Sunday band

Sunday morning I felt slow and leaden when I crawled out of bed, but I got to church more or less on time.

R1 and R2 had both been away at the state meeting this week, so Sam was preaching. He presented a sermon on evangelism that had some good points; unfortunately I can't be more specific because my notes are in the car, which is in the shop at the moment (radiator trouble).

In the afternoon my sister and I went to one of the other inner-city churches who were hosting a fund-raising concert.

The bandstand was so full of red uniforms you might have thought the RCMP were in town, but in fact it was the Australian Army's Tasmanian Band (with a couple of ring-ins from the Royal Australian Navy). They had a big brassy sound that was particularly well suited to the up-tempo jazz numbers -- I especially liked their Duke Ellington medley.

Vocalist Kaye Payne joined the band to do a couple of high-energy numbers, which were very well received by the audience.

A worthy occasion in many ways -- The show raised $1500 for Lifeline.

---

I try not to buy too much stuff over the net or by mail-order, but the catalogues from the Folio Society are fascinating reading. I sometimes think I might laminate the catalogues and keep them rather than buy the books they advertise.

Opening this month's special offer, I steeled myself not to be influenced by the Lost Cities of the Ancient World. I can live without that, I told myself, and felt quite smug at my self control.

Then I turned the last page.

Last chance to buy, it said. Half price. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis in seven cloth-bound volumes, blocked in gold, with the original illustrations by Pauline Baynes.

Hmmm, I thought.

Halve the price, add the postage, divide by seven... that's about $25 per volume. Anybody who's been in a bookstore in the last decade knows 25 bucks doesn't get you much these days, certainly not a volume of this quality.

I can feel my resolve weakening by the hour....

---

Some action on the chicken front.

Julie brought over one of her roosters who is off-colour so she can keep him under observation. (I joked to someone that we should put up a sign ICU, standing for Intensive Chicken-care Unit.) His name is Turk, short for Turkey because he was one of the biggest roosters in the farmyard.

Meanwhile Julie was surprised on Sunday to discover two fully-grown hens in her farmyard she'd never seen before. There was an empty sack over by the gate, so she deduces that someone wanted to get rid of two chickens, saw her flock and figured that she mightn't even notice a couple extra.

At least it will be good for the gene pool. She hasn't had any new blood among the chooks for some time.

The geese, for example, are probably a bit inbred too. That would account for why two of the younger ones have an identical malformation of the left wing that makes some of the feathers stick out horizontally.




The discovery of an amazing city left behind by the Ancients in the most unlikely of places, leads a new Stargate team to the distant Pegasus galaxy. Once there, the new team encounters a planet of primitive humans being decimated by a terrible alien race - the Wraith.

The Stargate: Atlantis premiere "Rising" comes from seasoned regulars on the original programme [writers Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper & director Martin Wood] and manages to get through most of the intrinisc problems of pilot episodes. For example, I didn't think a lot of the pilot episodes of Star Trek: the Next Generation or Deep Space Nine.

OK, so it lacks the wit of the original series and we still have to get a handle on some of the characters, but there are some handsomely-mounted sequences and I'll be interested to see how it develops over the next couple of months.





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Real Player problem

The gas company seems to have finished tearing up the footpaths in my street. I think.

---

Listening to BBC Radio has been very difficult for me lately. The signal has been coming through garbled most of the time.

What seems to have been the problem is the pesky automatic update from Real Player -- twice I installed Real Player and it worked fine until a window came up saying I needed an update which would now be installed. Then the problem started all over again.

What I've had to do is install instead a replacement called Real Alternative which I downloaded free from one of the software sites Major Geeks. So far it seems to do the same job all right.

The only remaining difficulty is that the signal from the BBC stutters regularly, meaning if you record a 30-minute show (using, say, Audacity) you get little blank spots every one or two minutes. This makes for a long tedious job of editing before you save the recording, but it can be done if you have enough patience.

You wouldn't want to be recording any three-hour specials though.

---

The goose goes from strength to strength, but we only have two surviving chickens at my house (as opposed to the multitude at my sister's place). One seems fine now but the other still has a crippled leg and Julie has been feeding and tending it solicitiously every day.

Mind you, sometimes even I can make unwarranted assumptions. She arrived home from the health food store the other day with a bag of what looked like bird seed. It was a mixture of crushed linseed, granulated sunflower kernels and almond meal.

"This is the latest thing to try and build your chick up, is it?" I asked and she shook her head. Apparently it's for our own use; we're supposed to sprinkle it over our breakfast cereal and otherwise add it to our food.

It certainly looked like bird seed to me.

---

Listened to a 1972 interview "The Golden Age of Radio" on Yesterday USA -- I hadn't realised till then that Brett Morrison who starred as The Shadow for many years was also the urbane host Mr First Nighter who presented plays from "the little theatre off Times Square" [actually it was a studio in Chicago, but that's the magic of radio for you!].

Re the above comments, I can listen to this show from America without any trouble because they use Windows Media Player rather than Real Player to stream their programmes. You might hate Bill Gates in principle, but not all his products are loathsome and vile.

Away

This month's offering at The Playhouse was Michael Gow's prize-winning family drama Away. I don't know Gow's work but I was very impressed by this play.

It's Christmas 1967 and three families are leaving on their annual holiday after the school play -- in an amusing piece of stagecraft, the opening scene of Away is actually the closing scene of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

We follow them over the next few days. The headmaster and his wife, grieving for a son lost in Vietnam. The upwardly-mobile family driven by the parents' experience of the depression. The outwardly cheery family with a secret sorrow.

A talented cast perform on a bare stage with minimal props, bringing to life a moving and very Australian story. Chris & Judith Cornish are the headmaster and his fraught wife. Scott Hunt is the thoughtful father with the Nottingham accent.

Next month: Shakespeare.

---

A lot of the hierarchy were away at a statewide meeting so Thursday was a bit quieter than usual at the church office -- once we got there that is.

While Julie was feeding her livestock one of the chicks fell into the old bathtub she used to use as a drinking trough. We had to cut our way through a thicket of blackberries to rescue it before we left.

---

Remember my trip to Government House? I had an e-mail from the Tasmanian Churchill Fellowship -- they'd heard we had taken some digital photographs and wondered if there were any they could use in their newsletter.

Asking my sister if she has any photographs is like asking Woody Allen if he has any neuroses. She burned a CD and mailed it off to them on the spot.

They can pick which ones they like out of the 125 she took.

---

Re my comments about dreams yesterday, I heard an interview on the radio with a woman who's writing about dreams.

She has a theory about why some people remember dreams better than others. In those who are artistic or creative by temperament, the wall between dreams and the waking mind is thin.

The wall is thicker in people who tend to be more concerned with tangible things, the ones who would probably describe themselves as "down to earth".

She could be right I guess. It would explain those people who say "I never dream" when all the scientific evidence says otherwise.

---

The season finale of Stargate SG-1 aired on local television last week (in a marathon three-hour block).

It made for intriguing viewing. The first of the three episodes "Threads" tied up the on-going plots from the current season, leaving us to wonder what was going to be in the remaining two episodes.

We needn't have worried. The two-part story "Moebius" demonstrated why I've always praised the standard of scripting on this show. It put our heroes into danger, then took an unexpected twist that was laced with a good deal of humour.

The four regulars were -- let us say, not themselves for most of the story, making for some very amusing lines and situations for regular viewers.

I shall be interested to see the spin-off series Stargate Atlantis which begins in this slot this week.

But don't make the mistake I did and download the free Stargate screensaver from one of the big American websites (The Sc* F* Ch*annel). My laptop crashed and it took four or five attempts to re-start the machine so I could delete it.

