I hate Hamlet

The first play for 2007 from the Hobart Repertory Society is Paul Rudnick’s 1991 comedy I Hate Hamlet. The central character is Andy, a television star whose series has just been cancelled and has landed a job playing the lead in the Shakespeare-in-Central-Park festival.

To his discomfort, not only does he find himself living in John Barrymore's apartment, but he is visited by the ghost of the great actor who informs him he is there to tutor him on how to play Hamlet!

So far so so-so. The concept is uncomfortably reminiscent of a sitcom put together by writers who've seen Blithe Spirit once too often.

But as we get into the second act, there are some interesting observations about the stage, the acting profession and life in the spotlight.

Trevor Gallagher is Andy, with James Casey delightful as Barrymorre

The supporting characters all have their good moments too -- Jennifer Gardner as the Noo Yawk realtor, Karen Kluss as the off-with-the-fairies girlfriend, Gillian Hunt as the agent, and especially Stuart Pearce as the crasser-than-crass Hollywood producer.

The evening ends with an amusing demonstration of how to give your final bow. The thunderous applause at the final curtain gave all the cast a chance to try it out for themselves.

---

As the summer comes to its end, the hot weather is finally becoming less common. This summer was so hot that even the cat lost interest in his food (he's started to show more appetite this week) and I had a lot of trouble sleeping.

Of course it doesn't help that the people next door have been taking a lot of family holidays, leaving their dogs to run amuck outside my window. And interruptions like early-morning deliveries or the friend who telephoned at 7:30 a.m. (who rings to discuss dinner parties at that hour?)

---

When Kenneth Horne passed away aged 61, he was described as 'the last of the truly great radio comics'. In a broadcasting career which spanned nearly 30 years, he had starred in three of the most popular radio series of all time. I remember listening to Beyond Our Ken in the 1950s and Round the Horne in the 1960s when I was at school though I was too young to remember the 1940s' Much Binding In The Marsh.

This month is Kenneth Horne's centenary and the BBC are featuring several special programmes about him. It's good to see that in today's digital age even the stars of radio (once the most ephemeral and easily-forgotten of the arts) can be celebrated in years to come.

Flash! Bang!

Wow, three or four hours of thunder and lightning. I can't remember a storm that lasted all evening like the one we had Friday night.


In fact the whole weekend was unprecedented. We had three days in a row over 30º and Sunday was a stifling 35° (which is about 95 degrees in the old Fahrenheit scale). Sunday night it was too hot for me to sleep; I kept waking up every hour or so.

You can imagine how relieved I was to wake up on Monday morning and find it was cool and cloudy outside. We just aren't used to this weather.

---

I dug out some information about broadband pricing for the office. The board is considering whether we need to upgrade to broadband but I'm not holding my breath.

One factor is that some members of the board not only don't have Internet access, they have never used a computer. There might be a certain amount of resistance to paying the $39 a month.

---

Meanwhile as usual I've been listening to a lot of radio programmes over the World Wide Web. The weekend shows featuring the Coodabeen Champions, for example, were only available on the net this month because there was cricket on the radio stations that usually carry their shows.

I was sorry to see that Brian Kay's Light Programme ended its five-year run on BBC Radio 3 on 8th February 2007 .

Host Brian Kay is still in demand as a conductor, especially of choral music. Brian is well remembered as the bass in the Kings Singers, with whom he made countless recordings, and concert appearances all over the world.

The axing of his amiably laid-back show about light music is apparently to enable Radio 3 to concentrate more on long broadcasts of classical music in the afternoons. A shame -- there are many shows about classical music but few about the "light music" genre.

Still going strong (and taped in front of live audiences around the USA) Says You! is the NPR radio show that claims to appeal to "crossword puzzlers, trivia fans, and the just plain intellectually curious". Two teams bluff, guess, and expound their way through brain teasers, literary challenges, and other stumpers.

Host Richard Sher introduces panelists including public radio personality Tony Kahn; television host Barry Nolan; television producer/writer Arnie Reisman; author, journalist, and executive coach Paula Lyons; arts and culture activist Francine Achbar; and columnist/critic Carolyn Faye Fox.

---

I wish I could be in London to see the new stage adaptation of The 39 Steps at the Criterion Theatre in Picadilly Circus -- I've seen every adaptation of John Buchan's classic novel but this sounds like a lot of fun:
"This nifty, comically bare-bones fringe adaptation of John Buchan's famous novel, best known as Hitchcock's 1935 movie thriller, slipped quietly into the West End and initially looked a little over-stretched. But with four actors playing about 150 roles in Maria Aitken's production, the pleasures of quick-change artistry and po-faced defiance in the face of impossible odds are considerable. Charles Edwards is Richard Hannay, the innocent 'murderer' on the run, and you really have to be there to believe you are seeing the escape on the Forth Rail Bridge (with a couple of chairs) and a magical death-defying finale in the Palladium."

in memory still green

This week was trying at times. I still have trouble getting enough sleep. The table above is supposed to show my natural rhythms, but I certainly don't get to sleep at the times it shows.

It didn't help that the people who live next door went away for the weekend and left their dogs at large in their yard. Their driveway is right outside my bedroom window, so whenever the dogs spotted someone passing in the street, they would run down the driveway barking -- sometimes at 3 a.m.

This often left me lying awake in bed, brooding over the approach of Valentine's Day. That had nothing to do with romance; my mother has been dead for a couple of years and I have come to terms with occasions like Christmas and New Year without her. But her birthday falls on February 14th and that's hard not to think about.

The last 36 hours, all the emotions I thought were safely consigned to the archives shelf have started welling up again. The grief, the regret, all that stuff. Every sale or commercial advertising Valentine's Day just rubs salt into the wound.

