fowl weather

Every few weeks my sister Julie discovers more sick or injured poultry. And they usually wind up in my front hall where she's set up a sort of Intensive Care Ward for Fowl. This week she came across a tiny chick which had been pecked on the back and/or stepped on, leaving it in difficulties. She carried it around for the rest of the afternoon; this caused much comment in the shops and the supermarket, but necessitated re-arranging the plastic crates in the front hall to make room for just-one-more.

---

A drastic shift in the weather at the beginning of this week saw an unprecedented blast of wet weather lash the state. Sunday night we sat there for an hour or so waiting to see if it was going to ease off before we went to feed Julie's livestock. It didn't.

The guttering over my front door is in worse condition than I had realised. The water poured down onto the front porch as though some mischievous neighbour had turned the hose onto my roof. The old old story -- when the roof is leaking you can't get up to repair it, and when it's not raining you forget the roof needs fixing.

The deluge resulted in 68mm of rain in a single day. "That sounds like a lot," I thought, and reached for the old tape measure. "Bloody hell, that's two and a half inches of rain!"

---

Synchronicity? Coincidence?

I stopped in to see Kay on Saturday afternoon to wish her a happy birthday.

While I knocked on the door, I reached over and picked up her mail.

Inside, I watched in disbelief as she opened a birthday card that had been in the post -- the very same card that I had just handed her.

What are the odds on that happening?

---

The media in Australia has been in a frenzy over the release of a book by Mark Latham, former leader of the ALP. He appeared on the ABC's interview programme Enough Rope, whose host later described him as one of the most emotionally fragile men he'd ever spoken with.

Barry Jones, former ALP president, said that Mr Latham's problem seemed to be that he took everything personally and in 12 months he would probably regret having rushed into print to express his feelings about his colleagues.

As a disinterested bystander it's hard to see Latham as anything but bitter, petulant and vengeful. Maybe there was a reason that the electorate didn't vote for him, some instinctive summing-up of his personality as somebody they didn't feel was ready to represent them as Prime Minister.

Certainly he wasn't ready for the rough-and-tumble of national politics.

Is there anybody that he hasn't alienated?

---

Zelda, our resident goose, continues to stick close to the nest. She only leaves occasionally for a quick wash, then it's back to her vain quest to hatch those two infertile eggs.

This has been going on for weeks and I have no idea how much longer it will last. Every day I go out and take her a bowl of water and some food.

Meanwhile Julie has been assigned to pay particular attention to her mastiff's teeth. I wouldn't suggest it to everyone, said the Vet, but since you can do anything you like with him you should brush his teeth twice a day.

So that's what it's come down to. My sister is acting as valet to a dog, and I'm serving breakfast in bed to waterfowl.








<

goose out

Over the last few months, I've become used to the sound of the goose waddling around outside the back door. Whenever I went out to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee after dark, she used to make this insistent sort of grumbling noise and I would have to make shushing sounds at her through the window.

However Spring has sprung, and it makes changes in all of us. Following the powerful drives of instinct, she fossicked around for bits of stuff until she was able to make a nest at the end of the walkway past the laundry. There she spends all her time, laying eggs which we know are infertile so cannot possibly hatch.

But instinct can't be challenged by logic. She sits patiently out there nearly all day and night. Now and again I can coax her into coming out to have some food and to wash her face in the bucket of water. Other times she just looks at me and makes a disapproving noise in the back of her throat.

I guess my little girl has grown up.

---

Driving into town the other day I gave Kay a lift. While we were talking I asked how she was doing with the correspondence courses she was taking.

"I might have some trouble with my next Maths assignment," she mused. "They want me to find out how many dollar coins will fit into a box a meter square..."

"Yes?"

"...and I don't know how I'm going to lay my hands on that many coins."

I was silent for a second, then I said carefully "I don't think they want you to get a real box and fill it with real coins. They'll expect you to calculate it mathematically and work out how many coins would be needed."

"Ohhhhh," she said, "yes, that should be a lot easier."

---

I noticed Officeworks had some of those new scratch-resistant CD-R discs in their sale, so I thought I'd stock up with a few. My sister Julie said she'd come with me; there was something she wanted to look at herself.

So she comes home with a 200GB external hard drive for $199. That's only about a dollar per gigabite of storage. Quite amazing.

The first computer I ever bought had a hard drive of only 4GB. The laptop I'm writing this on has 11GB, which is small by modern standards.

But I think Julie can not only back up her drive completely, she could back up the hard drives of everyone we know!

It will, of course, take her a while to transfer her data over to it. The speed of the link from her computer isn't that fast. She has a lot of photographs and video files on her machine, so this will be a weight off her mind knowing that soon they'll all be safely backed-up.

---

We took Julie's mastiff Saj in to the Vet for his check-up today. He looked him over carefully, particularly at the muscle wastage around his head. Words like "cranial nerves", "catabolic" and other technical terms were murmured but nothing conclusive.

We were told to come back on Monday for an X-ray. There are plenty of more high-tech tests and scans we could try, but that would be prohibitively expensive for Julie and the probability is that even if they did find something it wouldn't help us to actually improve his condition.

Time will tell.

---

Running on ABC television this month is Real Life Water Rats, an interesting look at the Tasmanian maritime police unit. The first episode was gripping, depicting the rescue of the crew of a yacht in the Sydney-to-Hobart race. Conditions in Bass Strait were horrific, but all the crew were brought aboard safely.

The sea was so rough that as soon as the police boat reached port the film crew were taken to hospital to recover from acute sea-sickness.

---

Monday night was quiz night at the New Sydney Hotel again. We managed to make up a team with me, Julie, Caroline, Jan and her little boy Jamie.

We started off well, though inevitably some of the questions took us by surprise. Alas, the last couple of categories "Sports" and "Current Affairs" brought us undone. We ended up way down the list at the conclusion.

A lot of the questions had us muttering, "Yes, that was in the papers. It was -- what was his name?" It set me thinking about the way we consume news.

When I was in my late teens, I used to read three daily newspapers as well as Time and Newsweek. I couldn't do that today. A lot of our news comes to us electronically and we mentally filter out things that don't interest us. Television, radio, internet... we skim over what doesn't concern us.

Information is endless, Aldous Huxley once wrote, and abbreviation is a necessary evil.

---

Received a thick envelope of CDs from those industrious people at the Radio Archives. The first disc we listened to was a quirky programme from 1947 The Man on the Farm

Sponsored by the Quaker Oats Company on behalf of its Ful-O-Pep line of animal feeds, it began as a syndicated weekly feature in about 1942 and ran for well over a decade -- eventually making its way to the full Mutual Network in the early 1950s.

Recorded at the Quaker Oats Experimental Farm near Libertyville, Illinois and hosted by a genial Oklahoman named Chuck Akery, the program offered a lighthearted Saturday afternoon combination of audience participation show. A small studio audience, consisting mostly of indomitable farm wives, were regularly asked to answer questions sent in by listeners as Akery moved through the crowd with a portable microphone -- perhaps winning a pound of feed or two for their trouble.

