Saturday Sept 11th
My first try at typing with my "new eyes" -- last week was difficult, this week seems to be mostly guesswork. Just as well I learned to touch type as a teenage student. It will be a few weeks before I can get new prescription lenses.
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Home again after my recuperative trip to the seaside. The last day we went for a stroll along the beach and I commented "What a pretty little creek emptying into the sea," to be told it was actually a storm drain outlet. In the evening I met up with an old school friend and we caught up over dinner before he gave me a lift back to my house (where all was quiet except the goose who came out looking for supper).
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Today's date reminds me of that evening twenty years ago when we were settling in at the day's end. My mother was already in bed and I said goodnight to my sister Julie. I walked into my roo and flicked the radio on to see what was on the late show. A moment later I appeared in the door of Julie's room and said "There's something happening in New York. I'm going to switch the TV on." From memory, that was just before the second plane hit the towers. The rest, as they say, is history. The next morning, as I walked down the front path to pick up the morning paper, a light plane flew overhead. I flinched.
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Nightmares aren't my thing, but now and again I have an odd dream. Saturday I woke up from a strange one, filled with elements that could have come from a B-grade horror movie. I'll spare you the details except for one exchange I recall:
"Think it's safe to look in the refrigerator?"
"Probably not..."
The dream I had the following night was much better. A picaresque spy thriller that even included cameo appearances by two of my friends as themselves.
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I was asleep when the phone rang. As I reached for it, my eye fell on the clock and I thought "Who could be phoning me at 4.30 a.m.?" Just for a second I had forgotten I was taking an afternoon nap and it was actually 4.30 p.m. !
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Walking back into town after church on Sunday morning, I wasn't thinking about much except where I was going to eat lunch before going home. Then I thought the woman walking up the street looked familiar. While my brain was dredging up the memory, I heard a voice "Mee-kal!" and the woman threw her arms around me. "Isobel! Great to see you again," I said. It was only the second time I'd seen her this year, and that time she'd been driving east and I'd been walking west so it had been a very short conversation. We chatted for a while, then I walked on, this time with a spring in my step. Sometimes it's a nice thing to live in a small city.
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Tuesday 14th Sept
Out this morning to walk to the Sunderland Street clinic for my quarterly blood test. Walked back to the Croquet Club and played for two hours, then walked home. Rested while doing some research for tonight, then walked to the Quiz Night. No wonder I've lost 5kg this month.
(We didn't do so badly at the quiz, coming third with 81 points -- those braniacs at the Diamond Set Stickpin table came first again.) June said to me she thought my handwriting had improved since my eye operation; I told her that since I couldn't see what I was writing, it was all down to muscle memory.
Wednesday night quiz was a perfect storm -- but I mean that in a good way. We solved the puzzle question on the first clue [10 points], got a perfect score on our bonus round [20 points] and romped through the first half of the evening ahead of the pack. At the end we won with 97 points, our best score ever -- we even beat Barnstoneworth and Don Quizote (yay!). 😁
Saturday 17th Sept
I went out for lunch, meeting Keith Curtis at his favorite restaurant (which just happens to be across the road from the Salvo's op shop). Between the food, fellowship and fossicking, it was an entertaining afternoon and the walking there and back was good exercise in the fresh air. Felt much better this evening than I did when I got up today, eating roast beef while I listened to a Sherlock Holmes radio play "The Two Watsons" by M.J. Elliot.
https://harrynile.com/product/the-two-watsons/ly
Steve Ashley's podcast was especially interesting to me this week, since it featured the music of Jelani Eddington who visited Hobart some years ago. After he performed on our Wurlitzer, I chatted with him and asked him if he thought Cole Porter and George Gershwin would have been surprised to know they were still being heard in the 21st century. He shook his head and said "Their music is timeless."
https://www.hotpipes.eu/half-hour-broadcast-333/
Sunday 19th Sept
After the morning service at church, we stayed on for lunch. Something we haven't been able to do for a long time. Fortunately the state Covid regulations allow us to have up to 64 people in the church hall, so we had more than enough room. And as usual with a Presbyterian function there was food to spare!
I came home and slept for two hours afterwards. Got up for a light dinner, then tuned in ABC-TV to watch the final episode of THE NEWSREADER and a show about the giant armadillo narrated by David Attenborough (or was it a profile of David Attenborough narrated by a giant armadillo? I must be tired).
