shaped!

Many a true word said in jest.

When my sister and I upgraded to Broadband, the salesman looked slightly surprised when we opted for the 20GB level (10GB peak-time and 10GB off-peak) - we told him it was better to have too high than too low a limit.

Since then it's been a running gag at our place: "Only four more days to go to use up that last 5GB. I don't know if we'll make it."

Well, guess what happened this month?

On the last day of our billing cycle, I thought the Internet seemed a bit sluggish. Julie asked if I'd checked our usage. That seemed a bit unlikely but I took a look.

Oh my, how did that happen?

Then I remembered. There was that website for the Lum & Abner radio comedy that had a link to download an entire year of the show at one hit. I tried it and it was one of those odd downloads that doesn't tell you what the size is.

So I let it run.

And run.

Every so often I'd look at it. 100 MB. 200 MB. 300 MB.

Hours went by.

Finally it was time to go to bed. The download had been running for twelve hours and hadn't finished yet.

"You could leave it running overnight," said Julie but I elected to shut it down before it completed. It was up to about 900 MB already and still going.

That, it struck me, was the crate of straw that broke the camel's back. That would have used up almost 10% of our allocation for the month.

No wonder we'd hit the wall.

OK, I won't do that again.

(There's a follow-up to that story – for a couple of days afterwards my internet connection was still slow. I finally contacted the ISP and they explained that sometimes the modem "remembers" the new speed and I should unplug the modem from the powerpoint for 60 seconds. It worked; I probably should have thought of trying it myself.)

---

CD listening today:

You Light Up My Life: 22 country gospel greats
Platinum Collection CD #257

The compiler of this album gets a bonus point for putting together the album without doubling up on either artists or songs. Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Slim Whitman, Charley Pride, Hank Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jim Reeves, Frankie Laine... it's all good.
Pleasant listening for $4-95.

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I've found a place on the Internet where I can listen to the 1970s drama series CBS Radio Mystery Theater. There's a lot of interesting stuff here, but the drawback is that the first year episodes are horribly muffled.

Given the age of the shows, I assume that somebody recorded them by just putting the microphone of their tape recorder in front of the radio and taping them that way. That's the way I used to do it at the time anyway.

It's an unsophisticated low-tech method and unfortunately the results show it. But sometimes that's the only copy that's in circulation.


The bedroom boombox (the TEAC CD/MP3 player) seems to have given up altogether. It's been increasingly reluctant to play MP3s and last week it didn't want to play CDs either. The good news is the FM radio still works.

I should think about getting a new one sometime, but at the moment I'd rather not spend the cash. If I want to hear anything before I go to bed, I can transfer it onto the little pocket MP3 player - even though I'm not mad about those silly little earphones.

---

Julie brought over another hen from her place. This one has gone broody so she thought it might look after the chicks she brought over last week. That makes 15 here.

---

Otrfan.com have announced their new line-up for free old-time radio programmes. There may be extras, but the basic line-up is as follows:

Monday: Abbott and Costello; Dragnet; Gunsmoke.
Tuesday: Jack Benny ; Mysterious Traveler; Whitehall 1212.
Wednesday: Boston Blackie; The Man Called X; The Saint .
Thursday: The Cisco Kid ; Philip Marlowe; The Whistler.
Friday: Arch Oboler's Plays; Fred Allen; Weird Circle.
Saturday: Lux Radio Theater ; X Minus One; Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.
Sunday: Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator; The Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show; Suspense.

This is a great website and their selection of radio shows is really outstanding for a free site. I recommend it. Click here to visit it.

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trucking down

Driving over to Julie's place, I peered at something at the front of the house. "What's that?" she said.

I stared vainly. "Yes, what is that?" I echoed.

As we drew up, it turned out to be a medium-sized truck on its side just off the road. The driver, a policeman and some onlookers were gathered around.

It seems, Julie's odd-job man told her, that the truck's brakes had failed as it came down the hill and he turned uphill to slow his speed. It almost worked, but the truck had overturned before it slowed sufficiently.

"I heard the air-brakes scream while I was working in the yard," he said. "I thought maybe I'd better start running if he was going to come right onto the property."

And indeed it was a close thing. The truck had come to rest just inches from the fence-line. Another couple of feet and it would have gone through the fence, probably running into one of the pine trees. In that case, I doubt the driver would have been able to scramble out unharmed with the aid of the odd-job man as he did.

We made a phone call that we would be delayed – n overturned truck in your back yard certainly counts as "circumstances beyond one's control" – and watched the rest of the affair.

A stout little tow-truck attached two sets of chains and slowly winched it out of the smashed greenery until ever-so-slowly it toppled back onto its wheels again. We left while the crew swarmed over it like mahouts examining an ailing elephant.

