Other Notes from Down Under

27/08/2019
 Tuesday, out to Croquet Club, then into Moonah -- bank, post office, lunch. Spent the rest of the day wrestling with my new phone.  With advice from the help desk and the aid of my largest magnifying glass, decided the problem is the tiny clip that is supposed to hold the SIM card in place, but actually doesn't. *sigh* A trip back to the place I bought it tomorrow then.
[Phone fixed without drama - it was, of course, the youngest member of the staff who solved my problem for me.]

11:05 PM 5/09/2019
Too busy for croquet again, with a committee meeting before lunch, then monthly PWMU luncheon.  Home and had a bit of a rest before heading out with Helena to see "Legally Blonde - The Musical" at the Playhouse.  Never have I seen a more demonstrative audience, screaming, whooping and applauding all through the show.

7/09/19

A bit cool and damp on Saturday.  Out for lunch and op-shopping as usual, then dropped in to see Kay.   A mutual friend was trying to fix up her audio-video system, and she was distraught because she kept insisting that the computer had to  be attached to her VCR if she wanted to see stuff on her television.  She wouldn't accept that this was neither possible nor helpful.   Sigh.

4:59 PM 9/09/2019

NBN seems even more problematic than usual.  By 5 pm it had dropped out at least four times -- may have been more but I wasn't on-line all the day.

3:29 PM 16/09/2019
Sunday morning I was a little apprehensive about having to step up to the lectern and read today's text aloud.  All sections of Scripture have their good and bad points (from a performance angle) but chapter 8 of Daniel was the first time I  have had to read a long passage of apocalyptic imagery.  Hey, it could have been worse -- I just had to read it, the minister had to preach on it.

21/09/2019
Saturday, a bewildering sight -- Keith spent an hour in the Salvation Army store and bought one book.  Just one!  That's like Dean Mrtin going into a bar and ordering an orange juice

1:00 PM 24/09/2019

Those TV re-runs sometimes turn up a forgotten gem.  Today I saw the pilot episode of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE with Steven Hill.  Interesting to compare it with the series that sprang from it.  Hill's Dan Briggs is unchanged, though intriguingly the voice at the end of the recording says "Welcome back, Dan", implying he's returning to the IMF after some time.  Barney and Willie have their brains-and-brawn sctick down pat.
The biggest difference is in two of the show's best-loved characters, Cinammon and Rollin.  Cinammon's sex appeal is more overt in this episode, verging on the sort of "eye candy" role common in 1966 -- later they would tone it down to the sort of cool elegance more appropriate to a high-fashion model.  And the make-up that was one of the show's trademarks falters a bit here, with Rollin's impersonation of a Latin American dictator very ordinary.
But the important thing is that this episode [the only one written by creator Bruce Geller] got the show on the air.  Its status as a TV icon would soon be assured.


4:13 PM 26/09/2019
Thursday's agenda:
10 am  Croquet;  1 pm  Lunch; 2 pm Facebook;  3 pm  Officeworks;  4 pm Star Trek;  6 pm  Dinner;  7.30pm Playhouse Theatre "Nunsense" .

7:31 PM 10/10/2019
Thursday I am still home resting up and trying to shake off that cold.  After feeding the animals, had a late breakfast and caught up on my reading till I nodded off on the couch.  Finally woke up when Keith Curtis phoned to say he'd got me a box of 60 year old issues of ANALOG magazine.  There are worse ways to wake up, I thought.

5:45 PM 11/10/2019
Being sick at home most of this week has given me the chance to watch a lot of STAR TREK re-runs.  Except for seeing them on the same day, I might not have noticed that "Devil in the Dark" [1967] and "Home Soil" [1988] are actually the same plot.

9:53 PM 14/10/2019

Sunday I got through church without sneezing or coughing (when I cough you can usually hear me half a block away), but the hymns were a bit of a challenge.  I only sing in church, so I  hadn't had to try it since before I got this persistent cold.  Afterwards, I had lunch, bought the SUNDAY AGE and went home, where I slept for two hours.  Let's hope my germs are packing their bags and making travel plans.

Monday I had planned to do stuff, but I never got that far.  Went out in the evening to have dinner with Pat & Ian.  They have a new big-screen television, organized by their family  --  probably because one of them has glaucoma and the other has macular degeneration, so they actually need a larger screen.  One of the family wants to connect them to Netflix, but I'm not sure it's necessary  --  they usually only watch SBS and ABC.
Still snuffling a little.  Warm and sunny today, which meant the cats both went outside after lunch, giving me a chance to make the bed for once.  Julie always said it was easier to handle cats during the winter, because you always knew where they'd be during cold weather  --  so true!

11:31 PM 18/10/2019
Dear iiNet, my Internet drops out at least three times a day for a few minutes.  Usually it's around midday (people logging on during their lunch break?), in the late afternoon (kids logging on after school?) and late at night (people logging on before they go to bed?)

Tsk, that's  two weeks now that I haven't made it to the Croquet Club.  Both Tuesdays I was put off by the weather, and both Thursdays I had a prior engagement.  This Thursday a group of us had lunch at Mather House after visiting the latest exhibition in the Allport Museum at the State Librart.  (Trivia titbit:  Mr Allport's daughter was the teacher in my sister Julie's art class at the Collegiate School.)

