no cold cash

Getting into this week produced some unexpected events. On the plus side my virus finally began to weaken (I went a whole afternoon without sneezing) and I was able to sleep a full night without antihistamines.

Less pleasing was the discovery that the cheque for my convention membership hadn't been deposited when I thought it had, throwing off my budget. (I must get into Net-banking so I can keep a closer eye on my accounts.) This resulted in my watching my pennies like the most frugal of misers, ticking off the days on the calendar till the cheques I'm expecting in July.

Maybe it's a good thing. It will teach me to curb my impulse buying and learn to distinguish between essentials and luxuries. {Sigh}

At least we have about three months supply of coffee already in the pantry.

---

Fortunately I'd already paid for this month's batch of CDs from First Generation Radio Archives. They arrived this morning in one of those neat little Global Priority Mail envelopes.

There's music from Arthur Godfrey, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Johnny Mercer and Benny Goodman, a thriller starring Boris Karloff introduced by Peter Lorre, quiz shows from the 1940s and more on this set of 20 discs.

Hours of great listening. I look forward to playing them.

---

Made a point of watching the half-hour documentary/promotion Waging the War of the Worlds the other night. I've been a life-long admirer of the novel but I've seen nothing about what sort of movie the Spielberg re-make was going to be, so I watched with interest.

From what I can gather, the tone of the new film is going to be closer to the novel than the 1950's movie was. The emphasis will be more on one family's reaction to the invasion rather than following world events.

Even Tom Cruise looks reasonably convincing as a working man caught up in things beyond his wildest imaginings.

I might almost be tempted to go to a cinema to see this one -- something that I seldom do in recent years.





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Huskies Picnic

The Midwinter Festival climaxes with the popular Huskies Picnic day at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens.


The dogs are friendly and always ready to meet new people (except the ones who ignored the "don't bring your dog" announcement)


There were even Samoyed dogs - a long way from Siberia - who lazed around in the sun.



And it was always nice to meet the people concerned with the Antarctic projects.





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colds in the cold

The Last Quarter Moon is on Wednesday June 29. Mercury, Venus and Saturn form a straight line close to the western horizon in the twilight, with Mercury and Venus quite close together. You can cover them all with your hand. During the week Mercury and Venus rose to meet Saturn.

Sunday June 26 Saturn, Mercury and Venus will form into a spectacular tight group
that you could cover with your thumb. On Monday June 27, Venus and Mercury will be so close together it will be hard to tell them apart.

The nights were clear and cold but some of the fine winter afternoons were (briefly) very nice. Walking the dogs at Julie's house around midday is quite pleasant -- but don't leave it too late because at this time of year the winter sun starts to dip below the hills once it gets past 3 o'clock. The encroaching shadows give one a preview of the colder weather that will follow sunset.

I thought I was shaking off that virus, but I find I'm sneezing a lot whenever I go out into a cold wind or walk down the other end of the house into a cold room. It makes one speculate on the relationship between the two words "cold" and "a cold". Temperature forecast for tonight: 2°

---

As part of Hobart's Midwinter Festival, Hadley's Hotel is running a tour of the hotel's Amundsen Suite. My sister Julie and a friend took the tour and spent the afternoon looking over the historic spot.

In 1911 Roald Amundsen led the first expedition to reach the South Pole. Their first landfall after leaving the Antarctic was Hobart and Amundsen went ashore alone, taking a room at what was then known as the Orient Hotel.

The hotel looked askance at their unkempt guest, still dressed for sailing the icy Southern Ocean, and gave him a "miserable little room" in the least fashionable part of the establishment. Not until telegrams began to arrive from the King of Norway and reporters besieged the hotel did they realise they were entertaining a historic guest.

"With hindsight, the hotel has dedicated its most prestigious suite, The Amundsen Suite, to this remarkable explorer," says the notes distributed to those taking the tour.

Julie reports the tour as being mildly interesting but was not amused when the promised Devonshire Tea consisted of precisely one scone per customer.

---

I was surprised last weekend at the quick result to one of Julie's projects.

She said that she wanted to repair the shelter over the bird-feeder in the back garden and after a few minutes hammering had completed the job.

The very next morning I looked out the kitchen window and there were two Rosella parrots sitting in the feeder having breakfast.