Reggie Cross on the harmonica and legendary Hammond Organist Porter Heaps would perform musical duets, while Ful-O-Pep advised listeners on new ways to increase egg production and issued a weekly blue ribbon award to an outstanding farm or dairy.

In this episode, show #288, audience discussions range from how cucumbers blossom to whether watermelons only turn red inside when they're exposed to fresh air. The program concludes with a contest in which seven women compete to see who can give the best imitation of a howling tom cat.

If you grew up in a small town, were raised on a farm, or ever belonged to a rural organization, you'll find "The Man on the Farm" a familiar and entertaining time capsule of rural life in the early postwar years.

It's also a reminder that radio, in its hey-day, was far more diverse than just the big-time network shows we remember today would lead us to believe. Is it corny? Maybe -- but it's lively, down-to-earth and a lot of fun.




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spring

Set your watches! Australia's clocks officially go atomic from today.

New national laws, which come into effect from 1 September 2005, have moved Australia to a new time standard based on the super-accurate atomic clock.


The move to UTC brings Australia in line with New Zealand, Singapore, some US states and most of the European Union.

Australia's time zones mean the leap second will actually be added to 1 January 2006, giving Australians an extra second to either enjoy celebrations or recover from their festivities.

---

Spring cleaning is on everyone's minds this month, and I made a token start by clearing out that cluttered corner in the kitchen. As I dug down into the stuff piled up there, I kept coming across plastic bags full of things I'd gathered up to put in the rubbish in previous weeks. They had then been covered up before I got round to tossing them out.

Housework in my place tends to resemble an archaeological dig – the further down you go the more ancient relics you discover. My sister once picked up a magazine at my place and had read through half of it before she exclaimed "This magazine is eight years old!"

Your point being?

---

Watching the Saturday night television news was a grim experience. The reports from the flooded city of New Orleans were uniformly disturbing even if the newsmen did dig up a couple of happy endings.

It was all unpleasantly reminiscent of the science fiction novels that Michael Moorcock and J.G. Ballard were writing in the 1960s. The worlds of The Final Programme and The Drowned World no longer seem so distant from our own.

Sadly the more refined catastrophes envisaged by John Wyndham are not in evidence so far in the real-life 21st century.

---

I've been waiting on a cheque to clear this week and you can guess what happened as soon as it did – yes, I went out and spent some money.

Julie and I hadn't seen the new Big W department store that they'd built out at Glenorchy Central, so we took a stroll round the place. I loaded up with some cheap items of clothing and sorted through the range of DVD movies.

Ended up buying the Oscar-winning Bette Davis classic All About Eve [which somehow I've managed to miss all these years], the Cary Grant thriller Notorious, two Ray Harryhausen movies Jason and the Argonauts and 20 Million Miles to Earth and a set of episodes from the 1953 Sherlock Holmes television series (you didn't know there was such a show? You're not alone!).

Coming out of Big W, we took a turn around the building and looked in on a couple of the other shops. Julie coveted some of the clothes in the French lingerie shop, we stopped for coffee at the Time Out cafe and had a stickybeak at Aussie Discount Meats (it's been decades since I've been in a Cool Room and in my lightweight summer shirt I felt as though I'd been snap frozen).

---

Saj, my sister's Mastiff dog, has been causing her some concern this last fortnight.

He still runs after her when she goes out to feed the livestock twice a day, but he's showing little interest in food and is slower and slower to get up in the mornings.

He's getting old for a big dog and I fear it won't be much longer before one day he simply won't wake up.

---

This afternoon I was listening to a CD from the FGRA titled The Crosby-Clooney Show. Three episodes of a radio series broadcast daily over CBS during 1960-61 after Garry Moore's show. Bing and Rosemary chat between songs with the Buddy Cole Trio and good-naturedly read some fairly hokey commercials. Announcer Ken Carpenter adds gravitas to the other commercials.

Lots of easy listening in this 15-minute show and it sounds good; these CDs were restored from the original 16ips master tapes.

---

PETROL PATROL:
Unleaded petrol has hit $1.30 a litre in Hobart.
To think that I should live to see the day when I'd be able to put $30 of fuel into my car without overflowing
the tank.

---

On ABC television tonight a rare orchid was smuggled into Midsomer Malham and released the heady scents of passion, jealousy and death in Midsomer Murders: Orchis Fatalis. DCI Tom Barnaby (John Nettles) and his offsider investigate the nasty goings on in the genteel Midsomer Malham Orchid Society in a story that might have been titled "Who is killing the great botanists of Midsomer?".

Later it's Hustle ["Rattling good fun, with slick performances all round, Hustle stylishly parodies the TV crime capers of the past"] with plot twists you'll never guess in a million years, and then Lost Highway [" the outsiders from all over America who rejuvenated Country by going Beyond Nashville - from the Bakersfield Sound of the 1950s, through to the `Outlaw' movement of the 1970s to alternative country today"].






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Harp SRO

Last year's performance by the Hobart Harp Ensemble saw the biggest audience I've experienced at the Moonah Arts Centre, so I made sure we arrived early for this week's show.

And a bloody good thing too. We arrived twenty minutes before the official start and the place was almost full then. By starting time, it was standing room only and the front doors had to be closed.

It wasn't just an hour of harp music — there were strings, pipes, flutes, even something called an Irish bouzouki. Celtic traditional songs, ancient Irish harps and lutes, ending with a moving rendition of "Brian Boru's March" The audience applauded madly, forcing three encores.



I don't know that I'll be at the next concert. I've seen Taiko drumming at open-air venues and I'm not sure that I want to be shut in a small building with a troupe of drummers pounding away. Not without industrial ear-protection anyway.

---

SHORT FICTION

In the September issue of Alfred Hitchock's Mystery Magazine, the cover story features a woman who starts off on a vacation and has car trouble in the middle of a thunderstorm in “Journey to Oblivion” by John H. Dirckx.


What amused me about it was that it reworked the plot of Hitchcock's classic Psycho to the point where you could almost hear the screaming string music on the soundtrack. Yes, the ending was different, but I enjoyed all the familiar plot elements in a different setting.


They say that the best in-jokes are the superfluous ones. If you've seen the movie or read Robert Bloch's novel you'd enjoy the story a little more, but if you hadn't (shame on you!) then it was still a perfectly serviceable whodunit short story.

---

Spring is here. And today was National Flag Day.

However, since this is Australia they held the celebration on Friday rather than Saturday so it wouldn't conflict with the football...






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Wattle Day

National Wattle Day 1 September 2005

On Thursday 1 September, All Australians are asked to wear the green and the gold (Australia’s colours) or a sprig of wattle and welcome each other with a G’day, a smile, a wink or a handshake in the same way as the wattle blossoms gold to welcome in the Australian Spring.

