Sometimes I sits and thinks

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

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

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

I guess that's life, in all its richness and heartache. But every day we get a new 24 hours, to do with as we wish...
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Had lunch in Cygnet at the Commercial Hotel, "the bottom pub". Glad to see that not only do they still have the photograph of James Harvey in the Dining Room, they're building a new function space to be called The Harvey Room. He was my great-grandfather and proprietor of the hotel until 1903.

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

Poem for Mondays

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

Too much coffee
or maybe too little.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many happy returns, sis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time marches on...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I cover the waterfront

Felt curiously disengaged wandering around Salamanca Place after my 12:15 appointment with my GP. I stopped for coffee and a sandwich at Drifter’s, but felt somehow unconnected from my surroundings.

This was my home town, I’ve lived here all my life, but today it could have been a visit to some other city for all the emotional impact it had on me.

Maybe my age is catching up with me. For many years, I always said that I didn’t feel any older on the inside. Like Jack Benny, I reached the age of 39 and stopped. But this year I’m starting to feel as though I have actually been through the 62 years that the calendar tells me I’ve lived.

The diabetes medication probably doesn’t help. Nor would my daily schedule. When you have trouble eating, drinking and sleeping it tends to throttle back the pleasures of everyday life.

But there’s always the radio. This week on A Prairie Home Companion, it's a live broadcast performance from The Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota. With special guests, French-pop girl group Chic Gamine, blues songstress Hilary Thavis, and vocalist Holly Jones. Plus, the Royal Academy of Radio Actors; Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and sound effects man Steve Kramer, Dean Magraw sits in with The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band, and of course (yay!) the latest News from Lake Wobegon. http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/

Lassie Go Home

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Haven't posted much lately, but I guess this is because each day seems so busy.  Take yesterday for example. 

I was up early because it was the day that our local fruit-and-vegetable man drops by with a van loaded with fresh fruit and veggies.   After he left, I felt so tired I thought about going back to bed... but I didn't because I knew we would never get through the day if I did.  

After feeding the poultry, my sister and I drove down to South Hobart.  Julie had spotted some luscious looking boots in the Jesse Shop op-shop when we were at a wedding at All Saints Church, but thrift shops don't take plastic cards.    We raced down and bought the boots, then had a quick fossick around the shop.  

The Jesse Shop is one of those great old stores, full of nooks and crannies filled with all sorts of bric-a-brac, memorabilia and just plain stuff.   We must go back again when we have time to take a leisurely look around.  

Then back to the croquet club for the Fun Day BBQ.  Ian and Henry had done a great job on laying out some games that we could play on the croquet lawns.   It all looked a bit odd at first but turned out to be a lot of fun.  Following that we fired up the barbecue and threw on some snags and burgers.  

To my surprise June appeared with a handful of  toy Olympic Medals and handed them out to all the competitors.   We even lined up and had our photograph taken (no we didn't have a podium, since we were all winners!).

Where does the title come in?  We had taken to the barbecue a brown dog -- not our dog, just a stray we had picked up the night before when I was driving over to Julie's place.   She thought it was too late to let it roam the streets;  it might have been run over. 

So we went back to the intersection where I thought we'd found the dog.    I walked up to the house on one corner, rang the doorbell and asked "Do you know a family that has a small white and brown dog?"

"Yes!" they cried.  "We do!"

Well, I thought to myself, that was easy enough ! 



 

Great cat rescue

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I try to lead a dull and uneventful existence, but real life keeps finding me. Last month I stepped on a manhole cover, as I’d done a thousand times before -- but this time it gave way beneath me. I snatched my foot back just in time to watch the cover pivot on its axis and plunge down the shaft in front of me. I was unhurt but considerably startled.

Last week, I drove my sister back to her house after a morning playing croquet followed by lunch at my place. When we walked up to her front door, we were surprised to find a map of the world rolled up and sitting on the porch. “Isn’t this the map off my library wall?” said Julie. I had a look and replied “It certainly is. Look, you can see the x where as a child I marked the spot the Titanic sank.”