What do they say in the movies? "If you build it, they will come."

---

This month's free concert at the Moonah Arts Centre was BASS JUMP, Nigel Hope's group that encompasses vibraphone, drums, sitar, percussion and his four different basses. Their music style is described as a blend of "blues, jazz, world music, classical and funk".

I don't know if you call it a quintet when the five musicians never actually all play together at the same time. Nigel Hope started off with the drummer and the vibes, then played a couple of solos before being joined by saxophone and sitar.

"You might get a surprise during the next number" he said. We weren't expecting his wife dressed as a belly-dancer (though I had wondered what the square of carpet in front of them was for).

We fluked seats right in the front row -- the vibraphone was practically in our laps (who knew they had so many moving parts?).

A great sound. We look forward to their next appearance.

---

While Tony Delroy has been away for a fortnight, his chair on the Late Show has been occupied by Libby Gore, better known in her television days as Elle McFeast. She's done quite well and has been sensible enough to take the midnight quiz The Challenge seriously.

But even the best presenter is at the mercy of the person who compiles the questions. The Wednesday night quiz featured a section on Governors and Governors-General. One fairly straightforward question was "How many State Governors are there?". The first contestant said quite reasonably that since there were six states there should be six governors.

"No, the correct answer is five," said Libby.

The unanimous reaction amongst all the following contestants was to say "I thought there were six."

Embarrassing for the host, but you hardly need to be an expert on the Australian Constitution to count up to six.

---

Now available is the PDF version of Futures Mystery magazine.




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Booked!

Once again the familiar cry goes up: "I've finished my book. What am I going to read next?" This is my cue to fossick around in the thousands of books in the house and find something that my sister will enjoy. This month she's read novels by Nevil Shute, Kerry Greenwood, Josephine Bell and Agatha Christie.

She's just finished a long spell of only reading non-fiction -- often really heavy volumes of history and theology. But it's obviously time for a change.

In previous years when this happened all the time, I used to keep a box of books at hand so I could just dip in to it as needed. Maybe I should start doing that again.

---

Rain all day and night yesterday. I know we needed some wet weather, but there must be a happy medium. Not as bad as Adelaide though -- they had their wettest June day since the Weather Bureau started keeping records.

Last week I came down with some sort of virus and snuffled and sneezed my way through the weekend. My sister suggested I should take an antihistamine Saturday night, but I was reluctant because we had to be up early Sunday for church and I didn't want to oversleep. Needless to say this wasn't a good idea -- it took me a long time to get to sleep and I had to lie on my back so that my mouth and nose drained, leaving the cat to take the prime spot in the middle of the bed.

Sunday night I took 2mg of Polaramine, slept for seven hours and felt a lot better. I probably should have done that Saturday night.

---

One of the reasons I've been short on cash is that I bought some books at the Thylacon dealers' table. They weren't that expensive for limited-edition collectible volumes but I did buy seven of them.

They're put out by NESFA press and feature all my favourite authors from my teenage years when I first started reading science fiction.

Entities: selected novels of Eric Frank Russell, Major Ingredients: selected short stories of Eric Frank Russell, The Rediscovery Of Man: complete short stories of Cordwainer Smith, First Contact: the essential Murray Leinster plus a three-volume set of The Essential Hal Clement.

So many great stories. I have all of them on my shelves already, but many of them are cheap paperbacks from the 1960s -- probably too fragile to re-read now.

These are big books. Solidly bound hardcovers, most of them over 500 pages each. There's enough good reading in them to keep me busy for months.

---

The crippled chick I mentioned a few days ago went into a decline and stopped eating. It didn't look well and we weren't surprised when it died overnight.

It was sad but we'd done everything we could for it -- my sister had kept it alive for weeks after it would have died out in the barnyard.

You can't save every sick animal I'm afraid.

---

Listened to Bette Davis in a radio play "Jezebel" on an MP3 disk of Academy Award Theater. This show aired on CBS radio throughout 1946; movie screenplays were adapted by Frank Wilson and directed by Dee Englebock. The original movie casts were used wherever possible.

One source notes: The series, sponsored by E.R. Squibb and Sons, only aired for one
nine month season. It's half-hour dramas, although decent adaptations
of the movies, were not able to complete with the hour-long ones by
The Lux Radio Theatre or The Screen Guild Players.

