Wednesday, March 31, 2021

You sily goose

 Dear Neighbor,
You may have noticed a lot of the greenery at the front of the house has been removed.  A working bee has cut down a lot of the shrubs and vines that had grown over the front of the building, moved it out the back and fed it to the goats (who needs a rubbish skip?).   
Of course we did manage to cut the phone line while we were doing it, but a roll of insulating tape was all we needed to get back on line.
One thing I hadn't expected was that one of the hens nesting in the driveway turned out not to be broody after all.  Sunday morning I discovered she had hatched out seven chicks.  I tried to move them, but she wasn't having any of it and I had to drive around them on my way out to church.   Another effort in the afternoon persuaded her to move only as far as the front of the house,  where she now resides.   So if you see a proud mother and her offspring when you walk past, you will know the story behind them.   

 

March 15 Monday
A quiet day, with no appointments to keep or people to meet.  After lunch I sat down and typed a 1500-word short story.  Nothing significant, just a bit of fan fiction I had been plotting in my mind before I slept each night.  All that was left was the physical act of entering it into my word processor.

Tuesday I could tell that Summer was on its way out.  Not only had my cough returned last night, but today there was an icy wind blowing across the garden when I opened the back door.  Before breakfast I dug out my thick green jumper from last winter and put it on so I could feed the animals without shivering.  But by the time I went to the Croquet Club after lunch, I put on my  broad-brimmed hat to keep the sun out of my eyes.  Welcome Autumn!

The quiz night this week was almost Standing Room Only, with 14 teams competing.  Despite the absence of Mark and Caroline, we had a few good rounds, scoring 76 points.  We came in sixth, with the winners racking up 89 points in a very close finish.  And we scored 10/10 in the French round despite the absence of our Francais expert!

22 March Monday
Spent a lot of time Monday morning considering how to get food and water to the goose, who has somehow got through the fence to join the goats in the back yard. I eventually worked out how to get to him without the goats trying to get out.  
The following day we moved him out of the back yard  --  hint, when handling a goose, scoop him up and get your arm around him to keep him still (this prevents you getting a whack across the face is he decides to flap his wings).  I carried him into the driveway and his head shot up;  he obviously remembered a couple of years ago when he and the other goose used to wander down the driveway and curl up on the front lawn in summer.

Later that day I went out to feed him before dusk and couldn't find him. (Surely he couldn't have got into the back yard again , I thought). I went up the driveway, then down to the front garden. Eventually he emerged from where he'd been curled up under the table at the back door. He likes a bit of shelter at his age and ended up spending the night under one of the garden chairs near the carport.
Hence the expression "You silly goose"?

23 March Tuesday
Croquet today was fine and sunny this afternoon.  In fact it was getting a bit warm by the end of the first game but after the tea break we played the second game with a refreshing sea breeze to cool us down.  Won first game, drew the second.
While we were playing,  I glanced over the fence now and then, watching workmen dismantling the greenhouse that the City Farm group built in the St John's complex.  They moved in a few years ago and made quite a success of their brand of popular agriculture. Alas, they must have lost their lease.

 

Quiz night went off all right.  Caroline rose from her sickbed and looked tired but ready for the fray.  W e were up and down a bit, but finished with a credible 79.  We came second out of the eleven teams.  (we would have made another point in TV except for me being unable to recall whether Gary Shandling played Larry Sanders or vice versa.)

Movie moment:  SECOND ACT [2018]
Jennifer Lopez gets a job with a big corporation using a faked background and qualifications.  So far so good, but midway through there's a mind-boggling twist that will have most viewers rolling their eyes.  Two stars only.

I did like the brief scene with a bunch of Cornish Rex cats, and the use of the anecdote about the Ginkgo trees of Hiroshima.



My feet hurt


 March 3rd Wednesday
Another busy day.   As soon as I finished lunch, jumped into the car and drove to Sandy Bay for the fortnightly meeting of the Connect Group.  After many and varied discussions,  came home with just enough time to change and get off to the book launch this evening.  
 

Arrived just in time to hear the speech made by the Tolkien of Tasmania, the Jack Vance of Van Diemen's Land, the one and only Cary J. Lenehan.  The book was Gathering The Strands, book 5 of his Warriors Of Vhast series.
Cary spoke about his books, their past, their future and took questions from the audience before signing copies of his novels.  Intriguingly, when asked what were his biggest influences, he named Rider Haggard and the great Russian writers  --  he said he read War And Peace three times before he started High School!

Haiku for nuclear test 03 October 1952:
Earth moves and skies split.
The planet groans and shudders
at Monte Bello.

I wrote this between rounds at the monthly pub quiz at the New Sydney Hotel in 2014, inspired by one of the questions in a previous round (much to the interest of my team mates). My brother-in-law David was involved in the nuclear test in a small way when he was in the Navy.