I calculated we had time in the afternoon either to go out and get a load of duck food or to stop at Café 73 in Moonah. In the end the Caesar Salad won out.

That evening we attended the Moonah Arts Centre for this month's concert. It was titled Fascinating Rhythm and was billed as featuring cabaret songs and jazz classics, but this was slightly misleading. If anything, the tone was closer to the Metropolitan Opera than it was to Broadway.



Soprano Charlotte McKercher and percussionist Robert Rule gave us an eclectic mixture of music ranging from Kurt Weill to Benjamin Britten – I've never heard Bach played on the marimba before! – culminating in the premiere of a new work by local composer Ian Cresswell based on ancient Japanese love poems.

Not quite what we were expecting but an interesting evening.


Fibber McGee and Molly


ABC Television have been running some interesting British programmes at the weekend this month. The new series of Doctor Who is as intriguing as last year (this week we saw Queen Victoria menaced by an extra-terrestrial werewolf), Catherine the Great is an interesting docu-drama about a historical figure I knew little about, while every episode of Bleak House makes me think this would have made a great Hammer movie.

---

Julie has brought home some more patients for her chicken hospital. Five young chicks who looked at death's door were rushed over to my house and placed under a reading lamp. One chick, which I thought already dead, was resuscitated with heat and massage.

This makes a total of 14 poultry she has in residence at my house. The total at her place is beyond my figuring out.

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walking wounded

What an unpleasant world it can be for the helpless. Tuesday I gave Kay a lift into the city as usual. That afternoon I was at the office when the phone rang. She had had a fall in an office downtown and they thought she should see a doctor.

So I closed up and went down to pick her up. She was shaken and had a nasty-looking graze on the top of her head. They transported her out to my car in a wheelchair and I drove round to the emergency room at the hospital.

There was a long wait to see a doctor - "I can't wait that long. My back won't take sitting for hours in one of those plastic chairs in the waiting room."

OK, so what were the options. There was a private medical clinic just around the corner... who charged $60 for a 15-minute consultation. So that was out.

What about her GP? The hospital gave us a phone and we called the practice. The receptionist listened to my story, then checked her schedule. "No, we don't have any appointments. Tell her we can't see her today." I hung up, vaguely stunned; I know I don't follow the medical news closely but I wasn't aware they'd repealed the Hippocratic oath.

We walked out of the ER. Kay was pale and a little unsteady and said "I'm starting to shiver, but it's not that cold today."

"You're in shock," I said. "And that at least is something I can help you with." I took her back to the office and did all the things that they taught me in the St John's Ambulance first aid course at school in 1964. I calmed her, kept her warm and gave her hot sweet tea.

So far so good.

After that, I did what anybody would do next. I googled "head injuries".

This gave me a few questions to ask. "Any blurred vision? Any feelings of nausea? How bad is the headache? Do you have any - good heavens! - clear fluid running out of your nose or ears?" The answers seemed satisfactory, but I stressed that just because she felt better she shouldn't assume she didn't need a doctor.

I hurried through my work, then drove her home, gave her some over-the-counter pain-killers and recommended she see a doctor tomorrow.

Heading home I mused on the strange priorities that some people have. As we'd left the hospital, the driver of the car parked next to mine said "Can you get to your car? Or should I move mine?" I told him that we should be all right. But as I helped Kay into the car I heard another man loitering nearby lean over and say to him "He didn't scratch your car when he opened the door did he?"

Strike me! Here we are outside a hospital with people involved clearly suffering, and all he can do is stick his oar in. Some people!

---

This week's old time radio listening:

SUSPENSE "Alibi Me" 51-01-04

Stream-of-consciousness thriller with Mickey Rooney as the man who has impulsively killed his life-long enemy and now has only 90 minutes to arrange a watertight alibi before the body is discovered. Maybe overly frantic for some, but still quite entertaining.

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO 45-06-07 "Costello gets a tattoo"
Lou consults a dream analyst to find why he keeps dreaming about beautiful girls. No standout comedy bits but some pleasant songs from chanteuse Connie Haines. Nice voice. [Her fan website states she landed the A&C job in 1942 and stayed with the program for four years as well as performing with their touring show during the summer months.]

THE LONE RANGER 47-01-15 "From Outer Space"

No, not a western science fiction episode; in this story the masked man is asked to protect a chest of unique mineral specimens from a meteorite on its way to Washington DC. The Lone Ranger has embarked on his most thrilling and unusual adventure, the announcer assures us at the end of [aaagh] part 1 - I hadn't realised this was a 4-part story when I started listening to it.

MY FRIEND IRMA 47-04-11 episode #1

Some old time comedies are amusing partly because of their period feel or the nostalgia factor, but this is genuinely funny. It's the story of a blonde (very blonde) stenographer named Irma Peterson, played by Marie Wilson, and her screwy friends. One of Irma's best friends was her logical and very dependable roommate, the narrator of the show, Jane Stacy, played by Cathy Lewis. Their misadventures are very funny even today.