I haven't seen Jezebel for many years, but it was obviously an uphill battle for the writer to fit the movie into a 30 minute slot. If you just present the high points of a story without any of the quieter moments, it runs the risk of sounding like a parody of itself.

(Remember the classic MAD Magazine spoof of Readers Digest Condensed Books summarising Gone with the Wind in one page -- "They've fired on Fort Sumpter!" BANG! "Thank goodness that awful war is over.")

Abbreviation may be a necessary evil, as Aldous Huxley noted, but sometimes you can boil things down too far.





<

Thylacon

Jupiter is high in the night sky. Down here on earth we saw the gathering of a group of people with cosmic minds. A gathering called THYLACON.



This was the 44th Australian national science fiction convention. When I used to go to conventions in the 1960s and early 1970s I don't think they were even into double digits.

Science fiction fans from around the country gathered at Wrest Point hotel in Hobart for the usual round of speeches, panels, masquerades and award presentations.

I haven't been to many conventions in the last twenty years and didn't feel immediately at ease when I wandered into the venue. Everything had a familiar feel and a few people even recognised me -- I went over to say hello to Melbourne bookseller Justin Ackroyd and he looked more shocked than surprised ("Mike?!") when he saw me.

International Guest Of Honour was fantasy novelist Anne Bishop; not only was this her first trip outside America, it was the first time she'd been on a plane for more than two hours. Australian GoH was novelist Marianne de Pierres.

Fan GoH was Mervyn Binns, whose involvement with Australian science fiction goes back to the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I first met him at the 1968 Melbourne Convention, up that long staircase to the old Melbourne SF Clubrooms over a warehouse in Somerset Place.

After the official opening, there was a skit based on the television show The Glass House which even included as one of the guests Hobart's Lord Mayor Rob Valentine. Brooklyn-born Tasmanian Steve Lazaroff hosted the skit.

Kay, a local fan, had never seen the show they were sending up and was sitting in the front row. When they asked during one routine were there any questions, she spoke out in a loud voice "Yes -- what does any of this have to do with science fiction?"

You may criticise Kay's sense of humour but you can't fault her dedication. Partly disabled and lacking any form of transport, she was willing to shuffle 10km there and 10km home every day. Fortunately she was able to get a lift with someone a couple of times.

---

It didn't help my sense of alienation that other obligations kept me away on the second day of the proceedings. Returning on day 3, I stayed for a while and suddenly felt very uncomfortable and out of place. I got in my car and drove straight home, leaving a few people wondering why I'd vanished so abruptly.

That wasn't the first time I'd had that feeling, though I hadn't thought about it for many years. Going back, oh 35 years it's be now, I sometimes felt uncomfortable during conventions and I'd shut myself in my hotel room, lie down and stare at the ceiling for half an hour.

I never told anyone about it because it seemed so strange. You would have expected me to be in an elevated rather than depressed state, surrounded by friends and all my favourite interests.

But people aren't always logical.

---

I didn't really feel comfortable until the fourth and final day. I wandered about chatting with people, looked at a couple of displays and listened to a panel discussion about recent developments in Australian publishing [I didn't recognise the names of the authors mentioned but the problems didn't seem to have changed since my day].

As the convention wound down, I was aware that I should have made more of an effort to overcome my lack of emotional involvement. Being out of the circuit for so many years I simply felt detached from everything that was going on and it took me a long time to warm to the event.

Maybe next time I'll be better.

---

A friend e-mails me to point out that I haven't yet mentioned the new series of Doctor Who which has been on for a month now.

It's certainly a lot of fun. I remember seeing the first episode of the show 40 years ago and have been watching ever since, so I'm probably in a better position than most to judge how the new series works. And for my money, it works well.

Christopher Eccleston makes a good Doctor, full of vitality and yet capable of expressing the sorrow of being the last of the Time Lords. Billie Piper is great as his companion Rose, a girl from modern London who does well at expressing the initial incomprehension common to all new travellers in the Tardis.

The first three episodes neatly take us to past, present and future. "Rose" introduces us to the new protagonist and shows us some old enemies The Autons at large in present-day London.

