Summer marches out

My Kindle tells me I have read for 83 weeks without missing a week, but I did miss a couple of days when I was in hospital last month.  Now it seems I still have four chapters of Russell's THE SPARROW to read, which is annoying because I had planned on finishing the novel by the start of March.  I am almost tempted to take Wednesday off and just stay home till I finish the damned book.

*

Tuesday I was tired and did little.  At least I was able to go out to the quiz night this week after taking last week off due to ill health.   We didn't do so  badly, finishing in second place.   Probably my favourite moment was the Acronym round where I was asked to say where the word Taser came from;  you should have seen my team mates when I confidently wrote down "Tom Swift's Electric Rifle" !

*

Well, I carried out my idea of staying home on Wednesday and finishing the novel THE SPARROW.  After the last chapter I put the book down and stared into space for a while.  It's certainly an intriguing book, with echoes of Jack Vance, Philip Jose Farmer and Harlan Ellison (three of my favorite authors).  Because of the way the story jumps around in time, place and character, you aren't absolutely sure where the plot is going -- as you get closer to the end, you have the feeling that something bad is going to happen soon.  But unless you're psychic, you have no idea just how bad.   I don't think I've had this sort of reaction to a book for decades.  If this was a TV show, it would be freely decorated with warnings about "mature themes".  I didn't start reading anything else for two or three days - it took me that long before I could face a new story.

*

Thursday attended the FOM annual general meeting.  Travelled in by car instead of bus for once, so I wasn't quite as tired as I sometimes am afterwards.  But still felt happy to get to bed on time and clock up a full eight hours sleep.  Don't often remember my dreams this year, but I do recall that night's.....

I was back home at our old place in Liverpool Street with the family.  I was getting ready to go out, and my sister happened to ask me whether there was anything worthwhile on TV tonight.  The morning paper was in front of me so I picked it up and started glancing through it to find out.  Then I stopped and groaned.  My sister asked me what was the matter.  I stared down at the newspaper.  "There's a full page of comic strips," I said glumly.  "They haven't had comics in Australian paper for years.  So if ever I see them, I know that I am still asleep and this is all a dream."  She looked at me, plainly baffled.  When I looked through the rest of the paper, I found a big lift-out full of comic strips I'd never heard of.  A disconcerting experience, knowing that you are dreaming and not being able to do anything about it.

Plainly my subconscious has not forgotten the sixty odd years I spent reading the comic strips in the local paper.  Apparently it knows that I miss them, and tries to make up for it by providing them in my dreams.   I'll bet Freud or Jung never had a patient with these sorts of dreams !

*

Tuesday quiz night we came second yet again.  I thought 81 points was a good score but the folk at the next table got 85.  However in the movie round I  was the only person who recognized the film clip from THE WILD BUNCH  😳

Wednesday I was leaving a meeting in Sandy Bay to drive home and not only did it start to rain but we saw a lot of silent flashes in the sky ("dry lightning").  Between that and a couple of crashes on the highway, it seemed a long time before I got home.  Heated up something for dinner and ate while listening to a Maigret audiobook.

* 

A Warning !   Went  out  to do the weekend shopping on Friday.  When I started on the trip home, I  noticed an unfamiliar warning light on the dashboard - it looked like nothing so much as one of those signs by the roadside that warn you of dangerous driving conditions in case of ice or snow.  [see above]  I drove home carefully while the light stayed on, even though ice or snow would be unprecedented at the end of summer in Tasmania.

It took me about fifteen minutes paging through the car manual before I found the right section.  It turns out the DSC may be turned off  -  that's the Dynamic Stability Control.

I couldn't help it, I had to laugh.  Anybody who has watched me walk more than a few steps knows that it's not the car that needs Dynamic Stability Control, it's the owner !

[The light must have healed itself;  it did not come on next day.]

Goodbye [and good riddance] to February

 As February goes on, we have had a few cooler days - and more importantly cooler nights.  There's nothing like a hot and humid night to set you up for a bad start to the next day.  Although I did manage to get uncomfortably warm today when I dozed off in my chair in the afternoon sun after I got back from a meeting of the Sunday lunch club.

  (This is  similar but different to the Friday lunch club; there have only ever  been two people who have belonged to both of them.  I wonder if I could start calling the monthly meetings of the Friends Of Missions group the Thursday lunch club?)  Maybe I could blame my nap on reading a chapter of a Henry James novel after I got home --  no, that wouldn't be fair.  Probably the plate of lamb's fry I had at the hotel in South Hobart was the culprit.

*

The 11th was a Tuesday.  I slept reasonably well and had a light breakfast while the morning news show A.M. filled my ears with the (mostly bad) news of the day.  The usual routine of feeding the animals and downloading yesterday's podcasts, then morning tea while I read the first six chapters of my new novel THE SPARROW (1996) the first novel by Mary Doria Russell. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, James Tiptree Jr. Award and the British Science Fiction Association Award. 

Light drizzle for a few minutes at midday.  The weather forecast for this week is confounding.  They predict a heatwave for Thursday, then a cool change late in the week, possibly including snow flurries up on Mount Wellington!   In the meantime I have to go out to buy bread to replace the loaves that went mouldy during the warm weekend afternoons.

Here's the longer version of how I ended up in hospital on Wednesday.  Skip it if you want to.