I was surprised to see that the Wattle tree at the end of my garden was actually in flower for Wattle Day this year. Other years I've been mildly annoyed to see it blooming later than any of the other Wattles around the district, but this year it's a mass of golden blossoms for the big day.

---

Here's one for the Neil Diamond fans: Monday night was the warmest August night ever recorded in Hobart.

The lowest temperature was 15 degrees [about 58º F], up from the previous record of 14.4 degrees.

The weather bureau's Ian Barnes-Keoghan says a windy and cloudy night in the south and east meant daytime temperatures did not drop away as they normally would.

He says the new Hobart minimum breaks a record that has stood for 120 years.

"That's above the previous record of 14.4. That occurred back in 1885, so it's a very long established record that one". A hot August night indeed.

Yet so erratic is the winter weather this month that by Wednesday afternoon Deloraine and parts of northern Tasmania were flooded. The Mersey River has broken its banks and caused localised flooding around Latrobe.

The Main Road at Balyhoo Creek between Tarleton Road and Latrobe Road has been closed, and people are advised to use the Bass Highway to get to and from Latrobe and Devonport.

The State Emergency Service regional manager, Bevis Dutton, says Kentish, Central Coast and Latrobe emergency services will be on stand-by throughout the night.

What can we expect next??

---

Very sluggish on Wednesday morning. I was still asleep and dreaming when someone phoned to ask if I wanted to sell some raffle tickets for charity. No I didn't.

I wish I could remember that dream in detail. It would knock Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard right off the bookshelves. It was so detailed -- when I woke up I could remember in detail the uniforms that the soldiers wore in the other world I'd dreamed up.

Alas, all the memories fly forgotten as the old hymn has it.

Sunday thoughts

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine!
Alive in Him, my living Head,
and clothed in righteousness divine.
Bold I approach the eternal throne
and claim the crown through Christ, my own.


God Sent His People

Our minister R1 took to the pulpit on Sunday morning at the end of “Missions Month”, read from the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles and mused on just what we were celebrating.

The chief missionary of the church, he said, is the Holy Spirit – through that work a light is shone on Jesus Christ.

It’s estimated there are 400,000 people involved in cross-cultural activities around the world. This is what the popular idea of a missionary is. But the real work of missions is God’s people witnessing for the Lord – you and me, not some missionary toiling in a far-off jungle.

We are the living embodiment of mission [John 17:13-21]. We are called by God to be a witness to his glory among those we rub shoulders with on a daily basis.

It might be possible to live in a Christian ghetto, mixing only with those with similar beliefs and consuming only the books and music sold at the local Christian bookshop. The wider community wouldn’t even know we were there. That would be as far away from mission as possible.

Our lifestyles should signify as much as our words – we need to be more like Christ if we want to influence others in his cause. If we don’t have that inner joy, we can’t spread the Good News of the Gospel to others

We should live for Christ by living as Christ.

Still on and on the anthems spread,
of hallelujah voices;
in concert with the holy dead,
the warrior church rejoices;
their snow-white robes are washed in blood,
their golden harps are ringing;
earth and the Paradise of God
one triumph song are singing.

He comes, whose advent-trumpet drowns
the last of time's evangels,
Immanuel, crowned with many crowns,
the Lord of saints and angels,
O Life, Light, Love, the great I AM,
Triune, who changes never,
the throne of God and of the Lamb
is Yours, and Yours forever.

Deadly Nightcap

We had a few days of culture this week. On Friday we went from a bookshop via the Cafe 73 restaurant to the art galleries and then on to the theatre.

This month's play at The Playhouse was an old Francis Durbridge whodunit "Deadly Nightcap".

After a deceptively quiet first few minutes, the plot begins to thicken rapidly with an amazing twist at the end of Act One. From there on we had enough red herrings to stock a seafood restaurant before the mystery was resolved at last.

Leonie Adams starred as the much put-upon Sarah Radford -- a very different part to her role in Away earlier this year.

A gripping piece of entertainment from the creator of Paul Temple.

The final attraction for the year is a double-feature of two one-act plays, including the amusing The Real Inspector Hound which I remember seeing at the Theatre Royal many years ago.

And while I think of it a big Thank You to the ushers at the Playhouse for letting us in after I left the tickets at home.

---

Unfortunately we missed the fact that that Friday was the annual Gallery Crawl bus trip around the city's galleries for Tasmanian Living Artists Week. We usually take the tour round the city, but this time we had to settle for a hasty walk around the art gallery belt in Salamanca Place before the theatre.

We'll try to get to some of the other exhibitions while they're on.

---

The Hobart Jazz Club has been talking about holding a jazz festival in North Hobart for the last five years. This year they finally got it off the ground under the title Hot August Jazz, spanning the pubs and restaurants between Burnett Street and Federal Street.

Sunday we spent the afternoon going up and down the main drag, sampling all the attractions. It was a mixed bag, with all different sorts of bands, styles and venues.

The venerable Ian Pearce Quartet were playing to a capacity crowd at the Queens' Head hotel when we arrived, followed by Mei Wei Lim and the Hobart Jazz Chorus.

Across the road, we looked in on Kaye Payne's Eklektika band at the Trout Bar [the old Commercial hotel] but someone had decided to amp up the volume and the blaring speakers were unsympathetic to her style. I've seen her in a more intimate venue and enjoyed it more.

Down at the Republic Bar [formerly the Empire Hotel] the Late Bloomers trio were better served by their sound system, bowling along nicely with some old favourites. The venue also boasts a nice collection of Art Deco bric-a-brac and antique travel posters.

Julie and Jan took a few minutes out to study the window of the St Vincent de Paul shop. "Look at that lovely twin set. Do you think they'd hold it for me if I phoned them on Monday morning?"

Of course not all venues were really sympathetic to things. The La Porchetta restaurant featured Mei Wei Lim playing a selection of George Gershwin and Cole Porter, but it was only for the diners with no options for anyone else to hang around and listen.

spring up

Can you believe this weather? Last week we were shivering in the icy wind blowing off the mountain. This afternoon it was so warm and sunny while I was in the city that I stopped for an ice cream!

All the trees are coming out in blossom -- even our notoriously slow wattle is in flower. There's even a sprinkling of daisies coming up on the back lawn.

---

Thanks to those generous people at OTRCAT I was able to listen to an episode of the classic American radio series Lights Out last week.

Lights Out debuted in 1934 and was radio's premier horror series created by writer/director Willis Cooper, who later scripted Boris Karloff's 1939 classic Son of Frankenstein. Cooper was succeeded by Arch Oboler, one of the great dramatists of Old Time Radio. Oboler had scripted Mae West's infamous "Garden of Eden" sketch and brought a new level of psychological horror to radio in scripts like "Cat Wife," "Sub-Basement," and "Chicken Heart" [famously recalled by Bill Cosby in one of his funniest routines].

Although I've known of the show for years (it ran till 1947) and once owned a vinyl LP of horror stories written by Oboler, I'd never actually heard an episode of the programme before.