"The End of the World" has echoes of Douglas Adams' creation The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe and shows how well the update of the show works -- the same plot in the 1970s would have involved some dodgy-looking sets and a gaggle of aliens in rubber suits. This is unmistakably a modern big-budget production.

And "The Unquiet Dead" takes us back to the 19th century where a skeptical Charles Dickens becomes involved when zombies turn up in Cardiff of all places. This one was criticised for its violence and horror elements when it was aired in Britain and I suspect it may have been lightly edited for its early-evening slot here in Australia.

Episode 4 "Aliens of London" was delightful. Returning to the present day, the Doctor is obviously pleased to be on the spot when an alien spacecraft crashes into the Thames in full view of the media. The key line: "This is all a diversion... no, not a diversion, a trap!" I also enjoyed the second half of this story, which takes place almost completely inside 10 Downing Street.

Polar pleasures

Why go to the city when a stroll into Moonah gives you fine dining, art and literature?

OK that's overstating it a wee bit. But we did get a quiche at Cafe 73, pick up the latest issues of The New Yorker at the newsagency and look at an exhibition of Suzanne Crowley's work at the Moonah Arts Centre.

Suzanne Crowley is Irish but has lived in Tasmania since 1991. This show (her first for a decade) is the first combined exhibition of her paintings, linocuts and photographs. The most interesting of the oil paintings was the large "Banna Strand" and personally I preferred the linocuts like "Sacred Place" and "Sailing on the harbour".

Some her photographs were quite striking. There were some nice pictures of the Jewish Quarter in Girona (a place that my gazetteer fails to mention) and a lovely colour photo of County Wicklow in Ireland.

---

The scrapes on my scalp from that fall last week are healing up all right. I've been a bit wary about using shampoo on my hair this week but everything seems OK.

I'm still very tired at night but that's probably because I just don't get enough rest. Living with my sister one has to put up with late nights as a regular part of life.

---

Disregarding the large goose in the backyard, we have five poultry in residence at my house this week. The two silkies are only here until Julie finishes fitting out a hen house specially for them (she'd like them to breed) and there are two chicks that were brought over to be nursed back to health and seem to be doing fine.

The fifth one is a bit of a worry. A chick that was brought over with an injured leg. She is almost half grown now, but the leg sticks out at a very strange angle and can't be used at all. Nursing and feeding by Julie has kept it alive but I really don't know what good this has done in the long run.

It will never lead a normal life unless we shell out for expensive veterinary treatment, which Julie can't afford. So at the moment we're just keeping it alive as a helpless cripple. It's not even like the half-blind hen that Julie had for a couple of years -- at least it got about quite happily in its cage. This one's prospects have me wondering.

---

After some foggy weather last week, the days have been fine and clear, but as soon as the sun sets things begin to cool down quickly. We have nearly reached midwinter, and that's the cue for the Antarctic Midwinter Festival, co-ordinated by Antarctic Tasmania on behalf of the Tasmanian Antarctic Community.

Many organisations in Tasmania are involved in the Antarctic. The Tasmanian Polar Network currently has more than 60 members. 65% of Australia's scientists studying Antarctica and the Southern Ocean live in Hobart.

There will be a plethora of exhibitions, lectures, seminars, art contests, concerts, film shows, tours, ice sculptures, and a grand Solstice Party.

Julie of course would like to see the Huskies Picnic at the
Royal Botanical Gardens on the Queen's Domain. The huskies have now been withdrawn from the polar bases, but in the public mind they are still an integral part of the exploration of the Antarctic continent.

She's also trying to lure me down to the Solstice Party ("enjoy music with Mr Coconut then put on your dancing shoes to tap your way into Salamanca Square to enjoy the midwinter fire show") but I'm undecided.

---

Some weeks the bills come in faster than the cheques do. It certainly cuts down impulse buying in the supermarket when you know exactly how much you have left on your Ezy Bank card. I got out of there today with enough to buy the groceries and still have $1.41 left in the account. That's what I call cutting it close.






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Tattoo!

Saturday afternoon saw the first appearance of the Australian Federation Tattoo in Hobart. This is the seventh year of the Tattoo but their first performance in Tasmania I think.

Most of the audience were well into the older age group and probably saw nothing strange about being told to stand for the national anthem.