I remember John Bangsund saying that he found Easter difficult because his father had died on Good Friday. I can appreciate how he felt now.

But I try to concentrate on what my mother would have said if she could have commented on the situation. Don't be so silly, she would have said, get on with things instead of moping around dwelling on the past.

Maybe that's what I should try and do.

a memory of fire

My back gradually came right with rest and pain-killers. I was in such a rush to get out and about on Sunday morning I forgot to take any pills at all, so I decided I must be nearly OK.

I was in a hurry because we were helping a fellow parishioner drive a Sudanese family in to the morning church service. There are a lot of Sudanese refugees who've settled in Hobart and we have quite a few in our congregation.

Musing on their future, I was struck by how quickly the children have picked up perfect English. In a few years they will be fully acclimatised to the Australian lifestyle, and the struggle to survive of their parents' generation will be a dimly-understood story.

One woman we know slightly has given birth to twins since arriving in Australia; growing up here,they will never be able to fully comprehend what their mother went through. I can't help wondering about the divide that must occur between the two generations... but I suppose that has happened in any group of people that have had to uproot themselves and flee to another country.

Monday morning my breakfast was interrupted by one of Julie's chickens escaping from its cage and running into the kitchen. I managed to corner it by the refrigerator but while I was returning it to its cage a second chicken got out through the open door and I had to chase her around the room.

My sister was oblivious to this (though I informed her of it promptly!); she was sitting up in bed reading Charlie Chan Carries On. She has always loved pre-war whodunits but this is the first Charlie Chan novel she's encountered. It's just as well she doesn't know how to find the other novels in the series in my attic or she'd go through them all in about a week.

They should be in the low bookshelves on the right hand side of the attic. Yes, that would be right. Margery Allingham is in the first bookcase near the window and Leslie Charteris is in the third one, so Earl Derr Biggers should be in the second one. I'll dig them out and ration them out to her -- one every couple of weeks perhaps.

Monday afternoon Julie had visitors at her place -- our neighbour, science fiction writer Steve Lazarowitz and his partner Dana. Steve was interested in seeing her chickens with a view to raising some in his own back yard.

Like many people, they were amazed to find so many different animals living right on the edge of suburbia. Steve was especially taken with Julie's horse Shadow, who came cantering over to see if we had brought anything to eat.

"I've been around horses sometimes, but I never had much to do with them as a boy," he said. "You can't keep a horse in Brooklyn."

"That would be a good title for your autobiography," I told him, but he was patting the horse and I don't think he was listening.

In the evening, it was out to the monthly pub quiz at the New Sydney Hotel. The line-up on our team varies from month to month -- this time it was me, my sister Julie, Caroline (who's just back from France) and Leon (who I think was once a member of the Royal Society). Between us we had quite a wide range of knowledge and we did better than our disastrous outing in January; I think we came in at equal third.

Of course there are always questions where you come unstuck. When they asked who was the actor from Bridget Jones' Diary who was nominated for an Oscar, I thought it must be Peter Firth. No, they meant Renee Zellwigger. Being an older guy, I took the term "actor" to mean a male.

Tuesday was a lot busier than I expected. The afternoon at the church office was the most hectic I've had in months. Sometimes I was talking to people at my desk, answering the phone with one hand and pushing buttons on the computer with the other. I had some sandwiches with me for lunch, but I didn't get a chance to eat them until 4:30 in the afternoon.

When I left work, I gave Kay a lift to the supermarket on my way home. After I'd taken the groceries inside for her, I installed a VCL media player on her computer for her; she has some television programmes on CD discs but has nothing to play them with. This seemed like a good freeware solution.

The main problem with her computer is that she is one of those people who are reluctant to delete anything unless absolutely unavoidable. I'm in no condition to throw stones, but it could do with a good spring cleaning.



Wednesday morning was a sobering time. After breakfast I listened to Tim Cox's show on local radio; they spent an hour reminiscing about the 1967 Tasmanian bush-fires, forty years ago today.

It was gripping stuff, if a little unsettling. I remember that day clearly. I was a teenager, living with my parents in their centre-city hotel. That afternoon the sky turned a dark blood red and ash blew in on a hot choking wind.

Even though we lived in the heart of the city, my father went out and got an extra-long hose in case we needed to hose down any embers that landed on the roof and threatened to start fires. This wasn't the countryside -- we had never before imagined we could ever be in danger from wildfire.


My sister was out with friends that afternoon and we weren't sure where she was. (No cellphones in those days!) When she returned home safely my mother broke down and wept with relief. She had spent an hour during the afternoon driving around looking for her, witnessing people trying to beat back flames with wet sacks and garden rakes.

Many small towns around the state were simply obliterated by the fires; the primitive fire-fighting equipment of 1967 just couldn't halt the conflagration.

62 people died.

1,400 homes were destroyed.

Forty years ago today.

A radio documentary on the subject can be downloaded from the Radio National "Hindsight" website.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight/default.htm

turn off that bloody television

There's more violence on television than ever before, and it's more graphic. That's what a new report from America says.

The number of violent scenes during prime-time programs has risen on all six US networks since 1998, found a study conducted by American organisation Parents Television Council and released last month. And an increasing number of violent scenes include a sexual element.

The report highlighted the 2005 television season as one of the most violent, with 49 per cent of all episodes in the study containing at least one instance of violence.

"Not only was there more on-screen violence than ever before," the study said, "but the discussions of violent crimes were more explicit and the violence depicted was far more graphic than anything TV viewers had ever seen before."