The story in question was "Oxychloride X" and is one of two Oboler stories about the end of the world. (The other is the over-the-top classic "The Chicken Heart".) This starts out quietly and calmly until the introverted protagonist goes berserk in the college laboratory and invents an unstoppable solvent.

The events that follow makes Orson Welles' famous War of the Worlds broadcast sound like the chimps' picnic at the zoo. Oboler destroys not just the human race but the entire planet! However, in the style of Alfred Hitchcock's end-of-story disclaimers, there's a soothing final scene in which we discover it was all a dream.

Certainly a lively half-hour. Really brings back the feel of the Golden Age of radio.

---

Whenever a new sound media comes along, we're told how wonderful and durable it is. I remember in the early days of magnetic tape, one manufacturer had an advertisement in which tape was frozen in a block of ice, thawed out and played perfectly. The fact that such a thing was unlikely to happen in the average home was glossed over.

In the real world, cassette tapes proved to have built-in drawbacks including stretching, bleed through and sticking together, making them impractical for long-term storage.

Enter the Compact Disc.

When the CD was first introduced, it was of course described as being the perfect medium for sound recording. People had exaggerated idea of the durability of the discs, only to be disillusioned by problems caused by scratches and dust.

I remember when the DVD came out, I was taken in at first by the hype which described it (you guessed it) as the perfect medium for conveying sound and vision. I was brought down to earth by hiring a George Clooney movie from my local video library and discovering it was so badly scratched it couldn't be played at all.

So after all that I wasn't at all surprised to see that the Imation company have brought out a CD-R which promises to have fewer problems than a normal disc.

Marketed with the catchphrase "Don't your memories deserve an extra layer of protection?", the Imation Forcefield disc promises a scratch-resistant coating, anti-static repulsion of dust particles, and wipe-clean surface in case of smears and smudges.

But can you freeze it in a block of ice?

---

PETROL PATROL: Fuel is up to $1.25 a litre in Hobart, but a recent letter in the local press points out we're still not paying as much as some countries are. Quite high enough for me, though.

---

It's usually the habit of television networks to program like against like. Rather than put shows of different types against each other, they prefer to match the opposition with a clone of their hit show and try and split the audience.

Wednesday night here is a perfect example of this. Beyond Tomorrow and The New Inventors compete for the attention of the audience interested in science/technology. Later the audience who enjoy police drama in the Big Apple have to decide between Without a Trace or Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

But of course that's why they invented the VCR.

---

I hear on Tony Delroy's radio show while I'm typing this that someone wants to make a new version of the science fiction film Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Excuse me?

Last time I looked there had been two feature films, one black-and-white and one in colour, and I think at least two telemovies.

Not to mention the original novel which was a serial in Collier's magazine before that.

Do we really need another re-make?

---

CD of the Day:

Back In The Swing
Anthony Warlow with the
Victorian Philharmonic Orchestra
Polydor Records 1993

People often ask me what style of music I like to sing when I'm not performing on the Opera or Musical Theatre stage. This album is the best I can give. From the romance of "Autumn Leaves" to the crazy fun of "Orange Coloured Sky" this collection celebrates the music of a golden era, the Swing Era. So whether you're hearing these songs for the first time or rediscovering an old favourite, I hope you'll enjoy listening to the music I enjoy singing.

Yes, it's an album of show tunes by Anthony Warlow. All the usual suspects: Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Hoagy Carmichael, George Gershwin, Lerner & Loewe etc etc.

The 15 tracks here make for pleasant listening, though the first number is a bit of a surprise: "Blue Heaven" from the antique musical The Desert Song. I don't think I've ever heard such an uptempo version of Sigmund Romberg.






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back in Winter

The weather continued unsettled in August, with a few days of balmy weather followed by a weekend that snapped back to winter.

On Sunday morning the skies opened while we were on the way into town and I was almost soaked making my way into church. I took my place in the pews and sat there steaming slightly as we opened our hymnbooks.

At lunchtime the sun shone weakly through the drizzle - an infallible sign of snow falling on the mountain.

Maybe the weather is part of the reason my back is playing up today.

I felt all right when I eventually got out of bed this morning, but within half an hour I was conscious of some discomfort. (Now that I think of it, it was just after I helped Julie get the chickens out of their coop, which involved a bit of stretching and twisting.)

By lunchtime I had trouble turning my body to look at anything. This was a bit of a problem since while we were at my sister's house I planned to walk the dogs and unload a couple of sacks of feed. Neither seemed like a good idea anymore.

We bought a couple of smaller bags, and between Julie and myself we managed to get them out of the car and into the storage drum without straining ourselves. I took the dogs out in the yard and let them run around chasing some apples I threw for them. Not quite as much fun as a walk, but less strenuous for me.

We stopped for a cup of coffee in North Hobart. Called in at Aroma, an unusual shop that combines selling CDs with food & drink. I'm not sure if it's a record bar with a coffee machine or a coffee shop with a CD table, but in any case the coffee is really good and the food is edible.

It's funny but I can tolerate mediocre food if the coffee is good, but there are several places I never patronise simply because the coffee is undrinkable.

In the evening we had something to eat so Julie could dose me with anti-inflammatories and see if it made my back any better (so far it's helped a little). We watched the episode of Mythbusters where they experiment to see if it's true that buttered toast always falls face down; afterwards we went out into the kitchen and made a plate of buttered toast!

---

I quite like the new weekend line-up on ABC television.

Saturday nigh we have classic whodunit stuff in Midsommer Murders, amusing con-man stuff in Hustle and the story of country music in Lost Highway.

I also enoy Sunday night's Broadway: the American Musical and the comedy-thriller about an unorthodox police squad New Tricks.

Who needs commercial television?

Harlem Lounge

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winter wow

The press are warning about severe weather tonight and tomorrow in Tasmania. Queenstown on the west coast is apparently already cut off, and snowfalls down to sea level are predicted for southern parts of the island tomorrow.

Here in Hobart, there's snow on Mount Wellington down to about 300 meters. The afternoon show on ABC radio bravely announced they were defying the weather and would stay on air playing summer music, sipping cocktails and wearing Hawaiian shirts!

Driving through north Hobart I noticed at least one car with snow piled on its bonnet, a local custom on winter days to show that you've driven up to the snows and back.

---

Quote of the day:
"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others." ~ Pericles

---

The shuttle has landed safely. (Praise God!) Before the Challenger disaster (and more recent tragedies) there was a feeling that spaceflight was safe and routine. The truth, of course, is very different.

Every astronaut takes their lives in their hands when they volunteer for space. That they return safely should be a cause for celebration after every flight.

---

Checking the latest Mandrake comic strip last week I was unpleasantly surprised to find that the King Features website now only offers you the current week instead of a month of strips. The reason is not surprising; they now have a paid service which allows you full access to that and many other comic strips.

That's become an increasingly common thing. Companies offer their stuff on-line for free till you become accustomed to immediate access to it. Then they bring in the paid option....

Other sites like Comics.com, comicspage.com and Ucomics are still free, but I wouldn't put any big bets on them staying that way forever.

