Coward! Chicken!

A clash between matters cultural and agricultural – was there a way of resolving it?

Saturday afternoon was the poultry show out at the Royal Hobart Showgrounds. Saturday evening was a concert at the Town Hall. Could we see both and still fit in the Spit Roast at the showgrounds? Well, yes, but it was a close thing.




The noise was fairly overwhelming. All those clucking, quacking and crowing birds in one place. To a layman like me, a chicken is a chicken, but walking around the cages one saw an incredible diversity of breeds, sizes and markings. There were plenty of birds I'd never even heard of before.


Julie of course had an even more pressing motivation than usual to inspect the birds in the "For Sale" row. Both the Wyandottes that she'd bought at the last sale had died, apparently victims of the cold weather, and she wanted to find replacements.



We took the chickens home and returned for the Spit Roast, which offered beef, pork, venison and (um) chicken. I think it would take a more determined diner than me to tuck into a plate of roast chicken while surrounded on all sides by poultry looking over my shoulder.

The meal made us a bit late, but we almost made it on time for the Tasmanian Song Company's concert at the Town Hall.



Where better than the ornately decorated concert room at the Town Hall [built in 1864 with an organ that was once played by Albert Schweitzer] for a concert entitled "Flanders & Swann meet Noel Coward".

Musical director Christopher Waterhouse has been wanting to put on such a concert for some time, ever since he heard an early 1970s album of the music by the vocal group the King's Singers. It was a difficult job to gather the necessary choral arrangements, since most of these works are seldom heard on modern concert stages. But here they were.

Entering late, we were seated at the back of the hall, but my knowledge of the lyrics made up for my imperfect hearing and it was a delight to hear all the old songs performed with such gusto.

Many of Flanders & Swann's songs involve animals and we were treated to renditions of "The Hippopotamus", "The Sloth", "The Warthog", "The Rhinoceros" and "The Ostrich" as well as everyone's favourite "Mud, glorious mud".

I've known these songs most of my life since I had a teacher who wisely decided there was no use trying to get boys to work during the last week of the school year. Instead, he brought in a gramophone and played us some of his favourite records – always including at least one album of Flanders & Swann. Even at that age I could appreciate the vocal dexterity and clever lyrics.

Allan Bacon and Darren Sangwell performed most of these, while Robert Jarman breezed in every few minutes to portray Noel Coward and offer us a convincing re-creation of Coward performing such songs as "Nina", "I've been to a marvellous party" and "Let's do it."

The evening came to a close with the audience joining in to sing "White Cliffs of Dover" and "We'll Meet Again."

The last was appropriate, since it was announced that the Song Company plans another concert in November focusing on Gershwin and Rogers & Hammerstein.

We shall be there.

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c/attic

We had three days under 2º this week – a sudden blast of winter to make us sit up and take notice. That's about 35º in the old measurements. The cat was glued to the electric heater every morning.

There was fog some evenings, and one morning frost lingered on the back lawn until after 9:30. It was quite a wake-up call after the mild winter we had last year.

This of course meant that I should take some precautions to prevent damage to my book collection. I hadn't worried much last year, but weather like this meant I had to start running the heaters in the attic for at least part of the night.

I hadn't been up to the attic for a while, mostly because I was afraid of what I might find. Last time I was up there I discovered one of Julie's cat had started using it as a toilet; that wasn't so terrible but in the tidy way of cats she'd tried to cover it up using any books or magazines she could grab.

I had to throw out half a dozen books (including a nice copy of The Saturday Evening Post Book of Sea Stories). I know some people who are adept at book restoration but there's not much you can do with a volume that's been soaking in cat urine.

But this time it wasn't so bad. To my relief, there was just a bit of cleaning up to do on the floor, with no damage to the books. I was particularly glad to see that some boxes in front of the far bookcases had protected my collection of P.G. Wodehouse and Edgar Wallace. (I have everything arranged in roughly alphabetical order, starting with A near the rear window and going clockwise around the attic.)

I ran a long extension cord from the electric heater to the off-peak power-point so I could heat the place economically. Just a few hours a day is usually enough to stop problems with dampness and mould.

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Sarah Key, a physiotherapist who's written a book titled The Body In Action, was interviewed on morning radio this week. She had some discouraging things to say about how the body handles aging and the loss of elasticity and flexibility. I guess I should do something about an exercise programme, something that will stop these twinges and occasional back spasms.

http://www.allenandunwin.com/shopping/ProductDetails.aspx?ISBN=1741141184

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The BBC7 website have been running a 3-part serial based on John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos [a.k.a. Village of the Damned]. I can't work out if I've heard it before or whether the serial is so faithful to the book that I feel as though I've already heard it.

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powerless

The sound of silence. That's what I heard when the clock radio cut off in the middle of a song on Saturday morning. I knew what that meant. The electricity people had been right about when the power would go off.

I got up and wandered out to the kitchen. Nowadays nearly everything you use plugs into something. I looked around. Refrigerator. Microwave. Kettle. Computer. Toaster. Video. All so much useless metal without the vital spark to power them.

They'd advised us to heat some water the night before and keep it hot in a thermos. We tried that but our old thermos wasn't up to keeping water hot all night. Managed to make a cup of luke-warm tea that was better than nothing, but we ended up going out for brunch across at the little coffee shop at the Coles shopping centre.

They actually took two hours less than scheduled to fit the new power-lines. It was positively exhilarating when I opened the refrigerator door and the light came on!

What's the old song lyric - "You don't know what you've got till it's gone"?

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This really is the 21st century! Last night Julie's friend Jan sent her a text message on her mobile phone to say that she'd arrived safely in Dover, England. She then asked if we could look up on the Internet the address of the hotel she was going to stay at!

So you had her sitting in a coffee shop on the coast of England while two people in Australia used various search engines to locate the website of the hotel she was seeking. And then sent the information to her phone by SMS.

Talk about your global village...

"How much is it to text to Britain?" wondered Julie. "I'll find out."

"One way or the other," I commented.

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Kay and Chris were here on Saturday afternoon. Kay was vexed by one of the television stations and waxed eloquently on the subject till I had to blow my referee's whistle to quiet things down.

Without meaning to, I annoyed her more than somewhat just before she left. She had asked if she could borrow one of my Stargate DVDs and I shrugged. "As long as you remember to return it and in good condition," I said guardedly.

"Of course it would be in good condition," she replied. "When did I ever do otherwise?"

I should have thought before speaking, but given a direct question the answer popped into my mind and I heard myself saying "Well, there was that paperback Thunderbirds and the Ring of Fire you borrowed in 1973..."

"What about it?"

"It looked like someone had taken to it with an electric carving knife."