The report, Dying to Entertain, details more than 30 scenes from various episodes to support its finding of a growing number of "graphic autopsy scenes, scenes depicting medical procedures and extensive torture sequences".

"Violence has shifted from being incidental to the storytelling to being an integral part of the program," it said.

Similar thoughts had been going through my mind after watching the first couple of episodes of the new season of 24 (subtitled "A New Beginning" for some reason). Even for a show about terrorism, the amount of killing and torture in the first couple of hours was confronting.

Recently prime-time shows such as Bones and NCIS seem to spend half their time in the morgue cutting people up. Somehow it seemed in better taste when Sam Ryan did similar things in Silent Witness. Now I tend to go out into the kitchen and make coffee during the opening scenes of Bones and my sister tells me when it's safe to return.

Nowadays the heroes in television programmes do things that we would have once found shocking if it was the villains doing them.

In my childhood, the Australian television censors were scrupulous in removing any scenes involving knives or stabbing. Their reasoning, I suspect, was that no Australian had a handgun so cowboys and cops could blaze away with no impact on our psychology, but nearly everyone carried a pocket-knife of some kind. (That led to some strange looking stories where people would suddenly be inexplicably dead in between scenes - even Star Trek and Phil Silvers didn't escape the censor's scissors.)

Sometimes I pine for the days of Naked City, when the only things stripped bare were the emotions of the protagonists.




Years ago, whenever there were problems with television reception between Tasmania and the other states of Australia, the technicians would mutter about "bearer problems" caused by Bass Strait.

Recently someone on the BBC message board queried why a certain radio programme kept skipping. The answer was as follows : "These glitches are caused from time to time by atmospheric conditions interfering with the satellite feed to our listen again service encoders. We are working longer term to provide a more stable feed."
The more things change, the more they stay the same!


Of course there is so much more to listen to on the BBC.
Another contributor added up all the drama and readings aired in a week on BBC Radio 4:

Drama & Readings per week (in mins)
Afternoon play 225
Classic serial 60
Friday play 60
Saturday play 60
Book of the week75
Book at bedtime 75
Women's hour drama75
Sub total 630

Repeats
Repeat classic serial 60
Repeat book of the week 75
Repeat Women's hour drama75
Sub Total 210

Total air play of Drama & Readings per week
including Repeats 14 hours (840 mins)

Blimey!

And that's on just one of the BBC radio stations!

Ouch!

Those mice have a lot to answer for. We've trapped and released nine of them so far, but there are still plenty of them. I spent a lot of time on Saturday re-organising the kitchen and bringing in a big plastic crate to protect the bread and baked goods from rodent teeth.

It didn't seem like I'd done that much work, but I got up the next morning and went to feed the chickens outside the back door. Leaned over to get some feed out of the bin.

Twang!

"Oh no," I groaned. "Not my back again." Yes, after many months without any back problems, I was now hobbling about like an old man.

After 24 hours, I reluctantly let my sister dose me with some of her pills.

"How's your back?" she asked a couple of hours later.
"It feels a bit better," I replied.

"So it should with that amount of pain-killers," she said drily.

---

The postman staggered in this morning with two packages. There was a big envelope of CDs from the First Generation Radio Archives (mostly Fibber McGee and Phil Harris shows) and a box from AV Deals in Sydney.

The second one contained a Philips MMS430 speaker system. I bought this over the Internet without seeing it in real-life and for once it was bigger than it looked in the photograph. The main speaker was as big as a breadbox and I haven't decided how to fit it into my living space yet.

Anyway, I don't think I'll be moving any furniture around for a while..

---

Listening to The Idlers on ABC radio on Saturday night, they opened with Lisa Miller singing "On the road again". I haven't heard this before; sure, it's light-years away from Willie Nelson but it's a lovely version. I must keep an eye out for Lisa Miller in future.

The Idlers and The Coodabeen Champions were both pre-empted for sports broadcasts this weekend, but I've discovered in recent times that the shows do still go to air for those tuning in on the Internet. All you need to do is go to the ABC Gold Coast website and you can listen to them regardless of what's coming over your radio set.

Australia Day

It was Australia Day and even Julie's dog was celebrating the occasion. (No Photoshop tricks here!) Julie and I shared a special dinner to mark the day -- a meat pie with sauce followed by a lamington. The only thing missing was a cold stubbie but I'm not a beer drinker.





The mouse plague hasn't quite reached the alarming degree depicted in some science fiction tales (for example the 1961 potboiler by R.L. Fanthorpe depicted above) but so far we've managed to trap and release five of the little critters.

Field mice are very tiny and very cute but we're heartily tired of them running around the place as though they owned it. I've had to learn to lock up the bread every time I leave the kitchen so as not to find that somebody has been sampling it when I pick it up next time.

We won't mention the ants. That's a story for another time.

---

A couple of interesting items on Thursday night television. The Archive Project on ABC was about the Melbourne Realist Film Unit. It wanted to spur political action by showing what life was like for the working classes after World War II. "This inequality must end," urges the film A Place to Live, about Melbourne’s housing shortage. But the Melbourne Realists were not fundamentalists and became increasingly sceptical about Stalin’s cult of personality.

The group believed first and foremost in film’s potential for social change and they soon broke with the Communist Party. This didn't stop them from being kept under surveillance by the security agencies. Indeed, that will be the most interesting part for many viewers; earlier parts of this special featuring footage rescued from the cutting-room floor set to sombre classical music will bore most laymen.

Keenly anticipated was the documentary on SBS titled In Search of Bony. This looked at the remarkable story of Arthur Upfield, dubbed by one critic Australia's forgotten bestseller. Starting in the 1920s he wrote a successful series of detective stories about Inspector Bonaparte of the Queensland Police. The unique thing about the character was that he was of mixed racial background at a time in history when the "half-caste" was routinely the villain or at best an unsympathetic bit-player.

