulverstone and Hobart, Tasmania.

Beloved husband of the late Audrey Jean, father of Marcus,

father-in-law of Rowena and devoted Grandpa of Jessica, Lucie and Hugh.

Resting in Peace.

Like a few young men of the pre-war generation, he developed an interest in science-fiction, a minor genre often dismissed as “that crazy Buck Rogers stuff.” SF was a small niche market and it would have been possible for a dedicated fan to read all the science-fiction published in English every year. Unlike most of his fellow afficianados, he began collecting information with a view to compiling a book that would include all the available facts about the genre.

This would have been a challenging project had he been in New York or London, but he had been born in Launceston, Tasmania, as far from the wellsprings of the literature as one could get!

In those days, there was no internet, no e-mail. To query someone overseas about a fact, you wrote the question down in an air-mail letter. If you were lucky, you might get a reply in three or four weeks.

The situation was not helped by the fact that the Australian government had banned the importing of American magazines in 1940 as a war-time economy (in fact the ban lasted until 1959). This meant that the magazines that were the staple of serious science-fiction, such as John W. Campbell’s Astounding, could only be obtained by barter or depending on the goodwill of fellow fans abroad. Many of Don’s magazines from the 1940s bore the rubber stamp of the Bermuda Post Office, through which they passed on their long sea voyage to Australia.

Never deterred, Don plodded on through the decade, collecting and storing data while also moving to Hobart, holding down a job at the local zinc company and starting a family.

The story in his family was that when he married Audrey, her father volunteered to help him move house. After watching box after box of science fiction and fantasy publications loaded into the truck, he turned to his daughter and blurted out “Audrey, you’ve married a nut!” Audrey’s response is not recorded.

Don published a series of four articles about prominent SF authors in the newsletter of the Melbourne SF Club, Etherline, in 1954. Those outside his circle of friends may not have appreciated these were just the tip of the iceberg, for Don was nearing the completion of his first book on the subject.

A Handbook of Science Fiction and Fantasy was published in 1954. Don had typed up all 154 single-spaced pages on his manual typewriter onto stencils and ran them off on a duplicator machine. No photocopiers in those days! Self-publishing was the only option since no mainstream publisher would have considered such a book for a moment.

(To put things in context, the first “real” book about science-fiction was New Maps of Hell by Kingsley Amis in 1960. The first book about science-fiction films, incidentally, wouldn’t come along until 1970 when John Baxter wrote Science Fiction in the Cinema.)

The Handbook caused a sensation in the science fiction community and there was wide approval for the scope and detail of the work. Far from resting on his laurels, Don continued collecting information and in 1959 published and revised and enlarged edition. This now ran to two volumes, a total of 400 pages!

No wonder he received a special award from the 1962 World SF Convention. The 1950s was a time of great growth in the field, and Don’s works covered it in great detail.

Still residing in Hobart, Don kept in touch by mail with fellow collectors around the world, a common practice at the time. His only face-to-face contacts were occasional evenings at his home in Lindisfarne when half a dozen SF connoisseurs would gather to discuss the latest developments in the field and admire Don’s collection. Following an hour or two of gossip, Audrey would serve refreshments and the meeting would break up. I was privileged to be invited along when Don discovered I lived just across the river from him, and he was always a courteous and charming host despite my youthful enthusiasm.

I was aware that he was still collating facts and reviews, but nobody was expecting the final flowering of his efforts. Don had been in touch with the American specialist publisher Advent, and in 1974 they began the publication of his greatest achievement, the three-volume set The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy through 1968: A Bibliographic Survey of the Fields of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction through 1968. These were three big books, and every page was packed with text (no illustrations) and detailed entries about books, authors and publishers.

Reviews were enthusiastic and 99% positive. Don was perplexed by a review by Barry Malzberg who reproached him for leaving out such famous authors as L. Sprague de Camp. It turned out that Malzberg, slightly confused about the niceties of alphabetical order, had looked under C rather than D!

The final volume rolled off the presses in 1983, and Don could be forgiven for finally drawing a line under his bibliographic career. After fifty years he deserved some time off.

The collection of old magazines and books was sold off to a university library on the mainland, and filled an entire moving van. Previous to that, Don had invited me to drop in and have a look around his garage. It was lined from floor to ceiling with paperbacks from all around the world. “Anything you want, just pick it out,” he said. I filled the back of my car with rare items at bargain-basement prices. (I wonder what they would have fetched if e-Bay had been around in those days?)

The success of his magnum opus led to his being invited to be Guest of Honour at the 1975 World SF Convention being held in Melbourne. Don was unable to make it to the convention in person, but several authors and fans were so determined to meet him that they added a trip to Tasmania to their Australian visit. We had a large dinner at a city hotel for the visitors.

After that, I lost touch with Don. He retired from the Zinc works, and he and his wife moved to Victoria, closer to his children and grandchildren. The increasingly frenetic and profitable genre that was modern science-fiction held less appeal for him (though he and Audrey did enjoy the first Star Wars film).

There were many other reference works about science-fiction in the years to come, but nearly all of them were quick to acknowledge their debt to Don’s comprehensive surveys of the field.

He had little contact with science-fiction fans in later years, and aside from a Christmas card or two, I gradually fell out of touch with him. It was a sad moment to learn he had died aged 87. I will always remember him as an agreeable host, a loyal friend and an industrious scholar. R.I.P. Donald H. Tuck.

another year

2010-10-11T14:48:00.000+11:00

Looking back at 2010, it’s hard to believe we are so far through the year. Even things that seemed like big landmarks, like my 60th birthday, are now rapidly receding into the past.

My sister Julie did most of the organising of this occasion. We took over a small restaurant near my home and invited a couple of dozen of my friends. Most were from either my church or the croquet club, but there was a scattering of people from other circles.

At this sort of gathering, inevitably the person in question is called on to make a speech. To avoid this, I compiled a trivia quiz covering events that had happened in my lifetime, and passed it out to guests as they arrived. This meant that I could combine the speech with giving the answers to the quiz, killing two birds with one stone.

My note on the invitation that birthday gifts were not necessary was largely unheeded. After the party I had to make two trips out to the car to load the presents into the boot.

This winter was wildly different to last year. In 2009, we had the biggest amount of rain we’ve had for fifty years -- the mud stretched almost to the horizon. But this year it was actually below average for rainfall. Not what I was expecting after last year.

Now that spring is here, Julie is about to start work on her new chicken shed. The keeping of chickens in urban areas is going from strength to strength around the world, but here in Hobart there is a whole bundle of red tape involved. For a start you cannot keep a rooster inside the city boundaries unless you have the written permission of all your neighbours. Then there are restrictions on where you can build your hen house, how far it has to be from the edge of the property, and strict controls on how it affects the people next door. (Penalty for each infringement is a $240 fine.)

The fact that the chickens were there before most of the neighbours moved in cuts no ice with the authorities. A string of complaints to the City Council and the RSPCA have been a recurring irritation for her. Some of them have been out and out trouble-making; one complaint alleged her dog was neglected, which was unbelievable for anybody who has met my sister.

My health seems to suffer during the winter each year nowadays. I get a cough that lasts for weeks, and that tends to drive up my BGL (Blood Glucose Level readings), which upsets my endocrinologist. Controlling my diabetes is more difficult when I’m battling a virus that refuses to move out for months on end.

It’s almost November, which is National Novel Writing Month. This will be the sixth year that I’ve taken part in this challenge to write a 50,000 word novelette in a month. It seems unbelievable, but that means I’ve written a quarter of a million words of fiction (http://www.mediafire.com/?0662ubc64xksl). As often happens, I have no idea what to write about this year, but I’m hoping my subconscious is working on a plot that will come to mind by the end of October!

A thing of the past

2010-04-12T11:45:00.001+10:00

.
My life is over -- well, not quite, but the end is in sight. Only two weeks to go till my 60th birthday, and I am beginning to feel the years piling up.

For example, on Saturday my sister and I were invited to Michele's house for the 13th birthday of her son Aleks. We knew that he was interested in the history of rock & roll, so I went through the attic and found a 1971 book on Buddy Holly that I thought he might like.

The party was a large affair, but partitioned so that the adults and children didn't have to spend all their time together. The basement was taken up with a sound system blasting out AC-DC while the elderly in-laws ate a sit-down meal upstairs.

Julie and I wandered about, chatting to various people, partaking of the copious refreshments and watching Michele's dog try and bully one of the visiting dogs. It was all pleasant enough.

But when we arrived home after only two or three hours, I felt as though I'd been away for the weekend. I suppose I'm no longer used to noise or large numbers of people. Once I would have taken it in my stride, but that seems to be a thing of the past.
.

At least my cough has eased off enough that I can sleep at night again. A couple of weeks of waking every two hours to cough really made me feel seedy.

I hope to be rid of it before the winter weather sets in, although going on the weather forecast for today that isn't far away. Last night it was almost frightening to read a forecast that predicted strong winds, heavy rain and possible flash flooding.

Happily, none of these things seem to have happened.

21st century (with waterfowl)

2010-04-08T18:29:00.000+10:00

.
My health is improving a little, though I'm not sure you can say the same for my sister Julie, who (inevitably) seems to have picked up the same virus that I am battling.

It seems hard to believe that this month I will be celebrating my 60th birthday. I remember when I was at school I calculated that if I wanted to see the 21st century, I would have to live to be fifty. That seemed so far off in the future... ! And today the year 2001 is nine years in the past. Sometimes I wonder where that half century has gone.

We now have four geese in my backyard as well as the population of chickens that ~~invaded~~ colonised the property from Julie's house. I've always had one goose, but three goslings were rescued from an uncertain future at Julie's place and have grown up strong and resolute in my yard (where the lawn used to be once upon a time). The only difficulty is that the oldest goose tries to boss the chooks around, and honks at them loudly if they displease her. Heaven knows what the neighbours make of it.

Rooster refugees re-located

2010-03-16T22:44:00.002+11:00

So we got the roosters moved, without needing to have a poultry mass-execution. (That would really have had the neighbors in a tizzy!)

The ten favorite roosters were sent off up north to stay on a farm near Oatlands. Julie found someone at the croquet club whose family own land up there, and he persuaded them to take the ten. We now refer to them as "the Government in Exile" since there is just a chance that one day they may return to their old home.
The remaining crowd we managed to re-locate to a country property a bit closer to town. A poultry breeder told Julie about this disused farm whose owner is prepared to let people release unwanted chickens onto his place. There's water, shelter... they're even near the beach. It's more like a holiday camp than a detention center for refugees.

All we had to do was catch the roosters one by one and shove them into a feed sack. When we had enough to fill the boot of my car, we'd drive off across the river and release them. It took about three trips but we did it. I like to think of it as "the Shangri-La for roosters" rather than as abandoning them. They certainly look happy enough when we were down there.

The following week we arranged to meet the Environmental Health Officer and take a walk around Julie's property. He seemed a nice enough young man (you couldn't actually see the horns that we had imagined him with) and made few demands.

So for the time being, things are quiet. But Julie is still going through the real estate section every week, searching for a property where you could keep roosters.

This week we visited such a place, a turkey farm up near Molesworth. It was the first time I've seen turkeys up close in numbers, and they actually do make that gobble-gobble-gobble sound and fluff up their feathers when there are strangers about. Very impressive looking.

This persistent cough of mine is now into its fifth week. Taking revolting cough mixture by the bottle. I had been going to visit my GP and see if I needed antibiotics, but he passed away unexpectedly. I am going to see a new doctor tomorrow, so we shall see what happens then.

Old Time Radio Catalog (OTRCAT.com) is dedicated to the preservation of the golden era of radio (old time radio). You can hear thousands of old time radio episodes online and can stream or download full episodes in Mp3 format. Detailed descriptions of the performers and series broadcast in the era (1920's - 1959) are available to read. In the 'daily downloads', there are the broadcasts of the day throughout history (from the last 50-70+ years). More information about old time radio...

Remembrance of fans past

2010-02-23T23:23:00.001+11:00

By some weird coincidence, four old friends were in town the same week. Leigh Edmonds, Valma Brown, Eric Lindsay and Jean Weber.

We met up for dinner at the New Sydney Hotel, along with Robin & Alicia Johnson and Cary & Marjorie Lenehan. The years just rolled away and it was like we were at a science-fiction convention in the 1970s. Well, except for the silver hair, prescription medication and the high-tech computer hardware.

Eric and Jean were on holiday before catching a plane for the Melbourne convention. Leigh and Valma were in town doing research for a book Leigh is writing. But the conversation ebbed and flowed, jumping from topic to topic and occasionally harking back to an incident in 1968 or 1975.

It was amazing how we all felt so much at ease, as though the last twenty years hadn't happened and we'd just seen each other a few months ago.

A couple of them asked me if I was likely to attend Aussiecon IV.

No, I told them, I'd ruin my reputation for being a recluse...

A farewell to poultry

2010-02-22T18:55:00.004+11:00

My sister Julie always regards Registered Mail as bad news, and this time round she was right.

"You have seven days to remove the roosters from your property," said the official letter. And by the way, here's a $240 fine for having them in the first place.

This marks a turning point in Julie's life. The last few years, suburbia has grown all around her little farm, and now the full might of the Environmental Health department has come down on her.

What will she do with thirty roosters? Kill them? Release them in the country? Give them away? Sell them?

I don't know.

Stay tuned for more news.

All Hooped Out

2009-12-03T22:01:00.001+11:00

The second day of the croquet competition I found a bit taxing. It was only just over two hours but as the sun got hotter I started to get tired. The insulin shots only do so much, and after the first hour my concentration began to wane. The close shots were particularly difficult and I kept missing the ball.

After the game, one of the referees came over and gave me a couple of tips on how to hold the mallet correctly. He was being helpful, but by that stage I was thankful just to be standing up, let alone trying to improve the fine points of my game.

I had planned to go home after the game, get something to eat and sit down for a while, but my sister received a phone call on her mobile. Somebody whose chickens she'd been looking after was back from holiday and wanted to collect them. So we drove straight to her place and she caught the required hens.

So it was a late lunch followed by a nap. I felt shattered. I'm either more unfit than I realized, in poorer health or older than my birth certificate states ("born: 1950").

~~

Now that Novel Writing Month is over, maybe I'll be able to get some time to organize my radio collection. All the stuff I've downloaded or recorded over the last month is sitting there on my laptop's hard drive waiting to be sorted, edited and burned to disc. No wonder I keep getting these messages telling me I'm low on disc space and/or virtual memory.

The weekly shows like 'The Big Broadcast' and 'Those Were The Days' are now into their Christmas season. You wouldn't believe how many Christmas-related shows there are in Old Time Radio. Even 'Dragnet' did at least two!

~~

Reading 'United In Crime' by H. Montgomery Hyde [Heinemann 1955]. A collection of short pieces about crime and the law: accounts of the legal cases of Sir Travers Humphreys and Lord Simon followed by a sections entitled Law and Crime; The Enigma of the Multiple Murderer; The Case For and Against Flogging; the Problem of the Young Offender.

The early sections are the sort of legal cases that one might find in the short stories about Rumpole of the Bailey. The chapter on flogging, however, is amazing. I had no idea this was still going on in my lifetime. Who knew that the cat-of-nine-tails was being used into the second half of the twentieth century??

Return of the Blogger

2009-11-23T21:16:00.003+11:00

Bears hibernate for the winter.

So do some bloggers.

I felt so run down during the last few months that I haven't been updating this at all. It didn't help at all that we just had the wettest winter for fifty years. I couldn't walk out my back door without changing into boots, the mud was so bad.

Even my hobbies, like collecting old radio shows and reading seemed to lose their appeal. I was so tired that I felt I would be all right if only I could take a nap for an hour after lunch every day.

But the season change, and I recently started on insulin injections and have started feeling a little brighter. Maybe things are on the up from here on.

I had been afraid I wouldn't be strong enough to take part in this year's National Novel Writing Month; the physical exertion of typing 50,000 words might be too much for me. But I started as scheduled on November first, writing a horror novel "The Bohemian Relic" (partly a tribute to H.P. Lovecraft). By last night I had written 32,080 words - that's not the 37,400 I should have written by then, but it's better than I thought I would do.

Onwards and upwards, gang!

Pass the Bicarb

2009-04-21T00:03:00.003+10:00

Aaaaagh. I feel as though I’ve swallowed a tennis ball. I found an old bottle of the indigestion cure Dexsal in the medicine cabinet, but the use-by date was 1999. It just lies there if you drop it into a glass of water.

Maybe I shouldn’t have had so much coffee this afternoon, or forced myself to finish that big bowl of plums in custard at dinner. And it definitely didn’t help that we spent the evening in a house where the residents keep the heating at maximum.

Perhaps it was a combination of all the above factors. Possibly aggravated by fatigue brought on by the builders next door starting work at 6:30 this morning.

I hope to improve for tomorrow, but at the moment I have to say I feel at a low ebb.

**

Stopped in at the New Town Croquet Club on Sunday afternoon to watch the final round of the state championships and presentation of prizes. One of the officials encouraged me to have a hit on the now-vacant greens.

“This time next year you’ll probably be on the team,” he said, gazing fondly at us as we raised our mallets.

The scary part is I don’t think he was joking.

**
Here’s a couple of episodes of Theatre Organ Showcase from local radio. Have you ever heard the theme music from Star Trek played on a pipe organ? Neither had I. And the Beatles medley is pleasant.

http://www.mediafire.com/?lhz2y1yzz2k

http://www.mediafire.com/?rijhcwoovmz

It's goodbye Julie

2009-03-31T01:50:00.002+11:00

My sister Julie and I have always been close, but it looks like I may have to get along without her. The reason is this e-mail she received today:

Attention:

I felt very sorry and bad for you, that your life is going to end like this if you don't comply, i was paid to eliminate you and I have to do it within 10 days.Someone you called your friend wants you dead by all means, and the person have spent a lot of money on this, the person also came to us and told us that he wants you dead and he provided us your names, photograph and other necessary information we needed about you. If you are in doubt with this I will send you to death.

Meanwhile, I have sent my boys to track you down and they have carried out the necessary investigation needed for the operation, but I ordered them to stop for a while and not to strike immediately because I just felt something good and sympathetic about you. I decided to contact you first and know why somebody will want you dead by all means. Right now my men are monitoring you, their eyes are on you, and even the place you think is safer for you to hide might not be. Now do you want to LIVE OR DIE? It is up to you. Get back to me now if you are ready to enter deal with me, I mean life trade, who knows, and I might just spear your life, $9,000 usd is all you need to spend. You will first of all pay $3,000 usd then I will send the tape of the person that want you dead to you and when the tape gets to you, you will pay the remaining $6,000 usd. If you are not ready for my help, then I will have no choice but to carry on the assignment after all I have already being paid before now.

Warning: do not think of contacting the police or even tell anyone because I will extend it to any member of your family since you are aware that somebody want you dead, and the person knows all members of your family as well. For your own good I will advise you not to go out once is 9pm until I make out time to see you and give you the tape of my discussion with the person who want you dead then you can use it to take any legal action.

Good luck as I await your urgent respond. Do response to me on this email servicesforsuspension@yahoo.cn

Thanks,
Mr. Jacks Hitler (Everyones Nigtmare)

Goodbye Julie, we'll miss you!

Times of Change

2009-02-17T14:17:00.002+11:00

2008 was a year of change. Most people would think of the Obama election, the international financial downturn or even the Beijing Olympics. But I found it a time of flux on the personal level.

For a start, I left my job at the Church Office after twenty years there. I’ve only had two jobs in my life, each lasting 20 years -- what a boring CV that would make.

I got myself a new car (well, newer) after the old one virtually fell to pieces -- it wouldn’t go up hills anymore, rather like me. With all the automobiles in the world, I ended up with a Toyota Corolla, notoriously the world’s most reliable and dullest vehicle.

My financial problems were somewhat alleviated when I began receiving a regular payment for being partly disabled. This came about when the Employment people offered me a particular job and I expressed doubts that I could handle it. “Do you have any health problems?” they asked. I replied “No, apart from being a near-sighted hard-of-hearing diabetic with a bad back.”

I’m now on an interesting variety of prescription drugs, pills and tablets. I’ve also been trying to remember to take St John’s Wort twice a day -- it’s useful for mild anxiety and nervous tension, but you can’t take it if you already have a prescription for anti-depressants.

Probably I would feel better if I could get more rest. I’m tired all the time and have been for the last year or so. Recently I’ve started limiting the amount of coffee I consume; I suspect I’ve been drinking more and more of it because my body is seeking some form of stimulant to make me feel more lively.

On the home front, my sister Julie was saddened by the death of her favourite dog, Saj the mastiff. This gentle giant had survived an operation for cancer the year before, and in fact the bills for it ended up outliving him. (I think they should all be paid off by next month.)

One of the big problems on the domestic side is the large number of poultry in my backyard. It started out when Julie brought over some chickens from her place, some because they were in poor health and some because they were specimens she wanted to breed from. You can probably guess what happened -- a few moments of inattention and we had a poultry population explosion on our hands.

Let me tell you -- that business about roosters only crowing at sunrise is something that they thought up for the cartoons. These ones crow morning, noon and night.

On the plus side, I have been able to start reading again a bit. The last decade I
have been reading less and less, until it was a struggle to even get through the morning paper. But this year I have been able to read a few light novels without too much exertion. Part of the problem I guess is my graduated-lens glasses which stop me from reading in bed; I have partially overcome that by reading e-books on the little Asus EEE mini-computer that was a retirement gift from the office.