Lunchtime on Wednesday I left home intending to be away for a couple hours at the first meeting for the year of our church's Bible Study Connect Group.  I got to my destination, a house in the hills above Sandy Bay and parked out front.  I took my walking stick and carefully picked my way across to the path that led uphill to the house.  Now because it was almost three months since I'd been there, I had partly forgotten the steepness of the slope, particularly that I usually walked up the left hand side of the path which was the easier and more level side of the path.  I absent-mindedly pointed myself straight at the house and walked forward - straight into the steeper and more curved side of the path.

You can guess the rest.  I took two or three steps and couldn't understand why I suddenly felt unsteady and out of balance.  I jammed my stick into the ground behind me, trying to steady myself, but the path was concrete and it didn't help at all.  I felt myself falling backwards and a moment later I felt my body and my head hit the ground;  I later found that I had come down on my right buttock, my right elbow and the right side of my head.

A nice young couple who were walking down the street saw me fall and hurried  to my aid.  Another member of the Connect Group was just arriving and she hurried up to the house to summon help.  With support, I made it into the house and the lady of the house (an ex-nurse) tended to the grazes on my elbow, the only place that was actually bleeding.  I was vaguely surprised at how quickly the right side of my head had swollen up, and when I phoned my doctor he was quick to advise me to seek attention at the hospital where I could be checked for concussion.

So that's how I ended up in the waiting room at the Emergency Department.  This wasn't my first fall,  but all the other times I'd been brought in by ambulance.  I composed myself and took a seat among the crowd, knowing I might be sitting there for some time.  There were young men, old women, mothers with children, the whole variety of humanity waiting patiently to  be fed into the system.  I gradually worked my way from one waiting room to another, seeing various doctors and being X-rayed, ECGed, blood-tested, blood-pressure checked and given all the usual tests to see if I was "with it" or not.

By the end, I felt I was right on the cusp of going/staying.  I had nothing except the clothes I stood up in, my wallet, my phone and my walking stick.  I had spoken to some of my friends, and promised to keep them informed if any decision was made.  Finally a doctor told me that they'd like their physiotherapist to assess my walking, so they'd like to keep me in overnight so I could see him first thing in the morning.  Okay then.  I was placed in a wheelchair and whisked through the rabbit warren that is the Royal Hobart Hospital and into a section of the building I didn't recognize.

They stopped at the door of a room that looked unusually modern.  It reminded me of nothing so much as a smaller version of the astronaut's room in the movie 2001.  There was a comfortable bed surrounded by all manner of  machinery, thankfully none of them beeping at me.  I was given one of those hospital robes that feel like a sarong and some sandwiches and a hot drink.  They even charged up my mobile phone for me, enabling me to text people and say I'd see them tomorrow.

One of the staff came round with the inevitable form for me to sign  and initial.  I duly did so, reflecting on how my signature had deteriorated in the last decade.

As I drifted off to sleep, it struck me that nobody had looked at the bandage on my elbow.  I guess it looked so professional that all the staff must have assumed somebody else had dressed the wound.  I made a mental note to mention it to my friend;  she would probably be amused to discover she hadn't lost the knack.

So the next day,  I woke up and looked at the clock, wondering how the animals were faring at home  They had probably gone to sleep last night thinking I must have gone out and forgotten their supper.  I hoped to be home in time to feed them lunch.  It was odd to think that my clock radio would be broadcasting the latest news to an empty bedroom.  It reminded me of that Ray Bradbury story about the automated house that kept to its routine even after its owners had been vaporised in a nuclear war.

A nice woman with a clipboard came round with some personal questions to ask me.   I've done this before, though last time I had regarded the questioner with some suspicion, wondering if she was a spy for the Public Trustee.  This was a much jollier occasion, with my inquisitor and I sharing a laugh at some of my answers.  At one point, she asked me the routine question "Do you know where you are?"  I thought for a second and said I knew I was in hospital but I had no idea what part of it.  "This is the EMU" she said.  I looked blank and she added "The Emergency Medical Unit."   Trust them to have thought up a new three-letter-acronym!

So the Physiotherapist came round, watched me walk around and asked me a few questions.  He was surprised when I told him I'd been on the waiting list for a cardio consultation for 53 weeks.  He said he would write to my GP.  He said I'd be told I could go home shortly, and I was.  I asked at the nurses' station was there any paperwork before I left and they shook their heads - "There isn't even anything for you to sign," they said.  "You're free to go."

And so I did just that.  While I waited for friends to pick me up and go down to Sandy Bay to pick up my car, I cautiously ran my hand over my scalp.  I could still feel the swollen area, but it was definitely going down and I suspected nobody would even notice it if I didn't regale them with the story of my latest head injury.

And if you've read this far, congratulations.

*

I sneezed as soon as I walked though the back door this afternoon.  Obviously the climate indoors isn't as variable as it is outdoors.  (Headline in today's paper SNOW FALLS AS FIRES STILL RAGE).

*

Could make a party game out of this  -  who would you like to be shipwrecked with?  My choice would be Sorrel Wilby. Sorrel Wilby is an award-winning adventurer, becoming the first person ever (with hubby Chris) to traverse the Himalaya (6500km) on foot in 1991.  I have selfish reasons for this choice.  I know that on the first day  she would have located a source of fresh water and gathered edible fruits and nuts.  On the second day she would have built a makeshift shelter for us.  By the fourth day she would probably have constructed a raft for us to escape the island.  (I used to watch her on television leading expeditions up the side of active volcanic mountains, so I feel not much is beyond her.)