She recoiled as though I'd slapped her across the face. "There are two things that I've never been guilty of," she moaned. "Cruelty to animals and mistreating books! Anybody who knows me will tell you that." She shook her head. "I don't remember the book, but I'm sure that never happened."

"Well, that's the way I remember it," I said in a neutral voice, but she was still muttering about it as she left.

I think I really upset her this time.

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Nice to see that the Nine Network has such confidence in the Star Trek franchise
Enterprise. They've finally stirred themselves to show the first episode of the 2004 season ["Storm Front" part 1] but they don't seem too fussed about it - they're running it at 1 a.m.

Not a great time-slot for a first-run programme. Typical of the way that the networks treat anything that doesn't have instant mass-market appeal nowadays.

If this was the way things always worked, the original Star Trek series would have been cancelled in its first month. They would probably have replaced it with Big Brother's Amazing Survivor Wife Swap Idol.

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I'm so dizzy...

This is the sight that greeted us when we parked in Moonah to visit Leah at Café 73. Julie was transfixed – an immaculately restored 2CV containing a Dalmatian and a German Shepherd. I can think of nothing more calculated to have her reaching for her camera.

I wasn't feeling the best on Friday. I was late getting to bed but I thought I'd had enough sleep, yet I felt worse and worse as the morning went on. The Blood Glucose test was a startlingly high reading of 8.7 before breakfast – yow!

It's a popular urban myth that having a flu shot causes you to get the flu. I'm beginning to see why people believe it. I spent all morning coughing – "You're sickening for something," said my sister and she may be right.

In the evening I had just finished watching West Wing on television when I suddenly felt dizzy. If it wasn't for my eyes being open, I might have thought my chair was spinning slowly round and round. It didn't last long, but then you wouldn't want it to.

To add insult to injury they're cutting the electricity tomorrow morning to work on the power in our street, so I can't even say "I'm sick, I'm going to stay in bed and ignore the world."

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My sister spends a lot of time on the Internet nowadays doing research on our family tree. This week she extended the genealogy one more step back and discovered that Madeleine, one of her oldest friends, is actually a distant relation. Madeleine was so excited at this news that she phoned her mother interstate to tell her the exciting news.

I hope this doesn't mean they'll be coming round wanting to borrow our lawnmower or something similar.

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Recent live entertainment in town includes:

Tarantara! Tarantara! is sort of a potted history of Gilbert & Sullivan including all their greatest hits. If you know little or nothing about G&S this is the show to educate you. A lively presentation from (of course) the Gilbert & Sullivan Society.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie was the May attraction at the Playhouse. I think everyone knows the plot of this one by now, but it was well staged and it was interesting to see whether or not the director had decided to follow the lead of the London production and follow the original novel rather than the 1943 stage version. (I'll never tell!).
Ten Bears is an eclectic folk-rock trio fronted by former Hobart performer Josh Wilkinson. Listening to him at the Moonah Arts Centre was pleasant, though I hardly understood a word of what he was singing. Two demerits to the PR person who described the act as "a gentle, ethnic influenced journey into mysterious waters, melded with a more modern sounding rock element, intended to invoke a subtle whisper of ancient wisdom"(!)

Coming up next: Pride and Prejudice the stage play.

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Ephah

Had to go into the city to go to the bank, so Julie and I had a snack at the Ephah café in the Bank Arcade. The coffee is always good there, which is more than you can say about a lot of the eating places around town.

Then browsed through the Spice World shop across the arcade. They had some organic mandarins which were so brightly coloured they looked like they'd been dipped in orange dye. They were dearer than the ones in the supermarket but so sweet and juicy.

We strolled around the shop, which is an Aladdin's Cave of foodstuffs. Not to mention the extra items, like the shelf of Indian DVD movies. I've always been mildly interested in Bollywood but not to the point of actually buying a movie.

David and Nicky Williams have a nice little operation there at the junction of Bank Arcade and Wellington Court – her coffee shop and his Spice World store.

For dinner a plate of lamb and cheese croquettes on a bed of baby spinach with a sauce of mushrooms, chickpeas and grapes, accompanied by soy-and-linseed bread and washed down with green tea. A simple meal but enough to keep body and soul together.

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A card in the mailbox from the power company. They're working on the powerlines in our street on Saturday morning and warn us that the electricity may be cut off. This is going to make breakfast difficult – a cold drink isn't my favourite way to start the day in winter.

Last night the temperature went down to 1° [34°in the old scale]. I hope that Saturday morning isn't a repeat of that or it could be awfully chilly in an all-electric house.

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I really miss the Blackmask web site. It's been one of my most-visited web sites for years – the sheer range of free books they offer is breath-taking. Unfortunately they got into a legal battle with Conde Naste, who own the copyright on The Shadow and Doc Savage, and they've been off the air all this month.

Every so often my finger strays to their entry on my browser's favorites list, but there's never any response. *Sigh*

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Old Time Radio revisited:

Gunsmoke [1955] "Chester's Hanging"

Brisk if brutal western drama – even Matt Dillon has to deal with paperwork and go through the wanted posters if he wants to nab fugitives. His sidekick Chester almost comes to a bad end here.

Jack Benny [1946] "Fred Allen"

Celebrated comedian Allen makes a guest appearance. "Now that we've finished ad-libbing can we get back to the script?"

Life with Luigi [1948] "The Little Immigrant"

Probably not politically correct, but an engaging sitcom about an amiable little Italian in Chicago (J. Carroll Naish). A highlight is Luigi's attempt to explain the American banking system.

Whitehall 1212 [1952] "Weed Eradicator"

Measured police procedural about poisoning in a small town in Wales. Script ed by the legendary Wyllis Cooper, better known for his Quiet Please series.

Rocky Jordan [1948] "The Bartered Bridegroom"

A clone of Casablanca – adventures of the owner of a Cairo nightclub. Full of the usual ambience of Hollywood's mystic East with all its danger, intrigue and sinister characters. Not to be confused with Frank Sinatra's Rocky Fortune series.

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chickens run

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Just after I'd left home on Tuesday morning I got a SMS message from my sister Julie. The neighbour's new dog had wandered down our driveway and discovered we were keeping chickens there...

In the resulting commotion, two of the chickens got out of their coop. One was recaptured easily enough, but the other sought refuge in the backyard and had to be scooped up with the butterfly net we keep handy for just such an emergency.

The dog fortunately wasn't able to follow the hen into the backyard. Had he come face to face with our goose Zelda the ensuing kerfuffle would have had the whole neighbourhood in an uproar.

We got everybody settled down and moved the cages to safer spots, just in case – though I notice the neighbours had their dog on the chain by then.

I got back in the car and set off for the office again.