4:43 PM 25/10/2019

While television channel WIN BOLD was off the air, apparently due to bushfires impacting its transmitters, I tried watching the streaming feed on-line.  Nope, that doesn't work  --  we get five seconds of program,followed by ten seconds of buffering.  The end result is like watching a radio play illustrated with a series of still photographs.  The prediction that the NBN would bring us "fast and reliable" connectrions turns out to be just another political promise.  At least for FTTN. 
I wish we had ADSL2 back again.

2:31 PM 28/10/2019
Sometimes think the safest place to be in a zombie attack would be the croquet club.  Just stand out in the middle of the lawn till the zombie spots you and staggers towards you.  Then when he trips over a hoop and lands at your feet, you just bop him in the head with your croquet mallet and wait for the next one.

10:54 PM 29/10/2019
Phew.  After my morning blood test I played two games of croquet this afternoon with the temperature around 27 (or 80 fahrenheit).  Had time for coffee at Magnolia, then went home and put my feet up while I watched the afternoon Star Trek re-run.  Herded the cats inside then went out to the pub  quiz in Moonah -- we finished fifth but we had a couple of good rounds.  (And we got ten points because I remembered that it was Naomi Campbell that had written a novel called "Swan"!)

12:02 AM 10/11/2019
Thursday seemed pretty well planned out.  Croquet in the morning, Missions meeting and lunch at the church hall, Bocce Club in the evening.
Well, one out of three happened.  The weather turned wet and windy, so outdoor activities got the flick.  The meeting went off all right, with guest speaker Kim Jager from P.I.M.
Dinner at home and watched first episode of L.A.'s FINEST on TV;  Jessica Alba is as nice as usual but the show is just another cop series.
 
2:51 PM 17/11/2019
For a change, fine and sunny with not too much wind -- the equinocial gales last week were such that I feared the roof outside the back door was going to blow away.  Attended the morning service at church, where the sermon was interrupted by a couple of people being unwell  --  nothing to do, I hope, with my reading aloud the entire book of Philemon from the lectern.
After lunch, it was such a nice day I spent a pleasant hour in the garden drinking coffee while reading the latest issue of THE NEW YORKER and watching the cats wander in and out of the shade of the carport.  I have a full agenda for next week, but even God rested on the seventh day.

After my last update, when everything was so calm and peaceful, things took a surprising turn.  I was in my room, wondering whether I'd take a nap before dinner, when I heard a sudden commotion from the chickens.  Curious, I made my way to the back door.
Then both cats camre rushing inside -- and behind them a large black dog!  As it followed the white cat into the kitchen, I realized it was a greyhound. Out in the kitchen, the cat was "treed" on top of a cupboard, the greyhound standing up to look at him and the cat hissing at him.
Fortunately greyhounds are fairly docile beasts and I was able to herd him out the backdoor and walk him down the driveway to the street, where he was reunited with his owners.
One never knows, do one?

More Notes from Down Under

 16/07/2019
Muddy outside again.  Picked my way across the yard carefully, bearing in mind what happened the other day.  I went out to feed the poultry their breakfast and because of the wet weather they were in a different place to usual, sheltering from the rain.  I leaned forward as I threw their food down, and felt I was over balancing. 
Fortunately I managed to grab something and steady myself, but the chickens had seen me starting to topple over and had run off in all directions.  Tried calling them, but they were standing back suspiciously watching me.  I'm sure they came over as soon as I went back into the house.

9:16 PM 23/07/2019
Tuesday I was at the Croquet Club punctually and played two games.  The good news is that we did all right in the second game.  The first game?  Well, I haven't lost a game 7-0 for about ten years, but there's a second time for everything.

12:29 PM 26/07/20191
Blest be the tie that binds
  Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship our spirit finds
  Is like to that above.

When we asunder part,
  It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
  And hope to meet again.

10:33 AM 6/08/2019
A memory surfaces of dinner at the Bangsund home.  Left alone at the table with George Turner, I said by way of conversation that I hadn't seen any of John's SF collection anywhere.  George took a sip of wine and replied "Like a lot of SF fans, I expect he keeps it under his bed for quick reference."

10:08 PM 6/08/2019
Slept well.  Played a little better at croquet today. (Are the two things connected?) Then went into Moonah for lunch.  Weather a bit unpredictable from hour to hour.  This evening tuned in to watch first episode of SEA CHANGE  on TV -- who would have thought they'd make a new series 20 years after it finished? 

6:04 PM 10/08/2019
Drove up with Adrian to Oatlands in the southern midlands.  A big day for the town with the Heritage & Bullocks festival, though the weather was not co-operating.  (Helena's photographic studio was the warmest spot in town!).  Saw quite a few of the sights, including black swans on the shore of Lake Dulverton, lots of native hens, heritage displays and a coffee shop with an Errol Flynn themed decor.