Upfield's achievement in making this character not only acceptable but fascinating to the mass audience is mostly forgotten today. Those who remember the character automatically dismiss him because they are books about a black man written by a dead white male. This skips over the fact that at the time many aborigines were fascinated by the depiction of an educated professional black man.

The character of Bony was idealised, of course. But it's a tragedy that Australia is about the only country in the world where Upfield is out of print. In many countries, his are the only books about Australia that most people will have read.

Time to bring Bony back into print.

The Rains Came

Little did we know what was in store that Sunday. My sister and I went to church, came home and ate lunch. It was warm and humid outside. I had few plans beyond possibly taking a nap for a few minutes.

Then one of us looked up and said "I think it's raining..." and the other nodded, vaguely approving.

What we didn't realise was that northern winds had swept air from the monsoon areas up north; as it collided with the cooler winds from the southern oceans, the result was spectacular.

Accompanied by rolls of thunder, the heavens opened and rain bucketed down. Standing at the back door, awe-struck by the sudden change in the climate, I saw that the drain by the back of the house was partly blocked and water was spilling over.

I plunged out into the rain and struggled to clear the drain and prevent the back of the house being flooded. Almost instantly I was soaked to the skin. I had to discard my trousers because they were so heavy they were threatening to fall down around my ankles!

After a few minutes, the water was draining away and the rain had eased just a little. I came back inside and changed. I was so wet I had to take off everything except my glasses and my watch!

My brown suede shoes will never be the same again.

The goose was notable by her absence. She apparently didn't like the rain drumming on the roof and took refuge outside the laundry where conditions were less extreme. A contrast to her behaviour during last week's power cut when I thought she was going to join us in the house.




After the worst of the deluge was over, we drove over to Julie's house to check for any damage there. It was better than we expected, with few problems.

The creek, which had just barely been running that morning, was now a raging torrent. Julie (above) tried to get some pictures of it, but it wasn't easy. "That rock in the middle of the water looks like a loaf of bread surrounded by snow," she sniffed after looking at the snaps.

The next morning I inspected the boxes on the front and back porches for signs of water damage. Half a dozen books had to be thrown out; the rest seemed all right. The carton of Country Life magazines was more of a dilemma. The top half were OK, the bottom half were slightly damp along the edge with a couple on the bottom completely sodden.

I was less disturbed than I would have been once. In the last couple of years I've digested the fact that I simply have more books and magazines in the house than I'll be able to read during the remaining years of my life. OK, I do still have some volumes I would be very upset to lose, but I no longer feel the urge to buy as many books as possible wherever I go.


HISTORIC QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

As the free world grows stronger, more united, more attractive to men on both sides of the Iron Curtain--and as the Soviet hopes for easy expansion are blocked--then there will have to come a time of change in the Soviet world. Nobody can say for sure when that is going to be, or exactly how it will come about, whether by revolution, or trouble in the satellite states, or by a change inside the Kremlin.

Whether the Communist rulers shift their policies of their own free will--or whether the change comes about in some other way -- I have not a doubt in the world that a change will occur.

Harry Truman's farewell speech in 1953, showing remarkable good sense.

a hot time in the old town

I slept through the thunderstorm last night, though my sister reported her whole bedroom being lit up by lightning flashes. Wednesday morning was sultry and overcast. Even after a cold shower the weather soon felt unpleasantly close to me.

But it could have been worse. According to this morning's news, parts of the city Melbourne had their electricity supply cut by bushfires while suffering heat-wave conditions of 40° -- that's about 104 degrees in the old scale. I don't know that I could stand those conditions.

We had a black-out here last week but it only lasted for an hour. Just as well we still had those candles on the mantlepiece, left over from when we had a series of power cuts a few years back.

The weirdest part about it was that Zelda (the goose who lives in my yard)panicked and started running about as though she wanted to force her way into the house. Maybe she was freaking out because of the sirens from some burglar alarms that had been set off by the black-out.

This afternoon we stopped for petrol and while I was inside my sister was fascinated by the passing parade. First two girls on bicycles called in and let their golden retrievers have a drink of water. Then a dapper middle-aged man at the wheel of a big sedan drove in and got out to fill a bowl of water. He placed this on the floor of the car next to his dog and drove off. I hope he didn't have to make any sudden stops on his way home!

The hot weather makes the pest problem worse. The new screen door has kept out most of the flies, but there are ants everywhere and the mice are always sneaking around (they're very cute but there's a limit!)



The neighbours at Julie's place have a high proportion of animal-lovers among them. The woman at the top left corner of the paddock feeds the horse regularly. He enjoys the attention (and the food) -- in fact I think he's starting to put on weight.

gurgling on

Water restrictions mean that I can only water the garden every second day. Over at my sister's house, the creek that runs through her property usually has some water in it, even in the middle of summer. But in the picture above it is as dry as dust at the end of last month.

Fortunately a few days with some rain saw it start running again. But January is the middle of summer in Australia (it hit 33° today - the equivalent of 91.4 in the old scale) and I don't guarantee that the water will stay around.



Some things that are amusing in retrospect weren't so funny at the time. This evening I finished watching something on television and reached for the remote control. Not there.

I looked around me. No sign of it. I moved things around, while the television chattered away to itself on the other side of the room. I suppose I could have gone and turned it off manually, but so many functions nowadays can only be accessed through the remote control.

And why, oh why, do they always make these small and black? They're almost designed to blend into the background -- a sort of stealth remote. Next time I have a new one, I'm seriously considering decorating it with some of that fluorescent yellow tape.