I don't know what a WER47.ca.dir00 file is, but I'm glad to be rid of it. My old S3 graphics card just couldn't handle it.





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hello possum

Possums galore this autumn.

Must be something in the air. Or in the trees.

At night Julie can hear them when she's feeding her livestock at night -- leaves rustling, branches swaying, the the characteristic cough-cough sound.

Her mastiff Saj is usually quite unconcerned about the local wildlife, but the possums really get him going. Julie sometimes sees him standing up against the trunk of a tree looking up as though he'd like to try and climb up into the branches after the noisy intruders.

They don't do any damage to speak of, but they often get all the neighbourhood dogs barking, which is not very popular with the local residents.

---

Latest ratings in British radio show an increase in listeners for the digital station BBC7 which devotes a lot of its day to Old Time Radio. From 391,000 BBC 7 listeners in the last quarter of 2004, they have leapt by 41% to 556,000 listeners from January - March 2005.

(I wonder if the Poms were just sick and tired of the election coverage?)

Mary Kalemkerian (Head of Programmes BBC7) attended the European Broadcasting Union Conference, where she delivered a presentation on how an archive network can attract new listeners to speech radio.

The delegates were all from public service radio throughout Europe, and many ideas were shared and discussed. A common theme was, unsurprisingly, that "content, content, content" is the key to the success of any radio station.

Amen to that!

---

We got through Mother's Day all right. It wasn't great but it wasn't awful.

The first time is always the worst when you lose someone. First birthday, first Christmas, stuff like that.

After a couple of years the worst of the wounds have scabbed over, and I'm able to reflect on the past without it necessarily sending me into a spiral of gloom.

I no longer dream about my mother so frequently. Oh, she crops up now and again but that's only to be expected.

Maybe in another year or so I'll not only have stopped dwelling on the past but I'll be able to face the future.





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wireless musings

I should have known this would happen someday.

I was leaving the house yesterday evening and went through the usual mental routine of checking the essentials. "Keys? Yes. Wallet? Yes. Phone? Yes.”

I'd actually walked through the door into the driveway before I realised that instead of my mobile phone I was holding the TV remote control!

---

Received a nice thick parcel from ABC Radio last week. A hardcover novel, a CD, a DVD and two glossy magazines.

These were prizes from Tony Delroy's late-night radio quiz The Challenge. I haven't been phoning in lately (mobile phone charges!) but they'd reached question 24 of the 25 and I could tell it would take them a long time to get this one answered.

“Which bestselling thriller writer was a cousin of film actor Christopher Lee?”

I reached for the phone.

After the next few contestants had all gone down in flames, Tony worked around to me.

“Michael from Hobart,” he said with a certain touch of anticipation. “I think you might know this one.”

“I'm thinking about the movie The Man with the Golden Gun” I said.

“I'm thinking you might be on the right track,” he purred.

“Ian Fleming.”

“Correct! And for the win, question 25, Captain Hastings was the sidekick of which fictional detective?”

“Did he have little grey cells?”

“He very well might have.”

“Hercule Poirot.”

“Correct! The prizes will be on their way out to you tomorrow. Congratulations to Michael, tonight's winner.”

---

Speaking of radio, Tim Cox is back on the morning show after a long absence from the local ABC station. I guess four months was enough time off for pushing the pram. His wife Barbara Pongratz is also back at work with ABC television news.

They also moved house during their time off, so there's been plenty to do.

They used to live across the road from me. Sometimes I still look out when I'm bringing in the newspaper half-expecting to see him walking down to catch the bus to the studio.

---

And which commercial television station on Sunday night announced that this was the anniversary of VE Day, which brought World War II to an end....

Whoops. Not quite right.

---

After discussing current events with Kay and Chris on Saturday afternoon, I feel that Kay inhabits a quite different universe to the one I know.

We were talking about the new series of Doctor Who which Chris had seen but Kay hasn't. She shook her head at the prospect, saying that obviously it was a very different programme to the one she had known. Just look at that bedroom scene they keep showing in the preview, she muttered.

"Oh no", said Chris, "that's just there for humour. It's actually a very funny scene."

She looked at him with disbelief. He went on. "There's a scene later on in which they need vinegar, so they're emptying out the jars of pickled onions in the flat belonging to Rose's boyfriend. The Doctor looks at Rose and says 'And you let this man kiss you?'. Quite a funny line."

Kay just shook her head reprovingly. "Pickled onions can actually be very nice..."

Now, I admit I can be a bit too flippant at times, finding amusing word-play or incongruities in everyday life. But Kay seems to look past most humour as though it isn't there.

There must be a happy medium between the two of us.

---

Listened this afternoon to a CD from
First Generation Radio Archives. This one features three music programmes.

STAND BY FOR MUSIC

"We pause now for a program in the public interest" - and what a
program it is: "Stand By For Music," one of the best of the
public service shows, starring The Modernaires.
Glenn Miller's musical ensemble performs a series of favorites
including "Just Like You Used To Do."
1956 - 14:40 - Public Service, sponsored by US Naval Recruiting

HIS MASTER'S VOICE OF THE AIR

Advertising comes in all forms, but there is no better way to
sell a recording than to let the customer hear it first.
Realizing this, in 1932, the RCA Victor company sponsored a
series of syndicated programs titled "His Master's Voice of the
Air" featuring the latest recordings from the Victor catalog.
Here is a rare program from this series, taken from a 14"
Victrolac pressing manufactured by RCA Victor, Camden, New
Jersey. Recently released Victor records featured on the program include
"Frivolity" by the RCA Victor Concert Orchestra, Mendelssohn's
"On Wings of Song," as sung by Marjorie Fulton, and two songs
performed by Conrad Thibault.
1932 - 13:06 - syndicated, sponsored by RCA Victor

SALUDOS AMIGOS

The onset of World War II had a strong impact on the way the
United States viewed the world - particularly from a business
standpoint. Long-stranding European markets, the backbone of
American imports and exports, dried up overnight, leaving the
nation to find new markets for its goods and services.

Here's a good example of the kind of musical programming that
radio featured toward the end of the war: "Saludos Amigos," a
special musical salute to our friends "south of the border."
This AFRS re-broadcast, used as a replacement for the regularly
scheduled Xavier Cugat series, is taken from an original 16" War
Department recording.

mid-1940s - 30:00 - AFRS





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in camera

The implacable minions of the gas company have reached my street. The quiet suburban thoroughfare now resembles a parking lot for earth-moving machinery as trenches are gouged into the footpath.

There is a silver lining to the cloud though; at least they are digging up the other side of the street to my house, meaning I can still get in and out of my front gate without much trouble. I wouldn't have been so cheerful if they had dug a trench across the mouth of my driveway.

---

And I just heard on the radio the price of petrol in Melbourne has fallen 3.5 cents while in Tasmania it's increased by 0.3 cents! Grrrrrr!

---

Julie's gone off to the city with that eager glint in her eye. The photography shop phoned to say that her new camera had arrived.

It's basically the same as her old one except its black not silver and has a larger optical zoom (10x) plus a sound feature for movies ("which could be a mixed blessing" she said).

Since she had that accident with her old digital camera she's been quite bereft. She looked like a sheepdog that's lost its flock. Let's hope this cheers her up.

---

While Louise Saunders was working a different shift on local radio, her stand-in Jennifer Fleming indulged in some banter with Coodabeen guru Geoff Richardson at the expense of her musical taste. Louise's favourite albums, it was muttered, were put out by K-Tel in the 1970s.

And indeed when Louise returned to the Drive spot this week, she confirmed that indeed the very first LP she ever bought was Explosive Hits '74.

