Treasure 2 October 2014

John Collins Leigh Edmonds Bruce Gillespie Robyn Whiteley

Doug Barbour Damien Broderick Ned Brooks Jennifer Bryce Stephen Campbell Peggyann Chevalier Giampaolo Cossato Robert Elordieta Carole Gray Ros Gross Kim Huett Steve Jeffery Jerry Kaufman Werner Koopmann Dora Levakis John Litchen DJ Frederick Moe Gerald Murnane Cath Ortlieb Lloyd Penney Andy Robson Yvonne Rousseau Steve Sneyd Cat Sparks Joe Szabo Jean Weber Casey Wolf Sally Yeoland and many others

Robyn Whiteley: ‘Cambridge punts’ Treasure No. 2 October 2014 First publication: October 2014 mailing of ANZAPA. Written and published by Bruce Gillespie, 5 Howard St., Greensborough VIC 3088. Phone: (03) 9435 7786. Email: [email protected]. Member fwa.

3 Editorial: Treasure — Bruce Gillespie

6 A cascade of fans: Continuum X, Melbourne, June 2014 — Bruce Gillespie

25 Letters of comment Jennifer Bryce :: Ros Gross :: Yvonne Roussseau :: Robert Elordieta :: Werner Koopmann :: Dora Levakis :: Gerald Murnane :: Ned Brooks :: John Litchen :: Sally Yeoland :: Damien Broderick :: Steve Sneyd :: Jerry Kaufman :: Joe Szabo :: Casey Wolf :: Doug Barbour :: Steve Jeffery :: Giampaolo Cossato :: Stephen Campbell :: Lloyd Penney :: Andy Robson :: DJ Frederick Moe :: Peggyann Chevalier :: Kim Huett :: & We Also Heard From

47 Feature letters: A conversation about music today (especially on ABC FM) — Leigh Edmonds and Bruce Gillespie

56 Have wheelchair, will travel: A travel diary: May–June 2013 — Robyn Whiteley

Illustrations

Front cover: Robyn Whiteley (‘Cambridge Punts.’).

Photographs: Cat Sparks: pp. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19. Cath Ortlieb: pp. 13, 15, 22, 23. Jean Weber: p. 13. Damien Broderick: p. 31. Carole Gray: p. 33. Casey Wolf: pp. 33, 34. Giampaolo Cossato: pp. 38, 39, 40). Robyn Whiteley and John Collins: pp. 56, 57, 58, 61. 63. 65. 68. 71. 75, 76, 78, 80, 81, 83, 84, 86, 87, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95, 98, 99, 104, 106, 107, 111, 114.

2 Treasure

The trouble with unearthing buried treasure of the mind kind is that first I The Train, also from the early 1960s, in which Burt Lancaster, improbably need to unearth visible treasure of the cash kind. Treasure 2 is nine months cast as a wartime railway worker, rescues the Nazi haul of French art and late because of my constant need to work (compiling indexes for book returns it to Paris; and Henry Hathaway’s rollicking North to Alaska (1960), publishers) to top up my other meagre sources of income. in which John Wayne and Cappucine hurtle around CinemaScoped Alaskan valleys and mountains. I had hoped Treasure 2 would appear in for the June mailing of ANZAPA. Instead I was hit by a deluge of interesting but time-consuming indexing jobs. Another friend, John Davies, alerts me to previously unavailable British films I finished the most recent project two weeks ago. Since then I’ve been that are being released by such labels as BFI and Studio Canal. Thanks to gathering my scattered wits and Treasure text and photo files. him, I’ve been able to see a remastered print of The Mouse That Roared, one of several films in which Peter Sellers played multiple roles; and Carol Reed’s I can’t afford to publish a print edition that is more than 80 pages long, but The Third Man, famous for Orson Welles’s ‘cuckoo clock’ speech, and last time I looked, I found at least nearly 200 pages of material that would fit distinguished by its black-and-white photography, as glorious as in any in nicely into a single issue. So here is the first of two issues. Orson Welles’s own films.

Film treasure Recently I bought the new Studio Canal seven-Blu-ray set of Jacques Tati’s movies. His Mon Oncle (1958) has been one of my favourite movies since I DVDs and Blu-rays were supposed to have vanished by now. If they had, I first saw it in 1965, but it has been difficult to gain access to his other movies. would have a larger bank account, since I don’t download film and music His first two feature films, Jour de Fete and Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, were very files. popular at the Valhalla repertory cinema during the 1970s and 1980s, but they became shorter and shorter as various projectionists sampled bits of Instead, if you are an astute film fan, such as Dick Jenssen, you find obscure them. These, like all of Tati’s movies, have been reconstructed for the Blu-ray films released constantly in glorious remastered prints from obscure labels. set. They are now complete and without all the scratches and blips that He orders them from overseas suppliers, whereas I still buy from local became so obvious in the prints I saw in the 1970s. Tati’s fourth movie, Play suppliers, such as Play Music, 50 Bourke Street, Melbourne, and Readings Time (1967), has finally been remastered from the original 70 mm negative. Records and Books in Carlton. I’ve been able to see seemingly long-lost When it played in Melbourne in the 1960s, only the 35 mm print was shown. classics such as Robert Wise’s magnificent 1963 black-and-white horror film (That was also the version used for the DVD set of some years ago.) Play Time The Haunting, based on the novel by Shirley Jackson; John Frankenheimer’s was Tati’s bankruptcy-inducing folly, for which he built an entire city set near

3 Paris, so it is now wonderful to see his visionary urban nightmare clearly for during World War II find themselves bored by ordinary existence after the the first time. war. When they meet ten years later, they solve crimes not even noticed by other people. I’ll save my Favourite Films list for the end of the year. The top two are made by a man named Paolo Sorrentino. This year we finally saw the Second Series of The Doctor Blake Mysteries, made right in Ballarat and starring a swag of Australian actors, on ABC TV, but with I will mention now, while it’s in Australian cinemas, the Spierig Brothers’ no guarantee of a third series. Many of the more interesting background Predestination, based with satisfying accuracy on Robert Heinlein’s 12-page character involvements of the first series are allowed to rest this time, but time-paradox short story ‘All You Zombies’, and starring Ethan Hawke and individual episodes have been very enjoyable. In Australia, we do ten episodes Sarah Snooks. Made in Australia, this has been picked up by Sony Interna- to a series, not a measly three or four eps, as they do in Britain. tional, so could well appear without warning in a cinema near you. Don’t miss it. Snooks’ performance should give her an Oscar, if the film is released Book treasure in USA in time. Hawke is the only American in the cast, but everybody speaks with an American accent, and Melbourne has to stand in for New York and This year I was supposed to give a talk to the Nova Mob, Melbourne’s Cleveland. I haven’t worked out the implications of the uber-story that is discussion group. I wasn’t quite sure of my subject matter or the books I would draped over Heinlein’s kernel story, but with it the scriptwriters have solved be covering, and until well into the year Julian Warner, our Bossa Nova, could an inconsistency in the original story. not give me a specific month when I might speak. Not that it mattered. I didn’t have time to write a talk this year, and in the end I escaped from having TV treasure to improvise. August would have been my month, but the meeting was cancelled because many of the Mob were winging their way to sunny London That’s not an ironic heading. I watch few TV series, but I try to keep up with for LonCon, this year’s SF World Convention. (170 Australians attended.) I some of the major British shows. Sherlock (Series Three) is the most stimulat- started writing up the material I have researched. But shouldn’t it be in SF ing TV series of the year, but the distance between these scripts and anything Commentary? In the next issue, the one you’ve been waiting for all year. written by Conan Doyle has now become immense. Irritating is the current British tendency to attach a cliffhanger ending at the end of a series, but My subject is ‘Genre Barriers Work Both Ways’. (1) Why do some literary Sherlock is not unique in that. I remember an early series of Dalziel and Pascoe, authors write books that are obviously genre fantasy or SF, but few people in where Dalziel, seemingly obliterated by a shotgun blast at the end of one the SF world know about them? (2) Why do some people write books that series, is merely injured and feeling sorry for himself at the beginning of the are obviously major literary works, worthy of the Miles Franklin or Man next. Booker Awards, but their books are known only to SF and fantasy readers?

The cliffhanger syndrome also spoils the end of the end of Endeavour To follow Proposition (1) I suggest reading the novels and short stories of (Second Series), which is otherwise very well written. I don’t believe for a such Americans as Steven Millhauser (We Others: New and Selected Stories), moment that Shaun Evans could be the younger Inspector Morse (John Karen Russell (St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Vampires in the Lemon Thaw), but Roger Allam as his boss, DI Thursday, gives an down-to-earth Grove, and Swamplandia!), some of the work of Jennifer Egan (Look at Me and gravity to his role. Thanks, as always, to Dick Jenssen, for enabling me The Keep), and at least four novels by Canada’s Margaret Atwood (especially Endeavour — and the two series of The Bletchley Circle. Four women who were The Handmaid’s Tale). To follow Proposition (2), read some of my favourite clever enough to have worked at Bletchley Park in Britain as code breakers Australian writers, such as Angela Slatter (Sourdough and Other Stories), Kaaron

4 Warren (Dead Sea Fruit), and Cat Sparks (The Bride Price); and a book I read and Reading’s. However, if you want to start a basic collection, now’s the time. by America’s Elizabeth Hand (Errantry). As part of these boxes, individual CDs rarely cost more than $2 or $3 .

Among the other enjoyable books I read this year, the standouts include the What’s the problem with the boxed sets? It’s not buying them. But when do first two novels by Australia’s Thomas Keneally. I have no idea why he I find the time to listen to them? I’m so far behind in sipping even the tastiest suppressed republication of his first novel The Place at Whitton for 50 years. of these sets that I’ve stopped buying them (although various stores are It’s an excellent crime novel of place and character, seemingly ideal for currently offering 50 per cent discounts on many of them). The sets I did conversion into a 2014-style atmospheric tele-movie. His second novel, The buy this year provide valuable historical records of entire careers. They Fear, is just as accomplished as his first, and much more enjoyable than some include Herbert Von Karajan’s 1960s recordings for Deutsche Grammophon of his later novels. (recently challenged by a huge number of smaller boxed sets of his work for EMI), remastered in a big big box that sits awkwardly on the shelf. This has My other discovery of the year is Australia’s Michael Robotham. I had become been followed by the first set of Leonard Bernstein’s recordings for DG, annoyed by most of the crime and mystery authors I used to enjoy, but I’m although not yet the vast number of recordings he made for Columbia/Sony. looking foreward to catching up with Robotham’s novels. He is no great stylist, but his novels are readable and full of memorable characters and plot Even better is the recent box of Bruno Walter’s recordings with the Columbia ideas. His latest novel, Life or Death, is his first novel set in USA and aimed at Symphony Orchestra for Columbia/Sony. During the last years before his the American market. Buy it if you see it. death in his early 80s, Walter recorded many of his favourite works in stereo for the first time. Many of these versions, such as that of Mahler’s Symphony Music treasure No 2, are among the great recordings of the twentieth century.

On the one hand, I could say ‘more of the same’, and you would know what Dick Jenssen has been generous in sending us various opera and symphony I mean if you read my annual lists of favourite CDs. Again I have bought more Blu-rays, but recently he overdid himself. He sent us not only the new Simon CDs than I can listen to. Rattle/Berlin Philharmonic recordings of the Schumann symphonies, but also the other recent Blu-ray Schumann set, recorded by Paavo Jarvi with the The best of the popular CDs range from Willie Nelson’s best CD for awhile, German Chamber Philharmonic Bremen. Both sets include documentaries Band of Brothers, to the second CD by Swedish singing double First Aid Kit about the music, which is presented in 24-bit sound. (Stay Gold) with their divine floating harmonies, to dark-voiced Mary Gauth- ier’s great new set of songs Trouble and Love. Thanks very much to Robyn Whiteley for her wonderful travel diary, various treasure-seeking letter writers, and the oganisers of this year’s Continuum in However, the real treasures can be found among the classical boxed sets. If Melbourne. you don’t buy classical music CDs, you won’t have noticed the huge range and number of these sets as they litter the shelves of stores such as Thomas’s For more treasure ... just read on ...

5 Bruce Gillespie

A cascade of fans: Continuum X, Melbourne, June 2014

A man approached me at Continuum X, this year’s national convention held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Melbourne, 6–9 June. Jolly round face, smiling. In his fifties. Did I know him? ‘Hello, Bruce,’ he said, and handed me a book. Could it be? No! Impossible! His name tag said, ‘Van.’

Van Ikin! We haven’t held a conversation since 1981, at the Canberra SF Conference, and haven’t spoken to each other since 1985, when we were briefly in a room together before Van disappeared into the bowels of Aussiecon 2.

Van gave me a copy of Xeno Fiction, the second volume of articles, edited by Damien Broderick and Van Ikin, from Van’s long-running journal Science Fiction, and published by the Borgo Press. The book contains an essay by George Turner about Peter Carey. Since I am George Turner’s literary executor, it’s very nice to have that essay available again.

There were so many questions I wanted to ask Van, but he was snatched away from me by Gillian Polack. Van was the supervisor for her PhD, but this was the first time she had been able to meet him. Before he disappeared back into the crowd, I did find out from Van that he is semi- retired, and has four Van Ikin and Janeen Webb. (Photo: Cat Sparks.) issues of Science Fiction ready for completion. I didn’t even have time to ask

6 Looking up from the atrium of the Intercontinental Hotel. (Photo: Cat Sparks.)

7 Lower ground floor bar of the Intercontinental Hotel — where all fans gathered. (Photo: Cat Sparks.)

8 him about his current home address. But meeting him gave an immediate emotional lift to the convention.

Friday, 6 June 2014

From the time I arrived, this year’s Continuum gave me the feeling that it would be a great success. A convention spread out around an atrium layout will usually be a success (especially Aussiecon 3 in 1999). This year the registration area at the top of the stairs faced down a U shape. The dealers’ room and one meeting room ran along one side of the U, and the other three meeting rooms down the other side. The atrium of the Intercontinental convention facility looked rather like the interior of the Bradbury Building in Los Angeles: all wood panelling, black metal, and verandas. (The building must have been either a warehouse or apartments before being turned into a hotel.) From the registration–assembly area, you could look down the whole length of the bar and restaurant. You could always see somebody you knew, as well as a whole lot of people you’d never met before.

I arrived early on Friday, 6 June, for the very first event of the convention: the special Nova Mob meeting. Our regular meeting should have been on the Wednesday night, but it had been arranged that DUFF (Down Under Fan Fund) winner Juanita Coulson should be the speaker. She did not arrive from New Zealand until Thursday. I had met Juanita most recently in October 1973, when I was traipsing around USA. Sandra and John Miesel had taken me to visit Buck and Juanita outside of Indianapolis. They were best known as publishers of the great fanzine Yandro. Buck died of diabetes- related illness some years ago, and that was long after Yandro had ceased publication. I knew that Juanita had become famous for her filk singing, but otherwise I knew little about what she had been doing recently in fandom. A few months ago John Hertz, the US DUFF organiser, gave me the chance to support her nomination for this year’s DUFF race, which she won.

All I knew about Juanita now is that she is 81 years old and that she sings well. She also speaks very well — for three-quarters of an hour, without notes, without an ‘um’ or ‘er’ or ‘y’know’, about how she joined fandom, how she met Buck and married him, the story of the genesis of Yandro, and much else Juanita Coulson, the 2014 DUFF winner. (Photo: Cat Sparks.) of what she has been doing.

9 him when Collected Works was in Smith Street, Fitzroy, in the 1970s. The place was filled with poets and others, and some people I recognised, such as Alex Skovron (although I did not get to talk to him), plus some of Us (including Sean Williams from Adelaide, Edwina Harvey and Simon Petrie from Sydney, and the Blackfords from Newcastle). Alan Stewart has a poem in the collection, but says he was not invited to the launch.

I found myself standing in one spot, and standing ... and standing ... while two books were launched that night. First was Gemma White, whose poems in The Furniture Is Disappearing have a speculative and mischievous feeling. She read well, but perhaps too long, from a wide selective of poems that were both poignant and sharp. Finally, Philip Salom, a well-known Melbourne poet I had never seen before, launched The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry, edited by P. S. Cottier and ... Tim Jones!. I hadn’t recognised Tim until that moment. We had last met during the 1994 national conven- tion, held at the Southern Cross Hotel in Melbourne, when he and I were Fan Guests of Honour. Since then Tim, a New Zealander, has almost disappeared from world fandom, and has become a writer and editor of poetry and fiction. The Stars Like Sand is follow-up project to Voyagers, Tim’s (and Mark Pirie’s) earlier anthology of New Zealand speculative poetry. Jenny and Russell Blackford. (Photo: Cat Sparks.) Penelope Cottier, Tim’s co-editor for The Stars Like Sand, proved to be a forceful poet and speaker, also well aware of the width and depth of poetry A great start to the convention, especially because we drew a good audience, that might be called ‘speculative’. which swelled during the hour. By the time we emerged, the registration area was buzzing and the first program items had started. Gathering at the bar, I If only I had not already been standing for half an hour, I might have better kept catching up with people, letting them go, moving on. Suddenly I was enjoyed the readings from The Stars Like Sand. My impression is that you supposed to be elsewhere in the city by 6 p.m. cannot be considered a poet these days unless you can perform your own work convincingly to an audience. Every offering seemed fine to me on the Jenny Blackford, down from Newcastle with her husband Russell, had invited night, but Jenny Blackford’s ‘Their Cold Eyes Pierced My Skin’ was a crowd me to attend the launch of a collection of speculative poetry, The Stars Like pleaser. It was the only poem that told a gripping story as well as being an Sand, which included a poem of hers. The launch was at Collected Works, effective lyric, and Jenny’s delivery held us until the ending. Somewhat more the last great old-fashioned bookshop, tucked away on the first floor of the enigmatic, but also very powerful, was Philip Salom’s ‘Detached and in the Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston Street. I hadn’t been there for many years, Manner of a Veterinarian’, Alex Skovron’s ‘The Road to Hell’, and Lisa but it remains the same as I remember it: walls of poetry books, with lots of Jacobson’s ‘Several Ways to Fall Out of the Sky’. posters and special offers pinned to the shelves, plus many other types of books that have disappeared from elsewhere in the city. Shop owner Kris I talked briefly to Tim, and hoped I would catch up with him the next day at Hemensley was holding court at the front of the shop, just as I remember the convention. I dashed off to Ciao in Hardware Lane to meet the usual

10 Friday night crew for a quick dinner, then yet another walk in the cold back to the convention for the panel I had promised Bill Wright I would attend: the Fan Funds Panel. At other recent Australian conventions I’ve been to, attendances at fan fund panels have been minuscule at best. This time Alison Barton put together a jolly group of fan fund winners, such as Bill Wright (last year’s DUFF winner), Norman Cates (FFANZ winner a few years ago), Juanita Coulson (this year’s DUFF winner), and Matt Lindus (NAFF winner, over from Western Australia). She asked the panel members to tell scandal- ous and astonishing stories about their various journeys, but most of them

Cat Sparks and Sean Wright. (Photo: Cat Sparks.)