As for the future -- well, we shall see.

****
I continue to spend a lot of my spare time on my current hobby, collecting Old Time Radio programmes. This is one case where synchronicity timed it perfectly, with the invention of the MP3 sound file and the wide spread of the Internet. These two things have made it possible for me to hear old shows that I never imagined I would ever enounter.

***

There was a lot of fuss recently about whether Vegemite contained too much salt to be consumed without a health warning. I tend to agree with one website that said “Vegemite is a condiment. Condiments tend to be bad if you look at them in isolation - but hey - we do not (well most of us) eat vegemite by itself.” He went on to advise us to check the fat content of salad dressing and check the sugar content of the chocolate you sprinkle on your latte before worrying about the Vegemite on your toast at breakfast.

http://fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?t=11245877&page=3

***

Alan Rider is back on air again after a few weeks away sick. I always enjoy his
show Theatre Organ Showcase

http://www.mediafire.com/?whynumjtm2f

http://www.mediafire.com/?5l4tiqwzjjj

D.E.L. (don't eat lunch)

2009-01-02T22:13:00.002+11:00

I raised the glass of champagne and toasted the horse as he grazed in the garden. I’ve always found Christmas to be a stressful time, but Boxing Day things start to calm down a bit. One of Julie’s neighbours asked us round for a drink, and even invited Julie’s horse.

We opened the champagne, then took down the slip-rail that divided the two properties. After a bit of cajoling, the horse wandered in and started cropping the grass. Then he wandered off again.

All the time we were having drinks and nibbles, the horse came and went. You can probably guess what happened in the end -- when we were ready to leave, I put the slip-rail back in place, and the horse decided he wanted to come back into the garden. He stood there and looked at me reproachfully across the fence.

“You had your chance,” I told him. “You should have taken the opportunity then.” He just grunted accusingly.

#

The end of the year is a bad time if you’re trying to lose weight, especially in Tasmania. You just get over Christmas, when the vast majority are engaged in becoming ever vaster, then you have the Summer Festival.

This started as a time-filler between the start and finish of the Sydney-Hobart yacht race, but in twenty years it’s become a fixture on the Tasmanian scene. The jewel in the crown is the Taste Of Tasmania, a week-long festival of food and drink held on the Hobart waterfront.

Friday my sister and I made our third visit of the week to the old warehouse that houses the enormous range of stalls. We started out with a glass of draught cider to wash down the eight different kinds of cheese we sampled at the Bruny Island cheese stall.

Then we moved on to the smoked lamb with rosemary and pinkeye potatoes with spiced cherries. We made our way down the line of sheds heading for the Turkish stall, but got detoured by the Huon Valley free-range roast pork.

When we finally made it to the Turkish stall, we had some lamb cutlets, then moved on to the Paris Cafe stall for coffee and Mexican beef on a buckwheat crepe with Mesclun salad.

I was starting to fill up by this stage, but managed to sample the pancakes with strawberries and ice cream. While we were buying a take-away platter of the Bruny Island cheeses, we were standing next to the stand selling Panna Cotta (the name literally means “cooked cream” I believe).

Watching the people walking away with plate after plate of that beautifully light eggless Italian custard was too much for me. We ended up sampling that as well before we walked out into the late afternoon sun.

“Do you want anything else to eat?” asked my sister.

“No,” I said firmly, “I do not.”

#

Alan Rider isn’t well, so the last couple of episodes of Theatre Organ Showcase on 96FM were slightly different to usual -- no Irish comedy segment for example. But we still had a lot of enjoyable music, including an agreeable swinging version of “Mack the Knife” and a Klaus Wunderlich medley.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ntiwvyojvtl

http://www.mediafire.com/?3wmeum0wzdy

nothing doing

2008-12-15T23:18:00.001+11:00

Don’t sit down till you read this. It seems the standard for office chairs may have to be revised upwards in the near future. The requirements for chairs assume that users will weight no more than 100 kg but nowadays they often have to cater for people weighing 150 kg (I think that's 350 pounds in the old scale).

With ever increasing numbers of people being classed as “obese” it looks like chairs will have to be made stronger if we want to avoid having them collapse underneath us.

###

Today was Monday and to be candid I didn’t accomplish a darned thing today. And I won’t apologise for it.

The last couple of weeks have been so hectic I wonder when I would have found time to go to the office had I still been employed. I’ve eaten so much turkey I feel as though we’ve already had Christmas, since I’ve been to two different Yuletide functions in three days.

Not to mention the time taken up with learning the game of croquet. I even threw my back out one week, enabling me to claim (for the first time in my life) that I was suffering from a “sporting injury” !

###

I did take time out to finish reading Alexander McCall Smith’s novel The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency. This novel, set in Botswana, has been a world-wide bestseller and the start of a series. Smith has a real feel for the dusty little nation of Botswana, though he doesn’t paint it as a utopia; it may be peaceful compared to its fellow African nations, but there are all the usual problems common to humanity.

There are a couple of plot twists that would be at home in a more traditional crime novel, but it’s the atmosphere and the characters that really draw you in.

I’ll keep an eye out for other books in the series.

###

You have to hand it to those Wurlitzer boys (and girls - don’t forget Beccy Cole) for the variety of music they produce. How many instruments could play not only “Nessun Dorma” but “Let’s Go To The Hop” in the same show?

You can download that week’s show here

And the following week is here

Write a novel in 30 days

2008-11-29T20:53:00.003+11:00

The final days of the National Novel Writing Month were in sight and I was trying desperately to keep up my quota.

Even though this was the fourth year I’d taken part in this writing challenge, the first two weeks were especially difficult. It wasn’t until the third week that I began to pick up speed. By the fourth week I had actually drawn a little ahead of the daily quota of 1,700 words and could see the target in the distance.

I wanted to try and be a little early, because I knew from past experience that different word-processors count totals slightly differently. There’s nothing worse than sending in your completed manuscript only to find that you are a few hundred words short of the 50,000.

So when I clocked up the magic total at 5 pm on 28th November I was happy but wary. And sure enough, when I entered it into the word count validator on the NaNoWriMo website, I was about 250 words short.

A determined effort over the next half hour managed to put me over the hump, and I collapsed in a heap.

I’ll never put myself through that ordeal again.... well, not until next year anyway.

To see my NaNoWriMo novels, go to this site

Some problems with the recording of today’s Theatre Organ Showcase, but the sound clears up after the first few minutes. Listen for yourself and see what you think. You can download it from here

just lazing around

2008-11-20T23:46:00.001+11:00

People kept saying to me “So, what will you do with all that extra time once you retire?” Let me think...

Last Thursday for example, I looked at the calendar and said to my sister Julie “Look at the date. We have to be at Parliament House in 45 minutes!” We rushed in to town to take the tour arranged by Adult Education followed by morning tea with the Speaker of the House.

Then we went to Julie’s house to feed her animals and swung by my sister Pauline’s place to pick up a mobile phone we’d left there the night before. After that we drove in to the church office; I may not work there any longer but Julie still had things to do in the church library.

From there we went on to dinner with friends at Claremont. We played cards with them for a while after watching the thunder over the hills.

And before I went to bed, I had to write 1,700 words for this year’s National Novel Writing Month.

All that extra time? Don’t think it will be a problem.

---

This year’s NaNoWriMo story was a difficult one to get started. It’s the fourth year I’ve done it, but I’ve never had so much trouble getting off the ground. I don’t even have a title for it.

I suspect that this year my creativity fuel-tank was so low that it kept running out before I could refill it each week. In fact the first week I kept thinking to myself “I’m getting bored with this story” - that’s never happened before.

But once I passed the halfway mark I started to pick up speed a bit. What’s still difficult is when you’re typing it late at night and you think “How much more have I got to go?” 500 words.. 400 words.. 300 words.. It can be arduous getting those last few sentences out.

---

Listened to the Theatre Organ Showcase on 96FM. Ah, the mighty Wurlitzer! Another great show. Where else will you hear the theme music from ‘Paul Temple’ and ‘Things to Come’ one after the other? You can download it at the link below:

http://www.mediafire.com/?1mmoiq4njmi

Farewell faithful desk

2008-10-30T01:50:00.001+11:00

So now we come to the final day. Yes, Thursday will be my last day at the church office, where I’ve worked part-time for the last two decades.

It will seem strange at first not to be there every Tuesday and Thursday. I fall into routines easily, and a habit of twenty years standing will not be easily broken.

This was the second of the only two jobs I’ve had in my life. It wasn’t difficult work, for the most part, but sometimes it was a bit overwhelming. I was there two days a week every week since 1988 -- no holidays or sick leave on that sort of job.

I hope that I was useful. Several people were nice enough to say kind things about my work. A couple even said “I never thought of you not being in the office!”

My response was “Sometime in the future, someone will say ‘This wouldn’t have happened when Michael was in the office.’ But whether they mean that’s a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen!”

Time to clean out my desk, gather up the personal possessions that have colonised the area around my workspace, and try and leave things the way I would have liked to find them when I started there.

Still to come is the official farewell on Sunday, with the special morning tea, the gift presentation and the inevitable speeches. I will have to steel myself for that ordeal. One of the Elders invited me to lunch and presented me with a framed photograph of myself at my desk.

To quote from my father’s favourite song:

And now, the end is near;
And so I face the final curtain.
My friend, I’ll say it clear,
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain.

Regrets, I’ve had a few;
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.

Where's the money gone?

2008-10-28T16:46:00.002+11:00

The chronic global financial crisis has wiped trillions of dollars off world stock markets since it first erupted last year - but where has all the money gone? Nowhere, according to analysts quoted on the NineMSN website:

From New York to Tokyo, via London, Frankfurt and Paris, investors were gripped by another roller-coaster ride of turbulent trade last week.

Across the globe, equity markets have now slumped by 30-50 per cent since the same stage of 2007, as confidence has been ravaged by the collapse of the US subprime housing sector and the subsequent credit crunch.

Economists say markets have suffered massive "paper" losses that do not relate to the disappearance of cash - but instead to a dramatic drop in value.

"When we say that trillions of dollars have been lost, this is a miswording," said economics professor John Sloman at the University of Bristol.

"What we should say is: trillions of dollars of value have been wiped off from the stock market's value, which is totally different," he told AFP.

"It's not money, it is value, which is basically the price (that) people are ready to pay at one time."

Robert Shiller, professor of economics at Yale University in the United States, drew a comparison with the drop in the price of a house.

"Suppose one day you ask a real estate agent to estimate the value of your house if it were to be sold," Shiller told AFP.

"The next day you ask a second real estate agent to estimate the value of your house, and the second agent gives you an estimated value that is 10 per cent lower.

"Have you lost any money? Certainly not, the currency notes in your pocket have not changed, nor have any of your bank accounts.

"But you would be poorer, in a very real sense. It is just the same with the stock market. Nobody loses any 'money' in the strict definition of that term, but they have lost value."

(Of course it would help stop the panic if the media stopped making it sound as though we were all losing millions of dollars in cash every day.....)

Stalk the ball

2008-10-25T22:58:00.003+11:00

“This is a game for all ages which provides mental and physical stimulation. It combines strategy and precision and is a bit like snooker on grass or a combination of chess and golf. It is an ideal opportunity which allows for social interaction.” My sister read from the Adult Education brochure, adding “And it’s just around the corner. We should sign up for it.”

She read on. “This course will show you the basics required to play the game of croquet. Six 90-minute sessions.”

So this month we’ve been spending our Saturday afternoons out in the sun hitting coloured balls with wooden mallets.

They started us off simply, more or less playing the simplified game known as Aussie croquet. After a while in the first lesson, I started getting the knack of hitting the ball. Then they introduced us to the more subtle aspects of the game.

“Roquet, croquet, continuation,” I muttered to myself. “Stalk the ball. Mind the angle. Check your V. Ball in the hand. Make sure they touch....” I was starting to get a little dizzy. Playing for one or two hours a week means you don’t get a handle on the finer points of the game easily.

The third lesson they showed us the Standard Grip and the Follow Through, with special emphasis on using the shoulder muscles. Yikes!

After that lesson, they gave us a cup of tea in the clubhouse. I could see my coach at the other end of the table, talking to the Club Secretary. I could hear my name being mentioned but I couldn’t make out anything else. “Mumble-mumble-mumble Michael. Mutter Michael mutter.”

I wasn’t really that concerned. Playing croquet for a couple of hours in the sun can be surprisingly tiring. For the moment all that really interested me was getting off my feet and having a hot drink.

my day in court

2008-10-16T23:48:00.001+11:00

Not many people are happy to get a letter telling them they have to be at the Supreme Court at a particular time and date.

However since I had signed up for a special tour of the building with the Adult Education Department, I wasn’t intimidated.

They let the group in - there were about ten of us - then locked the doors. If anybody was passing in Salamanca Place, they must have wondered why we were going into the courthouse after hours.

We were greeted by a pleasant young woman. It took me a moment to realise that she was actually a Justice of the Supreme Court. She led us into Court #8, where she is sitting this month, and gave us a full description of what happened where.

I was surprised to hear that all proceedings are now digitally recorded; the last time I was in court the only electronics visible was a big square reel-to-reel tape recorder. For routine appearances that only take a few minutes the prisoners will often be there only on the audio-video link from prison.

There’s even a special court intranet that links courthouses around the country. Who knew?

The judge then led us down into the tunnel that links Court #8 with its mirror image Court #7 in the building across the way. Surprisingly, the tunnel zig-zagged and curved to an alarming extent. It seems that instead of going in a straight line it follows the edge of the property line around the court complex. It is not a place you’d want to find yourself during a power cut.

The courthouse was only built during the 1970s but is looking a bit tired and in need of updating. The oldest and least modern part of the whole place are the holding cells below the building. They are the classic jail-house cells -- thick metal bars, furniture fixed in place and big padlocks that would have been at home in the convict era.

Much of the court’s work is done on computer these days, but they still have a large library. We asked the judge if she ever needed to consult the old law books and she said she had been down there just recently to look up a 19th century case.

Our final stop was the judge’s own chambers. There were some personal touches (like the framed drawing of Rumpole of the Bailey) and her robes and wig ready for the next trial. The current Chief Justice is doing his best to simplify the robes, and possibly do away with wigs altogether. It would take away a lot of the atmosphere of the court, I thought. After all, every trade has its uniform.

90 minutes later we were back out in Salamanca Place, with the seagulls wheeling overhead in the floodlights that illuminate the historic buildings. It was hard not to feel a passing twinge of relief. It was a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t like to stay there....

enter the Five

2008-10-02T02:17:00.002+10:00

We call them the Famous Five.

Nothing to do with Enid Blyton.

These are five chickens that suddenly decided to take up residence each night on the old refrigerator outside the kitchen window. I don't know why they chose this spot. You might have thought they'd be bothered by the noise of me rattling round in the kitchen preparing the evening meal.

Sometimes they turn and glance at me over their shoulders. Maybe they're wondering when I'm going to go away and stop bothering them.

Or maybe they're checking to make sure I'm not having a chicken dinner.

One of those things

2008-09-26T22:47:00.002+10:00

Very unsettled weather all this week. The equinox doesn't help, and being situated between the warming Australian mainland and the sea ice of Antarctica means the wind is almost intolerable.

To add injury to insult, I cut my foot on some wire while walking across the back yard when I fed the poultry yesterday morning.

-----

The music of Cole Porter may no longer fill huge venues, however a small but enthusiastic audience turned out tonight at the Moonah Arts Center to hear Kaye Payne.

Out of his 800 odd songs, she chose for the evening
Night and Day
Too Darn Hot
So Nice to Come Home To
Love For Sale
Let's Do It
I Get A Kick Out Of You
Everytime We Say Goodbye
Don't Fence Me In
What Is This Thing Called Love
I've Got You Under My Skin
True Love
You Do Something To Me
Just One of Those Things

http://www.kayepayne.com/bio.htm

------

Reading The Freckled Shark which originally appeared in ‘Doc Savage’ magazine issue #073 (March 1939) written by Lester Dent under the house pseudonym Kenneth Robeson: ‘In his most exotic adventure, the Man of Bronze encounters the insane money lust of Senor Steel, president-dictator of Blanca Grande (a very unfortunate South American republic); decodes the awful secret of Matacumbe; and sinks -- for what may be the last time -- into the muddy horror of the primitive jungle...’

I re-read it last week and enjoyed it a lot. Doc Savage is one of my two favourite 1930s crime-fighters, along with The Shadow. There are some notable things about it.

-- We often have people bring Doc in to confuse things; this time we
get to see them beforehand and how they make this decision. (Tex and Rhoda are vintage pulp characters. They could have been spun-off into their own series quite easily.)

-- no super-villain or occult methods of murder for once. Just a
ruthless Latin American dictator. There are unintended frissons when
someone defies him, telling him that he can't lock people up on an
island and torture them without people finding out. Hmmmmm.

-- Doc has a bit of a Jekyll-and-Hyde period here, where he finds that he's actually beginning to enjoy being somebody else, rather than the straight-arrow scientist and do-gooder.

-- some nice bits of description, although I suspect that Dent (like
W.E. Johns) would have said that too much description slows down the
action for the reader.

Friday on my mind

2008-09-12T19:00:00.007+10:00

The cat sleeps. He takes up almost the whole of the armchair.

In any other creature it would look awkward, but the cat's natural grace defeats this description.

"An ungainly cat" would be as much of an oxymoron as that old favorite "Military intelligence."

He pesters me for breakfast every morning, then goes in and out of the backyard, returning at regular intervals for more food.

Then when he's decided that he's done enough patrolling, he takes a long nap before lunch.

As he gets older, he takes more naps.

A bit like his owner really.....

----------------------

Listened to the Friday afternoon show on 96FM. Always try and tune in for Alan Rider's programme -- gotta love those giant Wurlitzers who seem to be able to play any genre from classical to rock.

Download this week's show here

photo by Columbine at http://www.sxc.hu

There's a roo in the roses

2008-08-28T23:43:00.002+10:00

I thought the noise of the possums and wallabies would quiet down as the winter went on and feed was easier to find. But they still seem to be lurking around in the suburban gardens when I take the dog out for a late-night walk.

Even on a dark night you can tell the difference. If it’s a possum, they wait till you’ve crossed to the other side of the road, then they start making bad-tempered coughing sounds at you. But if you go past somebody’s garden and you hear that characteristic boing-boing sound retreating into the darkness, it’ll be a wallaby.

Sometimes they even come out in the daylight -- the picture was taken just across the road from my sister's front door.

They first started moving into the suburbs last summer when the drought caused a shortage of feed. I knew that wallabies liked flowers -- a friend of a friend has special permission to keep a wallaby in his backyard and it loves a rose as a special treat. But I hadn’t expected them to move into the gardens in my sister’s street.

One of her neighbours showed me the whitewashed front wall of his garden and you could plainly see the marks of the wallabies’ feet where they’d tried to scale the wall. He’s given up trying to grow anything in his backyard because they sneak down the hill at night and eat everything in sight.

And yet my sister, who would love to have a few wallabies going through her paddock, never sees them on her side of the road. Either they don’t like crossing the road or they won’t go through the poultry and horses that populate the property.

What will happen in the Spring? We’ll just have to wait and see.

M R I and me

2008-07-24T23:16:00.001+10:00

We want to study your brain. That's what the official looking letter from the Menzies Research Institute said. A study to contrast the brains of diabetics and non-diabetics.

OK, I thought, I'm willing to go along with it. An MRI scan, a blood test and a questionnaire. I could do that.

Saturday afternoon I present at Calvary Hospital. I'm not certain how much I have to do before the scan, but it turns out to be not much.

Since they're only interested in my head, I don't need to get undressed or even remove my belt. So long as I removed my watch, keys and coins it's fine.

They slide me into a long tube and give me ear plugs. Half an hour can be a long time flat on your back listening to a blacksmith in the next room.

They started off with a repeated bang-click-click, then after a few zing-zing sounds it settled into a steady clunk-clunk clunk-clunk.

I had a panic button in case I became claustrophobic. There was a little window so I could see out, but since they'd taken my glasses that was just a blur.

Thirty minutes isn't long usually, but I had no way of telling time so I tried to pace myself. I thought of some normal calming things for a while, then I sort of drifted off with the rhythmic pounding coming from all around me.

The next thing I knew I heard a muffled voice and I began sliding out of the tube. The technician looked down at me and said something but I couldn't understand her. Then I remembered the ear-plugs.

When I got my watch back, it was just half an hour.

If you're in a similar situation, I suggest you do what I did and don't look up the MRI page on Wikipedia until afterwards. I know if I had researched it in advance I would have found it hard not to think about all those atoms bouncing around in my skull !

world of winter

2008-07-14T19:23:00.002+10:00

When we pass the shortest day, the days begin to lengthen but the cold begins to strengthen. The truth of that old saying is certainly proved by this winter. Some of the mornings have been breath-takingly cold and chilly.

Doses of gingko biloba keep chilblains at bay, but the skin on my fingers is beginning to crack. My remedy for this is to apply a cream for dry skin before retiring and put on a pair of white cotton gloves.

This seemed a bit strange at first, but you get used to it. In fact it's an advantage, helping to keep your hands warm on these near-zero nights.

