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.

Reasons To Be Cheerful

Global power may currently be in the hands of a scary three year old in the body of a grown man, a sinister former member of the KGB and an ambitious inscrutable oriental power,  but I try not to let that bother me overmuch.

What can you do?

My answer is to find things that make you cheerful and take your mind off the dire new world – world war three  will happen, or then again, it may not.

I have several pleasant things to look forward to in books, music and horse racing.

Firstly, books.  I was pretty underwhelmed by the literature on offer at the start of 2016, but I did find some gems published last year after it was almost over.

I’m currently reading A Gentleman In Moscow by American writer Amor Towles, an author unfamiliar to me, even though he has one other novel, The Rules of Civility, published in 2011.

A Gentleman In Moscow is a real find; a charming and thoroughly enjoyable novel set in Moscow, covering the years 1922 through to the 1950s. 

Though  the novel is set in Moscow in the period following the Russian Revolution,  it is mostly confined to the grand old Hotel Metropol where the novel’s protagonist, Count Alexander Rostov, is detained under house arrest. 

It’s a novel to be enjoyed for its elegant and witty prose style, rather than page turning action.  However, there is plenty to keep the reader amused and beguiled as Count Rostov settles into his prison and adapts to its limitations. He’s a likeable character, a man with good taste and manners -  a true gentleman- who enjoys the good things life has to offer in his confinement, and treasures the friends he makes along the way.

Events outside the Metropol are not ignored; the tumultuous events of post revolutionary Russia  intrude on the charmed lives of the Hotel Metropol residents every so often.

Other 2016 published novels I was taken with are Margaret Atwood’s wicked take on Shakespeare’s The Tempest Hagseed, and Moonglow, a fictional biography by Michael Chabon, wonderfully written as you’d expect. I also read some super short story collections, Joan Aiken’s The People In The Castle, Get In Trouble by Kelly Link and Children of The New World by Alexander Weinstein.

This year’s fiction offerings are far more promising with novels by favourite authors Neal Stephenson (The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O), Nick Harkaway (Gnomen), Phillip Pullman (The Book of Dust) and John Crowley (Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr)  all to be published this year.

As for music, I have three concerts to attend in the next few months, with the Dixie Chicks on April 2 at Rod Laver Arena. My all time favourite artist Ryan Adams will be performing live in May at Margaret Court Arena. In July I’m off to see America, the 1970s band, best known for the song “Horse With No Name”, at Hamer Hall.

Having been awed by the amazing performance of Winx in the George Ryder Stakes last weekend, I had an overwhelming urge to go and see her in her final race for autumn, in three weeks time at Randwick, in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes. I have decided to fly to Sydney for the day and have booked my flight and purchased a ticket to the event, which also covers public transport fares to Randwick Racecourse.  So a sort of mini adventure is on the cards for Saturday 8 April. I don’t care what the weather is like – rain or shine will suit me either way.

Rebecca, if you’re reading this, I can get you a race book (can’t promise to get it signed, but I’ll try) and hopefully a Winx flag. Send me an email at pollycatster@gmail.com if interested.

If you’re wondering at my folly, check out this video of Winx winning the 2017 George Ryder Stakes last Saturday.  Be mindful that the track was a heavy 10 (Heaviest category track, very wet, towards saturation). All the racing fraternity are lost for words at her latest win, but I can’t help but rejoice that a racehorse of her calibre is back with us again so soon after Black Caviar stole our hearts away. 

A Life Well Travelled–Louis de Bernières at Melbourne Writers Festival

Louis de Bernieres (left) & Patrick Allington at the Wheeler Centre 21/8/15

The annual Melbourne Writers Festival kicked off  on Thursday 20th August, and International Guest Louis de Bernières delivered the opening address at Melbourne Town Hall on the night.

I did not attend the event, but chose to book for a 90 minute session entitled “Ask A Novelist” with Louis de Bernières and Patrick Allington  discussing the subject at the Wheeler Centre on Friday afternoon.

A surprisingly low key affair, it was pretty well attended for a mid afternoon event. I managed to get a seat in the front row, so was well placed to snap a few surreptitious photos.

It was an interesting and entertaining seminar, where Louis de Bernières, an articulate and erudite speaker, explained his writing process in some detail. For instance, he said he tended to write crucial scenes first, no matter where they occurred in the overall layout of the book in progress, and liked to slowly develop the novel as a sort of journey to completion. To illustrate his approach to writing a novel, he quoted the first few lines of Ithaka by Greek poet C P Cavafy:

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.