11 emphasised the niceness of their hosts and the delightful aspects of winning lian small press publishers were there, or had sent stocks. a fan fund journey. Most of the people in the audience had won fan funds in the past or had help organised fan fund contests. Stephen McCracken and Gerry Huntman were sitting side by side, selling books published by IFWG Publishing. I had never heard of them. I had never Saturday, 7 June 2014 heard of their authors. They said they had begun as the Australian agent of an American small publisher, and now were publishing Australian authors. My first hour of the convention on Saturday 7 June felt like a re-run of the I bought a collection, Starquake 1, that included contributions from all their night before. Both Tim Jones and Penelope Cottier appeared on a panel authors. about speculative poetry, along with Sean Wright, somebody I thought I had met for the first time the day before, and who was still a mystery to me. (It On the desk of Satalyte Publishers, I did recognise the names of quite a few turns out he does podcasts and blogs, rather successfully, but I’ve never of the authors, including Janeen Webb, Adam Browne, and Jack Dann. listened to any podcasts and rarely read blogs.) Tim and Penelope repeated Satalyte has just republished Jack Dann’s Jubilee short fiction collection. I some of what they had said the night before, but the discussion went onto to nearly bought the magnificent hardback edition (although I have the discuss the nuts and bolts of placing their work. ‘Selling’ seems too strong a HarperCollins first edition) until I saw the price: $60. word, since payment for poems rarely exceeds $40, and I would have thought many poetry magazines publish in the same way as fanzines. There are a few top markets in Australia, especially the literary magazines, but it was not clear whether they were interested in speculative poetry, or whether they paid any more than the tiny magazines.

I did get to talk to Tim Jones, however, for the first time in 20 years, then went to the launch by FableCroft Publishing of a new novel by Jo Anderton. Jo has won Ditmars in the past, and probably some Aurealis Awards as well, but I did not get a clear impression of her special interests. I own her most recent book of short stories, so much catch up.

My main purpose in attending the Saturday sessions of the convention was to bankrupt myself.

I had started the literary-led downward path toward poverty the previous night. Collected Works was so filled with unsuspected literary riches that I grabbed a few books by my favourite poets (such as Geoff Page, Kevin Hart, and Barry Hill), as well as Jenny Blackford’s wonderful little book of cat poems. I blanched when I saw my VisaCard bill, and stopped spending there. I will return to Collected Works when safe to do so. Jo Anderton and her publisher, Tehani Wessely (Fablecroft Publishing). (Photo: The dealers’ room of the convention offered no safety. All the major Austra- Cat Sparks.)

12 Pauline Dickinson, Justin Ackroyd, Cath Ortlieb (Photo: Cath Ortlieb.)

Who are Satalyte? Stephen Ormsby and his wife Marieke (and very new baby). George Ivanoff launches LynC’s first novel,Nil By Mouth. Stephen Ormsby Stephen explained that they have been publishing for seven months, and (Satalyte Publishers) is on far right. have already issued a tableful of books. Such is the wonder of producing (Photo: Jean Weber.) books by Print on Demand technology. No more garages full of unsold copies have to buy a copy. She had already given me a signed copy! Thanks, Lyn. (à la Norstrilia Press, in our heyday). No more capital costs in the tens of thousands of dollars. Print a few copies initially, then keep printing as each Peggy Bright Books is a publisher I had heard of, thanks to the efforts of book attracts customers. It’s almost enough to make me want to revive Edwina Harvey in Sydney and Sue Burstzynski in Melbourne. From their Norstrilia Press — but not quite. How did Satalyte make itself known among table I bought two anthologies edited by Edwina Harvey and Simon Petrie. Australian authors? I have no idea. How do the Ormsbys alert customers to Again, I have no idea how Peggy Bright mounts a selling campaign or finds their books? I have no idea. In the world of the Internet, there seems to be a distributor, as Norstrilia Press did in the seventies and eighties. no centre of information for our field. Justin Ackroyd’s Slow Glass Books tables were the selling point for a number Showing up at Continuum was a good idea for Satalyte. Stephen was all over of the independent publishers you might have heard of, such as Ticonderoga the convention, on panels and organising book launches. On Monday, I Publications and Twelfth Planet from Western Australia. I caught up with attended the launch of LynC’s first novel, Nil By Mouth (Satalyte), but I didn’t

13 Russell Farr, co-publisher at Ticonderoga, for a conversation for the first time I was also able to buy Rupetta, by N. K. Sulway (which had already won the in many conventions, but have yet to natter to his partner Liz Grzyb, who James Tiptree Jr Award in America). I already knew she was going to win the copy-edits all their books and publishes her own collections. Until the Norma Hemming Award the next night at the awards ceremony. Better dig convention I had not been able to buy a copy of the third annual collection into the wallet before all the copies are sold out. I did not know that Rob of The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror (edited by Liz, with Talie Hood’s new novel was going to win the Ditmar for Best Novel, so I missed Helene) or Kisses by Clockwork, Liz’s collection of steampunk stories by out on a copy. Australian writers. It seems that Russell and Liz do not send out review copies. Of the books I bought on Saturday, the book I am most looking forward to Twelfth Planet books I bought included Kirstyn McDermott’s new collection reading is the new Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks edition of the complete Caution: Contains Small Parts, which contained a story that won a prize later Lord Darcy stories, by Randall Garrett. When I began buying Analog in the in the convention, and Rosaleen Love’s Secret Lives of Books. If Rosaleen was mid sixties, these stories were appearing there. Now at last they are in one around, I did not see her, but I did say hello, once, to Kirstyn. (Kirstyn and thumping big volume. her husband Jason Nahrung were members of our Fourth Thursday dinner group until the went to live in Ballarat.) I haven’t dared add up the total damage inflicted on my VisaCard by that hour in the dealers’ room. For the only time that weekend I was pleased that Continuum happens only once a year.

Sunday, 8 June

Sunday afternoon began at 2.30 with an event about which I can say little, because it was organised by David Russell for a few of us at the other end of town from the Intercontinental. David saves all year to take out a few friends every year to some otherwise unaffordable restaurant. This year he took us to High Tea at the Windsor. This very Melbourne event is highly recom- mended, but you need to book a long while ahead to gain a table at the High Tea of High Teas on Sunday afternoons. Many thanks, David.

Eventually we staggered onto a tram and returned to the convention. At 6 p.m. it was time for My Own Convention Event, the panel on ‘Collections’ that I was asked to coordinate. I had emailed a variety of people, most of whom I thought were unlikely to attend the convention — but they turned up anyway.

It was the first time since Aussiecon 4 I had had time to talk to Grant Stone. He had been the Special Collections Librarian at Murdoch University until involuntarily retired a few years ago, but since then has had a wonderful job Liz Grzyb and Russell Farr, Ticonderoga Publications. (Photo: Cat Sparks.) cataloguing and curating a huge private collection of SF books. Grant

14 The right-hand side of the Collections panel: Pauline Dickinson, Bruce Gillespie, Grant Stone. (Photo: Cath Ortlieb.) To their left (invisible): Trevor Clark and James ‘Jocko’ Allen. radiates enthusiasm whenever we meet, but is often hard to raise by email. I still don’t have his home address. Book collectors all!: Bruce Gillespie, Grant Stone, Helena Binns, Merv Binns. (Photo: Cat Sparks.) I see Pauline Dickinson quite often at Continuums (Continua?) and other Melbourne conventions, but had not had the opportunity until Sunday to Trevor Clark has a huge collection of what he calls ‘stuff’, but which includes ask her what she is doing these days. She says she is semi-retired from the special interest comics, especially from the 1950s in Australia, when most Special Collections section of the Fisher Library in Sydney, but she still comic books issued here were reprints of American comics. American pub- sounds busy to me. lications could not be imported because of wartime currency restrictions, which lasted until 1959. Trev can talk for an hour about comics and make it James ‘Jocko’ Allen has his own personal collection at home, but he is more seem like ten minutes. famous as the long-time librarian of the Melbourne SF Club’s library, now in storage. Established by Merv Binns during the fifties and sixties when he was As panel moderator, wanted to explore people’s investments in their collec- working at McGill’s Newsagency in the city, the library has become very large, tions, their emotional investment as much as financial, but Grant and Pauline built on donations and review copies. When the Club was forced to move concentrated on hard information about the nuts and bolts of curating and from its rooms at St David’s Uniting Church late last year, the library (the preserving collections. It’s a high-stakes business. I realised all over again that main attraction of club membership, at least for new members) had to go a collection is only as good as its curator, which is why Bill Wright and some into storage until new rooms can be found where the library can be rebuilt. of us have been interested in establishing Meteor Inc. as a freestanding library This has not happened yet. of SF collections for fans and collectors. Despite assurances by Grant and Pauline that their own libraries will continue their good work after they are

15 gone, I was left wondering if that could be so. years at Swancons, so why not a Victorian equivalent?

Nothing was decided by the panellists or members of the audience. None of Which is okay when Victorian fans show a vital interest in their own SF writers us know what will happen to our collections after we die. However, Grant and and fans, or know who they are. This year there were few nominations in Pauline did describe in some detail why the specialist libraries in Australia most categories, and the only hotly contested category was Best Long Fiction. (including that at Monash) need to know what people are collecting, so that George Ivanoff won with his novel Gamers’ Rebellion (Ford Street Publishing). collections can go to the right place. For instance, it was reassuring to know that the Murdoch University collection is still seeking fanzine collections, This was rather a relief to George, because in a previous category (Best Short especially from the pre-1970s era of Australian fandom. Fiction) he had become the only person I can remember who has ever lost out to ‘No Award’. This caused some delightful banter from Narelle Harris I had chosen the right panellists. We could have kept talking for another about finally giving an award, after thousands of failures, to No Award, who hour. However, we and members of the audience had to attend the awards had been lying on a beach in Barcelona all these years waiting for the good night. news.

The emotional centre of most conventions is the awards ceremony. Some My surprise moment for the convention: my name was read out as a nominee Continuums stage their awards night on the Friday of the convention. For for Best Fan Publication in Any Medium. I had forgotten that I had been those of us lucky enough to be nominated for something or other, it’s a great nominated. Since Grant Watson, the only other contender apart from No relief to have the awards out of the way, whether we are winners or not. Award, has made himself a popular member of Victorian fandom since he migrated from Western Australia a few years ago, I thought he would be a Traditionally, Australian national conventions stage the awards ceremony on shoo-in. But no! Some voters had remembered that SF Commentary still exists the Sunday, as the climax of events, before people disappear gradually on after 45 years of publication. I was so astonished at winning that I said ‘Thank the Monday of the long weekend. Tradition won this year. 8 p.m. Sunday: you!’ and sat down. I wish I had thought of something intelligent to say. everybody turned up scrubbed up and ready to put on a show. The awards committee put on a feast of egoboo for those lucky enough to have their Other winners were: year’s efforts rewarded and egos boosted. George Ivanoff and Narelle Harris G Best Artwork: Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan (Hachette Australia) took over the role of MCs from the usual jokesters Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond. (No Ian Mond! Whatever is Continuum coming to? I saw him only G Best Achievement: Gamers’ Rebellion book trailer by Henry Gibbens. once, very briefly, on Saturday afternoon.) To me the most important awards of the night were the two lifetime achieve- As President of the Australian SF Foundation, I had been consulted about ment awards (the Chandler Award and the Peter MacNamara Award), the several of the awards. The awards committee told us: if you are a presenter, Norma Hemming Award, and the Amateur SF Competition. We at the get it over quick! If you’re awarded something, don’t waffle. Australian SF Foundation was heavily involved in three of these awards, with Bill Wright putting in a huge amount of effort into the Chandler and Danny Oz (or Danny Heap, as we have known him for most of his fannish Hemming Awards, and Rose Mitchell organising the Amateur SF Competi- career) established the Chronos Awards to be given out each year at Contin- tion. uum for achievements of Victorians in the various Ditmar-like categories. The Western Australian fans have been giving out the Tin Ducks for many Bill Wright had spent weeks of effort into organising the A. Bertram Chandler

16 for Lifetime Achievement, and the Norma Hemming Award. He commis- sioned gorgeous trophies, plinths, and citation awards to give to each winner.

The Norma K. Hemming Award is awarded each year ‘for excellence in the exploration of themes of race, gender, sexuality, class and disability in Australian speculative fiction’. The judges gave the main prize to N. A. Sulway for her speculative fiction novel Rupetta, published by Tartarus Press (UK) in February 2013.

The judges (Russell Blackford, Sarah Endacott, Tess Williams, and Rob Gerrand) had sorted through 29 submitted novels. The Honourable Men- tions were:

Rob Hood and Jack Dann. (Photo: Cat Sparks.)

17 night. They went to:

G First Prize: Lauren Mitchell

G Second Prize: Vanessa Kuipers

G Third Prize: Cameron Burnet.

I hadn’t heard of any of these writers until now. It will be interesting to look at this list in 10 years’ time to see how many of them become Ditmar and Aurealis winners.

The two lifetime achievement awards provide the emotional climax of the night’s proceedings because their winners are given no warning of what is about to happen to them.

Over the last 25 years, the A. Bertram Chandler Award for Lifetime Achieve- ment in Australian SF has covered a wide range of recipients — from people who have been active mainly in fandom rather than in professional publish- ing (such as me) to people who are known mainly for their writing and publishing but who also enjoy and take part in fandom (such as Lucy Sussex Alan Baxter, Alex Pierce, David McDonald. (Photo: Cat Sparks.) or Jack Dann). It is wonderful if the winner can be in the audience on the night, to be gobsmacked when his or her name is read out. This year Danny

G Catherine Jinks for her novel A Very Unusual Pursuit: City of Orphans (Allen Danger Oz, this year’s winner, offered the most wonderful gobsmacking & Unwin) performance as James ‘Jocko’ Allen (Danny’s old friend, who wrote the citation) announced his name. Readers of my magazines might remember G Kirstyn McDermott for her short story collection Caution: Contains Small the name ‘Danny Heap’. This is the same person who now calls himself Danny Parts (Twelfth Planet Press). Danger Oz (see later in this article). In the last 30 years he has resurrected the Melbourne SF Club in the 1990s from near extinction in the late 1980s, The judges commented on the winning novel: ‘In Rupetta, N. A. Sulway tells and has set up the permanent floating Continuum committee that for the a passionate story about history, truth, power, sexuality, and love. From its last 10 years has given reality to Danny’s dream. Western Australian fans owe opening pages, the novel is a joy to read — written with remarkable craft and as much to Danny as we do, and I did not know about those activities until authority. It is likely to become a classic of Australian speculative fiction, and Jocko wrote the citation (which you can find on the Australian SF Foundation it confirms that Sulway is a major talent.’ As in previous years, the judges had website). unearthed a novel written by an Australian author few of us had heard of. The Peter MacNamara Award was put together about 15 years ago by a group For many years, the Foundation has offered a total of $500 to the national of people in tribute to the inspirational publisher and writer, who snatched convention to distribute as they saw fit for an Amateur SF Competition. This up the small press publishing baton (as Aphelion Books) after Norstrilia Press year Rose Mitchell took charge of the award, presenting the cheques on the

18 and Cory & Collins dropped it in 1985, then handed it on the plethora of new small press people who began publishing in the early 1990s. He died in 2004. Like the Chandler Award, it is for lifetime achievement in Australian SF. Recipients of the Peter Mac Award (as it is called) have tended to come from a generation later than most Chandler awardees. Today Mariann MacNamara administers the award, in consultation with one other person each year. This year’s co-judge was Julian Warner. The recipient was Garth Nix, one of Australia’s most successful fantasy authors. He wasn’t there on the night, having just returned from overseas. Justin Ackroyd, who accepted the award on his behalf, whipped out his mobile phone (as you do), phoned Garth at home, and told him the news. Garth could hear the cheers from our end. We could hear him being gobsmacked at the other end.

Were the Ditmar Awards a bit of an anticlimax to the evening? They could

Kathleen Jennings. (Photo: Cat Sparks.) Kirstyn McDermott, Jason Nahrung, and Rosaleen Love. (Photo: Cat Sparks.)