There has been snow on the mountain for about a month now. Every year this sparks a debate about the merits of the mountain road. Whenever it snows, lots of people want to drive up Mount Wellington to see it, but they can't get there because.... well, because the mountain road is covered in snow and ice.

It seems to me that this is something to do with the modern attitude that everything should be accessible and user-friendly. What good is it having snow on the mountaintop if you can't get to it? Some have written to the local paper expressing the opinion that we should simply tell people to walk to the summit, the way they would have done a century ago.

That idea would be unacceptable to many, and the debates weigh up the merits of improving the road, putting in a cable-car or building a light rail service.

I don't know. I enjoy seeing the massive bulk of the mountain looming through the clouds, speckled with white streaks. It's a part of life in Hobart and personally I don't think we need to make it into a 24/7 tourist trap.

It's a new car! (Well, newer...)

2008-07-08T00:27:00.002+10:00

"Now into its tenth generation, it's the world's biggest selling badge, with 32 million owners to its credit in its 40 year history. And, somewhere in the world, in one of the 140 countries where it's sold, someone buys a Toyota Corolla every 23 seconds."

When I started looking around for a new car, I thought I'd end up with something cheap and boring. I am still a little surprised that I ended up with a flame-red Corolla with mag wheels. Hardly the sort of car most of my friends would expect me to turn up in.

I saw Robin Johnson at the theatre the other night and I mentioned I was getting a new car. "I'm not surprised," he said drily. Cheek!

When you've driven the same car for decades, it becomes almost part of you. You know without thinking how much pressure to apply to the controls or how close you can come to another car. Then you get a new car and suddenly everything is different!

It's actually quite scary. The first few times you go out, you're concentrating fiercely. If you can avoid stalling when you start off from a red light, you're doing well. And going round a corner is enough to make you break out in a cold sweat.

After a while it gets better, but I don't know how long it will take before I can just get in and drive off without consciously thinking about what to do.

Where to now?

2008-06-25T23:25:00.001+10:00

It was like an allegory. Those winds that blew in the bad weather felt like a reflection of the currents that seemed to be stirring up the stagnant pond that my life had become.

Remember those bio-rhythm tables we used to consult back in the 1970s? All the different areas of my life seemed to be moving to a crisis point simultaneously. The car had deteriorated till it can only drive on flat roads. My sister's dog died. Problems at the office made me consider my job might have a limited life span.

I was chronically short of sleep and the cat keeps waking me up at dawn to feed him.

My diabetes flared up, just as it had last winter. The house needed repairs but my bank account was sinking fast.

I couldn't even change the light bulbs in my house as they burned out, due to my vertigo that kept me from climbing ladders. I was slowly being consigned to the dark. Symbolism anyone?

Was I approaching some sort of turning point, I wondered. Since my mother died, maybe I'd just been marking time. Maybe I needed some sort of shock to galvanise me into action.

Like they say, "Sometimes bad things happen because God needs to get your attention." Could be.

Wheels (or not)

2008-06-14T00:01:00.001+10:00

What would you say counts as an "old car"? Some people who trade in theirs every two years may think that five years is old. Until about a decade ago, I was still driving a 1963 Toyota Tiara -- I only stopped using it because it began refusing to turn left.

Since then I've been driving a 1980 Toyota T-18 and it's been pretty reliable. But this year it's been developing a few problems and I've been meaning to get it looked at. This week I finally took it in.

The mechanic phoned me up a couple of hours later and said "Well, it's not good news." He gave me a run-down of all the things that were wrong and said it would cost $1200 to fix... and that this was more than the car was worth in his opinion.

So it looks like I won't be driving myself into the city again until I can find another car. I can get around the northern suburbs all right because it's mostly flat, but it can't handle the hills going in and out of Hobart.

In fact that's why I was finally motivated to get the car checked -- driving uphill in peak-hour traffic in the city centre was a nightmare.

Ideally I'd like to pick up something cheap and boring like a Toyota Corolla or a Honda Civic. My man at the garage said he gets them sometimes and he'll keep an eye out for me.

But if you're coming to town and you want me to drive out and pick you up at the airport.... sorry, no can do.

Fuel prices

2008-06-12T00:49:00.001+10:00

It's always difficult to work out the prices of fuel in other countries - by the time you convert the currency and then convert gallons to metric, your head is spinning. So it was nice to see this piece on ABC radio this morning:

AM - Wednesday, 11 June , 2008 08:05:00
Reporter: David Mark
TONY EASTLEY: Americans are complaining because their fuel has reached around one dollar a litre.

Australian motorists believe they're doing it tough at $1.50 a litre or thereabouts but petrol pain is acute in Europe where the prices are much higher. There, people have taken to the streets and highways in protest.

David Mark reports.

DAVID MARK: Around the world petrol prices are rising. Motorists and truck drivers on the street are on the street.

In Spain where the price of fuel is the equivalent of $AU 1.89 a litre, around 90,000 truck drivers have blocked the country's motorways with their lorries in protest.

VOX POP (translated): This is like a tug-of-war we mustn't give up at the beginning. This is the last bullet in our gun, if this doesn't work, we're lost.

DAVID MARK: Spanish petrol prices are in fact among Europe's cheapest. In Portugal where truck drivers are also protesting, fuel costs around $AU 2.40 per litre. It's about the same price in the UK and Italy.

The price in France and Germany is only marginally cheaper at around $AU 2.30 per litre.

Europe's most expensive countries for fuel are Norway at $AU 2.67 per litre and Turkey at $AU 2.68.

(Sound of people protesting)

The protests aren't confined to Europe. Motorists in many Asian companies are also up in arms about the petrol price hikes.

In Nepal, protesters are on the streets of Kathmandu after petrol rose 25 per cent. The price there is the Australian equivalent of a $1.58 per litre

Protesters are also on the street in Hong Kong where petrol costs around $1.99. It costs a $1.06 in Pakistan and in India it's a $1.24.

In South Korea, where the Government has offered to resign in part because of fuel prices, petrol costs $AU 1.96.

But while most motorists are doing paying ever more, in some countries fuel is virtually free. It costs just 12 cents per litre in Saudi Arabia and just five cents a litre in Venezuela.

Most motorists can only dream of paying so little for the fuel, but they can take some heart in a forecast by the International Energy Association which is predicting oil prices will fall over the next two years to below $US 100 a barrel.

Quizzers of Oz

2008-06-03T01:41:00.003+10:00

The monthly pub quiz run by the Irish Association was Monday night. Five of us formed a team under the usual name of The Amnesiacs but we failed to triumph this time round. We came second in our category (of course there were only three teams in that section!).

The categories this time were "Who am I?", Australian trivia, movies, music, books, "Yesterday's News" and a table quiz where we had to identify celebrities whose faces had been morphed onto other bodies (surprisingly difficult).

Sometimes you find that even things you thought you knew refuse to come to mind. Quick, what year did Roy Orbison die? [It was 1988.]

And at times the entire audience disagrees with the quizmaster. Only 16 countries in the Commonwealth? We all said 52. But what the question actually wanted to know was how many Commonwealth countries have the Queen as their Head of State. Like Elizabeth, confusion reigned.

We always have a meal while we're waiting for the quiz to start. Usually I have the Caesar salad, but this time on a whim I tried the Venison Sausage Pasta; not bad, but a bit spicy at times.

PETROL PATROL:

Fuel at my local station has reached 159.7 -- that's A$1.59 a litre. Forecast is it will only go higher. *Sigh*

ON THE RADIO:

You'll invariably find me at home on Friday afternoons listening to the Community Radio station to hear Alan Rider's show Theatre Organ Showcase. Always lots of great old tunes played on the Wurlitzer or the Hammond organ. This week's selection was particularly enjoyable.

http://www.mediafire.com/?wxrcm3fzmix

Autumns dawns

2008-05-23T01:59:00.003+10:00

Cold and dark these mornings as we get deeper into Autumn. My vision is not the best under dimly-lit conditions and one morning I found that I'd left my bedroom wearing not odd socks but odd shoes.

I thought my gait was a bit funny.

Very tired again. I've been so weary lately that I haven't updated this page for almost a month. Will do better next month.

ON THE TUBE:

Sally Lockhart Mysteries #1: The Ruby in the Smoke

Billie Piper stars as Sally Lockhart in this adaptation of award-winning author Philip Pullman's (His Dark Materials trilogy) The Ruby In The Smoke. That gave me pause - Pullman's reputation as an atheist is a bit off-putting.

In this story an orphaned teenager seeks the truth about her father's death in the dark and dangerous world of Victorian London.

If you nodded off and woke up after the opening credits, you might think you were in an episode of Charles Dickens' "Bleak House" that you'd somehow missed. The evocation of 19th century London is very well done and the cast fit into their parts well. Julie Walters in particular is so submerged in her role it's almost impossible to recognise her.

Some plot elements seem a little implausible - the freedom enjoyed by young women and black people doesn't ring quite true.

What's a bit startling is the fact this is based on a novel for children. There are several fatal stabbings, drug use, brutal beatings and the implied threat of under-age sex. Children's books have obviously changed since I was a boy.

This month's wine list:

Heritage Road Moonstone 2005 Semillon Chardonnay
Pleasant white from southeastern Australia with the apple-citrus of the semillon comlpemented by the peach-fig in the chardonnay. Goes down well with most meals.

Blue Tongue Sauvignon Blanc 2005
Nice drop that claims to blend passionfruit, gooseberry and kiwi fruit. I can't taste any of those but it's an agreeable white wine (even if it is named after a lizard!).

Yallum Ridge 2004 Verdelho semillon
Once again, a passable white from a vineyard I've never heard of before this.

Crittenden & Co 2007 Late Harvest Riesling
From Mulgrave Victoria comes this nice white with "hints of tropical fruits, citrus and lime".

Lennard's Crossing 2005 Chardonnay
This wine, that promises to be "full and soft on the palate" when served chilled with your favourite fish or meat, comes from Pokolbin in New South Wales.

Anzac Day

2008-04-26T13:09:00.002+10:00

Anzac Day, my 58th birthday and the day that celebrates Australia's history at war.

It made for a thoughtful morning. Not only did I reflect on what I had and hadn't accomplished over the last twelve months, but it brought to mind thoughts of all the members of my family who'd served in the armed forces.

My cousin who went to Vietnam. My uncles who were in North Africa. Even my mother served in an anti-aircraft unit when Radar was a deep dark secret.

I took down from the shelf a battered little notebook that had been handed down to us from previous generations. It tells the story of my father's oldest brother, from the day he left home with his unit in 1915 till he sent it home from England a year later just before he left for France.

He never returned. In one of the many Australian graveyards in France, he lies to this day. We often think of him at this time of the year. My father's family mourned him for many years and among the bric-a-brac from the old family home are several framed memorials to the fighting men who were lost in a far country.

Rest in peace, 4385.

Garage Sale

2008-04-11T22:52:00.001+10:00

Darkness. That's all I saw when I opened my eyes, but I couldn't go back to sleep. Today was Garage Sale Day in my street.

One of the women in the street had rounded up half a dozen households to participate in a joint Garage Sale (what they call a yard sale in some places). We split the cost of the advertising and benefited from being able to avoid the sunrise wolf-pack.

If you've ever had a garage sale, you'll know that there's usually someone banging on your door at 5 a.m. wanting to get a preview of what you're selling. This way, we just announced that there would be a garage sale in my street commencing at 8 o'clock. Right on that time, everyone who was participating opened their doors and put out balloons on their front fence.

That didn't stop a couple of cars driving up and down the street early looking for any signs of life. Dealers and bargain hunters hoping for a chance to get in early.

I felt like a vampire who'd been dragged out of the crypt by Dr Van Helsing, but as the sun came up I gradually got it together.

Originally I'd planned to spread everything out on the front lawn so that the passing trade could see everything, and I wouldn't have to depend on people wandering down my driveway.

Then at dawn there was a shower of rain and I thought to myself "Oh no, I'll have to change my plans and put everything under cover in the carport." So I did, and of course that was the only rain all day!

It made for a fairly long day. I took up my position at 8 o'clock and watched the clock slowly progress round to 1 p.m. People came and went. Families with kids. Old couples. Young adults. A few people who were obviously dealers.

One man was as transparent as could be. He glanced at a cardboard box of comics and said off-handedly "Those are a bit modern" in a dismissive tone.

"Depends on what you mean by modern," I said, well aware of what he was doing.

"Bit of silverfish damage on a couple of them," he added. I shrugged and said nothing.

"Will you take ten dollars for the lot?" he said finally and I nodded.

It was so obvious what he was doing. He had seen a few comics in there that he thought he could sell at a profit, so he began by denigrating their rarity and quality before making an offer to buy the lot cheaply.

I could see what he was up to, but that box of comics had been in my For Sale section for the last ten years so I took the ten dollars and let him do with them whatever he wanted.

That was the biggest sale I made. There were a lot of browsers but few buyers. Several people asked if I had any old records or old furniture. I could have sold the bird cage by the back door a couple of times.

By 12:45 the neighbours began wandering about making noises about packing up. The family on the other side were pleased that they'd finally been able to sell that three-piece suite that had been taking up room in their garage all year. "Now the kids can play table tennis again."

I checked the takings. $19, less $5 for the newspaper advertising. A total of fourteen dollars for five hours sitting there browsing through old magazines while strangers rummaged through your cast-offs.

Not a way I'd choose to make my living.

is your stuff "shot from guns" ?

2008-03-26T15:41:00.003+11:00

How much stuff have you got? That's the question being asked by a new Australian television series titled simply Stuff.

Its creator Wendy Harmer says in the show's outline:

[quote]This series looks at the human life-long love affair with material objects. It is a deeply personal and psychological portrait of our connection with our own “stuff”.

Stuff examines – from the cradle to the grave – the abiding passion all of us have for stuff – the stuff we buy, the stuff we treasure, the stuff we desire and the stuff that’s most important to us.

“In making this series I wanted to present a view about consumption that was beyond basic academic theory. I wanted to present a human view of consumption.

I found myself increasingly dissatisfied with the many books, newspaper columns and documentaries that finger-wag about the way we consume. We consume, they say, because we’re “greedy”, “unthinking”, to “show off” to “have power over others.”

We are told that consuming is a habit we have to quickly unlearn, as if, somehow, we had only recently learned it.

In fact, we humans have been consuming forever. The desire to acquire goods is as much a part of our lives as is the desire to work.

In researching this topic, I was much inspired by a wonderful book: “The World of Goods – towards an anthropology of consumption” written by Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood ( Basic Books New York, 1979).

In this book, the authors make the point that consumption cannot be discussed without looking at our social system. In fact, we humans consume for many different reasons - to keep our selves warm and fed, certainly, but we also consume books, poetry and beautiful objects that inspire; we use goods to celebrate; as gifts; to honour our spiritual life; to express our identity and encode memory.

Therefore stuff is both the hardware and software of human existence.

I am very proud to have made a documentary about consumption that does not contain the usual footage of factory smokestacks, landfill tips and bulging supermarket trolleys.

Instead, it features many happy human faces and all their wonderful stuff! It’s a study of a love affair as much as anything else.

The message of this programme is to be mindful when you consume and above all, love your stuff. It is as unique as you are. Hopefully, this series will have people thinking about over-consumption, but in a gentle and humorous way.[unquote]

The only problem, perhaps, is that Wendy is not a neutral observer - she is a self-confessed "chucker" who is visibly restraining herself from telling the interviewees they should just throw out all that junk.

This series is for those who get the horrors whenever they watch Collectors on Friday night!

#

I've been listening to some old radio serials recently and have been intrigued by one of the sponsors, a breakfast cereal that is "shot from guns."

I didn't think I would get very far asking about it at my local supermarket, but it took me quite a while to bring up a straightforward explanation of what this meant (even with help from Mr Google).

The best explanation was from a website where they were discussing breakfast cereals (!) and somebody spelled it out as follows:

"The 'shot from guns' slogan refers to the normal method of making puffed wheat kernels: a metal cylinder is rapidly injected with hot compressed air, causing the wheat kernels to expand, and then opened to release the puffed kernels. A similar process is performed with other grains. When the cylinder is opened, it creates a loud noise; the cylinders are generally referred to as guns, since this works very much like a shotgun shell and the process is most efficient when performed with long and slender tubes that resemble large rifle barrels."
So now we know.

#

New tablets mean a new leaflet about side-effects and all that. All about biguanides and metformin hydrochloride.

The paragraph about low blood glucose is a bit concerning. If not treated promptly, the leaflet warns, this can lead to
loss of co-ordination
slurred speech
confusion
fits or loss of consciousness.

They've certainly got my number -- most days I suffer from the first three anyway!

how bout dem shift keys??

2008-03-26T00:02:00.001+11:00

I didn't write this, but I think you'll find it amusing....

The Shift Key FAQ - Version 0.001

by Alan Meiss, ameiss@indiana.edu

Unleash the Power of Shift!

Q. What happens if I press both shift keys?

A. Even bigger letters may show up on your screen. You should not use this feature, however, because these letters are also brighter, and may cause Screen Burn-In, which would be particularly embarrassing if you were typing something naughty at the time. You might consider obtaining the author's Shift Key Burn-In Protector program for only $139.95. Or you might not, it's your computer, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Q. My shift keys have little arrows on them. Does that mean the *real* shift keys are located above them, and these keys are just little signs to point them out?

A. Nope, they're the Real McCoy. The little arrows mean "up", as in "look up at the screen". Your keyboard is telling you to learn to touch type and quit staring at your fingers.

q. my religion prohibits the use of shift keys. how can i type capital letters and punctuation

A. Discuss alternatives to the shift key with your spiritual advisor. Perhaps your deity would not be angered by repeated use of the Caps Lock key, or maybe you can retain a consultant to depress the shift for you. You might also consider replacing punctuation marks that require the use of shift keys with lower case expressions; replace ? with "huh" and ! with "zowie".

Q> I PRESSED SHIFT AND IT"S STUCK DOWN NOW>

A. Do small children with a fondness for peanut butter use your keyboard frequently? If so, you may want to clean it off for more reliable operation. First, disconnect your keyboard by gripping each of its ends firmly and pulling as hard as you can. Next, immerse the keyboard in warm water and scrub thoroughly with your favorite lemon-scented detergent and lots of steel wool. Finally, you need to dry the keyboard. Either dry it to touch with a handheld blowdryer, or place it in the dryer for not less than 60 minutes. Be sure to clean the lint screen when you are finished.

Q. Why are there are no "shift" keys on my keyboard, but there are two keys labelled "hif"?

A. Again, you may want to consider cleaning your keyboard, and washing your hands more frequently for that matter.

Q. Are there shift keys on my Macintosh?

A. Yes, although instead of the notation "shift", the key may be labelled with an excited Mac face, something like :O . Press this key to use shift, and be thankful you're using a friendly Mac instead of a mean old PC with all them confusin' words 'n stuff on it.

Q. I'm sick of pushing the shift key every single time I want big letters. Is there any other way to do this?

A. This is the Modern Age of Convenience, and you may be able to activate the shift key merely with the power of your voice! Check to see whether your computer is equippped with speech-recognition equipment by saying the word "shift" very clearly and slowly into its speaker. Then watch the keyboard closely to see if the Shift key moves down. Note that you may have to repeat this action several times to "train" the computer to recognize your voice before the feature works reliably.

Q. There are two shift keys, which should I use?

A. Avoid unnecessary wear on either shift key by alternating between the two. Keep track of your usage of each key so that you press them in equal amounts. Your keyboard may be equipped with a small notepad; you should use this to make little tally marks in two columns for each time you shift. Remember, it's better to go to a little trouble than wind up with a broken shift key.

Q. Why are the shift keys bigger than the other keys?

A. They aren't. This is simply an optical illusion. Just as the moon appears much larger when it is close to the horizon, your shift keys look larger because of their proximity to other keys. To verify this, go out in a large field at night with your keyboard, place it in an upright position, and view it from a distance of 200 yards. Sure enough, the keys all look the same size!

Q. If I press the shift key at the wrong time, or too many times, will my computer explode?

A. No. Well, generally no. Not unless you are using a NEC laptop. Or vt100 terminal emulation. But even then, hardly ever. Really, don't worry about it. Forget I mentioned it. Just type softly. Move along, next question.

Q. No matter what I do, the shift key just doesn't seem to work. What's wrong?

A. Have you ever considered that the problem may not be your keyboard, the problem may be YOU? Perhaps God Himself has suspended the operation of these keys to send you a Message that you have strayed from the path of righteousness. Use this as an opportunity to reflect on your life. Before rushing blindly ahead with a lot of shifting, consult the spiritual advisor of your choice for help in dealing with any unresolved issues in your relationship with the Almighty.

"Present Laughter"

2008-03-17T15:14:00.004+11:00

Name a Noel Coward play. Chances are you wouldn't say "Present Laughter" but that was Hobart Rep's opening production for 2008.

First staged in 1942, this comedy has been revived around the world many times with varying degrees of faithfulness. Here we have Nick Falk in the demanding role of theatrical superstar Garry Essendine -- Garry is seldom off-stage and never stops talking when he is on stage. His dialogue is like a Gatling gun, firing witty remarks, sarcasm and barbed comments at maximum speed.

The story takes place in Garry's London flat, where he is plagued by a never-ending series of visitors including his manager, his ex-wife, a star-struck admirer and even (a modern touch) a creepy stalker, all played by veteran members of Hobart Rep.

