Winter approaches.  Being warned, the goose seeks shelter.

Tuesday 8th June
Playing croquet is difficult at this time of year.  This afternoon I took my scarf in case it was windy, my sunglasses in case it was too bright, and my fishermen's cap in case it rained.  I also stashed my heavy raincoat in the back of the car.  As it turned out,  I'd just finished my last game when a flock of Black Cockatoos flew overhead, a reliable sign that rain was coming.  My opponent was just congratulating me on the long roquet I'd made on the eleenth hoop when they started to squark.
"We've finished just in time" I observed, and indeed I drove home in the rain.

Tuesday night quiz night went off all right.  There were a few potholes in the road, but we did pretty well  --  it helped that there were questions about Orson Welles' THE THIRD MAN and even a couple of music questions that I knew.  The winners scored 84 points, with us treading on their coat-tails with 80 points to win second prize.  And as usual there was a question each about US Presidents, South American geography and the Periodic Table  (there always is).

Wednesday 9th June
As a coffee addict,  I was initially pleased when Coles in New Town installed a coffee machine.  But after a couple of months I found that I either received half a cup of dirty water or (since cash is not an option), I was trapped in an endless circle of "TAP - TRY ANOTHER CARD - TAP - TRY ANOTHER CARD - TAP etc etc etc".  It always ends with me walking away, vowing never to come back to it again.  But after another few weeks I am always tempted....  😕

Thursday 10th June
BEEP What's that?  BEEP  Oh, it's the smoke detector.  BEEP BEEP It needs a new battery. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP....  Bloody hell.

Cool and cloudy all day.  Not sorry to have a day without any appointments.  I have been eating out ten days in the last two weeks, and not only is it getting expensive but I'm learning to hate the sight of chips with my meals.  I have eaten more chips the last fortnight than I have in the rest of this year!

Tuned in to listen to the radio interview with the retiring Governor of Tasmania, Her Excellency the Hon. Professor Kate Warner AC.  I had been hoping that they'd ask her what the high point of her time at Government House had been and she would reply "Being taught croquet by Michael O'Brien.  I should have recommended him for a medal."  Alas ...

Hobart Rep announced its next production – The Stranger by Agatha Christie  – is well underway with a brilliant cast featuring some of Hobart’s most experienced and talented actors. Unlike many ‘Agatha Christie’ plays which use her novels as the basis for a stage adaptation, the script for The Stranger was actually written by the Queen of Crime herself. After laying hidden for almost 100 years, it was absolutely marvellous to discover that Hobart Rep will stage only the second or third known production of her original script. Now that is something to look forward to!
The Stranger opens on Friday, 27 August and should keep you guessing right up to the final breath!

Saturday 12th June
Friday Keith planned to go out in the afternoon.  He said to me "Will you be all right?"  I said that I would be OK as long as I didn't have to drive after dark, in the rain, or in peak-hour traffic.  So of course that was what we ended up doing.  My new driving glasses are good in traffic but useless in poorly-lit side streets.  I think I gave Keith a couple of new grey hairs by the time I got him home.

After yesterday,  I had a day to myself on Saturday and stayed home resting up.  It rained for a while so it's not so cold.    In the evening, I rehearsed for my Sunday reading at church, the start of chapter 4 of 1st Corinthians.  It's not a long passage, and if I were more adventurous I would try memorising it and doing it without the Bible in front of me.  Maybe not.  The church elders might take a dim view of it if I started ad-libbing in the middle of the reading.

Tuesday 15th June
Wet grass was probably not good for my health.  Neither did it help my croquet game.  Lost two games (7-2 and 7-6) but I managed to make a couple of good shots and all practice is good for your game.
The quiz night went off all right  -  we got 8/10 for music thanks to Rose.  The quizmaster apologized for the number of sports questions sprinkled throughout the evening, but we struggled through most of them.  I think we even had a perfect round for Pot Luck, which is often a bit hit and miss.  We ended up third, so not so bad.

Thursday 17th June
Looking at a newly published e-book of pulp stories,  I was distracted by an e-book of H.G. Wells' novel THE WORLD SET FREE.  I wondered why they were asking five dollars for a public-domain book you can download for free on the Internet.  Maybe they had some extra features,  I thought, so I had a look at the free sample.  Well !  What I found was a text I did not recognize.  I read TWST many years ago and the book is still on my shelf.  But what I read felt like somebody had found a copy of the book in another language and run it through Google Translate to produce an English=language version.  That grinding noise you can hear is Wells turning in his grave.