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I've finally succumbed and bought myself a fairly rudimentary portable MP3 player. After some initial fumbling, I have worked out how to play back stuff. Last thing at night I sit propped up in bed, the cat oblivious to my button-pushing, and listen to a half-hour radio programme - sometimes one I've recorded myself this week or perhaps one from a past decade that I've downloaded from the Internet.

New gadgets are always difficult for me to get the hang of. I thought it was just me, but a recent news report suggests that it may be more widespread a problem than I realised.

It seems more and more people own gadgets that sit idle because they have to relearn how it works each time they want to use it.

A recent study by a Dutch university notes that half the products returned to stores are in working order - the customer just can't figure out how they work. On average, consumers will spend just 20 minutes trying to get it to run before giving up.

"Products that are technologically advanced should also be simple to use," said a spokesman for Philips but critics mutter that so-called "feature bloat" is becoming common as engineers realise they can now add more functions at virtually no extra cost.

Whether the consumer can understand how to use all these extra features is another matter.

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The Nine Network has a new TV show called What's Good for You, hosted by Sigrid Thornton.

Each week the team of reporters will examine a common myth or misconception and conduct their own experiments to expose the truth of the matter. (In the first episode one poor soul was stung five times by a bluebottle to test varying cures - ouch!)

Sounds a bit like Mythbusters without the explosions, doesn't it?

So guess where they scheduled it. Yes, that's right, directly opposite Mythbusters on Monday nights.

Those programming directors are so predictable, aren't they?

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Old Time Radio noted:

Escape "Ancient Sorceries" [1948]
Paul Frees stars as the lead in this adaptation of an Algernon Blackwood short story about a small town with a secret in Wales. Blackwood's stories are eminently suitable for radio, and before he died Blackwood became something of a media star in the early days of television. The same story was adapted for CBS Radio Mystery Theatre in 1975 as "The Velvet Claws" but I prefer this half-hour version.

X Minus One "Mr Costello, Hero" [1956]
The title is ironic, since Mr Costello is anything but a hero in this Theodore Sturgeon story. In fact from this viewpoint the plot about a manipulative social engineer looks like an oblique attack on the hysteria of the McCarthy era. The interplanetary angle is incidental, but as Gene Rodenberry once observed you can get away with a lot of things if it's done in a science-fiction setting.

X Minus One "Saucer of Loneliness" [1957]
Here's another story by Sturgeon. It's about 30 years since I read it, but I don't notice any major changes to the plot. A young woman is hounded because she encounters a flying saucer but refuses to reveal the message it conveyed to her. As often happens in Sturgeon's fiction the ending is unexpected and bittersweet.







Phil Harris "Cadilac in the swimming pool" [1949]
Here's one from the popular 1940s comedy series in which Phil Harris and his wife Alice Faye played themselves. In this one, Phil's pal Remley manages to destroy not one but two of their employer's cars. "Remley, I meant release the hand-brake after you got in the car!"

Suspense "The Lunch Kit" [1949]
John Lund stars as the nervous narrator in this story that has become unfortunately very relevant again today. A man sets out to smuggle a bomb into a factory hidden in his lunchbox. The obstacles in his path make for an entertaining half hour.

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Speaking of radio, Alan Braid the radio-collecting farmer who was featured on the TV show Collectors this month was featured in the Sunday Examiner this week. He owns 400 fully-functional radio sets, not counting the ones he has in the barn for the cows.

The newspaper went on to report that a study at the University of Leicester (UK) had tested the old theory that sweet music produces more milk from dairy cows.

Music of different tempos was played to herds of friesian cattle. Milk yield went up to the strains of "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" or (appropriately) Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. But rock music from Jamiroquai or Mud had the opposite effect.

I'm not surprised. I remember a similar experiment just a couple of years ago that had similar results - classical music was good, heavy metal was bad and speech or the music of Britney Spears had no effect either way.

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Quote of the week:
All the troubles of man come from his not knowing how to sit still -- Pascal

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Ducks Don't Roost

What do you do with a duck while you're on holiday? Jan roped in my sister Julie to look after some of her poultry while she is interstate. We drove up into the hills under Mount Wellington on Sunday afternoon where she fed us scones and we played with my brand-new mobile phone – which I used to take the photographs on this page.

Sunday afternoons I'm usually so tired that I nap for a while, but after two cups of percolated coffee at Jan's table I felt wide awake. Still, I was content to stand back and let Julie, Jan and her little boy chase the ducks and chickens around the coop.

The ducks took a bit of chasing down, since they don't roost at dusk like the chickens usually do.

We put the chickens into a black bag in the back of the car, while I held on to a sack containing three ducks. They weren't too bad on the drive down to Julie's place – I eased the top of the sack open a little so they could get some air but I kept my hand over the opening since the idea of three ducks suddenly loose in a moving vehicle doesn't bear thinking about.

Everything went off all right and it wasn't as difficult as I had feared it might be.

If anybody has a difficult job, it was our preacher at the morning service today. In the space of a 20-minute sermon "In The Beginning" he had to summarise the creation of the universe, explaining who, what, why and how with reference to Genesis chapter 1 and John chapter 1. Whew! I didn't envy him the job.




Old Time Radio slot:

X Minus One "The Cave of Night" [1956] this is so topical it's rather eerie: an American astronaut is trapped in space after a rocket launch goes wrong and the whole world is agog; there's a sort of war-of-the-worlds feel in that the story is seen from the viewpoint of the journalists reporting the drama. Comparisons with the Australian mine rescue this month seem unavoidable.

Weird Circle "Fall of the House of Usher" [1943] first in a little-remembered series of thrillers that drew heavily on classic literature. For their premiere, they hark back to Poe and give the story of Roderick Usher the radio-drama treatment, opening the story out, exploring motivations and bringing in new supporting characters. Now usually that sort of thing is anathema to me, but this actually works better than some attempts to do a faithful dramatisation I've heard.

Hancock's Half Hour "First Night Party" [1954] ties in with the sort of self-referencing that used to be a staple of radio comedians. This is the first episode of Hancock's own radio show, and it concerns his attempt to wine and dine the critics to drum up publicity for its broadcast. Needless to say things go spectacularly wrong. All the familiar ingredients are there, though they haven't been fine-tuned yet as they would be in later years - Moira Lister is the female lead, for example, and quite different to Hattie Jacques. Bill Kerr and Sid James are their unchangable selves though.

Strange Doctor Weird "The House Where Death Lived" [1944] Another first episode. In this one the eponymous narrator (gilding the lily a bit to make him both strange and weird surely?) tells us the story of two ruthless killers who are victims on a father's search for vengeance. Fifteen minutes of fairly unsubtle stuff - par for the course for radio horror of the time.