The Playhouse was full of enthusiastic theatregoers for this farce. It bodes well for Rep's 2008 season, though I notice they're only doing five plays this year. Most years they've been doing six.

There's a list here
http://www.playhouse.org.au/content/showlistintro..html>

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red hot Friday

2008-03-14T23:54:00.003+11:00

I don't know about global warming, but local warming is certainly a fact. When I opened the back door this morning, there was a blast of hot air hit me in the face like I was standing at the door of a boiler room.

It stayed above 30 degrees from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. tonight -- that's 86 degrees in the old Fahrenheit scale.

At midday it hit 37 degrees, which is 98.6 in the old scale, meaning that the temperature was the same inside and outside your body. Not a pleasant feeling at all.

The hens in the backyard had found sheltered spots to escape the sun, and the goose sensibly decided to settle in under the table in the garden. No eggs today but I could understand that. I don't know where the cat ended up but he stayed there for most of the day so it must have been comfortable enough.

After I'd been to my sister's house to help feed the livestock, I suggested we call in at Subway in Moonah. It's air-conditioned and we could get something to eat that wasn't hot.

I'm glad don't live in South Australia. Their record-breaking run of hot weather must be unbearable for the people of Adelaide.

It's a shame I wasn't at work in the office this afternoon. Those old stone walls can withstand the most withering blast of heat for at least a day or two.

Not that it's always comfortable. I spent most of one day this week installing a new multi-function printer (a Brother DCP) and at one stage I was wriggling about on the floor checking the USB connections under the desk -- a real spaghetti dinner under there.

At least I was able to get a good deal at Officeworks. Originally $199, marked down to $129. They only had two left when I was there. There were some el-cheapo ones for about $95 but I tend to be wary of them.

farewell to the queen

2008-03-07T14:19:00.002+11:00

The queen of the seas. That's how I'll always think of her. The QE2 made her final visit to Tasmania this year and I drove down to the waterfront to take a last look at her.

Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) was named after the earlier Cunard liner RMS Queen Elizabeth. She was the flagship of the line until 2004. When she was built in Clydebank, Scotland, in 1969 it looked as though she would be the last of the great transatlantic ocean liners.

Who could have guessed that liners would not only survive but would become bigger and bigger until they now look like floating cities.

But the QE2 still has the old-world styling of the traditional ocean liner, a little like a wedding cake in appearance. And the discreetly lettered name Cunard on the side of the vessel still has gives one a little thrill.

On her many visits to my home town, the ship brought back a welcome whiff of the old days of ocean travel. Two of my uncles travelled on the original Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary during the war, when their phenomenal speed made them the only troopships that could out-run German submarines and surface raiders.

We shall not see her like again. Modern liners look like office buildings turned on their side, and lack the prestige of "the Queens." She will be retired from active service in late 2008, to become a floating hotel in Dubai.

It was just a pity that modern security requirements meant that the townspeople of Hobart could not get close to the ship for a last look. I remember on previous visits one could stroll down the dockside and look right into the ship through open doorways and hatches.

To get a good photograph of the ship we needed to drive to the top of a hill in South Hobart and look back at the Derwent river.

boing boing in the brush

2008-02-22T22:31:00.005+11:00

Wallabies and possums. Mosquitos and ants. The hot summer weather seems to bring them all out. The mozzies in particular made straight for my sister Julie at the Australia Day barbecue; she had marks all over her legs for weeks.

When I take Julie's dogs out in the evening, the bushes and the trees are full of sound and movement. The irascible possums glare at us from the branches of the trees, coughing noisily at us when we're at a safe distance.

In this weather there's often a wallaby lurking about in the back yards of the homes. They come down from the hills and feast on the flowers in the gardens. I hear some of them are very partial to roses.

It was odd at first to walk down the street and hear a rustle in the bushes, followed by the unmistakable boing-boing-boing noise as it hopped away. One of them got so used to us going past that it would stand there and wait for us to leave -- as long as we stayed on our own side of the road.

A sad day in Australian publishing this month with the country's oldest magazine folding. When The Bulletin's death was announced at a 10am meeting in Sydney, it ended a tradition that began 128 years ago with the likes of Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson and Miles Franklin, and survived into the time of Donald Horne, Les Carlyon and Laurie Oakes.

I never knew the magazine in its pre-war heyday. By the time I came along, Sir Frank Packer had taken it over and turned it into a modern news weekly. I doubt the magazine would have been axed if his son Kerry Packer was still alive, but today it's owned by a soulless international media corporation.

One of the galling things is that the magazine's end was announced between editions. The editors didn't even have the opportunity to write a farewell note to the readers.

The same thing happened with Australasian Post, which was scuttled at a moment's notice despite its equally long history.

They say Australians are among the world's biggest consumers of magazines. But sentiment counts for little among the bean-counters of the modern business world, and a long history is no guarantee of survival in the marketplace.

Just today I heard a report that Reed Elsevier are selling off their magazine business, which includes titles ranging from Variety to New Scientist. Apparently the company is unhappy with "the cyclical nature" of magazine publishing....

American comics Down Under

2008-02-09T21:06:00.000+11:00

I read a lot of American comics as a child. But they weren't exactly the same comics that Americans were reading. 

Australian access to original US comics was limited until the 1980s, resulting in a relatively strong local comic industry.

Back in 1939, Australian Senator D Cameron railed against US periodicals being dumped in Australia, affecting local writers and artists. The problem was soon solved with the start of the Second World War: the Australian Government enforced the Import Licensing Regulation to control the spending of US dollars and from June 1940, the import of US comics was banned.

From 1947 until 1983, DC comics were reprinted in Australia by KG Murray Publishing Company/Murray Publishers Pty Ltd under a range of imprints— Colour Comics, Planet Comics and finally Murray Comics. Between 1983 and 1986, the Federal Publishing Company Pty Ltd released reprints as Federal Comics and finally Australian Edition DC.

K.G. Murray had some long-running black-and-white publications whose titles reflected their 100-page size. Century, Hundred, Five Score - you get the idea. But the size of these comic books meant that just reprinting one DC title wasn't enough. Instead the editors ranged over the decades and assembled a real smorgasbord of various dates, titles and genres.

For example FIVE SCORE COMIC MONTHLY #76 in 1964 featured as its cover story "The Terrible Secret of Negative Man" which had appeared earlier that year in DOOM PATROL #87. Another story "The King of Nightmare Jungle" had appeared a few months earlier in TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED #83.

So far so good, but the rest of the stories were from a wild and wonderful range of sources. "Out of Nowhere" came from a 1962 issue of UNKNOWN WORLDS. There were two Captain Compass stories from 1952 issues of STAR SPANGLED COMICS and a Hopalong Cassidy story "Buffalo Riders of the Mesa" from a 1950 issue of ALL AMERICAN WESTERN! A range of 14 years from oldest to newest and a bewildering potpourri of art styles from artists as diverse as Alex Toth, Carmine Infantino and Ogden Whitney.

Of course these things never bothered us as children. We just accepted the variety of themes and styles.

What did worry me was when they started trying to fiddle around with the details of the stories. There were attempts to de-emphasize the American origins -- references to Washington DC were relettered to read "our nation's capital" and in the TOMAHAWK stories set in the Revolutionary War the captions talking about the British army were relettered to read "the Redcoats".

Not to mention the frequent censorship where knives or arrows were removed from dead bodies to reduce the amount of violence depicted.

The strangest incident was an ATOMIC KNIGHTS story in which the hero pointed to a map of the United States on the wall. Local artists clumsily replaced it with a map of Australia. The problem was that they didn't change the dialogue which referred to the mountains on the west coast. In Australia, of course, the mountains are on the east coast! 

I must have read that page half a dozen times trying to make sense of it. 

A for ant-agony

2008-02-06T15:02:00.000+11:00

Hollywood tried to warn us. Films like The Naked Jungle, Them! and Phase IV.

Even Joan Collins tried to sound the alarm in Empire of the Ants.

The ants are on the march. The last couple of summers they've been an increasing problem and this January has been the driest since they started keeping records around 1882. The result is that they are literally everywhere.

Some nights they've been so bad in the kitchen that when we're making dinner one of us stands there holding the plates in mid-air while the other dishes out the food.; then we take off for the dining room and eat before the ants can follow us.

I know from watching movies what to do in a case like this. You dig a trench and fill it with kerosine, then when the ants start to cross it you throw in a flaming firebrand.

That may be all right out in the jungle but I'm a bit reluctant to try it in a suburban kitchen.

My sister hasn't been well this week, but she was up bright and early after the neighbours called her in to consult on a poultry problem. Their hen has only hatched one chick, so Julie offered to help out. She caught two chicks at her place and brought them over to be put under the hen.

They plan to tell their children that the hen hatched two more chicks while they were away.

Let's hope they all get on together. I know Julie will be on tenterhooks waiting for news of their progress.

I had a routine day at the office yesterday but I felt downcast by the time I arrived home. I felt like dark clouds were gathering over my head, plunging me into increasing darkness as time went on.

Sitting out in the garden alone before dinner, I came to the conclusion that the obvious explanation was probably correct. Next week is Valentine's Day, which is also my mother's birthday. She would have been 86 this year.

It's unfortunate that her birthday falls on Valentine's Day and she died on Grand Final Day. Thus the media never let me forget when either day is approaching. The rest of the year I'm all right, but those two days of the year always get me down.

go to the light

2008-01-31T11:09:00.000+11:00

I need something. Maybe this is it.

This is from the Zazz website:

Full Spectrum Light with Ioniser -- Enhance your overall feeling of wellbeing -- $54

You know the slightly grey-tinged guy in the corner cubicle. You'd probably hardly notice him except for that incessant dry cough and the fact that although he never seems to take a sick day, he's always sick and complaining of chronic migraines!That man suffers from a bad case of SOS and SAD! (If you're not au fait with your acronyms - Sick Office Syndrome and Seasonal Affective Disorder.) Two sadly prevalent disorders in our oh so modern world caused largely by our artificial internal environments.

Introducing the "innovative" Full Spectrum Light with Ioniser that aims to undo the twin evils of SOS and SAD. The lamp produces glare and flicker-free light that emulates the natural effects of daylight. Normal lighting has an imperceptible but damaging flicker which is known to cause fatigue and stress. The Ionmax lamp however will bathe your world in a much kinder, gentler and natural light.

Its other function is designed to counteract the high amounts of damaging positive ions emitted into the air by our appliances. With an inbuilt air ioniser the lamp will spread negative ions into the air cleaning and refreshing your stale, recycled, coughed and sneezed in, indoor air. And in so doing reduce your sense of fatigue and disenchantment with your boring job... well at least the first part is true.

The combined effects of this device will leave you feeling like you've been frolicking in a meadow soaking up the sun and breathing in pure, freshly oxegenated air with little bluebirds and rabbits gamboling happily around you

OK, I suffered from SAD during last winter -- more than I ever have in the past. So I'm willing to be persuaded. I sent off for one yesterday.

I'll let you know how it goes.

paltry day

2008-01-19T00:50:00.000+11:00

Friday morning I enjoyed a rare hour of peace and quiet. There's a little window between when I finish feeding the chickens in the back yard and when I have to try and get my sister moving. I had breakfast, checked my e-mail and read the comic strips.

Later in the day I went in to the pet-food shop to get meat for my sister's cats and took it over to her house. It was so warm and humid over there that I suggested we go into Subway for coffee and a snack -- their coffee is all right and their air conditioning was definitely a plus in this weather.

At dusk we sat out in my garden with a glass of wine and watched the poultry as they paraded by. I don't mind having them there, but I look forward to the day when Julie finishes extending her hen house and takes some or most of them home.

In the mail today, received an e-book CD containing all 181 Doc Savage novels in PDF format. We all know that you aren't allowed to post these on the Internet, but they don't seem to stop them being sold on E-Bay. Remind me to tell you about the South Pole Terror sometime.

A fascinating interview tonight on Rod Quinn's radio show with David Ansen, the NEWSWEEK movie critic: "On January 26, 1958 (the date is written in pencil), I began keeping a list of all the movies I'd seen, using lined notebook paper that I further divided in half so that I could get upwards of 50 movies per page. I was 12 years old. I've kept up the list my entire life. It now fills 146 handwritten pages—close to 8,000 movies, though the number would be higher had I added all the movies I saw on TV."

Rod was especially interested because he keeps a similar list. I used to do the same thing.

Of course there was a very practical reason for this in the 1950s and 1960s. There was no Internet, no IMDB, not even any of those movies-on-TV paperbacks that you see in every bookstore.

It's hard for anybody under 40 to understand those days. In my young days I loved science-fiction movies but there was no way to have a list of all the SF films that had been made unless you imported an expensive specialist publication from the United States. (There was a copy in the reference section at the State Library but I could never have afforded a copy for my own use.)

I used to go through the magazines like TV WEEK and TV TIMES and make a note of any movies on the late-show that I hadn't heard of before.

I thought it quite wonderful the publication of "Science Fiction in the Cinema" by John Baxter (London: A. Zwemmer, 1970; New York: A. S. Barnes, 1970) which I was actually able to purchase.

It's a very different world today, where (to use a metaphor from the early days of the Internet), we are swimming in a sea of information.

Called in at the shop/post-office around the corner from my sister's house to pick up a registered letter for her. While I was there, I bought a comic book and the girl behind the counter looked at it, looked at me and said "Are you one of those people who are interested in old Phantom comic books?"

I reeled back in horror. "Is it that obvious?" I said tremulously.

"We just got in the end-of-year special issue this morning if you want one."

"Oh. Yes, I'll take one while I'm here."

Selling an average 30,000 copies an issue, The Phantom remains this country's favourite comic book. There is simply nobody else who comes close to the wide readership that the Frew Publications title has.

That's close to a million copies a year in Australia. Total Frew sales since 1948 are estimated at a breath-taking 35 million copies.

a hot time this morning

2008-01-11T21:29:00.000+11:00

Hell. That's what it was like this morning.

I thought I was having a hypoglycemic attack,sweating and feeling like I was going to pass out. The expected cold change didn't come in and as it got closer to midday it just got hotter and hotter.

For about three hours it stayed up around 30 degrees (that's around 86 in the old Fahrenheit scale) and I think the humidity was about 55%.

One of Julie's friends Merv had come by to collect some rubbish that we'd cleared out of the driveway yesterday and I tried to help but I had to keep retreating inside to sit down and drink iced soda water. I just couldn't cope with it.

Thankfully the cold change did finally move in late in the afternoon and the temperature started to drop after 3 o'clock.

Fire crews and helicopters were out fighting brush fires that had sprung up during the hot and windy afternoon. More news here: http://www.fire.tas.gov.au/mysite/Show?pageId=colPublicNews

Roll on the autumn is all I can say.

Meanwhile we attended the Irish Association's usual monthly quiz night at the New Sydney Hotel. We had a team of five, with a wide span of general knowledge. In spite of that, we had a couple of disastrous rounds in the middle of the night and I feared the worst.

We chose the "television" round to joker for bonus points, but it was a debacle. All the questions were about obscure details from sitcoms that I never watched. I thought we'd sustained a mortal wound when we only scored two out of a possible eleven points, but when the scores went up I found that was not unusual. One table even scored zero.

The other categories - People & Places, Literature, Movies, Ireland, Music, Sport and History - were kinder to us and in the end we won in the Silver category. Of course it helped that most of the other teams went for Gold and there was actually only one other team up against us.

The prize is just a few vouchers for free drinks, but at least we could share those around the team. One of the other tables won a movie ticket -- how do you share that between six people?

From the news desk -- a sign of the times. The new Federal Government says all schools will be able to apply for help to assess their security needs.

The Government will spend $20 million on the program, which will see ASIO and the AFP (Australian Federal Police) assess the security risk at applicable schools.

Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard says while the scheme will specifically target some schools, all are welcome to apply.

"It would be of no surprise to people for example that many Jewish schools have had cause for concern about security arrangements," she said. "The program is there to assist schools who feel themselves to be at risk and who are at risk."

Times have certainly changed since my school days.

The only time you saw the police outside my old school was when they were directing traffic at the pedestrian crossing.

Doctor Who and me on the air

2007-12-19T14:53:00.000+11:00

When my local radio station announced a Doctor Who contest, with prizes include a book of DW scripts and five DVDs, I was naturally interested. Write a plot for a Doctor Who episode in 500 words or less? Hey, I can do that.

I sent in my e-mail, and a couple of days later I was listening to the afternoon show and Joel Rheinberger announced they'd be reading one of the entries in the contest.

To say I was happy with it would be an understatement -- the reading with music and sound effects just bowled me over. I almost thought I was listening to the BBC.

http://www.mediafire.com/?1krmsmddnen

So if nothing else goes well this pre-Christmas week, I at least have the consolation of having heard my own words come back to me over the wireless.

They'll soon be calling me the Orson Welles of North Hobart -- though they might have my build rather than my intellect in mind....

Twelve Days of Turkey

2007-12-16T12:16:00.000+11:00

This isn't original, but it seemed to go over quite well when I performed it at our church's Christmas lunch:

On the first day of Christmas my true love said to me

"I'm glad we bought a fresh turkey and a proper Christmas tree".

On the second day of Christmas much laughter could be heard

As we tucked into our turkey - a most delicious bird.

On the third day we entertained the people from next door

The turkey tasted just as good as it did the day before.

Day four. Relations came to stay; poor gran is looking old.

We finished up the Christmas pud and ate the turkey - cold.

On the fifth day of Christmas, outside the snowflakes flurried,

But we were nice and warm inside, for we had our turkey curried.

On the sixth day I must admit, the Christmas spirit died,

The children fought and bickered; we ate turkey rissoles, fried.

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love he did wince,

He sat down at the table and was offered turkey mince.

Day eight and nerves were getting frayed. The dog had run for shelter.

I served up turkey pancakes - with a glass of Alka-Seltzer.

On day nine our cat left home - by lunchtime dad was blotto,

He said he had to have a drink to face turkey risotto.

By the tenth day the booze was gone (except our home made brew).

As if that wasn't bad enough, we suffered turkey stew.

On the eleventh day of Christmas the Christmas tree was moulting,

The mince pies were hard as rocks - the turkey was revolting.

On the twelfth day my true love had a smile upon his lips -

The guests had gone, the turkey too, we dined on fish and chips!

I was sitting next to the wife of one of our ministers and she asked how I'd gone with the Nanowrimo novel this year. "I got through it with a day to spare," I said, "though it took me a couple of hours every night."

"How much did you have to write each day?"

"1700 words is the minimum."

She nearly choked on her cranberry jelly. "You can write 1700 words in two hours??"

I admitted that some days were easier than others....

final day

2007-11-29T23:34:00.000+11:00

Thank goodness for that.

You Won!

So it's official.
Our word-counting robots have analyzed your November novel, and they've delivered their final, binding assessment: Winner.

You did it! You did it! You did it!

This was, without a doubt, one of the hardest years on record for NaNoWriMo participants. At some point in the literary marathon, most of your fellow writers fell by the wayside. They lost their books to work, to family, to school, and to the hundreds of other distractions and interruptions that tend to shutter creative undertakings like NaNoWriMo.

But not you. Not this year.

This November, you set out with the ridiculously ambitious goal of bringing an entire world into existence in just 30 days. When the going got tough, you got writing. Now you're one of the few souls who can look back on 2007 as the year you were brave enough to enter the world's largest writing contest, and disciplined enough to emerge a winner.

We salute your imagination and perseverance. The question we ask you now is this: If you were able to write a not-horrible novel in 30 days, what else can you do? The book you wrote this month is just the beginning.

From here on out, the sky's the limit.

-- from the NaNoWriMo website

The eyes have it

2007-11-25T19:30:00.000+11:00

Saturday was E-Day. In fact it was doubly so. It was Election Day, but it was also eye-test day.

Five years is a long time between visits to the optometrist for anyone, but for a diabetic that's definitely too long.

My problem is that I don't like my eyes being touched, and for a diabetic exam it's usual to put in eye drops to make the eyes easier to inspect. I have never been able to use eye drops; embarrassingly I often struggle if somebody is trying to use them on me.

After a couple of attempts, we manage to work around my problem by photographing the inside of my eyes, then inspecting close-up the parts that didn't show up well in the picture.
The verdict was no sign of diabetic retinopathy and my macular seemed to be OK. However I was overdue for new bi-focals.

Under the Australian health system, the eye test is free. However the spectacles are definitely not.

Have you ever noticed that in this sort of situation if you try and guess how much it will cost, you're always about 30% below the actual figure.

The girl behind the counter showed me a couple of different styles.
"This pair is lighter and would cost about $1100, while these aren't so lightweight but cost about $900."

"I'll take the latter," I said. This month I have to pay the rates, the phone bill and the power bill before I even start thinking about Christmas. $900 is a lot of money at the moment.

Meanwhile, back at the ballot box, the pollsters' predictions turned out to have been right on the mark. The entrenched conservative government led by John Howard was crushed by the swing to Kevin Rudd's ALP.

Both men made speeches on late-night television. Howard was gracious in defeat, while Rudd gave a long speech overflowing with platitudes and cliches.

My main source of disquiet with Kevin Rudd sounds a bit superficial. It's the way he looks; sometimes he feels like an android who's been programmed to play the part of a politician. If they ever do another live-action 'Thunderbirds' movie, I've go the man to play Brains.

eclipsed

2007-11-19T00:18:00.000+11:00

You remember the old comic-book villain Eclipso? Nasty fellow with one half of his face painted black, the other half white. That's how I felt when I woke up Wednesday morning.

