Armistice Day

Eleventh  hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the moment the guns fell silent in 1918 to end hostilities in what was known as the Great War, now called WW1 or the First World War. What a damned shame we have to number them at all.

I had meant to mention the other day that last week's monthly concert by the singers and band went well, in Minlaton, and our next is an "extra" on the 23rd, at a different elderly care home in the same town. End of year events rapidly approach, both secular and sacred.

The pic is the five masted barque France II, 5800 tons, whose story I tell in one of the ten chapters of my book at Amazon dot com (How to Hold Their Attention,  by Will Smyth). A good Chrissie present for someone? France II sailed for just ten years 1912-1922, but was the largest tall ship ever built, her interior fittings on a par with those of the luxury ocean liners of the 1930s.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer. Hey, that's a good line!

This spell of perfect weather locally is, as they say nowadays, awesome. I am suitably awed, and relieved. Most of my immediate bunch of acquaintances say they dislike or even dread the prospect of the fierce heat this region expects in the South Australian high-summer from December to March, at times 40C plus. There is at least one exception, a lady country-born and bred who insists she loves the heat. Clearly she has asbestos-walled veins and mercury for blood.

But I'd not now enjoy the serious snow-and-ice cold again from my youthful jaunts and haunts, with winters experienced in Canada, northern China, northern Sweden, Russia and Scotland (our Glasgow University Mountaineering Club insisted on "bringing in the New Year" on various mountains, why I've no idea). Please don't ask me how or why I was in those parts of the planet, because I can't now remember that either. There must  have been some reason. Life is certainly a mystery.

Pop quiz. What's the blog post heading? Well done! You knew it. Shakespeare's Richard the Third.  Well, actually HE didn't say "Hey, that's a good line." I said that bit.

Bad arithmetic, pale ochre, anti-ageing and festive geese

Oops. I wrote on Wednesday that my Tassie friends were among a congregation of only four last Sunday in Gladstone, and the correct number was SIX. The main point of the blog post is unaltered.  Thank you to Brendan for pointing out my error, and especially to those who responded to the substance of the post.

Welcome phone call today from old friends to say that they, Veronica and David, will be in our neck of the woods this Sunday and I can expect a visit. As for today, except for the morning when I painted the new retaining wall at the back of the driveway to match the house's pale ochre stonework, the day has gone by with little achieved. Pale ochre? Yes, that is the official colour, one of a recommended set. The other colours are Heritage Red (roof) and Brunswick Green (timberwork and guttering) and an off-white or cream which is for other bits.

A parcel arrived with 15 copies of my pseudonymous book Keep Age Away: Easy Foods for Fitness and Longer Life which is available (and five other titles of mine) at Amazon.com.  The shipping costs from the U.S. are nearly prohibitive - books are aimed at the North American market - and I ordered these copies at "author discount" so that I can pass some on to friends who have asked for them (having seen advance copies). More anon. In fact, several people living not a million miles from me have conspired and contributed to the sixth book, suspiciously titled Festive Recipe Favorites ... yes, American spelling of course, and all the recipes in both imperial and metric. Roast turkey and goose, even. Could this be for Christmas?

The world is, as the SBS ad used to say, an amazing place.

Parsons Beach Practice. Melbourne Cup. A Gay-Unfriendly Church.

Friendly choral practice this morning at the beautiful Parsons Beach (not ON the beach) followed by our monthly concert performance in Minlaton. Great thing was that our numbers are nearly back to full strength after bouts of  illness or  family bereavement. Everyone hopes for a more placid spell in coming months.

Fun gatherings yesterday - no doubt also across the country -  for the annual Melbourne Cup, won by the French-trained Australian-owned horse Americain. The book, The Oxford Companion to Film once described the Melbourne Cup race (which was the subject of some of the earliest documentary film footage circa 1900) as "a famous Australian boat race." Recent decades have seen the newer editions corrected, but it was a nice idea.

B. writes from Tasmania that he and his same-sex partner of 35+ years went to church last Sunday in Gladstone, to which they travelled some considerable distance after press notices about the service. There were only six in the congregation. (I have corrected this from the earlier posted number "only four..."). The Catholic priest, however, who also had travelled a considerable distance to take the service - in the name of trying to gee-up falling attendances in the region (he was NOT from Gladstone, please note) steadfastly refused even to acknowledge my two friends' presence. A difficult act, given the tiny numbers! B.'s comment - there is a wide rift between the systemic homophobia apparent in the Catholic Church from the Pontiff down, and the generally gay-friendly laity. Here is an organisation at war with itself, but not unique in fostering hatred. Read the next paragraph ...

The same blog gives a link to published sources last week for Facebook comments, by a red-neck official of a school board, saying in effect that he applauds suicides by (harassed) gay students and wishes they all would kill themselves. The world is not yet the compassionate place that the great teachers of major religions would hope for.

Un-Hallowed traditions? Innes National Park. Sean Connery.

All Hallows Eve came and went. Today is Monday 1st November - the day of All Hallows (All Saints). Such days of significance or festival were once, more than they are now, a part of the religious or spiritual life. While it is quite sad to see any tradition debased to silliness -  the nonsense of  "trick or treat" for example - it is often better than an earlier too-serious superstitious dread, often accompanied by vilification of those standing aside from the mainstream dominant belief-system.

