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.
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.
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.
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.
Travellin' Penguin 