Sherlock Holmes "The Greek Interpreter" - couldn't miss out the Great Detective since it was Conan Doyle's birthday this week.

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According to Britain's librarians, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mocking Bird is the book that everyone should read.

The Pulitzer prize-winning classic has topped a World Book Day poll conducted by the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), in which librarians around Britain were asked the question, "Which book should every adult read before they die?"



According to Diana Ashcroft, one of the librarians who voted for the book, it "has all the factors of a great read. It is touching and funny but has a serious message about prejudice, fighting for justice and coming of age."

Harper Lee is also likely to receive a renewed flush of publicity with the opening this week of the Hollywood film Capote, in which she is a key character.

To Kill a Mocking Bird heads an odd triumvirate at the top of the librarians' list: it is followed by the Bible and, in third place, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Further down the rankings, a mixture of classics and popular contemporary titles feature.

Mark Wood, chairman of the MLA, commented, "This goes to show that if you are stuck for something to read, you should ask a librarian."

The list in full:
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bible
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
1984 by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn

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go east

Monday saw us set off on a "mystery bus trip" with a group from our church. I was up before sunrise so we could feed my sister's animals before meeting up with the bus group.



We set off for the east coast of Tasmania and a few words in the driver's ear meant we made a special stop at the Woodsdale cemetery. This is where our great-grandmother is buried and after a minute or two we located the grave marker.



We have been here before, but not for about 25 years.

Julie would like to organise a special trip down to Woodsdale, which does have some tourist attractions in spite of it being so small there isn't even a sign to let you know you've arrived.



Lunch at the Blue Waters Hotel in Orford was a pleasant affair, then we took a stroll along the foreshore to admire the seascape.

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Old Time Radio spot:

Listened to a 1944 episode of Suspense titled "One Way Ride to Nowhere". Alan Ladd stars as a man who takes a roller coaster ride and finds that at the other end there's an extra passenger - a dead psychiatrist. Intrigue and deceit on the midway unfold in typical film noir style.

Dark Fantasy was a minor 1940s series originating in Oklahoma City, but the episode "Pennsylvania Turnpike" does a nice job of slowly building the atmosphere in this tale of a hitch-hiker who doesn't seem sure what century he's living in. The climax, as often is the case, doesn't match the Twilight-Zone-style build-up but overall it's not bad.

Less subtle is the 1945 Sealed Book episode "Hands of Death", which is the radio equivalent of one of those old black-and-white B-movie thrillers. A mad strangler, his manipulative brother, the greedy butler... all that's lacking is Boris Karloff. (Notable is the amount of padding, including rambling introductions and excessively long musical interludes.)

And to finish off, listened to a 1940 newscast with Edward R. Murrow in London. We tour the darkened city during an air raid, ending up in Whitehall where the novelist J.B. Priestley muses on the future that lies ahead. Stirring stuff from CBS.





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angst

I'm perfectly in control of my day right up till the time I finish breakfast. After that, I feel increasingly powerless and anxious.

The fact that I recently started in on the second half of my fifth decade just makes things worse; before I know where I am, I'll be 60 and after that I'll pick up speed the further along the path of life I get.

Friday things just seemed to get more gloomy the further the day progressed. I felt as though there was a black cloud hanging over my head as the afternoon dragged on. I tried to stay impassive, in keeping with the tradition of the stoic Australian male, but I felt bloody awful.

Julie's friend Jan asked me if I was coming to the fireworks display tomorrow night.

"No." "Why not?" "I think I'm having an anxiety attack."

I was happy to keep it to myself, but faced with a direct question I lacked the patience to make up a polite excuse.

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Some caregivers think their stress will drop once an elderly relative is placed in a long term facility, but they actually suffer more emotional trauma. A University of Pittsburgh study is the first to provide a comprehensive analysis of the emotional turmoil caregivers experience in placing a loved one with dementia in a long-term care facility.

"Caregivers have to face new challenges such as frequent trips to the long-term care facility, reduced control over the care pro- vided to their relative, and taking on responsibilities such as coordinating and monitoring care," says study leader Richard Schulz. "This study shows that we need to help care- givers who place their relatives." The findings appear in Journal of the American Medical Association.

I can believe that. Being a carer is a stressful job and the emotional connection doesn't end just because the person in question is physically out of the house. It never did for me. Cutting down on the angst factor is difficult.

And by the way, thanks to Wikipedia for their informative article that told me Angst is used in English to describe an intense feeling of emotional strife – a different but related meaning is attributed to Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard .

Kierkegaard used the word angst (Danish, meaning "dread") to describe a profound and deep-seated spiritual condition of insecurity and despair in the free human being. Where the animal is a slave to its God-given instincts but always confident in its own actions, Kierkegaard believed that the freedom given to mankind leaves the human in a constant fear of failing its responsibilities to God.

In modern use, angst is broadened to include general frustration associated with the conflict between actual responsibilities to self, one's principles, and others (possibly including God).

That's more the sense that I would use it in.

240 pounds of trouble

Today's visit to my doctor has been preying on my mind for some time. To say I'd been dreading it would be too strong, but I was certainly uncomfortable.

Ever since I was diagnosed with diabetes, it's been instilled into me that I need to lose weight – watch your diet and take thirty minutes of exercise each day. It's that simple.

"I'd like you to lose about three kilogrammes by the next time I see you," my doctor said. That's about 6½ pounds.

Had I done it?

Of course not. After all, what was at stake except my life and my health?

I could have made a case to explain it away. Told him how I'd thrown my back out and taken a month to get over it. Explained that my sister keeps me up so late I'm more likely to take a 30-minute nap than a 30-minute walk. Even played the sympathy card and said that since my mother died I have trouble motivating myself to do anything at all.

But the truth, which is (mostly) what I went for, is that like many things in my life it was just a matter of procrastination.

I had managed to lose one kilo and my sugar was down a fraction, so it wasn't a total debacle. In fact I wasn't doing so badly considering that I was running out of my tablets and had had to take a reduced dose to make it through to this appointment.

What about all this publicity about flu shots and diabetics, I asked. "I recommend diabetics get a flu shot," he replied. "They're more susceptible to bacterial infections that accompany influenza." I got the impression that I was more likely to develop pneumonia if I got the flu.

I should call my GP and ask for that flu shot.

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And an adaptation of which famous novel was recently blurbed by the BBC7 website as "The world's most famous detective takes on the world's most famous dog"?
Yes, it was the Hound of the Baskevilles!

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Troy Holaday (a professor from Indiana) has been gratifying C.S. Forester fans by posting Horatio Hornblower adaptations on his website.

But these are big files. Today I downloaded a zip-file of 255MB containing a 52-episode Hornblower radio serial. This took me 2½ hours to download on my 25kb/sec ADSL broadband. I'd certainly never have tried this on my dial-up connection.