---

Wednesday I had a couple of hours free so I went into the city. Ellison Hawker's comic shop had phoned at the weekend to say that I had rather a lot of Disney comics and could I pick them up.

They were over-reacting - it was only this month's and last month's order, a total of eight comic books altogether. Hardly enough to panic about, I would have thought.

But while I was in town with time to spare, I had a rare opportunity to browse through the Red Cross second-hand bookshop. In years gone by, I was in there all the time, but nowadays I hardly ever get in there.

So I wandered around, picking up a few whodunit novels for my sister and one or two books by vintage authors for myself. Finally I circled round to the front of the shop and glanced at a couple of boxes on display by the door.

"Is that the English quarterly The Countryman?" I asked.

"Yes, somebody must have been having a clear-out and brought in a whole box of them. We've sold quite a few already."

"Hmmm, how much are they?"

"Oh they're only thirty cents each."

"How much for the whole lot?"

So I left with fifty copies of The Countryman - I must have known something when I took the extra large bag with me.

I notice someone on eBay is offering issues for $4-95 but I don't know if they get many buyers at that price.

I've read the magazine quite often over the years. It's a useful little volume to have next to the bed; sometimes you just want to read a few pages to let your brain unwind before you put the light out. This is perfect for that.

Of course whether I get through all fifty copies is another matter!

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Treasures and Choices

Someone somewhere had a great idea. Why not take all the priceless relics held by libraries around Australia and put them all into a travelling exhibition?

National Treasures from Australia’s Great Libraries is a landmark exhibition that tells a rich and remarkable story about our history, our nation, our treasures … and our libraries.

It brings together, for the first time, more than 170 extraordinary items that have shaped our nation. Drawn from the magnificent collections of Australia’s National, State and Territory libraries, the exhibition contains manuscripts, maps, drawings, paintings and objects —from the everyday to the exotic — all linked to Australia.

National Treasures from Australia’s Great Libraries includes familiar icons such as James Cook’s Endeavour journal, Ned Kelly’s helmet and Donald Bradman’s favourite bat. Others may be less well known, such as the heartbreaking story of Mary Watson, who perished with her baby off a deserted Queensland island, or the diary of Shane Gould, written as a teenager during her record-breaking swims at the tragic Munich Olympics.

Spanning the earliest European depiction of the Southern Cross drawn in the 16th century, through our convict and colonial era, two world wars, recent innovations and our constant obsessions with sport, food and wine, this exhibition gives a fresh insight into the diversity and breadth of our history and what it means to be Australian today.

I found the exhibition awe-inspiring. It's divided up into broad categories -- The Southern Cross, Hope and Hardship, Heroes and villains, War and Loss, Innovation and Industry, Culture and National Obsessions.

Not only were there relics that everyone knows (Ned Kelly's helmet, the Eureka flag, etc), there were items I never expected to see (Captain Bligh's log, Lasseter's diary, Kingsford-Smith's 1928 aviation map) and some that I didn't know existed (like the scrapbook kept by pre-war undercover policeman Sgt Frank Fahy who was nicknamed "The Shadow").

Quite fascinating stuff. There's even a podcast describing the exhibition
available here

Meanwhile those industrious people at Hobart Rep have been busy. In between fullblown productions, they organised a special event for Sunday night – a play reading of the classic comedy Hobson's Choice by Harold Brighouse.

I didn't know much about the play, though I was vaguely aware it had been filmed in 1954 starring Charles Laughton. But for $5 I was willing to take a chance on it.

The Playhouse was half full when we arrived, and there was a perceptible buzz of excitement as we waited for the curtain to go up. I noted that the performance was billed as "a moved play reading". I had expected that this would consist of a rehearsed reading on a bare stage (sort of like watching a radio play) but in fact it was more elaborate than that.

The cast were in 19th century costume, and there were a few basic props on the stage. Most of the cast had the script in one hand throughout the evening, but in all other respects it was just like a "real" play.

A boot-making business in Lancashire is the catalyst for a a power struggle inside the Hobson family. Peter Middleton was wonderfully bumptious as Mr Hobson, with Ann Lennon-George as the "old maid" daughter who knows what she wants and how to get it. Stuart MacDonald was engaging as the mild-mannered cobbler who finds himself the third point in the triangle.

A very enjoyable evening.






I do spend a bit of time listening to OTR [Old Time Radio] programmes as above but mostly during the week I finish the day listening to my favorite late-night chat show Tony Delroy's Nightlife. You can listen to the show in streaming audio from the ABC website - and many from around the world do - but now for the first time highlights from the show are available as podcasts. (No, unfortunately this doesn't include the midnight quiz segment The Challenge.)