Listened to a couple of radio westerns.  One was 'Hopalong Cassidy'. February 07, 1949. Program #31, "The Shell Game".  This was a lively story, with Hoppy tangling with smugglers on the New York docks while visiting Manhattan.  The only disappointment was there was no actress credited for the raucous-voiced lady who played California's old flame.  Could have been Virginia Gregg.

March 4th Thursday
My feet hurt.  Spent the afternoon at FOM AGM (the Annual General Meeting of Friends Of Mission), walking to and from the bus stop.  Then in the evening played three games at the Bocce Club.  After a few busy days this week, I was happy just to sit down  with a cup of coffee and the radio.  (A segment about monster movies, followed later by a discussion of minimalism  --  anybody who knows me will guess that I know more about the former than the latter).  As part of the first segment, they had a competition where you had to identify the sound of four different monsters roaring!  After a few minutes they changed the rules so you won a prize if you identified just one.  Anybody who could have identified all four would qualify as a movie super-Nerd.
(The monster roars incidentally were from Godzilla, Gamera, Predator and Jurassic Park.)

8th March Monday
Last week was tiring, and by the weekend I did not feel up to doing much at all.  Keith kindly released me from the usual activities on Friday and Saturday and I spent most of Saturday dozing and napping (which pleased the cat).  My energy levels were severely depleted this month and I had been depending on cups of coffee first thing in the morning to get me moving for the day.  But there's only so far you can rely on caffeine.

9th March Tuesday
Croquet can be a funny old game.  This afternoon I was playing Rod, a former president of the club.  Readers with long memories may recall that I have beaten him only once in the 13 years I've been playing the game.  The first game he kept on scoring again and again;  I think we were up to the ninth hoop before I scored.  He beat me 6-1.  We went out again and played a second game;  this time I beat him 6-1.  A funny old game indeed.

The quiz night this week hit a new high point for the team.  I can't remember us ever scoring 90 points before --  as I've noted in the past, the maximum possible score would be 110 points.  We won the evening by one point (the runners-up must have been over excited;  they went home and left their prize voucher on the table, from which it was retrieved by the staff).  I suspect this may be our last win for a time as our sports expert is going to be absent for six months, which will inevitably bring our scores down a lot.  Kudos to June and Caroline for their expert work in the first round about correct spelling.

March 10th Wednesday
Some people keep telling me I lead an exciting life.    Well, maybe...
Today I thought I had an appointment in the afternoon, but I'd mistaken the date.  So I went home, did some laundry, finished the book I started reading last month and listened to some music. The end.

Talking with a friend about my plans for the week brought a reaction:  "A psychologist?  You'd be better off coming up the bush with us.  A trip into the country will make you feel better.  I'd change my plans if I were you."   I can see his point of view, but I think I shall keep my appointment..

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Report from Dreamland 2008

 I was so tired one afternoon in 2008 that before lunch I lay down and slept for an hour.   It was not easy falling asleep in the middle of the day, but when I did I had one of those incredibly realistic and vivid dreams...

I could have drawn you a map of the place I visited and picked out the photographs of the people I met from any rogue's gallery you showed me.  Everything was as bright and real as watching it on a cinema screen.

The building I visited was a rambling old structure that seemed to be owned by the nearby Roman Catholic cathedral, because there were priests and nuns going in and out of one of the offices on the ground floor.   The rest of the building was leased to a very eclectic collection of businesses and groups.  

You went up the sweeping stone staircase from a lobby that would have done justice to Grand Central station.     There was a theater where a school group was rehearsing an elaborate and remarkably risque musical Einstein's Things based on a comic strip.  The bits I saw would have got them thrown out of the building if the landlord had seen them.

Along from there was a big room where I was doing a course of some sort.   But after it was over it was always interesting to wander in next door, where some sort of advertising agency or publisher had offices.   You could just stroll in without anybody asking you who you were or what you were doing.   It was that sort of freewheeling set-up.

The various rooms of the business were each given over to people working on different projects.    In one of them, a weary woman photographer had covered an entire wall in lurid covers from tabloid magazines and was taking pictures of the resulting montage of images.  

In other rooms people were working on equally outlandish but completely different projects.  

I stopped in at a waiting room or staff room which was full of comfortable couches and strewn with expensive glossy magazines, most of them still in the unopened plastic mailing envelopes.   There were a couple of issues of The New Yorker that I was tempted to put in my bag, since it was obvious they'd never be missed.

One of the magazines carried that comic strip that had inspired the musical they were rehearsing in the big hall.    

I sat back on one of the big couches and drowsed for a few minutes.    The feel of the room reminded me of the bedroom I'd had as a child.   (This is the first time I remember wanting to sleep in a dream.)   Then I got up and started tidying up some of the piles of magazines before I left.  