The left hand of my head felt perfectly normal, but on the right side my eye was watering, my nose was running and my ear was hot and itchy. I've seldom had a head cold that was so compartmentalised.

For the next four days I felt miserable. I wandered around the house scavenging any medication that looked useful.
Paracetemol.
Vitamin C.
Antihistamines.
Ibuprofen.
The symptoms went away but they always came back.

I was plunged into despondency. I felt there was no way I could summon up enough energy to get through each day.

The worrying part was that I was halfway through the annual Novel Writing Month and had undertaken to write 1700 words a day -- every day. Up till then I'd been right on schedule, but now I went 36 hours without typing a word.

There may be things you can still do with a heavy head cold, but writing fiction doesn't seem to be one of them.

And as students of Murphy's Law would know, this happened on the least convenient day of the week. I had to get up early because my sister Julie was driving our older sister Pauline to the eye clinic for a cataract operation. And I had an appointment that afternoon with my endocrinologist.

My doctor wasn't terribly happy that I hadn't improved at all, but he did listen to my complaints about being in constant ill-health. He wrote a couple of extra squiggles on the form for my blood test and said to make an appointment with the Diabetes Association for a consultation. He is planning to change my medication so I need to be tutored about the warning signs of the hypo.

*Sigh* I could have done without all this, but that's the way it happens sometimes.

It could have been worse. By Saturday night I had just about shaken off the symptoms without picking up any new ones. I'd even managed to just about catch up with my NaNoWriMo writing project, though it wasn't easy.

My sister's cataract operation went off without a hitch. That was good.

It was just a shame that in the middle of my ill-health I had to go to the office on Thursday afternoon. I felt so dreadful that I had to exert all my willpower to just get through my work.

My boss discovered after about an hour that he had his jumper on backwards. He asked if I'd noticed it and I was at a loss for what to say. It was difficult to explain that if I had noticed it, it was so low down on my list of priorities that my mind (running on emergency power) never got round to processing the information.

Surely the rest of November must be better!

my november novel

2007-10-31T11:52:00.000+11:00

Nothing to do with Halloween, but the last day of October is a worrying moment. For November is Nanowrimo month!

"NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is a creative writing project originating in the United States in which each participant attempts to write a 50,000 word novel in a single month. Despite the name, the project is now international in scope" states their Wikipedia entry.

If you've ever done a Creative Writing course, you'll find the idea of National Novel Writing Month a bit startling. For here the emphasis is on quantity not quality. Can you write a 50,000 word short novel in four weeks? That's about the length of a slim paperback novel. (Not one of those thick blockbusters you buy at the airport.)

The term "winner" is a bit misleading here - this isn't a contest and there aren't actually any prizes. Chris Baty of San Francisco started the whole thing in 1999 with 21 participants. From there, it's gone from strength to strength - nearly 80,000 participants registered in 2006, with almost 13,000 completing their novels (word total for all participants in 2006 was 982,564,701!)

Participants need to write an average of 1,667 words per day, which is about two and a half pages, single-spaced, in a 12 pt font. Now I am a trained touch typist and I could type that standing on my head. But actually creating a story as you type at that speed? That brings some of us out in a cold sweat.

I've taken part in it the last two years with mixed results. The first year I actually made it with a day to spare, which was just as well. I hadn't realised that different word-processors count words differently; my science fiction novel "Scorched by Darkness" was just under the 50,000 mark and I had to add a few more pages.

It was tiring but a satisfying experience.

The following year I ran into problems. I started off writing what I thought was a horror novel in the Stephen King mode and bogged down at the end of the first week because I was trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.

Eventually I decided what I was actually writing was a psychological thriller set in the television industry and it flowed along fairly well from there. Unfortunately I never made up the time I lost and in the end I missed the deadline by about two hours.

Nevertheless, I have a certain fondness for the resulting story "Carlton Marsden is dead"

So tomorrow I have to begin on my novel for this year. Two weeks ago I was worried about this, firstly because I didn't know if I was physically strong enough to do it, and secondly I didn't know what I was going to write about yet!

But the human mind is an amazing thing. Slowly the germ of a plot began to form and some characters came forward to volunteer. While I was shaving one morning I came up with the title - "Bernie Thompson's Unicorn is Missing" - and when I was walking the dog last night I thought of the whole first page.

And no, it's not a real unicorn. But it does play a vital part in the plot.

Wish me luck as I sit down at the keyboard at midnight tonight.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

gone north

2007-10-29T19:02:00.000+11:00

Last Saturday I got back from Bagdad in the late afternoon. Not Baghdad in Iraq. Bagdad the small town in central Tasmania.

My sister Julie had an invitation to go to the races up north that weekend, and she could get a lift with a friend of a friend if she could get to Bagdad.

It was a nice Spring day, so I didn't mind the drive. I wasn't quite so happy about my car -- the clutch is slipping and it doesn't like going uphill.

Usually we would have taken Julie's car and had mine repaired, but hers was already in dock. She was driving home one evening when the motor suddenly died and clouds of white smoke began billowing from the rear of the car.

Fortunately years of living in the modern world have given her the training to remedy this: she went on-line and bought a new engine.

But getting back to the trip north, I had to have a refresher course in looking after the animals. I ran through the mechanics of feeding the horse and the poultry morning and night, giving the dogs their dinner and keeping the cats happy.

"Every night, walk around the horse to check he doesn't have any injuries on his legs or flanks. Have a look at his eyes to make sure they're OK," she said. "And if one of the dogs dies, don't bury him till I get home."

I looked at her patiently. "How long are you going to be away? 36 hours? I'm sure everything will be all right."

Yin and Yang

2007-10-15T00:53:00.000+11:00

Presented for your inspection, two aspects of the modern persona.

Part the first. My older sister Pauline had an unexpected visitor. A tradesman doing some work on the hotel she had owned years ago turned up on her doorstep. He had found some old photographs of her husband that had slipped down behind a wall and recognized him. So he brought them round to her.

Part the second. Driving home from Pauline's the night she told me about this, I saw a car coming towards me on the main road. He started to turn to the left and I assumed he was turning into a side road. Then he turned right. Then left again. Faster than it takes to describe, he shot past me zig-zagging along the white line in the middle of the street. He was either an expert driver or stoned out of his brain.

Part the third. What do those two people mentioned above have in common. One did something good for no reason except that he thought he should. Another did something reckless with no regard for anybody else. It would be easy to say that one was "good" and the other was not.

But maybe it would be more accurate to say that both were human. We have in us the capacity to help or to hurt others. All of us, like a Yin/Yang symbol, contain elements of both dark and light.

The difference between us, perhaps, is that some of us are trying to move from the dark towards the light.

And some of us aren't.

Thoughts from a late-night laptop.

====================================================

If you like Red Skelton and/or black-and-white comedy thrillers this will suit you down to the ground. I first saw Whistling in the Dark 40 years ago and have finally located it on DVD. It was just as much fun this time. Directed by S. Sylvan Simon in 1941 with a screenplay written in part by Albert Mannheimer (producer Simon and screenwriter Mannheimer would later receive Oscar nominations for Born Yesterday in 1950).

The play it was based on opened on Broadway starring Edward Arnold and Claire Trevor on 19 January 1932 and had 265 performances.

Skelton plays Wally Benton, a radio broadcaster whose program 'The Fox' features himself in the title role as a crime solver. Conrad Veidt and some nefarious characters decide that ‘The Fox’ is just who they need to invent a perfect crime: a murder which will assist them in obtaining a one million dollar legacy. Ann Rutherford, Virginia Grey, and Rags Ragland play significant roles; Henry O'Neill and Eve Arden also appear.

To ensure The Fox's co-operation they also abduct his girlfriend Carol (Ann Rutherford) and his sponsor's daughter Fran (Virginia Grey).

One of the gang is sent to poison their target on an airliner while the dim-witted ex-boxer (Rags Ragland)is left to guard the trio. Wally, who actually is quite intelligent, works out that a severed phone line can be used in conjunction with a radio set to call for help.

With the help of his two lady friends, he calls in to his radio station and begins broadcasting the details of the crime in progress, including their kidnapping.
Rags is curious as to what they're doing but they convince him they're just pretending to broadcast as they do at that time every week and he good-naturedly goes along with it.

But, having been fooled by Orson Welles's "War of the Worlds" broadcast three years earlier, the local police chief thinks Wally's rantings are just another hoax!
Some of the early scenes also show how radio programmes were made in the early days: actors had to go on air live - twice, once for the East coast, and three hours later for the West coast. They performed, standing up, in front of a live audience. Sound effects men behind them watched for their cues, while the actors read from scripts.

This is all vastly entertaining -- the only way it could be improved is for Eve Arden to be given more screen time as Wally's agent instead of only appearing in the first reel.

Film expert William K. Everson commented "So many comedies of the '40s tend to date today, being so locked in to their period, but 'Whistling in the Dark' escapes that fate and remains an excellent comedy." From his notes for a 1989 Halloween double-feature for film fans
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/wke/notes.ht

The fire of 2007

2007-09-24T21:44:00.000+10:00

"Word gets around when it affects our memories."

The Myer department store has been an institution in the main street of Hobart since 1959. Two days ago, Saturday afternoon shoppers noticed a wisp of smoke coming from between the first and second floors.

Within hours, 15 fire trucks were battling to try and stop a fire that had engulfed the building. The column of smoke could be seen from both sides of the Derwent River. By the time night fell, the 19th century building was in ruins -- the worst fire in the history of central Hobart.

There were no casualties but I found this news very disturbing. Back in the 1960s I had grown up on the next block from Myer and had been past it or through the shop almost every day. The record rack in their basement supermarket had been my introduction to buying music (mono LPs for only $1-99).

Most people in the city would have similar feelings. It was like having a stake driven through the heart of the central business district.

The quote on the first line is from a text message my sister received from Madeleine on the mainland. We even received a similar SMS from Libby in France.

I haven't been in to see it for myself. I guess I have this silly feeling that as long as I don't see it with my own eyes, it's not real. If only....

{Interestingly, I read this wasn’t the first fire on that site - the building was first damaged by fire in 1858. It’s not even the first major department store fire on the block!. Fitzgeralds (now Harris Scarfe) in Collins Street was burned in 1911. And the Green Gate cafe burnt down on the same day in 1984 in the same street. Eerie.}

The scent of Spring

2007-09-21T23:40:00.000+10:00

You wouldn't think you could lose one of your five senses without noticing it, but that's what happened to me this winter.

One Saturday recently I emerged from the bathroom after a refreshing shower and noticed something was different. I took a deep breath and the air was full of unfamiliar scents -- not that there was anything unusual about them, it was just that I hadn't smelled them for some time.

It was quite distracting in fact. I walked around the house and the garden, constantly surprised by the aromas that surrounded me. I knew that I had been sneezing and snuffling all through the winter, but I hadn't been aware of the extent to which my olfactory senses had been dulled.
I suppose it must have happened so gradually that I just hadn't noticed it.

But now suddenly my sense of smell had been restored. Perhaps the steam from the shower had been the catalyst.

In any event, I was back to normal. Now all I had to do was get used to the barrage of scents and smells again. I felt like a colour-blind man who has suddenly been given the gift of normal vision -- it's nice, but it takes a while to absorb.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's not often you get a message from someone saying they're being held prisoner, but there's always a first time.

I'll let my sister explain...

An acquaintance, Jenny, had been discussing with me what to do with a broody chicken she had at her place. I said she could always pass her on to me. So the other day I got a message from her on my mobile phone to say she was ready to bring her over.
I sent back a text message to say that was fine -- I was at my brother's house in New Town whenever she wanted to come over. She sent back a message to say she was on her way.

So far so good, but Jenny forgot I'd said I was at my brother's house and drove straight to my place in Lenah Valley.

She got out of the car and walked out into the paddock, carrying the hen in a box with some straw. I wasn't in sight, so she kept walking.

Now my horse has a lot of admirers and he's used to visitors coming round with little treats for him. When he scented the straw in the box, he assumed Jenny had brought him a snack and started following her across the field.

She was a bit startled by this, and kept trying to move away, but he followed her till she reached the middle of the paddock, near the creek.

Unfortunately this was where the geese had made their nests. September is the season for laying eggs and they are very protective, goose and gander alike. Jenny got this far and couldn't go any further without a full-scale confrontation with the geese.

So she was trapped, not between "the devil and the dark blue sea", but between an inquisitive horse and the aggressive geese. She sent me a frantic text message; I realised what had happened and drove straight over there.

I arrived in minutes and looked out across the fields. "Jenny?" I called out, and a distant answer came back from the other side of the trees.

"Help ... !"

When I hurried down to rescue her, I saw she couldn't have ended up in a worse location. She had five laying geese around her in a semi-circle with her only exit blocked by a hungry horse. She really was trapped.

In the middle of all this my brother sent me a message asking where I was. I phoned him back, but it was difficult to keep a straight face while I described the situation.

I told Jenny I'd just let the dog out while I was there. "How are you with dogs?" I asked cautiously.

"Is he a big dog?" she said warily.

"Yessss, fairly big" I said (he's a Mastiff with maybe a bit of Great Dane).

"I'll stay here," she replied.

But it worked out all right. I took her over to my brother's house and made her a hot drink while we watched the chickens wandering about on his back lawn.

She seemed much calmer by the time she left.

into Spring?

2007-09-15T00:27:00.000+10:00

It's going to be an early Spring based on the readings available to me: the goose-o-meter, the wattle-o-graph and the Horse Hair Index.

The goose in my backyard started laying eggs early instead of waiting till September, and the Wattle tree in my garden was in bloom for Wattle Day for the first time in twenty years.

(Wattle Day began in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1838; in 1988 Acacia pycnantha was officially proclaimed the Australian floral emblem and four years later the first of September was proclaimed as Wattle Day.)

As for the Horse Hair Index - it's obvious to my sister whenever she puts the horse-rug on or off that he's losing his winter coat.

Personally I'm hoping that the end of winter will see the end of this persistent low-level infection that's kept me coughing and sneezing and has meant my Blood Glucose readings have consistently been around 12.5 instead of last summer's 6.8

I'm wondering what my endocrinologist will say when I see him next week.

a red moon

2007-08-31T23:47:00.000+10:00

As the Tasmanian winter draws to an end, my craving for citrus fruits has started to abate. I've eaten just about every sort I can get my hands on - oranges, mandarins, tangellos, kiwi fruit.... only grapefruit is off-limits, because it interferes with one of my medications.

I've still been drinking a lot of coffee though, and apparently I'm not alone. A survey released this week reveals that a lot of Australians are drinking more and more coffee. I can sympathise with that, though the guy who drinks seven cups a day every weekend is probably over-doing it.

The big event of the week was the lunar eclipse. The visibility was good from my back yard. It started a bit after 7:30pm (Eastern Australian Time) and soon the moon shadowed over. By about 8 o'clock it looked like Mars - pale orange with a bright white area visible at the top.
I was worried about clouds blocking our view, but it was windy and the clouds moved away to give us a good view from suburban Hobart.
About 9:30 I went out again and there was a brighter rim at the bottom, with a sort of smudge across the face of the moon.
It worked out better than I expected. I wouldn't have been surprised if the weather had closed in just at the vital moment.

Florida, so I read, leads the US in legislation about pirate radio. They have laws that empower authorities at the county level to investigate complaints about unauthorized broadcasters and shut them down. It literally takes years for the FCC to act (not its fault: it’s stuck with cumbersome procedures). The Palm Beach Post says a pirate operating from a tower owned by a plumbing company was interfering with a licensed Low Power FM owned by a nearby church. That led to a Wednesday morning raid and an arrest.

Speaking of radio, I usually listen to the Friday afternoon show on 92FM which features an hour of Theatre Organ music. If you've ever heard a Wurlitzer in full flight, this is the show for you. Go here - http://www.mediafire.com/?fznzfw15t0b

Viewing the PM

2007-08-10T15:15:00.000+10:00

The Prime Minister wants to speak to you. That's a hard one to ignore.

For the first time in Australia, a debate between the PM and the Opposition Leader was going to be streamed live over the Internet to churches around the nation. All we had to do was brave the wild winter weather to get to the church hall by 7 pm.

The only webcasts I've seen on my home computer were rather hit-and-miss affairs, so I settled in to my seat with some trepidation about what was to come.

Fortunately some members of our congregation are younger and more technically savvy than yours truly, so they were able to run a long cable from the office modem to their laptop and from there into the Data Projector. Once that was set up, all they had to do was project the live feed onto a screen at the end of the hall and it was just like being at the cinema.

The format was fairly simple. Each politician spoke for 20 minutes, then spent 15 minutes answering questions from church leaders gathered at the National Press Club in Canberra. There was a half hour break between the two men.
There was a lot similar about the two speeches. Each speech broke up into three parts - the valued place of our Christian heritage in the national fabric, the speaker's own faith, and the party political section.

In practice, PM John Howard had the easier run. Coming from the conservative side of politics, he had no compunctions about saying he was a believer and endorsing the role of the churches in national life. Being the incumbent, he was also able to announce Federal funding for the Net Alert project to keep Australian children safe on the Internet.

Kevin Rudd, the Leader of the Opposition, had to walk a finer tightrope. He praised the work of all religions in our tolerant multi-faith society and made vague noises about his personal religious faith, but of course coming from the left-wing he wasn't going to risk being quoted in the media as being a "god botherer" -- it certainly wouldn't have helped his standing with the tree-hugging Greens who think of Gaia rather than God when they contemplate the spiritual realm.

In the end, it was an interesting rather than involving evening. The polls may speculate about a Labor landslide, but I suspect it will take a lot to dislodge the canny Mr Howard from the PM's seat.

The webcast organised by the Australian Christian Lobby was beamed to about 900 churches all round the country. Quite an impressive achievement.

Weedy

2007-08-09T00:34:00.000+10:00

Not everything you want to know can be found on the Internet. My sister's horse has developed a problem with his hind legs and it was suggested it might be caused by the toxic plant Cape Weed. She scoured the web searching for a clear picture of it without success.

Finally she had to get out of her chair, walk into the next room and take down from the shelf the 1979 Reader's Digest book Illustrated Guide to Gardening. They had a nice clear sketch of the offending flora.

So we spent the afternoon going over the paddock, peering at every weed we saw. I don't think we saw any Cape Weed, but we think we saw a lot of Cat's Ear (which looks vaguely similar) and many seedlings that looked a lot like the Hawthorn tree I bought at the nursery last month.

The problem is that for a layman like me, all the weeds start to look alike after a few minutes of inspecting them. What I need is a nice clear Wanted poster depicting the weeds in question.

Or do I mean an "Unwanted" poster?

My Blood Glucose Level [BGL] reading hit an all-time high yesterday. Last summer it was around 6.9 or 7.5 most mornings, but since I've been snuffling my way through this winter it's been going up and up. Yesterday it hit 14.0 -- a personal best (or worst). I'm really hoping that it's going to start coming down as the temperature goes up.

Already we can see the days starting to lengthen perceptibly. It's no longer dark at 5 p.m. Can Spring be far away?

Not according to the Zelda, the goose who lives in my garden. She has already laid two eggs this week, something that she doesn't usually do until September.

Is it a S.A.D. season?

2007-07-25T23:52:00.000+10:00

Tasmania and Iceland have a lot in common, I've always thought (the small matter of volcanoes aside). I've often read things about SAD - Seasonal Affective Disorder, a mood disorder also known as winter depression or winter blues. Most SAD sufferers experience normal mental health throughout most of the year, but experience depressive symptoms in the winter.

(The Icelandic word is "skammdegisthunglyndi". "Skamm" means short, "degi" is day, "thung" is heavy and "lyndi" means mood ; it appeared in print as long ago as the late 1800's, according to Wikipedia.)

Being an Australian male, I usually have little time for these sorts of psycho-babble afflictions, but this winter has hit me harder than most. For one thing, it's the first really cold winter we've had since my diabetes was diagnosed. My doctor advised me to get a flu shot, but I came down with a virus before I could get it done.

Ever since then I've snuffled and sneezed my way through most days, groping my way out of bed each morning like a groundhog emerging from hibernation. During the afternoon I've started drinking three cups of coffee in a row, something I usually never do; it's as though my body is seeking extra energy from somewhere.

I was thinking about this on Sunday, which has been a particularly difficult day in recent weeks. I think this is because I'm sitting in my pew in church before I've even seen the sun. This is one of the classic SAD problems.

Probably things will improve when the days begin to lengthen. I certainly hope so.

#

It's twelve weeks since I became entangled with the bureaucracy of the Centrelink department. I've been through the job-seeker training sessions and the job interviews and all that and now it had come round to my return visit to Centrelink.

I won't pretend I wasn't nervous. I had a folder with all the papers I might possibly need and I spent the last 24 hours doing everything I could to prepare.

Then when I was standing in line at their office, all the possible excuses and explanations that had been running through my head were just too much. I switched into job-seeker mode, following the job-seeking videos they kept showing me. Be attentive and responsive, but don't talk too much or volunteer information.

I wasn't even thrown off track by the fact that the woman who was interviewing me had some sort of Continental accent and was very softly spoken. She whispered her way through the interview and I sat there and watched her black-painted fingernails wander around the desk and her keyboard.