Tune in and hear what people are talking about on radio Down Under.

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poultry and prejudice

If I had the right camera equipment I could have taken a classic photograph of Mount Wellington on Tuesday night.

The temperature peaked about breakfast time, then the rest of the day was dark and drizzly with the mercury stuck on 5º. But around midnight the strong winds blew the rain away and the full moon was shining down unhindered.

Up on the mountain, the moonlight reflected off the snow and the remaining snowclouds hovering around it. It made for an unforgettable sight against the darkness of the clear night sky.

Tuesday afternoon was a quiet day at work. Julie had spent the afternoon over at the home of a fellow poultry-fancier and arrived home with two new hens and a rooster. The new rooster looks like a lively little customer and has a very distinctive crow (so I hope he's not with us for too long).

We just had time for a quick meal before racing off to the Playhouse to see their new production, Helen Jerome's play based on the Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice.

Solid performances from all, with John Andrews the calm masculine lynchpin of the Bennet household, Noreen Le Motte as his scatterbrained wife and Jane Russell as their strongwilled daughter Elizabeth.

James Casey is the straitlaced Mr Darcy. If you haven't seen him in other shows you might mistake his starchy manner for poor acting, but I've seen him play a wide range of characters on stage.

Jane Russell [unfortunate name for an actress!] is a recent graduate of the National Theatre Drama School. She's a real find and lights up the place whenever she's on stage.

---

My mobile phone stopped sending outgoing phone calls or text messages at the end of last week. I think it was the telephone company's not-so-subtle way of reminding me that I hadn't paid this month's bill.

I took care of it and was soon back on the air. It reminded me how easily we get used to things ­– ­­yesterday's luxuries become tomorrow's essentials. Originally I regarded a phone in my pocket as a rather indulgent item, but a couple of days without it was more irritating than I expected.

---

My sister bought me a little pedometer last month, presumably to encourage me to keep up my much-needed exercise regimen. It clips neatly onto the belt and clicks off the number of steps I take.

The problem is that the reset button is placed on the front of the pedometer. It might not be a problem for athletes jogging around the track, but to wear it in the real world presents some difficulties.

Whenever I wear it for the day, inevitably somewhere along the way I brush against something or bend over the car and *pop!* the numbers reset to zero.

Consequently I still don't know how many steps I take in the course of an ordinary day.

---

Tony Delroy's Nightlife, my favorite radio programme, is now available as a podcast. Go to the ABC page and see what's available

click here

Meanwhile Tasmanian dignitaries and amateur radio enthusiasts have spent the afternoon toasting one of Tasmania's greatest technological contributions. Tasmanian Governor William Cox transmitted messages to his Victorian counterpart across Bass Strait, to re-enact a ceremony that took place 100 years ago today.

The event in 1906 was the first known Marconi wireless transmission across water in the Southern Hemisphere.

The president of the Devonport Maritime Museum, Bob Vellacott, says the gathering marked the city's special contribution to radio technology. "The event 100 years ago proved indeed that the wireless transmission could go across a large stretch of water" he said.

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these crowing times

Other people's jobs are really boring to read about most of the time. But it strikes me that I've never written about what I do at the church office.

We don't actually sit around reading the Bible and praying - well, not all the time anyway.

Two days a week I make my way into the city and take up residence in a 19th century stone building which paradoxically holds quite a lot of modern office equipment.

Most of my time is spent at the main desk surrounded by computers, printers, modems, faxes and scanners. Information flows in by phone, fax and e-mail to be digested and distributed.

This Tuesday, for example, I did a first draft of the Sunday bulletin which we'll print later in the week. I corrected a set of rosters, typed a couple of letters, answered the e-mails, sold a book on baptism to someone who rang up looking for it, and checked the smoke alarms.

During my coffee break I listened to a new adaptation of Rider Haggard's novel She which is the current Classic Serial on BBC Radio 4's website. I remember reading this about forty years ago when I was at school. I don't recall the plot in detail but I can picture the cover picture and the old children's library in Macquarie Street. I find that memory sometimes works that way: like a collection of snapshots in an album.

---

This morning I was awake early and the roosters outside the back door started crowing. I went out and tried to keep them quiet. I was having mixed success, then the rooster inside started answering them.

I gave up at that point. Even if I could shush noisy fowls, I couldn't be in two places at once.

I'll be really happy when Julie finishes the extensions to her hen house and has room to take these two lads home with her.

Similarly, walking the dogs at Julie's house is full of unexpected adventures. Especially involving her border collie Emma, who is the most unpredictable dog I've ever met.

I can't stress enough that a border collie is not the ideal dog for those living in the city and inner suburbs. These dogs were bred for work in the outdoors and have the stamina to run all afternoon. They're also intelligent enough to get bored quickly in the backyard, meaning they tend to go over the fence at any opportunity.