We all have such musical skeletons in our closets. I used to like those Top of the Pops compilations that Pickwick Records put out with studio musicians imitating the superstars of the day. There were about 90 albums in the series, which ran till 1979.

---

Tony Blair's party has been returned to power in Great Britain. Amusing to notice that the popular London tabloid The Sun endorsed him, saying that he needed a third term if only to try and keep all the election promises he made at the first two elections! Ouch!

---

Coincidentally with the release of the film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, BBC Radio 4 have started airing the long-awaited radio adaptation of the final novel in the series.

The last three books of the ‘trilogy in five parts’, Life, The Universe And Everything; So Long And Thanks For All The Fish and Mostly Harmless, have been dramatised as three new series (none of them were previously produced for radio).

It seems a long long time ago (~1978?) when I heard a recording of the first episode of the show that an acquaintance had received from a friend in Scotland. No MP3 or Internet in those days. The programme was recorded off-air onto a cassette and air-mailed to Australia.

We were absolutely stunned. It was unlike anything we'd ever heard before and we instantly recognized that we were witnessing the creation of something new and exciting.

Now, nearly thirty years later, it still has the power to stir the blood -- though I'm not sure that many of the people going to see the movie will find it that new (the catchphrase "42" having well and truly entered popular culture).

---

I like this one that I saw at the end of an e-mail today:
You only need two things for repairs - WD-40 and duct tape.
If it should move and doesn't, WD-40.
If it shouldn't move and does, duct tape.







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stay tuned

Now that I've got Real Player running properly again, I was able to listen to an adaptation of the old Dorothy L. Sayers whodunit Whose Body on BBC7. Love Lord Peter Wimsey.

And you've got to admire the brave people at BBC World Service's Write On who responded to a letter from one listener who suggested (possibly tongue-in-cheek) that it would be interesting to hear juxtaposed two clips on the subject of the soap opera Westway.

They gamely dug out the two clips in question and we got to hear a BBC Commissioner in 1997 explaining why the BBC World Service needed its own soap opera serial, then we heard from April 2005 the Director of English Networks & News explaining with equal conviction why the World Service had to axe the programme.

It's part of what some listeners have derisively dubbed the "BBCNN transformation of the World Service" -- turning the station into a clone of the American style "rolling news" stations which broadcast little but news and current affairs.

A symptom of the 21st century's short attention span perhaps. You switch on, listen for ten minutes and switch off again.

---

There's been quite a bit of talk in marketing circles about the possibility that Australia's two biggest supermarket chains Coles and Woolworths are going to follow overseas trends and concentrate more on their own home-brand generic products. The Australian Financial Review did a story about it last year.

But now The Weekly Times has taken a look at the idea and how it would affect Australian producers. The own-brand products tend to be sourced from anywhere that the company can procure good quality materials at a cheap price. If they start to crowd out the Australian brands, this could lead to a decline in the Australian-made products being sold and consumed in this country.

Your canned beans might come from China, your biscuits from the Persian Gulf, your frozen peas from the USA.

Australians have traditionally responded well to "buy Australian" campaigns, but the big two chains control 75% of the grocery market across the continent. If it's in their interests to downsize the traditional brands in favour of their own products, does anyone doubt that they'd do it?

---

I'm one of those people who still handwrites a few things, and over the years I've used various types of pens. Back in my school days I actually learned to write with a fountain pen (my teachers believed that ballpoint pens encouraged sloppy penmanship) and since then I've tried most of the popular brands from Biro to Staedtler.

The one I've settled on for now is the Hybrid Gel pen made by Pentel.

The 0.6mm fine point rollerball is easy to write with, and the rubber grip is comfortable.

But what really keeps me coming back to this product is that the gel ink is advertised as being waterproof and fade-resistant.

Like most bloggers I have an inflated idea of the value of my words, and I like the idea that the notes I scrawl in my diary will still be easily read in a generation from now.






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stay tuned

Now that I've got Real Player running properly again, I was able to listen to an adaptation of the old Dorothy L. Sayers whodunit Whose Body on BBC7. Love Lord Peter Wimsey.

And you've got to admire the brave people at BBC World Service's Write On who responded to a letter from one listener who suggested (possibly tongue-in-cheek) that it would be interesting to hear juxtaposed two clips on the subject of the soap opera Westway.

They gamely dug out the two clips in question and we got to hear a BBC Commissioner in 1997 explaining why the BBC World Service needed its own soap opera serial, then we heard from April 2005 the Director of English Networks & News explaining with equal conviction why the World Service had to axe the programme.

It's part of what some listeners have derisively dubbed the "BBCNN transformation of the World Service" -- turning the station into a clone of the American style "rolling news" stations which broadcast little but news and current affairs.

A symptom of the 21st century's short attention span perhaps. You switch on, listen for ten minutes and switch off again.

---

There's been quite a bit of talk in marketing circles about the possibility that Australia's two biggest supermarket chains Coles and Woolworths are going to follow overseas trends and concentrate more on their own home-brand generic products. The Australian Financial Review did a story about it last year.

But now The Weekly Times has taken a look at the idea and how it would affect Australian producers. The own-brand products tend to be sourced from anywhere that the company can procure good quality materials at a cheap price. If they start to crowd out the Australian brands, this could lead to a decline in the Australian-made products being sold and consumed in this country.

Your canned beans might come from China, your biscuits from the Persian Gulf, your frozen peas from the USA.

Australians have traditionally responded well to "buy Australian" campaigns, but the big two chains control 75% of the grocery market across the continent. If it's in their interests to downsize the traditional brands in favour of their own products, does anyone doubt that they'd do it?

---

I'm one of those people who still handwrites a few things, and over the years I've used various types of pens. Back in my school days I actually learned to write with a fountain pen (my teachers believed that ballpoint pens encouraged sloppy penmanship) and since then I've tried most of the popular brands from Biro to Staedtler.

The one I've settled on for now is the Hybrid Gel pen made by Pentel.

The 0.6mm fine point rollerball is easy to write with, and the rubber grip is comfortable.

But what really keeps me coming back to this product is that the gel ink is advertised as being waterproof and fade-resistant. Like most bloggers I have an inflated idea of the value of my words, and I like the idea that the notes I scrawl in my diary will still be easily read in a generation from now.






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down the pub

Nobody can say the Tasmanian autumn is dull. Sunday night we were huddled around the electric radiator trying to keep warm while we watched the last three weeks' worth of Star Trek: Enterprise [I recommend the episode "Doctor's Orders"]. I haven't been so cold since last winter.

Then next morning I woke up early and went out to bring in the newspaper (somebody has been stealing it off our front lawn lately if I don't bring it in promptly). I was amazed -- not only was there no snow on the mountain but it was a really beautiful sunny morning. Real "indian summer" weather.

It was so nice outside that we put out the two surviving chickens to get some fresh air on the back lawn. We have a little cage to put them in so they won't be bothered by cats or by the goose while they're out there.

The only cloud on the horizon was my conversation with my insurance company. They said that the damage to my sister's digital camera wasn't covered -- if it had been stolen or destroyed by flood or storm that would have been different.

I assume that if she'd been struck by lightning while using the camera, they would have paid up happily.

---

In the evening we went into the monthly quiz night run by the Irish Association. A pleasant meal at the New Sydney Hotel followed by two hours of racking our brains.

We joined two friends to make up a team under the nom-de-guerre The Amnesiacs. Amused to find that one of the other teams went by the acronym CRAFT (which stood for Can't Remember A F****** Thing).

This was the first regular quiz night we'd been to, so we were wondering how specialised the questions would be. The answer was that some were and some weren't. In fact I was pleasantly surprised at how many of the sports questions we managed to get.