*

An anecdote I forgot to put in my story about my trip to hospital...   Halfway through the afternoon I had worked my way up the ladder to one of the smaller waiting rooms with half a dozen other patients.  We were sitting around waiting;  every so often one would leave or another one would arrive.  I was sitting there in a semi-trance, afraid to look at anything on my phone because I was afraid of flattening the battery.  I read all the posters on the walls and amused myself by trying to make anagrams out of the words in the warning notices.

One thing didn't amuse me though.  Looking straight ahead from where I sat,  there was a rack of boxes on the wall that held various sizes of disposable gloves.  There were four of them.  Three were one way up, the other one was upside down.  Whenever my gaze passed over them, I involuntarily read the labels on three of them.  Trying to ignore the fourth box was a losing battle.  Finally, I stood up and walked across to the waste paper basket on the other side of the room.  I dropped some scrap paper into the basket, standing so my body blocked the view of the rack from outside the room.  Quickly and quietly I grabbed the miscreant box out of the rack, reversed it and slid it back into place.  Order was restored to the universe. It took about two seconds, and nobody would have seen me do it.

Then I heard a woman's voice from the other side of the room.

"Oh thank heavens.  That's been driving me crazy ever since I sat down!"

*

Tuesday I woke from a good night's sleep.  That's the good news.  An hour after breakfast, my stomach started doing handstands.  You would have thought it was trying to stage a coup d'état.   I wasn't game to leave home for quite a while.

In the evening, I took a cab out to the Quiz Night.  It was only a 15-minute ride and somehow I spent ten minutes of it answering questions about the Bible from the cab driver.  I must remember to turn down my halo before I go out in public in future.

Only three of the usual team were present, but between us we covered a lot of general knowledge.  I may note that I scored 10/10 in Science & Nature and we finished in second place with a respectable 75 points.  As usual there were a couple of stumbling blocks (try as I might, I could not remember Jerry Springer's name) and I'm still scratching my head over the question that asked for a word with all the vowels in it.  I came up with "aqueous" but the word they wanted was "queuing".

*

I am not a doctor, I'm not even a hypochondriac.  But we all know our own bodies and wonder at any unexpected changes we experience.  While suffering from my usual summer cold, I had two bouts of diarrhoea in ten days - the second one fairly spectacular.  I cannot think of anything unusual in my diet this month.  Is it possible that the mucus I've been coughing up (and mostly swallowing) has somehow acted as a lubricant on my digestive tract and caused the process of peristalsis to  become unexpectedly rapid, fast-tracking the waste products through the gut?  Or am I just suffering from the age-old layman's problem, trying to ascribe a simple cause to a complex problem...

Books for the shortest month:

A LONDON LIFE by Henry James, 1888

CALL MR. FORTUNE by H.C. Bailey, 1920

THE DAGGER AFFAIR by David McDaniel, 1965

THE SPARROW  by Mary Doria Russell, 1996 

THE CINEMATIC LEGACY OF FRANK SINATRA by David Wills, 2016

a New Year note

 AI pic of me and Caroline Munro out shopping

Dear friends, I find it hard to believe we have reached the end of January already. At this rate we shall soon be stocking up on calendars and diaries for 2026. At least we have a (temporary) break from the hot weather, which won't be back till next Monday if the forecast is accurate. It reminds me of the 1980s, when my first chore on returning from work in the summer months was to open the front and back doors, to allow the sea breeze to blow through the house - Mother Nature's air conditioning.

 

Since getting my cataracts done a couple of years ago I have been able to resume my old habit of reading for an hour or more each day, in consequence of which I received a message from Amazon saying I had achieved a new personal best, reading on my Kindle for 77 weeks in a row. I'm glad they are keeping track, since I certainly wasn't. This afternoon I finished reading the Strugatsky novel ROADSIDE PICNIC (a.k.a. STALKER). I am now contemplating my to-be-read list, wondering what to tackle next.

 

My poultry population has now sunk to ten, I think, with the body of the blind hen curled up in her usual sleeping spot. She has, unless I am very much mistaken, left us for the Great Barnyard in the sky. (I don't mind feeding Julie's chickens for the rest of their lives, but I do wonder how long this will go on for; I think most of them must be ten years older or more.) At least I have finally rid myself of the last of the roosters.

 

I am typing this on my secondary laptop, the one I bought in a sale last year because I sensed the old HP laptop was getting a bit old and cranky. Last year it started being a bit erratic and this month most of the keys in the middle of the keyboard stopped working. Until you can't use them, you don't know how often you use the letters M Y U and J !

My secondary machine is an Acer, which I bought mostly because it had a clear white-on-black keyboard which I could see a lot better 

than the HP's black-on-silver layout. Of course I had never noticed that the Acer lacks two of the frequently used keys, Page Up and Page Down. Apparently there is a work-around that lets you use the keys 3 and 9 instead, but old dogs and new tricks....

 

I assume that the owners of the house next door are off on holidays, leaving the younger generation in charge of the premises. Two Saturdays in a row they have had noisy parties full of music, loud voices and other such noise. In fact after the first Saturday night I went to sleep and dreamed I was back in my 1970s job running an inner-city bar.