This afternoon I took my eyes off her for 30 seconds to answer my mobile phone and when I looked up she was gone. After some searching I eventually found her around the corner and up the hill playing with a stray dog.

That's not the first time she's done something similar. She's such an escape artist we should have named her Houdini.

---

After a couple of weeks of frugality, I received a cheque that put my account back in the black for a while.

It probably won't stay there for long, because having money means you're more likely to spend it.

For example we were in the supermarket this afternoon and stopped at a display of groceries marked down. It would have been better to have passed by on the other side; in the end we loaded up with examples of three types of biscuits and no less than seven different varieties of tea.

---

American author Gilbert Stack has always had a passionate interest in history; he has a PhD in history and his academic focus has been the middle ages.

However his short story in the July issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine "Pandora's Luck" is a tale of the Old West, where prizefighter Corey Callaghan and his trainer, Patrick, travel the boxing circuit; in Denver, they meet the beautiful gambler Pandora Parson who seems to have her own strange sort of luck. "Look for more of Corey and Patrick's adventures in these pages in the future" promise the editors.



I've been working my way through one of my MP3 disks of old radio programmes I've collected. Usually I keep one of these in my room so I can listen to one or two before bed each night.

THE BLUE BEETLE 400517 Sabotage
Based on an old comic strip; this one was probably more fun to read than to listen to.

COUNTERSPY 490816 statue of death
U-235 smuggling in Mexico - the body count is dismayingly high in all the episodes I've heard of this show.

GREAT GILDERSLEEVE Birdie the heiress
Typical of the show's warm and fuzzy feel - everyone is dismayed at the prospect of their favorite housekeeper leaving the country.

GUNSMOKE 540712 Texas Cowboys
Matt Dillon faces a band of quick-tempered Texans when it looks like he will have to arrest one of them for murder. But he begins to believe that the man isn't the killer. Another episode of the quintessential western series.

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CLICK HERE TO SEE MY PICTURES

winter wears on

The hens stop laying. The lawns are white with frost. For a couple of hours the sun shines then darkness descends.

It must be the winter solstice.

June and July in Tasmania are the depth of winter. "As the days lengthen, the cold does strengthen," says the old proverb.

A few ginkgo biloba tablets help keep the chilblains at bay, but I feel like my car – a few dents, slow to start in the mornings and not much charge left in the battery.


The end of the month was a tiring couple of days. For the second Thursday in a row, the photocopier broke down at the vital moment. Very aggravating indeed.

My sister complained that I'm not assertive enough when making complaints. It's just not in my nature to say "Get your **** down here and fix this **** machine before I **** !"

The next morning was icy cold - only 1º in the Celsius scale, which is about 34º in the old scale. I waited by the phone until they rang and made an appointment to fix the machine. A little while after that, just as my sister was starting breakfast, another phone call. "Julie, it's Coralie. Are you still coming round for lunch?" "Aaaaagh!" she said and ran out of the room.

So she went flying off while I donned my galoshes and traipsed around her place feeding the animals. I didn't have much time to spare but I got through everything (except nursing the cats - "there's a time and place for everything" I told them).

Arrived at the office two minutes before the service van. They spent almost 2½ hours pulling the machine to pieces, testing it then pulling it to pieces again.

Finally they announced there seemed to be some gears that weren't meshing. That sounded reasonable. The next time they put the machine back together it actually worked.

And it only took them ten days.

So I did the weekend photocopying and (when my back stopped aching) drove home and made myself a sandwich and a mug of hot chocolate. That last item may have been a mistake, since I felt so tired and sleepy I almost dozed off in my chair.

That night was the monthly concert at the Moonah Arts Centre but the last thing I felt like was dragging myself out on a winter's evening. Where's the listing to see what's on... Hmmm, 15th century choral music. I can live without that.

Saturday morning I was so tired it took me a long time to drag myself out of bed. I had to urge Julie into action - she had another lunch appointment. We fed her animals and raced back so she wouldn't be late. This just gave me time to snatch a cup of coffee and be ready for a visit from Kay and Chris who drop around every second Saturday.

I'm always tired lately. Every day of every week. I seem to be constantly struggling through the quagmire that is everyday living.

Of course it doesn't help that I haven't had a holiday since 1989.



There are all sorts of things available for free on the internet, including music. I've got to say that Accuradio has a truly amazing range of music available for free listening.

There are 24 main channels, and each one has between three and thirty sub-channels. There's even a sub-channel devoted just to all the different versions of "White Christmas" !

If you can't find something to interest you here, you're very hard to please.

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Sunday chicken

The geese join my sister's horse Shadow for a graze in the top paddock:


Sunday morning we shivered through breakfast then set off for church.

I liked the story that our minister used this week...

