to Moonah

Killing two birds with one stone, I set off for Moonah on foot. I had to go to the bank and I needed to get more exercise, so the fact that Julie had borrowed my car wasn't a deterrent.

I walked along the bike track.. er, the intercity cycleway I mean. It was quiet enough so I could listen to my MP3 player as I strode along, and I got through half an episode of a BBC World Service arts programme that I'd recorded last month.

Elmore Leonard was being interviewed. He said that he always tried to make his novels come out around the 300-page mark. If he was just under, he'd often suggest to his publisher that they change the typeface just a little so it would hit the magic number!

After I'd been to the bank, I called in at the Moonah Arts Centre to see their current exhibition "Eastern Light", a collection of new oil paintings by Romany Best and Sarah Weaver.

There was a certain sameness, since this was a theme exhibition – a visual portrayal of life in Tasmania. Best's pictures included both rural scenes and pictures of urban streets. A couple of the pictures featured brooding skies with titles like "Melancholy" and "If Only I'd Known," but the picture "Feeling Blue" was a visual pun depicting blue skies and blue seas with blue hills in the background.

Weaver's oils included landscapes of places like Adventure Bay, Maria Island and the Huon Valley. I particularly appreciated these since I'd recently visited all of them and it brought back pleasant memories.

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I've chanced on yet another web-site that lets you listen to old radio programmes. This one comes from Wisconsin Public Radio and lets you listen to their three-hour Sunday night show in three one-hour chunks.


Another site for my favorites list, along with Those Were The Days and The Big Broadcast.

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Old Time Radio listening:

DARK FANTASY 420327 "Convoy to Atlantis"
In a sort of forerunner to all those stories about the Bermuda Triangle, two men find their ship has been hijacked and is heading for the sea bottom where it will be used to re-roof the lost continent of Atlantis.

FIBBER McGEE AND MOLLY 400116 "Fibber's car is stolen"
Amusing comedy in which Fibber gets arrested for stealing his own car and is horrified at the idea he'll only be paroled into the custody of The Great Gildersleeve. Still fun even today.

CISCO KID 531008 "Planted Gold"
In this oater about trying to fake a gold strike, the dashing Cisco Kid encounters one of the few things he's afraid of - a little old lady with an eight-gauge shotgun.

AVENGER #3 "Rendezvous with Murder"
Sort of a poor cousin of The Shadow, with some rather nasty killers and some sonorous voiceovers - "The road to crime ends in a trap that justice sets. Crime does not pay!"

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The new series of 24 has started on local television. I hear that they've signed to keep making the show into 2008-2009. That boggles the mind.

I pity the poor writers having to come up with that amount of scripts for such an edge-of-the-seat drama. Another example of the tendency of television networks to work something to death so long as it seems to get the ratings.

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I was intrigued to read on a W.E. Johns website that Johns had once made a list of what he would want in a volume titled The Best of Biggles, the definitive selection of stories about his stalwart avaiation hero:

Part 1 Biggles the boy in India: two stories from THE BOY BIGGLES
Part 2 Schooldays: two stories from BIGGLES GOES TO SCHOOL
Part 3 World War 1. Foreword on Air Combat. Two stories from BIGGLES LEARNS TO FLY.
Part 4 Biggles Combat Pilot: novel BIGGLES FLIES EAST.
Part 5 Between the wars: Two stories from BIGGLES CHARTER PILOT or, full length book BIGGLES FLIES WEST
Part 6 World War II: two stories from SPITFIRE PARADE (or full length book. BIGGLES SWEEPS THE DESERT.)
Part 7 After the war: SGT. BIGGLESWORTH C.I.D. (part of) then enough detective stories to make up required length.

Interesting. I know two books that have been published with the title BEST OF BIGGLES but neither of them follow John's plan.

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