*

BOOKS OF THE NEW YEAR -- January's reading report

ROADSIDE PICNIC by A&B Strugatski 1971 (filmed as STALKER)

RENTAL PERSON WHO DOES NOTHING by Shoji Morimoto 2019

WILD ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES 3 by Will Murray 2023

WHISTLE STOP by Maritta M. Wolff 1941

TROUBLE IS MY BUSINESS by Raymond Chandler 1950

 

2024 ends

 

 I'm getting too old for all this stuff...

Monday I went out to my GP to get a prescription for a new drug they've put me on.  One of those silly made-up names like Ferrofibroton which tells you nothing about what it actually does.  :(
Tuesday morning I felt too tired to go out and play croquet, but was okay for the Quiz Night.  Missed out on winning again, but we have one more chance this year.
Wednesday I was still tired (why can't I get to bed on time anymore?)  but I did make it to the final meeting of the Connect Group for 2024.  Happy to see Phillip Mitchell there;  his father used to be my boss back in the 1970s.
Thursday I spent the day driving around with Keith Curtis. Keith wanted to gs to the South Hobart tip shop before the end of the year, as well as a final visit to Kookaburra Books. I thought I might get Friday off, but he rang up and said "Want to meet for coffee?"
Saturday was the annual Croquet Club Christmas Lunch.  As usual I presided over the quiz, and one member won a prize for getting 15/18 answers right.  Afterwards I polished off the leftover champagne (only half a glass full) and drove into town to deliver a big bag of cleaning supplies to the church hall. (No way I was struggling into the hall with them Sunday morning.)
Sunday I arrived punctually for the Communion Service and took my place.  All went well till the final moments when the minister announced that for our final hymn we would be singing something new, an American hymn titled "O Come, All You Unfaithful".  We sang it but I could see some of the congregation were taken aback.
After a quick lunch, I returned to the city for the annual Organ Society concert at Collegiate school.  Liz Barsham came over for a chat before the concert, and we discussed her recent art exhibition in Salamanca Place.  Then the mighty Wurlitzer started up, and we sang a few Christmas songs.  Believe it or not, the first one we sang was "O Come All Ye Faithful" !
https://worshipmatters.com/2020/12/18/the-story-behind-o-come-all-you-unfaithful/
*
Monday I looked at the weather forecast and decided to stay indoors all afternoon.  After lunch I retired to my bedroom and shut the door while the temperature soared to 32C outside - that's 90F in the old scale.
I stayed inside all afternoon, finally venturing out to feed the chickens when the temperature had eased to a more tolerable 27C.  The forecast said that there would be showers between dusk and dawn as the hot northerly winds changed, and I felt a little drizzle in the air as I finished in the backyard.  Let's hope we have better weather for Christmas week.
*
Birthday greetings to ABC Tasmania.  It's 100 years today since they began broadcasting in my home town.  Of course radio was very different in 1924.  You had to wear a suit and tie when you were on the air representing the national broadcaster and you probably had a cultured English accent.  There was also an ashtray next to every microphone and a piano in the studio in case you had somebody providing live music.  Happy birthday ABC.
*
"The Christian faith is the odd one out in the world. Christianity tells you that you are accepted by God, not by working work your way up to Him, but because God has worked his way down to you."
-  Alistair Bain 2014.
*
Christmas being over and done with (and that tiring pre-Yule three weeks) I had resolved to stay home and do absolutely nothing on Boxing Day.  Which is just what I did.  After morning tea, I relaxed with a book in the garden.  At the end of one chapter I put it down and just enjoyed the silence.  No traffic, no voices from passing pedestrians, no power tools from next door, no dogs barking.   Not even any birdsong.  Complete and utter silence.
Then the phone rang.  It was Keith, alerting me to the fact he was in town at the Boxing Day sales.  Apparently the place was so full of shoppers, people were lining up on the footpath waiting to get into some stores.
I put the phone down and said to myself "I think I made the right decision."
*
Books of December  -  
it's a long time since I kept a reading log, but here is my book list for the last month.
1Q84 book three  (Murakami)
Vhast 02 • Engaging Evil (Lenehan, Cary J.)
Tales From the Cafe (Coffee 2) (Toshikazu Kawaguchi)
Vhast 03 • Clearing the Web (Lenehan, Cary J.)
Forever Rumpole  (John Mortimer)
White Face (Edgar Wallace)
First Form at Malory Towers (E. Blyton)
Finders Keepers (Emily Rodda)
Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 2 (Will Murray)
If you lived here, you'd be home by now (Christopher Ingraham)

Winter woes

I've always said that we get the worst weather just at the end of winter, as we're about to move into Spring.  It was certainly true this year - I can't recall a year when we had so much wind.

Saturday morning it looked too wet and windy to go round the op shops, so I was ready to settle in for a quiet afternoon at home, but...
After I'd fed the chickens I was sitting down enjoying my morning coffee when there was a mighty gust of wind and something went <CRASH> overhead.  A quick inspection of the backyard showed nothing amiss, then I raised my eyes to heaven and LO the truth was revealed to me.   The wind had come in the back of the house, flown up the stairs and blown out the attic window.   The decades-old pane was now a heap of broken glass on the roof above the back door.   😟
I haven't been in the attic for some time, in fact not since I had my cataract operation,  My failing eyesight had made me cautious about climbing the stairs.  I had a second cup of coffee to give me extra get-up-and-go,  then I began the ascent.   Once I moved the fallen books off the steps and cleared away the cobwebs, it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be.   I passed my desk and typewriter (both covered in dust) and went past the rows of bookshelves, pausing only to pick up some 1963 annuals featuring Dan Dare and Supercar.
The window was pretty much as I expected;  the lower pane was still intact but the upper half had vanished completely.  I rigged up a crude cardboard cover in its place and then slowly and carefully descended the staircase.  Covered in dust and cobwebs I would have looked like the family ghost to anyone who had just wandered in the back door.   I'll decide  to do about it tomorrow, I thought to myself (channeling Scarlett O'Hara).