---

Small Victories department.

I've managed to get Kay back on-line. After I gave her a lift home on Tuesday evening I had a look at her computer and tried out the new ISP a couple of times.

Here's your trouble, I told her. When you typed in the phone number, you put an extra digit in the middle. All we have to do it delete that and... hey presto!

She was quite pleased. Not only has she been off-line for several weeks, but she now has a connection to Netspace that costs her only $8 a month.

I didn't try to explain the new Netspace Accelerator programme to her; let's just enjoy our little success.






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Millions

Went out one afternoon to a preview screening of the new movie Millions over at Eastlands – I don't go to the cinema much nowadays, but we were lucky enough to score some free tickets.

And it's a lovely movie. A small boy, alienated and grieving, suddenly stumbles across a small fortune in cash. What will he do with it? Will it change his life or can he use it to change the lives of his family and neighbours?

The American film critic Roger Ebert nails it pretty well when he says that director Danny Boyle and writer Frank Boyce "are serious filmmakers who do not know how to talk down to an audience, and although Millions uses special effects and materializing saints, it's a film about real ideas, real issues and real kids. It's not sanitized brainless eye candy. Like all great family movies, it plays equally well for adults -- maybe better, since we know how unusual it is."

---

Friday night, for the first time in ages, I actually got eight hours sleep. I felt so good when I woke up this morning that I forgot all about doing my Blood Glucose test before I had breakfast.

That's a shame, because the last two mornings I'd been pleased to find my BGL was down to 6.4 which is where it used to be a couple of months ago. For some reason it's been going up steadily all this month, hitting 8.0 one day.

That's not good. It's not disastrous, but it's not good.

Maybe I felt so well I just forgot I had diabetes.

Trust me, months of not getting enough sleep make you feel really run-down. Maybe when you're in your twenties you can tolerate that sort of thing – but as you go along you find you simply can't do it anymore.

---

Saturday we spent part of the day at the Veterinarian. Julie has been worried about her mastiff Saj, who has been off his food this week.

Fortunately her favourite vet was on duty and he carefully examined Saj from top to tail. Nothing obvious was wrong but he recommended leaving him there for further tests.

This we did and they gave him the full gamut. Blood tests, urine analysis and a cardiac and abdominal ultrasound. Everything seemed fine for an 11-year-old dog and they prescribed some anti-inflammatories in case arthritis was a factor.

As we left, I said to Saj "You're in better health than most people are at your age!" He didn't answer, merely made a bee-line for the exit.

While we were there, Julie had asked about her Cornish Rex cat Jezebel. The Feliway didn't seem to be helping calm her down, so they gave us some "pussycat prozac" for her.

Now these are small tablets, and it's been quite a while since we've had to give a cat pills.

I had forgotten ("Hold her head!") just how difficult ("And her front paws!") it can be ("Ouch! And her back paws....") to get pills down a cat's throat.

We managed to get one down her in the end. At least I think so. It's hard to say for certain since I didn't notice much change in her attitude that evening.

But then that's cats for you. You often have to accommodate your personality to theirs rather than vice-versa.

---

I've been enthralled by the new series of Doctor Who we've had on television this year. Sequels and re-makes are always a bit dubious but this one works great.

The penultimate episode of series 1, "Bad Wolf", was fascinating. It turns out that reality television is actually a plot by aliens to soften us up for an invasion. That explains a lot!

The episode would have worked even better if the ABC hadn't shown us in the preview the previous week that the Daleks were the power behind it all. I think that was supposed to be a surprise, folks!

---

I've been listening to quite a few different radio programmes on the BBC website in the last year or so, but in the last couple of months I've added another to my list.

Brian Kay's Light Programme explores the "diverse world of light music", which is a very particular niche market. You may not understand the name, but you'll know it when you hear it. (If you recognise the name Eric Coates this is probably for you.)

What I like about it is hard for me to explain -- it features music I like but which I haven't heard before.

There are plenty of "nostalgia" or "easy listening" programmes and albums that could easily have been produced by a computer. You know the sort of thing: take one song each by Bing Crosby, the Mills Brothers, Judy Garland, Richard Tauber, throw in an amusing novelty song and a couple of instrumentals and voila!

The music that Brian Kay plays on his show certainly has an agreeable sound, but they are nearly all tunes that are not already familiar to me. Sometimes you don't want to hear a particular song for the 83rd time, you want something that's equally pleasing to the ear but is new to you!

I remember when Magic 103.9 started broadcasting in Hobart, they had a very strict Golden Oldies format. The first time I listened to the station for a long spell, I realised that I knew all the words to every song. That's all right now and again, but the human mind likes a bit of novelty occasionally.

jazz it up

Out on Saturday night to the Tasmania Inn to see the jazz trio Joe & The Joy Boys, who are acquaintances of my sister Julie. They swung their way nicely through a pleasant selection of standard oldies -- I particularly liked their renditions of "Girl from Ipanema" and "As Time Goes By". The sound system gave them a bit of grief but that's not unusual for Saturday night pub gigs.

It's the first time we've been to the Tasmania Inn since it changed hands, and my sister (who dislikes change in any form) was slightly disturbed by the changes they'd made to the decor.

We were both disturbed by the changes to the menu, where the cheapest item is now about $17. A bit dearer than it used to be.

The new owners, a family of Canadians, seem nice enough but I would be interested to know how much experience they've had in the hotel trade. It's a line that a lot of people go into without any prior knowledge.

---

I've been generally quite satisfied using Netspace as my back-up ISP, and I queried them about taking out a second account for a friend. They were quite happy about it and I went ahead with it at the weekend.

The problem for my friend Kay, you see, is that she's one of those rare individuals who doesn't have a credit card. If you think about it, that makes it almost impossible to sign up with the majority of internet service providers.

I suggested to her that if she was willing to pay me, I could charge it to my credit card and neither of us would be worse off. She certainly wouldn't be, since her last ISP charged $29 a month and the Netspace Supersaver subscription is only $7-95 a month.

---

The local press reported this week that petrol has soared to record prices around Tasmania, with some motorists paying a staggering 124.9 cents a litre. In Hobart unleaded fuel has reached 118.9 in most stations, four cents more than in other capital cities.

Despite a drop this week in the world price of crude oil, farmers and the transport industry are reeling from the high prices. The chief engineer of the Royal Automobile Club of Tasmania complained that oil companies were usually quick to raise prices but slow to drop them.

Too true, blue.

---

I've wondered why Network Ten persists with Big Brother when a quick check of the ratings in Melbourne and Hobart shows that it struggles to get into the ten most-watched programmes each week.

The series costs about A$25 million a year to mount.

Well, mystery solved. I now read that the show is always on the list of the "20 most-watched programmes" among viewers aged 16 to 39 around Australia. Apparently the advertisers don't really care that many people over 40 consider it a complete waste of time. The 25-to-54 demographic are firmly rusted on to the Nine Network anyway.