I fetched a flashlight and looked around to see if it had fallen down next to the armchair. Finally I racked my brains and recalled that I'd had to feed the cat in the middle of West Wing. I wandered out into the kitchen and there it was, sitting on a box in front of the spice cupboard.

It was, as my sister consoled me, out of my eye-line and in a place I never have the remote.

This has been one of a continuing series of anecdotes in the series "How I knew I was losing my marbles."

Taste of Tasmania 2006

The end of the year is always the time for the Summer Festival and the jewel in the crown is the Taste Of Tasmania. For several days a gloomy old warehouse on the waterfront is transformed into a culinary wonderland, with stalls selling an amazing variety of food and wine.

My mother used to put a little money aside every month so she could indulge herself at "the Taste." We come from a less frugal generation, but we managed to make a few visits to this temple of the gourmandizers.

We feasted on such items as hare, ostrich, buffalo, and even Senegalese Calamari. A large choice of wine, coffee and soft drinks was available to wash it down with.



The normally dark and dour interior of the building was festooned with wall hangings painted by local school-children, and the colourful signage of the stalls brightened up the place. Sitting inside, we could see out across the waterfront and watch yachts and boats coming and going.

In fact the Taste started 18 years ago as something to keep the public amused between the start and finish of the annual Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race. Today I suspect it is as big an attraction as the race is, perhaps even bigger in some circles.

The weather was good for the festival, but became a bit oppressive later in the week. The temperatures soared to around 30 degrees (about 86 fahrenheit)and my sister Julie had to resort to hanging wet towels over the cages to keep her poultry from suffering heat stress in the sultry afternoons.

One night the humidity was still at 73% at 2 a.m. I found it difficult to sleep as you might imagine and stayed awake late reading and listening to the radio. And wouldn't you know it, the following morning I was woken first by an early-morning phone call then by a visitor ringing the doorbell.

It was after midday before I felt human again. Not an experience I'd care to repeat again.

It was a relief when a change came over at the end of the week and we were able to enjoy a cooling breeze while light rain pattered down on the roof.

I'm dreaming...

My favourite talk-show on ABC radio, Tony Delroy's Nightlife has moved on to the summer program and the show will be presented by Bernadette Young for the next few weeks. (Bernie Hobbs will take over then, and Tony will return early next year.)

The summer month is always known as "the silly season" in the media, and sometimes it's not hard to see why. At least Nightlife is still listenable to, though many of the usual features are absent.

One of the problems with a stand-in host for this show is handling the midnight quiz segment "The Challenge". This is an institution for ABC listeners and it doesn't take much to rile them if you get it wrong.

Bernadette seems to be doing fairly well, even though one night I think she equalled Rod Quinn's record for the longest time to get through the quiz. They started after the midnight news and ran till 1:30. I think that why Tony manages to keep to schedule is that he knows the rules but he knows when to break them; it's no good sticking to the no-clues-after-halfway rule if you're going through 20 or 30 contestants with the same question.

Of course she has some additional difficulties. The show this month is coming from the studios at ABC Perth and apparently the studio is not generally in use at that time of night -- so the air-conditioning automatically switches itself off. Bernadette and her producer have had to resort to switching off some of the lights in the studio to keep the summer heat at bay. Hence her rather informal attire in the picture above.

---

Christmas Day was pleasant enough in itself, but the lead-up was a tiring time. December 25th I was up early to get to the 9 o'clock service -- the church was packed and I was glad that I hadn't cut back the number I printed for the bulletin as I have sometimes at Christmas time.

At lunch time I went out with my sisters Julie and Pauline for a meal at Rydge's, a stylish hotel in North Hobart. The food was fine, though I think the jokes in the Christmas crackers could stand improvement.

The weather took a right-turn over the last couple of days. A week earlier we had heat waves and bush fires, then this week the temperature plunged and we actually had snow up on Mount Wellington (though we couldn't see it through the snowclouds from ground level).

I think they've got Bing Crosby working at the weather bureau.

Boxing Day I felt completely washed-out. I had a nap after breakfast and another one after lunch. If I could have figured out how to fit one in, I probably would have taken one after dinner as well.

I can't remember a time when I've been so tired for so long. It just seems that all the energy has been drained out of me. If I don't start getting more rest, I won't be able to think of any New Year resolutions, let alone try to keep them.

merry christmas to all

The Sunday School children, so the story goes, were invited to take part in the Christmas Eve service.

The minister introduced them to the congregation and said "And the next song we shall sing is a new hymn entitled 'Christmas Love'."

That was the cue for the children each to raise a card with a letter printed on it, spelling out the name of the song.

But one little girl had her card upside down, and when the children raised the cards, this is what the congregation read:

C H R I S T W A S L O V E

red sun at noon

"Remember to water the lawn before midnight," I thought to myself. Total Fire Ban Day meant that the sprinkler became illegal once we got past Wednesday night; any spare water was reserved for fire-fighting activities.

Even though the bushfires this week were nowhere near the city, it didn't stop the sky from turning that creepy colour. The sun was orange,almost red, and the smoke haze spreading across the state meant we could hardly see Mount Wellington (which normally dominates Hobart from any angle you may be looking from).



It was all distinctly unsettling. The mercury hit 31 degrees midweek (that's about 88 in the old Fahrenheit scale) and it's always a shock when that first hot weather of the summer hits you, no matter how aware you are intellectually that it's going to get hot.

It was really late when I got to bed last night but it was still 15 degrees outside with 68% humidity. Not very pleasant.

One of the announcers on the local ABC radio station said the next day that when he left the air-conditioned studio it felt like the end of the world outside in the street.