She tapped away at the computer and then told me in a murmur she didn't need any more information.

Her lips moved again. " " she said.

"Pardon?"

"One hundred and fifty" she whispered softly.

"I'm sorry? What about it?"

"$150. That's how much we'll pay into your bank account tomorrow."

"Oh. Right." I picked up my little booklet. "I've filled my Job Seeker Diary. Do I need to get another one?"

"No," she mouthed almost silently and I left, carrying the folder of documents which I hadn't even opened while I'd been in the office.

It was an odd sort of experience, but not as unsettling as I had been expecting.

I remember a saying that my father was fond of. "We can't change the past and the future doesn't belong to us." I guess he was right: today is the only day that we can do anything about.

2007-07-09T23:50:00.000+10:00

Let our motto be "No Left Turns!"

If you drive a 30-year-old car you must expect a few quirks and difficulties. Lately my old Toyota has developed a new problem, namely that whenever I turn left the right hand door flies open. (I think the doors both need re-hanging.)

The last few weeks I've become pretty good at driving with one hand while holding the door closed with the other. It's not too hard, but I don't think it really adds to the standard of my driving.

It has had one good result though. I usually drive whenever I'm going anywhere with my sister Julie, but lately she's been quick to say "Let's take my car" whenever we are going out.

Can't blame her I guess -- it must be a bit nerve-wracking sitting in the passenger seat watching the door on the other side opening and closing every time we make a left-hand turn.

But I am glad last week is over. Apart from the two days I spent at the office, there were two quiz nights, a wedding and a visit to relations. By the time we got to Monday, I was glad to be free to just call in for coffee at Café 73, buy a few things in Moonah and drive in to North Hobart to see some pictures at one of the galleries, visit the organic produce shop and pick up something to eat at Praties.

Probably also something to do with the fact I haven't had a holiday for twenty years. The level on my psychic energy must be hovering down in the lower end of the meter.

Unlike my Blood Glucose Level I'm afraid. It's been going up steadily for the last month, meaning I've left it too late to get a flu shot for this winter. Before that I was around 6.9 or 7.5 most of the time, now I'm up around 10.0 and 11.0 (in fact after over indulging at the wedding reception I hit 13.0 for the first time I can remember -- but that was a one-off.)

This has also been the coldest winter we've had for years in Tasmania. Julie pulled out of storage her warmest overcoat, a stylish blend of wool and cashmere; she's owned it for years but it's never been cold enough to wear it before. She is less pleased about the conditions on her property: "It was muddy before, but now it feels like someone brought in a truckload of mud and dumped it on top of what was already there."

The last few years I've taken up reading again two British comics that were childhood favourites, 'The Beano' and 'The Dandy'. Not all of it is as much fun as when I was 10, but it makes for an entertaining few minutes before I go to sleep each night (I used to read novels in bed, but I need new glasses). However lately their publishers have been having a fad for sticking free gifts to the front cover and this is a bit annoying: it's difficult to detach them from the covers without causing damage (they use tape rather than the stuff they use for attaching CDs to computer magazines!) and in some cases a heavier-than-usual toy almost destroys the magazine during the long sea voyage from Dundee to Tasmania. Enough already, guys.

But I am enjoying the new series of 'Doctor Who' on ABC television. David Tennant does a good job of capturing the manic energy that has always been a part of The Doctor and his sadness at missing his previous sidekick Rose is a quite believable sub-plot.

I haven't yet seen the spin-off 'Torchwood'. Robin Johnson phoned me last week to warn me it started on digital television that night but I said that I wouldn't be watching as it was too much trouble to plug in the set-top box. He was a little surprised; maybe I should have explained further that the set-top box is surrounded by chickens, making it a little difficult to get at.

I'll just have to wait till it comes out as a DVD or makes it to free-to-air television.

midwinter blues

2007-07-03T23:46:00.000+10:00

Frank Muir and Denis Norden usually join me for lunch on Fridays. Their long-running show MY WORD used to be a staple on ABC radio when I was growing up but for some reason it's now rarely heard in Britain or Australia.

However it's still a regular feature on American public radio, and KIPO Honolulu streams it at a convenient time for me to enjoy the show while eating lunch on Friday.

If you haven't heard it, I recommend keeping an ear out for it. For more information, try this link: http://jrabold.net/radio/index.htm

I haven't posted much this last couple of weeks. I feel so tired all the time -- maybe I'm coming down with another virus. Certainly my BGL (Blood glucose level) readings suggest something is up. A month ago it was down around 8.0 most of the time, but it's been going up steadily and is now hovering around 11.5

Things at the office have been a little difficult equipment-wise this month too. The modem packed up for a few days, but a replacement arrived yesterday. And the photocopier repairman swears that he has now received the part he's been missing to fix our copier.

But the HP printer/scanner is being a nuisance: to make it work properly I have to turn it upside down and shake it before using it. Not ideal.

winter ahead

2007-06-18T21:11:00.000+10:00

I think "capricious" is the word I'm looking for to describe the current climate in Tasmania. Last Saturday my two sisters took me to lunch at the Waterfront Hotel in Bellerive, looking out over the marina. It was a pleasant sight, staring out over the yachts and the blue sky while we ate.

The following morning there was frost on the lawn when we left for church. By Tuesday there I could see snow up on the mountain when I stepped out the front door to bring in the daily paper.

Quite a shock after the "indian summer" we had in May. It's still a few days to the winter solstice but the cold is becoming a part of daily life. I've taken to wearing gloves if I go outside at night, and taking Gingko tablets to ward off chilblains.

Last night it went down to zero (32 degrees in the old Fahrenheit scale) -- I felt so cold I went to bed fully dressed and just pulled the blankets over myself till I warmed up.

At least I don't have to be up at sunrise anymore to attend the Job Centre. I had a second interview there and they explained that I've now graduated to a slightly different classification. I now have to show that I've applied for 4 jobs every week instead of 5, but I still have to keep track of my hours so they can tell when I've put in a hundred hours of job-seeking.

I won't say the extra money doesn't come in handy -- I can now just about make ends meet. Just as well I don't have expensive tastes though.

I've never had much luck using i-Tunes. Twice I've tried it out and both times I ended up uninstalling it. I just couldn't get the hang of using it.

But I have found a substitute that seems easier to use. Podcast Alley's website has a lot of the same radio shows available for download and is a lot simpler for me to use.
http://www.podcastalley.com/index.php

For example I can now easily download the Big Broadcast -- five hours of vintage radio comedy, drama and music produced and hosted by the award-winning team of Mark Magistrelli and Mike Martini. It can be heard live on Public Radio Station WMKV 89.3 FM in Cincinnati, Ohio on Saturdays from 7 PM - 11 PM (EST/DST) or streamed on the web at www.wmkvfm.org.

I was the midnight arborist

2007-06-05T23:46:00.000+10:00

The weather gods play pranks on us at times. One windy night last week I drove my sister back to her house and I took her dog for a walk before I went home. As we turned for home the moonlight fell on her neighbour's driveway.

"Oh oh," I thought. "What's that big leafy mass down there?" Part of a tree had fallen from my sister's property onto the driveway downhill of her house.

So we gathered up a saw and a flashlight and started work. One of us would saw for a bit while the other held the light, then we'd change places.

It didn't actually take as long as I'd feared. I wondered if we'd find a really big branch in the middle, but it wasn't as bad as that. In less than half an hour we'd cut through the branches and dragged them out of the way.

The funny part is that my sister's neighbour may not have even noticed when he came out to drive off the next day. He might think to himself that those branches looked different, or wonder what that pile of debris was by the sidewalk.

But he probably would not suspect that two people had been out in the moonlight playing lumberjack so he could get to work on time in the morning.

I wasn't sorry when they told me on Friday at the Job Centre that I didn't need to come in every day from now on. "This concludes the formal part of the course," they said. I was diplomatic in my response.

What actually went through my mind was that I no longer had to get up at sunrise in the Tasmanian winter. That could only be a good thing.

I've been so tired the last three weeks that it wasn't funny. The size of the sleep debt I've been building up must be massive. The occasional nap before dinner just wasn't helping.

From now on I'm supposed to seek employment under my own steam. I don't see it will make a lot of difference to the results.

My only shot at a job interview seems to have come to naught. I suspect that they looked at the date of birth and said "We wanted someone mature, not halfway to senility."

Melbourne radio station 3AW has celebrated 75 years on air with the launch of a book about the station's history. Margaret Campion, the author, said 3AW is Melbourne — 75 years of Radio began as an essay for a history assignment at TAFE. "I heard on radio there wasn't a history of 3AW," she said, "so I wrote one."

3AW remains the most-listened-to station in Melbourne despite a recent fall in ratings (especially among older listeners for some reason). The Australian recently commented that "The music-led recovery has failed to eventuate for
commercial FM radio stations in the latest radio ratings
survey, as talk stations in Melbourne (3AW), Sydney (2GB)
and Adelaide (5AA) continue to lead their markets."

Personally I can't remember the last time I listened to a commercial music station. Oh yes, I do recall it now -- it was the time there was a power failure at the transmitters and all the ABC stations went off the air.

on the air

2007-06-01T23:16:00.000+10:00

On another site, someone asked if there was a list of stations that you can pick up that still play the old time radio shows.

These are the ones that I know about.

http://www.wamu.org/programs/bb/

http://www.nostalgiadigest.com/Those%20Were%20The%20Days.htm

http://www.wrvo.fm/playhouse.html

http://www.wpr.org/webcasting/ideas_audioarchives.cfm?Code=otr

http://www.wmkvfm.org/#

And of course there are also

http://www.radiospirits.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/

sleep no more

2007-05-27T23:55:00.000+10:00

Monday I fronted up to the Job Net office for a short interview. This wasn't a job interview, it was an interview about a job, if you see the difference. Basically they wanted to see me so they knew whether or not to recommend me to their client.

I wore a clean white shirt, black trousers and a conservative tie. I probably looked like a supermarket manager.

At least I wasn't nervous - I seemed to have a little man in the back of my head ticking off all the things that they'd taught me about job interviews. Make eye contact (but don't stare). Don't give "yes" or "no" answers (but don't talk too much either). Sit up straight and pay attention (but don't look too stiff).

All those videos they showed us must have done some good, since the interviewer seemed to be impressed (she told me I had "a wealth of experience") and said she'd recommend me for an interview.

We shall see.

Wow I've been tired this month. And it doesn't take much to work out why. Having to get up at dawn to make it to the Job Centre course, I'm losing two hours sleep three times a week. That's the equivalent of a night's sleep every week.

Maybe I can take a nap before or after dinner every night. It would go some way to make up for it.

As it is, I'm only semi-conscious by the end of the day. Forget the random breath-testing, they should stop drivers and give them random sleep tests.

My sister is running out of stuff to read. This is no problem for her - she just waits for me to bring over a new lot of books.

I've tried taking her into book-shops to browse, but she just waves a hand and says "You know what I like." So another one of my unpaid jobs is family literary consultant (I used to do the same thing for my mother, who had similar but slightly different tastes in novels).

Maybe I'll trawl through the attic this week. There are several thousands books up there, of all ages, types and subjects. There are a lot of pre-war whodunits, which are a particular favourite of my sister, so I shouldn't have too much trouble in making up a bundle.

What a mixed bag the local weather has been this month. Just a few weeks ago, light winds and almost stationary cold fronts saw the city blanketed with fog. This week we've had unseasonally warm weather, and next Wednesday the Met Office is saying we may get highland snowfalls.

If I do end up getting a job out of all this, it's going to be hard to know what to wear for the day when I leave the house in the morning. (Yes, I know nearly everybody has that problem, but over the years I've never had to do much commuting so it's all pretty new to me.)

Last Sunday night I was listening to the Stained Glass Bluegrass music show on the web-site of WAMU Washington DC. Since they gave out their e-mail address several times, I fired off a note to them while I was listening.

About half an hour later, the deep-voiced compere announced that they'd had an e-mail from Michael in Tasmania, where it was almost midnight. (This must have surprised his listeners who were just sitting down to breakfast, but it was actually more to do with Time Zones than time-travel.)

The era of instant communication still amazes me. To think that I can tap a few keys on my laptop and only minutes later hear my words being read out live on a radio station in America.... that's mind-boggling to somebody who grew up in a decade in which sending a message to America required an airmail stamp and ten days of time.

Call me Rev

2007-05-19T23:49:00.000+10:00

Powerpoint presentations in church in place of the sermon are something I'm not used to yet. We had quite a reasonable talk with all that stuff flashed up on the wall, but I couldn't help feeling that it was a gesture to the modern attitude that you have to have something to look at while you listen.

I suspect that this would make it difficult to interest the younger generation in the art of the radio play where you have absolutely nothing to distract the eye.

At least it kept people's minds off the fact that the church bulletin was in a right old mess this week. Between ill-health and some disturbing news, none of us had been 100% on that day and I had managed to reverse the details of the morning and evening services.

This led to a flurry of e-mails with corrections and corrections of corrections. I hate to think how many electrons were sacrificed in this cause.

I'm into my second week at the Job Centre and I'm beginning to get the hang of it. I'm glad that I didn't have to go through all this when I was the age that some of these job-seekers are.

Next week I have to go and see one of the other employment services. It's not a job interview, but it's an interview about a job if you get the difference. I presume the middleman wants to see if I'm worth recommending to their client.

When was the last time I had to go to a job interview? I think it would have been 1988 -- when I was probably a little more presentable than I am today. Older, heavier, less healthy.

Well, it will be interesting anyway.

But if my financial and medical status is below average, at least my spiritual standing has received a boost. Yes, thanks to clicking on that button on their web-site, I am now a duly ordained minister of the Universal Life Church (head office: Modesto California -- where else?).

I trust that my fellow citizens will treat me with the deference my new status is deserving of.

It might be best if you didn't mention this to any of the people at my church. I'm not sure they'd understand.....

I've go to admit that episode 4 of the TV show Primeval was quite amazing. The dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures in previous episodes looked convincing, but we've become used to that in this age of computer animation. But the scenes where the escaping dodos were running around while the heroes tried to capture them was mind-boggling.

Top marks to the special effects wizards. It looked completely real, though we knew intellectually that it couldn't possibly be happening.

In the modern world, I'm afraid seeing isn't believing!

schooled for work

2007-05-10T23:47:00.000+10:00

I won't pretend it wasn't unsettling to find myself at a job training centre at my time of life. My only past experience with employment services was hiring people from them. Now I found myself in a room with a gaggle of other clients, most of them young enough to be my grandchildren.

I find it a bit hard to explain why I felt so uncomfortable. Certainly I was outside my comfort zone -- it felt a little like being back in school, with elements of an airport waiting lounge.

One of the problems was that the class was full of all sorts of people. Some old, some young, some experienced, some newcomers. The staff weren't able to tailor their lessons to any particular level and it was difficult to work out what we were supposed to be doing.

I ended up getting most of my information from one of the older women (OK, she was probably a couple of years younger than me). She explained how things worked and showed me how to log on to the Jobsearch website, even though she'd never used a computer herself until a week ago.

She was unimpressed by the mixing of ages in the same class. "Some of us are here because we want to be here, some of us are only here because they have to be. And some of the girls...well, just let's say my daughter seems like a little angel in comparison!"

I was sorry she was leaving the next day for a job in the northern suburbs. She was a real help to me.

Six hours seemed like a long time inside that place. Staring at computer screens filled with lists of jobs, poring over pages photocopied from the newspaper classified ads, watching videos of how to behave at interviews.

I was getting a headache by the end of my first day. It didn't help that about three days beforehand I'd come down with my first head cold of the year. On Sunday, I could swear that every time I tilted my head I could sense fluid sloshing around inside my skull. Sleeping was difficult too, which doesn't help when you need to get up at dawn. In short, I wasn't at my best.

The weird part about it all is that I still get to go to my regular job two days a week -- then the other three days a week I have to make like I'm looking for work. The ways of bureaucracy can be strange.

One week down, three weeks to go.

#

Last Friday night the Moonah Arts Centre presented an evening guaranteed to please the nostalgic. "Broadway: Strangers in Paradise" was put on by soprano Charlotte McKercher and tenor Michael Kregor accompanied by pianist Shirley Trembath.

The songs they chose were a mix of the familiar and the obscure. They began with songs from South Pacific and My Fair Lady, and ended with Show Boat and Kismet.

In between we heard Kurt Weill songs from Lady In The Dark and Street Scene, a bracket of Stephen Sondheim songs from the 1970s and songs from musicals we'd never heard of like Jekyll And Hyde, The Secret Garden, Wonderful Town and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Great stuff - even the Sondheim songs were good and you may have noticed I'm not a fan.

#

The mice are still a problem in the house. One evening
recently I was walking past the sitting room and from out in the hall I could hear a ferocious gnawing sound. A few minutes searching and I discovered an Easter egg forgotten from years ago. The mouse's attempts to get through the cardboard and plastic surrounding it had resulted in an unbelievable amount of noise for such a tiny rodent.

#

Old Time Radio shows that I've listened to this week:
Abbott & Costello, The Whistler, Words at War, Fibber McGee & Molly, Jack Benny, The Falcon, X Minus One, Dragnet, Bill Stern's Sports Newsreel and Sherlock Holmes.

Signs of the times

2007-05-08T17:13:00.000+10:00

consternation by moonlight

2007-05-05T19:51:00.000+10:00

The full moon shines down on all of us, on the personal tragedies and the small triumphs of everyday life.

Wednesday morning it took us a couple of hours to bury one of Julie's dogs. Tai succumbed to an unsuspected tumour and it was little consolation to hear the vet say she'd never seen a Shar Pei live to that age before.

In the afternoon I had an appointment at that big federal office building in Collins Street. I've stayed out of the welfare system ever since I stopped receiving the Carer Allowance, but now I was putting my toe into the waters of the unemployment system.

They told me they would pay me some money each fortnight -- not a fortune but more than I expected -- and I would also receive a Healthcare card. That would certainly be welcome; it would cut out most of the charges for my medication.

But there's no such thing as a free lunch. Not only did I get a little Job Seeker Diary, but on Friday I had to see the Steps Employment Service. This was a further step into the system: they said I'd be doing a training course on how to look for work, five days a week for three weeks.

"It takes three weeks to learn that?" I said and they nodded. So I guess I'll just have to get used to the new routine.

It seems there's no such thing as being slightly unemployed, any more than being slightly pregnant. You're either in the system or out of it. And it looks like I'll be in it from now on. Stay tuned for more news.

The television show Primeval made its first appearance on Australian TV on Saturday night. It's not that great a show (although I would have loved it when I was 14!) but what intrigued me was the scheduling of it.

You see, the Nine Network has had a perfectly shocking record when it comes to screening science-fiction in recent years. Brand new episodes of Star Trek were routinely screened at 1 o'clock in the morning some years.

It will be interesting to see if they persist with it. Their demographic usually skews to the older end of the graph but after all it is Saturday night.

London Rhythm is heard on Fridays at 9 p.m. and Sundays at 9 a.m. (that's Cincinatti time so the Friday evening show is heard just before lunch here in Australia). I always enjoy tuning in over the Internet on http://www.wmkvfm.org

Alan and Judy Seeger, always fans of the Big Bands, began collecting vintage recordings of London dance bands and West-End stars in the 1960s when they were in England making television featurettes. Their collection of classic British recordings was the starting point of their WMKV radio program, London Rhythm.

The show features Pre-Beatles pop music from the English Music Hall to the TV age with emphasis on the great London Dance bands of the ‘30s and ‘40s.

The Seegers have lived in New York City for more than 40 years where they produced and/or directed over 400 films and television programs.

About WMKV

The latest article on blogs

Another year??

2007-04-27T14:24:00.000+10:00

If I'm typing a little slower than my last post, it's probably because I'm a year older than I was last time. Wednesday I celebrated the 36th anniversary of my 21st birthday, if that's the word I'm looking for.

Even the cat gave me a break for once and let me sleep in for a few minutes without insisting I get up and feed him at the crack of dawn.

That evening we went out for dinner at the Mexican restaurant on the waterfront. I was joined by ten friends and/or relatives who toasted my health. I had my first Margarita, which my dictionary describes as "a cocktail made of tequila and triple sec with lime and lemon juice". Madeleine tasted hers and said it tasted just like a soft drink; yes, I said warily, a couple of those and we'll find you under the table moaning that your lips have gone numb.

I scored the usual round-up of gifts -- a CD from my favourite radio show, the DVD of a movie I missed on television last week, a bottle of French wine (from Caroline, natch), some home-made biscuits, some tomato relish and a new science-fiction paperback. The last came from Steve, who made a point of mentioning it came from K-Mart; I thought at first he was expecting kudos for his frugality but he actually meant it was an unusual place to find cutting-edge fiction.

Overall it was an enjoyable enough birthday, though if I had my druthers what I'd actually have liked as a present was an extra hour of sleep every night.

It never ceases to amaze me what you can find on the Internet. My newish hobby of collecting old radio shows has gone from strength to strength as I have discovered whole networks of fellow aficionados of this form of entertainment.

In the beginning I started out buying things over the net, but now I have but to ask "Does anyone have a copy of Jack Benny for May 4th 1948?" and somebody will instantly respond with "Sure, I've got a nice clear copy of that; I'll send it across to you tonight." No money changes hands - merely a combination of barter and sheer goodwill.