6:13 PM 23/08/2019
Thursday it struck me that the week so far has been defined by things that didn't happen rather then by stuff I did do.  No croquet, no quiz night, no mobile phone and the laptop still in the shop.  Plus the batteries in the TV remote died while I was watching a movie last night!
Also no sunshine  --  while I was feeding the poultry a couple of days ago, it struck me that I had not seen so many pools of water on the ground since last year's rainstorm.   
Things must improve from now on, surely.

10:56 PM 23/08/2019
A bit busier on Friday.  Even the sun was shining.   I napped for an hour then went out for lunch and browsed through the Salvation Army store (mildly surprised to find a DVD bearing the emblem of the Mt Isa Blockbuster store - a long way from home).  Picked up the laptop from its service, then joined my neighbours for a trip to The Playhouse.  We saw David Williamson's classic comedy THE CLUB, which was very well received by a large audience. 

26/08/2019
A typical day --
1. Feed poultry, feed cats.
2. Breakfast
3. Facebook
4. Morning coffee while watching MISSION IMPOSSIBLE
5. Lunch
6. Phone Helena to let her know I have received SIM card for new phone
7. Wrestle with phone - gad but that's a fiddly job
8. Activate card on-line after giving up trying to get through on phone
9. Out for dinner with friends, watch episode of DEPARTMENT S.
10. Supermarket on way home.
11. Try out laptop after its service - tolerable.
12. Phone call from Keith Curtis, latest books collected.
13. Listen to late news on radio, go to bed.

Notes from Down Under

I haven't been posting much, but here are some notes I made last year.

Easter 2019 -  I am making a flying visit to Ballarat for a family reunion on Easter Saturday and staying overnight.  Sunday I will catch up with Leigh Edmonds, then return to Melbourne late Sunday.  I will be staying at the Victoria Hotel in the CBD and will be available for lunch or coffee etc before catching the 7.50pm plane back to Hobart.  

Wednesday I was still tired from my travels, though most nights this week I've been in bed by 10:15pm which is not usual for me.  To my surprise this didn't seem to harm my game at the Croquet Club -- in fact a couple of people told me how well I was playing on Tuesday.  Go figure.
A very windy night.  When I got up this morning I saw the lid had blown off the 44 gallon drum at the back door.  Never saw that happen before.  Went out to get some food for the poultry.  Let me tell you, the man who coined the term chickenfeed meaning a negligible amount of money never had much to do with caring for hens.
In the evening we competed in the weekly pub quiz and managed to finish in second place.  We only lost by a single point, so I reckon we would have won if we had done better in the puzzle question ("What year did NATO celebrate its 40th birthday?").

Thursday was quiet.  Anzac Day is a public holiday.  I played croquet in the morning and we shared a cake I provided  --  the club has a tradition that you have to bring a cake when it's your birthday that week.  Went home and took a nap.  After dinner I watched some stuff from the Sid & Marty Krofft boxed set I bought last week.  I was unaware that the State Cinema was having a special screening of one of my favourite films THE DAMBUSTERS due to it being Anzac Day!  Oh well, maybe another year. 

Friday got off to a sad start.   I gave Keith Curtis and his cat a lift to the Vet, but only two of us were coming back if you know what I mean.  :(   After it was all over, Keith and I talked for a while over coffee before I drove him home.
Lunch time, Adrian drove me down to eat with Mick, Helena and Zyta to celebrate my birthday.  Chicken and champagne, and since I wasn't driving I felt free to have an extra glass or two.  Zyta had come across one of the conical moulds used for making cream horns and served up a plate of them for dessert.  This was the first time I'd seen those in a long, long time.  Quite nice but you wouldn't want to be eating them every week.

AVENGERS ENDGAME  I enjoyed this a lot more than INFINITY WARS.  The movie hits the ground running and never stops, and though you'd need a PhD in Marvel to identify every character, it works.  The movie looks amazing and it has heart.  I'd put it in my Top Five list of Marvel movies.

10:50 PM 9/05/2019
Last night I felt a little unsettled, and today I felt sad and melancholy for the first half of the day.  A game of croquet took my mind off it for a while, but afterwards I drove past my sister's old house  --  it looked so lonely sitting there behind a chain-link fence studded with warning notices.  The whole property seemed like a wasteland, enlivened only by the donkey from next door grazing in the paddock. (Good old Rosie, I thought.)
Drove in to Moonah and felt a little better after a bowl of hot soup at the Magnolia coffee shop.  I kept thinking about the photo album Julie had put together for my 60th birthday, which I had been looking through recently.  Even after a couple of years, grief can sneak up on you at unexpected moments.

13/06/2019
Thursday night, out to the Playhouse to see the Tasmanian premiere season of the musical LADIES IN BLACK.  Who knew that Tim Finn could write the music and lyrics for a good old fashioned big musical?  This is based on the Maderleine St John novel, but not the movie which was made at the same time the musical was about to come out. (Imagine the legal minefield for the lawyers dividing up the rights!)   The cast includes such stalwarts of the Hobart stage as John X and Chelle Burt, but the star is Cecilia Hutchinson who shines as the bookish suburban girl who finds a way out of the conformist 1950s when she takes a summer job at Sydney's leading department store.  This is that rare play that I would recommend unreservedly to everyone I meet.