19 have been if the other awards had taken too long, but they hadn’t. No Oscars A nice mixture of people I know well, and people I’d never heard of. Ceremony exhaustion here. Rob Hood I’ve met a number of times, but mainly when accompanied by his Each category in the Ditmar Awards (Australian SF Achievement Awards) was partner Cat Sparks. I knew that he wrote fiction, but have not read any of it. much more hotly contested than each of the Chronos Awards. The Ditmars I could have bought his book Fragments of a Broken Land in the dealers’ room have been run by their own interstate internet committee during recent before awards night, but hadn’t, so I’ve missed out on a copy. years. The committee publicises the nominations and awards process widely. Too bad I had hardly heard of any of the nominees. But I attend conventions Cat Sparks has been doing many things over the years, including running these days to try to find out who people are. her own small press, Agog, writing stories I like very much, being fiction editor for Cosmos magazine, and taking photos of people at conventions. It’s The winners: a treat to have her best stories finally gathered in The Bride Price, and to have one of those stories also win a Ditmar. G Best Novel: Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead, Robert Hood (Wildside Press) In 2010 Shaun Tan won many literary prizes, as well as an Academy Award G Best Novella or Novelette: ‘The Home for Broken Dolls’, Kirstyn McDer- and a Hugo Award, mainly for his astonishing graphic novel The Visitor. mott, in Caution: Contains Small Parts (Twelfth Planet Press) Several books later, he has gained kudos for his less ambitious but still visionary Rules of Summer. It’s a pity Shaun could not be at the convention to G Best Short Story: ‘Scarp’, Cat Sparks, in The Bride Price (Ticonderoga pick up his award. Publications)

G Best Collected Work: The Bride Price, Cat Sparks, edited by Russell B. Farr I thought I had never met Sean Wright before Continuum this year. (It turns (Ticonderoga Publications) out I was wrong. He remembers talking to me two years ago.) On Sunday night I was still not sure what he does, but he is a very pleasant bloke, and G Best Artwork: Rules of Summer, Shaun Tan (Hachette Australia) took the trouble to catch up with me. He writes his own blog, for which he G Best Fan Writer: Sean Wright, for body of work, including reviews in gained the Ditmar as Best Fan Writer, and organises a podcast, for which he Adventures of a Bookonaut and his friends Alex Pierce, Helen Stubbs, David McDonald, and Mark Webb gained the Ditmar for Best Fan Publication. I hope he sends some articles to G Best Fan Artist: Kathleen Jennings, for body of work, including Illustration SF Commentary one day. It was good to catch up with Alex Pierce, who also Friday runs a reviews blog, and who beat me for Best Fan Writer a few years ago. She

G Best Fan Publication in Any Medium: Galactic Chat Podcast, Sean Wright, has reviewed Steam Engine Time for the AsIf website. Alex Pierce, Helen Stubbs, David McDonald, and Mark Webb Perhaps the most talented person to emerge recently in Australia has been G Best New Talent: Zena Shapter Kathleen Jennings. I saw her reading her fiction at Conflux several years ago, but since then she has become more famous for her accomplished artwork, G William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review (tie): Galactic Suburbia Episode 87: Saga Spoilerific Book Club, Alisa Krasnostein, Alex Pierce, especially book covers. Her cover for Midnight and Moonshine (Lisa L. Hannett and Tansy Rayner Roberts; and The Reviewing New Who series, David and Angela Slatter; Ticonderoga Publications) is a special favourite of mine. McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Tehani Wessely. I’m not sure what Illustration Friday is, but I assume it is a website.

20 The downer of the evening (but only for me): SF Commentary was beaten by Sharon claimed to be the person who would not speak, but her promptings a podcast, Galactic Chat. Not that my loss was a surprise; if you place podcasts kept sending Danny off into a very funny and insightful harangue that told and websites in the same category as real fanzines, how can there be any true me much more about them than I’ve discovered in the twenty or more years comparisons? I must catch up with Galactic Chat. I’ve known them.

As for the other awards ... I have no idea who Zena Shapter is, but somebody Why did Danny change his name? He was adopted, and his adoptive parents must have noticed that she is Best New Talent. were called Heap. Their grandfather had changed his name from Heiptz on the verge of World War I. (In the same year many towns in South Australia And as the person who began the William Atheling Awards in 1976, I assert changed their names from the original German to an English equivalent.) that although several of the pieces nominated this year (especially an essay Endless gormless name-plays on ‘Heap’ afflicted Danny from childhood on. by Leigh Blackmore) fit the original criteria of the award, the two winners Eventually, he exploded when somebody who wrote a sympathetic article do not. Consider this an ongoing grump, long ignored by Those In Charge about him could not resist a final stroke — wishing him ‘heaps of luck’. Out There. What should he choose as a new name? Originally, he thought of ‘Danny After the awards, the back-slapping (and thanks to the many people who Australia’, because of his gratitude to this country for everything it has given offered me congratulations, either at the convention or on Facebook) and him. It sounded too corny. A friend suggested ‘Danny Oz’. Danny added the drinks at the bar (open to midnight on a Sunday night), and the long several more middle names, including ‘Danger’, so he could tell people that ride home on the train. ‘Danger is my middle name’.

Monday, 10 June 2014 Danny is that sort of bloke — always friendly and sympathetic and creative, but he offers that little extra: a sense of danger. He delivered a wonderful I expected that the final day of the convention would be a bit of a letdown, rave-up sermon about the value of every person’s life, and how every person but I still kept meeting people I had not seen before at the convention. It was is better than her or his self-image. And every person should also aim to be great to catch up with Nalini Haynes and her husband Stephen. This year, ‘a little weird’. Nalini’s Dark Matter website was also beaten in the race for the Ditmar for Best Fan Publication, but Nalini did pick up the award last year. We shared Weird things have been happening to Danny all his life. He presses the limits a long rave at the bar about the vicissitudes of reviewing, obtaining review of any situation. Weird things lead to great achievements, of course, but copies, public transport to outer suburbs, and much else besides. Danny has also been struck down by negative weirdness. Some years ago he suffered from a rare condition that affected his whole body with a slow stroke. I enjoyed George Ivanoff’s launch of LynC’s Nil By Mouth, but, as I’ve written Many people thought he would not survive, or probably not walk again. A already, Lyn had been kind enough to offer me a signed copy on the first day year later, he turned up at conventions supported by a cane, still looking of the convention. subdued. These days he sometimes needs a cane, but on Monday afternoon he was prancing around the stage in full flight. The most entertaining hour of the convention was my last: the Guests of Honour speech by Danny Oz and Sharon Moseley. Bear in mind that Danny Sharon and he told of the night when Danny forgot who Sharon was. He had had won the Chandler Award the night before, and he and Sharon were been to a party (I assume sometime after the onset of his medical condition), child-free for a few days. They were both tired, of course, but on a high. drank too much, stayed up too late, arrived home ... and could not figure out

21 Guests of Honour Danny Danger Oz and Sharon Moseley. Danny also won the A. Bertram Chandler Award in 2014. (Photo: Cath Ortlieb.)

22 Danny’s Guest of Honour rant: Danny in rapid motion. (Photo: Cath Ortlieb.)

23 who was this beautiful girl was who was inviting him to bed! In the morning, the bar and restaurant prices. I had never before paid $5.50 for a cup of he woke up, and fortunately remembered who Sharon was. coffee, and those who drink such things were paying $19 for a cocktail. In exchange, the staff gave us their full attention and kept the bar open. The stories kept coming. The story of how Sharon and Danny fell in love is (Everybody shudder as we remember the problems with Rydge’s in Carlton so wonderfully fannish, so romantic yet unsoppy, that you must ask them to a few years before.) The convention committee did a superb job. People tell you the story when next you meet them. Perhaps our friend Dick Jenssen turned up for the program items. is the only other person who could find romance in the Fibonacci table. What more could one want? Another Ditmar Award for Ditmar — Dick It was a great convention, one of the best I’ve attended. I had almost given (Ditmar) Jenssen, after whom the awards are named, and who was nominated up on attending conventions, having dropped in only a few program items this year for Best Fan Artist. of recent Continuums. The venue had much to do with the feeling of excitement around the place, because you could see everybody cascading — Bruce Gillespie, June 2014 around you. Most people’s only complaints about the Intercontinental were

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24 Letters of comment

JENNIFER BRYCE Box 1215, Elwood, VIC 3184

I don’t go to my mailbox every day. Quite often I go just once a week. But on such a sunny autumn afternoon, I decided to stroll to Elwood PO. What a surprise to discover the Treasure! I had understood that you were so busy it would be ages before you could publish anything. I haven’t read it all yet, but it looks magnificent. And thanks so much for sending two copies.

(8 May 2013)

What is the date of your Nova Mob presentation? (You never know, I might make it to the wilds of Northcote.)

I can explain Ros’s and Brad’s absences. Ros had a fall at work a few months ago and fractured her hip. She has been pretty much off work since then — returning gradually on reduced hours but probably not up to Nova Mobbing.

And Brad and Kelly are expecting their first baby quite soon (June, I think), so that might keep him out of circulation for a while.

I showed Treasure 1 to some of my writing group — we met yesterday — and they were mightily impressed, commenting for example on the very tasteful layout, which I must admit I’ve come to take for granted with your publica- tions. [*brg* The Nova Mob is Melbourne’s SF discussion group, held on the first Wednesday of the month. I’ve known Roslyn Gross for 39 years, (9 May 2013) and Jenny Bryce nearly as long. The Nova Mob was revived in the early 1980s at the home of Jenny Bryce and John Foyster in St Kilda. Ros had

25 already been a long-time attendee at the Nova Mob when she joined Story of Harry Potter and Voldemort’. It would have turned out rather ACER (Australian Council for Educational Research), where she met Brad differently if I’d meant to submit it as an article, and it would have taken more Jackel and Jenny Bryce. And discovered that both of them knew me and time, so I’m grateful for your artistry in compiling it from our exchange of other current members of the Nova Mob. I did not know until Jenny got emails on the subject. in touch that both Ros and Brad had problems attending the Nova Mob these days. Last year, Jenny attended her first Nova Mob in many years (10 May 2013) to hear Tony Thomas and me speaking about the books of Graham Joyce. Those talks will be published in the next issue of SF Commentary.*] ROBERT ELORDIETA c/o 20 Coster Circle, Traralgon VIC 3844 ROS GROSS North Balwyn VIC 3104 While I was at work, your Treasure and *brg* arrived in my mail box, on Thursday, 9 May. The envelope was sticking out of my mail box. Someone Lovely to hear from you! Yes, I fell and fractured my right hip early last took it out of my mail box — I’m guessing a teenaged school kid. The kid December. The hip healed, but after I had the pins removed, I developed a went to a park, took out the fanzines and then ripped them to pieces. When contusion around the wound, which put me back a bit further. I was walking back home I went through the park. I saw the ripped-up fanzines and then the envelope. I saw that the envelope had my name on it. (4 June 2013) I can tell you that I wasn’t very happy when I saw that. Some people have no respect for other people’s mail. They have no right to take it and then rip it YVONNE ROUSSEAU up. PO Box 3086, Rundle Mall, Adelaide SA 5000 [*brg* The ultimate critical comment — topped only by pet animals On this day of the annular eclipse, my daughter Vida was able, before rushing who use my fanzines for kitty litter.*] onward to her lecture room, to observe the early stages of the eclipse on the lens of a telescope placed for that purpose at Swinburne University. Good Once I had a bill taken out of my mail box and ripped up too. The same egg! thing has happened to my unit neighbours.

Thank you, too, for *brg* 79: beautiful Ditmar- birthday-card cover, and very (12 May 2013) interesting contents. Does Alan Stewart truly contemplate distributing Ansible in Australia again? I have seen some of Luc Besson’s films. I saw The Fifth Element at my local cinema. I saw La Femme Nikita and The Professional on SBS. I haven’t seen many [*brg* Yes. ANZAPA (Australia and New Zealand Amateur Publishing of Besson’s films, but what I have seen, I’ve loved. The Americans did their Association) appears every two months, so Alan contributes two issues own version of La Femme Nikita, called The Assassin, starring Bridget Fonda. of Ansible every mailing.*] The Americans have also done a TV series based on La Femme Nikita.

And thank you for the glorious Treasure 1, June 2013! — with fascinating Even though I’m not a big horror fan, I’ve seen some horror films from the reading from all contributors. I was startled to see among the headings that 1930s on free-to-air TV. I loved them because they didn’t show blood and I’d contributed an article that I didn’t remember writing: entitled ‘The Real gore, and had good story lines.

26 I’m glad that you are enjoying New Tricks (I’ve seen some of New Tricks on WERNER KOOPMANN the ABC). It’s very interesting to see them investigating cold cases and trying 202c Reihersteig, 21244 Buchholz, Germany to solve them. Other countries that have done shows like this include the USA, Canada, and even Australia. In Australia it was called Blackjack and Good to hear that the box reached you. The box was sent on 18 March, so starred Colin Friels. In the USA it’s called Cold Case. we now know it takes about one month. I do not want anything back. I have enough SF books here, English ones too. In case you do not want some of John Thaw was great in Inspector Morse. My parents saw him in an earlier show them give them to SF aficionados of your acquaintance. called The Sweeney. It has also been made into a recent movie, also called The Sweeney, starring Ray Winston . When John Thaw died, the actor who played We hope to see you in Greensborough in 2015. his partner (Kevin Whateley) did a spin-off show called Lewis. I don’t think this show has been as popular as Inspector Morse. (15 May 2013)

I’m currently reading Volume 3 of George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. [*brg* Werner sent a whole box of books of criticism about the SF field, I’m really enjoying it too. The books are on average 1000 pages long. I’m a most of them from the late sixties or the early seventies. I suspect slow reader, so it is taking me a long time to read them. many, including first editions of books from Advent:Publishers, are now collectors’ items. I owned more than half of them already, having (10 September 2013) bought them through Space Age Books. But I do have quite a few left over, which might interest serious readers in the SF field. Enquire at my Like you, I loved Foyle’s War. I also like the old black-and-white movies from email address.*] the 1930s. I’ve seen an movie called Dark Angel, which was set before, during, and after World War I. It starred Frederic March and Merle Oberon, a drama My wife and I will not leave our house as long as my mother- in-law still lives and romance movie set in the UK. in her old home in Uetersen. She is 86.

Luc Besson has also been executive producer on a number of films, such as Ulla and I will be 64 this year. She still loves her garden, but it’s getting more Kiss of the Dragon (Jet Li) and The Transporter (Jason Statham). A French movie and more burdensome. If and when we move, where we don’t know, it will he has done is Taxi. The Americans did a version of this movie, not as good surely be some years hence. I still will keep many SF books, English and as the French one. I haven’t yet seen The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle German, but we don’t think to keep all our books, only those we like most. Blanc-Sec. So downsizing in a new home will be a must.

I’m glad that you know about the series Lewis. I didn’t know about Endeavour, (15 May 2013) a series about a young version of Morse. DORA LEVAKIS I don’t have cable TV either. Like you, I don’t have much spare time. It’s Numbulwar, Top End, NT, and Yarraville, VIC hard to find out what’s out there on TV series and movies from Australia as well as overseas. I’ve seen the Wallander series from Sweden on SBS. I haven’t Lance had the time to read my Treasure article ‘Journey to Tuva’ and my seen the British version. (25 September 2013) letters before I did tonight, and was thus first to point out that the caption beneath Gerald’s painting reads as ‘finalist’ rather than as ‘semi-finalist’. At

27 all other places the painting is correctly referred to as a semi-finalist. It would paintings etc, I reached with a digeridoo to flick on the switch at the power be good if this can be corrected before it goes onto internet. I’d forgotten point. How very, very lucky for me that I had not used my fingers. No one how this particular photo looks and feel pleased at how the painting looks, would have found me until Thursday when my sister would have arrived at and that darling Thomas features also; I’d forgotten I had included him, the the station and possibly tried my home after I wouldn’t have turned up. little sweetheart. I’m glad you decided to run with this photo. Now all the sun just outside my back door has gone. Time for the orange coat (14 May 2013) of paint.

