Thursday, June 14, 2007

I'm Back...

...but I haven’t been anywhere at all, merely lacking enthusiasm to blog or lacking ideas for blogging, more like.

Melbourne is now in the grip of winter – it’s cold. Amazingly it started promptly on the 1st of June after May ended with one of the warmest May nights in recorded history.

I’ve been reading a lot, of course. I finished off Olivia Manning’s Balkan and Levant trilogies a week ago. I didn’t want them to finish, so engrossed was I in the period. I’m now re-reading an omnibus of PD James detective novels. She does write well, I must admit and the stories are gripping and interesting. This is a stopgap measure while waiting for some new books I’ve ordered to arrive. I find the local bookshops uninspiring- they don’t appear to stock the novels I am wishing to buy. Thank goodness for Amazon!

On the subject of books and John Crowley in particular, Overlook Press have a haiku competition to win one of five copies of the readers edition of The Solitudes, the first volume in the AEGYPT quartet. You can find out about it on the
Overlook Press blog.


I recently discovered a remarkable photographer, the late French photographer, Francis Toussaint. His photos are beautiful, and inspiring to amateur photographers like me. You can look at his photographs here. The photo above is one of his. (click for larger image)

Tonight, I’m off to a CD launch at Northcote Social Club. The artist is Paul Hicks, a young, up and coming singer/songwriter. I’ve known Paul for quite a while, meeting him through Nu Country when it was an aspirant radio station. Paul was an announcer and I worked in the office when he was on air. We had similar musical tastes so we got along very well. No doubt, tonight, a number of old Nu Country acquaintances will be there. I’ve already got a copy of Paul’s CD “Food for the Journey” and I like it a lot. It will be good to see it performed live.

I’ll report back with pictures tomorrow.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That place is beautiful - I wonder where it is - some limestone valley in France, perhaps.

Anne S said...

Clare: It's Normandy I believe. There are heaps of photos on his photo page - all pretty gorgeous.

I've wasted lots of time browsing that photo album.