But while I may appreciate the ability to do this, not everyone is so happy about the broadband situation in Australia. The Financial Review newspaper even published a scathing article that dubbed it "Fraudband."

Some very unflattering comparisons were made with Canadian users of broadband, who are able to access the internet much faster and more cheaply. Although some of the cases were clearly chosen for effect (anybody who chooses some of the Bigpond deals they gave as typical examples of Australian broadband needs his head examined), it certainly puts Australian telcos and ISPs in a poor light.

goose out

While on a coffee break at the office, listened to a 1944 episode of the radio show Suspense - "Fugue in C Minor" by Lucille Fletcher (who also wrote "Sorry Wrong Number"). Ida Lupino is engaged to Vincent Price, a man who has built his house around his giant pipe organ. Price seems nice enough, but his two children are convinced the organ is haunted by the ghost of their mother.

If only that was all that it was...

Nice spooky stuff. I've been downloading a host of these Suspense shows from one of the radio fan websites; the trouble is that I'm scared to listen to them after dark, so I'm a bit behind with actually hearing them.

---

Those miners have successfully been rescued from the bottom of the Tasmanian gold mine after 11 days. A happy ending for the men and their families.

Speaking of radio, I was musing how much of a radio event it was for my family. Others may have gleaned all the latest details from the television or the newspapers, but to me it was wireless all the way.

The first intimation that two of the miners were still alive came on Sunday night last week. The Coodabeen Champions comedy/chat show was on ABC radio and just before the 8 o'clock news they crossed to the Tasmanian newsroom for an update. It was a stirring moment.

Then for the rest of the week Tim Cox did his weekday morning show not from the Hobart studio but from the first aid room at the mine. This can't have been easy, but he did a great job. In the evenings, Tony Delroy's Nightlife show included a live cross to the mine every night around 1 a.m.

And when I woke up this morning, the first thing I heard was the good news coming over the clock radio.

God bless all who worked so hard to make this day happen.

---

Waterfowl belong outside. I don't want to wake up and find a goose sitting on the end of my bed.

That's the sort of thing that was going through my head when the backdoor jammed in the open position last week. Not only was it going to be cold during the winter but it was going to be difficult keeping the poultry out of the house.

Fortunately my sister Julie is more mechanically minded than I am – she got out the hammer and the drill and soon had it back in order again. Thank goodness for that.

---

Julie was off to a lunch the other day. I dropped her at Salamanca Place then went into the central city block to pay some bills, fill some prescriptions and pick up the magazines.

I had lunch at Euro in the mall, reading the Melbourne paper and doing some people-watching. It was interesting to see the sort of folk who drifted in and out after the lunch-time crowd had gone.

There were two or three students at the side table, exchanging comments about life and art on a fairly high level. By the front there was a couple, apparently tourists, who looked a little vexed about something and hurried off after their meal.

One guy came in and started giving (at length) his opinions about the sign on the front window. He discussed it in exquisite detail and just went on and on. If I'd been behind the counter, I would have told him to put a sock in it or clear off, but the staff must have been used to him.

He finally left but my relief was short-lived. Within five minutes he was back. He'd decided he'd have a coffee, but first he wanted to discuss in detail exactly what each sort of coffee consisted of....

It's a long time since I was in the retail business. Obviously I've lost the carefully-cultivated shield of patience that lets you put up with people like him.

---

7% of people in Australia have it. Type 2 Diabetes is a virtual epidemic among people with poor life style and obesity.

"It's easy to do things. It's not easy to think what to do." Jamie in Mythbusters







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That Third Man

The possums got all the quinces this year, so it was a pleasant surprise to walk into the church hall on Sunday and see someone with an over-abundance had left a please-take-one crate of quinces. We brought home a handful and might stew them with some apples. Yum.

The possums have been around at Julie's house most weeks lately, and this week she was feeding the chickens and looked up to see a wallaby on the other side of the fence just a few feet away. They often go browsing through the gardens across the street, but they don't usually venture across the road.

Speaking of church, spare a thought for our associate minister [R2] who was preaching this morning on a really complex subject (predestination). He was just past the halfway mark when one of the members of the congregation took ill.

Imagine if you can trying to hold an audience's attention with this difficult topic and all the time their eyes keep straying across to the people administering CPR next to the pulpit. This would have to be up there in the worst-possible-scenario list for any preacher.

P.S: the woman in question was all right.




Saturday was Orson Welles' birthday, I noticed in the newspaper, so before going to bed I listened to an episode of his radio series Harry Lime [a 1951 spin-off from the movie The Third Man] .

You can get the Harry Lime radio show from OTRCAT.COM.

On Sunday afternoon, I returned home for lunch to find the arts show on ABC-TV were showing a documentary about the making of The Third Man.

Not a coincidence, I suggest.

---

An intense cold front is generating very strong winds, heavy rain and a cold showery change in the southeast of Australia, says the Weather Bureau. Northerly winds ahead of the front are directing warm norhterly winds over eastern NSW. A high pressure system in the west is keeping WA mostly dry.

The southern jetstream is helping maintain an intense front over the southeast and generate strong winds and rain. The northern jetstream is directing some high cloud over northwest WA but is otherwise not affecting the nation's weather.

In the early evening, ruddy Mars is in Gemini, and can be seen changing position every night. Saturn is easily spotted in the northern sky of Australia as a pale gold object, within binocular range of the Beehive cluster.

Jupiter is at its biggest and brightest on Friday May 5; it rises in the late evening and is the brightest object above the eastern horizon. In the dawn sky bright Venus is readily seen. On the early morning of Saturday May 6, the Eta Aquariids meteor shower should provide a meteor every two minutes or so.

---

Young adults in the United States fail to understand the world and their place in it, according to a survey-based report on geographic literacy released this week:

Take Iraq, for example. Despite nearly constant news coverage since the war there began in 2003, 63 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 failed to correctly locate the country on a map of the Middle East.

Seventy percent could not find Iran or Israel.

Nine in ten couldn't find Afghanistan on a map of Asia.

And 54 percent were unaware that Sudan is a country in Africa.

Remember the December 2004 tsunami and the widespread images of devastation in Indonesia? Three-quarters of respondents failed to find that country on a map. And three-quarters were unaware that a majority of Indonesia's population is Muslim, making it the largest Muslim country in the world.

"Young Americans just don't seem to have much interest in the world outside of the U.S.," said David Rutherford, a specialist in geography education at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C

Perhaps even more worrisome is the finding that few U.S. young adults seem to care. Fewer than three in ten think it's absolutely necessary to know where countries in the news are located. Only 14 percent believe speaking another language fluently is a necessary skill.

