Monday, March 25th .....

Thankfully, the sun is shining again today.  The Rotary Club was involved yesterday in a Charity Bike Race and my instructions were to be at a particular corner at 8.30 to direct the riders to turn right.  It seems simple enough but ... it was pouring!!  As I was leaving the caravan, Marilyn rolled over and snuggled into the doona, saying, Try not to get too wet.  That would rank among the least useful pieces of advice I’ve ever had.

The first riders came through at about 8.45, as bedraggled a group of athletes as I’ve ever seen.  I don’t think lycra is any good at keeping out the water.  One girl sailed past me, calling out, ‘I’m glad I put on my waterproof mascara.’  A policeman arrived at about 10 to help me direct traffic.  He complained that, if he hadn’t been on duty, he would have been riding with them.  Obviously, he knew a lot of the riders and, after a few minutes, he shot off to talk to them at the water stop, leaving me in sole charge of the corner.

During the morning, a 1940’s sedan came past, with a sign saying ‘Paris to Peking’.  He came back a little later going in the other direction.  I think the sign gave it away ... he was lost!  Anyway, I stood there until about 11.30 and then sploshed off home.  To her credit, Marilyn brought me a cup of coffee and a cheese toastie mid-morning, and it was very welcome.

On Saturday, we went to an Olde Time Music Hall which was being performed in the Little Theatre.  We went last year as well and it was appalling.  I think I described it in a previous post.  This year, Marilyn and I were invited to take part and that gave us the clue that they had decided to improve the quality.  Sadly, we were away for the first few rehearsals and had to miss out but, as it transpired, we weren’t needed.  Of course, the singing of the old songs is a bore but the side acts were excellent, with one or two exceptions.  One fellow sang Old Man River, very well, but he had the words pinned to the back of a cardboard tree so he wouldn’t get lost.  He also changed an important word, saying ‘get a little sick’ rather than ‘get a little drunk’.  It reminded me of the spoof where they change the words to be more politically correct.  We heard it most recently on Robyn's disk of her cruise on the Sea Princess ... ‘Elderly Person River.’

The best act, by far, was Tamsyn Stock-Stafford, a local soprano who gave up a professional career as an opera singer in Paris to have children.  Paris to Mole Creek is quite a change.  She sang Song to the Moon by Dvorak, in Czechoslovakian; not an easy piece by any means but absolutely beautiful.  The last note is very high and I wondered whether she would reach it but she simply rearranged her mouth and voice box and hit it pure and clear.  Great stuff!

The pianist was playing ‘In a Persian Market’ at interval.  This was Marilyn’s party piece for years when she was young and she knows every note and every trap to watch out for.  Sitting beside her, I could feel her tensing when the pianist’s fingers let him down and, at one point, I felt her physically shudder.

 

Wednesday, March 20th .....

It’s my Craft Fair committee meeting tonight and the main item on the agenda is the selection of a new logo.  The original logo has been around for 25 years or more and is certainly looking dated.  To reflect the reality of the Craft Fair today and in the future, we need a new slick logo which highlights the quality and professionalism of the organisation.  Note that, if we were a football club, I would have started that last sentence with ‘Going forward ...’ which would have immediately tagged us as a jumped-up, pseudo- professional bunch of innocents, led by a rag-tag collection of has-beens and wannabees.

Yesterday, Marilyn and I had been roped in to attend one of the local Probus clubs. I think there are three in the region: Mens, Womens and Mixed.  The Mixed club is having a hard time of it with numbers reduced to about 8.  I nearly said numbers dropping-off but that might have an unfortunate connotation.  At the last minute, Marilyn wasn’t able to change her baby-sitting responsibility so I went on my own.  It was quite interesting and it was good to be seen as a youngster rather than one of the greybeards.

They meet in the Uniting Church Hall.  I noticed a small collection of books in the corner and couldn’t resist having a look.  They say you can tell a lot about a person by looking at his or her library.  Does the same thing apply about a church library?  There was the usual small number of picture books for kids with an emphasis on the Easter Story – I imagine that would have to have been heavily modified.  There was a book called Dealing with Dawkins.  At a quick glance, it was generally of the type, “He must be wrong because we know we are right.”  I would have thought the best way to deal with a publicity-seeking atheist would be to ignore him and starve him of the oxygen of attention.

There were a couple of books on the imminent end of the Earth, and some re-printed emails with uplifting stories and dramatic photographs of rainbows, fiery sunsets and light beams through the clouds.  Most worrying were a couple of pamphlets revealing some secrets of Islam.  Again, a quick glance seemed to reveal that they’re different to us so we should be careful how we deal with them.

I should also say that few, if any, of the books looked like they had been read.

The harvesters came yesterday, and again today to collect the next-door onions. The harvester drives slowly along the rows, sweeping the onions up and into a truck which creeps along-side.  Truck after truck was filled and driven away for the next step in the process.  The air is filled with the smell of onions crushed under the wheels and the ground is strewn by onions which have been rejected by the harvester or, more likely, missed by the scoops.