I’m back in Yarraville for a few weeks. As I type this, two boards that I have (25 June 2013) primed with one coat of white ground are sitting in their modest sections of sun in my backyard, just outside the back door, awaiting another coat of GERALD MURNANE white, followed by a coat of orange and then followed by a red I mix with PO Box 40, Goroke VIC 3412 black. This sequence is what gives me the vibrant earth colour I have been using as background for my portraits of late. Broad bush strokes of the latter Thanks for Treasure 1, which reached me in late May. I can’t say I read much layer means that some of the orange glows through ... I hit upon this sequence of it, but I certainly appreciated the piece by Dora Levakis. As I’ve got older one time and like it so much I’ve kept it. and more set in my ways, I find it more and more incredible that people actually get into those big flying machines and travel to remote parts of the Saturday night: when in Coles a vibrantly good-looking young man planet such as that place in Central Asia where Dora pesters the throat- approached me with the reminder that I’d told him last year that I was going singers. The better-off farmers around Goroke travel every year, either to to Tuva. I couldn’t remember him and felt awkward. I answered politely, remote parts of northern Australia in four-wheel drives of by plane on expecting him to then walk away. He didn’t. He stood there smiling, expec- organised farming tours to the USA or South America. (If they visit a few tant almost. My head was foggy and I drank in his beauty whilst at the same farms, they claim all their expenses off their tax.) They find it hard to believe time, wanted to walk briskly away and remain inside the world in my head. that I’ve never been in a plane and that I’ve sworn never to visit Victoria again. He told me it is his turn now and that he would be going overseas the next They think a writer is someone who wanders around meeting interesting day, to Georgia, Italy, and other places. He is a science student at Melbourne characters and situations. University studying DNA. He is interested in archeological digs. Anyway, I finished the book that I never expected ever to begin: the book I was reminded of my first visit to Tuva and of my inability to recall the name that just occurred to me late last year when I read a certain sentence about or face of a young man who approached me and wanted to continue a the last film to be made by Ingmar Berman. I was reading a Time from the previous conversation. It’s terrible to not remember people. It disconnects late 1980s. Giles has a collection of old Times, and I’m reading my way through me from others in a way that is different from when I simply want to stay them. The Soviet Union will implode very soon. Yes, I read this one sentence inside my head. I eventually excused myself and walked away from the about a castle occupied by all the characters from all the films that Bergman good-looking young man. He is from Serbia. had made, and I went to my desk and wrote a sentence or two that would have been the first part of a book of fiction called A Thousand Windows, with When home, I wanted to see if I could print a file from my laptop to my desk the epigraph: ‘The House of Fiction has a thousand windows’ — Henry top. It was then that the desk top was affected by a fire at the power point. James. Then I told myself not be so foolish. Then I tried to forget about the Because the passage between me and the power point is obstructed my book but couldn’t. I finished it in mid June, all 55,000 words of it. I sent if to

28 Giramondo with the instruction that they might care to publish it, assuming Casey Wolf is quite right about Dean Spanley. When I heard it had been filmed it to be publishable, before another book they’ve already accepted, Border I reread the Lord Dunsany short novel, My Talks with Dean Spanley. It took Districts. They’ve held Border Districts over for the time being. They brought me a while to get a DVD of the film. When I did, it turned out to be a Blu-ray out a handsome new edition of Inland this year. Plus, Text is bringing out in made in Sweden. There were two problems with this — as the English November a Text Classics A Lifetime on Clouds. Giramondo thought three soundtrack was untouched, they had added an optional subtitles in any of books from me in one year would be overkill. So, in about May 2014, I’ll have five Scandinavian languages, omitted the ‘no subtitles’ option; and for some a new title in print and a further book in the pipeline. When I gave up writing reason the sound was low. I had to crank the volume control all the way up. fiction in the 1990s, I was resigned to having seven titles as my lifetime’s Maybe some Viking will trade me the standard DVD for this one. achievement. Thanks to Giramondo’s interest and encouragement, I’ll go to my grave with twelve to my credit. (15 May 2013)

(2 July 2013) I received a magazine from Fred Woodworth in Tucson (which he has decided should be spelled ‘Tuscon’, even though neither spelling matches NED BROOKS the pronunciation, ‘TOO-sahn’). Fred had the same problem with an aged 4817 Dean Lane, Lilburn GA 30047, USA cat as you describe — the vet diagnosed kidney failure and said nothing could be done. I will not try to describe Fred’s line of reasoning, as it’s all outside How do I come to have a loc in a renamed Scratch Pad that I have never seen? my experience. But his conclusion was that he should dose the cat with coffee. ... Aha — I see that it was a letter to *brg*, written over a year ago. No wonder I don’t remember it! The amount of coffee he gave the cat, 1 cc a day, apparently would not be expected to have any effect on a healthy cat. But he claims that his cat I can’t handle loud either, and have never been to a rock concert. It could recovered its appetite and normal activity. I was curious as to whether this be hereditary. My mother did not like loud noises either. was common knowledge among cat owners but all I found with Google is that there are expensive herbal compounds offered for what is apparently a I have Ralph Leighton’s book about Feynman’s Tuva quest, Tuva or Bust! and common problem in aged cats. have heard throat-singing. It is an interesting sound, but I’ve read that it causes internal bleeding in the practitioners, so I’m not sure it’s interesting (21 June 2013) enough to justify the health risk. An amazing account by Dora Levakis! ‘Numbulwar’ sounds like a place-name in a Lord Dunsany fantasy. [*brg* Somehow I think that Elaine would be very opposed to this attempted solution to the problem of kidney disease in cats. Also, I’m sure I would not want to drive in India. Fascinating photo of the Archie was not old. He was only six years old when his kidneys failed in 200-year-old Jantar Mantar Observatory! June 2012.*]

What anyone thinks of Mervyn Peake’s Titus Alone may depend on the edition Fred is a vegetarian anarchist and may be quite mad. But he is an excellent read. Peake was well into his struggle with the illness that finally killed him, publisher, and as far as I can tell does not lie. As a cat person you may well and the 1959 book is very awkward compared to the first two Gormenghast encounter the same problem again, so I thought you might be interested. I books. But I thought the re-editing by Langdon Jones improved it a lot. myself like cats — but could not have one around, as I am severely allergic. Just being where there is a cat makes my eyes itch. I once touched a bookstore

29 cat — and then must have touched my lower lip, as it swelled to double There are also many YouTube videos of a female folk singer called JoJo, which normal size. can be confusing. It’s weird but it never occurred to me to google his name to see what comes up. In fact I hadn’t thought about him at all until I started (21 June 2013) writing the memoir.

Re allergies: I have known since I was a child that I am severely allergic to I suppose I could make a copy of the CD. The quality isn’t good. The sessions raw egg white — fortunately not encountered as often any more. Cooked were originally recorded on an Akai tape recorder, then later transferred to eggs are no problem. I was an adult before I discovered that I am also allergic cassette. The cheap player I used to record it as a WAV file into the computer to cashew and to a nasty vine called Smilax Bonanox that grew in my yard in is not very good (because it is running unevenly). I will look for a better Virginia and grows here as well. Of course there is little chance of me eating option one of these days. any smilax — looking at it seems to make me break out. I once pulled some out of a photinia bush with an actual 10-foot pole (a piece of PVC pipe with (15 May 2013) a hooked-back blade on the end) — and had to take a course of the steroid methyl-prednisone to get rid of the inflammation on my arm. Brian Aldiss’s The Finches of Mars has just been released via Book Depository in the UK. Brian claims this is his final SF novel. Since he is getting on in (23 June 2013) years, it may very well be his last novel ever in any form. There are 200 signed copies available at $19.95 with no postage to be paid. I had mine on order JOHN LITCHEN for six months, so if others did the same when it was first listed there may not PO Box 3503, Robina Town Centre, QLD 4230 be too many copies left.

Who is Murray MacLachlan and what specifically are his musical interests? Is It’s rather sad that a big publisher doesn’t take Brian Aldiss’s work anymore, he interested in Afro Cuban drumming etc? Thanks for the email from him but at least there are small publishers who recognise a major talent and are that you relayed to me. I did use the links he supplied to have a look at the willing to publish him even though print runs are obviously small. interview on YouTube with JoJo. It was such a long time ago, and even comparing the images in the poor quality video with some of the photos I (10 June 2013) have I wasn’t sure, because the interview took place some years after I last saw JoJo. In the video he has a moustache and small beard, which made him [* Thanks very much for the copy of The Finches of Mars that you sent look different from the person I remembered. However, the nose appears to me, John. I’m still missing some of Brian Aldiss’s novels from the last be the same shape. What convinced me it was him was when he sat down and ten years, especially Walcot. Looks as if I will have to break my played a bit of conga drum for the dancer to dance to. It was unmistakably self-imposed ban on paying for stuff over the internet in order to his sound, and he plays an urban version of conga rhythm (Comparsa) very complete my collection.*] similar to what he taught us back in 1962–63 (which is recorded on the CD from the tape). He wasn’t an authentic Cuban player, but he played Cuban SALLY YEOLAND style as it was practised in the streets and parks of New York in the 1960s. He Preston VIC 3072 would have to be close to 76 to 80 years old now, since he was a couple of years older than me. I was particularly interested in Jenny Bryce’s latest adventures in India, and look forward to reading John Litchen’s piece. I can’t quite believe that it is

30 but where I made some good friends. The book is Hobart High School to Hobart College 1913–2013, and Fullers Bookshop in Hobart is posting a copy to me. Peter excelled as a student and was brilliant at English, so I’m not surprised at him becoming an editor.

(21 May 2013)

[*And wasn’t Peter Pierce a professor of English, specialising in Australian literature, before he retired? He still writes entertaining and meticulous reviews for the remaining literary sections of Australia’s major newspapers.*]

DAMIEN BRODERICK San Antonio TX, USA

John Litchen’s piece is very interesting. How old is he now? Mid seventies?

The kittens were born in our country place. There were six, but one died. All the parents (there might have been three) are siblings. We’re hoping for more poly-dactyl cats. None of these had two heads.

Kittens at the Broderick–Lamar residence, a year ago. No doubt they are now (29 May 2013) all taller than the car tyre. (Photo: Damien Broderick.)

STEVE SNEYD 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, almost 40 years to the day that I first met John and Monica, who visited John Huddersfield, West Yorkshire HD5 8PB, England Bangsund and me at Wentworth Avenue, Kingston, ACT when they were part way through their honeymoon. I think that I first spoke to John on my Thanks for Dora Levakis’s very interesting accounts of Tuva. It has a jagged brother’s 32nd birthday 10 May 1973, which was a Thursday; then we first rock face in one picture, and she makes mention of mountains. I recently met up that weekend. It almost seems like a lifetime ago. read an article on the theorised importance of acoustics in ritual in early sacred spaces, as in Stonehenge. The article mentions the theory that Tuvan I just googled Peter Pierce, with whom I was at Hobart Matric College. It was throat-singing began as a way to create echoes in caves or from rocks, my brother’s old school when it was still a high school. Peter was a guest interpreted as the voices of ancestors. speaker at a Society of Editors meeting some years ago. I looked him up today because I have only just found out that he’s just published another book, The photo of Dora and the portrait of Gerald Murnane creates truly weird which is about our old school, which I only attended for some seven months 3D effect, as the elbow appears to project out of the picture frame.

31 John Litchen says that he gave up on The Lord of the Rings after 50 pages. I former). The album includes a cut featuring Richard Feynman, who was also was one of many who found the start of the section on The Shire tedious. A a fan of Tuvan music. friend assures me that one should jump ahead to where the journey begins. Then, when that has got a grip, it is easy to nip back to the start to back fill I’m surprised a bit that Jennifer Bryce could be so cool about the many any background. scammers she encountered in India. I think I would have been pretty angry.

Page 67 has an evocative literal: ‘bargoans’ for ‘bargains’. I’ve met many of I enjoyed reading John Litchen’s continuing adventures as a drummer, and those bargoans down the years. his thoughts about his reading of the time — all those books that turned out to be classics. I wasn’t as interested in the crayfish, wetsuit, and swimming I was intrigued by Malcolm McHarg’s mention of ‘teddy boy extraordinaire’. half of his memoirs. But it looks like once he is finished, John will have I’d assumed that the teds were a purely British phenomenon. Clearly I was included something to interest every reader. wrong; Oz also had them. In the letters column, I thought Dora’s portrait of Gerald Murnane also bears *brg* Not so. Malcolm grew up in New Zealand, which must have also a resemblance to Canadian actor and funny man Dave Thomas. (He and had teds during the 1950s. In Australia, they were called ‘bodgies’ and Rick Moranis developed a pair of Canadian ‘hosers’ for a segment of SCTV their girlfriends were called ‘widgies’.* called ‘The Great White North’.)

High Society: ‘Did you evah’ has the memorable SF line, ‘next July, we collide (4 June 2013) with Mars’. JOE SZABO I’ve read several of Colin Cotterell’s Laos-set crime novels: atmospheric tales, 29 Bessazile Avenue, Forest Hill VIC 3131 and interesting crossover mashup of the crime genre and the supernatural. It’s been a long time since we last corresponded with each other (over two (29 May 2013) years, I think) and in the interim I have been receiving hard copies of all your fanzines, with many thanks. JERRY KAUFMAN PO Box 25075, Seattle, WA 98165, USA For me, work is its usual animal — anxiety ... plenty one day and nothing the next. I am currently working as a graphic designer on a full-time contract It’s always good to have treasure in one’s mailbox, although this was the first with a promotional products company, and — when there is work available time I’ve had Treasure. Ditmar’s DJFractal was a startling eyeful introduction — working from home as a technical illustrator. I haven’t been overly to the issue. motivated to do my own art, but the last few months have proven to be quite productive. I hope that I will soon have enough work to plan for another Dora Levakis on her visits to Tuva were interesting, and shows that she’s more exhibition, either later this year or early next year. adventurous than I am. I’m willing to listen to almost anything (once) but not to travel several thousand miles to hear it in context. I have heard some Last week I was in Sydney seeing Kraftwerk as part of the Vivid festival — a Tuvan throat-singing, and believe I even have an Ondar album. Remarkable concert that was worth every cent spent on it. Also, Sydney was lit up with how much he sounds like Popeye (or even Baby Gramps, a Seattle per- some amazing lighting effects. (6 June 2013)

32 kindly mentioned. Fame at last!

I very much enjoyed visiting Melbourne in March, as you know, and meeting Elaine and Tim and Bill (please tell him I did vote as promised). I hope you enjoy these photos. This one is me at the Melbourne Museum, posing proudly with your Aussie whatsits. Carole Gray took that photo, and I took the others.

One small correction to your reminiscences. I was already writing, and involved in fandom, before coming to Oz in 1985. In fact, I was at that time and for a brief moment a member of A Women’s Apa, and met with some of those fine women at a party at Aussiecon. But it was a number of years

Top: Casey Wolf, being very Australian (and not at all like her usual genial self) (Photo: Carole Gray). CASEY WOLF 14–2320 Woodland Drive, Vancouver, British Columbia V5N 3P2, Canada

I was so excited when I opened my mailbox and saw a hefty envelope from you! I hadn’t expected to receive another ever, so it was like Christmas on Mars. Before I opened it I looked, for a change, at the postage on the envelope. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I immediately got out the $AU20 bill I had sitting around in the closet and said, ‘Casey, you send this right off to that nice Mr. Gillespie.’ Of course, it’s still on my dresser, but it is coming your way eventually.

An immense surprise to find myself and Finding Creatures & Other Stories so Bill Wright, also at the Nyala Restaurant. (Photo: Casey Wolf.)

33 I tried a little self-promotion and it felt so un-me that I was very stressed by it. The truth is, I just like writing. I don’t like competition, I don’t like drawing attention to myself, and I don’t like schmoozing. I like sharing my stories with other people. But I have a hard time going through the shenanigans required to do so.

before I began actually sending anything out. Did I mention that I was rear-ended by a car transport truck a couple of weeks ago, and squished into the car ahead of me? Howard’s car was totalled and On which topic, it has taken me a while to find a comfortable relationship to I have another nice whiplash. But no broken bones, no bloody bits, so I am the strange world of publishing. There is a frantic assumption that we need to publish often and widely and in as big name magazines as possible, and we oughtn’t spend too long on short fiction — we should move on to novels because that’s what will make our names. We must do everything we can to promote our work and ourselves and we must network, connect, strive to somehow climb to the top (or high up on the sides) of the heap. We must blog wittily and gather huge followings, and so on and so on, and Bruce, I just don’t feel comfortable with any of that. I tried a little self-promotion and it felt so un-me that I was very stressed by it. The truth is, I just like writing. I don’t like competition, I don’t like drawing attention to myself, and I don’t like schmoozing. I like sharing my stories with other people. But I have a hard time going through the shenanigans required to do so.

Being sick the last few years has forced me away from much writing and any self-promotion, and it’s gone on long enough that I have relaxed about it. I do wish I had more energy for writing — or for anything. But I’m glad I quietly withdrew from the fray. I do like to get the odd story out there, though I’m pretty inconsistent about sending them out. I’m happy to be getting back to writing for the joy of it and not worrying about whether anyone considers me a Writer or not. More realistically, I’m back to the joy of not writing but simply enjoying the world around and in me, and the many, many books other folk have gotten around to writing. As a matter of fact, I rejoined my weekly writing group when I returned from Oz even though I have no energy to actually write at the moment. But I do enjoy hearing the other people’s work and giving them my shrewd and brilliant critiques. Casey took this photo of Bruce Gillespie (left) and Tim Train (right) at the Nyala Restaurant, Fitzroy.

34 happy and lucky to be alive — and to have my nephew, who was next to me the act in its various manifestations feels right to me. It’s enjoyable, thought in the car, alive and well, himself. It is a bit annoying that I was the only person provoking, and in no way too scholarly book. (besides my nephew) who was not at fault in the accident, and I was the only one injured. And more annoying to discover that our auto insurance corpo- I’ve just discovered another terrific Texas singer-songwriter, Robyn Ludwick, ration is so despised that my chosen practitioners (including the facial pain whose Out of These Blues is one of those records I just play and play. clinic at our largest hospital) refuse to have anything to do with auto injury claims. Which means I can’t afford to get treatment. Our medical system is Visitors are arriving today for a few days, and we have to get the house ready, really going down the toilet in Canada. so that’s it for now.

