2024 ends

 

 I'm getting too old for all this stuff...

Monday I went out to my GP to get a prescription for a new drug they've put me on.  One of those silly made-up names like Ferrofibroton which tells you nothing about what it actually does.  :(
Tuesday morning I felt too tired to go out and play croquet, but was okay for the Quiz Night.  Missed out on winning again, but we have one more chance this year.
Wednesday I was still tired (why can't I get to bed on time anymore?)  but I did make it to the final meeting of the Connect Group for 2024.  Happy to see Phillip Mitchell there;  his father used to be my boss back in the 1970s.
Thursday I spent the day driving around with Keith Curtis. Keith wanted to gs to the South Hobart tip shop before the end of the year, as well as a final visit to Kookaburra Books. I thought I might get Friday off, but he rang up and said "Want to meet for coffee?"
Saturday was the annual Croquet Club Christmas Lunch.  As usual I presided over the quiz, and one member won a prize for getting 15/18 answers right.  Afterwards I polished off the leftover champagne (only half a glass full) and drove into town to deliver a big bag of cleaning supplies to the church hall. (No way I was struggling into the hall with them Sunday morning.)
Sunday I arrived punctually for the Communion Service and took my place.  All went well till the final moments when the minister announced that for our final hymn we would be singing something new, an American hymn titled "O Come, All You Unfaithful".  We sang it but I could see some of the congregation were taken aback.
After a quick lunch, I returned to the city for the annual Organ Society concert at Collegiate school.  Liz Barsham came over for a chat before the concert, and we discussed her recent art exhibition in Salamanca Place.  Then the mighty Wurlitzer started up, and we sang a few Christmas songs.  Believe it or not, the first one we sang was "O Come All Ye Faithful" !
https://worshipmatters.com/2020/12/18/the-story-behind-o-come-all-you-unfaithful/
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Monday I looked at the weather forecast and decided to stay indoors all afternoon.  After lunch I retired to my bedroom and shut the door while the temperature soared to 32C outside - that's 90F in the old scale.
I stayed inside all afternoon, finally venturing out to feed the chickens when the temperature had eased to a more tolerable 27C.  The forecast said that there would be showers between dusk and dawn as the hot northerly winds changed, and I felt a little drizzle in the air as I finished in the backyard.  Let's hope we have better weather for Christmas week.
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Birthday greetings to ABC Tasmania.  It's 100 years today since they began broadcasting in my home town.  Of course radio was very different in 1924.  You had to wear a suit and tie when you were on the air representing the national broadcaster and you probably had a cultured English accent.  There was also an ashtray next to every microphone and a piano in the studio in case you had somebody providing live music.  Happy birthday ABC.
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"The Christian faith is the odd one out in the world. Christianity tells you that you are accepted by God, not by working work your way up to Him, but because God has worked his way down to you."
-  Alistair Bain 2014.
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Christmas being over and done with (and that tiring pre-Yule three weeks) I had resolved to stay home and do absolutely nothing on Boxing Day.  Which is just what I did.  After morning tea, I relaxed with a book in the garden.  At the end of one chapter I put it down and just enjoyed the silence.  No traffic, no voices from passing pedestrians, no power tools from next door, no dogs barking.   Not even any birdsong.  Complete and utter silence.
Then the phone rang.  It was Keith, alerting me to the fact he was in town at the Boxing Day sales.  Apparently the place was so full of shoppers, people were lining up on the footpath waiting to get into some stores.
I put the phone down and said to myself "I think I made the right decision."
*
Books of December  -  
it's a long time since I kept a reading log, but here is my book list for the last month.
1Q84 book three  (Murakami)
Vhast 02 • Engaging Evil (Lenehan, Cary J.)
Tales From the Cafe (Coffee 2) (Toshikazu Kawaguchi)
Vhast 03 • Clearing the Web (Lenehan, Cary J.)
Forever Rumpole  (John Mortimer)
White Face (Edgar Wallace)
First Form at Malory Towers (E. Blyton)
Finders Keepers (Emily Rodda)
Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 2 (Will Murray)
If you lived here, you'd be home by now (Christopher Ingraham)

Winter woes

I've always said that we get the worst weather just at the end of winter, as we're about to move into Spring.  It was certainly true this year - I can't recall a year when we had so much wind.