We entered the house cautiously and decided that although she had obviously had intruders, nothing obvious seemed to have been stolen. Things were moved about, drawers opened and a book on dogs sat on the couch where the burglar had apparently been reading it. We discovered later that the visitor had used a spade from the garden to prise open a side window out of view of the public.

That was unsettling but Julie was worried about something else. “Where’s my cat??”

The other animals around the property all seemed safe and well, but the senior cat Kes (aged 15 and known for her nervous disposition) was nowhere to be seen.

We did all the usual things. Walked around the house calling her. Consulted the pet-loving neighbour across the street. Waited to see if she came back for food. Called some more.

It was possible that she’d been scared out of the house by the burglar, but it seemed more likely that she was hiding somewhere inside. We called and listened, hoping for some response.

The only witness was Julie’s dog, chained up at the back door, but unfortunately she couldn’t tell us what had happened.

That was on Thursday afternoon. On Friday we continued searching on and off. No results.

Saturday afternoon, Julie planned to do some work on the front garden while I was at the supermarket. My phone buzzed and I read a text message telling me “I can hear her, but I can’t find her.”

When I reached the house, Julie was going up and down the stairs trying to work out where the distant meowing was coming from. Eventually she settled on the right-hand wall of the attic. We could peep through an opening and see into the space under the roof.

The meowing was louder whenever we called Kes, but we couldn’t see any sign of her even when we shone a light into the cavity. The sounds seemed to come from in front of us, though there was nothing to be seen. It was very Lewis Carroll. I even went across the street and looked back at the house from a distance, just to make sure the cat wasn’t up on the roof.

Not one to leave things hanging, Julie fetched a hammer and began working on enlarging the hole in the attic wall. After a few minutes work, there was a hole large enough for us to put our heads through and peer around. No sign of Kes though.

We took it in turns calling and looking. Our attention soon focussed on an opening in the floor next to the chimney which seemed to have no reason for being there. (We eventually decided it was the top of a blocked-up airshaft.) After a few minutes, I said to Julie “Lean in as far as you can and shine the light downwards. Can you see anything at the bottom of the brick wall?”

She looked and then gave a cry. “Oh Kes! I can see her. Puss, puss, puss!”

Kes looked up and gave a meow. She was alive and responded to our calls. That was good. What was more of an unknown quantity was how to get her out of there.

She was apparently unharmed, but surrounded on all sides by solid brickwork, and eight or ten feet down from us. “I wish we had a trained monkey that could climb down and put her in a sack for us,” I sighed, vague memories of a Poe story in my mind.

While Julie fetched a saw and worked on enlarging the hole in the wall, I went to a local store and bought some makeshift rescue equipment. Ropes, nets and something called a sea anchor which just looked as though it might be handy.

By the time I got back, Julie was sawing through one of the vertical beams in the wall, having first checked that it wasn’t holding anything up. With that out of the way, there was room for her to scramble through into the space beneath the roof.

“Careful where you put your feet,” I cautioned, having visions of her crashing through the ceiling of the kitchen.

There followed a protracted sequence with us putting cat food into various things and lowering them down the shaft to try and tempt Kes into climbing aboard. The sea anchor was the right size for hoisting her up, but she didn’t seem to want to get into it.

We lowered down a net but she sat on it instead of in it.

“She knows we’re trying to help her,” said Julie, peering down the shaft while I looked on warily. “If only we could explain it to her!”

What finally did the job for a hair-raising trick in which Julie attached the rope to the net and then lowered it under the cat before slowly raising it up. It took a couple of minutes, but finally she was able to slowly pull the unresisting cat up the shaft and grab hold of her.

There followed a couple of minutes of hugging and celebration before she let go of the cat. Kes promptly shot out of the room and down the stairs, as though she wanted to get away from her prison as far as possible.

Julie looked at the large rectangular hole we’d made in the attic wall. “I’ll block that up,” she said. “But not tonight.”

I looked at my watch. From locating Kes to the successful rescue had taken four hours.

POSTSCRIPT

Kes appears to be unharmed, though hungry and thirsty. Her ordeal doesn’t seem to have left any lasting problems.