11:46 PM 14/06/2019
Friday night and I may not get to sleep easily tonight, because I was drinking a lot of coffee at the Alliance Francais quiz tonight.  The Amnesiacs were defending the trophy we won at their last quiz (which was back in 2016).  The questions were in French, so they had to be translated into English for us, then our answers had to be translated back into French.  Fortunately I was able to answer several of the science & technology questions without waiting for the translation.
We came in second, partly I suspect because of the round where they showed us pictures of statues in France.  We not only had to say who the statues commemorated, but where they were located.   A big ask for a team in which only one had actually been to France.  (I did mis-identify the status of Jacques Brel as Charles Tranet, but nobody's perfect.)

12:03 PM 2/07/2019
For most of my life, buying art has meant picking up odds and ends at local shops or church fetes -- I don't think I ever bought anything priced at more than $25.  But I am now proud to announce that I am the owner of  a "real" painting, the sort that they sell in art galleries.
Liz Barsham's latest exhibition at the Nolan gallery finally convinced me to take the leap.  I am happy to say that her picture "Seeking shiny things" is now mine (and wouldn't it make a great subtitle for my autobiography?).

Over oceans deep
Homeward fly the travellers.
Devils watch the sky.
--- haiku for Julie 2016

cat chaos

.

I had feared the worst when I brought Julie’s cat Silk over to live at my house. What if he ran away? What if he fought with the neighborhood cats? What about my two cats?

Well, he didn’t run away and as far as I know he hasn’t been in any fights. In fact my problems have been more to do with my two cats than with him. The two Cornish Rex cats have been indoor cats all their lives, not uncommon for that breed. I used to let the black cat out on the lawn for five minutes a day so she could get some grass, but the white cat was content to snooze on my bed most of the day.

But with me letting Silk in and out, they got the idea that going outside was something worth trying. It’s now got to the point where I have to count the cats before I close the back door, in case I shut somebody outside. This morning it was fine and sunny and for most of the afternoon all three cats were tearing around in and out of the house. The big orange cat Silk walks around silently, but the black cat gives little meowing sounds as she goes past, and the white cat lets out a wail if he goes outside and realizes he can’t see me.

I finally drew a chair up to the desk outside the back door and ate my lunch there, trying to soothe the cats as they ran back and forth around me. At one stage the white cat climbed onto my shoulder (a favorite trick of his) and when I stood up he leapt onto the top of the old wardrobe.

They did go to sleep for the evening, which was no surprise -- I think they were completely tired out.

A sibling recalled

For those who didn't see the latest parish magazine, this is the text of my eulogy for my sister: 

Some of you may remember Gerald Durrell’s famous book MY FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS. I sometimes thought that if I wrote a book about Julie it would have been titled MY SISTER AND OTHER ANIMALS. Certainly most of you are aware of her love of animals. She started small with white mice and canaries, then cats and dogs before progressing to chickens, ducks, geese, goats and horses.

But that was just one of the many sides of Julie. From the moment I saw her in her cradle at the end of 1953, my life would never be the same. For example I saw every movie Elvis Presley made in the 1960s until she was old enough to go to the cinema alone.

There was Julie the student. She was a picture in her Collegiate school uniform, complete with hat and gloves -- heaven help any girl seen in public without them. After her years at collegiate, she attended the same school as Errol Flynn, though in a different decade. She took up archery, she sang in a gospel group, she won prizes for dressage riding. Later on she was to take up croquet. Probably not a lot of you know she did two years of law at uni, before leaving to work at the new Wrest Point casino, where she progressed from croupier to inspector. 

Julie the world traveller was another one of her hats, and she saw a lot of the world. Whether it was riding horses around the pyramids, dining at the Waldorf Astoria or going around Picadilly Circus on the rear seat of a motorcycle, she seemed to have done it all. One of her favorite destinations was Hawaii and I lost count of how many times she passed through Honolulu. In her wake she left a scattering of new friends and acquaintances, people of all types who fell under her spell.

But it wasn’t all glamor and jet-setting, though she was seen at times feeding her animals wearing a mink coat and diamond ear rings. There was the practical Julie -- when something went wrong in our house, I started wondering how we could manage without it, while Julie was unscrewing the back looking for the defective part. I once saw her build a hen house in my backyard out of some scrap timber, a roll of wire and a sheet of corrugated iron.

She had a habit of gathering up bits and pieces that might come in handy one day. Wood, metal, wire... one day she told some workmen who were clearing out a shop that they could drop off the shelving and such bric-a-brac at her house rather than take it to the tip. They accepted the suggestion immediately. 

Her back paddock remained an oasis of green grass as Lenah Valley was slowly enveloped by the urban sprawl. . The local children often called in to give the horses treats -- the horses knew this and would wait at the gate with anticipation after school let out. One neighbor told me that her visiting grandchildren would come into the kitchen every morning asking for carrots for Julie’s horses.

(In years gone by, some of the local children volunteered to watch over the animals while Julie was at work, sort of the Merry Men to her Robin Hood. One girl dashed across the footbridge during a storm and led the goats to safety before the creek flooded!)