The Massed Pipes and Drums were amazing. Even if you're not Scottish there's something deeply thrilling about the skirl of the bagpipes.

We were sitting in really good seats - only three rows back in the centre - and could count the medals on the chests of the Australian Army Band as they marched by us.


It wasn't all bagpipe music. The Royal New Zealand Navy Band were real showmen, and the Copenhagen Police Band presented a tribute to Hans Christian Andersen on the 200th anniversary of his birth.

1960s pop icon Judy Stone took part in an "Entertaining The Troops" set-piece which even included a couple of go-go girls in fringed outfits -- I assume they must have shown them a video of what this involved since neither of them were old enough to remember!

There was even a comedy group The Windy Kilts who cheerfully plunged in and out of the audience during their routine.

---

I didn't do so badly today considering that I'd taken a header when I was unloading duck food over at Julie's house that morning.

It was so wet and slippery that I'd just reached the driveway gate with the trolley when my foot went out from under me and I wound up on my back in the mud.

I didn't seem to have hurt myself; what absorbed my attention was a twig from the blackberry plant that had insinuated itself between my right eye and my glasses.

For a moment I lay there, thinking "OK, how can I get out of this position and not put an eye out?"

At this stage Julie came rushing around from the chicken run, having heard me go down with a thump. She helped me up and I didn't seem to have suffered any ill-effects aside from a numbness in the fingertips of my left hand and an almost imperceptible scratch next to my right eye (whew!).

However when I went home I had to change everything except my socks. Everything I had on was either wet or muddy, through to the skin.

---

One of the CDs played by Alan Rider on his show on 92 FM was by Chris Powell who had performed at Linmor Hall on Wednesday night.

I was in the audience and thoroughly enjoyed his lively performance on the fully restored Wurlitzer that belongs to the Collegiate School. Mostly show tunes, with a few light classical pieces and a couple of modern pieces.

Listening to these, I was reminded again how thin a lot of modern music sounds when you put it in this setting. Playing Elton John's "Can you feel the love tonight?" just before a My Fair Lady medley just emphasises this.

An innovation since I was at one of these concerts is the projection of slides onto the rear wall of the stage, showing sets of organ pipes. (The pipes of the Wurlitzer are completely hidden from the audience; only the console is actually sitting out in the middle of the hall.)

During intermission, after refreshments and the drawing of the door prize, I wandered across to the console of the Wurlitzer and was amazed (as I always am) by the complexity and choices available to the organist.

Congratulations to the Theatre Organ Society for another entertaining evening.




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winter woes

The temperature went down to 3° last night but the morning was fine and clear -- it was such a nice sunny day that Julie put the chickens out on the back lawn to get some fresh air. I took some pictures with mixed results.



I haven't updated very often this week because I've been unwell. Maybe I had some sort of virus circling me early in the week. I felt tired and lethargic early on, but I didn't pay much attention to it until Wednesday.

Ironically it was the day that I had my six-monthly appointment with my endocrinologist. He was satisfied with my blood and urine tests and said to come back in December. I felt fine then, but I got steadily worse during the afternoon till I crawled into bed wondering how I was going to go to work the next day.

Fortunately I felt a lot better when I woke up, able to face the vagaries of an afternoon battling with recalcitrant office equipment. When we finished for the day it was dark outside and I walked round the corner to post some letters. The night air was cool and crisp and I could see the Southern Cross low in the sky, lying on its side.

Things seemed a lot better.

---

I'm quite enjoying the new series Stargate Atlantis but I'm not sure why our local television station is galloping through the show at the rate of three episodes per week.

What's their hurry? We're not up to the next Olympics already are we?

---

One of the dangerous things about the Internet is how easy it makes buying stuff. You tick a couple of boxes, put in your Paypal ID and ten days later a parcel lobs into your mailbox.

That's how I came to buy yet another four MP3 discs of old radio shows. A neat little package arrived from Adam in Toronto containing four shiny little objects containing hundreds of hours of Dimension X, X Minus One, David Harding Counterspy and I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again.

Finding time to listen to them all is another matter of course.

---

Our local paper The Mercury is the latest to introduce the new puzzle Sudoku, which they claim is sweeping the world.