Fewer than one in five young Americans own a world map.

This geographic ineptitude was further emphasized when young Americans were asked questions on how the United States fits into the wider world.

Three in ten respondents put the U.S. population between one and two billion (it's just under 300 million, according the U.S. Census Bureau). Seventy-four percent said English is the most commonly spoken native language in the world (it's Mandarin Chinese).

Personally I don't find the results that surprising. It took me some years to understand that other people couldn't visualise a map of the world in their head at will.

My problem is trying to remember the new names of countries!






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this chicken is deceased

If I seemed despondent about the weather yesterday, it was because it was the wettest day I'd seen for months. You should have seen me rummaging through the wardrobe looking for a raincoat.

Did this one still fit? Was that the one with the tear on the shoulder? What about this one with all the cobwebs on it?

Last year the winter was so mild that I hadn't needed my wet-weather gear, and you know how things tend to get lost if you don't use them for a couple of years. I eventually found a light raincoat, some gloves and a cap, deciding I was ready to venture outdoors at last.

At least I wasn't squelching about in the mud at my sister's place. While she was out feeding the horse and the poultry, I was content to take the dogs out in the backyard and throw a few pieces of apple for them to chase. The ground was damp enough underfoot out there, but it was great compared to the duck pen.

Not that the poultry were a great source of comfort to Julie. She had three of her chickens die on her in the space of four days.

And when that happens, there's always one that you miss more than the others. In this case, it was the littlest one, the hen we nicknamed "The Roadrunner" because of her long neck and determined expression.

Julie used to joke that she was like an anorexic supermodel in build, but sadly that seemed to be what did her in - she stopped eating and simply faded away.

It's surprising how much personality you can get in even a chicken.

---

I have been listening to quite a few Old Time Radio programmes lately and there are some gems among them.

Of course they aren't all winners. For example last week I listened to a 1953 episode of Hall of Fantasy "Out of the Sky" which was quite competently made but for a modern listener lacked a single spark of originality. It was rather like watching one of those old black-and-white B-movies on the late show:
Strange deaths arouse suspicion.
The government investigates.
An alien invader is discovered.
The Bomb is dropped.
In the last scene the hero stresses the need for continued vigilance.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with it but there's nothing much right with it.

We shouldn't fall into the all-too-human trap of making sweeping generalizations like "All OTR shows are neglected classics" or "All modern music is rubbish."

After all, that's the dictionary meaning of prejudice -- pre-judging things.

---

The Australian magazine PC User is celebrating its 200th issue and there have been some amusing flashbacks to issues of previous decades.

I especially liked the reprint from a 1995 issue that solemnly advised us that a multi-media capable PC needed at least a 400MB hard disk!

*Snort!*

Things have certainly changed.

malevolent May

Gosh it's been a shocking day. Tuesday was all right until the next morning, but when I woke up it was an awful day. It poured rain and started to snow on the mountains. At least one party of hikers have already set off their EPIRB mayday signal.

And doesn't this weather find all the leaks in the roof? Over at my sister's house she was running around grabbing up plastic bowls to put under all the drips. At my place the front porch was inundated because I haven't yet done anything about the blocked guttering caused by intrusive vines.



But it could be worse. The little town of Beaconsfield in northern Tasmania is in the spotlight this week because of two miners trapped at the bottom of a gold mine.



The media is all over the place, waiting for triumph or tragedy. So far they've managed to get a pipe through to them so they can communicate and send them fresh water.

And (a sign of the times) an iPod for each of them!

---

Most of my spare time this week has been spent trying to work why Julie's laptop won't run Internet Explorer any more. Searching and chatting all over the place with no result yet.

The strange part is that she and I have identical machines, so why am I still on-line and she isn't?

It all seemed to start after that last Windows Update but uninstalling it didn't help things.

And why has she lost Virtual Machine from her system?




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Port Arthur

April 28th is a day in Tasmania's history that will be sadly remembered. Standing side by side in reflection with people at the Port Arthur Historic Site ten years on from the tragic events of April 28th 1996, we hope to help bring "a sense of healing and encouragement, not to forget, but to move on with strength and resilience."

There was a special broadcast of the Commemorative Service direct from the Port Arthur Historic Site on 936 ABC Hobart, ABC Northern Tasmania (and streamed to the internet) hosted by Tim Cox of ABC Radio Hobart.

This service was an important milestone in looking forward, looking back for the Tasman Peninsula and the people of Tasmania and Australia.

Order of Service
12.27 Official Party arrive
12.30 Like an Eagle: performance by Rosny Children's choir
MC: Edward Gauden
- Welcome by Chair Hon Dr Barry Jones AO
- Reading by Keith Moulton (Mark 4, verses 35-41)
- Ave Maria: performance by Amelia Farrugia
- Reading by Maria Stacey
- The Lord's Prayer: reading led by Edward Gauden
- Song of Joy: performance by Rosny Children's Choir
- Address by the Prime Minister, the Hon John Howard MP
- Amelai Candle Bearers make their way to Memorial Garden
- Reading by Premier of Tasmania, the Hon Paul Lennon MHA (Garden of Peace by Margaret Scott)
- Irish Blessing: recorded performance
1.30 1 Minute silence then
- Looking Forward, Looking Back: Performance by Monique Brumby
1.35 Close: Edward Gauden

The radio broadcast was a very moving time. The words of sadness and consolation were made all the more affecting by the many pauses in which we could hear the sound of the native birds singing in the surrounding forest.

It brought back that awful Sunday ten years ago when we heard the unbelievable news that a gunman had run amok at a popular tourist spot and shot down 35 people. Then as now, it seems completely inexplicable.

What I remember even more acutely is being in the city the following day. The populace were subdued. People sat quietly, talking in soft voices and looking off into the distance every so often. It wasn't hard to know what they were thinking; we were all dwelling on the same thoughts.

Anzac Day

April 25th is Anzac Day, a public holiday in Australia, so I wasn't at work.

Instead, my sister and I spent the afternoon having a leisurely meal in a seafood restaurant in North Hobart with family, friends and neighbours. I ordered the pear and parmesan salad, though I ended up eating half of Rose Marie's chips.

It was also my birthday, so you could call it a de-facto party (although I went off birthday parties when I was about 11 years old).

"How old are you?" asked one guest candidly. Well, let's just say it was the 35th anniversary of my 21st birthday.



We enjoyed a nice meal and I even scored a few presents: a book of science fiction stories, a coffee mug with a cat motif, a DVD, a flash-drive and the inevitable box of chocolates (yum, liqueur truffles!).

All in all, it was a pleasant and relaxing afternoon. It was nice that so many people took the time to make their way in to North Hobart to join us – I think we had six people who'd been members of the Amnesiacs quiz team at one time or another at the table.