Speaking of the over-40s, DMG Radio Australia has launched its new Melbourne/Sydney network under the brand name Vega ("on your wavelength"). The new stations will be aimed at the 40-to-60 demographic, just as DMG's Nova network targets the under-40 group.

It's expected to lure listeners away from the ABC, news-talk stations and Classic Hits stations.

DMG - part of Britain's Daily Mail media company - has deep pockets. It's spent over $500 million to set up the five-state Nova network and the Vega stations. (And kudos to The Australian for not describing Nova as a "national network" -- any Tasmanian will tell you that you can't claim national coverage if you only broadcast to five out of the six states!)

---

I've reinstalled Firefox on my computer this week. I used to have it, but lost it when the laptop's hard drive crashed this year. Firefox 1.0.4 is apparently the latest model. I haven't tried it yet, so I'll be interested to see if I notice any differences to the old version.

I've also put on a free programme called Fraud Eliminator -- I am not paranoid, I'm just careful.

full moon

The full moon is past -- it always surprises me how quickly the moonlight lessens after the full moon, since it seems so bright just before it's completely full. Some nights I hardly need the lights on the backyard while I'm taking the goose for a walk before she has supper.

---

I don't know what's gone wrong with my diabetes. I always used to be able to keep my morning BGL reading to 7.0 or less, but recently they've been edging up. The apex (or do I mean the vertex?) came Wednesday morning when it hit 8.5

*Sigh*

My doctor isn't going to be pleased unless I get it down by the time I see him again. The only good thing here is that he's increased the time between appointments and I'm not due to see him again until December 7th.

Finally a date I won't forget! "An appointment that will live in infamy...." (I hope not!).

---

I called in at the local comic-book shop Area 52 yesterday.

"I got the July issues of Uncle Scrooge and Walt Disney's Comics & Stories last time I was in but I notice I haven't got the June issues. What happened to them?"

"That's odd, you should have got those. Let me look.... oh, here they are. Apparently they didn't get put in your box. Do you still want them?"

I bit my lip not to say what I thought, contenting myself with "Yes please."

Seeing these go for about A$15 a copy, you might expect them to take more care.

---

Received today from First Generation Radio Archives their new Round Robin. Twenty audio CDs -- no MP3 technology involved.

RR #25 contains over twenty hours of diverse radio entertainment, including comedy with Jack Benny, suspense with "Lights Out," "Inner Sanctum," and"The Strange Dr. Weird," the seldom heard "Cinnamon Bear" audition show, musical entertainment from Bing Crosby's "The Kraft Music Hall," "Philco Radio Time," Johnny Mercer, and "The Bob Crosby show," rare locally aired broadcasts, and a special series of never-before-available syndicated programs.

A panorama of old time radio entertainment, taken directly from original master recordings and restored for excellent audio quality. The early Jack Benny shows were originally recorded for Benny's own archives, for example.

In the mid-1950's, US Armed Forces Radio began recording and re-broadcasting the audio portions of some civilian television broadcasts over their radio stations. To today's listeners, this practice has happily resulted in the preservation of many high-quality audio tracks from television shows that in many cases wouldn't exist at all. Here, for example, we have "Stars of Jazz," a musical series from 1958 hosted by songwriter/performer Bobby Troup and featuring performances by Red Nichols and Frances Bergen.

Jazz on a winter's night

The Moonah Arts Centre put on a special event Jazz Night last week. It was twice the length of their usual concerts and they put out some tables so we could have a drink and some peanuts while we watched Georgina Richmond and Kalo Cocker sing with a jazz trio.

Dim the lights, put out some candles and it all got very atmospheric.

After a couple of songs, I thought to myself that "The Look Of Love" should be coming up soon. Ten minutes later, there it was.

The two ladies took it in turns to sing some of the old standards, finally collaborating on "Blue Moon".

All the songs were cover versions, I think, except for one original just before interval, Georgina's heartfelt "Blue Blackbird" which got a big round of applause.

I was safe to drive home afterwards without a doubt - I'd only ordered one glass of wine and I knocked that over before I'd finished it.

---

"A recent crash at Hobart's Elwick Racecourse was a sporting accident with a difference", said a news item in the Heritage Tasmania newsletter.

"Suspended high above the ground, one of the seven-tonne light towers being coaxed in to place snapped in half and the head crashed into the rear corner of the historic grandstand.

Thankfully for all involved no injuries were sustained, though there was a fair bit of mental bruising.

The Tasmanian Heritage Council is recommending that the building be repaired, however a structural assessment is required to ensure the impact has not created damage in other areas of the building, including the foundations.

Once this step is completed, discussions with the owners, insurers and the Glenorchy City Council will begin to consider how best to repair the structure. It may be possible to reuse some of the demolition materials, otherwise new materials will be sourced."

I remember the racecourse in the late 1950s when my father owned race horses and was often out there. One day my sister and I roamed all over the empty grandstand, finally pausing at one set of seats that had a view out over the entire vista.

"Hey!" shouted one of the staff. "Get out of there -- that's the Royal Box."

The closest I've ever come to royalty.

---

I mentioned previously that one of my chores in this household has always been to select books for the rest of my family. This week I've found it difficult to pry her away from her current novel, Robert Heinlein's The Door Into Summer. She hasn't read a Heinlein for a long while, and she found this one unputdownable.

Probably something to do with the fact that a cat is one of the main characters.

She was a bit puzzled by the future sequences (it's about time travel) set in 1970 and 2001, which seemed a bit odd. It was more comprehensible for her when I looked it up and found it was written in 1956.

---

Not happy with my readings for the last few weeks; my Blood Glucose Level numbers are higher than they should be.

I think I've only had one satisfactory morning reading in the last three weeks -- 6.3 the day before yesterday. Everything else has been higher.

Not sure whether it's a low-level infection, fatigue or stress... or maybe a combination of all three in varying amounts.

---

I've been enjoying the new Doctor Who stories a lot. This month's two-parter set in World War II's Blitz-affected London was quite compelling.

The vision of the alien zombies re-made in the mould of a lost child in a gas-mask was almost as disturbing as Nigel Kneale's third Quatermass story. For light relief we had Rose flirting outrageously with a time-travelling con man with movie-star looks.







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Sunday

In the morning I got up and made a cup of Earl Grey tea while watching the Rosella parrots in the backyard. Every time they visit, I'm struck by how vivid their colouring is; if you saw it in a textbook you would probably assume the printers had exaggerated the tint.

My sister was still recovering from her weekend trip to Devonport. She is such a creature of late nights that it only takes a couple of early morning starts to really set her back on her heels. It will probably take another day till she's over it.

---

The Sunday morning sermon at church this week was from our second minister (R2 I usually call him) and went right back to basics with the fifth chapter of Genesis in a sermon titled "Adam's Family".

From one man, the book of Acts tells us, God made all the races of humanity. And since God created Adam, we are all descended from God the Creator. As we try to become more like Jesus, the family resemblance becomes more marked.