Even the possums, considered a pest by most people, made friends with Julie. One mother possum came down with her baby in tow most nights to get a snack while Julie was outside feeding the animals.

Julie the artist was another part of her life. In the 1960s, she did a lot of painting and sketching, and a couple of her pictures hung in the dining room of her father’s hotel. She was over the moon when one of her pictures sold at an art show.  

Later on she took up photography with enthusiasm -- before Photoshop came along, she would force her animals to pose wearing antlers for her Christmas card photos. With the advent of digital photography she accumulated countless pictures of nature, animals and gatherings of her friends. At one point she was virtually the unofficial photographer here, capturing the events St John’s every week.

Julie was a regular here at St John’s from the 1970s, and she brought me into the fold ten years later. Her baptism by Alan Stubs was one of the high points of her life. I was there when she came up out of the water and I’ll never forget that smile. While she was working at Wrest Point, she stipulated that she wanted Sunday off every week. This probably surprised management, since they often disciplined their workers by not putting them on the weekend roster. But Julie was willing to sacrifice the extra money so she could worship with her church family.

And maybe that’s how we’ll remember Julie -- meandering through the wonders of this world and the next, admiring its beauty and the people and the creatures in it. She is always happy to see them, and I like to think they are happy to see her. 

I know we always were.

Winter days at the farm

.

As we bore through the heart of mid-winter, lots of things have to be done.

My sister married last year, an American from North Carolina.  Everyone asks me where they are going to live, but I have no answer.  At the moment, Julie and Gene are dividing their time between US and Australia, trying to fit in various commitments to the satisfaction of both sides. 

So I'm a bit busy, keeping an eye on her farm (farmlet if you want to be precise) -- I have help feeding the livestock most days, but it takes a bit of time buying feed, making sure the house is secure, and keeping the cats company for an hour or two.

Days when I am feeding, I go over twice a day and go in the front door.  Change into boots and go out the back door.   Start with going into the hen house and feeding the chickens;  check for any eggs.   Then go down to the creek and feed the ducks and geese, a noisy business.

After that I go across the creek and feed the horses - the big one Shadow and the miniature breed Trouble - before I hike up the hill in the back paddock with a carrot for Rosie, the donkey who lives next door.  This isn't too bad if it hasn't just rained, it can be pleasant with the sun on your back and a slight breeze blowing down Lenah Valley.  But I always take the hiking stick that Julie brought back from NC for me.

Then, carefully cross the creek and back to the house.   By the time I feel ready for a cup of tea or coffee, to be consumed while I keep the cats company for a while.  Silk likes to go outside afterwards;  Kes prefers to remain indoors, but she is almost 22 years old so that's quite reasonable.

And in the evening, repeat.  With the main difference that I lock the chickens up instead of letting them out into the run.  And I will probably watch the news on Julie's television set, since I don't own a working TV myself at home.

So the time ticks away, and one day I look at the calendar and notice to my surprise that they will be returning in less than two weeks.

And just when I'd got into a routine...

Robert W. Chambers revisited

Felt a bit better today, less tired and not as dizzy.  No appointments today for a change, so spent the afternoon quietly at home listening to music and re-reading Robert W. Chambers' short story "The Repairer of Reputations."

I had not read Chambers since my teenage years, and I had forgotten nearly all of it.  [Spoilers ahead!]  It is narrated by a troubled man in what was then the near future, and some parts of the story don't seem to add up.  But the first time you read the story you shrug that off, figuring that you'll eventually work out what is going on.

When I was younger, I was slightly baffled by the story and did not appreciate Chambers' artfulness in showing us everything through the eyes of an unreliable narrator.  In fact, you realize after a few pages, we are hearing a tale told to us by a madman  -- nobody and nothing he describes are likely to be true. 

The story was first published in the 1895 collection THE KING IN YELLOW and has achieved a new life through being referenced in recent movies and television shows.   I suspect, though, that readers who come to the book through that route will be as nonplussed by the story as I was in the 1960s. 
  

 

The Books of 1972

Recently on Facebook, there was some discussion about the number of books I seemed to have read down the years.    I explained that a lot of my reading had been done in my early years when I had a book on the go almost continuously.  From memory I used to read about six paperbacks a week.

To examine the original data, I blew the dust off one of my old notebooks (and I mean that literally) and opened it to see what I read in the month of November 1972, which is -- um -- almost 45 years ago.