 
The first Tuesday of Spring, I opened the back door and stood there for a moment, basking in the sun and the warm air.  The sun was shining, the birds were singing and a gentle breeze blew across the backyard.  I felt like a groundhog emerging from his burrow.   For the first time in a week I was able to breakfast on the patio, enjoying my tea and toast while I finished the Edgar Wallace novel I was reading on my Kindle.  I don't suppose it will stay like this for long, but it was a great start to the day.
*
The Australian government wants to stop underage people accessing social media.  Some are saying a whole new agency may have to be set up.  Possibly the expression "the Facebook Police" could become a real thing.  Your worst nightmare - a chatbot with a badge.
*
Hoped that this week might be a bit quieter, but not the way it worked out.  Tuesday and Thursday I was out driving around the op-shops with Keith ($1 CDs at Lifeline!), Tuesday night was quiz night, Wednesday I went up to New
Norfolk to visit friends on their farm while the weather was good, Friday I did the weekend shopping after I met up with a friend from Claremont who wants me to take a look at his laptop.  Saturday I plan to stay inside out of the cold weather and rehearse my reading of chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes for church on Sunday morning.   Aside from that, nothing special happening !

On the road again

My bank account took a bit of a battering in May. The car was increasingly unreliable so I put it into the garage for its long delayed annual service. It seemed fine the next day then the day after it broke down (first symptom: couldn't drive uphill!). So one of my friends who is more mechanical than me had a go at fixing the engine, which only resulted in a bill for spare parts that didn't seem to help any.

So after a week or two, we lost patience and went round the corner to the nearest car yard. While I am browsing through the high-priced models out the front, my friend marches up to the manager and says straight out "Have you got any good cheap cars?" Well, if you don't ask you don't get. He takes us over and shows us a very clean and impressive Mazda that's about a quarter of the price of the cars out front. 

 Then we haggled a bit and he knocked 15% off the price.

So I now have a new(ish) car that seems to run well; it even came with half a tank of petrol, which is nothing to sneeze at these days. And I am slowly getting used to the newfangled digital display!

 

Driving or dining, I have my habits

 

Lately my listening is divided up between the shows I listen to while driving and the ones I run while I'm at the dinner table. Plus the odd one at bedtime.

My dinner time list last month:
Boston_Blackie_-_Marked_Money_10_06_1948
CaseClosed886 Squad Cars 1968
The Adventures Of The Abbotts 1955
Challenge of the yukon_s51e016_the third strike.
Cisco kid_s53e051_key of death.
Escape_-_The_Brute_04_11_1948
Have gun will travel_s59e021_in an evil time
Hopalong cassidy_s50e022_the letter from the grave
RelicRadio883 Escape 1953 and The Shadow 1941
Suspense 1949-12-22 Double Entry
The Horror1166 Where The Dead Sleep by The Creaking Door 1965
Frontier Gentleman (10-05-58) The Librarian
The_Mysterious_Traveler_-_Death_has_a_Thousand_Faces_09_21_1948.
The_Whistler_-_Fateful_Friday_05_26_1947
Thriller831 The Birds by The Hollywood Radio Theater 1953
Wild bill hickok_s52e048_the mayor of mule mesa
Grand ole opry_s58e001_WSM radio
      -- C:\Users\61408\Music\2024-03-06 L

And my listening on the road :
A Happy Heart, A Taste of Honey, and a Banana Boat - Pgm BMP
ACADEMY AWARD--THE WATCH ON THE RHINE
BURNS & ALLEN, MAY 20 1948
Broadway-is-my-Beat_09-18-22
Challenge of the Yukon (ep0805) 1950 The Gold Behind the Waterfall
ESCAPE Earth Abides by George Stewart 1&2
Frontier town_s49e046_where men are men
Hopalong cassidy_s50e018_bullets for ballots
Music Box - Connect Radio 02-05
R-U-R_ Project-Audion_5-29-20
Sunset Melodies - Connect Radio - 02-07
Wild bill hickok_s52e044_a letter of warning
Sunday Bandstand 10 December 2023
-- D:\2024-02-02 H

 Thanks to Relic Radio, Andrew Rhynes, You Tube and the Internet Archive for sharing so much good stuff.

Into the new year we go

 Someone on a Facebook page for vintage paperbacks said to me "you seem to have read just about everything! I feel both admiration and envy!"

My response was it just seems that way. I did some research once and found the older a book was, the more likely I was to have read it. As we approached the present day, my strike rate sank to zero.

I was fortunate that my teenage years where I was reading almost constantly coincided with a wave of paperbacks in the 1960s that offered SF titles old and new at affordable prices. My notebooks of the time reveal I was consistently reading six paperbacks a week,month in and month out. (The average paperback in those days was seldom bigger than 192 pages, remember.) Under that set of circumstances, it was easy to cover the field fairly well !
*
Got through Christmas without any drama.  I drove in for the morning service at church where we sang all the old favorite Christmas songs.  Home and had time to sit down down for a while before joining my niece Anita and her son for lunch in the city.