Watched the DVD of THE BIRDS.  Not one of my favorite Hitchcock movies, but I haven't seen it since the time I watched it as a teenager on a small black and white TV.  Viewing it on a modern large screen certainly makes it a different experience, but I still have reservations about the script  -- to me it feels like two movies in one, the first a brittle romantic drama about family dynamics, the second a horror movie that foreshadows many later ecological chillers.  That said, it is still a Hitchcock movie ! 

Thought for the day:
~~The temporal differential we call wakefulness is the cosmic interaction of subatomic particles operating in the quantum field, representing a fundamental universal constant that we can only speculate upon as wave form frequencies. ~~

Banking on change

 25th May
Stayed in Monday, then went out Tuesday afternoon to the Croquet Club.  14 of us there.  Played two games, won one, lost one.  I tried practicing for a few minutes beforehand, but the result was I played badly at the end of the first game and the start of the second game.  Go figure.  The Tuesday evening Quiz Night was no world-beater either.  I guessed that from the two rounds which were about prizefighting and video games  --  not our strong points.  We came 7th out of the eleven teams. 

*** 
Thursday 27th May
Out early to get to a doctor's appointment.  My endocrinologist was not happy with my blood test and started muttering about changing my medication.  Vaguely amused when he quizzed me about all the different sorts of medication I'd been on over the years -- I guess it was quicker than delving into the thick file he had on his desk.  Eat less, take more exercise and see me in four months.
He probably wouldn't have approved of me lunching at Pizza Hut with friends, but at least I did walk there and back.
(When I got home I sat down in my armchair to rest for a minute and went to sleep.  Happens a lot this year.)

Infrequent visits to the central business district mean that I often notice changes in the city when I do go in.  Mostly these are minor things, like shops that have become Vegetarian Tea Rooms, but sometimes they are major changes.  All my life the massive Commonwealh Bank building has stood at a city intersection a few blocks from where I grew up. So it gave me a pang of regret to notice that the bank has now moved to a generic shopfront location up the street and its previous headquarters now has a For Lease sign on its frontage.  I wonder what will happen to the decorative frieze in the ground floor's main room.

 

Proust's novel SWANN'S WAY finally wore me down with its long introspective final chapters.  I am giving it a rest while I read CAT WITH A VESTED INTEREST a Sherlock Holmes story by Lyn McConchie.

Saturday 29th May

The coldest morning we've had so far this winter.  When I went out to feed the animals this morning the temperature was 4C  --  but the "feels like" ambient temperature was minus one!  At least the sun was shining when it came time to be out and about.  It's been a while between visits to the City Mission warehouse and they had added a lot of books and movies to their stock since last time.  I even picked up a framed poster for QUATERMASS II: ENEMY FROM SPACE which was the first science-fiction movie I ever saw (back around 1962).

Monday 30th May
36 hours since the first Covid jab.  I seem to be in the group that has no side-effects, unlike some of my friends.  So far so good.   Second jab in twelve weeks.

Tuesday 1st June
Croquet Club had about 14 playing today.  Cloudy but the sun broke through for a few minutes.  I was playing Rod in a singles game.  He beat me of course  -- I have won a game against him a few years ago but I think that was the first and last time that will happen.

Quiz night was a struggle.  We weren't the only team who thought the questions were harder than other nights.  There were ten teams and I think we came in 8th place with 58 points. The puzzle question certainly had us puzzled  --  it turned out the eccentric psychiatrist we had to identify was none other than Hannibal Lecter.  And we would have scored two more points except the picture they showed us was from an animated movie in which the classical monster the Hydra only had one head!  (My sister Julie would have been indignant  --  she always said there weren't enough questions about classical mythology.)

Wednesday 2nd June
It's a mixed blessing.  The benefit I get from visiting my psychologist has to be balanced against the stress of driving to and from her office across the river.  This month the trip back was more stressful than getting there.  The highway seemed full of buses, trucks and vans that blew their horns at me for various reasons, and the wait to get from the river road onto the highway seemed to take a long time.  When I got home I turned off the ignition, took a deep breath and just sat there for a moment.