The burglars haven’t been identified.

Plans are underway to cap the top of the airshaft to prevent any more such incidents.

The year 2012

2012 is the year we will see the temperatures rise, and the seas advance ...
Temperatures will rise until July / August when they will start to decline.

Unless of course you live in the Southern Hemisphere, then it's the other way around.

And as for the seas? ... well you'll have to check your local tide tables to know when they will begin to recede.

(Copied from the OTRplus forum)

Who is the Doctor

Enjoying the five-part Doctor Who audio adventure recently broadcast on BBC radio (it has been available on CD for some time, aimed at the audiobook market).  Hornets' Nest is... well, let the author explain it:  "An intricate and macabre series of interlinking tales perhaps best listened to on winter evenings. This creepy epic leads us step by spooky step towards the darkest nights of Christmas as the Doctor tells tales of his most recent escapades to his old friend and colleague Mike Yates and together they prepare to fend back the deadly and bizarre forces of darkness."

It's really nice to hear Tom Baker and Richard Franklin reprise their roles from the old television series.  Even after all these years, they slip back into the old characters straightaway.   Maybe I'm blinded by nostalgia, but I thought this was a very entertaining series so far.

Merry Christmas

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A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all from Michael (words) and Julie (pictures)

What did you do today?

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The other day, I was complaining how busy I was to somebody and they said “So what do you do all day now that you’re retired?”

Let’s take yesterday, which happens to be a Thursday. I had been late getting to sleep the night before, but I had to be up on time to wake my sister Julie and feed the poultry in the backyard. We needed to be at the Croquet Club on time for the Thursday morning golf croquet game.

The game went off well, but we spent so much time gossiping and exchanging Christmas greetings that we didn’t have time for a second game before we had to leave for a lunch date.

Julie’s old school friend (and fourth cousin) Madeleine was in town and had a small window for lunch while her mother was at the hairdresser. We met at the Green Store cafe in New Town and caught up over a meal. She needed a few extra Christmas lights, so we suggested dropping in to Chickenfeed in Moonah.

That didn’t help much, since we discovered the Chickenfeed store had been closed for flood-related reasons since the torrential downpour on Monday. Fortunately the very similar Reject Shop is just across the road.

After Madeleine had hurried off with her purchases, Julie remembered she wanted to drop off a Christmas card at the Croatian restaurant down the street. We wandered in there to find them busily cleaning up and putting everything away, ready to leave for their Christmas holiday. “Come in, come in!” they said cheerily and we ended up sitting in the darkened restaurant with a glass of champagne while we discussed their holiday plans.

We left with a large plate of cakes that they’d cleared out of the display at closing time. “That will do us for dinner,” I observed, hefting the weight of the platter.

The next detour was in to the St Vincent de Paul shop, so Julie could go through the $1 bargain rack and look around for any knickknacks suitable for last minute Christmas presents.

From there we drove to the feed store to pick up some wheat, and then on to Julie’s property to feed her animals. After I had walked the dog, I sat down for a few minutes to wait for Julie and felt very tired. The five hours sleep I had last night seemed to have been not quite enough to recharge my batteries.

We drove back to my house and I checked my e-mails and Facebook page while we had a cup of coffee. I stuck with the decaffeinated sort, since I was planning to take a nap for a while.

Two hours later I got up feeling a little better. I woke Julie, who had followed my example, and put the kettle on again. There was nothing on television we wanted to see, so I pottered about gathering up the week’s garbage, burning some audio files onto CD, and throwing together a makeshift supper. By then, it was time to switch on to listen to the Nightlife programme on ABC radio.

We listened to the late-night quiz segment, then went outside to feed the poultry in my backyard. After that we got back in the car and drove to Julie’s place to repeat the performance with her animals.

I walked the dog again, then shared an apple with her. The ginger cat wandered in and curled up on his blanket. I raised an eyebrow and said “What have you been doing today?” but there was no answer.

After Julie finished feeding the horse and checking on the new batch of ducklings, we went back to my house. I made a cup of tea, then set the computer to record this week’s episode of Those Were The Days for me overnight.

