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. ~~