Posted in Fiction

A Week Spent With Friends…

Posted on by TravellinPenguin

This past week was incredibly busy and this week is

turning out to be the same too.

I had a couple of very good gym sessions in the weight

room and the Barre’ class room.

Stock photo

I turned up on Thursday for my private PT session and my

trainer friend, Teresa and I just looked at each other and

said, “Let’s go for a coffee!!” We postponed the training

until tomorrow. It was a beautiful Tassie day and we sat in

the sun at our favourite café, drinking our oat latte’s (I

know), and along came another woman friend from the

Barre’ class. The three of us happily chatted until we had to

get back to the gym. They are such positive women and I

really enjoy them.

I had Adam’s book group Wed night and six of us had a

lovely time during the evening in an empty Fullers book

shop café discussing Olga Tokarczuk’s book Flights. We

had a lot of fun really dissecting this book. We all enjoyed it

as just so much in it.

Speaking of Adam’s group, I finished The Dry Heart by

Italian author Natalia Ginzburg (Dob 1916 to 1991). It was

first published in 1947 then translated into other languages

beginning in 1950s. It is wonderfully written and very

concise. It packs a lot in for only 105 pages. The writing style

reminded me of Graham Swift’s Mothering Sunday. I would

certainly recommend it if you enjoy a real study of a couple

in a very unusual marriage situation. The characters are

well developed and the story kept me reading even though

we know on the first page the protagonist shoots her

husband between the eyes with his revolver. It takes place,

I would guess in the 1950s, post WWII.

I also went to a couple of Fullers book launches last week

too. I met some friends there and we all enjoyed the launch

of The Chocolate Factory by Mary Lou Stevens. The

history of the Quakers who first developed Cadbury’s

chocolate in the UK is an interesting tale. Alcoholism was so

bad in the UK, they developed a chocolate drink that took off

In popularity. They wanted people to drink chocolate

instead of alcohol. It eventually became the Dairy Milk

chocolate the rest of us know. They were great employers,

developing accommodation, child care and

schools for the children of the employees.

The author said she ate a lot of chocolate while she wrote

it.

Friday night we went to another launch but I am not going

to write much about it as although the book is probably

interesting, the presentation was abysmal. The woman

stood behind a podium, cleared her throat continually, did

not consistently use her microphone and droned for 50

minutes. Complete monotone. Painful! I played with my

watch in order to not pull out my eye lashes. My friend fell

asleep as did a few others in the room. I guess you never

know the level of public speaking skills of an author when

that author is booked.

The working windmill in Oatlands. My photo.

This past weekend had me spending Saturday meeting my

photography friends north of Hobart in the small town of

Oatlands. It is a lovely country town with an even lovelier

bakery. I had the best heated chocolate croissant with my

flat white. We then had a few cars and we car pooled north

to Tunbridge an even smaller village with not much there

except very old houses and agriculture.

Convict made bridge.

From there we went farther north to the more touristy

town, Ross. It has one of the older convict made bridges

in the country. It also has a nice bakery. There was an

amateur medieval day going on and they were happy for us to photograph them. The local group do these little exercises

regularly and by then I was getting tired. There was

another American expat on the sidelines watching her

husband running around with armour and a sword. The

group was funny as they were like enthusiastic four year

olds who had all been given rubber swords for Christmas.

The others took more photos and I enjoyed talking to the

woman on the sidelines. We discussed the Super Bowl and

the upcoming American elections and how much we both

hate Donald Trump.

So now we are in the next week and activities continue to

roll on but more of that next week. I hope you do something

fun this week. I’ll leave you with the delicious banana bread recipe I made today. I substituted 1/4 cup of the flour for drinking chocolate mix. It really added to the flavour.

From New York Times cookbook.
It just started raining here.
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Author:

I live a retired life in Tasmania, Australia. I love books, travel, animals, photography, motor biking and good friends. I indulge in all these activities with the little Travellin' Penguin who has now shared five continents with me. We love book shops, photography walks and time with friends as all our family is in USA and Canada. I enjoy visitors to my blog so hope you'll stop by.

16 thoughts on “A Week Spent With Friends…”

  1. I don’t like hearing when your summer is starting to fade because then I know mine is about to heat up. Yesterday Marilyn and I were huddled in front of our space heater, today we have all the windows open, enjoying the lovely 72F breeze.

    I would’ve voted to ditch the gym and enjoy a latte outside as well.

    I hope there was Cadbury chocolate handed out at the chocolate book launch! I have a can of the drinking chocolate in my pantry. So good. And that reminds me I need to get some Cadbury Mini Eggs and some Caramel Eggs before Easter comes and goes. I think it’s in March this year instead of April.

    Had a good laugh over you playing with your watch in order not to pull you your eyelashes. That poor author was probably thinking “I told my agent I’m a writer, not a public speaker!!!”

    Liked by 1 person

  2. What a great week you had, and so many lovely things to do; travelling, photo shooting, meeting friends and reading good books.

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  3. I’ve had wives who had happily shot me between the eyes. Good thing I don’t have a gun! (Not Milly, though she probably dreamt of it occasionally).

    Very sorry for the author who droned. It’s just wrong they have to be public speakers too.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Oh what a newsy newsy post Pam. I enjoyed it. That Natalia Ginsburg book sounds like the sort of book that would interest me. I’d rather like to do a barre class because I loved ballet as a child, even though I was never very good at it.

    I can’t recollect whether I’ve ever been to Oatlands, though I think I must had. I’ve heard that it’s a beautiful town. Of course I’ve been to Ross. That was my first trip to Tasmania in 1974.

    Oh, and I love the Cadbury chocolate story … particularly that they were good employers. Stories like that are wonderful to hear.

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  7. Yes, we’re getting the rain here too. First a little thunderstorm with some very BIG hailstones, and then 20 minutes later, a very BIG thunderstorm and a bit of rain … and now the sun is shining and Amber has come out from her hiding place but still sticking close by me!
    We came through Ross and saw The Bridge on our first trip to Tassie when we did a circuit from Launceston by car. Actually, we had to outpace a grassfire that was running alongside us on the far side of paddocks beside the road. It was some distance away but we could see the flames, that’s the closest I’ve ever been to a wildfire and we were glad to get into Ross safe and sound. It wasn’t super touristy then, which was nice.
    I have The Dry Heart on the TBR. I was going to read it for Novellas in November, but you know how it is….

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      1. Oh, yes, thank you, we’re safe enough here in middle Melbourne. But I think we all worry about the bush and spend the day on tenterhooks because we were lulled into a sense of security during a cool summer and now it’s morphing into what we warned about.

        Liked by 1 person

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