Fifty Days of Grey

Gumnuts against a grey sky

It’s probably an exaggeration to say that since the start of winter the sky has been grey all the time, as the occasional sunny day has brightened what has been a mostly dreary winter.

However, Spring is coming and warmer weather will ensue along with the start of the Spring Racing season.

I have been slack on the blogging front with nothing much to write home about, amusing myself with computer games and books to take my mind off the cold and keep the brain ticking over.

As I’ve mentioned before this Ivanhoe house is a refrigerator in winter, often chillier inside than outside, though the upside is that it’s the reverse in summer.

The problems with Open Live Writer and the Google photo application have purportedly been fixed, so I can again compose a post in OLW with photos and publish directly to Blogger.  I had practically given up hope that the issue would be resolved, but a clever programmer on GitHub by the name of Nick Vella worked out a solution a month or so ago.

So I intend to place several photos in this post to check that it actually works.

The above photo is of an ornamental weeping gum tree down the street from our place, one of quite a few in the neighbourhood. They are very attractive trees, begging to be photographed.

Weeping gum blossoms

On the cat front, Bingo gave us a very worrying week recently when he went off his food for several days. For a cat who is normally ravenous it was most unusual for him to show no interest in food. We took him to the vet who checked him out and thought he had a gastric problem, but advised a blood test to ascertain that there was not a problem his internal organs.  The blood results found no issues with his kidneys, liver, pancreas etc.

Waiting for the blood results we suffered from a melancholy deja vu recalling Willy’s decline three years ago. At the end of the week, after Bingo had not eaten anything substantial for several days, we arranged with the vet that he be put on a drip for the weekend. Fortunately that didn’t happen as Bingo suddenly recovered his appetite on the Saturday morning, has eaten well since, and is back to his usual rambunctious annoying self.

Bingo sitting on the kitchen bench where he can supervise the cooking

Bingo on kitchen bench from a different angle

He is the drollest creature, taking an interest in everything we do, following me round when I’m mopping the floor and swiping at the sponge when I’m cleaning up the kitchen sink.

Though only a small cat, he doesn’t lack courage, picking fights with other cats, one of whom he chased up a tree in the street.  These encounters are not without wounds as he had to endure another trip to the vet to get a nasty bite under his chin flushed out recently and undergo a course of antibiotics. 

As for reading, two of the books I was looking forward to this year have been published – Big Sky by Kate Atkinson and Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson. I was in the process of rereading a sort of prequel to Fall, the 1000+ page techno thriller,  Reamde, when the Kate Atkinson book came out, so I put Reamde on hold until I finished this latest Jackson Brodie novel from the masterful pen of Kate Atkinson. It was a very enjoyable read and a pleasure to reacquaint myself with Jackson Brodie, champion of lost girls.

I’m currently reading Fall and finding it wonderfully entertaining, Neal Stephenson delivering his take on the modern world, with extrapolations on future technological advances, such as uploading brains to the cloud.

As today is the 20th July, the 50th day since the start of winter, and also the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11’s mission to the moon,  it’s significant in more ways than one.

I checked out my old diary entries for July 1969 and I did indeed note the Apollo Mission, though missed seeing the event as I didn’t have a TV at the time. I appear to have spent most of July 1969, breaking in my first pair of contact lenses.

At that time, students at Melbourne University could get discounted contact lenses through the Optometry College in Carlton.  These were the old hard lenses which took some getting used to. I wore them for several years before switching to Gas Permeable Lenses which I have been using ever since.

So July 2019 is also my 50th Anniversary of wearing these visual aids.  I have no desire to revert to spectacles, despite several optometrists telling me I’d get tired of wearing the lenses in time.

I haven’t been to the races since the end of April, but will probably attend the Bletchingly Stakes meeting at Caulfield next Saturday. Star Tassie filly Mystic Journey may kick off her Spring campaign in the race, providing the track is not too soft.

Mystic Journey winning the Australian Guineas

Anyway, must publish this post before the day is over. Cross fingers it goes through OK.