It was also a stark reminder of how quickly we forget. One question was "What is the full name of the current Pope?" We all remembered his surname, but what was his Christian name? We mulled it over in the brief time we had and all we could come up with was Carl.

(It's Joseph by the way.)

In the end we didn't win but we didn't disgrace ourselves either. There were teams ahead of us but there were also teams behind us, so we weren't too distressed about the results.

Drove home and unwound with a cup of tea. Tetley have introduced three new blends of tea and we tried their "Calming" blend. This is a low-caffeine tea with hints of Camomile, Lemon Balm and Honey.

---

This weekend saw the end of the Targa Tasmania car rally. This is a regular event and brings high-profile drivers in from all over Australia.

For the layman it can be interesting but also rather confronting. One flinches at the image of someone wrapping a $300,000 Lamborghini around a tree. Not to mention the Ferrari that burst into flames before the event had even begun.

If I had a car that cost that much, I wouldn't drive it at high speed on a slippery twisty road in the backblocks of Tasmania.

---

Julie was tired of the fairly heavy books she'd been reading lately and asked if I had anything a bit lighter for a change. I gave her a Reader's Digest omnibus of crime and suspense stories and she couldn't put it down.

She enjoyed the stories by Rex Stout, Ellery Queen and Graham Greene, was fascinated by Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair, and I practically had to pry the book out of her hands while she was reading The Maltese Falcon.

---

No progress with the problems on the BBC website so far. Still waiting on an answer to my e-mail outlining the difficulties I'm having listening.

Some of the shows are arriving so garbled that you can hardly sit through them. Last week's episode of The Navy Lark, for example, had most of the jokes trampled on by stray words and sound effects from previous sentences being dropped into the middle of lines.

Almost painful to listen to.

---

This week is the 35th anniversary of Those Were The Days:

Joining us “live” on stage for this milestone event will be:
KEN ALEXANDER, veteran radio announcer and man-about-town, who will bring a newspaper from his basement to share with listeners.
STEVE COOPER ORCHESTRA, presenting a re-creation of a “Your Hit Parade” program from 1944 as well as a “Tribute to the Big Bands” with a simulated coast-to-coast broadcast highlighting the nation’s great bands, bandleaders and remote announcers.
MIKE BEZIN’S WEST END JAZZ BAND, offering a “Salute to the Coon-Sanders Nighthawks” with a reasonable facsimile of a 1929 broadcast from Chicago’s Blackhawk Restaurant.
THOSE WERE THE DAYS RADIO PLAYERS presenting re-enactments of favorite old-time-radio scenes.
SPECIAL GUESTS, among others, will be big band historian Karl Pearson and movie historian Bob Kolososki. Plus an actual old-time-radio show.

Each Saturday's program is available on demand for one week beginning the following Tuesday. You'll need to have Windows Media Player installed, but most people have got that.

---

Speaking of radio, I was provoked beyond endurance by the problems I've been having trying to listen to the BBC website. I tried everything I could thing of, finally resorting to uninstalling Real Player.

I installed Real Player again from scratch and it came up with a message that corrupt files in the library had been deleted.

Logged on and tried the BBC again. It seems to be better at the moment, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is what it was.

After a few months of listening regularly, not being able to hear my favourite programmes was very vexing.







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a Thursday thought

The autumn weather can be quite varied if you live on an island between Australia and Antarctica.

The other day it was a warm and sultry afternoon, peaking at about 27 [about 80 F]. Then the wind changed and strong winds coming off the Southern Ocean began lashing the island.

By the time I got up the next morning and took the goose for a walk in the garden, there was snow on the mountain. {Brrrr!}

It might be a good thing Kay gave me a pair of warm gloves for my birthday.



Thursday wasn't a great day for me or for my sister.

Firstly, the afternoon at the office went all right until I had to re-start the computer. I somehow found myself with three versions of the document I'd been working on -- and picked the wrong one.

This resulted in my querying my boss for information he'd already given me the previous day. Not only did I feel like a fool for forgetting, I felt as though it scuttled all my efforts over the last months trying to consolidate my position.

Every day that I'd worked, I'd tried so hard not to look like an incompetent buffoon -- to obliterate the memory of that last time I messed up.

I felt depressed for hours afterwards.

It didn't help that I've been so tired this month. Whenever I can, I try to sleep for half an hour in the afternoon, just so I can get through the rest of the day without feeling physically drained. Otherwise I catch myself nodding off in front of the television after dinner.

Secondly, it looks like I may have been overly optimistic about Julie's rooster. I thought last week that he was starting to improve, especially with Julie's round-the-clock care.

But things didn't go so well the last couple of days, and he died on Thursday evening.

Julie was particularly upset because he's the last male of one of her favourite blood-lines. Her last chance of breeding with some of the other hens.

On a more upbeat note, it was nice to see no less than seven Spotted Turtle-Doves out on the back lawn one morning. We have had them here on and off for years but they haven't been around much lately.

And in a spectacular display a whole flock of White Cockatoos roosted for a while in a gum tree down the street. You couldn't miss them: the noise they made was terrific and at a distance the tree looked as though it was covered in snow.

Kay tells me she hasn't seen White Cockatoos in the city or suburbs since about 1948. I certainly haven't seen such a thing before.

---

I spend a lot of time listening to the BBC Radio website but lately they've developed an irritating problem.

Remember the way a scratched record would skip or repeat a word as the needle went around on the turntable? That's what the audio on the website is doing this month.

I can notice it on the music programmes, but it's more annoying on the drama and comedy shows. Words will either disappear from the middle of a sentence, or they'll pop up again in another sentence. It's very distracting.

I'm hoping that they can fix this sometime soon, but I think the audio-on-demand department would be well down on the list of priorities at the BBC.

---

The first concert for the year at the Moonah Arts Centre featured the a capella vocal group the Wellingtones. They've increased in size since I last saw them -- there must have been 30 people on stage when everyone was singing.

There was a full house who enjoyed the performance greatly. Most of the songs were classic show tunes often heard from Barbershop Quartets but there was one striking original composition.

"In A Field In France" was written by a Tasmanian songwriter after the discovery by a French farmer of the body of one of his forefathers, a soldier killed in World War I. It was a moving moment to hear it in the week Anzac Day was being celebrated.




SEE MY ARCHIVES

ALL @ C

CHAPTER 55: IN WHICH I HAVE A MID-LIFE CRISIS
AND DECIDE TO RUN AWAY TO SEA.



After years of waiting my ship had finally come in.


I took passage on a replica of the 19th century Lady Nelson.



We motored up the river for a couple of miles then cut the motor and sailed down as far as Sandy Bay. The quiet was startling -- no sound but the wind and the waves. We were travelling so smoothly we didn't even seem to be leaving a wake.



Seagulls soared overhead and a flock of cormorants preened complacently underneath the bridge. A seal popped his head out of the water and looked askance at us before diving again.



The size of the ship was startling. It's not much bigger than a modern fifty-foot yacht, yet in the 19th century it sailed from London to Tasmania. Imagine spending 200 days on a boat this size.



Fortunately I met some friendly natives ashore and decided to stay on land after all.

---

The start of the football season means the usual disruption to the broadcast media. On Saturday night the Coodabeen Champions were reduced from two and a half hours to one hour.

Friday night football was all finished by 11:20 but the compere cheerfully announced that they'd be staying on the air for the next forty minutes to discuss the night's game. "Call us on the usual number with your comments."

No, guys, I don't think you'd want to put to air any comments I might make.

---

Isn't this just so 21st century?

A news report about the ceremony to officially inaugurate the new Pope said that his route was lined with "thousands of people waving, cheering and taking pictures with their cell phones"!