A lot of the Old Testament is devoted to carefully noting the lives and family links of God's people. The individual and the family group are both important in the eyes of God. This chapter traces the family tree from Adam down to Noah.

Like Enoch, we all need to walk with God in ways that please Him. [Trivia question: who were the only two men never to die? Enoch and Elijah]

Noah's true glory was neither as a boat-builder nor as a descendant of Adam, but as a link to the birth of Jesus the redeemer.

Praise to the Lord --
O let all that is in me adore Him!
All that has life and breath
come now with praises before Him!
Let the 'Amen' sound
from His people again:
gladly forever adore Him!

Later in the day I went out to the Federation Concert Hall down near the waterfront. There was a free concert on that afternoon -- a jazz quartet featuring guitar, drums, saxophone and Hammond organ.

The music was good, but what gave it that extra something was that it was a live broadcast for the national radio programme Sunday Live. If I had a coughing fit or one of the musicians fell off the stage, it would have been beamed instantly across the country by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Classic FM network.

It was the first time I've seen a radio programme being broadcast (aside from the time I was interviewed by the ABC about the H.G. Wells anniversary) and it was much more straightforward than the days of Old Time Radio.

The announcer, Lee Parker, vanished behind a screen when she wasn't actually introducing items, and the microphones were nothing like the elaborate gear seen in old photographs.

Curious to think that once nearly all radio shows were done like this -- staged live and beamed out across the country. Comedy, drama, variety, children's shows. Remind me sometime to tell you the story about Bing Crosby and the birth of the tape-recorder industry.

---

That evening we were listening to the late show on ABC radio while Julie was feeding her animals. The Sunday night quiz segment is usually made up of questions about religion, but to my surprise after the first couple of questions they began to concentrate on science fiction movies that had some religious tie-in.

I picked up my mobile phone and started dialling. By the time I got through, we were down to the final question. John Cleary played a piece of the theme music from 2001 and asked "How is that music related to the statement 'God is dead'?"

The next couple of contestants fell at this hurdle and I sat there thinking "Come to me, come to me..."

Then I was on. "Michael from Hobart -- can you link those two?"

"Yes," I said cautiously. "The music 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' and the quote are both linked to..."(I paused imperceptibly as I realised I wasn't sure how to pronounce the name correctly ) "...Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche." I slurred the surname a little and hoped for the best.

"Correct! You're this week's winner." Phew!

---

I finished the novel I was reading and decided to take a look at one of the books I bought at the Thylacon convention. Musing on this, I mentally ran through the list of stories that were involved. Which one did I want to read first?

It only took a moment to decide. Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement.

This was one of the novels I read when I first started reading science fiction in the 1960s, one of those snazzy Penguin paperbacks with an upmarket modern-art cover (no spaceships or monsters for Penguin!).

I'm fairly sure it was the first novel I read in which the narrator wasn't a human being. A memorable character from a high-gravity planet, Barlennan is (to be candid) a centipede.

Even forty years later I remember how utterly fascinating I found the book.

"High time I read it again," I thought and reached for volume 3 of The Essential Hal Clement. .

Murray Leinster, Cordwainer Smith and Eric Frank Russell will have to wait till later, much as I love them.

Thanks to NESFA Press for bringing back into print these great old authors. And thanks to Justin Ackroyd for having them on his stall at the convention.





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livestock in depth

If you'd looked over my shoulder the last few days you would have seen me getting a refresher course in feeding my sister's livestock. "This goes in there. Then you put two of these and one of those for that one. Give her two scoops. Throw an extra handful to the duck with only one foot. Remember to shut this latch...etc etc etc."

She was off to a seminar for Christian women in the north of the state and somebody had to feed the dogs, cats, horse and poultry. It was only 36 hours but obviously she thought I needed to be brought up to speed on who got what and when.

Murphy's Law came into action of course, and the evening I was out in the barnyard was the coldest night we've had so far this winter, going down to 1°. I wasn't sorry to finish and get home.

24 hours later I got a text message saying she'd be home soon - "only 180km to go."

---

Meanwhile the Queen's Baton is visiting all 71 Commonwealth countries as a lead-up to the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

When the baton arrives in Australia in January it will tour every state and territory and be carried by 3500 people through 500 communities. Finally the baton, carrying a message from the Queen, will arrive at the Games' opening ceremony at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on March 15th.

---

Went round to Kay's place on Saturday afternoon and helped her download her e-mail. She hadn't been able to do it for a few months and she had 1300 messages in her inbox. Nearly all of them are free newsletters but she was very concerned about the possibility of them being deleted if she didn't download them.

It was a fraught half-hour. Kay panics so easily that pushing any button can be enough to make her swoon. I minimized a window and she let out a shriek "It's gone! What happened?" I explained that nothing had gone wrong and she subsided for the moment.

I had hoped that reading some of the articles in Netguide magazine might help her, but it doesn't seem to have made much difference.

---

Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling has topped Amazon.com's list of the 25 best selling authors of all time. Runners up were self-help book author Spencer Johnson, romance novelist Nora Roberts and Dan [Da Vinci Code] Brown.

Whatever you may think about the Harry Potter novels, Rowling is the classic self-made millionaire. She started off writing her first novel at a table in her local coffee shop, with no idea that the book wouldn't just be published but would become an international phenomenon.

It's been a long time since we've seen an author who succeeded purely on the strength of her imagination -- not a committee or a focus group to be seen.

---

UFOS, LIES AND THE COLD WAR was a German programme shown on SBS-TV this week. This programme states that from 1947 into the1960s, US intelligence was able to use UFO paranoia strategically to cover up secret weapons testing. UFO sightings began in Sweden with the so-called ghost rockets in 1946. The Swedish authorities assumed the Soviets were testing German rocket technology. From 1947, in the US, there were a large number of sightings of green and blue balls of light over Strategic Air Command centres involved in nuclear weapons programs. A feeling of anxiety and paranoia took over. The intelligence services investigated the phenomena, all the while playing them down in public.

Ironically the UFO hubbub was used as a smokescreen to cover up research and development programs in the US, the USSR and Britain. It was assisted by bureaucracies in order to keep important national secrets, such as the development of the U2 spyplane.

A different look at what we used to call "flying saucers."

Sunday

The news from Britain, commented our minister in his sermon this morning, ran the gamut of human emotions – from the euphoria of Olympic selection to the horror of terrorist bombings. Is there a solution to the troubles of humanity? It doesn’t seem like it. God has the answer but the world doesn’t want to hear it. “I am the way, the truth and the light.” This passage is offensive to many because it is exclusive, they say; salvation is restricted to those who come to God through Jesus Christ. Not good works, or religious ceremonies, social engineering or ethical speculation.

Regardless of what the world thinks, he continued, there is only one God. And there is only one way to reach Him.

An outsider looking at us through our mass media would have no idea we were a so-called “Christian country”. There would be no evidence of the close communion with God that is essential for all of us.