For the first time, someone who seemed to be in charge came sweeping into the room trailed by some assistants.   He was talking rapidly, finishing by exclaiming that everyone was invited to lunch.  Then he glanced at me, assuming that I worked there, and diplomatically remarked that he wouldn't disturb me from what I was doing.    I nodded and made some inane remark that someone had to keep the cars running that the clowns would get out of.   

They swept off and I had the feeling that maybe I should be on my way instead of making myself at home in a place I had no business in.    

I made my way down the big staircase and across the foyer filled with strangers, then down the stone steps at the start of the building.   There was a stall selling second-hand books and my eye was drawn to them.  

One of the office workers coming down the steps with me saw me glance in his direction and offered me a cigarette from the pack he was opening.   I felt foolish having to explain that I was actually trying to read the cover of a book on the stall behind him.  

He shrugged and was lost in the crowd of people hurrying off to catch buses or trains.   Not being in such a hurry, I stopped to look at some of the books on display.    There was a whole section devoted to Naval warfare and I paused to look at one about fleet operations near Iceland in World War II.  I noticed to my surprise that the book next to it had been inscribed to Don Tuck, an old friend and bibliographer.   I was tempted to buy it but the $35 price sticker was a deterrent.   

That sequence, the last before I awoke, was notable because I remember somebody saying on television that he could not actually read in dreams -- that maybe it used a different part of the brain.   This was the first time I remember actually reading anything while I was dreaming.  

I found myself in bed, feeling refreshed.   Obviously I was not just short of sleep, but short of the REM stage of sleep where dreams take place.   Catching up on my quota of dreams had made all the difference to how I felt.     

Straightaway I sat down at the keyboard for 20 minutes and captured what I remembered of the dream before all those bright and realistic images faded from my consciousness.  ##

Haiku, hoops and sunnies

 Feb 25th Thursday
Autumn seems to be on its way.  The days are still warm and sunny but that breeze can be a bit brisk first thing in the morning.  The cat goes outside at the start of the day, then comes back and gets under the blanket again.  I have to leave his breakfast in a bowl next to him so that when he gets hungry he can pop his head out of the blanket and eat without having to get up.

Inclined to be a bit vertiginous today, but nevertheless made my way out to the Bocce Club and played three games this afteroon.  Once again I made a few good shots, which was pleasing.  It has only taken me about five years to get the hang of this game.
Got my new sunglasses in the mail.  They're not actually for being out in the sun, they're supposed to reduce glare at night.  They may be rubbish, but I'll have to try them out.  They do make me look slightly sinister.



Feb 26th Thursday

1950s movie alert  --  received today, a jiffy bag (when was the last time we saw one of those?) containing two movies I saw on television when I was a teenager but not since.  Arch Oboler's FIVE and one of the great spoiler titles of all time I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE.  My dilemma - which one do I watch first?

Haiku for a pussycat (2014):
Eyes shut, body still;
The true meaning of "cat nap"
Plain for all to see.


Saturday Feb 27th
As usual, Saturday was devoted to driving around the op shops, in spite of Keith taking a spill in the main street yesterday.  We went to Salvos and Vinnies after starting at the Glenorchy Tip Shop  --  I had warned Keith he might not find much there but he did pick up a couple of items in between grouching about their prices and the condition of the stock.  Stopped in for lunch at the Green Store, where I had the Vegetarian Breakfast and he had a big plate of kurosawa.  (i.e. I paid for his lunch after he gave me three Japanese movies!)
Felt so tired when I got home that I sat down with a cup of coffee and watched some Fraggle Rock cartoons before I stirred myself to make dinner.

On the air last week, a review of a documentary about photographer Annie Leivowitz.  The reviewer mentioned in shocked tones that she has 10,000 books.  Pshaw, I say.  If you lived in New York and had a big house and plenty of money, why not own 10,000 books?

Sunday Feb 28
Late home from church because I detoured to the Eastern Shore for lunch with friends at the Shoreline Hotel.  Some eyebrows were raised when I ordered the stir-fried wild rice, a dish that nobody else seemed familiar with.  (Zizania palustris is a plant native to the Great Lakes region of North America and not actually related to everyday rice.)
I nodded off while deciding whether or not have an afternoon nap.  ..Fortunately I had already fed the animals.


Haiku for the pharmacist [2014]:
   Tablets, potions, pills!
   The modern magic cure-alls
   Are briskly dispensed.

 
March 2nd Tuesday
Got in two games at the Croquet Club this afternoon.  I played very badly in the first game, but after the second game my partner congratulated me on how well I played.  That is not uncommon for me.   

In the evening, a skeleton crew for the Quiz Night, three of us plus Suze who turned up at interval.  We managed to score 82 points, which I thought wasn't bad, but in the end (yes, you're right) we finished in fourth place yet again.  