20th Sept
Monday morning I went out for a walk. This being Springtime in Tasmania, I took a hat in case it rained, dark glasses in case it was sunny, boots in case it was muddy, a scarf in case it was windy and my walking stick in case I got the wobbles.
In the afternoon I was testing out my stop-gap magnifying glasses and read most of an issue of the PEOPLE'S FRIEND magazine. Unfortunately that included part 1 of a three part serial, so I spent quite a while sorting through the piles of unread magazines from this year. Did I locate the issues I needed? Yes, in the end.
Tuesday 21st Sept
Tried to catch up on some paperwork on the laptop, then walked over to the Croquet Club. 14 there this afternoon and I think about the same in the morning games. I played reasonably well in my two games, though my new eyes have not improved my standard of play that much. Walked home and rested up for a couple of hours for the quiz night.
We didn't do badly. The puzzle question took us a while, but we did get perfect scores for two of the other rounds. At 89 points, I thought we had a chance, but we came third and Jambag romped home again with a score of 95.
Friday 24th Sept
Cold, wet and windy for the equinox. I think the ambient temperature was down around zero when the man from the Auto Club replaced my battery this afternoon. With that, and the form my doctor signed yesterday, I can finally get back on the road.
In the evening, sat inside where it was warm and dry, eating dinner and watching the DVD of MURDER CALL, one of my favorite cop shows of the 1990s. (It gave rise to a catchphrase in our family "Look out, she's having a Lucy Bell moment"!)
Saturday 25th Sept
After lunch, cautiously took the car out for a spin. Until I checked the calendar, hadn't realized it was two months since I'd been behimd the wheel! It was actually a bit difficult to get back into the way of it; when you've been driving for fifty years, it becomes almost automatic, and having to think about what you're doing takes a bit of effort. By the time I got home, I felt a bit more comfortable, though I won't be driving in traffic for some time yet.
LAXDALE HALL [1953] Raymond Huntley leads a parliamentary delegation sent to a remote community in the Scottish Highlands where the residents are protesting at their poor links with the outside world -- the more things change, the more they stay the same, eh? I don't usually get a chance to watch old movies on a Saturday afternoon, but I commend 9Gem for giving me a chance to see this charming old flick based on an Eric Linklater novel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laxdale_Hall
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Sunday some of us went out to lunch in Bellerive after church. A little surprised to find that one of our group had a connection to the Wednesday quiz night -- her son is part of the Barnstoneworth team who keep beating us every week. Yeah, I know, it's a small world.
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I've always been intrigued by authors who collaborate. How does that work? Do they take turns at the typewriter or do they talk through the story in detail before they write it down? Well, I now know about one writing team. A book of the old Sherlock Holmes radio scripts co-written 7 5 years ago by Denis Green and Anthony Boucher for Mutual’s weekly radio program -- Throughout their Holmes broadcast collaboration, Green would pen most of the dialogue while Boucher would write the plots and the twist endings. [THE LOST ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES by Ken Greenwald]
Tuesday I fitted in one game of croquet -- it was helpful not having to walk to and from the club. The quiz night that evening came to naught, because for once we couldn't get enough people to make up a team. I stayed home doing a bit of writing and reading, which is still a bit difficult because the cheap glasses I am using at the moment give me little flexibility, I am anchored to exactly the same distance all the time I use them. (It can be positively dangerous if you use them while you're standing up, because if you look down the floor isn't in focus!)
The Wednesday night quiz was a bit better, at least we had three on the team. Got off to a good start, solving the puzzle question on the first clue for ten points. (Thanks to my abundant store of Hollywood trivia.) We faltered in some of the later rounds, scoring 4/10 in both music and television. We finished in third place, defeated by (of course) Barnstoneworth.
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I saw two consecutive items on the TV news last week. The first one said that the size and number of crocodiles in the north of Australia had increased dramatically. The second said that the Tasmanian cricket team had left Queensland abruptly. There didn't seem to be a link between the two stories but you can't help wondering ...
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I seem to be tired most days these last few weeks. In the morning I lie there, telling myself it's time to get up. Maybe I should try and take an afternoon nap whenever possible. I don't want to go back to those days a couple of years ago when I used to doze off after breakfast and not wake until lunch. Being a septuagenarian is no excuse for nodding off all the time when you're at home alone.
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