I had a look at it after all the hullaballoo and wasn't that intrigued. All those numbers and squares. Too much like mathematics homework for my taste.

a night of Payne

Thursday is often a busy day at the church office, but this week had some wrinkles that I hadn't expected. David had been in early in the week and run off about 5,000 pages on the photocopier so I wasn't surprised to see that the little light was on indicating it needed servicing.

I arranged for this to happen on the Thursday when everyone was at the office and the task was duly completed.

The problem was that we discovered the machine was running worse rather than better, producing images of such a low quality that we weren't able to run off the Sunday bulletin at all.

Julie was aghast to discover that her favourite repairman Bob had retired and was all in favour of dragging his young replacement back and making him fix the machine if it took all night. Cooler heads prevailed and it was arranged that he should return tomorrow morning, after which I should be able to do this week's printing.

I think it was Bob who once explained to me that the reason photocopiers seemed to go wrong so often was that they were an unholy blend of the chemical, the mechanical and the electronic -- meaning there were three different areas in which things could break down.

I don't usually go to the office on Fridays, so I had reserved that morning to go for a blood test at Hobart Pathology. As soon as you hear the word "diabetes" from your doctor you need to resign yourself to a life of being stuck with needles of various kinds.

Getting up a bit earlier meant I could fit in both things, though I didn't care for the snow that had settled on the mountain overnight. It looked to be down to about the 500-meter level [about 1600 feet] after a 4º degree night [about 40º F].

---

This month's guest at the Moonah Arts Centre show was Kaye Payne and the jazz trio Eklectrika. Kaye is a cabaret performer in the great tradition of the "torch singer", very much in the style of Peggy Lee or Julie London.

She's certainly got the look -- blonde hair, diamond ear-rings and a long black coat.

The name of the group comes from what they call their brand of "eclectic jazz" which includes elements of Jazz, Swing, Latin and Blues. They play some of the classic numbers, but also a lot of originals -- for her third album It's Jazz, she wrote or co-wrote all but two of the 13 tracks.

Severe weather meant it was a small crowd but everyone applauded warmly and lined up afterwards to buy CDs. It was a great hour of pure entertainment.

---

Read The Spider Strikes, a reprint of a story from the first issue of the pulp monthly The Spider in October 1933. Richard Wentworth behaves like a classic pulp-fiction vigilante, but the writing (in the first story at least) is very much in the 19th century picaresque tradition.

Wentworth has all the usual accoutrements of the pulp hero -- a secret identity, a laconic foreign manservant, a beautiful lady companion and an ominous trademark. He's feared by criminals and hunted by the police -- because, to be candid, he is a serial killer who happens to prey on the underworld.

Comparisons could be made between The Spider and The Shadow, to put it mildly, but though his magazine ran for 120 issues he is less remembered today than Lamont Cranston.

You can download a copy of this for free from the pulp fiction section of the Blackmask website if you'd like to read it for yourself

---

You can't fault the April issue of Popular Mechanics for its range of subjects. Along with the usual DIY features, there's a cover story on amateur rocketry (a very American hobby -- the Boy Scouts even have a badge for it) and a hair-raising account of what it's like to "ride shotgun" driving through Baghdad.

The most surprising thing is a brief article by Joe Bargmann called "Tunnel Vision". This reveals that for the last 30 years one of the world's most ambitious engineering projects has been underway hundreds of feet beneath the busy streets of New York City.

When the sandhogs finish the prosaically named City Water Tunnel No.3 in 2020 it will run right across New York supplying water to more than eight million people. City Water Tunnels No.1 and No.2 were completed respectively in 1917 and 1936 -- so a new pipeline is well overdue.





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showcase

Tuesday night was this month's Music Showcase evening at the Regency Room at Hadley's Hotel. By the time we arrived it was SRO [Standing Room Only] but after a few minutes we managed to find a seat in the third row.

Not even throat surgery could stop the indefatigable Mei from rounding up an unprecedented number of singers and musicians -- there were 20 items on the bill tonight, ranging from nervous soloists to the Hobart Jazz Choir which has 35 members.

There weren't quite as many originals as in previous nights, with many opting to do versions of standards (yes, there was even one Celine Dion wannabe who sang "My Heart Will Go On"). Louise Carr performed her new song "Sometimes" while Dawn Chorus gave us two new songs that Mei had written "He's With Me Everywhere" and "When I Am Gone."