I went to a memorial service on Sunday. My friend wrote a marvellous letter (12 June 2013) a month before what she called her ‘lift-off’. Very inspiring, actually. And I like the concept of lifting off as opposed to succumbing. I will hold onto that STEVE JEFFERY the next time I see a semi rushing toward me in my rear-view mirror. 44 White Way, Kidlington, Oxon OX5 2XA, England (10 June 2013) For the previous week or so, I’d been getting blisters on the sole of my foot. DOUG BARBOUR One of them must have infected, with the result that the foot puffed up in 1165–72nd Avenue, an unsightly blotchy red rash. The doc diagnosed this as cellulitis and Edmonton, Alberta T6G 0B9, Canada prescribed a course of antibiotics with instructions to keep my weight off it and keep it elevated as much as possible for the rest of the week. Busy times: Other reading. Editing (I edited three of the six books NeWest published this Spring, and two of the novels for the coming Fall; you might There very little you can do in that position, apart from read or sit rather enjoy at least one of them, Belinda’s Rings by Corinna Chong ). work remotely for some of the time, I also managed to make a fair stab at George R. R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons, which had been sitting on the I’m writing this the week I heard of the (sadly expected) death of Iain M. unread-books pile since my birthday or Christmas. I forget which: rather Banks, two of whose recent novels I read in the last few months, one a Culture intimidatingly, the pile doesn’t seem to be going down very fast at all, and novel, the other a multi-world thriller, both full of Banks’s wit, intelligence, still contains Iain Banks’s latest (and now last) Culture novel, The Hydrogen provocations, and solid, generative plotting. I’m going to miss the possibility Sonata, which I must get round to soon. of new work, but will enjoy rereading at least the best of them. RIP. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed his kind of SF, and its influence on the exciting new (The pile also contains the new book by Graham Joyce, who has also reported British SF of the past decade or two. he’s been diagnosed with a form of lymphoma, though hopefully with a better prognosis than that for poor Banks.) I’ve been reading Patricia Meyer Spacks’s fine and intelligent On Rereading, a delightful exploration of the whys and wherefores of that activity. Admit- [*brg* As most readers of this magazine will know by now, Graham tedly, she rereads some material I may never read for the first time, but also Joyce died recently from lymphoma, at the age of 59. Two articles about some, like Jane Austen, I have reread a lot over the years; but the way she sees his novels will appear as soon as possible in SF Commentary.*]

35 It’s been some years since I read the last book of George R. R. Martin’s the Rain. (The conductor’s notes, when we caught a sneak look at them from sprawling epic (in the meantime, we’ve watched both DVD box sets of series the bench in front, where he’d left them, contained the scribbled instruction 1 and 2 of Game of Thrones) and I really wasn’t up to re-reading the previous ‘listen to the version on YouTube’, so of course I had to.) Norgard has also two books to try to work out where he’d left his cast of thousands. Luckily (re)discovered and uses something called the infinity series, based on mathe- there’s a whole Wiki for the series, with handy timelines and plot synopses. matical operations, to generate sequences of notes. The result is somewhere Even so, it took best part of a day to catch up with where things stood at the between chaos (in the mathematical sense) and fractals. I’ve spent the last start of A Dance with Dragons, which turns out not to be a direct sequel but a couple of days transcribing the algorithm in his web page into Keykit so I can companion to the previous volume, taking place at the same time but with a program my MIDI keyboard to generate these sequences. different set of characters and locations. (Which would have meant I would have had to read the last two books to find out where I’d left off. Maybe 20 I’ve also been playing with something called Nodal, whose screenshots look years ago I might have been up for that, but age and eyestrain means I prefer like one of the diagrams on the back of Eno’s Music for Airports album cover. reading in short chunks, not something that epic fantasy lends itself to.) (One of the examples that comes with the trial download of Nodal 1.8 is titled ENO 7, and generates appropriately slow shifting ambient soundscapes.) All The week after the foot recovered enough to wear shoes again and go back this has resparked a fascination with algorithmic and generative music, some to work, we had what for us was quite the busy social whirl, with the First of which ties up with the writing on complexity and self-organisation in the Wednesday pub night, followed a day later with a sci-fi-(I use term advisedly book I’m currently reading, Murray Gell-Mann’s The Quark and Jaguar. in this case)themed pub league quiz held conveniently at the very end of our road at the local Social Club. In the end we weren’t needed to make up the This latter was a find in a book sale in the village church hall a weekend or numbers for the pub team, so Vikki and I co-opted our friend Judith from so back. Up to a few years ago our friend Graham used to organise a massive the pub meetings and sat in as a scratch team of three (against opposition annual event with tens of thousands of books, and Vikki and I would spend that included at least one previous winner of Mastermind and several who had the day helping out. Now Graham just holds rather more modest impromptu competed in TV quiz shows Eggheads and Only Connect). Unsurprisingly we sales whenever he needs to reclaim some space in his garage. While I only didn’t win, although at one point we were running a creditable third equal, found one genre work of interest, a nice hardback of the Martin and before falling on the inevitable media round. Still, it was a fun night out, Dozois-edited Songs of the Dying Earth anthology. although I doubt I will make a habit of seeking out that evening’s guest beer again. This was something called Twisted Wheel, described as having a hint Round about the time Treasure arrived in the post, I kept turning up of ginger and spice. In fact it was overpowering, and resembled a rather intriguing non-fiction math and science books, and only stopped when I overdone mulled beer. It would probably go well with a curry like a Jalfrezi realised I wouldn’t be able to carry any more home. The Gell-Mann was one on the basis that your taste buds would already be saturated with ginger and such; others included Stephen Inwood’s book on Robert Hooke, The Man spice. Who Knew Too Much, Leonard Mlodinow’s The Drunkard’s Walk: How Random- ness Rules Our Lives, and other books on Bayesian statistics and the Four Saturday was back to see Oxford contemporary choral group Commotio Colour Map problem. again, with a program that featured Britten (Sacred and Profane) plus works by a new name to me, Per Norgard. (I doubt if AOL is up to the odd accents (Yesterday, in the local Red Cross charity shop, I noticed a large paperback required to spell his name properly, but you can check it on Wikipedia for of a reprint and commentary of Newton’s Principia, and suspected this might typesetting purposes if you want.) Norgard proved interesting when I looked have been donated from Graham’s unsold stock at the end of the day, him up online the day after. Apart from the piece Commotio featured, I Hear although I don’t remember seeing it there or I’d have been seriously

36 tempted.) mention the content of the fanzine at all, except in passing. So please take it as read that Treasure 1 was read and much enjoyed (even with an elevated Little new music to report, although it appears from an email that the Civil foot), especially the continuation of John Litchen’s adventures in SF, conga Wars, who announced they had broken up at the end of last year, have drumming and seedy nightclubs, and the travel articles by Dora and Jennifer. re-formed and have a new album coming out. I had wondered about the (Is there a competition between you and Banana Wings for how many Feature dynamics of this American folk-country duo, both of whom are married, Letters you can get into a single issue? From space considerations alone, I though not to each other, and suspect domestic and marital difficulties may suspect you’ll win, though BW 52 has upped the stakes at four (Andy Hooper, have had a part in announcement of their break up and subsequent refor- Liam Proven, Robert Lichtman, and Paul Skelton) in the same issue.) mation. The ethereally pale Laura Marling also has a new album, which is being trailed a lot on Radio 6. (17 June 2013)

A rather recent discovery was that Kate Rusby had done a hauntingly [*brg* Maybe I gave permission to Claire and Mark to run Feature beautiful version of Sandy Denny’s ‘Who Knows Where the Times Goes’, Letters in Banana Wings. It is a way of solving layout issues that arise which I’d never heard before. Ridiculously prices were being asked for the when a great letter runs on and on, causing the reader’s eye to skip over CD version online, but I managed to download the mp3 from Amazon for it. It’s wonderful how a few extra headings, photos or fillos, and boxed the a reasonably 69p (my first mp3 puchase, and worryingly simple on texts can lift the Letters section of any magazine. I didn’t invent the Amazon’s One-Click ordering service). Then, prompted by your comment idea (but can’t remember from whom I stole it — probably Dick Geis), to Murray MacLachan’s letter about the cheapness and value of five-CD box but have been using it for well over 40 years. In 1973, Philip Jose sets (I have one of Jeff Beck’s early albums) I discovered one of the Mahavishu Farmer, Stanislaw Lem, Sandra Miesel, Franz Rottensteiner, and others Orchestra’s first set of releases, from Inner Mounting Flame to Visions of the argued furiously with each other by means of SF Commentary Feature Emerald Beyond, and including what is still their high point, ‘Birds of Fire’. I Letters.*] was actually looking for a Hawkwind box set (and not sure why I got sidetracked to MO), but could only find the three-CD Parallel Universe GIAMPAOLO COSSATO anthology of recordings covering 1970–79. I must ask fandom’s guru and Cannaregio 3825, Calle Fontana, fount of knowledge of all things Hawkwind, Mr Plummer. I think my favourite 30121-Venezia, Italy period of theirs is probably around Levitation and Quark, Strangeness and Charm rather than the early Silver Machine era. But hey, it was a silly price, so I had and still have a very busy period involving a variety of visits to practically why not. This could prove expensive, had I not converted an award from all hospitals in my area, which was a bit distracting. 71 is already behind, and work last year into Amazon gift vouchers (much of which has gone into age is encroaching upon my health by displaying a good number of its building a teetering pile of book parcels in the spare room for Vikki’s weapons. My hands are sometimes trembling, my ankles seems to be in the birthday). grip of a vise (acceptable so far), and cervical spondylosis and lumber arthrosis are gaining grounds. A CAT scan and an NMR also made the list, I realise I haven’t really written a loc for Treasure 1 at all. This is both the joy to verify the state of my brain. Apparently it’s still working. All the rest is old and slightly unfortunate effect of responding to *brg*-style zines (even those hat, with which I have been living for many years by now. under variant titles), especially those carrying banners like ‘Talking to my Friends’, in that it sometimes becomes an invitation to weeble about stuff in [*brg* In the one photo you’ve sent me, you appear many years the hope that you and others might find some of it interesting, and forget to younger than I am. Sorry to hear about the difficulties that come after

37 turning 70. That’s not far off for me.*]

Still I am not giving up. Some of the transla- tions I made with my friend Sandrelli (who passed away more that 10 years ago) are still popping up from time to time (the Dunes have also landed on the Kindle store, and so has Lafferty’s Past Master) and now I am scanning and rearranging some aged comics inspired by Goldoni’s comedies with old friends spe- cialised in the field who are also the writers and artists who created them. They might shortly see new life.

Venice is still the target of my photos, but now memorial plaques have become my more spe- cific search. Is a real trove. Some several hun- dred years old. At times they are so worn out to be almost unreadable. They come as a surprise in the most unlikely places. Compos- ers, writers, poets, scientists, important figures of the old Venetian Republic, martyrs of the various wars, and the more banal edicts carved in marble (written in old Venetian) banning the noise, the blasphemy, the dump- ing of garbage, and listing the punishments therefrom (rather scary, but they would be effective today if applied to the participants of so-called ‘rave parties’). And others to re- member the changes Venice underwent along the ages. A canal landfilled, a bridge demolished, a church torn down (Napoleon contributed), streets enlarged.

Thanks for Treasure 1. Which has arrived few days ago. Always appreciated. Kudos for the new venture. (17 June 2013)

38 39 40 For the past year we have been selling books and DVDs only through e-bay. death. At the end of this year I will definitely retire. Health permitting (I have a rather committing program with the local hospital) I will spend my time I agree with Don Ashby about time ‘travel’, and I suspect that what we think taking pictures of Venice, reading books, scanning old stuff, watching TV of as ‘travelling’ in time is actually time travelling in us, and the only shows (a guilty pleasure), and listening to music. convergence is the memory of an experience shared with it. Philip K. Dick might agree; alas, he has passed. Is it that the best science fiction is that written [*brg* Thanks for the generous financial contribution, but I’m even by the madder of us, more of a philosophical art than a literature? Does the more grateful for your letters and other support over the last 45 years. creator become the creation? Why did Philip Dick write an exegesis that Thanks for the photos.*] seemed to consume his sanity? He was extrapolating concepts of time in order to explain unknown phenomena of nature and could not come to STEPHEN CAMPBELL terms with his own revelation. Attempts by physics to explain time seem to 52 Aitkins Road, Warrnambool VIC 3280 me to be doing the same thing, avoiding the unknowable.

Jennifer Bryce’s travel story in India carried such a stoic intimacy of language Bruce, my time here in Warrnambool is a strange time to me. Sometimes I that I could almost be listening to her speaking and navigating her way am not sure whether or not I am in an Experimental Australian Prison or through that mysterious ancient land. Never having been out of this island whether this country town is ready a castle with attendant polar opposites of continent, I’m enchanted by good tellings about other worlds on this planet, oppressed peoples. I had thought that a century-old Aboriginal curse, or especially by somebody I consider a friend. Her descriptions of musical tones wubba, has been placed over the land in revenge for white settlers’ atrocities. in the environment caused me to remember that she plays the oboe beauti- Whatever it is here, I often feel the call of the concrete jungle, with its fully, and had me imagining the true qualia of her journey. anonymity and variations of behaviour. The twenty-first century exists here, but it’s concentrated in only 30,000 individuals instead of 4 and a bit million. John Litchen’s story exposes an amazing life, and I admire him for his David Russell and I get on well together; thank you for initiating our contact. adventurous spirit in encountering the mysteries of the ocean: a man of rhythm indeed! I keep working on my large projects. You said to me that maybe you couldn’t get into the visual language of Transitoria, my first book. I take that as meaning I witnessed the slightly scary wonder of throat-singing once at a concert that you could not read the item that I charged you an inordinate but necessary featured music from all over the world, and was reminded of the film Meetings amount of money for. I reckon if you persisted with a full reading of it and with Remarkable Men, which told of Gurdjieff’s wanderings in Siberia. Thanks, saw the drawings as picture worlds to assist the dialogue (which are word Dora, for the journey to Tuva. The photographs of the wedding were re- pictures), you might come to see the pages as different sensations of what is markable. basically a straightforward story about alien beings who are the result of a human mistake. I’ve been rereading Gormenghast, which I devoured when I was young, and found the same delight in the language and the strangeness that it describes. (26 June 2013) I was again wrenched at the demise of Fuschia and angry at Mervyn Peake for making me feel that again. Peake’s poetic use of language overcame the [*brg* It was great to receive a hand-written letter of comment from effect of the rococo names of his characters, to the point where I was even you for Treasure 1. The renaming of the magazine seemed just a way of identifying with Steerpike and saddened by his eventual corruption and getting rid of the complications of numbering between different

41 fanzines, but now that this New Thing is really up and out there, it feels the drama by identification with the visual attitudes of the characters. like a new beginning. Not that its existence can obliterate the shame of And those characters have to be perhaps even more clearly defined than never publishing another Metaphysical Review. I still have all the vast even in film or fiction. I really did have trouble with Transitoria, number of letters of comment I received on the last issue of that in working out who was speaking, what was the story of each character, 1998, about 100,000 words, and I really should publish them somehow, and why he or she should be interesting. I would have thought that somewhere. once that was clear, the technical reshaping of the physical figures would follow. But not now. I say this because the reason I don’t write fiction is that I don’t believe The material in Treasure 1, except for Jenny Bryce’s article, should have that I can write fully formed characters who are not me. Some writers, appeared well over a year ago, so SF Commentary is doing well by being the real writers, can do this, of course. I speak for only me when I only eight months late. But I should be working on SFC 88 right now. write: hence I stick to non-fiction, essays, etc. However, I cannot survive without taking in paying work (mainly indexes these days). So SFC is again on the back burner for a few weeks, Thanks for the sample of your new work, by the way. I hope the new because of an index finished recently, and the need to produce this book(s) is/are speeding along well.*] issue of Treasure. I keep hoping to retire, but I doubt if retirement can ever happen. LLOYD PENNEY 1706-24 Eva Rd, Etobicoke, Ontario M9C 2B2, Canada Jenny Bryce is concentrating on her writing these days, rather than oboe playing. She tried to retire at 65, but ACER wanted her to stay on ’Tis the day before Canada Day, the 146th anniversary of the founding of this for five days a week. She’s now cut her workload to three days a week, fair country, and Yvonne and I plan to celebrate with a picnic in High Park, and retains two days clear for writing. I’m sure she’ll produce something on the west side of the city. Before I get on with fixing up the picnic foods, I wonderful. thought I’d take the time to write a letter of comment to you on Treasure 1.