Sunday

Listeners tuning into a regular radio show which broadcasts religious services will have an unexpected surprise this weekend -- a programme made up largely of silence.

BBC Radio's "Sunday Worship" usually features Christian services, but will this week be broadcast from a meeting held by Quakers, also known as the Society of Friends, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Saturday.

Quaker meetings are centred around a long period of quiet contemplation by the gathered participants -- usually lasting around an hour -- with no hymns, sermons, spoken prayers or priests. The BBC has previously had little to do with broadcasting Quaker meetings lest listeners believe their radios have broken down, the report said.

The broadcaster's radio stations additionally have a technical back-up system which automatically transmits music in the event of a long silence, which it presumes is a technical fault. Sunday morning's 40-minute programme will come from a Quaker school in Reading, Berkshire, and will include a period of silence, although a shorter one than usual, the report added.

---

In church this morning, a bigger congregation than I had expected since this is the middle of a long weekend.

Rob continued his series of sermons from the gospel of John. He considered the way in which people found it hard to accept Jesus' message even when he was right in front of them, performing miracles and explaining his words.

The priests who made up the Sanhedrin must have heard more details about Jesus than just about anybody, but their reaction was to plot how to get rid of him.

Current ideas about modernising the church, moving with the times and making things more "accessible" to a young audience are doomed to failure. Watering down the message may bring in a few more people, but to what end?

The moral I guess is that we can't actually convert anybody. We can only present the message that's in the Word of God and let the Holy Spirit's grace bring people to Jesus.

As with most things, in the end it's all up to God.





The date of April 25th looms up. This will be my 55th birthday, which is a bit confronting. How can I be halfway through my 50s? It feels like only a few years since I turned 30.

I can still remember my 21st birthday. How can I be 55? That's... older.

*Sigh*




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rooster ward

With all the everyday things happening in our own routine, it's easy to forget how drastic the changes can be that are taking place in the lives of our friends and acquaintances. For example, until this year Val was a pillar of the local church - publishing the quarterly magazine, snapping the members of the congregation with his digital camera and serving on various parish organisations.

Alas, this was all curtailed by a recent diagnosis of cancer and he is more familiar with the business end of a syringe of morphine than he could ever have imagined.

I think about it sometimes as I pace across the back lawn (attended by various members of the poultry family), musing on how much we take for granted our good fortune in life. A short walk is of no significance (until you can't walk). A casual glance at the mountain hardly registers on the mind (until you can't see).

How often we take things as "givens" - health, freedom, comfort. And how quickly do we sometimes find that we can lose them.

---

Thursday was a tiring day. I had to get Julie moving early so she could meet friends in town for lunch, then on my way to the office detoured to pick up a few things before spending the afternoon working on this week's church bulletin.

This was complicated by the fact that the church hierarchy were involved in meetings most of the day, making it hard for me to get approval for each step of the process. Next week we're going to try producing the bulletin earlier in the week.

In the evening we went out again to the Lizbon bar in North Hobart. I was very tired and underwhelmed at the idea of having to go out to hear the nephew of my sister's best friend play jazz.

It didn't help that we were sitting in the only place in the bar where you couldn't see anything, and my hearing isn't good enough to carry on a conversation in a crowded bar.

The next day I was really worn out. After lunch I thought I'd go back to bed for a couple of hours.

Fifteen minutes later the burglar alarm went off in the house across the street!

Oh well, maybe I'll get an early night tonight...

---

Julie is still anxiously tending the sick rooster. It's getting to the point where every time we pass his box we check to see if he's still alive.

He gets very feeble looking overnight so she's been putting him out in the sun every day while she feeds him fortified gruel. Honey, oats, olive extract and sulphur.

A friend suggested it could be ringworm, but that doesn't sound the sort of thing that would cause his problems.

Julie found a website about chickens that suggested he could benefit from some yeast -- so she's going to try dosing him with Vegemite next time.

Chicken and Vegemite? Sounds delicious.

---

I've been transferring onto CD some more of those old tapes I made of the radio programme Sentimental Journey. These date from 1994 and while they seem OK at the moment, I don't want to leave them for another decade.

This was on the Saturday night show on ABC radio for many years, presided over by the venerable John West. It was the ultimate Golden Oldies show -- I don't think they ever broadcast a show that didn't have at least one number by Bing Crosby.

Before the CD revolution, it was the only way to hear some of the old-time stars if you weren't a confirmed audiophile with a big collection of 78s.

---

Browsing through the catalogues from hardware stores, I was slightly perplexed by the number of Patio Heaters on one page.

In days gone by, if we were outside and it got cold, we either put on more clothes or we went inside. We didn't try and produce "shirt sleeve" conditions by setting up banks of heating equipment on the back lawn.

Ofcourse, back then we would have thought that "al fresco dining" was the name of a chain of Italian restaurants.

---

On the box, Southern Cross TV takes a leaf out of ABC-TV's book and programmed a British whodunit in prime time opposite Friday night football -- perhaps inspired by the ratings success that ABC had with Midsommer Murders.

This time it's The Inspector Lynley Mysteries "Payment in Blood" (2002).

When eminent playwright Joy Sinclair is found dead at the remote seaside home of impresario Sir Stuart Stinhurst, Lynley and Havers are sent to the west coast of Scotland to investigate. The suspects are glamorous stars of the film and theatre world, there to rehearse Sinclair's long-awaited, controversial new play before the big West End opening.

Sounds like it could be good fun.

Meanwhile the double episodes of Stargate SG-1 on the late show continue to be compelling viewing. This week we had "Full Alert" (in which aliens try to precipitate World War III) and "Joe Citizen" (a barber from Indiana has a series of visions about other worlds which he gradually realises are true). The show continues to impress because of its consistent scripting and wry humour -- Richard Dean Anderson's Jack O'Neill is one of the great comic turns of science fiction.

chicken stuff

Help save the Tasmanian Devil

Thursday I thought that one of Julie's chickens in my front hall was on his last legs. He looked so feeble that we took him out into the garden for some fresh air, hoping against hope that being outside in the sunshine might perk him up.

And, surprise surprise, it did.

After a few minutes he was standing up instead of just lying there. Even tonight he seemed more interested in his food than he was this morning.

Wonderful what a bit of Vitamin D can do for you.

---

Heard on television tonight: "Disneyland is celebrating its 50th birthday. That would make me feel old if I could remember it." Gee thanks -- I remember when Disneyland was something that was still new and the first episodes of the Disney television show we saw were all about the building of the (then) unique theme park.

When I was a schoolboy there was another boy at our school who was a minor celebrity. Other students would point him out and say disbelievingly "He's been to Disneyland!" At that time, overseas travel was still a novelty for Australian families and to know somebody whose family had been to California was quite a remarkable thing

---

Always interesting to observe the feline mind in action. Our two cats (well, they live in my house anyway) Paco and Jezebel came face to face as Paco entered the sitting room and found Jezebel sitting in front of the heater.

For a second they stared at each other. Then Jezebel glanced away and Paco too looked off in the other direction. He walked behind the heater and passed on the other side while Jezebel leaned over as though suddenly interested in washing a spot on her leg.

Not completely different from the behaviour of some of us so-called higher animals.

---

These are supposedly questions and answers posted on a tourism website. I don't believe that, but it's a nice demonstration of the Australian sense of humour [chuckle]...

Q: Will I be able to see kangaroos in the streets?A: Depends how much you've been drinking.

Q: Can you give me information about hippo racing in Australia?
A: Africa is the big triangle south of Europe. Australia is the big island in the Pacific... oh forget it. Sure, the hippo racing is every Tuesday night in Sydney.