But by Saturday morning the following news was posted on the ABC website:

Most of the firefighters working on Tasmania's east coast will be able spend Christmas with their families after both of the state's large bushfires have been controlled.

The cool, wet weather has hampered backburning operations, but the Tasmania Fire Service (TFS) says the Kellevie fire is contained, and the St Marys fire has control lines around most of it.

Incident controller Gavin Freeman says the control lines on the western edge of the St Marys fire still need strengthening, but that work will have to wait until after Christmas.

"The fire has halted and we've got to a point where the tracks are chopped up because of the rain and fuels, lighter fuels, have got wet enough that they won't burn," he said.

On a happier note, my sister Julie is pleased by the Christmas gift she received from the Tasmanian police.

Well, sort of. Let me explain.

Last week she was unhappy to receive an $80 speeding ticket in the mail. It said that she'd been clocked at 52 kph in a 40kph zone in Giblin Street between Augusta Road and Pedder Street. Once she finished fuming, we re-read the letter and frowned.

Where is there a 40kph zone before Pedder Street? There's a school zone after Pedder Street, but that's a different block. We decided to query it when we got a chance.

Before we got round to this, she received a second letter. It said that due to a "procedural error" they would not be proceeding with the matter and to disregard the first letter.

I presume that "procedural error" is a euphemism for mistake. They have probably had a string of indignant letters and phone calls from people who received the same letter.

So that's her present from the police force this year.

---

Those of us with a warped sense of humour may enjoy the following list:


Modern Christmas Carols for...
* The Schizophrenic: Do You Hear What I Hear, the Voices, the Voices?
* Amnesiac: I Don't Remember If I'll be Home for Christmas
* Narcissistic: Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me
* Manic: Deck The Halls and walls and house and lawn and streets and stores and office and...
* Multiple Personality Disorder: We Three Kings Disoriented Are
* Paranoid: Santa Claus Is Coming To Get Us
* Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, (Did I Jingle Bells??), Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells (Or Santa Won't Come!!)
* Agoraphobia: I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day But Wouldn't Leave My House
* Conduct Disorder: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus So I Burned Down the House
* Social Anxiety Disorder: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas While I Sit Here and Hyperventilate
* Attention Deficit Disorder: We Wish You...Hey Look!! It's Snowing...Is That a Reindeer?>

Yule be sorry

I'd like to buy you all an Irish Cross as a Christmas gift, but since I can't here's a picture of one instead.

The Christmas season is coming on fast, but I don't recall ever being as disorganised as I am this year. I always seem to be tired nowadays. I thought it was tiring back in the last years of my mother's illness, but I don't feel much better this year.

I feel as though I'm living next to a giant building that's blocking out the sun, keeping me in the eternal shadow of its shade. Maybe I'm having an anxiety attack or something.

At least Thursday afternoon at the church office wasn't quite as bad as I had thought it might be. Our minister Robert had done two of the three orders of service and brought them in as PDF files, so that was a big help.

With Christmas falling on a Monday and the special Carol service on Sunday night, we had to do three lots of printing -- one lot for Sunday morning, one for Sunday night and a third lot for Monday morning. The photocopier was behaving itself, thanks heavens, unlike some recent weeks.

I had feared we might be there till 6 o'clock or after, but in fact we finished at 5:20 pm. Surprisingly early, I thought.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
Part of the appeal of the radio in the early days was that it was a participatory adventure. It was sound without sight. The listener had to supply the setting for the drama and the locale for the news report. This partnership now is gone as the TV provides everything needed. Everything but imagination. -- Bruce D. Callander

DISCLAIMER: Certain statements on this page may constitute "forward-looking" statements that involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any results, performances or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts including, without limitation, statements regarding our future financial position, strategy, budgets, projected costs and plans and objectives are forward-looking statements. In addition, forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may," "will," "expect," "intend," "estimate," "anticipate," "believe," or "continue" or the negative thereof or variations thereon or similar terminology.

I hope that's quite clear.

don't forget to breathe

Sunday morning began with a really strong cup of coffee. I was short on sleep, and there's nothing more embarrassing than nodding off during the sermon in church.

Especially since I was reading today's Bible text this morning. The second chapter of Matthew isn't too difficult for reading -- no awkward names like the Old Testament or long involved sentences to trip up the unwary.

What some people don't think of the first time they have to do this is that you have to read the passage aloud a couple of times. It's not the same reading it over to yourself. You need to be aware of how the words feel as they emerge from your mouth.

For example, in today's text, Matthew 2:1-12 I needed to pick a spot to breathe in the ninth verse, otherwise I would end up having to hurry through the last few words. And it's a good idea to practice getting the right speed; while reading too slowly can sound tedious, if you get rattled you'll probably speed up and gallop through the text with indecent haste.

Something that I often have trouble with is what to say when I finish reading the Bible in front of the congregation. Some people have a little formula that they recite after the reading, but I didn't feel comfortable with it.

After some thought I settled on a simple declaration "So it is written." I used it this morning; I'll see how I feel about it next time my name comes up on the roster.

---

I was so tired that I slept for an hour on Sunday afternoon until it was time to tune in for the Coodabeens radio show.

My sister however didn't nap. She was busy working on her Christmas cards for this year.

You see, I'm quite happy to buy a card, sign it and post or give it to the person in question. Julie however spends hours creating a personalised Christmas card that expresses her personality and the ambience of her home and animals.

This takes a lot of work. Sometimes days at the computer and the printer. In one extreme case she didn't finish working on the cards until Christmas Eve afternoon and spent the evening driving around hand-delivering them to all her friends' mail-boxes.