I would wish you could return to Melbourne, except that if you did so I After *brg* and other titles, I can see why you’d consolidate all your other expect I would see you even less than I do today. You did spend 15 zines into one. You can keep them all straight, it’s cheaper to get one zine years in Melbourne without ringing me, remember. So I’m very glad that printed at larger print runs and reduced rates, and spread them out for apas David takes the trouble to keep in touch with you. I don’t know what and other destinations. I enjoyed the other titles, but it’s good to keep track David does for entertainment, apart from his reading and artwork. It’s a of everything you produce. pity he hasn’t been able to relocate to Melbourne, so he could stretch his wings a bit. I agree that books and other media comprise a good life, but for me, friends and acquaintances and good times shared are a big part of a good life, too. My problems with Transitoria seem to be technical, but they’re not. Put It’s not likely to happen, but I think I could give up a lot of books and moves, simply: I couldn’t tell one character from another. And that’s reminded and my fanzine collection, if I really had to. Memories would keep me going, me of how difficult characterisation is, and how it’s an essential part of and if memory failed, but, it probably wouldn’t matter any more. most story-telling. I think it’s really important in graphic novels, since I suspect many readers don’t read all the dialogue; instead, they enter The Rolling Stones recently passed through Toronto on their Recharge-Our-

42 Retirement-Fund Tour, and we didn’t go. The cheapest tickets were about Greetings to Casey Wolf! We’ve never met, but from the looks of your address, Can$200, and they sold out in minutes. I can’t tell you the last time we saw a we have lots of friends in Vancouver, from the folks with BCSFAzine and live band. They are almost always beyond our ability to pay. Robert Charles Vcon, to the folks who run the British Columbia Renaissance Faire. Wilson’s wife Sharry has written a biography of Neil Young, and I gather it’s very good. (30 June 2013)

Throat-singing is also a part of Inuit culture in Canada’s north. Northern ANDY ROBSON singer/artist Susan Aglukark has added throat-singers to at least one of her 63 Dixon Lane, Leeds LS12 4RR, England albums. I am not sure I’d like a trip to India or Tuva — perhaps too foreign or too complex for me, or too hard to comprehend, a failing of mine. I must admit I’m a bit surprised that you decided to go for a large glossy new print edition of Treasure 1 after your plans to shift everything on-line. Then I would definitely enjoy getting and watching the full run on DVD or Blu-ray again it may simply be because it is so chunky; on-line is a ticking time bomb of the Jeremy Brett/Sherlock Holmes series produced by Granada an amaz- where anything that can’t be read and replied to in 30 minutes just doesn’t ing number of years ago. We recently got a bargain on the ‘complete’ Babylon happen for anyone. Something far more impressive is your ability to run for 5. (There is actually one missing disk we plan to try to order later.) The only trains after three hours of a Neil Young concert. I’m afraid I can’t run any complete series we do have on DVD is Murdoch Mysteries, the Canadian more these days, and I’m a few years younger than you. (Everybody’s younger Victorian-period police drama. It’s got among the best ratings of any program than Neil Young — even Keith Richard and Willie Nelson!) on Canadian TV. Its first five seasons are out on DVD/Blu-ray, the sixth season comes out in November, and the seventh season is in production. Some things are found only in dreams. I’d been searching for a couple of We’re looking forward to the sixth season DVDs: Yvonne is a background months unsuccessfully for something. I did eventually manage to acquire actor in the twelfth episode. one; although seemingly having to step out of reality to do so. I knew that all was not quite right when the bus driver turned up wearing dark glasses and Jerry Kaufman refers to a miniature Stonehenge. I saw a documentary using a white walking stick. I did return to reality around four hours later, recently about tracing Norse explorers and traders to archaeological digs in and I still had my — yes — rhubarb pie! Canada’s northern islands, going back nearly a thousand years. It referred to a Stonehenge-like structure in the Outer Hebrides. Wonder if there I was listening to an old Shadows record recently (one of those black round references are to the same structures. things), which brought back memories of the fairgrounds of my childhood. I still favour the tiny distortion of vinyl blowing through the darkness I just turned 54, taking meds for blood pressure and cholesterol, and just had interspersed with Elvis and the Everly Brothers. an operation to remove a cataract in my right eye. A bum knee completes this issue’s health report. What’s wrong with me? I just turned 54. (5 June 2013)

Yvonne Rousseau’s article on Harry Potter: she’s not the only Yvonne who D. J. FREDERICK MOE loves Alan Rickman as Severus Snape. My Yvonne does, too. To Yvonne 36 West Main, Warner NH 03278, USA Penney, the final book’s first half should have been named Harry Potter and the Never-Ending Camping Trip. Too long, and Joanne Rowling obviously I read about Treasure 1 in Dale Spiers’ Opuntia 265, and am writing to request stretched out the book for page and word count. a review copy. If you’d like, I could send you copies of my zines Turntable

43 Operator and Paper Radio in exchange. [*brg* The few people who are still producing paper fanzines in our field are trying to reduce their mailing lists as far as possible. However, (5 August 2013) some persist, including Andy Hooper (Flag), Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer (Banana Wings), and Robert Lichtman (Trap Door). I like I enjoyed reading your account of the Neil Young concert. Psychedelic Pill is receiving their fanzines more than I like reading on-screen fanzines my favourite Neil Young LP since Greendale. posted only in PDF files online, but realise that the facility offered by Bill Burns’ efanzines.net has led to a wonderful flowering of renewed Having been involved in Tuvan throat-singing via the Genghis Blues documen- fanzine writing and publishing.*] tary, I very much enjoyed Dora Levakis’s narrative of her journeys to Tuva. PEGGYANN CHEVALIER John Litchen’s memoirs fascinated me; and also Malcolm McHarg’s letter re Ypsilanti MI 48197-5336, USA John Hammond. Thank you for your exceedingly kind and greatly appreciated words about What is ANZAPA? I’m involved with two apas in the US: American Amateur ‘Missing Michael’. I would love to do another fanzine of sorts, though of what Press Association, and Cuneiform, a media–zine-focused apa that I started in sort, I don’t know. I couldn’t step into Michael’s shoes if I wanted to, as I 2011. The last issue we had five contributors, the most thus far. don’t have his background, knowledge, and so forth to continue Trial & Air.

[*brg* I wrote to Frederick, telling him about SF apas (amateur Speaking of Michael Waite, 24 November would have been his 77th birthday. publishing associations), and about ANZAPA in particular. I really Matt and Guy and I visited his grave that frigidly cold Sunday. Guy played enjoyed the fanzines he sent me, about various aspects of broadcasting Birgitt Nielsen from the car CD player, we cleaned off Michael’s marker, and and music, but haven’t received any more.*] walked around the lovely old cemetery till we were nearly frozen. Just yesterday, Michael’s house, which is bank owned, was listed ‘for sale’ and I am enclosing a couple of my humble zine projects. Please keep me on your several people were looking at it. The bank is asking far less than half what mailing list. If there is anything radio or media related re Australian radio, Michael owed. I’m afraid of who or what (rental agent?) might snatch it up. please feel free to send along to the email address in the zine. My preferred If Matt and Guy and I had any funds to our name, we’d buy it, sort of ‘protect’ mode of communication is on paper, via the postal service, but email is great it ... Ah well, nothing one can do but hope for the best. New neighbors are for sharing documents. always such a frightening prospect.

Reading fiction is not something I do often, though I am curious about SF (9 December 2013) Commentary. I read one of the books John Litchen mentions (Earth Abides) in my youth. I’m thinking about reading The Midwich Cuckoos. In the 1970s I KIM HUETT read a lot of Isaac Asimov and Andre Norton. SF films that are personal Box 1433, Woden ACT 2606 favourites include 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, and The Time Machine, and TV series such as Space 1999 and Doctor Who. [*brg* The following letter arises from Kim Huett’s scanning of large sections of his file of Norstrilian News, the Australian SF newszine that I discovered efanzines a few months ago, and wish more were available on was active during the early 1970s. Its name, a tribute to the stories of paper. I am not a fan of reading on screen. (9 September 2013) Cordwainer Smith, was echoed in the name Norstrilia Press, the small

44 press that Carey Handfield, Rob Gerrand, and I ran from 1975 to 1985. G Robin Johnson V3 #1 (mid-June 1972) to V4 #1 (mid-November 1972). After the death of NN, various Australian fan publishers maintained SF newszines. Leigh Edmonds published Fanew Sletter for a long time, and At this point NN stops being numbered at all. as Kim mentions, various editors maintained Thyme during the 1980s and 1990s. When Alan Stewart’s Hugo-nominated incarnation of Thyme G David Grigg September 1972 (1 issue). ground to a halt in 1998, Marc Ortlieb began the SF Bullsheet, first as a G Robin Johnson December 1972 to Sept/Oct/Nov 1973 (8 issues). paper fanzine, later as an internet fanzine. Edwina Harvey and Ted Scribner kept it going when Marc stopped publishing, but they also As you can see, your turn at NN was indeed far earlier than you assumed. You found that running a newszine takes a lot of work and gains little can also see that John Foyster was being ever so slightly disingenuous when thanks from Australian fans and pros. he complained about you and Leigh getting your sticky hands on NN (though And why was Kim scanning copies of NN? Because he wanted to put I assume he was being rather less than serious about that) given that he took together a history of the Nova Mob, especially its very early years the editorship back on both occasions. Furthermore I think it likely that NN (1970s), when it seems that members of the Nova Mob published their had more changes of editor than any other Australian fanzine barring, own apa (amateur publishing association): APA-Nova, with Carey perhaps, Thyme (I’ve not got around to counting up how many editorial Handfield as the Bossa Nova. In turn, Julian Warner says that he is changes Thyme went through). compiling a history of the 44 years of the Nova Mob. Tantalising bits of this history can be found in Norstrilian News.*] I don’t find it incomprehensible that nobody is now doing an Australian SF newszine these days. My impression is that recent generations of fans and The editorship of Norstrilian News always struck me as one big game of pass neo-pros are very inward looking. They don’t seem much interested in what’s the parcel, much as Thyme was at a later date (though, to be accurate, Thyme happening in outside of their own particular club or interest. It didn’t help was passed around at a much slower rate). It went as follows: either that the format of the SF Bullsheet wasn’t appropriate in an Internet environment. Rather than try and publish a monthly newsletter the editors G John Foyster 1 (25 March 1970) to 14 (9 September 1970). needed to copy the format of File 770 and publish news items individually as G Leigh Edmonds 15 (23 September 1970) to 17 (4 November 1970). they appeared. This and the ability of readers to comment on specific items would have helped build a sense of community for the Bullsheet. Of course G John Foyster 18 (18 November 1970) to 19 (2 December 1970). that would of required a better designed website for the Bullsheet, but surely G Missing: NN 20 and 21 so don’t know who edited those. there were SF people out there with the knowledge and the will to do that,

G Bruce Gillespie 22 (7 February 1971) to 32 (5 September 1971). (June 2014)

No idea if I’m missing any issues at this point because of NN going to a new WE ALSO HEARD FROM ... numbering system.

G John Foyster 2:1 (1 January 1972) to 2:9 (15 May 1972). CAROL KEWLEY (Sunshine, Victoria); THOMAS BULL (Doncaster, Victoria); TIM MARION (New York, USA); MATTHEW DAVIS (Redditch, Again, no idea if I’m missing any issues because of a new numbering system, England), who sent me a copy of Avram Davidson’s Wailing of the but probably not, given how close the dates are. Gaulish Dead; TARAL WAYNE (Toronto, Canada), who publishes Broken Toys frequently on efanzines.com; JOY WINDOW (Lismore, NSW); MIKE

45 WARD (San Jose, California), who was going to write a letter of winning a Shirley Jackson Award: ‘Having been a judge, know what they comment, but didn’t get around to it; JAMI MORGAN (Alburquerque, are looking for, so am even more flattered they chose my story! I just New Mexico), who sent a subscription but insists on downloading each need someone to make a movie of it now and I’ll be set!’; ZARA BAXTER of my fanzines from efanzines.com; CAT SPARKS (Wollongong, NSW); (recently returned, I think, from New Zealand to Sydney); ROBYN DICK JENSSEN (Carnegie, Victoria): ‘Wotta Treasure!’; BRUCE TOWNLEY WHITELEY (Richmond, Victoria), who has just sent us another batch of (San Francisco, California); KIRSTY ELLIOTT: ‘All the best with Treasure concert program books from concerts staged by such organisations as 1. Vale Scratch Pad.’; JASON NAHRUNG (Ballarat, Victoria); PAUL the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, and VOERMANS (Reservoir, Victoria), who recommends a new book by the Australian Chamber Orhcestra — concerts we can’t afford to attend, ‘Terrence Deacon, a scientist everyone should read’; ADRIENNE RALPH so we were very grateful last year when Robyn and husband John let us (Northcote, Victoria), who has returned from an extended stay overseas attend a concert for free when they were absent to attend a wedding: ‘It since Treasure 1 appeared; MARTIN MORSE WOOSTER (Silver Spring, doesn’t look as though we’re going to book the ACO next year, and we’ve Maryland); MARK LINNEMAN (Sacramento, California), now retired as taken the MSO at Robert Blackwood Hall’; and WILLIAM BREIDING head of the Law Library of California, who asks, ‘Could you please send (Dellslow, West Virginia), who sent cash, lots of letters, and the article everything to my home e-mail: ’; KAARON that features in this issue of Treasure. WARREN (Downer, ACT), who, when she wrote, was still stunned at

Nine months later ... My Sparky would be in the ground with his brothers if it was not for a miracle my vet thought of. There is a dog medicine for nausea call Cerenia. When The letter column was finished in January. Publication of Treasure 2 has Sparky’s appetite goes down down (for whatever reason) he becomes less and been interrupted since then. I can’t cover the host of emails that have less able to eat and things look terminal fast. Cerenia settles his stomach and buzzed me since then, but I can report the gratitude that Elaine and I allows him to get back into eating. It takes a few days or a week to get him feel to CASEY WOLF, who when she heard about our difficulties in eating well again and then I taper him off until the next time he is compro- keeping 19-and-a-half-year-old Polly eating, replied as follows. Doses of mised. Cerenia began a return to health by our little old lady cat Polly:

46 Feature letters

Leigh Edmonds and Bruce Gillespie

A conversation about music today (especially on ABC FM)

[*brg* This correspondence began with Leigh’s letter of comment about Or on 3MBS, which is the subscription-funded Melbourne music station SF Commentary 84. He mentioned that he was reading SFC while that Leigh cannot pick up in Ballarat. travelling by train from Ballarat to Melbourne and Geelong, and that he also listens to classical music during these trips. While nattering, we The reason why the ABC repeats a limited number of popular concert began talking about recorded music and broadcast music, at a time pieces is that in the last few years it has abandoned programs based on when ABC FM (Australia’s national classical music network) was music released as CDs, and fills many of its programs with concerts by a broadcasting one of its annual surveys of a Top 100 favourite pieces of wide range of orchestras, recorded for other radio stations, and music as chosen by listeners. The most recent survey at that time was imported from all over the world. Does one need to hear three or four the Top 100 Pieces of French Music. I probably said to Leigh that I did Beethoven symphonies a week, unless the performances are startling not realise how many classical composers I disliked until I heard several new interpretations? Why is it impossible to escape a Brahms hours of readers’ choices of French pieces. I should dig up the lists from symphony, or one by Sibelius? I love these composers, but I find myself wherever they dwell on the internet, and point to examples, but I won’t. turning off performances of their works. Why do most concert Let’s just say that I don’t like many French composers apart from Hector organisers stick to such a narrow range of classical pieces? Is it the Berlioz. Leigh doesn’t like Berlioz as much as I do. However, Leigh and I fault of the people who choose the programs or the public who attend agreed that we get more than a bit irritated to hear Berlioz’ Symphonie concerts? I hope you find the discussion interesting, although some of Fantastique (for many years my favourite piece of classical music, in my own email replies to Leigh seem to be missing.*] the Colin Davis 1968 version) played every couple of weeks on the ABC.

47 LEIGH EDMONDS Robert Lichtman reports that you wrote a nice account of staying in Ballarat East VIC 3350 Hobart for SAPS. Could you please keep me on your mailing list for your SAPSzines, either paper or PDF? I don’t think I’ve received the latest I came across this email lingering in my inbox among an array of much less one. interesting stuff. I must get tidy in here one of these days — by which I mean that while my room looks generally tidy this could not be said for my I’ve been on the pension for over a year now, but it merely tops up my computer, which has all kinds of files and bits and pieces in odd folders all crumbling bank account. Without occasional bits of paying work, I over the place. It reminds me of the Tardis, with all kinds of stuff hidden would be broke. Also, I received a bit of money as advance for the away in dark corners far from comprehension. reissue of George Turner’s The Sea and Summer by Gollancz SF Masterworks. It’s now available in Australia, and I think an e-book as As I might have written to you somewhere else I took the opportunity to read well.*] a lot of stf while in Hobart. It was interesting but I don’t know that I could write much about it. To put it another way, perhaps, I could either write I’ve been on the pension for over a decade now and I’m moving over from nothing or write a lot and I don’t feel equipped to write a lot about why it the disability pension to the old age pension. I could have stayed on the wasn’t the way I thought it should be. Besides, it wouldn’t be nice, and my disability one but I’m not sure what the new government we are going to get mother always told me to say something nice or not say anything. This led will do with people on pensions and I thought it more likely that the old age me to a line of thinking that included John Foyster and his role in ASFR. This, pension will escape tampering than the disability pension. The pension has in turn led me to further thoughts, and I query which has become an itch been very good for filling in the gaps between commissioned histories, but that I can’t scratch. Perhaps you can help me with it. I recall that John wrote with the GFC and the current financial climate there have only been two under several alternate names there (and perhaps elsewhere) but the only decent commissions advertised in the past three or four years, so things have one is K. U. F. Widdershins. (How could we forget that!) But I’m wondering really dried up. Fortunately our parents have died and left us some money, if you recall any of his other names? which is keeping us going. But in a few years I’ll have to pick up some new commissions, think of something else to do or live on bread and dripping. Recently I got pieces of paper from the Department of Human Services (or We will see. whatever they call it) saying that it was time for me to change from the Disability Pension to the Old Age Pension. I know it means I’m turning 65 I thought that I had sent you my most recent SAPSzine. If I didn’t, here’s a soon, but how did that happen? PDF of it for you. I really should look at finding a place to post them for more general reading, but there don’t seem to be enough hours in the day to take (22 May 2013) on new things, let alone keep up with the old ones.

[*brg* Re John Foyster: Andrew Escot was another of his pseudonyms I don’t recall which of George Turner’s books we have. I’ve begun unpacking for ASFR. John Ossian was the name he used for that Cordwainer Smith the academic books of history, sociology, politics, theory, etc, but the fiction pastiche for which he won a Ditmar in 1970 or 1971. But there’s still remains in boxes. I’m starting to build some new bookshelves so, another Foyster name as well, and only leafing through ASFR would give hopefully, I will be able to get them out and see what we have sooner than it to me. Lee Harding had several names as well (such as Alan Reynard), later. Then I’ll see if I need this reprint. so that between them, and John Bangsund reviewing under a pseudonym, the three of them wrote entire issues of ASFR.*] I keep on meaning to let you know that I received the two most recent issues

48 of SFC in the mail. Much thanks. I shook the envelope but unfortunately the of increasingly good quality and with an iPod when it became available. five hours needed to read them seemed to be missing. I will, of course, get around to them as soon as I have to make a train trip to Melbourne or some Later, when I spent a lot of time in the archives where the radio reception such thing. was completely tolerable, I still listened to tapes. The main reason for having headphones or earplugs then was because people can’t help themselves from In the meantime, having heard more than enough Berlioz to last a month I chattering and music in my ears is what I call my ‘cone of silence’. It is also found my way to the ABC Classic page to make a comment. And what do I very useful on the train down to Melbourne, where a lot of people like to see? Your smiling face! Is it true that you’re are the ABC Classic’s only Friend? chatter, which can be a real distraction when I’m trying to work.