1. THE KANDY-KOLORED TANGERINE-FLAKE STREAMLINE BABY by Tom Wolfe
2. PROFESSOR JAMESON SPACE ADVENTURES: TWIN WORLDS by Neil R Jones
3. THE BLIND WORM by Brian Stableford
4. SEED OF THE DREAMERS by Emil Petaja
5. PERRY RHODAN: PLANET OF THE DYING SUN
6. DON'T FALL OFF THE MOUNTAIN by Shirley MacLaine
7. LOST HORIZON by James Hilton
8. THE CYBERNETIC BRAINS by Raymond F. Jones
9. NEW WORLDS QUARTERLY No.2
10. THE DAYS OF GLORY by Brian Stableford
11. THE INHERITORS by A. Bertram Chandler
12. THE GATEWAY TO NEVER by A. Bertram Chandler
13. KING KOBOLD by Christopher Stasheff
14. THE HIGH HEX by Laurence M. Janifer & S.J. Treibich
15. NEBULA AWARD STORIES No.2
16. NEBULA AWARD STORIES No.3
17. DRAGONFLIGHT by Anne McCaffrey
18. THE AVENGERS: THE AFRIT AFFAIR
19. THE AVENGERS: THE MAGNETIC MAN
20. THE BLACK STAR PASSES by John W. Campbell   
21. DR. FUTURITY by Philip K. Dick
22. THE CRACK IN SPACE by Philip K. Dick
23. HELL'S GATE by Dean R. Koontz
24. THE NEW TOMORROWS edited by Norman Spinrad
25. INFINITY TWO edited by Robert Hoskins
26. THE REBEL WORLDS by Poul Anderson
27. THE WEATHERMONGER by Peter Dickinson
28. THE HOLLOW by Agatha Christie
29. THE STAR VIRUS by Barrington J. Bayley
30. PERRY RHODAN:  THE IMMORTAL UNKNOWN
31. PERRY RHODAN: VENUS IN DANGER
32. PERRY RHODAN: SECRET BARRIER X
33. THE WARLORD OF THE AIR by Michael Moorcock
34. THE ENEMY STARS by Poul Anderson
35. GOD BLESS YOU, MR ROSEWATER by Kurt Vonnegut
36. ALICE'S WORLD by Sam J. Lundwall
37. NO TIME FOR HEROES by Sam J. Lundwall
38. EMPIRE OF TWO WORLDS by Barrington J. Bayley
39. VULCAN'S HAMMER by Philip K. Dick
40. DR. OX AND OTHER STORIES by Jules Verne
41. THE BLONDE AND THE BOODLE by Jack Trevor Story
42. A BOOK OF MILLIGANIMALS by Spike Milligan
43. MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH by Robert Silverberg
44. INVADER FROM EARTH by Robert Silverberg
45. SKYJACK! by Clark Whelton
46. DOC SAVAGE:  THE MUNITIONS MASTER
47. FLIGHT INTO DANGER by Arthur Hailey.

So, forty seven books in thirty days.  Most not long books,  some quite short in fact.  But you can see how it adds up if you keep reading at that rate for several years.  I may not know many modern writers, but I can claim to have a pretty good acquaintance with the authors of the first three quarters of the twentieth century !

Shop till you drop

OK, I spent $300 on new comics in one afternoon yesterday. 

Jeez.

I hadn't been to either of the two shops where I buy my comics for a few weeks, but I didn't realize it had been that long.

The first shop, where I get my British and Australian stuff, I walked out with seven issues of THE BEANO, ten issues of COMMANDO and four issues of THE PHANTOM.

The second shop is the one where I get my American stuff. I came out of there with two issues of COMICS REVUE, one POPEYE, one DONALD DUCK, two WALT DISNEY COMICS, three MICKEY MOUSE and five issues of UNCLE SCROOGE. At least I get a 5% discount there as a regular customer, but bloody hell.   A lot of those comics are $4 in America,  but here we are paying $7 or $8  --  call it US$5.50


I didn't think it was that long, but you can't argue with seven weeks of THE BEANO sitting there waiting for you.

Tasmania -- Bushfire 1967

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the worst fires in the history of Tasmania. I was 16, working in my father’s hotel in the middle of the city. We knew it was a scorchingly hot day and the wind was blowing up, but we could never have believed the inferno that was about to descend on the country and suburbs. 

As the day went on, conditions worsened. The sky darkened, and a chokingly hot wind swept across the city. I stepped out the front door, and the street outside was filled with ash blowing through the city. All but one of the radio stations was off the air because the landlines to the transmitters had been victims of the fires, but we were getting news of the suburbs and the streets that the fires had been through.

My father went down to a hardware store and bought an extra long length of hose in case he needed to damp down the roof if embers started to land on it -- that’s if the water had been available. My mother was freaking out a bit because she didn’t know where my sister was; she got in the car and drove around looking for her, passing the Botanical Gardens where men with hessian bags were trying to beat out fires.

Eventually my sister turned up safe and sound. All my family came through that day safely. But after five hours, there were 62 people dead, 900 injured and over seven thousand homeless. No one who was there on that Tuesday in 1967 will ever forget it.
(Picture shows Lenah Valley in 1967 fire)
 

Barsham excursions and adventures in art

Liz Barsham is an old friend of the family.  We knew her before she became one of Australia's leading surrealist artists -- although she isn't happy with the surrealist tag and prefers to describe her work as "expressionist"  (she calls it Tasmanian Gothic).  Her new exhibition opened in North Hobart this month -- "Excursions and Adventures - new paintings by Elizabeth Barsham".  (Picture shows Liz on the left with Lara van Raay in front of one of her paintings.)