I looked at my watch and found it was very late again. What had I been doing all day? Blessed if I know.

Goodbye Insulin, Hello Bytetta

OK, I haven’t been contributing much the last couple of months. This is partly due to the travails of the Australian winter, and partly due to some health problems.

Like a lot of people nowadays, I have type-2 diabetes. For a couple of years I’ve been taking insulin with moderate results. So I was surprised when my doctor told me that he was going to take me off the insulin and put me on something new, something called Byetta.

I was a bit surprised, since I was under the impression that once you went on to insulin you were on it for good. But I was willing to try something different. He gave me a prescription and I left it at the pharmacy to be filled.

While I waited for the Byetta to arrive, I did what you would have done - googled the name to find out what it was and how it worked.

My sister was sitting across from me and looked up when I gurgled. “What’s wrong?” she asked me.

Yes,folks, Byetta is in fact lizard spit! To be fair, it is a synthetic hormone, one that mimics a substance found in the saliva of the Gila Monster.

I had grown up reading Spiderman comics, so I knew what happens to people who inject themselves with lizard essence. I imagined looking at myself in the mirror every morning, waiting for the first scales to appear.

Despite my initial misgivings I started on the new drug and injected myself morning and night for a couple of months. My doctor was pleased with the results -- not only were my blood sugar levels as good or better than on insulin, but I lost nine pounds.

Before you all rush out looking for Byetta in your local drug store, I should say it isn’t available as a diet aid, and it has some unpleasant side-effects. Chief among these is nausea, though this eased off as the weeks went by.

The reason it is associated with weight loss is that at first it kills your appetite stone dead. Because of the effect it has on your digestive system, I always felt as though I’d just eaten. I had no interest in seeking food; if it was put on a plate in front of me at the table I’d eat it. I lost interest in tea and coffee almost completely.

The only things that I actually wanted to consume were water and fruit. I felt as though I was on one of those silly fad diets.

A couple of months have gone by, and things have changed only a little. I’m still eating less (and enjoying it less -- no “comfort eating” for me). I can tolerate a bit of coffee, though I drink almost no tea. In accordance with Murphy’s Laws, it was only a few months ago that I stocked up on my favorite brands of tea, meaning that I probably now have a life-time supply of tea-bags.

I do have a little appetite in the middle of the day, after the morning shot has started to wear off and before I take the evening shot. My between-meals snacking is a thing of the past though.

It will be interesting to see what the long-term results of the change in medication will be. If the weight loss continues, I may be able to get out those trousers that I banished to the back of the wardrobe a few years ago!

We shall see.

 

November is a novel month

November is always a trying time of year, because it’s National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo). People all over the world set themselves to producing 50,000 words of fiction, starting on November 1st and going through to midnight on the last day of the month. It can be done, but it isn’t easy.

This was the seventh year I’ve taken part, and each year it seems to get a little harder. Last year was especially difficult and I felt a lot of dissatisfaction after cranking out a potboiler titled “The Purple Page.”

This year I was hoping to produce something better. I had spent a lot of time during the year musing on the plot and I felt I had a reasonable plot skeleton worked out.

The title was “The Moonlight Visitors” and would concern a man who discovered that his house guests were actually from a parallel world - that explains the

Tasmanian Tiger he saw in the back garden.

Things would have worked out all right if I’d been able to write every day -- about 1700 words a day is recommended. But things distracted me, and I had three or four days when I didn’t write at all. I was short of sleep, averaging about five and a half hours a night. There are some things that you can still do on four hours sleep, but writing fiction is not one of them.

The end result was that I had half the novel written by the time we were two-thirds of the way through the month. My maths isn’t great, but I knew I was in trouble.

I re-organized my schedule for the last ten days of the month to allow me more time to write. Especially the last three or four days. Who was the author who said the secret of writing was applying the backside to the chair and the fingers to the keys?

A pleasant surprise, I managed to finish at 4:15 pm on the last day of the month. Story completed, and almost eight hours to spare. “Wow!” I thought.