(12 October 2012) These days I have a very nice set of Sennheiser wireless headphones that I wear around the house. It is plugged into the back of my computer, so I can My listening habits, when it comes to classical music, were really shaped while either stream the ABC (or anything else for that matter) or listen to my CDs, I was doing my PhD. For almost two years I spend five days a week, eight hours all of which have been ripped onto the hard drive. I’ve also begun the process a day in a little room in the middle of the State Library of WA reading old of copying my LPs on the computer. It seems such a pity not to listen to them microfilm. Radio waves did not penetrate, and trawling old papers is such a again, even with the inevitable crackles and pops. What a wonder modern tedious and very unrewarding for the most part, so you need something to technology is. distract and entertain. I had a few tapes of music and rock and roll gets very tedious after a few hours, and having next to no money at the time, buying My favourite Goldberg Variations is by Rosalyn Tureck, which was recorded CDs was out of the question. So I recorded music off ABC’s Classic FM and when she was quite old and takes a very deliberate reading. Gould (at least then played it back to myself during the day. Since each side of a tape was 45 the famous version) is as keen to show us how good he was as he was to recount minutes long I liked music that was about that length, but there were often what Bach had to say, while Tureck opens the text up to a very intense gaps at the end of a tape that needed filling. I developed a system of noting reading, to my mind anyhow. how much time was left blank at the end of a tape and went through 24 Hours (that magazine of happy memory) searching for pieces of the right length I don’t get much time just to listen to music. When I do I like to read the to fill the blank spaces. It didn’t matter what the music was, so long as it was score — not that I am very good at it. It helps to keep me focused, and gives the right length. This actually gave me a very broad education in all kinds of me a better understanding of what the entire piece is about. Some time back music. I was killing time in the waiting room of Valma’s dentist when I decided to take a look at the art on the walls. It turned out that one large piece was what So I soon built up quite a collection of tapes, and I’d take them in to the was probably the manuscript of the famous Chaconne from the 2nd Partita library and played them to myself hour after hour with no great care as to so, having my iPod to hand, I read it through while Menuhin played it for what was on them. Sometimes, if a tape wasn’t too bad I’d just let it play me. A great pleasure. I wouldn’t mind having that to put on my wall too. through all day so that I listened to a lot of music over and over, and it would only be later, when I looked at the label I’d put on the tape, that I’d see what (15 October 2012) I’d been listening too. As I say, an education. [*brg* I can certainly see how your listening habits developed, but Those tapes have long ago been abandoned because of the tape hiss, which since I’ve been able to work at home for quite a long time, my is no longer tolerable. So I got used to listening to music with headphones, experience is rather different. The CD machine is the device I had been

49 waiting for all my life, having to put up with crackles and pops and reading it. And I don’t need an iPod or mobile phone because we don’t forever-deteriorating styli with turntable music. What I didn’t know in often go anywhere. Except last week, when we seemed to be out every 1985 when I bought a CD player for the first time is that CD sound night. About all that does is add kilos to my weight when I’m supposed could have been a lot better from the start, and that the 20-bit sound to be trying to lose them. was chosen almost at random from a number of possibilities. What is now called SACD sound (24 bit) is what CD sound should have been Back to tapes .... I have two huge drawers of tapes of edited-up popular from the beginning. Even so, many CDs sound infinitely better than the music of all sorts, and I never think to play them. It’s not even the LP versions, or much better than I ever could have imagined from sound hissing that stops me — it’s just that as soon as something is taken off recording. The only limitation on my listening to good music from CD on the shelf it disappears from mind as well as sight. The worst thing is good speakers is time to sit down and listen, and the fact that under that I gave away or sold a lot of LPs in the late 80s on the basis that I certain circumstances what I play can annoy Elaine. I don’t have much had taped the best tracks, but I would be far more likely to go back to jazz, but I have to play that on earphones. So I have an inferior device those tracks if I still had the LPs. But I wasn’t to know that in the in my workroom, which good for ABC radio but less so for playing CDs. 1980s.*]

Most other later devices I cannot afford, or seem redundant for my If you wanted to play jazz in my house you’d have to wear headphones too. needs, frinstance, downloading stuff from the net. Not that I dislike jazz; it’s just that life’s too short and besides, there is trad jazz, which should be outlawed. The other thing I always wanted (apart from what proved to be the CD player) was some way of playing films in my own home, but cassette It seems that you may be a lot more interested in sound quality than I am. movies always looked awful, so I bought few of them. DVD is a different I’m not put off by crackles and pops on LPs unless they are very insistent. matter, and Blu-ray even better. However, the only reason why we have Perhaps I’m more interested in musical structures than sound quality, which a large plasma screen is that Dick Jenssen gave us his when he may be why I prefer chamber over orchestral music. I have no great problem upgraded to LCD. I don’t know if he has since bought a really huge LCD with MP3 compression, which doesn’t sound any different to me than music screen. Race Mathews now has one (50 inches), which we see at the straight off the CD or LP. I know a lot of people like the lush sound of music, monthly film nights at his and Iola’s place, and it was nice to see 2001: especially orchestral music, but the why of it is a puzzle to me. It seems to me A Space Odyssey on it the other night. I’ve lost count of how many times that perhaps the only way that I could really get immersed in orchestral music I’ve seen the movie. is to hear it live, and I have very good memories of experiencing the Mahler 2nd in the Perth Concert Hall, but even so, better memories of a performance But all the more recent devices seem redundant. I like to buy a DVD or of the Winterreise there. When we were in Washington DC once, we stayed Blu-ray so that I have a copy of a film on metal in the home. I get rid of with a historian friend whose husband had huge wall speakers that generated movies I think I will never watch again — although if I were really very high quality sound, but it was still reproduced sound. He also gave me honest I could halve the collection on that basis. I buy a few TV shows a CD of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, which doesn’t sound any better on my on DVD, but it’s very easy to get very sick of the formula of any TV show. headphones than it did on his speakers — but then it is far from my favourite piece. And I hardly need an iPad because I could not stand the thought of reading a book on a screen. As it is, if I find an interesting article on I’ve ripped all my CDs to hard drive and they sit unplayed. I started recording the web, I copy it into a Word file, then run it out on the printer before LPs to hard drive as well, but have an intermittent problem with 60 cycle

50 hum, which is distracting, so I’ve put that off until I can resolve the problem. men on bikes. The producers of the show know it, and give us lots of lovely In fact, I’m gradually working on getting everything of interest to me on to things to look at. To illustrate my dedication to digitisation, I copy the DVDs hard drive, including books, papers, and anything else you can digitise. This onto an external hard drive and show them onto the screen through a cheap might be the result of seeing my father in his final few years living in a room computer we bought for that process. The picture quality if no less and it in a nursing home where all the stuff he loved (his tapes and records and saves all that messing about with fragile disks. It also means I have duplicates tools) were inaccessible to him. I would like to have the stuff I like still if the originals get destroyed for any reason. available to me if I ever end up in that position, so making that happen is my current project. Enough chatter. I find it interesting that we should have different attitudes to things like sound quality and digital information while coming from the Like you, I still have trouble reading off a screen, but I’m working on getting same generation. Perhaps it comes from my father’s great love for gadgets over that. At Aussiecon 4, Rob Gerrand showed me his new iPad and I was and new technology (he was the first person I knew to own a tape recorder) very impressed by the possibilities it presents. Still, I thought I’d wait until and I still have all his tapes from the mid 1950s of family members that I will they got less cumbersome (which they already have) and I have the time and get around to copying onto hard disk in WAV format one of these days. But inclination to learn how to use one. My first thought was that they would be I’m not the early adopter that I used to be, having had an early Walkman and very useful for storing and reading music scores, and since most of the music an early portable CD player and one of the early iPods. The introduction of I tend to listen to is way our of copyright it should not be an expensive process. mass storage devices like external hard drives (now available in 3 and 4 Though buying paper copies would take up a lot of space. I am also not a terabyte sizes I see) have pushed the technology as far as I need, for the time mobile phone user. We have one that costs us $22 a month. It exists mainly being at least. for emergencies like the car running out of petrol (but when it did earlier on this year the phone battery was flat anyhow) and for Valma to make free (23 October 2013) calls to her family and friends in Queensland. When I was working for the Tax Office they found my habit of leaving my mobile turned off very [*brg* I think Lee sold me the very last 20 records in his collection offputting, but I told them that I was a historian and needed lots of un- when he was really hard up at the end of 1969. They were some of the interrupted thinking time. They thought I was a bit eccentric, but that’s all most important records I ever owned, until I could buy the same right with me. versions on CD.

Valma and I have the big 52-inch plasma screen. I’m told that these days you It’s pretty easy to see why most people don’t ‘like’ classical music — can buy a similar size LED screen for around $1000, which seems very most state schools do not teach music any more, at least not above inexpensive. We watch very little television on it — though we did enjoy the primary school, and none can be found on commercial, or even Jack Irish programs on the ABC. Hopefully there will be more sometime down community, radio (except for MBS, of course). There are just no the track. We mainly watch old TV series on it. We recently finished off The guideposts anywhere in the culture. Avengers and are currently watching Mission Impossible. Next will be The New Avengers. Just in case you think we only watch old shows, we so enjoyed It’s pretty obvious from listener comments to the annual ABC polls why Battlestar Galactica that we watched it twice, and when the complete set of they like the sort of music they do — they want something as soothing Hustle is released we will get that too. I’d also buy the Doctor Whos that the and ‘uplifting’ as possible, something as different as possible from ABC is advertising, but they are a bit too expensive for us at the moment. We ordinary boring experience. Can’t say I can knock this, but I can’t see also enjoy watching the Tour de France on it, as much for the scenery as the why people aren’t always looking for new music that turns on the same

51 buttons. The most peculiar thing about classical music now and classical [*brg* My life seemed to consist in waiting for Things To Be Done music during its heyday is that most concert goers and listeners really Properly. Even before I became interested in classical music in 1967 only want repeats of what they have always heard, whereas for and 1968, I knew that AM radio was a very poor way of broadcasting centuries it must have been very hard to find anything but the latest music, but we seemed to be stopped forever from having FM radio in being played by your local orchestra, provided you ever heard your local Australia. It was great travelling around America in late 1973 and orchestra. Therefore (for instance) Mendelssohn was needed to revive catching the huge variety of music (then) on FM radio. The ABC did a interest in Bach and Mozart, because they had almost disappeared from few stereo broadcasts, remember, especially their broadcast, using the the repertoire in 1830 or whenever. two stations, 3LO and 3AR, of the Solti Wagner Ring Cycle in late 1968. I was most impressed, not by the music (I’ve never liked Wagner) but Not that I have much interest in the toot-whistle-plunk-and-boom by the fact that, having started the final opera at 7 p.m., they were school of twentieth-century music (atonal apples), but it’s always actually willing to go over the midnight time limit on end of programs amazing to find a vast amount of ecstatic music that is still being in order to finish the opera. written and occasionally played and recorded. Charlie Brown in San Francisco put me on to John Adams, for instance — somebody I sort of So, FM radio was a revelation, and I bought a decent receiver/amp — knew I sort of liked, but somebody whose music I hadn’t actually heard which seemed forever plagued by crackles and sputters — although I until Charlie did a Lee Harding when I visited him and played some plugged it into the back of the main amp. Much better was the medium fascinating stuff for me.*] I had always waited for — CDs. In the early days, my dad not only had to change speeds on his turntable (built by my Uncle Ian) but also had What I learned about classical music came initially from John Bangsund and to change cartridges when he went from 78s to 33s. When he bought a Lee Harding. Just as well I found my way into fandom, eh. So I started with radiogram in early 1959, it was a bit easier to play LPs, but the sound Mahler, found my way to Shostakovich, and went on from there. Lee was wasn’t much better. My own first setup, bought at Douglas Hi Fi (you selling off some records, so I ended up with some treasures, including the bought yours there too) was an improvement, but there were still the first recording of Peter Grimes. The thing I found from the French Top 100 crackles and pops on those LPs. CDs are still it, as far as I’m concerned. was that there was a lot of French music that I did not know, a lot of it bombastic and trite. I was amazed that the pieces I liked the most came in But we had a swifty pulled on us when ABC Classical FM began, because the bottom 50, and Boulez didn’t even make it into the second 100 that the none of us thought that the ABC would rapidly withdraw classical music ABC later placed on its website. I guess I keep on underestimating the general from what is now called Radio National, leaving only John Cargher and public’s liking for romantic swill. Once upon a time I expected to spend my Ralph Collins. (Ralph Collins’ program on Sunday mornings was, as much final months of life making the important decision of which Mahler sym- as instruction by Harding and Bangsund, my real education in classical phony I liked the most. These days I seem to have gone off Mahler completely music in the late sixties.) (not that he’s French, of course). I will, instead, have to fill in my time trying to figure out which Berlioz piece I dislike the least. I still have no idea how to make connections with what’s out there in internetland. I would want WAV files, 24 bit if possible, which I would I can’t understand why everyone doesn’t get ‘classical’ music. Perhaps most somehow have to find a way to play through my regular amplifier. Since people just don’t have their brains wired the right way. it is about 25 years old, perhaps older, it doesn’t have a USB connection.

(23 October 2012) Thanks for all the stimulating chat. As I say, I’ll try to put all this

52 together to see if it makes a good article for Treasure.*] a wide variety of sources, but in a world in which genres and niches have become the norm, classical music had also disappeared into its own niche. I was thinking about what you said about people wanting well-known, com- You will recall the days when 3AR broadcast a lot of classical music, but lots fortable or uplifting music in their ‘classical’ music these days when I turned of other stuff as well so that if you listened to that station you got a wide variety on ABC Classic FM to hear the usual Saturday night new music and came of generally ‘high culture’ things. These days Radio National seems to be a across yet another performance of the big Brahms violin concerto. Good more or less perpetual talk station, which I find gets tedious after a while, grief! I don’t know how many people would want to see performances of and all the classical music has disappeared into Classic FM where you have Hamlet or Death of a Salesman every year, but they certainly seem to want to to specially look to find it. expose themselves to this kind of music as often as they can. It may be because music is, for most people, a language of emotions and they need their Can’t complain though. Classical music has probably never been more emotions soothed or uplifted by being made comfortable and secure. popular. I see that organisations like the MSO have to put on three perform- ances of their most popular concerts to meet demand. Not that I go, I I wonder how much the invention or radio and recording has changed wouldn’t pay money to hear most of what they put on in those concerts, even listening habits. We can now listen to the old favourites as much as we like if I could afford it. but, on the other hand, the need for recording companies to keep the catalogue going has led to a lot of stuff being played and recorded that is not (31 October 2012) really great music. Even Haydn had his off days, but you can still buy complete sets of his 104 smphonies (or at least you could when I acquired most of My father was a bit of an early adopter of new technology, and had a tape mine). And these days you can get the work of a lot of his forgotten recorder by the mid 1950s. I was also aware of stereo fairly early, I recall dad contemporaries as well. When I listen to the new music programs I hear a lot taking me around to the shop in the main street where one bought electronic of music that will probably never be heard again. But there are also pieces of stuff when I was quite young to listen to it. As soon as dad had a two-track great imagination and beauty that may become part of every day listening. recorder we were listening to stereo, but my parents’ music tastes were not It’s getting to the stage that you have to work hard to avoid the Glass Violin very exciting, so the only thing of any interest that I can remember hearing Concerto in the ABC’s concert broadcasts, and the Edwards Violin Concerto more than once was the Turkish March from The Ruins of Athens. As for my is becoming commonplace too. own listening habits, my radio was rusted on to 3UZ for most of the 1960s, with Stan Rofe the highlight of the week. The same goes for your plink-plunk-plonk music. Most of it has been played once and forgotten; in fact, it seems that most of that movement coming out Your ears must be much more finely tuned instruments than mine. I can of the Second Viennese school has disappeared without a trace. But it would listen to something for quite a while before I realise that it isn’t in stereo, and be hard to say that pieces like the Berg Violin Concerto or A Survivor of Warsaw I’m quite happy enough with MP3 files, though not highly compressed. This or some of the Webern miniatures are not worth listening to more than once. means that I don’t have to have a large collection of CDs. All my recorded I have to say that I prefer almost any music coming out of that second school music fits quite happily onto an iPod Classic. I suppose that you will be able to the sickly lushness of Richard Strauss, but most people don’t seem to agree, to stream audio over the interweb in a while when the NBN gets built. At the and the Four Last Songs comes up regularly on the radio to offend my ears. moment the ADSL runs so slowly at times that I have trouble with drop out when streaming, even at relatively high compression. Roll on technological I’m wondering if a general lack of interest in classical music doesn’t also come advances. We might not have a permanent base on Mars, but we do have the from its accessibility. True, it has probably never been more available from ability to listen to almost every radio station in the world or to spend out