There can be times, I think, when too much determination can be as bad as too little.

---

Old Time Radio shows that I've been listening to this week:
Barry Craig, Phil Harris, Wild Bill Hickok, Hopalong Cassidy, Fibber McGee & Molly, Family Theatre, Hancock's Half Hour, Hollywood Barn Dance, Weird Circle.

mousing along

That mouse with the sweet tooth continues to make a nuisance of himself. I had thought that we'd gathered up all the chocolates and other confectionery in the kitchen, but apparently not. Following some chewing sounds, we came across a plastic bag containing half a dozen sachets of sugarless drinking chocolate.

Apparently it was the cocoa that had attracted the rodent's attention, since he had gnawed open one of the sachets, sugar-free or not.

I have a humane mouse-trap somewhere. I must get it out and try catching him. It won't be hard to decide on what to use for bait - a chocolate truffle or similar will do the job.

Meanwhile other pests are making their presence felt. There were so many flies in the house last month that we bought a new screen for the back door. Our remaining cat Paco is a bit puzzled by it; so far he has worked out how to get out, but not to get back in again. I'm sure that with time he'll get the hang of it.

---

Wednesday I had a whole list of things to pick up and to do. I had it all written out on a scrap of paper, crossing them off as I went like that guy on television.

If you'd been watching my progress on a map, I would have zigzagged back and forth and made big wide circles around the city, from Chesterman Street in the north to Weld Street in the south.

Traffic was getting heavier with the Christmas rush, but I was more worried by the slow but steady build-up of that smoky haze in the air. All the hills and mountains on the horizons were becoming harder and harder to see, and there was just a faint tang about the air.

Reports about the fires on the east coast dominated local radio broadcasts, and the local newspapers must have ordered up big on red ink to print all those colour photographs of raging bushfires. The one that struck me the most was a picture of a couple standing at their back gate watching fire-fighters try to quell a blaze that was literally a stone's throw from their boundary. None of us want to imagine ourselves in their place.

Hurrying through the mall on my way to the bank, I stopped for a moment to take a second look at a display in the window of one department store. It was a giant snow dome and inside it, a cheerful looking penguin and a teddy bear were standing under a signpost reading "North Pole." I wondered if I was the only passer-by who was disturbed by this sight.

My sister meanwhile was over at her house feeding the livestock. Two of the goslings survived from the last batch of eggs, and two of the older geese have died during the year, so she finishes 2006 with the same number (11) in the gaggle.

Meantime at my house Zelda the Suburban Goose continues to "rule the roost" in the back garden. I have only to cough when I walk out into the kitchen first thing in the morning for her to give a honk that she's ready for breakfast. For an animal with no visible ears, her hearing is very acute.

---

I hadn't realised that Rod, our Associate Minister, hadn't been there when I've mentioned National Novel Writing Month in the past. When I happened to mention it in conversation, I had to explain the concept - writing 50,000 words during the month of November.

He stared at me. "That's about 1500 words a day," he said. "It must just pour out of you like a tap."

"Would that it were so!" I thought to myself.

---

And since it is December the television stations are well into the "silly season". Looking at some of the programmes on offer it's easy to see why it's called that.

Some of their decisions don't really seem to make a lot of sense. For example, who decided to screen the final season of Star Trek Enterprise at 2 a.m. on Monday morning? That's a time slot almost designed to make sure that the target audience isn't watching.

And can we please have fewer programmes about autopsies screened in the early evening? I'm usually late getting dinner on the table and this doesn't do much to encourage my appetite.

the Grand Hotel

No, not the Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, not even the one with Greta Garbo. We were at the Grand Hotel in Huonville, on the banks of the Huon River and we were wearing funny hats and eating plum pudding.

Yes, it was that time of year again and we were all enjoying an early Christmas Dinner with a group from our church.

I even ran into a fellow blogger, John Dekker, who said "Glad to see you finished your novel."

After eating, my sister and I took a stroll into downtown Huonville (not a long trip). I wanted to get a newspaper and as we turned we were facing a plant nursery with a notice telling us to follow the signs to the bookshop.

Julie looked at me. "Want to take a look?" I sighed. If we hadn't seen the notice, I wouldn't have had to decide whether or not to go in.

I used to spend a lot of time in second-hand book shops but not in recent years. Three reasons. It doesn't cost a lot, but it costs something. It takes time, which I never seem to have enough of. And most importantly it fills up space, which is a big factor after forty years of buying books.

But we went on in. Julie was delighted to find the proprietors owned a small black kitten, which obligingly sat there washing itself while she took pictures.

We wandered around the shop, which had the look of having once been in a bigger store. The bookshelves were large and imposing, but they were crowded together as though they had once been in a larger establishment.

The subjects were arranged thematically, so I found the whodunits just below the True Crime stuff. I'm always on the look out for traditional mystery novels since Julie reads a lot of them and I need to keep one step ahead of her. I sorted out half a dozen for her, and picked up a few old issues of Argosy and The Countryman for myself.

Nowadays I'm not up to reading many novels. The concentration required and the strain on my eyes is a problem for me. It took me a long time to come to terms with this -- for years I kept buying books that I knew I'd never get around to reading.

So we wandered out of the store, through the refreshingly moist atmosphere of the newly watered plants in the nursery, and out into the street again. We finally made it to the newsagents, then up the street for a Devonshire Tea at a little cafe in the main block.

It was one of those long summer afternoons, so it was still light when we came out. We strolled back to the hotel to pick up the car, enjoying the sensation that our forefathers would have wandered along this same street on their trips to town in the 19th century. The town might have changed a little, but the hills of the Huon Valley would still look the same if my grandfather were to return for a visit.