I had never been to the Crowne Plaza before - it was built after  I moved out of the city - and it has a deceptively small frontage (a bit like Doctor Who's Tardis).  We enjoyed a very pleasant meal, and I managed to stop eating just at the stage where I felt I could have eaten one more mouthful.  That's the time to stop!
*
Tuesday I skipped the usual croquet morning and the evening quiz night,  so I had plenty of time to meet up with Dr Ali, my new medical adviser.  He had received the results from the scan I had early in the year.  Good news and bad news.  There was no sign of Problem A, which they had been looking for.  But they had noticed some signs of Problem B, so I have to go and see a specialist.  Sigh.   Oh well, better to get it done than not know about it at all.
*
The television set hasn't been switched on since before Christmas.  Oh, I have watched a couple of movies on You Tube (seeing THE MONOLITH MONSTERS again was a real treat, haven't seen it in fifty years).   In the milder weather, I have been eating my meals out on the patio, and I have a new radio by the back door -- i was initially attracted to it because it has both a cassette deck and bluetooth, a hybrid of two different centuries.   This means I can listen to old radio shows while I eat.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've listened to HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL, FRONTIER GENTLEMAN, THE HERMIT'S CAVE, THE HAUNTING HOUR, GANGBUSTERS, THE WHISTLER, ESCAPE, WILD BILL HICKOK, THE SEALED BOOK, DRAGNET, CHALLENGE OF THE YUKON, THE CISCO KID, and HOPALONG CASSIDY.

Memories

While I was sitting out the back having my morning serve of tea & toast, I was flipping through a magazine and looked at one of their short stories; it turned out to be about a brother and sister who didn't get on in younger years but came to love and respect each other as they grew up.  The story ends with the brother proudly being part of the wedding of his younger sister.

After I finished reading, I closed the magazine and sat there lost in my thoughts for a while.  What were the odds, I pondered.   Just this morning, Facebook had reminded me that it was seven years to the day I had been best man at the wedding of my younger sister.  I'll never forget how happy she looked that day.

We miss you, Julie.   God bless.

*

Even last Sunday was busy this week.  I read from the Old Testament at the communion service this morning (and got the usual two or three comments from the parishioners - maybe I should start selling my autograph for the missionary fund).

Then picked up three bags of feed from the Animal Tucker Box store.  Home for a light lunch and closed my eyes for an hour.  Went next door to a birthday party for my neighbor's big-seven-oh celebration.  The family dogs didn't seem upset by all the visitors, though one of them brought her ball in and kept dropping it at stranger's feet and looking hopefully at them. 

*

Here's a poem I wrote back in 2014:

A MONDAY POEM

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.

Down I go again !

 

Broke my glasses again.  Don't really know how it happened.   Last year when I had my first bad fall, I could sort of understand it -- I was walking uphill in the dark when I lost my balance.  But this time?  I went out to vote on Friday, got out of my car, took two steps and down I went.

I hit my nose when I went down, so a gratifyingly large number of people appeared from all directions when they saw me lying there bleeding profusely.  At the hospital, they gave all the usual tests - scans, X-rays, blood tests, and the old "I'm going to shine this light in your eye" standard.   A paramedic asked me if I knew the date and I replied less than enthusiastically "Yes, it's Friday the 13th !"

One young nurse leaned over me and said "I want you to grasp my hands and pull me towards you..."   I thought my luck had changed, but she was just testing me.

Later, when I was beginning to feel very dry, two nurses came in and one said
"You might be a bit dehydrated.  Could you drink these two bottles of water in thirty minutes?"   I said "I'll give it a go!"  I must have had a gleam in my eye because I heard the other nurse murmur "Challenge accepted."

They finally let me go home about 7.15  -  as I sat in the cab going home, I was vaguely surprised to see the sun was only just going down.  it felt like I'd been in the hospital for a whole day.  Needless to say I took two paracetemol and went to bed early.

 ---------------------------------------------

Once again I thank You Tube and the Internet Archive for uploading so many great movies.

 AGAIN THE RINGER  [1965]  Neues vom Hexer
Another German movie based on Edgar Wallace's novels.   This one features Heinz Drache as Inspector Wesby, the previous sleuth having been married off in the last movie.   A rich but unlikeable man is murdered and the killer tries to blame the crime on the notorious vigilante The Ringer.   Any reader of thrillers will know this is a bad idea and the Ringer is on the next plane to London to clear his name.  Two notable things  -  firstly, two of the leading ladies are played by Barbara Rutting and Brigitte Horney (really!) and secondly how did they do that scene where a young boy is locked in a room full of tigers but he makes friends with them???

PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES  [1966]
Hammer Films' only zombie movie and one of their better thrillers.  A visit to Cornwall in  1860 by an eminent doctor ends in the discovery that a local squire is using the reanimated dead to work in his tin mine!  Good perforances by Andre Morell and Jacqueline Pearce [pictured] who madc this movie back-to-back with THE REPTILE.  Michael Ripper is the village policeman.

 

RAID ON ENTEBBE [1977]
TV movie based on the 1976 hijacking of an airliner.  Packed with familiar faces.    There have been three or four movies based on this incident -- at two and a half hours this one is a bit long and I wasn't surprised to hear that 20 minutes were cut for the theatrical and home video releases.