"We're told that God made everything," said a Professor. "If God made everything, then God made evil, and if we can only create from within ourselves, then God is evil."

One student raised his hand and said "Sir, is there such thing as cold?"

"Of course there is, what kind of a question is that? Haven't you ever been cold?"

The young man replied, "Actually, sir, cold does not exist. What we consider to be cold is really only the absence of heat. Absolute zero is when there is absolutely no heat, but cold does not really exist. We have only created that term to describe how we feel when heat is not there."

The young man continued, "Sir, is there such thing as dark?"

Once again, the professor responded, "Of course there is."

And once again, the student replied, "Actually, sir, darkness does not exist. Darkness is really only the absence of light. Darkness is only a term man developed to describe what happens when there is no light present."

Finally, the young man asked, "Sir, is there such thing as evil?"

The professor responded, "Of course. We have rapes, and murders and violence everywhere in the world, those things are evil."

The student replied, "Actually, sir, evil does not exist. Evil is simply the absence of God. Evil is a term man developed to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. It isn't like truth, or love, which exist as virtues like heat and light. Evil is simply the state where God is not present, like cold without heat or darkness without light."

The professor had nothing to say.

"Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" asks 1 Corinthians 1:20.

---

Monday we were out and managed to do one or two things on that long list of stuff that needs doing.

We loaded up with some sacks of feed for my sister's animals, paid my electricity bill, bought the latest issue of The New Yorker and stopped at Café 73 in Moonah for a Caesar Salad.

Tonight we plan to scruff one of the roosters from outside my back door and take him back to Julie's property. Having four roosters at my place is a dangerous situation; as soon as one gets the impulse to crow, all the others join in. Not a good thing in the modern world.

There is traffic in the opposite direction though. Julie brought over a hen from her place on Sunday that was faring badly in the barnyard. "I think she might just be old," said Julie but at the moment she's resting comfortably in what I call the ICU [Intensive Chicken-care Unit].




Old Time Radio:

CLOAK AND DAGGER

O.S.S. agent in Italy is meat in the sandwich between a fascist with valuable information and partisans who want to hang him. "I don't have a problem with executions; it's lynchings I don't like."

GUNSMOKE 'Poor, poor Pearl'

Adult western, meaning there are no happy endings for some of the people involved in a romantic triangle on the prairie.

THE CHASE 520504 "Harry Troll's Diamond"

Somewhat in the line of SUSPENSE or ESCAPE, this story will keep you guessing, though veteran listeners may guess one of the surprise twists.

X MINUS ONE 560201 "The Cave of Night"

Docu-drama about the plight of the first man in space – and this was aired a year before Sputnik went up. Effective script based on the same story by James Gunn that was aired on television as "Man in Orbit" [Desilu Playhouse 1959 starring Lee Marvin].

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that **** photocopier

Is there anybody who hasn't got a story about a recalcitrant photocopier? After all these years in the church office I can usually nurse them along, but every so often things grind to a halt.

Thursday was one of those days. We started out with it jamming every few minutes, then every couple of pages, then finally every page.

Twenty four hours passed without a sign of the repairman; I even got up early in the morning in case he phoned during breakfast. So Friday night I ended up at one of the local office-equipment warehouses shelling out $35 to have the weekend printing done. A series of small delays and inconveniences made for a trying afternoon.

As I drove home that night I kept feeling there was a small insect on my left eyebrow. That wasn't encouraging. It's been a long time since I had that nervous twitch in my left eye and I hoped that it wasn't coming back.

---

Having some of my sister's poultry living at my house isn't usually that much of an imposition, but this month things have been a bit difficult. The roosters she's keeping outside my back door have grown up enough to start crowing, so we're worried about disturbing the people next door. The problem is that it only takes one of them to start and all the others join in.

This is even more concerning than it might have been, since the Hobart City Council is talking about introducing new regulations to control barking dogs (three minutes of barking at night or six minutes during the day would be the maximum allowed).

If dogs are in the bureaucracy's cross-hairs, can crowing roosters be far away?

---

Rod Quinn has been standing in for Tony Delroy for a fortnight while he's on holiday from the late show on ABC radio. It's always interesting to see how the fill-in presenters do – the acid test is how they handle the midnight quiz segment The Challenge.

Some of them are a bit clumsy but pick it up quickly. At least one was an unmitigated disaster. Rod Quinn of course had an advantage since he used to be a regular guest on the early days of the show; he had his own segment The Trivia Challenge each Friday night.

But for some reason the going was a lot harder this week. I can only think that someone else was setting the questions – there was a palpable difference in how demanding they were. Even the compere admitted they seemed a lot more difficult.

Fortunately I got in early and phoned in on the Monday. I was heartened to find that Rod remembered my voice and recalled our days on the Trivia Challenge all those years ago. Mind you, I wouldn't have won if my sister hadn't prompted me on the question "What animal has the collective noun of a 'sleuth'?" [It turned out to be bears.]