Q: Which direction is north in Australia?
A: Face south and then turn 180 degrees. Contact us when you arrive and we'll give you the rest of the directions.

Q: Can doctors in Australia dispense rattlesnake venom?
A: Rattlesnakes live in America, which is where you come from. All Australian snakes are perfectly harmless and make good pets, especially the Taipan.

Q: Can you send me the Vienna Boys' Choir schedule?
A: Austria is the little country bordering Germany... oh forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys Choir perform every Tuesday in Kings Cross, straight after the hippo races.

Q: Are there supermarkets in Australia? Is milk available all year round?A: No, we are a peaceful civilization of vegetarians. Milk is illegal.

---

Most amusing show of the week on television that isn't a comedy? It would have to be Grumpy Old Men which presents a group of irascible baby-boomers who look at modern life and don't like what they see.

Computers, mobile phones, modern fashions, body piercing ... plenty of stuff that we can all agree on.

---

And isn't it a distressing thought that the last film actually released by the now-defunct MGM studio was the new version of The Amityville Horror?

Richmond ramble

This Monday was the day selected for a "Richmond ramble" but the weather was so bad I thought it wouldn't go ahead. But I was wrong.

Richmond is a picturesque old town about 25km from Hobart, full of historic relics like the oldest bridge and the oldest gaol in the country. Just the place for my local church group to have a day out.





I consulted the local guidebook.




We saw the bridge in the distance.




The river was very pleasant, though we were nearly deafened by the crickets.




Julie saw the park




And the antique shops of course




Not forgetting the art galleries.

quiz nite

I've always enjoyed trivia and quizzes, but up till now I've never taken part in that popular activity the Pub Quiz. But one of the Thylacon committee invited me to come along to a quiz they were running as a fund-raiser at a city hotel.

Well, it had been a fairly busy weekend, but I pencilled it onto my calendar -- I like a couple of weeks notice so I can get used to any new idea -- and Monday night my sister and I rocked up to the New Sydney in Bathurst Street.

There was quite a good turn-up and there were half a dozen tables of people taking part in the quiz. I thought perhaps it was a bad sign that our table was designated by the name "The Amnesiacs" but we did fairly well.

The evening had a science fiction theme, but even if you were a trivia expert some of the categories were easier than others. The questions about classic novels and movies of the 1970s were easily disposed of, but the section about the geography of fictitious countries was quite a challenge.

Still, I would say that we did well in more categories than we messed up in, and we made ground rapidly as the finishing line approached. In the end we were only one point off being in second place.

To our amusement, when we listened to the midnight radio quiz The Challenge, two of the same questions showed up again!

---

Visited Joel to finalise our laptop repairs. He even installed XP Service Pack 2 on the machine for us, saving me the trouble of fossicking around for a magazine disc with that programme.

I don't know when he found time to do the repairs. He works at the boatyard, has his own IT business, helps at the Internet cafe and has a new baby in the house. He must be a very busy boy.

The only odd thing was that installing that knocked out my AVG anti-virus and I had to uninstall it and put a fresh copy on. Aside from that, everything seems to be working fine now.

Let's hope it stays that way. $200 for repairs we can manage - $2,000 for a new machine might have been a different story.

---

I saw Kay today and said to her "How are your cats behaving this week?"

Not too well, she said, I caught one of them up on the bookshelf about to curl up on a valuable first edition.

"Well, you should do two things. First, move it to a more secure location. Second, leave it to me in your will," I said with a twinkle in my eye.

Funny you should say that, she replied, that's just what I have done.

Oops! Many a true word spoken in jest.

---

Britain's streets are in chaos. Plastic mannequins erupt from shop windows to create havoc. One of London's famous landmarks is implicated in the plot. Harrods explodes. "It's bigger inside than outside."

Yes, Doctor Who is back on the air!

A friend provided me with a copy of the first episode a couple of weeks after it went to air on the BBC -- it won't be seen in Australia till next month -- and I was intrigued to see how it worked.

All in all, I was quite pleased. We've been watching a lot of the Doctor Who repeats that have been running on the ABC for months, so it wouldn't have been surprising if we'd found it difficult to warm to. But I found it a lot of fun.

Christopher Ecclestone brings the requisite dash to the role, and Billie Piper does well with bringing the "Dr Watson" part to life. The special effects are obviously modern, but they don't go hog-wild with CGI pyrotechnics just because they could.

And of course it was nice to see the return of the Autons, though the name isn't actually used in the show.

I look forward to seeing the rest of the series.

---

Julie tells me she saw a Japanese ocean liner when she was down at the waterfront today. Who knew there was such a thing?

She thinks it was even called the Nippon Maru, which should win some sort of prize for lack of imagination.

---

The pipeline crew may have moved on from Julie's front door, but their legacy remains. There's a lot of fine dust and grit all over the road where they dug it up, and one of the cats always rolls on the street.

This means that whenever I pat her, I find I've got all this fine dust all over my fingers. It must keep her busy licking it all off later on.

---

You think your kids watch a lot of television? According to The Hollywood Reporter the biggest viewers are in Japan:

The average level of television consumption increased on nearly every continent last year, but a new study has found that Japanese viewers watch more TV than anybody.

The newly released report from Eurodata TV Worldwide, the focus of a panel discussion at the MIPTV convention in Cannes, also found Americans' daily dose of TV climbed by three minutes last year to an average of four hours and 28 minutes -- nearly 90 minutes above the world average.

The Japanese watched the most television last year, clocking in a daily average of five hours.

Americans were second, followed by Argentinians and the Greeks, who consumed four hours and 25 minutes and four hours and four minutes, respectively. At 2 1/2 hours daily each, China and Sweden watched the least amount of television last year.

Even though dramas accounted for 46 percent of viewers' time overall, and made a comeback stateside, American fiction failed to dominate outside of the domestic marketplace as it has in years past.

However, shows such as "Friends," "CSI" and "ER" maintained popularity in many regions. American blockbusters continued their international appeal, with "Shrek" and "Titanic" sticking out, the report said.

The spike in various countries' consumption was due in large part to a blend of both news and sporting events, including the Iraq war, the U.S. presidential election, the Athens Olympics, the European Football Championships and the qualifying matches for the 2006 World Cup.

The MIP conference heard that the Eurodata document reveals that 46 percent of viewing time was dedicated to drama, 36 percent to other entertainment categories (talk, comedy, and variety shows) and 18 percent to news.

A total of 2,300 new programs were launched in nine countries last year. In terms of new formats, NBC's "The Apprentice" appeared to have found the most purchase globally.

---

Today's quote:
"Manned space flight is an amazing achievment, but it has opened for mankind thus far only a tiny door for viewing the awesome reaches of space. An outlook through this peephole at the vast mysteries of the universe should only confirm our belief in the certainty of its Creator." -- Wernher von Braun

Electric days

So I thought I'd got everything back to normal on my back-from-the-dead laptop. All the software that I'd needed had been replaced.

Then I started getting this series of error messages every time I started the machine. A serious error has occurred, it told me sternly, and asked if I wanted to report it to Microsoft. After a couple of these, the crash analysis report told me that something on my computer was in conflict with the S3 graphics driver.

A quick internet search revealed that this was a known problem with the OpenOffice word processor I'd just installed. I'd never had problems running OpenOffice 1.1.3 with Windows 98, but maybe OpenOffice 1.1.4 and Windows XP didn't get on.

So I un-installed OpenOffice (though I've always rather liked its clean look) and installed 602PC Suite, which was originally developed in the Czech republic as a free option to Microsoft Word.

We'll see if I do any better with that one.

I can always go back to Rough Draft - it's a very simple word-processor, but I've never had a moment of trouble with it.