He is widely travelled himself, having in his late teens spent some years in Columbia South America. This experience and the novels of magic realist writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez influenced his early writing and his first three novels, the so called Latin American Trilogy.

When researching the historical and physical background for his novels, he travels to the locations and gets the lowdown on the history of the place from the locals. He finds inspiration from many sources and his latest novel, the newly published The Dust that Falls From Dreams was inspired by the life of his grandparents.

His best known book is of course Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, a runaway best seller published in 1994.  I have read it, but appear to have mislaid my copy of it. I do have Birds Without Wings, purportedly de Bernières favourite of his novels. I actually wrote a review of it on this blog way back in 2006.

A friend gave me The Dust that Falls From Dreams recently for my birthday, so I’m looking forward to reading it, especially after meeting the author.

There was curious case of synchronicity last night, when I resumed reading The Confusion, book two of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Trilogy, my current book on the go. 

Louis de Bernières at one stage quoted Leibniz; his best of all possible worlds statement.

When I opened  page 646 of The Confusion, what should the chapter quotation be but:

God has chosen the world that is the most perfect, that is to say, the one that is at the same time the simplest in hypotheses and the richest in phenomena.
- Leibniz

My mind was accordingly blown.

Louis de Bernières reading a poem at the end of the session

It was an enjoyable seminar and I was pleased that I attended the event, and delighted to have my copies of Louis de Bernières books signed.

I don’t plan to go to many other of the Melbourne Writers Festival events, but have pencilled in Kelly Link on Sunday morning, 30 August. As I have two of her short story collections, which I have read and enjoyed, I’m keen to see her in person and of course get them autographed.

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.

Hello 2015 – Cats & Books

I meant to write a post before the New Year, but somehow time slipped away and I didn’t get around to it.

2014 was a pretty good year for me, only marred by the deaths of two friends, who are still mourned and will live on in my memories. I hope 2015 will not be as stressful in that way, and that my friends, family and pets continue to survive in good health and spirits.

Willy, pictured above, will turn 11 in January and this month will also mark the second year that Talya, the Russian Princess, has been part of the Cat Politics domicile.

The happy cat herbal medicine appears to be working and apart from a fracas yesterday morning the cats seem cool and calm in the main.

The fracas occurred when both cats were sprawled on the bed in close proximity and Willy misinterpreted Talya’s body language as a threat. She was actually sneezing or coughing, but he thought she was hissing at him so he advanced on her personal space and the inevitable happened with much sound and fury on Talya’s part.  She sprang off the bed with Willy in hot pursuit and hid under it, shrieking. I persuaded Willy to back off and eventually, as breakfast was in the offing, Talya emerged as if nothing had happened and the cats milled around my ankles as I dished out their food, all aggro forgotten.

Monty the cat next door has been hanging around in our back garden quite a bit, but both he and Willy appear reluctant to come to blows. If they’re facing off on the fence, Willy allows me to lift him down without any fuss and wanders inside without a backward glance. When I got up the other morning I discovered Monty lounging on the back door step. The resident cats were outside as well, looking on, but not game enough to dislodge him. When he saw me he slunk off, which gave Talya and Willy their chance to pester me for breakfast.

Monty lounging on the decking outside the back door

On other matters, this time last year I was anticipating new novels from two of my favourite writers, those being David Mitchell and William Gibson, and I’m pleased to say that neither novel  was a disappointment. In fact The Bone Clocks (David Mitchell ) and The Peripheral (William Gibson) are among the best books I read this year, both being wonderfully written and interesting throughout.

Another book that glows in my brain is Tigerman by Nick Harkaway, a book about fathers and sons with the most unusual super hero in literature. This was the last book I read in 2014, and it is up there with the best. Nick Harkaway is the son of John Le Carré and has written three novels so far – The Gone Away World, Angelmaker & Tigerman-  all of which I have read and enjoyed. He’s a writer I’ll certainly be following in the future.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, which won the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non Fiction and the 2014 Costa Prize for Biography, is a standout. It’s a beautifully written memoir wherein Helen Macdonald, in the wake of her beloved father’s death, describes in glittering prose how she tried to cope with her grief by acquiring and training a goshawk.  As well as detailing her life with Mabel her goshawk, she muses on the sad lonely life of T. H. White who also wrote a book on training a goshawk in the 1950s, but is famous for his series of Arthurian novels collected under the title of The Once And Future King.

I’m still waiting for the 25th Anniversary Edition of John Crowley’s Little, Big, despite being hopeful at the beginning of last year it would be published in 2014.  Dare I hope to see it in 2015? It is after all 10 years since I subscribed to it, but surely will be worth the wait.

