Wednesday, August 29

This idea of talking to the iPad to save typing isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Apart from the issue of having to correct the frequent errors, I find it really difficult to find a quiet spot where I can say what I want to say. I can’t say that my ramblings are of prime importance: enough to cut myself off from civilisation for that time.

However today I am driving the swimming bus so I have an interrupted hour while the ladies are in the pool so I can ramble on to my heart’s content. But of course I now have nothing to say.

One of the social things that we have set up in the last couple of months is a semi regular film afternoon. We invite another two couples to join us mid-morning, we watch a movie and have some lunch and then watch a second movie if we’re in the mood. Each time we’ve had it has been terrific. We’ve seen some great films but also enjoyed the chance to talk about them with like-minded people. A side issue is that we get a chance to see films more than once. The film Pride which we first saw at the Peace Festival has been a particular favourite and we’ve seen it three times now, each time enjoying it more than the time before. Marilyn is particularly keen on seeing a film more than once because she picks up nuances in the second viewing which she missed the first time around.

One of our recent efforts was to invite a couple of friends, the husband of whom is severely deaf. I don’t know what he does at home but we had to scrape around to find movies with subtitles and get Jamie to set up a better sound system so that Phil would have a speaker blaring in his good ear. As it happened they cancelled at the last minute because she was sick so we still have to go through that challenge sometime soon.

Our big news is that we are heading back to Dilston to live. It’s been terrific to be in Deloraine and to have the opportunity to get involved in lots of activities in this great little town. However, Jamie and Nera have bought a house in Hadspen, just out of Launceston and will be moving in September so we have made the decision that we will head on back to Dilston rather than rent it out to someone else. In many ways we will find it great to be home but in other ways we will miss the ease of having social contact in our town that we know well. I’ve resigned from Rotary so that’s one fewer connection holding us here.

Of course one of the issues of living in Deloraine is that we spend too much time driving up and down the road to Launceston. Last week I had four drives to Launceston. Of course, one of these was the swimming but, for one reason or another, we did the drive three more times. We hope that the move back to Dilston will reduce the number of trips on the highway.

We’ve given notice to vacate the premises here and we’ve already had three or four prospective renters coming to have a look. Each of them immediately falls in love with the place and is keen to move in so we have encouraged them to fill in the paperwork and we been promised a decision will be made by Thursday or Friday of this week. We don’t plan to leave here until October 12 so we still have lots of time to get organised.