The works on show covered all sorts of emotions and styles.  "Eyes of the Forest" is a straightforward depiction of --  well, a forest of eyes.  "The Flower" caught many people's attention with its splash of colour illuminating a drab and dusty world.  "Battleship" is just that, and "The Mechanics" mixes apocalyptic wreckage with a rather endearing pair of mechanics who seem unphased by the cataclysym, jauntily wielding their spanners as they prepare for work.  

"The Great Silence", with its shambling beast approaching the viewer, would be perfectly at home illustrating a collection of stories by HP Lovecraft.  "The laughing girl" is at odds with its cheery title and caused some unease whenever I looked at it.

"Song of the Mill", 58 cm x 41 cm acrylic on paper, was her contribution to Metamorphosis, an international exhibition at the annual Ripattoni Art Festival in Italy.  Notable for surrounding its organ-playing protagonist with an array of Tasmanian ferns, which Cary Lenahan was happy to enumerate for me.

"Child's Guide to Wilderness" has something of a Lewis Carroll feel, with an immaculate little girl wandering through a strange world - which is obviously Tasmania, given the subtle inclusion of a Tasmanian Tiger and Mount Wellington in the background.  "McCrae's Hill" even more so, with a completely realistic Tasmanian countryside in the background of a typically Barshamesque shambles.
Sometimes the fantastic is so close to the real.  "Seabird" depicts a skeletal shape dominating the landscape,  recalling to my mind the chicken skeleton by my back door, so perfectly does it capture the long-dead avian look.

If I had to choose a picture I would want to live with on my wall, I would find it difficult to choose between the endearingly elliptical bestiary of "Strange Flightless Birds Wandered The Hills" and the small but perfectly rendered piece "Little Sisters of Perpetual Motion" which would have perfectly suited one of those abstract covers that Penguin paperbacks used to have back in the 1960s.

http://www.tasmanian-gothic.com/artwork.html

in the wet

Went across and fed the animals at my sister's place before dusk, then served up some spinach and ricotta cannelloni and ate while I listened to a podcast of the radio serial THE ARCHERS. I haven't heard an episode for a year or more but it's surprising how easily you can pick up a soap opera.

Everything was fine on the drive home, even though it was raining lightly. But when I got out of the car, the velcro holding my wallet closed gave way and I ended up squatting down gathering up all the credit cards and similar that were spread across the driveway. 

Fortunately nearly all these are now plastic rather than paper, and a bit of damp seemed to do them no harm. But I felt quite chilled by the time I got inside out of the rain...

One for the books

When I was in Vinnies thrift shop this week with Keith Curtis, I paused to look at an old book. 
Our conversation went as follows:
"Look at this one.."
"Yes, I saw that."
"By Ilf and Petrov..."
"..the Russian humorists."
"They wrote ..."
"THE TWELVE CHAIRS, yes."
 
About this stage, I began to feel I was taking part in that famous exchange between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty:
“Everything I have to say has already crossed your mind."
"Then possibly my answer has crossed yours.”

I had it here ... somewhere ...

So once again I had no idea what I'd done with the plastic box I keep all my diabetes stuff in.  I remembered I moved it when I went across to Julie's place  -- but did I bring it back?  

I looked in my house, I looked in the car.   I didn't find it, but that was no guarantee it wasn't there.

So the next morning, after staying in bed late, I finally got over to Julie's place to give the 21-year-old cat her tablet.   Couldn't see anything but I wandered around for a bit ...  and there it was next to the kettle.   I must have put it down when I stopped to make myself a coffee last time I was there.

I took a long overdue injection of Byetta, made myself a sandwich and took my diabetes and blood-pressure tablets.  Felt a bit better after a while, sat and read for a bit.  (THE INHERITORS by Jill Dobson)

Think I feel well enough to go home and start on some housework, throwing out the moldy bread and rotten fruit that has become such a part of my everyday life in recent times.   Julie's house may not be perfect, but it is closer to meeting minimum standards for being habitable than mine is.

BGL

I ran out of diabetes testing strips last night and even though I haven't bought any more, I'm not worried.

An old friend died a few months ago, and recently his wife bundled up all his diabetes paraphernalia and gave it to me. He was a very practical person and I'm sure he would have preferred his stuff was passed on to me instead of being returned to the pharmacy for safe disposal.

And every time I do a blood test for the rest of the year, I'll think of him.

Sometimes I sits and thinks

.
Sometimes on a wet afternoon you leave the TV and the radio switched off and think.

You think about the past and the future. The people you knew. The people you never met but you felt you knew them.

The things you wish you'd done and the things you wish you hadn't. The things that you know now that you'll never do.

I guess that's life, in all its richness and heartache. But every day we get a new 24 hours, to do with as we wish...
.

Had lunch in Cygnet at the Commercial Hotel, "the bottom pub". Glad to see that not only do they still have the photograph of James Harvey in the Dining Room, they're building a new function space to be called The Harvey Room. He was my great-grandfather and proprietor of the hotel until 1903.

I don't get down there that often (it's a 140km round trip) but I like to check in on the place whenever I'm down the Huon.

Poem for Mondays

Somehow
at this time of life
the day seems to go out of focus
so easily.