Monday, March 18th .....

We’re in the middle of Ten Days on the Island, an International Arts Festival which was launched in Tasmania 11 or 12 years ago.  The premise is to invited artists and performer from other island, in celebration of island life, so in the past we’ve had people from Iceland, the Shetlands, New Zealand, Singapore and so on.  The first Artistic Director was Robyn Archer; Leo Schofield took it on for a few years and currently it is Jo Duffy.  It’s run every second year and the directors always manage to find extraordinary acts from around the world.

The festival runs right across the state and it’s not unusual to see a performance under a tree in Zeehan, or on a beach at St Helens.  Deloraine always has two or three events which are all well-attended.  On Friday, we had 21 Circus Acts in 20 Minutes, performed on the riverbank with hordes of kids from the local schools and last night was a Corsican group called A Filetta in the local church. 

A Filetta is a group of 6 men who sing a capella in their own language and in French.  They look more like a bunch of navvies than singers but their voices are angelic.  They choose to perform in historic churches as they believe the atmosphere and acoustics enhance their sound.  Certainly, the audience (congregation?) was astounded by what they heard.

First, though, we had the problem of actually getting to the show.  We didn’t read the instructions properly or we would have known that we were expected to book our tickets on-line before the night. Happily, we weren’t the only ones who were derelict and a dozen of us had to wait until everyone who had done the right thing had arrived and taken their seats.  Another dozen chairs were then squeezed in and we were accommodated. 

The six Corsicans filed in and, from the first note, we were enthralled.  One of the men looked like Mr Punch with a hook nose and a nutcracker chin coming up to meet it.  Unlike the others, who stood calmly and sang their parts, Mr Punch leaned forward, girning and gesturing with his hands in front of his face.  Probably, he was conducting in an eccentric Corsican way.  Every note he sang seemed to be squeezed out with great effort while the others made it look so easy.

It was something of a one-trick pony.  Many of the pieces were short, almost like practice pieces but one item had a traditional structure like a song and it was easily the most enjoyable.  I thought I recognised it as a Celtic song but as it was in French, I really couldn’t tell.  Several times during the performance, Mr Punch spoke to the audience obviously explaining what was going on.  However, as it was in Corsican and/or French, we were none the wiser.  We managed to pick out some individual words: tres bien, merci aussi, and so on.  I thought I heard the word ‘muerte’ as well but that’s Spanish.

Anyway, we’ve had our dose of culture for this week and that’s positive.

 

Sunday, March 10th .....

We might have had a brush with fame today.  I say ‘might’ because we have no idea who the celebrities were or even whether they were celebrities at all, or just four boys behaving badly.  We were towing a trailer towards Launceston and I pulled into a layby to check that the load hadn’t moved.  In behind us glided a stretch limousine with a fully-uniformed chauffeur.  Four scruffy young men jumped out, climbed to the top of an embankment and proceeded to point Percy at the paddock.

Cars passing by honked their horns and waved.  The young men, who might have been members of a pop group, waved back (one hand at a time, of course).  I suppose we should have asked them for an autograph but, as I say, we didn’t know who they were.  Anyway, I wasn’t going to hand them my pen, or shake their hand because I saw what they had been doing.  Later, we asked the checkout chick in the supermarket who they might have been.  She wasn’t sure, but did mention a name; however, it was in teen-talk and we couldn’t understand her.  Whatever!

I wonder if they write in their blog about the harassed elderly couple they saw struggling with a badly-packed trailer.  We had decided we would indulge in some bed-swapping.  That is, collect Jamie’s bed from the storage, take it to Dilston to replace our bed which he has been using, and bring our bed back to the storage.  I know, it’s madness, especially as we chose a day with a predicted high of 31^o and scattered showers.

Anyway, the job was done at the cost of a great deal of perspiration and some drops of rain on the way back.

Thursday, March 7th .....

After a very pleasant few days in the free park, we're back at the Rotary Pavilion.  We've been watching the progress of the onion crop in the paddock next door for two or three months now.  They're now lying on the ground waiting for the harvesters to arrive to collect them.  Apparently, they take several weeks to 'cure' so they're just left there unsupervised.  I suppose there are so many, no one would begrudge a few being picked up by a passing scavenger.

Now the crop has been dug up, we don't see much of the farmer so we were surprised today when a truck pulled up, a fellow got out and started to put onions into a bag.  When he was leaving, I gave him a wave, as you do, and he swung his truck around and drove over towards the caravan.

Oh good, I thought, he's going to give me some onions.  But no, he wanted to talk to me about our caravan.  He has one on order and wanted to get my advice on things.  He was very impressed with out recliner chairs and was surprised his dealer hadn't offered them as an option.