---

Thursday afternoon spent a few hours at the office. It was the usual procession of minor problems and tasks. We spent a lot of time working on the minutiae of the weekly bulletin -- putting in a comma here, taking out an extra line there, re-writing one line six times. All the precise details. You probably know the sort of thing.

In spite of all that, we had the job completed at 4:59 which is unusual.

Drank too much coffee, as usual. I always say that modern offices run on two things: caffeine and electricity. And speaking of that, they're re-wiring the building this week, meaning that it looks a bit like a building site at times.

They installed new lights in the church library, which is a bit distracting. From my desk in the office I can look across the hall and see the library bathed in an almost supernaturally bright light. It's as though they've put in an enormous skylight and it's a really really sunny day.

Later this week they're going to put in new power outlets in my office, but it won't be easy. They discovered there's no crawlspace under the office floor, so they'll have to run the cables through the ceiling and down the chimney!

I was interested to hear that we will have two different types of power point. The red ones are for computers and electronics, the white ones are for ordinary things like fans, heaters, radios etc. After the trouble we had with our laptops at home this month, I'm all in favour of any possible precautions.

---

Julie not that pleased to find that the gas pipeline people are working on her part of the street again. She came out of her front door the other day to see a bulldozer and a pile of gravel as high as her shoulder.

"How much longer are they going to be working here?" she muttered. Every time she thinks they're going, they find something else to do.

She thought for a moment there might be a silver lining. One of the men working in the street asked her whether she'd like to sell some of her chickens. Certainly she would.

But then he had a look at them close up and had reservations. "I was really looking for single combs. Are all of yours double combs?"

As a layman, I had no idea people were so finicky. But apparently poultry buffs can be as fussy as any other hobbyist.

---

Remarkable weather this month. A few days ago we were sweltering in hot north-westerly winds. With hardly any time to get used to the change, last night plunged to a brisk 5°C [about 41°F].

My sister's Rex cat was particularly unimpressed. She usually gets up early and sits in the sun in the kitchen window. This morning she was back and forth all morning, keeping Julie awake as she burrowed under the covers every few minutes.

At least Paco is content to curl up on my bed and snooze until I get up. Like many cats, he sees no reason to go out into the kitchen until somebody is present to feed him.

---

I've had a look at ABC-TV's new 6:30pm line-up and there's not a whole lot that catches my interest. The most entertaining to my mind is Collectors and not just because it's filmed here in Hobart at the Tasmanian Museum.

It's full of stories about rabid collectors which make the average person think "Well, I'm quite normal compared to him."

Sample hint for attending garage sales: if it's already daylight, you're running late!

Brings back pleasant memories of the old series For Love Or Money.

---

Programmes of interest on the BBC radio website this week:

• And June Whitfield
• Hancock's Half Hour
• Just A Minute
• Navy Lark
• Big Band Special
• Brian Kay's Light Programme
• The Music Goes Round.

Lots of music and comedy.

Speaking of British humour, I've been looking at some recent issues of the venerable D.C. Thomson weekly comic The Dandy. A few months ago they revamped this title, which is second in popularity only to the iconic Beano. Glossy paper, new style covers, new comic strips.

The problem with this sort of change is always the same -- can you attract new readers without alienating the old ones? Some of the old strips are still running. It will be interesting to see how the title progresses this year.

The Beano on the other hand seems not to have changed. I suspect that D.C. Thomson are watching the success of their first upgrade before they start making changes to their flagship title.

---

Called in at Cafe 73 in Moonah and was surprised to see a poster for Thylacon in their window. Full marks to the committee for getting some publicity in the suburbs instead of just whacking up a poster or two in the local bookstores.

Tintin on the air?

Now that I have the laptop back in action, I've been able to listen to some of the radio programmes on the BBC website. One of my friends had told me about a re-run of an old show I hadn't been aware of.

It was nothing less than a radio serial based on the famous Tintin comic-books. I was aware of the animated television series that runs on ABC here, but I was bemused at the news there was also a wireless spin-off.

It seems quite faithful to the old large-format comics – what you'd call a "graphic novel" these days I suppose – although the Destination Moon story in which Tintin is the first man on the lunar surface sounds a bit odd now.

The irascible old salt Captain Haddock is voiced by an actor we all recognised as soon as he spoke – none other than Leo (Rumpole) McKern!

---

Julie spent a long time last night working on getting all her stuff back on the laptop. She has a lot more software on hers than I do, mostly to do with her photographic pastimes. That was why she had to upgrade to a later model – she'd filled up the hard drive on the old one.

While we were in Hobart on Monday, we bought some extra surge protectors, so whichever power supply we're using will be safe for the computers. What was that old saying “a burnt child fears the fire".

I've been needing a new alarm clock for some time, so I looked around some of the shops. The first couple I went through had only clock radios or wall clocks. We ended up in Dick Smith's where I picked up a nice little gizmo for $15.

However, since you can only read the instructions after you've purchased the item, it has a couple of features I hadn't been aware of. It has an hourly chime (well, you hardly want that while you're trying to sleep) and a choice of alarms: a recorded voice that announces the time, the sound of a cuckoo, or a rooster crowing!

We tried the "rooster" function and I have to say I don't think you'd sleep through it. As far as I can tell it keeps alternating between the crowing rooster and the voice announcement until you switch it off. Ideal for sound sleepers.

Though possibly not suitable for those of a nervous disposition.

---

Describe your favourite film in 20 words or less, preferably in a single sentence.

Sounds like a party game, but it's a problem faced by newspapers and magazines every day in the modern world. Over the years I've seen a lot of different errors perpetrated by television guides. They come in various forms.

An easy-to-understand mistake is printing the details of the re-make for the original film, or vice-versa. Then there are the movies that have the same title – I think I've seen at least four titled Breakout over the years.

There are even simple mechanical errors, where someone has turned over two pages at once and printed (say) the plot of the war movie Hangmen Also Die under the name of Hangman's Knot, a western.

The really interesting mistakes seem to come about when somebody in a rush tries to abstract the essential details from a much longer review – here lies peril for the unwary.

Sometimes we get a description that's perfectly correct as far as it goes: I once saw a blurb for Captains Courageous which simply said "a spoiled little boy causes trouble on an ocean liner". This is correct – that is the plot of the first five minutes of the movie! And presumably it's the first line of a much longer write-up.

But now and again you get one that's simply the result of trying to summarize a plot that can't be boiled down. You can't get a quart of milk into a pint jug.

That probably explains the entry in Wednesday's newspaper for the screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey on SBS-TV: "A group of primitives humans find an alien artifact buried on the moon".

Oh dear.

We've somehow had the start of the movie grafted onto the middle. I suppose we should be thankful the synopsis doesn't imply that they are accompanied by a paranoid computer.

---

After being fine for the rest of this year, my morning BGL [Blood Glucose Level] readings suddenly went up for no apparent reason. I've been between 6.0 and 7.0, which is acceptable, then last week I suddenly had a string of readings over 7.0 – a bit surprising.

Possible explanations – stress from some late-nights while Julie was away, change in seasons, an undetected virus of some kind, or different medication. The latter is a bit suspicious; the day before I had filled a new prescription for Metformin and it was a different brand to the one I had last month. Hmmm.

I was able to get it down to 6.6 this morning with more rest and skipping my usual bedtime snack of a slice of bread and an apple. We shall see how I go.

Goose? Geese!

Saturday afternoon I spoke to Robin on the phone about the Thylacon convention and a quiz night that’s on at one of the pubs this month. At one point I had to break off the conversation to call out the back door “Keep quiet!”. Sorry about that, I said, the goose is a bit noisy. “Oh, it’s a goose is it?” he said, “I thought your dog just had a very funny bark....”