Welcome 2018

B Kliban – Tree Party Hangover

World War III failed to eventuate in 2017, for which we can be thankful, but the odds of it happening in 2018 are much shorter, with Trump and Kim Jong Un causing Global anxiety with their belligerant exchanges of views.

Hopefully, sanity will prevail with 2018 featuring more good news than bad news. With any luck Trump will be impeached, Kim Jong Un will be overthrown, and peace will prevail.

2017 was an eventful year for the Cat Politics domicile, particulary the big move to another suburb and the raising of a new feline companion to fill the gap left by Willy’s death on Boxing Day 2016.

The feline in question is sitting on my knee as I write this post and is being good for change.

Cats – Talya in the cat bed with Bingo outside

Talya appears to have recovered from her stomach ailment, as she has not inappropriately voided her bowels inside for several weeks.  She has however abandoned her blanket on the chair and readopted the cat bed. I must say that the cat bed purchased in 2015 has been a great success as cats seem to love this particular model.

We had Christmas lunch at my brother’s place and I got to meet my new great niece Florence for the first time.

A baby photo! Florence in elf hat

She’s another Leo born into the family. That makes five of us in all.  My youngest nephew became a father this year in November with the birth of baby Tex.  I haven’t seen the nephew for several years as he lives and works in Queensland.

One of the joys of New Year’s Day is putting up a new calendar. I buy a calendar every year and have a huge collection (though I culled it before we moved) of calendars dating back to the 1970s.

This year I purchased the Mimi Vang Olsen cat calendar, which has 12 delightful portraits of cats.

We had a quiet New Year’s Eve as usual and went to bed early, though were awoken briefly by the bang of fireworks nearby around midnight. 

I’ve started the New Year with a head cold, awaking with it yesterday morning. Who knows how I caught it, but it’s not that bad so far and my nose seems to have stopped dribbling.

There are a few things I’m looking forward to in 2018 - a Jason Isbell concert in late March, and seeing New York writer and wit, Fran Lebowizt, earlier the same month at the Athenaeum Theatre. I have an ancient copy of her first book, Metropolitan Life, which I enjoyed reading at the time, though it’s a bit dated now.

There are not many books I’m eagerly awaiting in 2018, other than the new Kate Atkinson novel Transcription, and William Gibson is purported to have the follow up to The Peripheral, called Agency out this year as well. No doubt there will be other books that will catch my fancy as the year progresses.

And - I didn’t think I would be writing this again - the 25th Anniversary Edition of John Crowley’s Little, Big, now awaited for 12 years, will hopefully be published this year. It was supposed to come out last year, and must be close to being sent to the printers, according to the latest news on the Little, Big website.  God, I hope it arrives before I die!

Anyway on this first day of a brand new year I’m mostly optimistic that we will all survive to live a few more.

PS The phone and Internet are now working after a technician came and fixed the wiring in the street just after Christmas.

Winter Cheer–Cats, Books & Music

Talya – the blue princess

It has been a while since I last posted about the cats and their political stance. Lucky for them they are unaware of the truly awful Government ruling Australia at present and the general state of the world. No doubt, if they knew, they would think it only their due, that cats are the most popular topic on the Internet.

In their cat world all they care about is keeping warm, filling their bellies and maintaining their cool in the presence of other cats.  This of course involves the services of their human slaves as providers of food and warming pads.

Since winter has drawn in, Willy has taken to spending more time inside and has insisted on using my lap as his resting place. He’s a real burden, a heavy, though warm encumbrance, that certainly limits a person’s movements.  If you have cats, you’ll know how they suck you in. You put up with incredible inconvenience so as not to hurt their feelings and even apologise if you have to inconvenience them.

Willy is a smart cat and has us trained to lift him off the fence when he can’t be bothered getting down by himself. He sits on the pergola outside the kitchen door and miaows. When we answer the “distress” call we have to walk out into the back yard and wait by the fence, while he clambers over the roof, onto the shed roof, then onto the water tank, then the fence, whereupon he stands in a handy lifting down position, so we can get purchase under his belly and remove him from the fence.

 
Willy, looking for a lap to sit on.