I did manage to get a bit of information about the state of onion-growing in Tasmania.  You never know when that sort of information will come in handy.  This fellow, whose name is John, works for Websters, a rather large agricultural firm, in Research and Development.  He was taking samples of the onions for testing.

This paddock is only one of many they have in Tassie, 150 Ha in all.  Our paddock is only about 8Ha, so it provides just a drop in an ocean of onions.  The thought of it brings tears to your eyes.  When all the onions are gathered, they are sorted into various sizes and stored until an order is received.  Most of them go to Europe, as far north as Norway.

John said they can grow any size they want by simply adjusting the distance between the hole where seeds are planted, closer if you want small onions, further apart for big ones.  Very scientific!  They plant them with a seed drill, invented by Jethro Tull (not the band!)

When we were fed up talking, he went off in his truck and left me standing there, onion-less.
 

Monday, March 4th .....

We moved the van today.  A group was meeting in the pavilion so we decided to move on.  As usual, it took most of the morning to get packed up for the journey of 500m down the road to the free camping spot.  It seems we arrived at just the right time, as we had first choice of a number of great spots.  We chose a grassy area adjoining a very nice garden and we're very content.

It's the Rotary club's birthday tomorrow night and Marilyn and I went along to lend a hand in setting up.  My instinct is to allow the nominal head of the group, in this case the president of the club, to take the lead but others don't think,that way.  So we ended up with at least three bosses, all talking at cross purposes which increased the amount of work to be done and added to the stress levels.

Years ago, Gilligan from the TV show, used to say, "I'm running away to become a helmet."  We often think like that, too.

I'm finding quite a bit of time to read at the moment and am working through a collection of what I gather is called Scandi-noir - books by Scandinavian authors.  I've just finished Black Skies by Analldur Indridason, who is from Iceland, of all places.  Some of their names are fantastic: Viktor Arnar Ingolsson, Henning Mankel, Leif GW Persson, and so on.  Stieg Larsson certainly started something.  I heard a British author moaning the other day that even second-rate books by Scandinavian authors are being snapped up for TV series while home-grown stuff is being overlooked.  Sounds to me like sour grapes and it  might be because so much British crime fiction has become so formulaic.

Another British author who was in Australia recently was Stella Rimington.  I hadn't realised that she was one-time head of MI5 and, during the 1984 Miners' Strike in Britain became notorious for tapping the phones and bugging the offices of miners' union officials. Just not cricket, old chap.

She must hate it when she's trying to promote one of her books and the interviewer keeps harking back to those trying times.  Be sure your sins will find you out.

Friday, March 2nd .....

It’s Marilyn’s birthday.  I realise I shouldn’t give away her age but, in compliance with the traditions of our generation, she is between 2 and 4 years younger than me.  We’re still camping so we celebrated with dinner at the local pub and a carefully-chosen card this morning,

I pride myself on the cards I’ve chosen over the many years.  I try to avoid the over-sentimental ones and aim for something tasteful and elegant with a nice verse.  However, I’m finding it harder and harder to find what I want.  There’s been a dumbing-down to the lowest common denominator in cardland.  I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before.

I am astounded at how many cards intended for a female spouse are humorous.  Are some men really so insensitive that they think that a card making fun of her age will do the trick?  Take it from me, birthdays are not a time for jokes.  It’s traumatic enough for your dearly-beloved to scratch off another year on the wall of her metaphoric cell; don’t expect her to laugh about it as well.

I know about birthdays.  Don’t forget that I’ve had 70 of them and I can tell you, it’s safer to go overboard with sentimentality than hope to tickle her funny-bone.

I did notice another trend in the world of greeting cards.  Among the flowery, lolly-pink and gushy cards were a couple of plainer ones.  Square, no nonsense, pinkish but not girly, some horizontal lines on the cover and, in bold capitals the words

                                WIFE

                   HAPPY BIRTHDAY

 

Are they serious?  Not even a comma to give it some grammatical merit.  What kind of fool is going to give his soul-mate and life-partner a card which reads WIFE HAPPY BIRTHDAY?  No graphics of flowers, or nostalgic scenes from a more romantic time.  No, just WIFE HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

Is this an example of the new-minimalism?  If so, forget it.  I don’t believe that women get the concept of minimalism.  Just think about it.  Most blokes would usually be happy with a chair to sit in and a table to hold up his bits and pieces, but his wife will insist on a three-piece suite and matching chiffonier.  Most of us men would be content with a post-it note saying happy birthday, but you can’t treat your wife like that.

Anyway, I can just imagine the staff at the card shop giggling when they imagine the reception which awaits the hapless idiot who has bought one of their minimalist cards in blissful ignorance.

I can’t help thinking of those ludicrous American TV hosts who challenge their male viewers to give their wife a crappy present and video her reaction.  All in the name of humour.  The stupid men get what they deserve but the TV hosts get better ratings.  Such is life!