The world and the Bible offer different answers. The problem is not with the Bible, but with the worldly beliefs of the human race.

Jesus Christ transformed lives when he walked the earth and he does so today. The world won’t be changed by Olympic committees or the United Nations, but only when people accept the truth of John 3:16

The church's one foundation
is Jesus Christ her Lord;
she is His new creation
by water and the Word:
from heaven He came and sought her
to be His holy bride;
with His own blood He bought her
and for her life He died.

Elect from every nation,
yet one throughout the earth;
her charter of salvation --
one Lord, one faith, one birth:
one holy Name she blesses,
and shares one holy food;
as to one hope she presses
with every grace endued.

Though with a scornful wonder
men see her much oppressed,
by schisms rent asunder,
by heresies distressed,
yet saints their watch are keeping,
their cry goes up: 'How long?'
And soon the night of weeping
shall be the morn of song.

In toil and tribulation,
and tumult of her war,
she waits the consummation
of peace forevermore:
till with the vision glorious
her longing eyes are blessed:
at last the church victorious
shall be the church at rest!

Yet she on earth has union
with God the Three-in-One;
and mystic, sweet communion
with those whose rest is won:
O happy ones and holy!
Lord, grant to us Your grace,
with them the meek and lowly,
in heaven to see Your face.


R2, our other minister, was musing on the recent problems of a certain Melbourne celebrity: “Steve’s fall from grace has received much attention this week. I’ve followed his career with interest since I boarded with him at College. He was brilliant and funny then – and was open to the gospel. Sadly that seems non-existent now, but he is a devoted family man and has done much for his State. Which leads to the bewilderment of why he threw it all to the wind in one stupid act, and then tells us to take note that he actually lost money on the share deal. Dumb and dumber Steve.
He wouldn’t be the first to see his need of God amidst personal failure.. I prayed for him back then and I pray for him now that this might lead him back to the faith he seemed to once embrace.
But enough finger-pointing. Jesus told his followers to be aware of the signs of the times in Luke 13 – and to learn from then for our own lives. One lesson is the deceitfulness of riches [Mark 4:19]
Steve is a multi-millionaire; when is enough enough? His saga coincides with a report this week that shows only 1 in 5 millionaires with over $3M are satisfied, while the percentage of those earning $25,000 p.a. is much higher. Amazing – but not really when you weigh up the teaching of Scripture about priorities, values, greed and responsibility.
The Live8/G8 challenge re Africa’s poverty could quite “easily” be solved by a biblical response to equity and wealth between North and South. There are many issues involved like corruption and Prime Ministers spending $9,000 a night on a hotel, but we best start with our own life... and faith.”

fun and fear

John, Steve, Dana and I brace ourselves for another round of questions

Monday night was the regular quiz night at the New Sydney Hotel in Bathurst Street. It's organized by the Irish Association but the questions aren't necessarily Irish. However since it was July Fourth I thought there could be an American theme.

My sister Julie had downloaded a couple of pages from a website -- information about American states and about all the Presidents and Vice Presidents in US history. I looked through them but my days of studying were decades gone and I thought to myself "I'll never remember all this."

We joined Steve & Dana at the pub, followed by John - he's an architect who plays cricket, so we were relying on him for any questions about architecture or test matches.

As usual the questions were a mix of easy, hard and very hard. We didn't do as well on the entertainment questions as we hoped, and the sports questions made a mess of us. But there were a couple of questions on American themes.

The first one was a question about which of the boroughs of New York was on the mainland. Steve lived most of his life in the Big Apple and knew it was the Bronx.

Then they asked for either of the two states that are geometrically regular, meaning they look perfectly rectangular on a map. A thunderbolt seemed to strike the top of my head. "I saw this just this afternoon," I groaned, clenching my fists against my forehead like a cliche of deep thought.

Suddenly the clouds cleared. "Wyoming and Colorado", I cried.

Funny the way memory works sometimes.

---

Wednesday night we were faced with a dilemma. There was an Wurlitzer concert on at Linmor Hall with a visiting organist, but there was also a performance by Circus Quirkus at Wrest Point.

Seeing we were strapped for cash this week, the fact that the circus tickets were free was a point in its favour and we ended up down at Wrest Point.

It was quite an amazing show -- the traditional arts of acrobatics, juggling, tumbling and clowning are still as impressive as they ever were, and some of these guys were really good at it. I've never seen anybody juggle a table with their feet before.

The audience especially went wild for the three African acrobats whose high-energy act was greeted with thunderous applause.

---

A less happy moment was arriving home from work Thursday night and turning on the television to see the devastating consequences of a series of bombs that had gone off in London.

The scenes of shocked and wounded travellers, reports that army officers were posted on rooftops with binoculars, and journalists saying they could only get to the scene by bicycle due to the chaos in the streets ... it was all uncomfortably reminiscent of the H.G. Wells original novel of War of the Worlds.

Memories welled up of similar shocking news from the past. The Port Arthur shootings. The Twin Towers. Felt very unsettled as the death toll mounted and the details about the bomb blasts came in.

I went to bed and tried not to think about it. It was a cold night and burrowing down into the blankets I managed to get to sleep in the end.





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plays and parties

Saturday was a very busy day. In the late afternoon I lay down and napped for half an hour to give me the energy to go out in that evening to The Playhouse.

I'd been unwell last month and hadn't made it to the first of Rep's Shakespeare season, but I did want to see the last night of other play A Midsummer Night's Dream

Before we left for town, I read the first few pages of the relevant chapter in Lamb's Shakespeare to refresh my memory of the opening of the play, since I suspected it might take a few moments to attune my ear to the players.

Robert Jarman's production had a few quiry moments - the set decorated with film posters, the people of Athens dressed in K-Mart pyjamas - but overall the Bard still came through pretty well. Aniela Grun was appropriately regal as Titania, and of course Ray Sangston's Puck gets nearly all the good lines.

Three groups of characters weave in and out of the story, making up one of Shakespeare's most original offerings.

The capacity audience cheered wildly at the curtain, throwing streamers as the cast took their final bow of the show.

Even after four centuries, still a big crowd-pleaser.

---

As soon as we left church on Sunday morning, we went into high gear so we could finish at Julie's property then head south along the Southern Expressway. Turn off towards Sandfly, then head towards Allen's Rivulet. Another furlong and you came to the house where a rare event was being celebrated -- a Diamond wedding anniversary, complete with a message of congratulations from Her Majesty the Queen.



Friends and relatives of Don and Nan came from as far away as Launceston to wish the couple the best. One of the in-laws murmured that in the modern world this would probably be the only 60th wedding anniversary he would ever attend.

There was food, fellowship and the singing of "For They Are Jolly Good Fellows". Don thanked us for coming and said that their door was always open -- "Until 7:30 when I go to bed and leave Nan surfing the net" he concluded.

Steve took us for a walk around the property and showed us their resident paddymelon wallaby (like a small kangaroo) who lives in their backyard. Her favourite treat? A freshly picked rose.