Later that night I actually turned off the television to look out the back and see what the peculiar noise was. It turned out she’d found a piece of styrofoam and was pecking at it.

It’s not easy to get used to living with a fully grown goose just outside your back door.

---

How we ended up with the goose is a story with a twist. At my sister’s house she has had very bad luck with her poultry in recent years. The casualty rate for goslings, ducklings and chicks has been appallingly high.

After some years of seeing goslings hatch only to die off one by one, last year when they got down to two goslings she decided to act. One evaded her, but she captured one female and brought it over to my house to hand-raise.

It thrived and finally had to be moved into the backyard after it got too big for its box. We still have it because firstly she has a problem with one of her wings, and secondly because we fear she may be so socialised to people she would have trouble acclimatising to the barnyard.

But the twist is what happened the following season.

The flock of geese are aging but still produce a few eggs each year. This year they hatched out five engagingly clumsy little goslings. After a couple of weeks, one of them disappeared and we thought “Oh oh, now they’ll all go.” We groaned and waited to see their numbers decline one by one, as usually happens.

But, to our great surprise, the remaining four not only survived but shot up at a great rate until you could hardly tell them from the adults. Julie now has a flock of eleven -- the first successful hatching she’s had in several years.

And I still have a goose in my backyard....

---

What a strange couple of weeks it’s been weather-wise. On the morning of Good Friday there was snow on Mount Wellington, but eight days later it was still 23 degrees at 11:30pm -- that’s about 74 degrees in the old scale! -- and I was sweating when I fed the animals at Julie’s house while she was away for the weekend.

It was 32 [=90] at Campania, the highest April temperature recorded there.

I wasn’t surprised when I woke up on Sunday morning and found it was raining lightly outside. With all that warm air, even the weakest cold change would produce some showers.

---

At church on Sunday morning it was good to see our minister Rob able to walk into the pulpit for the first time in months. He was still using a light cane after the service, but he’s walking a lot better than he was even last month. It’s been a long recuperation after his hip operation.

He returned to his series on the book of John that he last preached on a couple of years ago. This week his sermon looked at the story of Lazarus, and considered the whole business of death.

It was confronting stuff, but a topic that none of us can avoid.

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Julie was re-united with her laptop on her return from Launceston. I picked it up for her at the weekend, and she spent a lot of Sunday night working on re-installing software and locating data files that had been pushed into the background by replacing Windows 98 with Windows XP.

Her “favourites” list on Internet Explorer, for example, was blank but some sleuthing around on the hard drive discovered the original list and she was able to copy it over onto the current folder. Mission accomplished.

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Do you ever see something in print and mutter to yourself “That’s what I’ve always thought. Why isn’t it obvious to everyone?”

I was in a hi-fi shop the other day pricing CD Recorder units (how much? don’t ask!) and picked up a brochure for the upmarket Model Two radio made by Henry Kloss - famously the best mantle radio on the market.

The piece on their stereo AM/FM radio points out that “stereophonic reproduction requires the separation of the left and right audio channels, so why place two speakers in a single cabinet?” They provide a companion speaker with a five metre cable so you can move it anywhere in the room.

Perfectly logical. Why do so many so-called Stereo sets have the speakers mounted only a few inches away from each other? It makes no sense whatsoever.

If I won the lottery, I’d cerainly buy one of Mr Kloss’ radios.

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On the BBC radio 2 website, listened with great enjoyment to the weekly Friday Night is Music Night concert. Not only were the BBC Concert Orchestra in fine form, but during interval they played a selection of Byne's light music and the guest stars were the quirky band Pink Martini.

They've been described by one British critic as a cross between Manhattan Transfer and the Buena Vista Social Club -- a sort of blend of calypso, big band and smoky night club sounds. China Forbes' voice and Robert Taylor's trumpet form a beautiful synergy.

I must see if I can get their album Sympathique

And if it's the start of the month, it must be time for another mouth-watering newsletter from those industrious folk at First Generation Radio Archives. Their special offer this month is a set of CDs of the famous comedy series The Great Gildersleeve and a "Round Robin" (a set made up of various programmes) which includes material as diverse as Bob & Ray and Fu Manchu.

So much of radio's history has been lost but some survived by a fluke. The Gildersleeve shows mentioned above were preserved by chance when the 16" lacquer discs fell into the hands of an engineer who had worked at NBC radio when it was located at the famous intersection of Sunset and Vine in Hollywood.

In Australia, alas, most of our archives were simply dumped in the 1960s when Top 40 programming became almost universal. Hard-hearted bean-counters could see no reason to retain warehouses full of drama, comedy and variety shows.

What does still exist at least has a home at the National Sound & Film Archive in Canberra, which recently reverted to its original name after being known for a few years by the more trendy designation of Screensound Australia.

Fall furnace

Friday was a hectic day. We all wilted as the temperature shot up to a sultry 31 degrees; it seemed a bit strange to be mopping our brows while the autumn leaves were starting to change their hue. Then there was a lot of running about to do.

I had to go in to Hobart at short notice. I lost a prescription for Metformin and my endocrinologist's office mislaid my request for a replacement. So I phoned my GP this morning and asked if I could get one from him -- yes, said his receptionist, but you do know we close in half an hour?

So I jumped into the car and drove hurriedly into the city. Parking was a nightmare but I found a spot up in the end of Liverpool Street and got there in time.

Arriving home, my sister gave me a wary look. I wondered what had happened now.

I knew she was going up north to see her old friend Sippa, but she'd just had a phone call from the couple who were giving her a lift. We thought they were leaving about 6 p.m., but they'd changed it to 3 p.m.

Needless to say this change to our schedule sent us into another frenzy. Julie packed frantically. Then we drove to her house where she fed the animals and gave me a last-minute refresher on who ate what.

Stopped at a store to pick up some last-minute shopping for her trip, then when we got back to my place she said "I'm going to sit down for two minutes and relax." I made her a lukewarm cup of coffee (so she could drink it down quickly) then she drove off.

I watched her drive away, feeling hot and tired. Went back inside, made myself something to eat and went to sleep in my chair. Julie sent me a text message to say that it was a bit cooler in Campbell Town where they'd stopped for a meal. I drank the rest of my now cold coffee and emerged into the late afternoon, blinking slightly.

The sky had clouded over a little, and there was a breeze coming up. The goose followed me around, interested to see if I was going to feed her. Parrots fluttered around the fruit tree.
I still felt tired and sticky but the evening looked as though it might be a bit more tolerable.

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Went over to Julie's house before I went to bed and checked on her animals. Poultry were quieter than I expected, and the horse was ready and waiting for his feed.

The cats gallopped around as usual, and I kept a close eye on the dogs to make sure they didn't get into a a scuffle after I fed them. In fact I forgot to feed Julie's mastiff before I took him out into the duck-pen; I'm surprised he didn't remind me.

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At least I can listen to some plays from the BBC website now that my laptop is running again. This evening I listened to The Distant Echo by suspense novelist Val McDermid, dramatised by Bert Coules

Four students stumble upon the body of a dead girl. Twenty-five years later the Fyffe police mount a "cold case" review of the unsolved case, and the friends finally have an opportunity to clear their names once and for all. However, when one of them dies in a suspicious house fire, and another in a burglary gone bad, it seems someone is pursuing their own brand of justice. If the remaining two are to avoid becoming the next victims they need to find out what really happened all those years ago.

Not bad, but the Scottish accents require some concentration. Unlike television, you can't rely on the Closed Captions!

Afterwards, for light relief I listened to an episode of Just a Minute -- always one of my favourites.