Too much coffee
or maybe too little.

You feel as though
in some way
you haven't quite connected
with reality.

It's all -- somewhere a little removed.
You run on tramlines of routine,
vaguely baffled by your own steadfastness.

The things you used to love
no longer give you the same pleasure.
The things which were a chore
are so familiar
they no longer
even bore you.

Voices on the radio
talk of interesting things
and play new pieces of music
but it seems to come
from a space station
in orbit
around some other planet.

The calendars and diaries
tell of an old year ending
and a new year beginning,
but there are none
of the markers you were used to.

Where are the cards
from those uncles and aunts,
so punctual every year?
All gone, every one of them.
And you realize that now
you are the older generation.

Many happy returns, sis.

.
So we finally arrived at the dread day -- my sister's 60th birthday. 

The venue surprised most of the guests:  the loft over the Real Tennis Club opposite St David's Park.

Julie had been planning the event for months, but what we actually needed was twice as much time and twice as many helpers.   The 4 pm start was a bit of a debacle, but with a bit of good will things settled down into an enjoyable evening of music, food and chat.   Our minister said that Julie had the most diverse range of friends he'd ever seen and I suppose that was true.   There were old school friends, neighbors, members of the croquet club, ex-casino staff, even a couple of the science-fiction fan crowd. 

We borrowed a keyboard for Madeleine, and Nikki brought along her violin, so I didn't need to worry about playing any music for the guests.   We had the real thing, live and spontaneous.

As for the food -- well, we had a lot and people brought lots, so at the end of the evening we actually took home as much food as we brought.   Not the same food though!

Amongst the items at the party, we had a toast to the birthday girl from the Bishop of Grafton (who'd been at school with Julie), a display of photographs of Julie's life (which also included a hunt-the-chicken game - sort of like "Where's Wally?" with feathers) and a trivia quiz.   The final segment had three winners, who all scored eleven out of a possible twelve.    Just as well we had prepared several prizes. 

I had carried in a lot of drinks, but most of them were still left at the end of the day.   We used the beer and cider and some of the soft drinks, but there was a lot of wine that wasn't needed;   we used most of the personalized champagne that Julie ordered over the Internet though.   A lot of the people from church who had only been there in the afternoon stuck to tea and coffee.

So about 10:30 pm everyone had wandered off and a couple of our faithful friends threw themselves into cleaning up the place.   By the time we'd run the vacuum cleaner over the carpet and packed everything up, we were out of there by 11:20.  Thanks to Leon for helping us out by providing a third motor vehicle to drive all the stuff home.   He even took the helium balloons, which were a bit of a handful all in themselves.

So now we can start thinking about Christmas.   It was so hectic that we couldn't even get our heads around the Christmas season until the party was over.

We should just about finish the birthday leftovers by the time we have to start piling the turkey onto our plates....

Time marches on...

.

So the seasons change. The fierce Australian summer has given way to autumn, and now the chill of winter can be felt in the air.

Not a bad thing, some people would say. This year we had record temperatures in my home town -- 42 degrees celsius, which is 105 degrees in the old Fahrenheit scale. That is way too hot for most people.  

I found it difficult to tolerate, since I have been tired nearly all year. My sister Julie and her livestock took up a lot of time out of every day, and her "night owl" lifestyle doesn't really mesh with mine very well.

Last year, for example, I had to abandon my annual contribution to National Novel Writing Month halfway through the 50,000 word project. This is the first time in six years that has happened. There are things that you can do on four hour’s sleep, but writing fiction is not one of them.

Apparently housework is another. The place is spiralling out of control and I intend to try and get a handle on things next week, starting with installing a Trashpak container so I can shovel the garbage out of the house and see it hauled away every month.

One of my friends recently commented “You seem to be busier since you retired than you were before.” She’s not wrong. There seems to be something on every day.

Even last Sunday wasn’t exactly a day of rest. Up in the morning to go in to church as usual, then after Julie and I grabbed a quick lunch it was out to the Anglican church at St John’s Park who were celebrating their 175th anniversary. Thomas Heywood is the first Australian musician in history to ever make a professional living as a concert organist and his usual enthusiasm was undiminished as he played the church’s newly upgraded organ. After an enjoyable hour of light classics, we called in to the church hall for a Devonshire Tea followed by a tour of the lovely Georgian-style church.

It was dark by the time we left St John’s Park. We went back to my place and I served up a light meal while we listened to WAMU’s “Stained Glass Bluegrass” show on the Internet. This actually airs on Sunday morning in the US but the time difference means that we can listen to it live on Sunday night!

After that, it was time to go to Julie’s place again to feed the animals again. Including travelling time, this takes about two and a half hours out of every evening, so a not inconsiderable chunk of each day. I try to make some use of the time we spend driving back and forth every day -- at the moment we’re listening to downloads of the BBC radio serial “The Archers” whenever we’re in the car.

In fact a lot of my entertainment comes from radio, live or streamed over the Internet. The analog television transmitters were switched off last month, and although I do own a digital television set, I just don’t seem to have had time to clear a space and set it up! Maybe next month.