LONDON BY NIGHT  [1937]
Amiable little mystery B-movie featuring George Murphy, better known for his song and dance roles.  Here he's an American newsman in foggy London who becomes involved in the hunt for a serial killer known only as The Umbrella Man.  With the help of his dog, a beautiful socialite and Scotland Yard man George Zucco, he tracks down the killer.   All Is Not What It Seems.

MAN BEAST [1956]
Reputedly the second movie ever made about the  Abominable Snowman, and debut production for director Jerry Warren.  Lots of stock footage spliced into the mountain scenes make this movie look better than any ultra-low-budget film has a right to.  Vexingly, the start of one vital scene seems to be lost (but you can guess what was said without much trouble).

THE SLIME PEOPLE   [1963]
A group of refugees battle for survival after Los Angeles is invaded by a subterranean race of reptiles.   Robert Hutton starred and directed, but the result is a thoroughly generic horror flick.   Most of the budget seems to have gone on the fog machine and the nasty-looking creature suits.

FROM LIFE  [2018]
Could you make a version of THE SIXTH SENSE that only runs 8 minutes?  Director Uli Meyer has done it.  See it on the Omleto channel on You Tube.

INVADERS FROM SPACE  [1965]
One of four "movies" edited from the Japanese television show about super-hero Starman.   This one is supposed to be the best of the four  -- heaven help us if that is true!

SHARKNADO 3
Following on from the inexplicably successful tongue-in-cheek action movie SHARKNADO,  it's clear that the law of diminishing returns has set in, as it often does with movie series.  Probably the stupidest film I've seen this year.

BRIDE OF THE GORILLA [1951]
Jungle film noir !  Barney  (Raymond Burr) kills his elderly employer in order to get to his beautiful wife (Barbara Payton). However, an old native witch witnesses the crime and poisons Barney, who soon after finds himself turning nightly into a rampaging gorilla. But is it real or is it all in his head?  Director Curt Siodmak also wrote the screenplay, perhaps harking back to his script for the first Wolfman film.  Also starring are Lon Chaney (the original WOLFMAN)  and Tom Conway (who had similar problems in THE CAT PEOPLE).    Tolerable B-movie stuff.

GHIDORAH THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER   [1964]
Lots happens in this one, but basically a princess prophecies the arrival of space monster Ghidorah and the possible doom of humanity.  Can Mothra persuade Godzilla and Rodan to unite and save the Earth?   Considered by some to be one of the best of the early Godzilla movies.

POLICE DOG  [1955]
Both my sisters would have loved this movie.  They were big fans of the TV series INSPECTOR REX.  In fact the dog in this one is also called Rex!  Supporting cast includes John Le Mesurier and a young Christopher Lee.

HOUSE OF THE DAMNED [1963]
Marketed as a horror movie, but actually a suspense story about a supposedly haunted house.  Ron Foster and Merry Anders are pleasant as the leads, and black-and-white Cinemascope makes the movie look good.  This is one of three movies director Maury Dexter made at the Greystone mansion in Los Angeles.

MURDER IN TIMES SQUARE  [1943]
Edmund Lowe is a struggling playwright who finally has a hit on Broadway.  But an irascible old woman puts a curse on him and he's soon implicated in a string of "snakebite murders".   Passable B-movie thriller with some telling dialogue about the nature of fame.  Imagine if Damon Runyon and Edgar Wallace had met and decided to write a script together......
 

A lethargic end to the winter months

 I haven't been well this last few weeks.  Long Covid?  RSV?  URTI?  Who knows.

Monday morning you might have expected me to be pleased I had nothing in my diary for this week, after days of appointments and functions last week.  Didn't quite work out that way.  The weather was pleasant enough, but as the afternoon went on I began sneezing regularly;  by the time it started raining at dusk, I couldn't lean forward to pick anything up without my nose running like a tap.  Swallowing cup after cup of hot black tea, I washed down some C-G-H tablets (Vitamin C, Garlic and Horse Radish).
I had the radio on and when the evening presenter took over, he kicked off the show with the Rolling Stones singing "I can't get no satisfaction"  --  I muttered to myself, don't tell us about your troubles, we've got problems of our own!
*
We always called her "Mrs Harris" -- my sister Julie and I often visited when Madeleine was in town, and she always told us to call her by her Christian name, but we usually slipped back after a few minutes.  The big house always impressed us and once I mentioned I'd been to Government House and that it had reminded me of the Harris home;  "Yes, I think they were designed by the same architect" she said in a matter-of-fact voice."  Ah.  Yes.  (Oops)  We always enjoyed our visits there, and she always made us welcome at Sunnyside whether for small gatherings or large parties.  (Mr Harris was the only person I knew who had a portrait of himself on the wall of the pool room.) It was a long time before our two families discovered we were related through our mothers.  I can't say it made a lot of difference - Julie and Madeleine had been at school together, so discovering they were cousins changed their relationship little.
But that was many years ago, in another century.  Now I am left to speak for our side of the family and say "Good night, Mrs Harris".

*
Winter was a difficult season and by July things felt as though they were winding down.  But as often happens, there was a bit of a spike the following month.  In one week we had the quarterly organ concert, the monthly meeting at the church hall, the fortnightly study group in Sandy Bay and our weekly visit to the op shops.  By Monday morning I felt like I'd been put through a mangle.

*

Once again thanks to You Tube and Internet Archive for last month's movies.