Speaking of collectable books, I was able to get a signed first edition of William Gibson’s The Peripheral, being alerted on Twitter by a Gibson fan that Barnes &  Noble had them available for pre-order. I was delighted to finally have a long desired, signed edition of one of his books.

And I lashed out on a slip cased, limited, numbered and signed edition of The Bone Clocks, which arrived on Christmas Eve - a nice present to myself.

There are several books I’m looking forward to in 2015. The final book in Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, will possibly be released this year and Kate Atkinson is mooted to have new novel as well, about one the characters in Life After Life.

And I’ll have to clear another largish space on my bookshelf for Neal Stephenson’s new novel titled Seveneves, another 1000+ page novel due in May 2015. I like collecting his books in hardcover editions, even though they take up a lot of space, but they look wonderful on the shelf and are highly collectable, Stephenson being a nerdish cult hero.

Current hard cover collection of Neal Stephenson novels

No doubt there will be more good reads in the offing, and who knows there may be a new author out there who will blow me away.

With 2015 being barely begun, who knows what is in store in the next 12 months. I’ll no doubt be spending some of it at the racetrack. The Magic Millions 2 and 3 year old (outrageously rich) Classic races are scheduled on the Gold Coast this Saturday. I haven’t a clue as to who the likely winners will be, but they’re always interesting to watch.

The first Group 1 of the 2015 Autumn racing carnival is only a little over a month away, so there’s lots to look forward to on the racing scene.

With that, I wish readers of this blog (if there are any) good fortune, good health and happiness in 2015.

Anticipation

Life’s pretty dull if you haven’t got anything to look forward to. I was going to say, not worth living, but then I thought of all the people in the world who really haven’t anything to look forward to, but no doubt appreciate being alive.

I count myself fortunate that I live in a free and reasonably well off society, where there are many pleasures to relish in advance.

Such is the case at present, where I am keenly anticipating both things of a musical nature and things of a literary nature, not to mention the Spring Racing Carnival.

Ryan Adams. as I have mentioned before, is my all time favourite music artist. I’ve got all his CDs and even some memorabilia ( t-shirt and poster) and have seen him perform live five times.

I must admit I have not liked some of his music, his CD Rock N Roll for instance, but in the main I’ve loved most of them.

What I am keenly anticipating is his latest musical offering Ashes & Fire, especially after listening to a couple of tracks that are freely available on the Internet.  You can listen to his first single, Lucky Now here, and watch Ryan playing an acoustic version of the title song here.  They both sound really beautiful to me; Ryan Adams is back with a vengeance.

Ashes & Fire is his first solo record since he took a break from making music after his 2009 tour. So, it has been quite a wait, but judging from what I have heard so far will be well worth it.

Strangely enough, next week I am going to a concert by the similarly named artist Bryan Adams, famous for such songs as Summer of 69 and Cuts Like A Knife.  Yes it’s pop, but I’m certain it will be very enjoyable, despite the  horrible seat I was allocated at the booking office. People have suggested that I should yell out a request for Come Pick Me Up, one of Ryan Adams’ most requested songs, seeing as how at Ryan Adams concerts in the past, rude persons in the audience were wont to yell out “Play Summer of 69!” Of course I wouldn’t do anything of the kind.

A curious coincidence between Ryan and Bryan Adams is that they have the same birthday – 5th November, 1974 and 1959 respectively.

On the book front, I’m waiting for the publication later this month of Neal Stephenson’s new monster (in size, not subject) novel Reamde, purportedly a hi tech thriller.

You have to be somewhat nerdish to be a Neal Stephenson fan, or have the patience and fortitude to read through 1000 plus pages of a novel. But Stephenson generally fills those 1000 plus pages with cool stuff, and he has a racy style of writing that has you turning the pages excitedly. He  also explains complex ideas with engaging simplicity.

I have a shelf of Neal Stephenson novels in hard cover. They’re all pretty hefty tomes, but look impressive lined up together. I’ll have to clear a 60mm space to fit Reamde in alongside.

As well as having Reamde on pre-order, I’ve also placed orders for the new Haruki Murakami novel 1Q84, apparently Murakami’s masterpiece and his take on Orwell’s 1984, due out in October, and the new Umberto Eco novel The Prague Cemetery, which is due in November.

I purchased all the above books, redeeming a gift voucher I received from my brother for my birthday. I regard it as a good haul and will have the pleasure of anticipating new exciting books for the next three or so months.

I’m also still waiting – after six years – for the publication of the 25th Anniversary edition of Little, Big by John Crowley. Whether it will be published this year is up in the air. I’m not holding my breath.