Next year I’ll be better prepared.... But then I say that every year.  

Goodbye to good books

In the city this afternoon, we took a walk through a shop that had been there all our lives. Seeing it closing down was like losing an old friend.

OBM (Oldham, Beddome and Meredith) began business in 1922 selling books to the people of Hobart. As a schoolboy, I used to go through there whenever I passed the corner of Collins and Elizabeth Street. The shop was shaped like an L, so you could walk in through the Collins Street entrance (the bookshop) and walk out into Elizabeth Street (where they sold newspapers).

In the centre of the shop was the OBM Circulating Library. They had yards and yards of books that you could borrow for a week for sixpence or ninepence. I think I worked my way through their entire Crime and Science-Fiction sections over the years.

By the end of the twentieth century, the shop had been taken over by the old-established [founded 1884] chain Angus & Robertson. It seemed odd at first when they changed the name of the shop, but it was still referred to in our family as “the OBM arcade.”

Alas, like many bookstores the chain fell in to the hands of conglomerates whose business was business, not selling books. I guess the trend to on-line sale of books didn’t help either. Whatever the cause, the Angus & Robertson chain went under, something that would have seemed inconceivable a few years ago, and the Hobart store was dragged down with the rest.

Walking in from the Collins Street side, it seemed as though there was a sale going on, with prices slashed on everything. But walking on a bit further, the real situation became obvious -- acres of empty shelves, stripped of every volume.

The Elizabeth Street side was almost empty, with a few rows of greetings cards at 75% off and a pathetic little table of stationery items. Gone was the array of magazines from all over the world, the dozens of different calendars, the complex window displays.

A skeleton staff forlornly sold what they could. Asked how long they’d be there, they replied “Wednesday is our last day.”

Who would believe that it could end like this?

Goodbye Oldham.

Farewell Beddome.

So long Meredith.

We shall not see your like again.

They want your brain....

Yesterday I was off to an early start so I could be at the Menzies Research Centre by 9:15. I was taking part in a study called CDOT (Cognition in Diabetic Older Tasmanians) which involved some physical measurements, blood tests and sessions in which I had to remember shapes and numbers.

The mental testing was more taxing than any of the physical things. I went through this three years ago, so I knew what was coming but that didn’t make it any easier.

Trying to remember a group of unrelated words was difficult enough, but I blew one question entirely I suspect -- “Tell me all the words you can think of that start with the letter A.” My mind went completely blank. “All right, there’s... well, there’s... umm...” I did manage to think up a few but I felt a bit foolish.

The one I dreaded was the numbers section. They tell you some numbers and you have to repeat them back. But then they ask you to repeat the numbers backwards ! Yikes!

In comparison, the MRI scan was quite restful. They now give you headphones and play music to you. This is an attempt to disguise the noises that sound like the USS Enterprise is being attacked by Klingons nearby.

on the road until...

The message this month, boys and girls, is “Never leave home without fastening your seat belt.” Let me tell you why.

They say that a lot of car accidents happen within a few blocks of home, and it seems that this is true. One Thursday afternoon last month I drove out of my street and turned left down the main road in my Toyota Corolla. I had travelled only half a block when I heard my sister (sitting in the passenger seat) give a gasp of horror.

I started to turn to see what she was looking at, but at that moment there was an almighty impact. A green Mazda, trying to get across the traffic and turn into the other lane, had driven straight into the left side of my car. 

I don’t remember if I tried to brake or not, I was just conscious that my car was spinning to the left and there was a loud grinding noise.

It’s not like they show you in the movies. Time didn’t draw out into a slow-motion scene or anything like that. It was all over in the space of five or ten seconds. What was most startling was the sudden cessation of motion and sound. My sister and I just sat there not moving for a few seconds, stunned by the unexpectedness of what had just happened.

What had happened was that the green Mazda had collided with my passenger side door and scraped along the left side. My car spun sideways, bouncing off the bull bar of the Tarago van beside me; this impact forced me forwards into the rear right hand corner of the blue car in front of the Tarago. The Mazda must have been trying to turn right because my car spun sideways and ended up facing left in the middle of the road.