Enjoyed a walk on Saturday - the rain stayed away - along the Thompson-Pfitzner Trail down at Innes National Park, scene of the gypsum operations in the early part of the 20th century. The trail follows the former track of the wagons which carried the gypsum to Stenhouse Bay for loading at the  jetty. The wagons were originally horse-drawn on wooden rail-like tracks but the termites ate 'em. Then metal rails were laid, and eventually the horses were turned to other duties when small locomotives took over the pulling. Seems the whole area was cleared in the name of woodcutting for fuel, and the present dense scrub is all regrowth. Met a world-travelling surfer who was out for exercise; currently staying at Marion Bay, but, he said, recently doing the surfing thing in Mexico and South America. And I thought it was all just in books - I read Tim Winton's novel Breath earlier this year, which has a couple of globetrotting surfer characters.

This week our singers do one of the monthly nursing-home performances (which always last for one hour). That leaves, I think, three other special performances in various places between now and the end of the year. Since we are strictly unpaid volunteers, the standing joke is that we should demand double - or triple - pay. Big fat  zero, whichever way you calculate. We wouldn't want it any other way.

I am reading John Hunter's (1993) biography of Sir Sean Connery, who was knighted in 2000. Now THERE was a performer. Still around, and he turned 80 on 25 August this year.

Food Glorious Food

What does that title remind you of? Of course, we knew that. The Lionel Bart song 'Food Glorious Food' opens the 1960 movie, directed by Carol Reed, from the stage musical 'Oliver!' This week it has two points of contact for me - three if you include the happy fact that I have eaten food each day so far.

First, on Tuesday after the singing rehearsal a bunch of us watched a DVD of the movie, which seems all the better for turning fifty years old. And yes, we older-than-Fagin's-boys performers are practising some of the numbers (not the Food song) with verve but minus the acrobatics. A sad note is that Jack Wild (Artful Dodger) recently died, too young although past middle age, and it's hard not to think of the young cast as caught in a youthful time loop forever. Ron Moody's Fagin was never bettered. Oliver Reed as villain Bill Sikes was as uber-evil as they get. He was, I believe, the highest (over-)paid actor in England at the time. My favourite remains Bullseye the dog, and we all wondered how Oliver (Mark Lester) acquired a posh accent in the orphanage.

Our friend Angie will have a shot at Shani Wallis's stand-out solo 'As Long As He Needs Me'. If such a lyric were written today for London's West End, no doubt the modern critics would tut-tut and point to its theme (domestic abuse) saying it is inappropriate for performance, i.e. politically incorrect, or maybe Sir David Frost would put in a word, in echo of his vicious rubbishing sneers personally at Lionel Bart when the show was released. He, Frost, showed his true colours: but it is possible that he has grown up in the past fifty years.

That must be it! There's hope for us all.

Second, the food theme. By tonight I will have just about got in shape the recipe book which will be published via CreateSpace.com in the next few weeks, the result of kind contributions of "Kimberly's friends", some of whom turn out to be none other than the same songsters alluded to above. I am looking forward to sampling everything, starting with Maureen's egg nog and working my way back to the soup, via Elsie's brandy snaps, Gwenda's Irish cream whiskey, cake with brandy, and, in passing, smelling the aroma of Angie's chicken in red wine.

Do we see a pattern emerge here? I might be a chicken vegetarian but nobody said anything about red wine abstinence.

Dublin Cemetery

Now, that's Dublin South Australia - tidy little country town which most of the time the North-South travellers by-pass on the highway or like me call in on, to buy fruit and veg at the well-stocked greengrocery.
Well, on this visit yesterday, returning from my couple of days and nights in Adelaide, I ventured beyond the two or three shops, all the way to the little but well kept cemetery. Spent a quiet 20 minutes reading the headstones and getting a better sense of the area's 1870s onward history. Ate an apple there for an early lunch while walking - yes, and took the core home with me for the compost heap. Then at Kulpara (because I took the inland route) I bought a milk drink and a newspaper at the tourist shop which is stylishly located in an old church building.
The weather was sunny and benign after a mini-heatwave on the Thursday, when a friend kindly invited me to a delicious lunch. The hot day was  followed by a cool and wet Friday.
In Maitland another brief stop at the main store run by the Macks - their son and his wife were my tenants at a house in Samuel Street (since sold) before they bought one just round the corner from mum and dad's shop and it was nicely renovated by family effort. Good example of country town get-up-and-go spirit! Other family members run businesses in Yorketown, illustrating the theme of "all is connected".
In Adelaide at the Nova Cinema I saw the new fine Australian film Summer Coda with its action set in Mildura on the Riverland (an orange-harvesting setting for this "romantic drama" as described in the flyers). Worth seeing. That's my "review" :)
Our informal little sort-of literary group of friends on Friday night took stock and are looking at a dubious 2011 and further future. About half the handful of attenders - me being one of them - have indicated that we are unlikely to remain active next year. Obviously we wish well to all who continue to meet, but the viability of such a small number is compromised. A reliable location has been one diffiiculty: formerly this group - in larger days - used to meet in the Fullarton Park Community Centre. Health issues have been a recurring problem for several people; also unexpected overseas trips; clashes with family events; removal to a South East town for one member and (going back a bit further) to Sydney for another - to live with family. Oh  yes, and the Grinning Reaper here and there.
Nevertheless, our Friday night speaker gave a fascinating insight into the complexities of growing up and living in South Africa through the apartheid era. It would be sad if that evening were to prove to have been the final gathering of this group after nearly twenty years. It "grew"out of a successful international conference held in Adelaide on 1991, but the verb "to grow" no longer applies.
Today's weather is looking placid and I look out through the windows at all the gardening or fixing jobs which I have no intention of doing.