This will be short as I need to go get some groceries but when I went to start the car the battery was dead. I’ve most likely left the overhead light on again as the garage is so dark during the dark days and forgotten to turn it off. The RAC-T (Royal Auto Club of Tasmania) is on the way with the cables so I thought I’d write while I wait.
It’s been grey and rainy here for the past couple of days, today and will be again tomorrow. So much rain and all the rivulets are running wild down Mt Wellington. Two days ago I took Ollie out to Seven Mile Beach. It is about a 25 minute drive just east of Hobart out past the airport. It channels into the Derwent River that eventually goes out to the Tasman Sea. It is a nice beach and very few people on it when it is very grey and dark. Our photo club was challenged to do solstice sunrise or sunset shots but with the heavy cloud cover and fog I decided on an afternoon photo shoot. Besides I had to get Ollie out as he was full of beans and we needed to get rid of a few of them. I have told our vet she is not allowed to ever operate on him as all his beans may fall out. A bit of a run on this beautiful beach sorted out a few of them.
Bookwise- I finally finished the 37th hour of selections of The Diary of Samuel Pepys. What a long haul it was but overall I enjoyed it very much but by the end I was truly tired of him. The way he treated women as if everyone of them was manufactured from Mattel and always thinking about his own work, his own days, his own pleasures. But I did enjoy the stories of London and hearing about the September fires in 1666 and the plague year the year before. People’s lives were so difficult and desperate and it made me happy I was here in Tassie during our own pandemic.
I have a couple of new books on the go but not sure I’ll stick with them. My mood changes from day to day. I’ve started Normal People by Sally Rooney. I’ve been hearing a lot of good about that book. My other book is called A Time of Birds by Helen Moat. This book is newly published also and is a tale of Irish woman, Helen and her older teenage son’s bike ride from England to Istanbul. She is a school teacher who suffers from the same depression her father had and she thinks this bike ride might give her a new perspective on life. She has an old clunky bike that some lycra clad bicyclists in the Netherlands had a real go at making fun of but her son is more modern. Her father spent his later years studying birds and she wants to continue that tradition on her trip across Europe. However she hasn’t mentioned any of them yet.
So far she talks a lot about her dad to the point of dwelling I’d say. Have you ever been around that person, maybe at work, who does nothing but talk about their friends you don’t know and that friend’s relatives or experiences and you still have no idea who they’re talking about but they just never stop? We all talk about family members to our friends which is fine but there are some people who are more acquaintance who continually go on and on and on as it begins to wear a bit. I’m hoping as she gets into this trip she focuses on the present and not so much of the past but we’ll see.
I’ll let you know how I go with the books. In the meantime I’ve posted some photos of our day at the beach. Remember it is winter here.
Until next time.
I have been reading a bit but mainly continuing to listen to The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Selections from). I am enjoying it very much. It is 37 hours long on audible. He kept his diary from 1660 to 1669 and I am currently in 1665. 1665 is the year the plague hit London. Such a scary thing as medical treatment back then was very different and also very unforgiving. In 1666 the great fire of London will hit and that’s going to be challenging for him too, I’m sure. He was quite a character and he got up to all kinds of stuff, quite a bit of it naughty. He is quite taken with himself and I’m not sure I would like him as much in real life as I do reading about him in his diary. I just find all of it interesting.
Sunday here and I’m moving ahead here. Forget the post about splitting up or not splitting up book series. I’m keeping them all and they will continue to live together with their families. Once that thought was out in the open I couldn’t bear to separate them all. Thanks for the comments about it.
Last evening I read no. 3, The East London Line- Buttoned up by Fantastic Man. The authors are Gert Jonkers and Jop van Bennekom from Fantastic Man magazine.
From another…“The man in a deep V is open, ready, disposable. The buttoned-up man has a flavour of some entrenched, considered mystery. We would’ve once considered him pretentious, if preferring books to TV can be adjudged as such. He does not favour the more expositional approach to male sex-appeal in his wardrobe. “
Travellin' Penguin 