Saturday morning it looked too wet and windy to go round the op shops, so I was ready to settle in for a quiet afternoon at home, but...
After I'd fed the chickens I was sitting down enjoying my morning coffee when there was a mighty gust of wind and something went <CRASH> overhead.  A quick inspection of the backyard showed nothing amiss, then I raised my eyes to heaven and LO the truth was revealed to me.   The wind had come in the back of the house, flown up the stairs and blown out the attic window.   The decades-old pane was now a heap of broken glass on the roof above the back door.   😟
I haven't been in the attic for some time, in fact not since I had my cataract operation,  My failing eyesight had made me cautious about climbing the stairs.  I had a second cup of coffee to give me extra get-up-and-go,  then I began the ascent.   Once I moved the fallen books off the steps and cleared away the cobwebs, it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be.   I passed my desk and typewriter (both covered in dust) and went past the rows of bookshelves, pausing only to pick up some 1963 annuals featuring Dan Dare and Supercar.
The window was pretty much as I expected;  the lower pane was still intact but the upper half had vanished completely.  I rigged up a crude cardboard cover in its place and then slowly and carefully descended the staircase.  Covered in dust and cobwebs I would have looked like the family ghost to anyone who had just wandered in the back door.   I'll decide  to do about it tomorrow, I thought to myself (channeling Scarlett O'Hara).

 
The first Tuesday of Spring, I opened the back door and stood there for a moment, basking in the sun and the warm air.  The sun was shining, the birds were singing and a gentle breeze blew across the backyard.  I felt like a groundhog emerging from his burrow.   For the first time in a week I was able to breakfast on the patio, enjoying my tea and toast while I finished the Edgar Wallace novel I was reading on my Kindle.  I don't suppose it will stay like this for long, but it was a great start to the day.
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The Australian government wants to stop underage people accessing social media.  Some are saying a whole new agency may have to be set up.  Possibly the expression "the Facebook Police" could become a real thing.  Your worst nightmare - a chatbot with a badge.
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Hoped that this week might be a bit quieter, but not the way it worked out.  Tuesday and Thursday I was out driving around the op-shops with Keith ($1 CDs at Lifeline!), Tuesday night was quiz night, Wednesday I went up to New
Norfolk to visit friends on their farm while the weather was good, Friday I did the weekend shopping after I met up with a friend from Claremont who wants me to take a look at his laptop.  Saturday I plan to stay inside out of the cold weather and rehearse my reading of chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes for church on Sunday morning.   Aside from that, nothing special happening !

On the road again

My bank account took a bit of a battering in May. The car was increasingly unreliable so I put it into the garage for its long delayed annual service. It seemed fine the next day then the day after it broke down (first symptom: couldn't drive uphill!). So one of my friends who is more mechanical than me had a go at fixing the engine, which only resulted in a bill for spare parts that didn't seem to help any.

So after a week or two, we lost patience and went round the corner to the nearest car yard. While I am browsing through the high-priced models out the front, my friend marches up to the manager and says straight out "Have you got any good cheap cars?" Well, if you don't ask you don't get. He takes us over and shows us a very clean and impressive Mazda that's about a quarter of the price of the cars out front. 

 Then we haggled a bit and he knocked 15% off the price.

So I now have a new(ish) car that seems to run well; it even came with half a tank of petrol, which is nothing to sneeze at these days. And I am slowly getting used to the newfangled digital display!

 

Driving or dining, I have my habits

 

Lately my listening is divided up between the shows I listen to while driving and the ones I run while I'm at the dinner table. Plus the odd one at bedtime.