This is the way that the Internet was supposed to work before the Spam merchants and the sexploitation tycoons moved into cyberspace.

Speaking of IT, it was amusing to notice the chain of events when my boss wanted some letters sent out urgently last week. He wrote them out at home by hand, then scanned them into his computer. Turning them into a PDF file, he e-mailed them to the office, where I printed them out and typed the resulting manuscript to be printed out on our official letterhead so they would be ready for signing when he reached the office.

It worked, but it did seem to me that there must be a shorter way of doing this somehow!

The mouse problem continues. We have two traps in operation and have now captured and released 35 little rodents. I have been taking them down to the railway bridge and releasing them there, so if you see a news item about rail services to the northern suburbs being delayed by a plague of mice on the tracks, don't say anything.

It's reaching the point where the first thing you do in the morning is switch on the kettle, fetch the newspaper in and check the traps for little visitors. They are very small mice -- "tiny" would not be overstating it -- and while I can't bring myself to poison them wholesale I am not happy about the damage they do to anything edible we forget to lock up.

I haven't been game to ask the neighbours if they are suffering similar problems. If they are, that's one thing, but if they aren't then they may look at me askance, wondering what unhygenic conditions prevail in my household.

south by southwest

2007-04-20T00:00:00.000+10:00

I threw a tantrum last week that would have done credit to a two-year-old. It was just too much to bear.

With the mouse problem in my place this summer, we've spent weeks using a humane mousetrap to catch and release dozens of mice. They've eaten every piece of chocolate in the house and I have to lock up the bread before I go to bed every night.

So you can imagine how I felt when I discovered my cat had a new hobby: catching mice outside and bringing them into the house alive!

I lost it completely. I ranted and raved while he looked unruffled.

Finally I levelled a finger at him and bellowed "That's it. You're fired!"

The cat yawned.

One saturday recently we took a family trip down the Huon and drove down to Cygnet.

The Cygnet area was first explored by Bruni D'Entrecasteaux who sailed up the Huon River in 1793 and named the narrow bay Port des Cygnes (the Port of Swans) because of the large number of swans he observed in the area.

The first European settlers arrived in 1834. In 1836 orchards were planted and by 1840 Port Cygnet (as it was known at the time) was surveyed and land blocks and streets were laid out. My ancestors arrived there in 1851 and prospered in the apple industry.

We ate lunch in the hotel that my great-grandfather had owned; there's a framed photograph of him in the back bar. Julie was impressed that she got ten different vegetables with the roast. Then we drove around the town while my cousin Winnie told us stories about her childhood. Stopped to photograph the little school where my father was educated during World War I.

Just out of town was the little farmhouse that used to be our family's home. It looks smaller than when I first saw it as a five-year-old, but that's not unusual. The property feels very different because it's no longer surrounded by apple orchards, but it was good to see the house looks smart and well cared for.

There are oak trees just next door, and Julie stopped and filled her pockets with acorns even though I don't think she'll live long enough to grow an oak tree from scratch.

We had an appointment to see local historian John Dance. He has a house full of memorabilia including a couple of photographs of my grandfather that we hadn't seen before. A few questions produced the unsurprising news that he was in fact a cousin by marriage.

Julie's genealogical research seems to be providing us with a never-ending supply of new cousins. So far two of her oldest friends have turned out to be distant cousins. I guess that isn't surprising on an island like Tasmania -- Iceland has a similar set of circumstances.

The drive there and back was enjoyable. The wooded hills looked as though they had changed little since my grandparents lived there. It didn't take much imagination to picture them making their way through the orchards and down Slab Road to the village of Cygnet, a long way from Hobart on those twisty 19th century roads.

Collecting old radio shows in the Internet era means you can graze freely through all genres and levels of entertainment, from the most banal comedy to the most engrossing drama.

Even different episodes of the same programme can be notably different.

Take for example episode #152 of DRAGNET 52-05-08 "The big gamble" -- in this one detectives Friday and Lockwood are on the case when a cop is shot during a raid on a gambling club.

Observe the three act structure marked by three differing styles of dialogue - first the detectives are shown in a low-key, almost sympathetic conversation with an informant.

Then after the shooting, the interrogation of a suspect is conducted at a sharp staccato pace, the words being shot out like bullets from a machine gun.

Finally the confrontation with the man whose negligence caused the shooting -- outwardly polite but their words practically drip with disdain.

Much imitated and often the subject of parodies, this is still a show that repays listening.

into April

2007-04-12T00:13:00.000+10:00

Easter Tuesday there was a narrow window on ABC radio between the end of the cricket overnight and the start of the afternoon football broadcast. Tim Cox's morning show took the opportunity to throw away the playlist and have some fun with their music.

I don't think I've ever heard Cole Porter's "Let's Do It" sung by Louis Armstrong with the Oscar Peterson Trio till that morning. And when one listener requested a Johnny Mathis ballad "The Twelfth of Never", Tim found it on his producer's i-Pod!

Along with a re-run of their visit from talented Canadian vocalist Serena Ryder, it made for some entertaining radio.

The Wine List for last month:

De Bortoli Sacred Hill Traminer Riesling 2006

spicy fragrant Traminer blended with fresh citrus Riesling to make this pleasant medium-sweet wine

De Bortoli Sacred Hill Rosé 2005

raspberry fruit flavours with a crisp finish, a medium bodied wine for all occasions

McWilliams Inheritance Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2006

blend displaying floral and herbaceous aromas with hints of lychee, displaying ripe peach character and a crisp finish

Jabiru Classic White 2005

blend of Colombard, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc from fruit grown in the Adelaide Hills region of the state of South Australia

Warraroong Estate Long Lunch White Wine 2005

blend of estate grown grapes from the Hunter Valley producing a light easy drinking wine with a fruit driven palate

Red Poppy Vineyard Riesling 2006

classic Riesling with touches of lemon, lime and citrus blossom from South Australia

Snowy Vineyard Snow Bruska 2005

soft red from Australia's coldest climate winery

De Bortoli Sacred Hill Semillon Chardonnay 2006

blend of mature Semillon and ripe melon Chardonnay has soft oak character and rich dry finish

Have you heard Tasmania's seas are three degrees warmer than usual -- oceanographers are saying it is a good time to go swimming.

Waters on Tasmania's east coast are the warmest they have been for this time of year since daily records began 14 years ago.

CSIRO oceanographer David Griffin says satellite images show the east Australian current is travelling further south than usual, bringing the warm water with it.

Researchers also want biological evidence of the warming and are keen to hear from any beachcombers who find unusual species washed up. (Sounds just like the first reel of an old horror movie doesn't it?)

quizzed by the under-13s

2007-04-05T23:47:00.000+10:00

Equine misadventures continue. Julie was still tending the wounds from where Shadow fell off the bridge, when she got a phone call from one of the neighbours.

I'm going away for a couple of days, he said, but I thought I'd better let you know that your horse's eye is all swollen up. Aaaaagh.

We went over and examined him. He must have run into a branch or something, we thought. Julie had a bottle of saline solution that she thought might be useful for washing out the eye.

The horse didn't think much of this and it took us a while to work out that he was much happier if we took some warm salty water and bathed his eye. It makes sense -- would you like it if somebody sneaked up on you and squirted cold water into your eye?

After a few days the eye looked a lot better. Julie sent a text message to her neighbour to let him know that things were going OK.

I hope it's not true that things come in threes. Two mishaps like this are enough.

Meanwhile we were out at the monthly quiz night run by the Irish Association. The content of the quiz depends on who is setting the questions, and we've found in the past that the younger the quizmaster the worse for us old codgers.

You can imagine our feelings when we saw the two girls who were in charge of the questions. One of them looked about 12 years old (though I guess she must have been older than she looked). The second of the eight categories was The Wiggles!

After the first couple of rounds we were trailing the field. I think we were next to last.

You get to choose what you think will be your best category and play your Joker, meaning you get double points for that round. We looked at the list and went for Capitals And Cities, figuring that good old-fashioned geography might be safest. And in fact the Amnesiacs (our team name) didn't do too badly.

The night went on and one of our team went up to examine the scores on the blackboard. She came back and said we were equal second.

"What??" I said in disbelief.

"We're equal second," she repeated and everybody's jaw dropped. Had we really gone from second-last to second place? It seemed impossible.

After the last round, the figures were added up and we were tied for first place with a team of young women who called themselves The Beach Girls.

The organizers went for the tie-break questions. These turned out to be all sports related, which would have scuttled my chances but we did have one sports expert on the team.

One question. Both teams got it right. A second question. Both teams scored again. A third question. Both teams had the right answer, but our expert Caroline gave such a detailed answer that they declared us the winners.

Incredible. Somehow we had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. The Beach Girls took their defeat in good part, declaring "Next time you're going down for sure!"

I couldn't believe it.

It just goes to show the truth of Winston Churchill's speech which said "There are three things to remember. Never give up. Never give up. Never give up."

doctor doctor give me the news

2007-03-28T22:55:00.000+10:00

The new coffee machine was a good omen I thought. I arrived at the hospital and found they'd finally replaced the machine they used to have in the old hospital.

It was pretty elaborate. If Doctor Who had a dalek barista, this is what it would have looked like.

A two-dollar cappuccino helped settled my nerves while I waited to see the endocrinologist.

What was I going to say to the doctor? I had made up and discarded a dozen excuses over the last week. It was obvious that I couldn't live up to the promises I made last time about improving my lifestyle and controlling my diabetes.

But when I got into his office I was stunned. He opened his folder and ran down the list of test results -- each was either "normal" or "improved."

"If you continue to make this sort of progress, I'll have to think about reducing your medication" he said cheerfully.

"I'm speechless" I replied. I honestly never dreamed that I'd have such a result. Even good news can be a shock when it's that unexpected.

"Pride is said to be the last vice the good man gets clear of." - Benjamin Franklin.

I was reading recently about Ben Franklin, who once embarked on a plan to achieve moral perfection, only to discover this was "a task of more difficulty than I had imagined."

He drew up a list of 13 virtues as follows:
temperance
silence
order
resolution
frugality
industry
sincerity
justice
moderation
cleanliness
tranquillity
chastity
humility

The interesting thing is that originally he had only put twelve virtues on the list, but a candid friend pointed out that Franklin was often overbearing in debate and conversation.

Franklin added humility to his list and did his best to remove words like "undoubtedly" from his vocabulary. He avoided contradicting people even when he knew they were wrong.

As a result, he found people were more receptive to his ideas and he became known for his tact and diplomacy.

Maybe there's a lesson here for us. We've often heard that "low self-esteem" is a problem, but the opposite extreme can be just as undesirable. We all know persons who are difficult to hold a conversation with because they are sure they're right and are only too willing to explain why at length.

Whenever I can, I try not to come out and tell people that they're wrong. If I think they are I'll say "I'm surprised to hear that." If I'm certain of it, I'll say "I'm very surprised to hear that." Let those that have ears hear, as the good book says.

Perhaps we should all take a leaf from Franklin's book. Resolve to be a little less dogmatic and a little more diplomatic. It might make the world a bit more pleasant for all of us.

hold that horse!

2007-03-12T12:37:00.000+11:00

Unexpected midnight adventures can sometimes result from horse ownership. Just ask my sister Julie.

Monday night we'd been out to the monthly quiz night run by the Irish Association at the New Sydney Hotel. We'd finished second in line for the silver medal category, but it had been an entertaining evening as usual.

So there we were at Julie's house. I was playing with her cats while she got ready to give the livestock their late-night feed. Then over the sound of the radio, there was a loud noise from outside. "What was that?" we said and looked at each other.

We only discovered after Julie went outside that her walnut tree had unexpectedly toppled over in the lower paddock. And Shadow, her horse, was nowhere to be seen.

It took us quite a while wandering about the paddock in the dark with very small flashlights to find him standing by the fence in the upper paddock, completely silent and motionless. A bit of a change from his usual outgoing and demonstrative manner.

Apparently he had been standing down by the footbridge when the tree toppled over and he got such a shock that he spun around, slipped off the bridge and scraped his shin scrambling out of the creek. By the light of our torches we could just make out some nasty looking abrasions, but the blood seemed to be just weeping slowly as it ran down his legs.

Julie fetched the headstall and fitted it onto his head. She handed me the rope and told me to hold on to him while she fetched her First Aid supplies.

So there I am standing out in the paddock in the moonlight, hanging on to a large nervous ex-racehorse. I hoped for two things -- that Julie wouldn't be too long and that Shadow wouldn't take fright at anything.

At least everything was quiet. Standing there at the top of the paddock we looked down to the house and off in the distance the road. All the homes were dark and quiet, the neighbours unaware of our activities. At least I hoped they were -- anybody seeing our lights bobbing around aimlessly in the darkness might have been tempted to phone in a UFO report.

Julie returned and we led him over to the shed so we could see a little better. "Hold him ... if you can. Let go if you need to." said Julie warily as she picked up a bucket of water.

I watched as she threw the water over the wounds. The horse's head went up as the bucket of water hit him and he jumped sideways a step. Julie made soothing noises and he eventually decided nothing nasty was happening.

Julie looked over at me and said "That was all right. I wasn't sure about giving him to you to hang onto, but I couldn't pass on ten years of experience with horses in ten minutes."

"That's OK," I shrugged. "He wasn't too bad."

We inspected the wounds that Julie had washed down, then she sprinkled them with powdered sulphur. (This is basically the same stuff that people used to put on their wounds before antibiotics came along.) He definitely didn't like this, but we managed to get a bit on.

Over the next few days, Julie kept this up and the wounds gradually wept less blood and the swelling began to go down.

It just goes to show you -- most evenings I sit there with the cats while Julie takes care of the animals, wondering why I bother to accompany her every night. But every so often I feel that I might be needed after all.

I keep getting queries from people who want to buy my house. Not real estate agents -- these are people who wander in off the street and ask whether I've ever thought of selling the place.

One particularly persistent couple returned to add that if I needed any help in moving out they'd be happy to assist me. Well, thanks, (I guess) but I think that would be my responsibility.

It's always interesting to consider how you're seen by other people. In this case I suspect they may see me as one of those old codgers who might need a nudge to start thinking about moving from the family home.

I actually had one couple turn up who'd looked at the area on Google Earth and were impressed by the size of the backyards in my street... Sheesh!

A vague memory surfaced of someone on a television show years ago giving advice to house-hunters ... "Buy the worst house on the best street." Hmmmmm.

It's true that I haven't paid much attention to the house since my mother died. The grounds certainly have that uncared for look and the interior is even worse: literally every flat space is cluttered with bric-a-brac, while in some rooms there has been a desultory attempt to bring order out of chaos.

Perhaps this winter I shall be able to pull myself together and make some progress at last.

HEROES

2007-03-05T17:36:00.000+11:00

Arthur C. Clarke obviously still holds a fascination for me, since I got through "Jupiter Five" last night between going to bed and putting the light out. I haven't done that for a couple of years.

It's a wonderfully entertaining story, though maybe a little low-key by modern standards. A scientific expedition to the moons of Jupiter makes an amazing discovery, as illustrated on the cover of IF in 1953.

Thanks to the Centrepoint newsagent for helping me get re-acquainted with Clarke. If it hadn't been for them including Reach for Tomorrow among their bargain paperbacks, I might have taken years to getting around to re-reading him.

One of my readers was surprised to see me write a piece about Clarke without mentioning 2001. I guess that's because I'd read all Clarke's novels and short stories before that famous movie was released.

I remember getting a letter about 1969 from Gary Woodman in Melbourne (whatever happened to him?) saying "I've just seen the most extraordinary movie. You've got to see it, even if you have to fly to Melbourne."

That wasn't necessary -- I was in the audience as soon as the film was released in this state, and sat there stunned as the end credits ran up. In fact I think I sat there for a couple of minutes before I could collect myself enough to leave the cinema.

The end of February has brought with it some milder conditions. And about time too. Last week not only were we plagued with an invasion of tiny little flies that followed us everywhere, but the humid weather made life very tiresome. One night the humidity reading was still 90% at midnight, which is almost unheard of.

Roll on autumn, that "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness."

"Hiro, there are tweleve and a half million people in this city. Not one of them can bend space and time. Why do you want to be different?!"

Yes, I've been watching Heroes on television. I've only seen the first five episodes, but it certainly is an intriguing show.

The plot is complex and involved, but what struck me was the whole ambience of the story.

Let me explain. Heroes makes no bones about being in the style of super-hero comic books, frequently referring to them in its dialogue, though it isn't based on a comic book itself.

And that's what intrigues me. Over the years I've seen many comic books adapted for movies or television and seldom have they captured the essence of the original. Lots of colour and movement and people in funny costumes seems to be enough, they feel. (The makers of The Flash television show had to fight the network every inch of the way to try and make their show more like the comic book.)

But Heroes succeeds to a surprising extent in replicating the experience of reading one of those complex story arcs that used to be all the rage in Marvel Comics when I was a teenager.

Whether it manages to keep up this standard or not remains to be seen. But I for one shall certainly be watching next week.

Sheridan Morley died recently and his Sunday night slot on BBC Radio 2 has been taken over by Alan Titchmarsh to present Melodies For You. The programme remains, as ever, a pleasant mix of light classics and show tunes and has been extended to a full two hours.

But by the vagaries of scheduling, this means that there is now a news bulletin at the 135 minute hour mark before the show resumes for its final 20 minutes.

It seems to be one of the pillars of public broadcasting around the world that everything stops for the news. I remember the furore that was caused a few years ago when ABC television cut away from the final moments of a cricket test match because it was time for the evening news!

Reach for Tomorrow

2007-03-02T22:54:00.000+11:00

Reach for Tomorrow, published back in 1956, was Arthur C. Clarke's second collection of his short stories. I read it about forty years ago but the other day I picked up a nice new copy on the sale table at the newsagents.

Like most modern paperbacks, it doesn't give you details on the date or origin of the stories, but fortunately these are easily accessible on the web:
--Rescue Party, 1946. (novelette) (Astounding, May, 1946.)
--A Walk in the Dark, 1950. (Thrilling Wonder Stories, August, 1950.)
--The Forgotten Enemy, 1949. (New Worlds, #5, 1949; Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader, January, 1953.)
--Technical Error, 1950. (as The Reversed Man, in Thrilling Wonder Stories, June, 1950.)
--The Parasite, 1953. (Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader, April, 1953.)
--The Fires Within, 1947. (as by E. G. O'Brien in Fantasy, August, 1947; Startling Stories, September, 1949.)
--The Awakening, 1951. (Future, January, 1952.)
--Trouble with the Natives, 1951. (as Three Men in a Flying Saucer, in Lilliput, February, 1951.)
--The Curse, 1953. (short short) (Cosmos, #1, September, 1953.)
--Time's Arrow, 1952. (Science Fantasy, #1, Summer, 1950; Worlds Beyond, 1952.)
--Jupiter Five, 1953. (novelette) (If, May, 1953.)
--The Possessed, 1952. (Dynamic Science Fiction, March, 1953.)

It's a bit strange to look at these stories again after such a long time. The one I remember best is the first story "Rescue Party", which was Clarke's first sale and still one of his best. Aliens discover Earth is doomed and come to our rescue, only to find that the human race has already made its own arrangements.

"The Forgotten Enemy" I remembered really well, but I sat down and re-read it anyway. A very low-key end-of-the-world story.

What I didn't remember was that some of Clarke's early stuff was horror stories. Tales like "The Parasite" and "Walk in the Dark" are far from typical Clarke, and some of the other stories (like "The Possessed") depend on the twist in the last line that was often found in genre magazines of the time.

However I enjoyed re-reading "The Fires Within" and I look forward to re-reading "Jupiter Five", which was written decades before space probes actually told us anything about this distant body.

I've been saying for years I'd like to go back and re-read all my early Clarke. Fortunately if I want them, I have them all still on the shelf in my library.

For some time I've been aware that replacing my collection of SF would be expensive or (in some cases) almost impossible. When I began collecting around 1965 there was simply less SF on the bookshelves and the classics of the field were reprinted regularly.

But today there is just so much in paperback that the famous names tend to be crowded out by wave after wave of new authors writing enormously thick trilogies. I saw a Murray Leinster collection in the shops last year for the first time in about 20 years.

Congratulations to Jazztrack on its 30th birthday: a vital part of the jazz landscape in Australia since it began in 1976 on ABC Classic FM.

Its first and longest serving presenter Jim McLeod brought sounds both new and old to listeners and also featured many exclusive recordings of local and international artists. Mal Stanley has continued that tradition since Jim's retirement a few years ago.

To celebrate 30 years of the country's flagship jazz radio program, ABC Classic FM presented a week long festival of jazz and jazz inspired programs, culminating with a live concert broadcast from Melbourne's legendary Bennetts Lane on Sunday 25 February.

Jazztrack aims "to cover the increasingly diverse styles of jazz from both international and Australian artists, and has been a beacon for music lovers for over 30 years." Long may it continue!

There's nothing the average Australian likes better than a good meat pie, but some of those ones you get in the supermarket freezer can be a bit mediocre.
But lately I've taken a liking to Sargents' Premium Steak brand. 23% beef, 5% mushrooms and 3% red wine. Not too bad.

I hate Hamlet

2007-02-26T22:24:00.000+11:00

The first play for 2007 from the Hobart Repertory Society is Paul Rudnick’s 1991 comedy I Hate Hamlet. The central character is Andy, a television star whose series has just been cancelled and has landed a job playing the lead in the Shakespeare-in-Central-Park festival.