There was minor damage to the blue car’s rear but apparently no damage to the Tarago. The Mazda’s front bumper bar was detached and hanging down. My car suffered an impact to the passenger door and that side, and to the back wheel on that side. The bonnet was crumpled up concertina-fashion in front of the windscreen.

After a few seconds, my sister and I emerged from the car and looked about blankly. Strangely neither of us seemed to think about whether we were injured (I had a scratch on my right elbow, but incredibly that seemed to be the only physical sign of the crash). I suspect we were both in shock, because we were also oblivious to the fact that we were standing in the middle of a main road at rush hour, with cars trying to get past the accident scene. We just stood there, staring at the damage, joined by the drivers of the other vehicles.

The police turned up -- well, one of them did -- and a tow-truck to take my car away. It was obvious that it wasn’t going anywhere under its own power, since the left rear wheel looked as though it would fall off if you tried to move the car.

I felt sorry for the driver of the Mazda. He was a young African guy, and he looked as glum and unhappy as you would be in his place. I went over and spoke to him a couple of times, but the body language of the others standing around obviously spelled out who they thought was responsible.

The driver of the Tarago van was amazed that I had stopped against his bull-bar but without actually crashing into his vehicle. He had watched me spin into his path and was sure that we were going to collide. In fact it was only later that we absorbed the unbelievable truth that nobody had been injured at all in any of the automobiles involved. That was our miracle for the week, maybe for the year.

As they towed our car away, my sister and I were still wandering about vaguely wondering what to do next. Fortunately a friend named Leon had been driving past and had spotted us standing next to our wrecked car. He turned around at the first opportunity and came back to offer us a lift home.

Leon helped us gather up the stuff we’d removed from the car and drove us to our destination (Julie’s house to feed her animals), returning to take us back to my house. He stressed that we needed to take it easy and suggested we might want to get checked out by a doctor the next day.

It all seemed unbelievable as we sat in our familiar armchairs that evening. Had it all really happened just hours earlier? Was my garage really empty? Perhaps this was all some sort of dream and I’d wake up to find it hadn’t really happened.

The next day was taken up with the usual business. I contacted the insurance company. We notified friends that we wouldn’t be able to join them for dinner, since our movements were now restricted to places within walking distance.

It all worked out all right in the end. The insurance company wrote off the Corolla and I used the money to buy a Hyundai Lantra. Neither my sister nor I seemed to suffer any aches or pains from the impact. If there were any legal problems resulting from the accident they obviously didn’t involve me.

Only gradually did I try and process what happened. The possibility that one or both of us might have been killed was almost impossible to take in. It’s a cliche, but I didn’t seem to be able to comprehend my own mortality.

A few days later, the man at the supermarket check-out asked us if that had been our car he’d seen. When we said it was, he asked if we’d suffered any after-effects from the accident. “Surprisingly, no” I had to say. And it was true. I had expected to have some trouble sleeping that night, but I had dozed off after a few minutes. No dreams or troubled sleep.

Maybe I was made of sterner stuff than I had realised.

Or perhaps the ability of the human mind to avoid unpleasant subjects is even more powerful than I had imagined.

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The King’s Speech won a load of Oscars last night. I saw it a couple of months ago and thought it was a fine film.

What struck me about it was that it was basically a movie about the power of radio. In an earlier generation, the speech impediment suffered by the new King would have been a difficulty for addressing visitors to the palace. Probably people attending a royal garden party would have been embarrassed by his problem, but the awkwardness would have been confined to a small number of people.

But speaking to the entire British Empire over the air made it even more important to find a way of dealing with his stutter. As war loomed, the ability of the King to speak to his nation became virtually part of the arsenal of freedom. This sounds like a job for Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue [Geoffrey Rush].    Great stuff. 

Duck! There goes Christmas!

Christmas is like a roller-coaster I feel sometimes. You start off quietly - Christmas is three or four weeks away. Then you start to pick up speed, but it’s still two weeks or more to go.