Quizzing, Croquet and Op-Shopping

 

 


12th Feb  Friday
The goats have done such a good job clearing out the back yard that they've now been transferred to working on the end of the driveway.  Our friendly neighborhood goatherd has done a great job in erecting a stockade made up of wooden pallets and bits of garden bric-a-brac.  Fluffy and Snuggles seem comfortable in their new quarters, the only drawback being that they can now see me coming and going, a cause for baaing and bleating.

15th Feb  Monday
Last week was so busy I didn't have time to note down what was happening  I remember I was out to dinner with friends on Monday as usual.  Tuesday I played croquet, had a doctor's appointment and went to the quiz night; Internet out for an hour.  
Wednesday was an afternoon tea with one of the groups from church.  Thursday I had to be out early for another doctor's appointment, then in the evening played three games at the Bocce Club.  Friday and Saturday I was out all afternoon with Keith going round the used book shops; Internet out for three hours but had series of reassuring text messages from NBN.  
Sunday there was Communion Service at church, after which I picked up the animal feed I hadn't had time to buy during the week, and slept for two or three hours after lunch.  That gave me the strength to stay up and watch the late movie STARGATE: THE ARK OF TRUTH which I had somehow never seen before.  A late dinner after Keith phoned and we talked about movies and music for half an hour.
Monday morning I felt so tired I had two cups of coffee before breakfast,  something I never do.

Feb 16th Tuesday
The Curse of the White Butterfly.  It was hot and sunny for Tuesday afternoon croquet, which didn't help my game. At least I had a bottle of water with me. But I noticed whenever I took aim at the next hoop, a white butterfly would flutter around me in circles.  That didn't help my concentration and in the end I lost by one shot.   
Still pretty hot when I got home.  I should have followed the example of the goats, who were curled up in the shade looking very settled.

Quite a crowd for the quiz night tonight, we had 13 tables competing - unlucky for some.  We came in fourth, the usual position from years ago, but I thought we did pretty well, scoring 77 points. 82. The winners scored 82.  I got 9/10 in the Old Stuff category  --  we would have got a perfect score if they didn't get Hank Aaron's home record wrong  We said it was 715,  they had it as 755.   Oh well, there's always next time.

19 Feb  Friday
Weather for Saturday is a bit startling.  It hit a maximum of 31 here a few minutes ago, and the latest forecast says that we'll have a minimum of 19 (probably about sunrise) then a maximum tomorrow of 22.   Confirms all those old jokes about the volatility of Hobart's weather!

20th Feb  Saturday
After a leisurely Saturday aftrnoon going around the op shops and lunching in the suburbs, Keith and I went back to my place to look over a whole box of DVDs that a friend had dropped off.  We made a cup of tea and settled in at the table outside the back door to sort through the movies.  One of the chickens looked in a couple of times but lost interest when she could see we weren't eating.  The cat, however, enjoyed the opportunity.
Keith looked across the table at me and said "That cat really loves being with you.  The expression on his face while he's curled up against you is positively blissful."  What can I say, it's animal magnetism.  (My sister really had it  --  she was visiting Bondi Beach once and a German Shepherd came over and put its head in her lap.)
As for the movies, it took us a while to go through them and divide them into three categories -  Yes, Maybe and Definitely Not.  I'll study them more thoroughly later on.

23rd Feb Tuesday
Slept poorly, waking every couple of hours.  What's with that?  Probably the only part of my life I can usually rely on 100% is my ability to go to sleep easily.
Said good morning to the goats,  had a late breakfast and listened to "Trump's Last Stand" on CONVERSATIONS on ABC Radio.  Richard Fidler interviewed Australian-born reporter Jonathan Swan with the inside story of Donald Trump’s last few months in office.

The Croquet Club had a good turn-up today with 12 or 14 playing.from lunch-time.  The only drawback was the noise from workmen at the oval next door.  It's bad enough the medevac helicopters now fly right over the club,  but we got a bit tired of the mechanical noise and constant chatter ("Bring it back... more... more"  "Was that a mouse or a rat?"  "Can't you shift that **** thing!").

Called in at the pharmacy to complain about my latest prescription.  "Jardiance and Jardimet are just different names for the same medication," they said.  I replied "No, because one of them has Metformin in it, and I'm out of those."  "Well, you've still got an unused prescriptiom for Metformin - we could give you a packet of those."  I paused, and thought to myself, OK I could live with that.

Quiz night went off all right.  Nine teams playing.  We got off to a good start, scoring 8/10 in the opening round about Nobel Prize winners.  I even answered one of the music questions  (it was about Little Richard)  By the end of the night, we had 82 points and won Second Prize.
The quizmaster was disturbed when she heard at least two of us would be absent next week.  "We're not losing all of you, are we?"  We assured her there would be at least a token presence next week from The Amnesiacs.