My dinner time list last month:
Boston_Blackie_-_Marked_Money_10_06_1948
CaseClosed886 Squad Cars 1968
The Adventures Of The Abbotts 1955
Challenge of the yukon_s51e016_the third strike.
Cisco kid_s53e051_key of death.
Escape_-_The_Brute_04_11_1948
Have gun will travel_s59e021_in an evil time
Hopalong cassidy_s50e022_the letter from the grave
RelicRadio883 Escape 1953 and The Shadow 1941
Suspense 1949-12-22 Double Entry
The Horror1166 Where The Dead Sleep by The Creaking Door 1965
Frontier Gentleman (10-05-58) The Librarian
The_Mysterious_Traveler_-_Death_has_a_Thousand_Faces_09_21_1948.
The_Whistler_-_Fateful_Friday_05_26_1947
Thriller831 The Birds by The Hollywood Radio Theater 1953
Wild bill hickok_s52e048_the mayor of mule mesa
Grand ole opry_s58e001_WSM radio
      -- C:\Users\61408\Music\2024-03-06 L

And my listening on the road :
A Happy Heart, A Taste of Honey, and a Banana Boat - Pgm BMP
ACADEMY AWARD--THE WATCH ON THE RHINE
BURNS & ALLEN, MAY 20 1948
Broadway-is-my-Beat_09-18-22
Challenge of the Yukon (ep0805) 1950 The Gold Behind the Waterfall
ESCAPE Earth Abides by George Stewart 1&2
Frontier town_s49e046_where men are men
Hopalong cassidy_s50e018_bullets for ballots
Music Box - Connect Radio 02-05
R-U-R_ Project-Audion_5-29-20
Sunset Melodies - Connect Radio - 02-07
Wild bill hickok_s52e044_a letter of warning
Sunday Bandstand 10 December 2023
-- D:\2024-02-02 H

 Thanks to Relic Radio, Andrew Rhynes, You Tube and the Internet Archive for sharing so much good stuff.

Into the new year we go

 Someone on a Facebook page for vintage paperbacks said to me "you seem to have read just about everything! I feel both admiration and envy!"

My response was it just seems that way. I did some research once and found the older a book was, the more likely I was to have read it. As we approached the present day, my strike rate sank to zero.

I was fortunate that my teenage years where I was reading almost constantly coincided with a wave of paperbacks in the 1960s that offered SF titles old and new at affordable prices. My notebooks of the time reveal I was consistently reading six paperbacks a week,month in and month out. (The average paperback in those days was seldom bigger than 192 pages, remember.) Under that set of circumstances, it was easy to cover the field fairly well !
*
Got through Christmas without any drama.  I drove in for the morning service at church where we sang all the old favorite Christmas songs.  Home and had time to sit down down for a while before joining my niece Anita and her son for lunch in the city.

I had never been to the Crowne Plaza before - it was built after  I moved out of the city - and it has a deceptively small frontage (a bit like Doctor Who's Tardis).  We enjoyed a very pleasant meal, and I managed to stop eating just at the stage where I felt I could have eaten one more mouthful.  That's the time to stop!
*
Tuesday I skipped the usual croquet morning and the evening quiz night,  so I had plenty of time to meet up with Dr Ali, my new medical adviser.  He had received the results from the scan I had early in the year.  Good news and bad news.  There was no sign of Problem A, which they had been looking for.  But they had noticed some signs of Problem B, so I have to go and see a specialist.  Sigh.   Oh well, better to get it done than not know about it at all.
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The television set hasn't been switched on since before Christmas.  Oh, I have watched a couple of movies on You Tube (seeing THE MONOLITH MONSTERS again was a real treat, haven't seen it in fifty years).   In the milder weather, I have been eating my meals out on the patio, and I have a new radio by the back door -- i was initially attracted to it because it has both a cassette deck and bluetooth, a hybrid of two different centuries.   This means I can listen to old radio shows while I eat.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've listened to HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL, FRONTIER GENTLEMAN, THE HERMIT'S CAVE, THE HAUNTING HOUR, GANGBUSTERS, THE WHISTLER, ESCAPE, WILD BILL HICKOK, THE SEALED BOOK, DRAGNET, CHALLENGE OF THE YUKON, THE CISCO KID, and HOPALONG CASSIDY.