Category: Fiction

Things have been more than hectic the past few weeks with Mr P having had his hip replaced and on crutches and not driving for six weeks. I’m having eye surgery end of May and will be out of commission but by mid winter we should all be up and back. Did I mention I backed the new car into a guard rail one early morning while blinded by the sun and that is in repair for a week so learning to drive a little rental car. I need to pick it up this week the same time Peanut goes to the vet for injections. Whoops

I could go on, but it is boring so I won’t.

I had a disaster with this blog disappearing and I gave up and moved to Wix. They were great at setting up a blog but once that was just about finished they pulled all support and communication so to make a very long story short, I cut my losses and decided to get stuck back into the original one at Word Press. I can now tell you there is good in the world I really misjudged WordPress. As confusing as I find it at times, I spent more than 90 minutes in an online chat with a lovely person who got me back online. They can’t figure out what happened either. I had part of a different blog incorporated into mine and the whole thing went “Whoosh!” But….I’ve spent enough time on all of this so let’s say no more. But I can’t praise the WordPress support I got more. I’m now eating my words.

Photography has had some lovely moments as we are in autumn here and if I manage to figure how to post a photo I will do so.

There are many events happening at Fullers book shop this year. As my friends and longer term followers know, Fullers is the oldest book shop in Australia at 102 years. It is under new ownership by a young, lovely man (Tim) who has a PhD in philosophy and is also extremely well read, ambitious and absolutely full of ideas for the shop that people are flocking to. With more than 100 people divided into groups of 12 for monthly book groups, there is also a shared reading group that meets regularly, a new monthly poetry reading group where they focus on one poet a month. Shakespeare and philosphy events are scheduled as well as many author events and book launches.

Just last week my friend and I attended a really fun event as Jane Rawson launched her newest book, A History of Dreams. It is the story of four very different women who become witches to deal with rising facism during 1937 in Adelaide. Such an unusual theme but as she stated she is very concerned with many issues both past and present regarding how right winged our world is becoming and coinciding with that the problems of global warming especially as it relates to Australia with fires and floods. It was a great night and Geordie Williamson, one of the book critics from The Australian interviewed her. I think he should be working for the Guardian listening to their conversation. It was most enlightening and Jane has very unusual and interesting ideas for her books. She stated her next book would be about a time traveller who goes back to the 1980s and murders those responsible for global warming, though I must emphasize that is simply an idea at this point but it got a good round of applause and laughter from the audience.

Well I don’t want to push my luck here so we will see how this goes today so I will wrap this up for now. I must say my panic has subsided now I have my blog back and fortunately Wix transferred almost all of my past Word Press posts to this site though I haven’t had a good look yet. So stay tuned.

If you’d like to see the new direction this blog is going check out the new About page. All the best.

No this isn’t a bookish post per se. I am sitting in Hobart, early in the morning looking out to a chilly day but sunny for a change. Another busy week is upon us but I want to catch up a bit here. I just read a bunch of back blog posts from people I generally follow. Sue, Lisa, Karen…and the rest. You guys write so many posts I can never keep up but do enjoy them.

I just read Lisa’s post on the book Adrift in Melbourne about Robyn Annear’s walks in Melbourne (here). How I wish there was a Hobart book such as this but of course Melbourne is so much bigger than Hobart.

I really love books about walking. No idea why but I know there are people walking everywhere. They walk to work, they bushwalk, they hike through multiple countries. I think meeting and chatting to people on a walk is great fun. One can have a great conversation, connect, then perhaps never see them again.

Last week I needed to get out of my head so after an appointment (which I took my camera to in my backpack) I told Mr. Penguin to drive home and I was going to walk. It was an area I’d not walked before and off I went. Three hours later I got the bus home and said head was clear. I need to get out more often with the camera and walk more. I have a friend in Sydney who does her “Judy” day, a day just for her. I am going to start doing a “Pam” day. Time to visit those little out of the way places and take photos or just smell a few flowers. I will share the walk with you here, sorry not much narrative. Here we go….