To his discomfort, not only does he find himself living in John Barrymore's apartment, but he is visited by the ghost of the great actor who informs him he is there to tutor him on how to play Hamlet!

So far so so-so. The concept is uncomfortably reminiscent of a sitcom put together by writers who've seen Blithe Spirit once too often.

But as we get into the second act, there are some interesting observations about the stage, the acting profession and life in the spotlight.

Trevor Gallagher is Andy, with James Casey delightful as Barrymorre

The supporting characters all have their good moments too -- Jennifer Gardner as the Noo Yawk realtor, Karen Kluss as the off-with-the-fairies girlfriend, Gillian Hunt as the agent, and especially Stuart Pearce as the crasser-than-crass Hollywood producer.

The evening ends with an amusing demonstration of how to give your final bow. The thunderous applause at the final curtain gave all the cast a chance to try it out for themselves.

As the summer comes to its end, the hot weather is finally becoming less common. This summer was so hot that even the cat lost interest in his food (he's started to show more appetite this week) and I had a lot of trouble sleeping.

Of course it doesn't help that the people next door have been taking a lot of family holidays, leaving their dogs to run amuck outside my window. And interruptions like early-morning deliveries or the friend who telephoned at 7:30 a.m. (who rings to discuss dinner parties at that hour?)

When Kenneth Horne passed away aged 61, he was described as 'the last of the truly great radio comics'. In a broadcasting career which spanned nearly 30 years, he had starred in three of the most popular radio series of all time. I remember listening to Beyond Our Ken in the 1950s and Round the Horne in the 1960s when I was at school though I was too young to remember the 1940s' Much Binding In The Marsh.

This month is Kenneth Horne's centenary and the BBC are featuring several special programmes about him. It's good to see that in today's digital age even the stars of radio (once the most ephemeral and easily-forgotten of the arts) can be celebrated in years to come.

Flash! Bang!

2007-02-19T21:15:00.000+11:00

Wow, three or four hours of thunder and lightning. I can't remember a storm that lasted all evening like the one we had Friday night.

In fact the whole weekend was unprecedented. We had three days in a row over 30º and Sunday was a stifling 35° (which is about 95 degrees in the old Fahrenheit scale). Sunday night it was too hot for me to sleep; I kept waking up every hour or so.

You can imagine how relieved I was to wake up on Monday morning and find it was cool and cloudy outside. We just aren't used to this weather.

I dug out some information about broadband pricing for the office. The board is considering whether we need to upgrade to broadband but I'm not holding my breath.

One factor is that some members of the board not only don't have Internet access, they have never used a computer. There might be a certain amount of resistance to paying the $39 a month.

Meanwhile as usual I've been listening to a lot of radio programmes over the World Wide Web. The weekend shows featuring the Coodabeen Champions, for example, were only available on the net this month because there was cricket on the radio stations that usually carry their shows.

I was sorry to see that Brian Kay's Light Programme ended its five-year run on BBC Radio 3 on 8th February 2007 .

Host Brian Kay is still in demand as a conductor, especially of choral music. Brian is well remembered as the bass in the Kings Singers, with whom he made countless recordings, and concert appearances all over the world.

The axing of his amiably laid-back show about light music is apparently to enable Radio 3 to concentrate more on long broadcasts of classical music in the afternoons. A shame -- there are many shows about classical music but few about the "light music" genre.

Still going strong (and taped in front of live audiences around the USA) Says You! is the NPR radio show that claims to appeal to "crossword puzzlers, trivia fans, and the just plain intellectually curious". Two teams bluff, guess, and expound their way through brain teasers, literary challenges, and other stumpers.

Host Richard Sher introduces panelists including public radio personality Tony Kahn; television host Barry Nolan; television producer/writer Arnie Reisman; author, journalist, and executive coach Paula Lyons; arts and culture activist Francine Achbar; and columnist/critic Carolyn Faye Fox.

I wish I could be in London to see the new stage adaptation of The 39 Steps at the Criterion Theatre in Picadilly Circus -- I've seen every adaptation of John Buchan's classic novel but this sounds like a lot of fun:
"This nifty, comically bare-bones fringe adaptation of John Buchan's famous novel, best known as Hitchcock's 1935 movie thriller, slipped quietly into the West End and initially looked a little over-stretched. But with four actors playing about 150 roles in Maria Aitken's production, the pleasures of quick-change artistry and po-faced defiance in the face of impossible odds are considerable. Charles Edwards is Richard Hannay, the innocent 'murderer' on the run, and you really have to be there to believe you are seeing the escape on the Forth Rail Bridge (with a couple of chairs) and a magical death-defying finale in the Palladium."

in memory still green

2007-02-14T13:33:00.000+11:00

This week was trying at times. I still have trouble getting enough sleep. The table above is supposed to show my natural rhythms, but I certainly don't get to sleep at the times it shows.

It didn't help that the people who live next door went away for the weekend and left their dogs at large in their yard. Their driveway is right outside my bedroom window, so whenever the dogs spotted someone passing in the street, they would run down the driveway barking -- sometimes at 3 a.m.

This often left me lying awake in bed, brooding over the approach of Valentine's Day. That had nothing to do with romance; my mother has been dead for a couple of years and I have come to terms with occasions like Christmas and New Year without her. But her birthday falls on February 14th and that's hard not to think about.

The last 36 hours, all the emotions I thought were safely consigned to the archives shelf have started welling up again. The grief, the regret, all that stuff. Every sale or commercial advertising Valentine's Day just rubs salt into the wound.

I remember John Bangsund saying that he found Easter difficult because his father had died on Good Friday. I can appreciate how he felt now.

But I try to concentrate on what my mother would have said if she could have commented on the situation. Don't be so silly, she would have said, get on with things instead of moping around dwelling on the past.

Maybe that's what I should try and do.

a memory of fire

2007-02-08T22:23:00.000+11:00

My back gradually came right with rest and pain-killers. I was in such a rush to get out and about on Sunday morning I forgot to take any pills at all, so I decided I must be nearly OK.

I was in a hurry because we were helping a fellow parishioner drive a Sudanese family in to the morning church service. There are a lot of Sudanese refugees who've settled in Hobart and we have quite a few in our congregation.

Musing on their future, I was struck by how quickly the children have picked up perfect English. In a few years they will be fully acclimatised to the Australian lifestyle, and the struggle to survive of their parents' generation will be a dimly-understood story.

One woman we know slightly has given birth to twins since arriving in Australia; growing up here,they will never be able to fully comprehend what their mother went through. I can't help wondering about the divide that must occur between the two generations... but I suppose that has happened in any group of people that have had to uproot themselves and flee to another country.

Monday morning my breakfast was interrupted by one of Julie's chickens escaping from its cage and running into the kitchen. I managed to corner it by the refrigerator but while I was returning it to its cage a second chicken got out through the open door and I had to chase her around the room.

My sister was oblivious to this (though I informed her of it promptly!); she was sitting up in bed reading Charlie Chan Carries On. She has always loved pre-war whodunits but this is the first Charlie Chan novel she's encountered. It's just as well she doesn't know how to find the other novels in the series in my attic or she'd go through them all in about a week.

They should be in the low bookshelves on the right hand side of the attic. Yes, that would be right. Margery Allingham is in the first bookcase near the window and Leslie Charteris is in the third one, so Earl Derr Biggers should be in the second one. I'll dig them out and ration them out to her -- one every couple of weeks perhaps.

Monday afternoon Julie had visitors at her place -- our neighbour, science fiction writer Steve Lazarowitz and his partner Dana. Steve was interested in seeing her chickens with a view to raising some in his own back yard.

Like many people, they were amazed to find so many different animals living right on the edge of suburbia. Steve was especially taken with Julie's horse Shadow, who came cantering over to see if we had brought anything to eat.

"I've been around horses sometimes, but I never had much to do with them as a boy," he said. "You can't keep a horse in Brooklyn."

"That would be a good title for your autobiography," I told him, but he was patting the horse and I don't think he was listening.

In the evening, it was out to the monthly pub quiz at the New Sydney Hotel. The line-up on our team varies from month to month -- this time it was me, my sister Julie, Caroline (who's just back from France) and Leon (who I think was once a member of the Royal Society). Between us we had quite a wide range of knowledge and we did better than our disastrous outing in January; I think we came in at equal third.

Of course there are always questions where you come unstuck. When they asked who was the actor from Bridget Jones' Diary who was nominated for an Oscar, I thought it must be Peter Firth. No, they meant Renee Zellwigger. Being an older guy, I took the term "actor" to mean a male.

Tuesday was a lot busier than I expected. The afternoon at the church office was the most hectic I've had in months. Sometimes I was talking to people at my desk, answering the phone with one hand and pushing buttons on the computer with the other. I had some sandwiches with me for lunch, but I didn't get a chance to eat them until 4:30 in the afternoon.

When I left work, I gave Kay a lift to the supermarket on my way home. After I'd taken the groceries inside for her, I installed a VCL media player on her computer for her; she has some television programmes on CD discs but has nothing to play them with. This seemed like a good freeware solution.

The main problem with her computer is that she is one of those people who are reluctant to delete anything unless absolutely unavoidable. I'm in no condition to throw stones, but it could do with a good spring cleaning.

Wednesday morning was a sobering time. After breakfast I listened to Tim Cox's show on local radio; they spent an hour reminiscing about the 1967 Tasmanian bush-fires, forty years ago today.

It was gripping stuff, if a little unsettling. I remember that day clearly. I was a teenager, living with my parents in their centre-city hotel. That afternoon the sky turned a dark blood red and ash blew in on a hot choking wind.

Even though we lived in the heart of the city, my father went out and got an extra-long hose in case we needed to hose down any embers that landed on the roof and threatened to start fires. This wasn't the countryside -- we had never before imagined we could ever be in danger from wildfire.

My sister was out with friends that afternoon and we weren't sure where she was. (No cellphones in those days!) When she returned home safely my mother broke down and wept with relief. She had spent an hour during the afternoon driving around looking for her, witnessing people trying to beat back flames with wet sacks and garden rakes.

Many small towns around the state were simply obliterated by the fires; the primitive fire-fighting equipment of 1967 just couldn't halt the conflagration.

62 people died.

1,400 homes were destroyed.

Forty years ago today.

A radio documentary on the subject can be downloaded from the Radio National "Hindsight" website.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight/default.htm

turn off that bloody television

2007-02-03T11:23:00.000+11:00

There's more violence on television than ever before, and it's more graphic. That's what a new report from America says.

The number of violent scenes during prime-time programs has risen on all six US networks since 1998, found a study conducted by American organisation Parents Television Council and released last month. And an increasing number of violent scenes include a sexual element.

The report highlighted the 2005 television season as one of the most violent, with 49 per cent of all episodes in the study containing at least one instance of violence.

"Not only was there more on-screen violence than ever before," the study said, "but the discussions of violent crimes were more explicit and the violence depicted was far more graphic than anything TV viewers had ever seen before."

The report, Dying to Entertain, details more than 30 scenes from various episodes to support its finding of a growing number of "graphic autopsy scenes, scenes depicting medical procedures and extensive torture sequences".

"Violence has shifted from being incidental to the storytelling to being an integral part of the program," it said.

Similar thoughts had been going through my mind after watching the first couple of episodes of the new season of 24 (subtitled "A New Beginning" for some reason). Even for a show about terrorism, the amount of killing and torture in the first couple of hours was confronting.

Recently prime-time shows such as Bones and NCIS seem to spend half their time in the morgue cutting people up. Somehow it seemed in better taste when Sam Ryan did similar things in Silent Witness. Now I tend to go out into the kitchen and make coffee during the opening scenes of Bones and my sister tells me when it's safe to return.

Nowadays the heroes in television programmes do things that we would have once found shocking if it was the villains doing them.

In my childhood, the Australian television censors were scrupulous in removing any scenes involving knives or stabbing. Their reasoning, I suspect, was that no Australian had a handgun so cowboys and cops could blaze away with no impact on our psychology, but nearly everyone carried a pocket-knife of some kind. (That led to some strange looking stories where people would suddenly be inexplicably dead in between scenes - even Star Trek and Phil Silvers didn't escape the censor's scissors.)

Sometimes I pine for the days of Naked City, when the only things stripped bare were the emotions of the protagonists.

Years ago, whenever there were problems with television reception between Tasmania and the other states of Australia, the technicians would mutter about "bearer problems" caused by Bass Strait.

Recently someone on the BBC message board queried why a certain radio programme kept skipping. The answer was as follows : "These glitches are caused from time to time by atmospheric conditions interfering with the satellite feed to our listen again service encoders. We are working longer term to provide a more stable feed."
The more things change, the more they stay the same!

Of course there is so much more to listen to on the BBC.
Another contributor added up all the drama and readings aired in a week on BBC Radio 4:

Drama & Readings per week (in mins)
Afternoon play 225
Classic serial 60
Friday play 60
Saturday play 60
Book of the week75
Book at bedtime 75
Women's hour drama75
Sub total 630

Repeats
Repeat classic serial 60
Repeat book of the week 75
Repeat Women's hour drama75
Sub Total 210

Total air play of Drama & Readings per week
including Repeats 14 hours (840 mins)

Blimey!

And that's on just one of the BBC radio stations!

Ouch!

2007-01-29T21:54:00.000+11:00

Those mice have a lot to answer for. We've trapped and released nine of them so far, but there are still plenty of them. I spent a lot of time on Saturday re-organising the kitchen and bringing in a big plastic crate to protect the bread and baked goods from rodent teeth.

It didn't seem like I'd done that much work, but I got up the next morning and went to feed the chickens outside the back door. Leaned over to get some feed out of the bin.

Twang!

"Oh no," I groaned. "Not my back again." Yes, after many months without any back problems, I was now hobbling about like an old man.

After 24 hours, I reluctantly let my sister dose me with some of her pills.

"How's your back?" she asked a couple of hours later.
"It feels a bit better," I replied.

"So it should with that amount of pain-killers," she said drily.

The postman staggered in this morning with two packages. There was a big envelope of CDs from the First Generation Radio Archives (mostly Fibber McGee and Phil Harris shows) and a box from AV Deals in Sydney.

The second one contained a Philips MMS430 speaker system. I bought this over the Internet without seeing it in real-life and for once it was bigger than it looked in the photograph. The main speaker was as big as a breadbox and I haven't decided how to fit it into my living space yet.

Anyway, I don't think I'll be moving any furniture around for a while..

Listening to The Idlers on ABC radio on Saturday night, they opened with Lisa Miller singing "On the road again". I haven't heard this before; sure, it's light-years away from Willie Nelson but it's a lovely version. I must keep an eye out for Lisa Miller in future.

The Idlers and The Coodabeen Champions were both pre-empted for sports broadcasts this weekend, but I've discovered in recent times that the shows do still go to air for those tuning in on the Internet. All you need to do is go to the ABC Gold Coast website and you can listen to them regardless of what's coming over your radio set.

Australia Day

2007-01-27T23:17:00.000+11:00

It was Australia Day and even Julie's dog was celebrating the occasion. (No Photoshop tricks here!) Julie and I shared a special dinner to mark the day -- a meat pie with sauce followed by a lamington. The only thing missing was a cold stubbie but I'm not a beer drinker.

The mouse plague hasn't quite reached the alarming degree depicted in some science fiction tales (for example the 1961 potboiler by R.L. Fanthorpe depicted above) but so far we've managed to trap and release five of the little critters.

Field mice are very tiny and very cute but we're heartily tired of them running around the place as though they owned it. I've had to learn to lock up the bread every time I leave the kitchen so as not to find that somebody has been sampling it when I pick it up next time.

We won't mention the ants. That's a story for another time.

A couple of interesting items on Thursday night television. The Archive Project on ABC was about the Melbourne Realist Film Unit. It wanted to spur political action by showing what life was like for the working classes after World War II. "This inequality must end," urges the film A Place to Live, about Melbourne’s housing shortage. But the Melbourne Realists were not fundamentalists and became increasingly sceptical about Stalin’s cult of personality.

The group believed first and foremost in film’s potential for social change and they soon broke with the Communist Party. This didn't stop them from being kept under surveillance by the security agencies. Indeed, that will be the most interesting part for many viewers; earlier parts of this special featuring footage rescued from the cutting-room floor set to sombre classical music will bore most laymen.

Keenly anticipated was the documentary on SBS titled In Search of Bony. This looked at the remarkable story of Arthur Upfield, dubbed by one critic Australia's forgotten bestseller. Starting in the 1920s he wrote a successful series of detective stories about Inspector Bonaparte of the Queensland Police. The unique thing about the character was that he was of mixed racial background at a time in history when the "half-caste" was routinely the villain or at best an unsympathetic bit-player.

Upfield's achievement in making this character not only acceptable but fascinating to the mass audience is mostly forgotten today. Those who remember the character automatically dismiss him because they are books about a black man written by a dead white male. This skips over the fact that at the time many aborigines were fascinated by the depiction of an educated professional black man.

The character of Bony was idealised, of course. But it's a tragedy that Australia is about the only country in the world where Upfield is out of print. In many countries, his are the only books about Australia that most people will have read.

Time to bring Bony back into print.

The Rains Came

2007-01-22T15:16:00.000+11:00

Little did we know what was in store that Sunday. My sister and I went to church, came home and ate lunch. It was warm and humid outside. I had few plans beyond possibly taking a nap for a few minutes.

Then one of us looked up and said "I think it's raining..." and the other nodded, vaguely approving.

What we didn't realise was that northern winds had swept air from the monsoon areas up north; as it collided with the cooler winds from the southern oceans, the result was spectacular.

Accompanied by rolls of thunder, the heavens opened and rain bucketed down. Standing at the back door, awe-struck by the sudden change in the climate, I saw that the drain by the back of the house was partly blocked and water was spilling over.

I plunged out into the rain and struggled to clear the drain and prevent the back of the house being flooded. Almost instantly I was soaked to the skin. I had to discard my trousers because they were so heavy they were threatening to fall down around my ankles!

After a few minutes, the water was draining away and the rain had eased just a little. I came back inside and changed. I was so wet I had to take off everything except my glasses and my watch!

My brown suede shoes will never be the same again.

The goose was notable by her absence. She apparently didn't like the rain drumming on the roof and took refuge outside the laundry where conditions were less extreme. A contrast to her behaviour during last week's power cut when I thought she was going to join us in the house.

After the worst of the deluge was over, we drove over to Julie's house to check for any damage there. It was better than we expected, with few problems.

The creek, which had just barely been running that morning, was now a raging torrent. Julie (above) tried to get some pictures of it, but it wasn't easy. "That rock in the middle of the water looks like a loaf of bread surrounded by snow," she sniffed after looking at the snaps.

The next morning I inspected the boxes on the front and back porches for signs of water damage. Half a dozen books had to be thrown out; the rest seemed all right. The carton of Country Life magazines was more of a dilemma. The top half were OK, the bottom half were slightly damp along the edge with a couple on the bottom completely sodden.

I was less disturbed than I would have been once. In the last couple of years I've digested the fact that I simply have more books and magazines in the house than I'll be able to read during the remaining years of my life. OK, I do still have some volumes I would be very upset to lose, but I no longer feel the urge to buy as many books as possible wherever I go.

HISTORIC QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

As the free world grows stronger, more united, more attractive to men on both sides of the Iron Curtain--and as the Soviet hopes for easy expansion are blocked--then there will have to come a time of change in the Soviet world. Nobody can say for sure when that is going to be, or exactly how it will come about, whether by revolution, or trouble in the satellite states, or by a change inside the Kremlin.

Whether the Communist rulers shift their policies of their own free will--or whether the change comes about in some other way -- I have not a doubt in the world that a change will occur.

Harry Truman's farewell speech in 1953, showing remarkable good sense.

a hot time in the old town

2007-01-17T20:45:00.000+11:00

I slept through the thunderstorm last night, though my sister reported her whole bedroom being lit up by lightning flashes. Wednesday morning was sultry and overcast. Even after a cold shower the weather soon felt unpleasantly close to me.

But it could have been worse. According to this morning's news, parts of the city Melbourne had their electricity supply cut by bushfires while suffering heat-wave conditions of 40° -- that's about 104 degrees in the old scale. I don't know that I could stand those conditions.

We had a black-out here last week but it only lasted for an hour. Just as well we still had those candles on the mantlepiece, left over from when we had a series of power cuts a few years back.

The weirdest part about it was that Zelda (the goose who lives in my yard)panicked and started running about as though she wanted to force her way into the house. Maybe she was freaking out because of the sirens from some burglar alarms that had been set off by the black-out.

This afternoon we stopped for petrol and while I was inside my sister was fascinated by the passing parade. First two girls on bicycles called in and let their golden retrievers have a drink of water. Then a dapper middle-aged man at the wheel of a big sedan drove in and got out to fill a bowl of water. He placed this on the floor of the car next to his dog and drove off. I hope he didn't have to make any sudden stops on his way home!

The hot weather makes the pest problem worse. The new screen door has kept out most of the flies, but there are ants everywhere and the mice are always sneaking around (they're very cute but there's a limit!)

The neighbours at Julie's place have a high proportion of animal-lovers among them. The woman at the top left corner of the paddock feeds the horse regularly. He enjoys the attention (and the food) -- in fact I think he's starting to put on weight.