GAPPA THE TRIPHIBIAN MONSTER [1967]
Explorers bring back a newly-hatched monster from a South Sea island to be exhibited in Tokyo.  If you've seen the British movie GORGO you'll be ahead of the plot  --  yes, the monster's parents show up looking for him and chaos ensues.  In spite of the less than original script, there's a certain naive charm about this one and you'll stay watching to the heart-warming finale.

SPARROW SONG [2021 short - 13 minutes]
A couple travel across a ruined world hoping to find food and water.  Lyrical filming with a feel that makes up for its downbeat theme.  I found it poignant that the only piece of humanity's art and culture that survives is the man's piano accordion.  Available on Omletto's you tube channel.

THE FANTASTIC FOUR  (1994)
No, not the one with Jessica Alba.  Back in '94 the conpany that owned the movie rights was contractually obliged to make a film, so they hired Roger Corman's studio to do it.  The result is actually rather fun, though film buffs might be aghast at the 1990s special effects and Marvel fans will probably tut-tut at some tinkering with the plot.  But overall, it's good comic-book style entertainment.

SOMETHING EVIL   [1972]
I've often mused on the fact that people in horror movies never seem to have watched any horror movies.  Darren McGavin and Sandy Dennis (New Yorkers who buy a haunted house in the country) certainly had never seen ROSEMARY'S BABY or they wouldn't have taken advice about the supernatural from Ralph Bellamy.
The second TV movie directed by Steven Spielberg, who complained  later that the budget was cut by CBS, who did not give him creative control of the filming.  How times have changed!

THE HORROR AT 37,000 FEET    [1973]
Back when they used to make scores of made-for-TV movies, someone obviously thought "Hey, let's make a haunted house story but set it on a Jumbo Jet!"  Hence this film.   A lot of familiar faces are trapped aboard an airliner when somebody decides to send a haunted altar to America by air freight. Fans of American TV will enjoy seeing Roy Thinnes (as an architect) and William Shatner (almost reprising his role from a certain Rod Serling show);  the rest of us, not so much.

THE MAN FROM PLANET X   [1963]
Cheaply-made science fiction film about an alien visitor landing on a fog-shrouded Scottish island.  First half moves along nicely but runs out of steam as it goes on.  According to producer Jack Pollexfen, director Edgar G. Ulmer did rewrites, designed the spaceship and the glass paintings to expedite production and cut down on expenses.  I like the Ulmer films from the fifties that I've seen but this is a sixties movie that feels like something from the fifties.

LADY FRANKENSTEIN  [1971]
If you came in after the credits, you could be forgiven for thinking this was one of Hammer Films' later productions, except instead of Peter Cushing we have Joseph Cotten.  In this atmospheric Italian production, the lovely Rosalba Neri (billed here as Sara Bey) vows to carry on her father's work after he dies.  The creature he created in his final experiment terrorizes the district and she decides to create one of her own making.   (Please note, if you watch this, don't assume there's a fault in the print;  the final scene simply fades to black, with no end credits.)

THE DAY REAGAN WAS SHOT  [2001]
No great shakes as a historical piece, but this shot-in-Canada TV movie makes an exiting story out of John Hinckley's shooting of Ronald Reagan in 1981
 (I clearly remember watching the actual event on the TV news).  Emphasis is equally divided between the doctors fighting to save the President and the chaos and bickering among the White House insiders.   Richard Crenna is Reagan and (of all people) Richard Dreyfuss plays General Haig.  

MAYDAY   [2005]
Explosive decompression at 64,000 feet is no joke.  But that's what happens in this edge-of-the-seat TV movie.  A trio of survivors have to do what they can to get the plane down safely. A few familiar faces but no big names;  however Gail O'Grady has a memorable cameo as the insurance executive who explains it would be cheaper to let the plane crash rather than try to save it.  (Based on a bestseller co-written by Nelson de Mille)

CHARLIE CHAN IN LONDON  [1934]
Sixth of the Chan films with Warner Oland playing the oriental super-sleuth.  Here he's working to a deadline  --  he has to track down a killer before an innocent man is                        hanged for the crime in three days time.  He spends the weekend at a stately home where his presence causes some alarm among the servants - "We'll all be murdered in our beds " declares a maid.  Barrister Ray Milland is there for legal help. The mystery is solved just in time, thanks no doubt to Philip MacDonald the scriptwriter (who was a popular crime novelist as well as the man who adapted REBECCA for Hitchcock).   Passable for a movie of this vintage.

ATRAGON  [1963]
The legendary lost continent of Mu reappears to threaten the world. While countries unite to resist, an isolated World War ll Captain has created the greatest warship ever seen, possibly the surface world's only hope.

THE SEVENTH VICTIM [1964]  a.k.a. THE RACETRACK MURDERS
A string of murders take place at a rich horse-owner's estate.  This is sort of an Edgar Wallace thriller - it's based on a novel by his son - and provides the required number of deaths, race-fixing and surprises.

FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD  a.k.a. Frankenstein vs. Baragon [1965]
Near the end of WWII, Germans transport the immortal heart of Frankenstein's monster to Japan, where it is seeming lost in the bombing of Hiroshima. Years later a wild boy is found, born from the immortal heart.
I saw this on TV when I was at school on a small black and white set;  this looks more impressive than that and the plot is more subtle (which could be something to do with the Australian TV censor).