Later in the week the wheels seemed to fall off. Answers were hard to come by and took a long time to extract. One night the segment went on past the 1 o'clock news, finally ending at 1:26.

"I've always wanted to set a world record," sighed Rod. It seems this was the latest that The Challenge has finished in its 16 years on the air.

Tony is back next week. Let's hope he brings some easier questions with him.

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to Moonah

Killing two birds with one stone, I set off for Moonah on foot. I had to go to the bank and I needed to get more exercise, so the fact that Julie had borrowed my car wasn't a deterrent.

I walked along the bike track.. er, the intercity cycleway I mean. It was quiet enough so I could listen to my MP3 player as I strode along, and I got through half an episode of a BBC World Service arts programme that I'd recorded last month.

Elmore Leonard was being interviewed. He said that he always tried to make his novels come out around the 300-page mark. If he was just under, he'd often suggest to his publisher that they change the typeface just a little so it would hit the magic number!

After I'd been to the bank, I called in at the Moonah Arts Centre to see their current exhibition "Eastern Light", a collection of new oil paintings by Romany Best and Sarah Weaver.

There was a certain sameness, since this was a theme exhibition – a visual portrayal of life in Tasmania. Best's pictures included both rural scenes and pictures of urban streets. A couple of the pictures featured brooding skies with titles like "Melancholy" and "If Only I'd Known," but the picture "Feeling Blue" was a visual pun depicting blue skies and blue seas with blue hills in the background.

Weaver's oils included landscapes of places like Adventure Bay, Maria Island and the Huon Valley. I particularly appreciated these since I'd recently visited all of them and it brought back pleasant memories.

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I've chanced on yet another web-site that lets you listen to old radio programmes. This one comes from Wisconsin Public Radio and lets you listen to their three-hour Sunday night show in three one-hour chunks.


Another site for my favorites list, along with Those Were The Days and The Big Broadcast.

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Old Time Radio listening:

DARK FANTASY 420327 "Convoy to Atlantis"
In a sort of forerunner to all those stories about the Bermuda Triangle, two men find their ship has been hijacked and is heading for the sea bottom where it will be used to re-roof the lost continent of Atlantis.

FIBBER McGEE AND MOLLY 400116 "Fibber's car is stolen"
Amusing comedy in which Fibber gets arrested for stealing his own car and is horrified at the idea he'll only be paroled into the custody of The Great Gildersleeve. Still fun even today.

CISCO KID 531008 "Planted Gold"
In this oater about trying to fake a gold strike, the dashing Cisco Kid encounters one of the few things he's afraid of - a little old lady with an eight-gauge shotgun.

AVENGER #3 "Rendezvous with Murder"
Sort of a poor cousin of The Shadow, with some rather nasty killers and some sonorous voiceovers - "The road to crime ends in a trap that justice sets. Crime does not pay!"

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The new series of 24 has started on local television. I hear that they've signed to keep making the show into 2008-2009. That boggles the mind.

I pity the poor writers having to come up with that amount of scripts for such an edge-of-the-seat drama. Another example of the tendency of television networks to work something to death so long as it seems to get the ratings.

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I was intrigued to read on a W.E. Johns website that Johns had once made a list of what he would want in a volume titled The Best of Biggles, the definitive selection of stories about his stalwart avaiation hero:

Part 1 Biggles the boy in India: two stories from THE BOY BIGGLES
Part 2 Schooldays: two stories from BIGGLES GOES TO SCHOOL
Part 3 World War 1. Foreword on Air Combat. Two stories from BIGGLES LEARNS TO FLY.
Part 4 Biggles Combat Pilot: novel BIGGLES FLIES EAST.
Part 5 Between the wars: Two stories from BIGGLES CHARTER PILOT or, full length book BIGGLES FLIES WEST
Part 6 World War II: two stories from SPITFIRE PARADE (or full length book. BIGGLES SWEEPS THE DESERT.)
Part 7 After the war: SGT. BIGGLESWORTH C.I.D. (part of) then enough detective stories to make up required length.

Interesting. I know two books that have been published with the title BEST OF BIGGLES but neither of them follow John's plan.

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stray hare

My sister's backyard :




My sister takes up a lot of my time, but she certainly keeps me in touch with the real world of animals and plants.

Take Sunday night for example. We'd been over to her place to feed her animals. She went out with the horse and the poultry while I looked after the cats, then she took the dog food out to them. Finally we were driving back to my house.

Just as we turned into my street, she suddenly said "Hold it. Stop the car." I saw something in the headlights, moving across the middle of the road. As I pulled up, I realised that it wasn't a kitten or a puppy but a small rabbit.