If there was a prize for the oddest choice, it would probably go to Quartet Sans Nom who chose to perform two songs: "God So Love The World" and "Rubber Duckie".

This is a great venue for supporters of live music -- "we must nurture and encourage our musicians in order to keep music live," as Mei says in the programme booklet.

The Music Showcase receives not a dollar in subsidies, grants or funding but admission charge is only a gold coin. A tribute to the dedication of all those involved.

---

Well, I've got my car back and it didn't cost quite as much as it might have done (they managed to repair the radiator instead of replacing it) but the bill came with a long list of things that will need doing in the near future.

The list is more or less in order of importance, ranging from the brakes at the beginning to new blades for the windscreen wiper way down the list. It's getting older (aren't we all?) so I wasn't that surprised. But I would have liked a little more time to tackle such expensive items.

But at least I'm back on the road. I'd just gotten used to letting my sister chauffeur me around too.

It's sort of like when your watch breaks down. At first you are at a loss, trying to muddle through without it. Then after a while you get used to it and it becomes actually rather restful. ("I don't know what time it is -- but I have no way of working it out, so why worry?")

---

Listened to another FGRA CD, featuring the 1940s radio show Stand By For Music, which was sort of the equivalent of an infomercial. The 15 minute shows featured top-grade music guests interspersed with pitches for joining the U.S. Navy.

Apart from Nat King Cole, I hadn't heard of any of the guests (the Bell Sisters were apparently still in High School for example) but it made for a pleasant hour's listening.

---

The third episode of Stargate: Atlantis titled "Thirty Eight Minutes" has won me over. This one has a taut script equal to most of the stories in the original series.

Here we have a space shuttle jammed in the Stargate ring, with 38 minutes before it closes automatically and cuts the ship in half. The story unfolds in real time, with the crew of the shuttle and their colleagues at base frantically trying to devise a way out of the situation.

To complicate things, the shuttle's commander has an alien parasite attached to his neck and his men also have to find a way to detach it without killing him.

An exciting story well told -- what more could we ask for?

But how seldom we get it.

---

The following night we switched on the television and found that Big Brother was still on -- it over-runs like anything on a regular basis. Switched over to the ABC and watched the first episode of Shearers.

What a contrast!

The two programmes could have been coming from different planets. To put them both under the category of "reality television" seems wildly unjust.





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showcase

Tuesday night was this month's Music Showcase evening at the Regency Room at Hadley's Hotel. By the time we arrived it was SRO [Standing Room Only] but after a few minutes we managed to find a seat in the third row.

Not even throat surgery could stop the indefatigable Mei from rounding up an unprecedented number of singers and musicians -- there were 20 items on the bill tonight, ranging from nervous soloists to the Hobart Jazz Choir which has 35 members.

There weren't quite as many originals as in previous nights, with many opting to do versions of standards (yes, there was even one Celine Dion wannabe who sang "My Heart Will Go On"). Louise Carr performed her new song "Sometimes" while Dawn Chorus gave us two new songs that Mei had written "He's With Me Everywhere" and "When I Am Gone."

If there was a prize for the oddest choice, it would probably go to Quartet Sans Nom who chose to perform two songs: "God So Love The World" and "Rubber Duckie".

This is a great venue for supporters of live music -- "we must nurture and encourage our musicians in order to keep music live," as Mei says in the programme booklet.

The Music Showcase receives not a dollar in subsidies, grants or funding but admission charge is only a gold coin. A tribute to the dedication of all those involved.

---

Well, I've got my car back and it didn't cost quite as much as it might have done (they managed to repair the radiator instead of replacing it) but the bill came with a long list of things that will need doing in the near future.

The list is more or less in order of importance, ranging from the brakes at the beginning to new blades for the windscreen wiper way down the list. It's getting older (aren't we all?) so I wasn't that surprised. But I would have liked a little more time to tackle such expensive items.

But at least I'm back on the road. I'd just gotten used to letting my sister chauffeur me around too.

It's sort of like when your watch breaks down. At first you are at a loss, trying to muddle through without it. Then after a while you get used to it and it becomes actually rather restful. ("I don't know what time it is -- but I have no way of working it out, so why worry?")