The intriguing thing was that Jan called in after dropping her son Jamie off at a friend's house. He was going (get this) to a birthday party.

What are the odds on that happening?



Julie's car has been lacking a left-hand window for some time. She's done her best to replace it with a piece of perspex cut to shape, but it's not quite the same.

It's a Mitsubishi Starion and only about 1600 of them were sold in Australia - spare parts aren't exactly easy to come by.

So she was really pleased when she located someone on the mainland who had a spare left window for a Starion.

She sent off for it straightaway and he had it shipped over.

It arrived yesterday.

In about a hundred pieces.

Oh well, she'll just have to keep looking.....

---

I've been amazed at the amount of old radio shows that are available on the Internet for free thanks to the generosity of some OTR fans.

But one website made me glad I had gone over to broadband. A zipped file containing 90 episodes of Suspense from 1944-46. I set the machine to download and waited.

And watched the total go up. 100MB. 200MB. 300MB.

How big is this file, I started to wonder.

625MB in the end.

"Try that on dial-up!" I thought.

But...

The following day, I returned and tried to open the zipped file. It now weighed in at only 622 KB and trying to open it merely got you a little sign saying it was either invalid or corrupted.

So I guess maybe the old saying is true – you can't get something for nothing.

those autumn leaves

As we near the end of April, the autumn weather begins to bite. Looking across the backyard I can see an arc of mushrooms across the lawn, and there is a speckling of red foliage across the trees and bushes.

Standing out at the front gate looking up at the mountain, there's a constant murmuring sound as autumn leaves blow down the street.

But it's not all poetic and pastoral. A couple of times this month the weather has suddenly turned nasty and the wind comes howling off the Southern Ocean, bringing with it snow and rain. You get up one morning and find that your garden furniture has been blown from one side of the patio to the other.

We just have to get used to it. It will be worse before it gets better.

---

The commercial television networks are always hungry for a dollar and it's never been more obvious than this year. The Easter period is apparently a fortnight when the ratings shut down, so the networks see no need to use up their lucrative top-rating programmes.

All the popular shows are either repeats or (a new innovation) "specials" which take a look at the history of the show with lots of clips from previous episodes. Shows like Desperate Housewives, Lost and Prison Break have all gone this route.

That's why they call it show business, emphasis on the latter word.

---

The cultural side of things starts to pick up at this time of year though.

The amateur dramatics with Hobart Rep kick off at the Playhouse, and the free concerts begin at the Moonah Arts Centre.

The Arts Centre concert season was opened by the Lord Mayor of Glenorchy, who introduced the 35-voice Tasmanian Song Company, who serenaded us with a selection of popular and choral numbers. They also gave us a few songs from Noel Coward and Flanders & Swann.

I made the acquaintance of Flanders & Swann's amusing songs at an early age. When I was at school, the last couple of days of the year were always a non-event – one of our teachers used to bring in a gramophone and pass the time playing us his favourite records, including Flanders & Swann.

By the time I left school, I knew the words to "Mud, Glorious Mud!" and several other songs off by heart.

Meanwhile down at the Playhouse the first production of the year was The Lion in Winter by James Goldman.

Imagine the situation – it's Christmas and the head of the family insists on everyone getting together to celebrate the yuletide season. It's not exactly a happy occasion; the three sons are all jockeying for position to see who will inherit the family business and the mother has mixed feelings about her husband's young mistress.

The difference to your family or mine is that the father is King Henry II and the family business is running England. Any differences of opinion inside the family can be not just disruptive but deadly.

James Casey and Leonie Adams were gripping as Henry II and Eleanor of Aquatane... and who would have thought there were so many good one-liners in a play about 12th century politics?

---

“Television exists to make time pass quickly,
to get rid of an evening,
to whittle one's life away,
whereas radio drama illuminates,
invigorates and stirs the imagination.”

I saw that on a radio website and I rather liked it.

Since becoming involved with some of the websites where people discuss and trade old radio programmes, I've been impressed by the amount of knowledge shown. But even I was surprised to see a message from one aficionado that he'd just posted on-line the first 2½ years of the Suspense series for free download.

The Internet is a continuing source of wonder even after all the years I've been on-line.

---

Called in at the Harrington Street newsagent to pick up the latest American and British monthly magazines. Hi, I said, I thought it was about time I came by; it must been a while.

Yes, they said, it's nine weeks.

Where does the time go?





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Easter saturday

Tuesdays seem to be a bit of a jinx day for Julie's poultry. The week before last I came home from the office to find she was worn out from chasing straying chickens and building a new house for them at her place.

Last Tuesday I arrived home to find that she'd brought over two more ailing chickens from her place and reorganized the poultry here. The grounds around my house are slowly being filled with cages and hen-houses - as though a property developer with an interest in bigger-and-better barnyards has been at work. There are chickens of various breeds inside the house, outside the back door, in the driveway and there's a goose on the back lawn.

We have to bring the rooster inside at night in case his crowing wakes up the people next door. Not waking us up, of course, is more a matter of good luck than anything else.

Sometimes it's all a bit much....

---

On BBC Radio 4, Sunday's new Classic Serial was part 1 of "The Code of the Woosters", by PG Wodehouse, dramatised by Judith French. It's been recorded on location and the production team promised "a lot of vim and vigour."

"Now, this is really going to divide opinion, isn't it?" commented the BBC programme guide. They may be right. The first five minutes for example are a bit of a shock, as we discover that the producers have dubbed in a lot of comical sound effects more suited to Roger Rabbit than the Drones Club, as well as a dream sequence that I don't remember in the original. (Mind you it has been about 35 years since I last read it.)

This is a bit strange, since in condensing a Wodehouse novel into two one-hour segments one would have thought the problem was deciding what to leave out, not what to insert.

Marcus Brigstocke plays Bertie and Andrew Sachs shimmers in as Jeeves. This is the one where Bertie has to rescue newt-loving Gussie Fink-Nottle's engagement to Madeline Bassett, daughter of the formidable Sir Watkyn Bassett.

BBC Radio have done many fine adaptations of Wodehouse - I thought Richard Briers was a particularly good Bertie Wooster and Michael Hordern a satisfactory Jeeves when they serialised The Code of the Woosters in 1973 - but this one may disappoint the purists and fans.

I shall report further when I've heard part 2.

---

Speaking of radio, I greatly enjoyed the 1957 special Easter episode of the old radio show The Great Gildersleeve that was available on the Digital Deli website. I tuned in for it after seeing some comments that it was the sort of thing that nobody would be willing or able to do in the modern media.

I think they could be right. Not only would it be politically incorrect, it would be difficult to find any modern star who would sound convincing espousing mainstream Christian ideals.