Then you go over the crest and suddenly you’re picking up more and more speed. A week? That’s no time at all! Each day just flies past and suddenly you’re bursting into the Yuletide festival, covered in tinsel, turkey and wrapping paper. You look about, thinking “What just happened?”

By the time we get to Boxing Day, you feel completely shattered. The suburbs are quiet and almost deserted while everyone is away. It’s like the silence after some awful catastrophe in an old disaster movie.

It doesn’t help that I’m still carrying a respiratory infection from the winter that I can’t get rid of. I was scheduled to read the lesson in church the week before Christmas, but my voice was so hoarse and croaking that I had to postpone it for a week. Not to mention the way my right ear keeps blocking up until I can only hear out of my left ear.

The answer for the latter problem seems to be steam inhalation. What a wonderfully old-fashioned cure! I thought my doctor was too young to have even heard of it, but he recommended I give it a try.

So if you’re looking for me, I’ll be out in the kitchen inhaling steam and looking at the pile of Christmas cards I never got motivated enough to post out.

Broken Things

The other day I got up feeling very muddle-headed after sleeping for an hour in the afternoon of a very hot day. I blundered around in the kitchen, trying to make coffee, and ended up knocking my mug off the counter.

It was one of those big black mugs with your name lettered in gold on the side. I picked it up and at first it looked all right, but when I touched it, it broke in half.

My grandfather bought those mugs. He got three of them, one for me, my sister and my mother. Michael, Julie and Mary, they said in gleaming gold lettering. Now the gold was worn and almost illegible. He’s gone now and so is my mother.

My sister is three years younger than me, but her health is not 100%. I spent a lot of time looking out for her, and I wonder how she’ll go if I’m no longer around one day.

Coming up to Christmas, you tend to think a lot about the past. 

And the future.

There’s my half-sister and her family. The youngest member of the family would be her grandson Nathan.

It’s funny to think that whatever we have will eventually belong to him. He doesn’t really know our generation. The people we knew and loved are just names to him, sometimes not even that. I guess it’s hard for him to understand a world and a century that he hardly remembers.

I sit there at family dinners sometimes and watch him. He’s big and tall and has a loud voice; he’s interested in cars and parties and his friends. Typical of his age, I guess. 

It’s one of life’s little jokes that you only really feel connected to previous generations when your own has begun to fade away and drop out of circulation.

But for now I suppose I’ll take my tablets, watch my diet and see how far into the 21st century I can make it.

Farewell Don Tuck - SF's greatest chronicler passes

The past is another country; they do things differently there.

That quote went through my mind when I recently heard of the passing of an old friend, trail-blazing bibliographer Don Tuck.

TUCK Don Henry

Passed away peacefully

at Ringwood Private

Hospital, Melbourne.

Formerly of Ulverstone and Hobart, Tasmania.

Beloved husband of the late Audrey Jean, father of Marcus,

father-in-law of Rowena and devoted Grandpa of Jessica, Lucie and Hugh.

Resting in Peace.

Like a few young men of the pre-war generation, he developed an interest in science-fiction, a minor genre often dismissed as “that crazy Buck Rogers stuff.” SF was a small niche market and it would have been possible for a dedicated fan to read all the science-fiction published in English every year. Unlike most of his fellow afficianados, he began collecting information with a view to compiling a book that would include all the available facts about the genre.

This would have been a challenging project had he been in New York or London, but he had been born in Launceston, Tasmania, as far from the wellsprings of the literature as one could get!

In those days, there was no internet, no e-mail. To query someone overseas about a fact, you wrote the question down in an air-mail letter. If you were lucky, you might get a reply in three or four weeks.

The situation was not helped by the fact that the Australian government had banned the importing of American magazines in 1940 as a war-time economy (in fact the ban lasted until 1959). This meant that the magazines that were the staple of serious science-fiction, such as John W. Campbell’s Astounding, could only be obtained by barter or depending on the goodwill of fellow fans abroad. Many of Don’s magazines from the 1940s bore the rubber stamp of the Bermuda Post Office, through which they passed on their long sea voyage to Australia.