---

Listened to another FGRA CD, featuring the 1940s radio show Stand By For Music, which was sort of the equivalent of an infomercial. The 15 minute shows featured top-grade music guests interspersed with pitches for joining the U.S. Navy.

Apart from Nat King Cole, I hadn't heard of any of the guests (the Bell Sisters were apparently still in High School for example) but it made for a pleasant hour's listening.

---

The third episode of Stargate: Atlantis titled "Thirty Eight Minutes" has won me over. This one has a taut script equal to most of the stories in the original series.

Here we have a space shuttle jammed in the Stargate ring, with 38 minutes before it closes automatically and cuts the ship in half. The story unfolds in real time, with the crew of the shuttle and their colleagues at base frantically trying to devise a way out of the situation.

To complicate things, the shuttle's commander has an alien parasite attached to his neck and his men also have to find a way to detach it without killing him.

An exciting story well told -- what more could we ask for?

But how seldom we get it.

poultry party

Wednesday it was such a cold and foggy morning that after I went out to bring in the newspaper before it disappeared I went back to bed for a while. But by the middle of the day it had cleared to such a sunny afternoon that we decided to put the poultry convalescents out in the garden for some fresh air.

The goose watched us put the three chickens out and the two cats followed us out to see what was going on. I think we had everybody except the budgerigar out on the back lawn.






No news from the garage yet about my car.

I don't know what sort of impression I make on people, but I sometimes get an odd reaction from what I think are quite normal comments.

Speaking to one of the mechanics about the problems with my radiator, I said casually "Well, you can't manage without a radiator." There was an alarmed silence and he replied "No -- er, you certainly do need a radiator."




Maybe I'm prejudiced but I think that Collectors is the best of the crop of the new shows in the 6:30 slot on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. We get to see a lot of the hidden treasures of the Tasmanian Museum, and various collectors are wheeled out to let us appreciate their bizarre hobbies. Always good fun.

---

Re my recent comment on generic food sourced abroad by supermarket chains -- Woolworths have just brought out their new line of Select canned foods.

Nicely packaged but if you read the fine print those beans came from a field somewhere in Belgium.

---

I've still been having a few problems listening to the BBC7 website, but I did enjoy the episode of Beyond Our Ken from 1963 in which Kenneth Horne and his team take the mickey out of the then blockbuster Cleopatra.

The last line of the skit sees Cleopatra on her deathbed. "I'm dying... and I've never achieved my life's ambition -- to make a movie about Elizabeth Taylor."

---

INSPECTOR LYNLEY MYSTERIES: A SUITABLE VENGEANCE (2003) In this week's whodunit telemovie Lynley returns to his ancestral pile with his beloved Helen. However, a brutal murder on the grounds of his idyllic Cornish estate sheds new light on the inspector and his surprisingly dysfunctional family.

This works well enough on screen, but there is always the niggling feeling that the plot of Elizabeth George's novels has had to be simplified for the small screen. Who was it who said once that "Any adaptation is necessarily an abridgement"?

(Lovers of British popular fiction may be reminded of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca and Dorothy L. Sayer's Clouds of Witness which also features a titled sleuth whose brother is a murder suspect).

Personally I think that The Last Detective based on a series of novels by Leslie Thomas feels like a more successful adaptation.




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Sunday band

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

Then I turned the last page.

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

Hmmm, I thought.

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

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

---

Some action on the chicken front.

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

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

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

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




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

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

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





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Real Player problem

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

It certainly looked like bird seed to me.

---

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

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

Away

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

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

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

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

Next month: Shakespeare.

---

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

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

---

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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hello possum

Possums galore this autumn.

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

Amen to that!

---

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

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

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

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

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





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wireless musings

I should have known this would happen someday.

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

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

---

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

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

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

I reached for the phone.

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

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

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

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

“Ian Fleming.”

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

“Did he have little grey cells?”

“He very well might have.”

“Hercule Poirot.”

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

---

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

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

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

---

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

Whoops. Not quite right.

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

STAND BY FOR MUSIC

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

HIS MASTER'S VOICE OF THE AIR

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

SALUDOS AMIGOS

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

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

mid-1940s - 30:00 - AFRS





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in camera

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

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

---

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

---

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

---

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

---

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







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stay tuned

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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






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stay tuned

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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






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