I had the bright idea of buying him a cat bed as a substitute for my lap and found one that is self warming.  It has a space blanket layer that interacts with the cat’s body heat to create a snug nest, retaining the cat’s heat and warming the bed.  B thought I was mad to get it and doubted if the cats would take to it.

It arrived the other day and has been tried out by both cats, but Talya has now commandeered it for daytime use on the front verandah, and alas Willy still prefers my knee.

Talya in the self warming cat bed

The political situation between the cats is much the same; they still don’t like each other much, but don’t fight. They engage in stand offs where one cat will sit in the doorway to impede the exit or entry of the other cat. “Ooh, I don’t want to walk too close, he/she might jump me” you see them think.

Cat stand off – Talya is blocking Willy’s access to the door outside.

Monty the cat next door is always in our back garden, but the resident cats avoid him if possible. He’s super friendly, so it’s hard to shoo him away.

Monty – he doesn’t look too friendly here, but it’s an interesting pose.

My last post was about the problem with posting from Windows Live Writer to Blogger. This had something to do with Google+ security settings, which had not been taken into account by Microsoft. There was an outpouring of protest on both the Blogger forum and the Microsoft Live forum to such an extent that Microsoft and Google cooperated in working out a fix.

Let’s hope Microsoft will continue to support Live Writer as it’s the best blogging software there is. Creating posts in Blogger is a real pain it’s so clunky and user unfriendly.

As usual I’ve been reading a lot of books, and lately have read some really excellent novels, one of them being All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr which recently won the Pulitzer Prize.  It’s an outstanding novel set in the second world war, about a German whiz kid boy Werner, and Marie Laure, a blind French girl. the narration alternating between the two as they grow up in those turbulent times and inexorably meet.  Everything written about this novel is true. Highly recommended!

I also really enjoyed Kate Atkinson’s latest novel A God In Ruins, a companion piece to her previous novel Life After Life.  It follows the life of Ursula Todd’s beloved younger brother Teddy as he grows up to become a bomber pilot in the second world war, and his life after the war.  Ursula Todd was the heroine of Life After Life and makes several appearances in A God In Ruins.  I also highly recommend this book. It’s moving and very funny at times.

I’m currently reading Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, his latest, which happens to be a disaster novel. In the first paragraph Earth’s moon explodes and sets the scene for what happens next. I’m barely a quarter of the way through the 800+ pages, but am gripped in the drama of setting up an ark of human heritage in space as the total destruction of  planet Earth draws closer.

I ordered my copy of the book from Barnes & Noble and it’s signed by Neal Stephenson, which is a big thrill as I doubt he’ll ever come to Australia.

Concurrently on my Kindle, when commuting,
I’m reading a collection of short stories called Sisters of the Revolution. I supported a Kickstarter for this collection of speculative feminist fiction by women writers, and received both a physical and digital copy of it.

The stories are all interesting and diverse in subject matter.

The edition has a forward by my friends Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. Jeff won this year’s Nebula Award for his novel Annihilation, the first book in his Southern Reach trilogy. They are very strange novels, dark surrealist fiction. Annihilation is possibly going to be made into a film by Alex Garland (Ex Machina & Never Let Me Go). I have read the trilogy, but must admit found them a bit of a chore.  I’m so over weird fiction, hated all the characters and couldn’t care less what happened to them. I agree with David Mitchell, that characters have to be likeable to sustain the readers interest and sympathy – mine anyway.

On the music scene. I'm looking forward to seeing Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell at the Palais Theatre, St Kilda in a week or so. I ordered their new CD The Travelling Kind from Nonesuch Records, mainly because they were offering a limited edition autographed print with the CD. Another thing to be thrilled about – Emmylou and Rodney autographs, something unattainable in person for me.

Five days after the Emmylou & Rodney concert I’m going to see The Milk Carton Kids at the Athenaeum Theatre. I was really impressed with them when they toured here a couple of years ago, so look forward to their show. And in July my favourite singer-songwriter Ryan Adams is performing two shows at the Forum Theatre.

So despite winter’s chill, there are several reasons to be cheerful.