It simply doesn't happen today.





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Easter

Easter, our minister told us on Sunday morning, is the “silly season” for comments about religion in the mainstream media. Most years there is some sort of expose or amazing discovery about Christianity. This time it was the unveiling of the so-called Judas gospel.

Unfortunately the people of both our century and Biblical times have the wrong approach to Jesus. They think that belief in God is something that brings them personal happiness and is spiritually satisfying – and if not, why not?

If Christianity doesn’t do this, they’ll move on to some other set of beliefs. Forget the catechism that says man’s purpose is to know and glorify God.

The authority of the Bible is unique in that it’s based on historical events, not on the philosophical speculations of self-appointed gurus. Jesus was a king because God sent him, not because of any popular consensus amongst the population on his land.

Christ came not to make our lives more pleasant and comfortable but to help us escape the consequences of the way we lead our lives. We come to him because we need rescuing; we stay because he is Lord.

One day when heaven was filled with His praises,
one day when sin was as black as could be,
Jesus came forth to be born of a virgin,
Dwelt among men, my example is He!

Living, He loved me; dying, He saved me;
Buried, He carried my sins far away,
Rising, He justified freely for ever:
One day He’s coming: O glorious day.

One day they led Him up Calvary’s mountain,
One day they nailed Him to die on the tree;
Suffering anguish, despised and rejected;
Bearing our sins, my Redeemer is He!

One day they left Him alone in the garden,
One day He rested, from suffering free;
Angels came down o’er His tomb to keep vigil;
Hope of the hopeless, my Saviour is He!

One day the grace could conceal Him no longer,
One day the stone rolled away from the door;
Then He arose, over death He had conquered;
Now is ascended, my Lord evermore!

One day the trumpet will sound for His coming,
One day the skies with His glory will shine;
Wonderful day, my beloved ones bringing;
Glorious Saviour, this Jesus is mine!

May you have a happy and blessed Easter.

wet wet

A good thing that the City Council fixed the problem with the water seeping onto Julie's property. The climate has taken a turn for the worse, with rain and snow suddenly a fixture on the weather forecasts. If the seepage had been combined with the recent rain, her yard would have been a veritable morass.

As it is, I've been reminded that those old shoes I wear when I go to her place are ready to be discarded. They are only intermittently waterproof, and going up and down the front path on a wet day is less than comfortable.

---

Well, I may have been overly optimistic about my back - it seemed to be improving a little every day over the last week, but on Tuesday I forgot to take any pain-killers before I went to the office and after a few hours I knew about it.

It didn't help that Tuesday evening I always take Kay to the supermarket on the way home. All that bobbing up and down moving things in and out of the shopping trolley was the last straw and I was in some discomfort by the time we reached her cottage.

Not that there was that much food to unload. Nowadays she seems to live mostly on yogurt, ice cream and potato crisps. A lot of the supplies were blank tapes for her video recorder – she never buys less than 20 three-hour tapes and this week I carted in 30 tapes for her stockpile.

On reaching home I took some paracetemol and retired to my armchair for most of the evening. After a few hours I was able to move around the house without wincing at every step.

---

The introduction of podcasting has proved to be another success story for ABC Radio with the number of listeners taking advantage of this service making Australia's national broadcaster a world leader in the field.
Most recent figures show that in one week in February there were over 360,000 accesses to the ABC's podcast files.

ABC Radio National's podcasting service had a record number of mp3s downloaded in the last week of February. The network continues to extend the number of programs available for downloading. Since the start of this year programs added to the available list include Radio National Breakfast, The Book Show, Saturday Extra, By Design, Counterpoint, The National Interest, Rear Vision, Perspective and Radio Eye. These additions bring the total list available to 26 different programs.

The ABC's triple j was the first station to podcast in Australia but because it is a music station copyright laws prevent their podcasting most of their content.

ABC Local Radio is selecting popular program segments such as Shannon Lush the best-selling guru on stain removal, special events such as the Newcastle Music Awards or creating material especially for podcasting as ABC Central Coast in NSW is doing.

Go to : abc.net.au/services/podcasting



But if you have a taste for more downmarket radio programmes, you'll find lots of old-time drama and comedies at the Zoot Radio website. There is a thriving forum where questions and answers fly at speed through cyberspace.





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April Showers

Who would have thought there'd be such an instant difference between March and April? April 1st dawned dark and squally, with alternating patches of bright sunshine and driving rain.

This usually means only one thing, and sure enough when the clouds rolled back momentarily from around Mount Wellington, we could see that the first snows of the year had fallen. Then it clouded over again, like a giant drawing closed his robe.

At least the goose will appreciate the result of the wet weather, with improved grazing on the back lawn, though she actively dislikes the noise made by the rain on the roof of her quarters.

I don't suppose I can blame the weather, but my back isn't improving as fast as I had hoped this week. Oh, it's better than it was a fortnight ago, but it still bothers me when I first get up especially.

Friday morning I felt perfectly dreadful. Julie's night-owl habits had kept me out of bed till almost 3 a.m., I'd had to get up to answer a call of nature around 6 a.m. then the phone rang at 8:59. By the time I rolled out of bed I felt like I'd been run dragged through a hedge backwards.

At least the water situation at Julie's place seems to have been resolved. The pools of water have slowly dried up and the dogs no longer have to run through the mud to get in and out of the place.

---

Talk about spoilt for choice. With live radio, streaming audio on the internet, podcasting and MP3 discs, there is simply too much stuff for even a dedicated radio buff like myself to keep up with.

I've resorted to burning the half-hour programmes on to a CD and listening to one each night while I'm getting ready for bed. At least that way I can be sure of getting through 180 hours of Old Time Radio in a year.

This week I listened to several episodes of Leave It To George and A Man Called X, American thrillers from the 1950s. Yesterday I quite enjoyed listening to a 1957 episode of X Minus One "The Lights on Precipice Peak", based on a Galaxy magazine story by Stephen Tall. Two no-nonsense mountain-climbers get into difficulties and are rescued by friendly extra-terrestrials – characteristically one of the climbers says "If this is a gag, I don't get the joke."

I did get a chance to watch a little television on Friday: the ABC finally had a new episode of Dalziel and Pascoe after years of repeats, and the Nine Network aired episode #1 of a new Australasian science-fiction series Maddigan's Quest, featuring a travelling circus in a future century after the collapse of our civilization. Looks good – shot on one of those new high-definition video formats.

---

I remember Nan asking me some time ago to keep an eye out for any war books for Don that I might come across. Last week in the Salvation Army op shop I picked up a thick hardcover reprint of Eric Feldt's 1946 book The Coast Watchers. I wonder if it's of any interest to him?




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