Never deterred, Don plodded on through the decade, collecting and storing data while also moving to Hobart, holding down a job at the local zinc company and starting a family.

The story in his family was that when he married Audrey, her father volunteered to help him move house. After watching box after box of science fiction and fantasy publications loaded into the truck, he turned to his daughter and blurted out “Audrey, you’ve married a nut!” Audrey’s response is not recorded.

Don published a series of four articles about prominent SF authors in the newsletter of the Melbourne SF Club, Etherline, in 1954. Those outside his circle of friends may not have appreciated these were just the tip of the iceberg, for Don was nearing the completion of his first book on the subject.

 A Handbook of Science Fiction and Fantasy was published in 1954. Don had typed up all 154 single-spaced pages on his manual typewriter onto stencils and ran them off on a duplicator machine. No photocopiers in those days! Self-publishing was the only option since no mainstream publisher would have considered such a book for a moment.

(To put things in context, the first “real” book about science-fiction was New Maps of Hell by Kingsley Amis in 1960. The first book about science-fiction films, incidentally, wouldn’t come along until 1970 when John Baxter wrote Science Fiction in the Cinema.)

The Handbook caused a sensation in the science fiction community and there was wide approval for the scope and detail of the work. Far from resting on his laurels, Don continued collecting information and in 1959 published and revised and enlarged edition. This now ran to two volumes, a total of 400 pages!

No wonder he received a special award from the 1962 World SF Convention. The 1950s was a time of great growth in the field, and Don’s works covered it in great detail.

Still residing in Hobart, Don kept in touch by mail with fellow collectors around the world, a common practice at the time. His only face-to-face contacts were occasional evenings at his home in Lindisfarne when half a dozen SF connoisseurs would gather to discuss the latest developments in the field and admire Don’s collection. Following an hour or two of gossip, Audrey would serve refreshments and the meeting would break up. I was privileged to be invited along when Don discovered I lived just across the river from him, and he was always a courteous and charming host despite my youthful enthusiasm.

I was aware that he was still collating facts and reviews, but nobody was expecting the final flowering of his efforts. Don had been in touch with the American specialist publisher Advent, and in 1974 they began the publication of his greatest achievement, the three-volume set The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy through 1968: A Bibliographic Survey of the Fields of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction through 1968. These were three big books, and every page was packed with text (no illustrations) and detailed entries about books, authors and publishers.

Reviews were enthusiastic and 99% positive. Don was perplexed by a review by Barry Malzberg who reproached him for leaving out such famous authors as L. Sprague de Camp. It turned out that Malzberg, slightly confused about the niceties of alphabetical order, had looked under C rather than D!

The final volume rolled off the presses in 1983, and Don could be forgiven for finally drawing a line under his bibliographic career. After fifty years he deserved some time off.

The collection of old magazines and books was sold off to a university library on the mainland, and filled an entire moving van. Previous to that, Don had invited me to drop in and have a look around his garage. It was lined from floor to ceiling with paperbacks from all around the world. “Anything you want, just pick it out,” he said. I filled the back of my car with rare items at bargain-basement prices. (I wonder what they would have fetched if e-Bay had been around in those days?)

The success of his magnum opus led to his being invited to be Guest of Honour at the 1975 World SF Convention being held in Melbourne. Don was unable to make it to the convention in person, but several authors and fans were so determined to meet him that they added a trip to Tasmania to their Australian visit. We had a large dinner at a city hotel for the visitors.

After that, I lost touch with Don. He retired from the Zinc works, and he and his wife moved to Victoria, closer to his children and grandchildren. The increasingly frenetic and profitable genre that was modern science-fiction held less appeal for him (though he and Audrey did enjoy the first Star Wars film).

There were many other reference works about science-fiction in the years to come, but nearly all of them were quick to acknowledge their debt to Don’s comprehensive surveys of the field.

He had little contact with science-fiction fans in later years, and aside from a Christmas card or two, I gradually fell out of touch with him. It was a sad moment to learn he had died aged 87. I will always remember him as an agreeable host, a loyal friend and an industrious scholar. R.I.P. Donald H. Tuck.