She got out of the car and approached carefully, but the rabbit wasn't interested in getting any closer and zig-zagged down the street a few feet at a time. "He doesn't look like a wild rabbit. He might be a pet. I'll see if I can catch him."

I pulled the car over to the side of the road, angling it so the lights lit up the footpath for her. She moved back and forth, following the rabbit's progress. In and out of the front yards of our neighbours – I hoped that none of them were suffering from insomnia and might happen to look out their front windows.

After about ten minutes in the crisp night air she gave up.

This isn't the first time that's happened to her. Once she was driving through the northern suburbs and saw a rabbit hanging around by the side of the road.

When she tried to catch it, it dashed down next to a house and into the backyard. Julie shut it in an outside toilet (maybe a shed) attached to the house, hoping that the householder either owned the rabbit or knew who did.

I couldn't help thinking that if they weren't the owners, they were going to be surprised when they went into the backyard in the morning.

Sunday

Sunday morning was a cold start, with snow down to 300 meters on Mount Wellington. We drove in to church using my sister’s car since I wasn’t sure mine would start easily and we had to be on time - I was reading the Bible at the morning service.




Julie (above) read the text last week, and owing to a sudden change in the roster I stepped in to fill a vacancy this week. I had been through the passage from Genesis a couple of times [the end of chapter 1 and the start of chapter 2] and it wasn’t too bad - some of the Old Testament can be quite challenging to read aloud. There were a couple of places where the authors had put in what we’d call sidebar pieces, meaning that you had to pace your breathing so you didn’t run out of breath before you got to the end of a long sentence.

It went off all right and we settled down to listen to Robert’s sermon on the importance of human life. Christians, he said, can have nothing to do with the modern idea that some lives are worth less than others; anyone who believes this cannot believe in the teachings of the Bible.

Sunday afternoon we usually eat lunch and rest for a while, but that wasn’t the case this week. While we were still feeding Julie’s animals we received a phone call from her friend Helene - “don’t forget that you’re helping me photograph a wedding at the Town Hall today.” Whoops!

No time for Julie to rest her aching back that afternoon. There was just time for lunch and she had to head back into the city for her second visit to the Town Hall in 24 hours.

There’s no doubt it’s a lovely old building - just look at the photo Julie took at the concert - but you don’t necessarily want to spend Sunday afternoon trailing around it with camera equipment in the middle of winter.



If you’re interested in church architecture, Sunday on ABC-TV was the day for you. In the morning Songs of Praise looked at the reconstructed Spittalfield church in London. Then in the evening we saw Westminster Abbey briefly in The Queen at 80, a programme about 20th Century eccentric English priest John Cyril Hawes who designed and built scores of beautiful churches in Western Australia The Sacred Architect and finished off with Alain de Botton's quizzing the owners of a modern church in The Perfect Home about whether it really felt like a church.

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King Features website last year cannily realised that there were people out there who’d actually pay to read comic strips and started a paid site called Daily Ink. After some muttering I signed up for it and have been quite pleased with the service.

Not only do you get all the current comic strips, you’re able to choose to see them at an enlarged size which is a bonus in this age of ever-shrinking newspaper strips. (Our local paper unveiled its “new look” this week and you guessed it, the comic strips are slightly smaller than they used to be!)

That would be worth the annual fee, but there’s also what the DVD makers like to call bonus features. This includes a “Vintage” section which gives you the option of seeing a small selection of old comic strips in addition to the current ones.

The daily and Sunday versions of The Phantom are probably great for people who don’t live in Australia where a local publisher has reprinted all the Phantom stories ever published, and it’s interesting to see the early days of Popeye from the old Thimble Theater strip.

But as the site went into its second year, without any fanfare they doubled the number of Vintage strips and there were some pleasant surprises. There’s the World War II fighting-the-Zeroes strip Buzz Sawyer, the original Beetle Bailey (before he joined the army!), the detective strip Rip Kirby (one of my childhood favourites) and best of all, the daily Flash Gordon strip starting from its first day in 1951.

I’ve only ever seen one of the daily Flash Gordon strips and, yes, it was this one. But I look forward to being able to follow it every day - this is from the period after the heyday of Alex Raymond’s legendary Sunday strip and reworks the characters into a more realistic type of space explorers, more in the mode of its rival Buck Rogers strip rather than Raymond’s extravagant swashbuckling adventures.

I’d better not wax too enthusiastic. If the Daily Ink proprietors read this they might decide to increase the membership fee!

Coward! Chicken!

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

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




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


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



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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We shall be there.

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c/attic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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powerless

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk about your global village...

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

"One way or the other," I commented.

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

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

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

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

"What about it?"

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

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

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

I think I really upset her this time.

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

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

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

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I'm so dizzy...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Recent live entertainment in town includes:

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

Coming up next: Pride and Prejudice the stage play.

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