Just across the main road from the Grand was a quiet little park on the riverbank. Spaced along the river were a series of wooden statues, carved from trees planted to celebrate the relief of Ladysmith in the Boer War. We ambled about, admiring the workmanship in the statues and the tranquillity of the river. Not a Jet Ski or a speedboat to be seen.



The only subtle sign that all was not right with the world was that almost undetectable hint of smoke in the air. It was a long way to the fires on the east coast of the island, but the prevailing winds had blown some in.

Within five days of our idyllic afternoon in Huonville, the north-east part of the state was in flames. Gale force winds stirred up a virtual firestorm near St Helen's and the news was full of stories of disaster.

Casualties have been very light, but it was unsettling. Anybody who was in Tasmania during the terrible 1967 bushfires will never forget it. The sky filled with that terrible ruddiness, as though we were perched on the edge of an active volcano. The heated air that caught in your throat as you watched specks of ash drifting down from above.

Not happy memories.

---

Penelope Trunk, author and blogger, recently wrote a column on the subject of "burnout" and very thought-provoking it was.

Burnout doesn’t come from overwork but from an inability to get what you need from the work, according to Christina Maslach, professor at University of California, Berkeley. She created the widely used Maslach Burnout Inventory to test one’s level of burnout. The six areas of burnout to watch for:

1. Working too much
2. Working in an unjust environment
3. Working with little social support
4. Working with little agency or control
5. Working in the service of values we loathe
6. Working for insufficient reward, whether the currency is money, prestige, or positive feedback

People who are suffering from burnout tend to describe the sensation in metaphor of emptiness — they’re a dry teapot over a high flame, a drained battery that can no longer hold its charge.

Like most research about happiness, it comes down to your connections with other people. Maslach found that married people burnout less often than unmarried because a spouse provides another means for fulfilment.

So make sure you are reaching your goals and maintaining close friendships, and you probably won’t burn out.
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/

That was certainly interesting, because I've experienced some similar emotional reactions, though I wouldn't say that I suffered any of the shortcomings listed above. My way of phrasing it was to compare myself with a motor vehicle -- one that was constantly used for short trips, day after day, and never had a chance to charge up its battery.

Eventually there comes a day when that car is not going to start, no matter how normal it may seem to look at.

homage to a cat alone

It's never good when you lose a pet. In this case it was particularly upsetting for my sister because her cat Jezebel seemed to be on the mend after some extensive (and expensive) medical care.

She had regained her appetite, looked a lot brighter and had even caught a mouse for the first time in years.

Unfortunately she went into a sudden decline one Monday. At midday she was perfectly normal, then she had some sort of bad turn and by 7 p.m. the Vets had said there was nothing more they could do for her. A sad day indeed.

---

Most of my spare time in November was taken up with the international novel-writing project NaNoWriMo. The idea is that everyone starts writing on November 1st and completes 50,000 word stories by the last day of November.

I managed to get through with a couple of days to spare last year, but this time I didn't make it to the winning post. Partly it's because I haven't the stamina I had last year, partly it's because I hit a problem with the plot in the first week and never got back on schedule.

I did finish the 50,000 words but it was two hours past the deadline, so I didn't get the coveted "winner" designation on the NaNoWriMo website. *Sigh*

My novel (or novelette if you prefer) this year was a psychological thriller set in the Australian television industry. I was so disorganised that I haven't even thought of a title for it this year.

I still had 6,000 words to write on the final day. I thought that if I really put my head down I might just do it, but it was a Thursday so I spent all afternoon working in the church office. If it hadn't been for that, I reckon I might have made it.

Still, there's always next year.

---

The Full Moon is on Tuesday December 5. The evening sky is now devoid of bright planets, but Saturn can be seen in the early morning sky near Regulus, the brightest star in Leo. By the end of the week, keen-eyed observers can see Mercury, Mars and Jupiter just above the horizon half an hour before sunrise, a foretaste of the rare triple massing next week. (Personally I hope not to be awake at that hour!)


QUOTE OF THE MONTH:

If you actually believe in the value of individual freedom and responsibility (which not many people do, though many claim to), you pretty much have to agree that people have the right to decide for themselves what to do with their own bodies—if they also accept responsibility for the consequences. And that is something that our current culture has aggressively discouraged, to the point of making it practically impossible.

-- Stanley Schmidt, editor of ANALOG

goose steps in

I'll wake up one morning and find a goose on my bed if I'm not careful. Zelda the goose who lives in my back yard has started showing a wish to get into the house. Twice in one morning I discovered her standing in the back door, apparently considering her options.

Memo to self: reinforce the barrier keeping her away from the door.

Maybe she doesn't like the weather outside, which is more than a little unpredictable. Last week it was snowing on the mountain one evening, then the following day it hailed on me when I was driving home. It cleared up for Saturday - lucky for the bride at the wedding Julie attended in Richmond - but by Saturday night mist had settled over the city and it was nice and muddy when we were feeding the animals that night.

Not all the neighbours complain about Julie's animals. There's one woman who's moved in up the hill who not only enjoys seeing the horse and the poultry over the fence but has actually bought a sack of lucerne so she can feed the horse whenever he comes over to her side of the paddock!

A few more neighbours like that and Julie could save a lot of money on horse food.

---

I seldom go out two nights running, but this week was an exception. Friday night I was invited to a quiz night at the local RSL club; it was fun, although I think I exceeded my weekly allowance of fat, sugar and salt in one evening.

Saturday night was a special concert by the Tasmanian Song Company; under the title "Showstoppers" they presented songs from musicals ranging from HMS Pinafore to Les Miserables. A little too much Sondheim for my taste, but that's par for the course.