53 money on things we don’t really need from the four corners of the world. conversation with one of the ex-Commissioners of Taxation I did during the ATO history project. He said that there was one ABC radio station that no (23 November 2012) government would dare to touch, and that was Classic FM, because it had too much support in all the right places. It might also be that classical music is, [*brg* I agree completely about the change in classical music being in by and large, fairly non-contentious and both socialists and fascists can listen terms of availability. In 1790 there wasn’t anything but the latest — to it with equal pleasure. Perhaps we can say that ‘classical music’ as it now Bach and Haydn just had to keep churning them out, week after week. exists is the opiate of the intellectual/educated masses. If it were not for We’re lucky they were written down. Classic FM we’d all have to listen to that well-known socialist network, RN. And if we are busying ourselves debating the best ever performance of Das The real change must have come with radio in the twenties in America Lied von Der Erde we are not debating the state of the world and how it might and Britain. For quite awhile, classical music featured on major be improved. That’s my guess anyway. American networks as well as on the BBC (and ABC). A strong feeling of improving the experience of ordinary people was behind this, which led One of the programs on Classic FM that I really did enjoy was the one that to the creation of a rather solid canon. But I don’t know when the rot compared various performances on CD, done by I can’t remember who. I set in with orchestras themselves. Even the largest American orchestras found it very interesting to have things pointed out to me that I was otherwise seem to have been very adventurous up to the 1940s — I was recently not noticing in terms of things like dynamics, tempo, colour, etc, etc. I would reading about the breathless waiting for Sibelius’s 8th, which never prefer that to having to listen to some rather uninspiring performances from happened. I suppose the only composers for whom people wait today orchestras in Eastern Europe, but I’m not paying the bills so I don’t know are Glass and Part, perhaps John Adams and one or two others — but which is more expensive to broadcast. And if there’s a choice between having their new pieces don’t get snapped up immediately and given their to listen exclusively to Classic FM from now until the end of eternity and British, American, and Australian premiere as soon as possible. Yet that having to spend five minutes listening to a station like 2Day FM, you can was being done for the latest Shostakovich and Bartok pieces in superglue my wireless dial to Classic FM. I’m not brain dead yet. America in the 1940s. There are two parts to the recording and storing of music and video. Windows None of this explains what happened to audiences for orchestral 7 comes with an inbuilt video recorder that you can set to record anything concerts, who seem to be a quite different crew from buyers of CDs or on free-to-air TV (and perhaps cable if you have it) if you plug your computer downloaders of music. Yet ABC FM is giving in to a very narrow range of into the TV hole in the wall. Those video files are in an unusual format, so listeners by broadcasting nothing by sclerotic concerts, and abandoning you need a free downloadable converter (I use WTV Converter, which works CDs altogether, which is very strange. I’d just like to hear some of the fine) and then you need some video editing software (I use AVS Video Editor, exciting new CDs reviewed in each issue of Gramophone. which cost about $25). I copy my DVDs straight from the disk to computer memory using something called WinX DVD Ripper. It’s not the easiest bit of Exactly how did you put all your old stuff on to hard disk? We don’t software to use, but it was cheap and does the job. have any of the equipment necessary, but I would like to have some idea of what I would have to buy when our old computers die.*] For audio recording I have Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio (that I bought for a few hundred dollars, but use for processing and editing oral history When in doubt about why things happen the way they do, there’s nothing interviews). In some way that I don’t now recall I set it to record whatever the wrong with going back to that good old theorist, Karl Marx. I recall a computer is listening to, so all I have to do is turn it on and let it run in the

54 background when I’m streaming something like Classic FB, though it also had to battle with when I was doing the teaching. Next I think I might scan records the sound effects that come with other computer processes. I’m using and save all my correspondence from the early 1980s (11 boxes of it), because this process to record LPs, using a little gizmo whose name I now forget but I find that kind of material easier to handle in an electronic from than on which connects the turntable straight into a USB slot on the computer. It’s dusty old sheets of paper. Boy, I did keep up a hectic correspondence level so long since I copied all my CDs to computer hard drive that I couldn’t tell in those days. Today’s email to you are the most I’ve written along these lines you what it was called, but it was commonly available and cheap. I have the in years. feeling that Sonic Foundry might do this too. It is also good for converting between WAV and MP3 files quickly and simply. (13 December 2012)

The saving the files is the easiest part. Buy one of those multi-terabyte external [*brg* Martin Hibble was the great ABC Classical FM announcer who drives and feed stuff into it until you can’t imagine that there is any more hosted his round-table critics’ program in the 1980s. Martin died much music in the world. Of course, if you are a complusive collector like some of too young, and John Baxter has sent me an article about him that will us you end up having ten or so of these external drives, partly to make appear in the next issue of Treasure. The most memorable program was backups too of everything that you’ve lovingly processed ready for storage. the critics’ panel on Schubert’s Winterreise.

Recently I’ve also become a bit of an expert in saving printed matter to PDF In recent months, ABC FM has descended another rung of whatever files using a rather expensive A3 scanner and the rather flash software that ladder it’s on. It has replaced its wonderful overnight program, once comes with it. I’d been keeping a great deal of material from when I was called ‘Music to Keep the Days Apart’, with a colourless carpet of tutoring at Murdoch Uni, a lot of it interesting and potentially useful, but unannounced musical pieces from 12.30 in the morning. I refuse to also stuff that I haven’t looked at for twenty years. This is a more time- listen to music that contains no enlightenment. Its contents is not even consuming process because you have to show every page you want to keep to listed on the ABC website. This contempt gives little comfort for any the scanner, but reading off the computer screen (and, one of these days, an Australians interested in quality broadcasting.*] iPad) will be a lot easier than the cumbersome course guides and readers I

55 Robyn Whiteley writes: ‘Robyn Whiteley and Bruce Gillespie started working at the Publications Branch of the Education Department of Victoria in 1971. Both learned to be editors, while still engaging in their own writing. Both eventually became freelance editors, but Bruce also went into fanzines, and Robyn became an obsessive letter writer. In recent years, when she and her (much older) husband John Collins have travelled abroad, Robyn has written extensive emails to her 600 or so fans. This is the story of their 2013 trip.’

Robyn Whiteley

Have wheelchair, will travel: A travel diary: May–June 2013

Photographs by Robyn Whiteley and John Collins

Wednesday, 22 May 2013: was much easier. When we pulled up outside the international terminal, Pam Magical Melbourne Moments said, ‘The last time we dropped you here the man barked at us to move on.’ (With thanks to the receptionist at the Qantas Business Lounge.) ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘That’s why we’re not going to hang around farewelling you. We’ll just unload the luggage and you drive off’, which they did, once Bill At about 6.20 a.m. we drove to Tullamarine Airport with our house minders, worked out that you had to turn the key on before the car would shift into Bill and Pam Christoffel from Maryland, in the back seat. A traffic report on gear. radio at 6.30 warned us of congestion near the airport, but we hadn’t expected it to start from as far out as Mickleham Road. As we crawled along As I was struggling to find out just how much money it cost to hire a luggage we came to a four-car nose-to-tail smash. Once we had passed that, the traffic cart (the amount is not on any of the signs, just on the screen of the machine where you insert coins), a tiny security lady (she barely reached my shoulder

56 at her full height) came up to John who was struggling to get the wheelchair out of its fancy new bag, while keeping an eye on two suitcases, his pack, two carry-on bags, the laptop computer, and my handbag. While he got himself into the chair, she loaded the luggage cart, then she pushed it all the way to the Qantas counter while I pushed John in the chair. She was our first angel for the day.

In a very short time we were called to the counter by Tamara. When she worked out that we wanted to send ‘our’ wheelchair as special luggage she secured a Qantas chair so that John could sit in that while she and I struggled with the new cover. She was most admiring of it, and called one of her colleagues over to see the way it fits over the chair completely. She completed our check-in process without incident, and by 7.20 we were making our way through security (follow the handicapped signs to the head of the queue) where another angel took over John and the chair while I pushed through two carry-on cases, the laptop out of its case, and my handbag. I forgot to look for the tray into which John had put the contents of his pocket but when I went back with the mobile phone he had forgotten to take out of his top pocket, I was presented with the bits and pieces tray as well as the phone tray. We felt that people were really looking after us. Then it was on to Immigration and Customs (special queue again) and finally we made it to the Qantas Business Lounge where the receptionist asked how my day had been. When I said we’d met three wonderful people already she said, ‘Magical Melbourne Moments’, so what else could I call this opening section of this year’s travel-ogue?

The QBL is huge, and early this morning it was almost empty and very quiet. We had a delicious breakfast: fruit and yoghurt, scrambled egg on toast, and tea/coffee. Then, as we sat quietly reading the papers, a waiter came past with toasted sandwiches. I reckon I’m going to come home heavier at the end of this trip.

Our perceptive receptionist came at about 9.15 to suggest that it was time for us to go to the gate lounge. There we joined a line of three wheelchairs, and another came in after us. John decided he would walk down the aerobridge rather than ride, but when he found out how far it was, he wished he’d taken the ride after all. Even the wheelchair pusher with whom we were walking John Collins on his trusty scooter by the Bath Cathedral door.

57 commented that we appeared to be walking to Singapore. In a very short time diagram of a body on the right hand arm of the seat, with arrows all over the we were installed in our seats (after the flight attendant who met us enthused place. I spent some minutes pushing arrows and eventually found the footrest over my ‘flying dress’, the material for which depicts luggage labels from and even managed to get the seat fairly flat. Right at the end of the ride she airports all over the world) and we were offered champagne, orange juice, showed me how to get the seat upright in one movement, so I’ll have to or water to drink. There are no prizes for guessing which I chose. John had practise on the next leg. orange juice. When it seemed that the entertainment system wasn’t working I reached for It takes a while to learn to drive the seats in Business Class. I grizzled about my talking book, only to realise that I hadn’t put any batteries into it. (John there being no footrest and we both felt the loss of the pocket in front of us found me an adapter, which means I can use my mp3–CD player on power to store magazines etc., but a passing flight attendant pointed out to me the and I’ve got out of the habit of carrying batteries.) When the entertainment

58 system did come on (or when I learned how to work it!) I discovered Series The choice of drinks on arrival was the same, but the various spots to store 2 of Downton Abbey, most of which I had missed when it was shown last year, things were different, better than Qantas, in fact. However, the food was far so I caught up on that. Food and drink came plentifully, and I even had a inferior, both in quality and presentation. Our meals arrived on plastic trays little nap, broken rudely by John trying to climb over me to get to the toilet. covered with glad wrap, just like a meal in economy class. The only difference I think I’ll sit on the window next leg because it’s easier for him to get up seemed to be the free grog. and down from the aisle seat. John settled down to sleep and I settled down to watch movies: Guilt Trip, When we arrived at Singapore (about 15 minutes late, due to head winds), with Barbara Streisand, Mr Popper’s Penguins (got some giggles during that a wheelchair was waiting with a tiny pusher holding John’s name. She pushed one), Water for Elephants and, finally, Amour, but that was really disappointing him so far that I began to think Singapore is the biggest airport we’ve been because, in editing it to fit the airline screen, they managed to cut off the in, though John thinks O’Hare, in Chicago, is bigger. John would never have subtitles. I stuck with it, hoping I had enough French to get the gist of the managed the distance without the chair. She pushed us to the Finnair film, but it was probably the reviews I’d heard that gave me the most counter to hand us over to their wheelchair pusher, but that counter didn’t enlightenment. I must have slept at some stage because John told me he had open for another couple of hours, so eventually we convinced her to push been off chatting with the flight attendants during the night. They certainly us to the Ambassador Transit Hotel where we were booked in for a six-hour hovered around him like moths around a flame when we finally got ready to stay. We had a cup of tea and a short sleep, then I had a shower and washed leave the plane so he must have charmed them at some stage. my hair, and slipped out to see what I could organise at the Finnair counter. I did manage to organise a wheelchair to come and collect us at the hotel Thursday, 23 May 2013 reception desk at 10.30 p.m. despite the fact that the check-in clerk kept telling me it was such a short distance to walk. He doesn’t know the state of We landed at Helsinki about 6.30 a.m. We waited for a wheelchair to appear John’s lungs. We also discovered that the wonderful Tamara in Melbourne at the door, but that one took us only a short distance before the pusher got had managed to give me two copies of John’s boarding pass from Singapore a message to say that our own wheelchair was being brought up from the to Helsinki and no copy of mine, so we rectified that, and I returned to the hold and the chair John started in had to go to a lady who had been following hotel room to find John sitting up surfing TV channels. He slept more than in our footsteps from Melbourne. Both the pushers we had at Helsinki were I did on the first leg, but we’ll both probably sleep on the second leg, which enormous young men, such a contrast to the little girl in Singapore. We were is 12 hours as opposed to 8 hours from Melbourne to Singapore. taken through Immigration and Customs and deposited at the baggage carousel, where we said we could manage by ourselves. John got out of the Heading for Helsinki chair and pushed it with his carry-on bag on it while I pushed a trolley with the suitcases and John’s pack and my carry-on bag. I had packed the laptop The wheelchair pusher arrived in the hotel lobby at 10.30 p.m. as arranged. into my carry-on just to make the business of keeping track of everything that He pushed John to the Sky Lounge, which is, I think, the business class lounge much easier. for a number of airlines. It’s big, but we weren’t as impressed with it as we were with the QBL in Melbourne. Maybe we’re getting jaded about airline At the taxi line, the driver of a Volvo SUV said he didn’t think he could fit in lounges? Getting John a decent cup of tea was impossible, but at least he got all the luggage, so we stepped back to wait for something bigger, but nothing some liquid, and we both had a couple of little filled rolls as a snack. At bigger appeared (is there anything bigger bar a bus?) so eventually I said I 11.05 p.m. the pusher arrived back to take us to the aircraft. We boarded thought I could pack everything in. That really challenged the driver, so he without incident and settled in to find out just how this Business Class ran. fitted it all in and John got in beside him while I squeezed onto the back seat

59 with the wheelchair and its cover. We had a very good ride into town (50 process and then we faced a new obstacle. The streets of inner Helsinki are euros) and John finally got some conversation out of the driver. I decided paved with very smart-looking modern cobblestones, not the easiest thing to the driver was not taciturn, but rather shy about his level of English. In fact negotiate in a wheelchair. Several times I nearly shot John out but eventually, it was very good, but not fluent. having rejected the process of pulling the chair backwards up little slopes, I got the hang of tipping the chair with my foot to raise the front wheels to go Stalled by Sokos over rough patches. Green lights for pedestrians seem to last a long time in Helsinki, so we crossed several roads safely until we got to the Kamppi Drizzly rain was falling as we drove in from the airport. The rain was a bit Shopping Centre. We prowled along two floors with nary a sight of an ATM. heavier as the taxi drew up to the hotel. Where was the uniformed attendant Eventually we stopped at a little eating place, and while we had a drink and who would take pity on me with my husband in a wheelchair and appear a snack, I perused the information on John’s map and discovered that ATMs magically with a luggage trolley? In my dreams, I’m afraid. The taxi driver are called ‘Ottos’. We were then able to ask where we could find an Otto. landed the suitcases on the footpath, just out of the rain, while I struggled to The lady behind the counter said she thought there was one on the ground get John into the chair. I left him guarding the luggage while I went to floor, the one marked E in the lift (E for Earth?). Before we arrived at E John reception to ask if we could check in. ‘Trainee’ (everyone else had a name!) announced that he wanted to go to the toilet, so we found that and also found was very quick to point out that I could not check in until noon. Fortunately that it cost 1 euro. The coin disappeared by the time we worked out that you I had established this before I left home, so it wasn’t a surprise, but I was pulled the door instead of pushing it, so when the second coin went in we disappointed that I couldn’t talk my way into a room immediately. Yes, I could not only pulled the door the right way but we managed to make the coin do leave my luggage. No, there was no trolley I could use and, in any case, the double duty. Still searching for an Otto, we made a side visit to the super- luggage room was right by the door. So, piece by awkward piece, I carried market to buy batteries for my CD player and asked again about an Otto. The the cases into the luggage room. When everything was finally stored, I cashier and a customer both assured us there was one in the middle of the struggled through the outward-opening door with John in the wheelchair, floor. We found the money changer, but that was no good to us. Eventually, and then looked in horror at the ramp that has been installed at one end of under a staircase, we found what looked like public telephone booths and the short flight of steps up from the entry to the foyer. In the end, John got they were indeed marked ‘Otto’. Victory! out of the chair, walked up the steps, and returned to the chair. We sat in the foyer for 10 minutes or so working out how we were going to fill in four hours The shopping centre had lost its appeal by then and the rain had ceased so in wet weather after a 12-hour flight on which we had managed to achieve we braved the outside world and made our way to Stockmann, a department not very much sleep. John wanted his showerproof jacket and he said I should store that we fell in love with on our first visit here in 2005. Its motto is ‘If we get my overcoat too. I didn’t want to undo my complicated suitcase to get the haven’t got it, you don’t need it’. We started at the sixth floor and made our coat so I said no. He nagged, I snapped. We weren’t a happy couple. In the way down floor by floor doing a version of window shopping that I don’t think end I did as he wanted, and it was just as well I did. The rain was persistent I’ve ever done before. We worked out where to find the toilets, we looked at and the wind was chilly. I announced that we should find a shopping centre all kinds of things we don’t need, and we finally took ourselves up to the where we could, while staying dry, find somewhere to eat and drink and an eighth floor for something to eat and drink before we tackled the cobbled ATM to stock up on some euros. I took various brochures from the hotel’s streets back to the hotel, where we arrived at 11.50, and the receptionist advertising stand and John found one that had a shopping centre marked didn’t dare to refuse to check us in. and he reckoned he could guide us there. We had fond memories of the Sokos Vaakuna Hotel from our two-night stay Arrayed in our wet gear, we got John out the door by reversing the incoming in 2005. I can only think that we paid more for our room that time, because

60 Cobblestoned market square.

61 the room we have this time is quite pokey. There isn’t really a comfortable on 2 January. Her birthday is on 25 May, so I suggested to John that we should chair. There is a pleasant view from our seventh floor window and there is come to help her celebrate the birthday and then go on to visit other friends still heating in the bathroom floor, which makes personal laundry easy to in Europe. That’s how this whole trip began. dry. In dismay I looked at the shower over the tub and wondered if John’s general unsteadiness would allow him to climb into the bathtub. I cursed We chatted for nearly the half hour we had until our dinner booking and myself for not having asked for a room set up for someone with a disability. then she led us to a restaurant called Strindberg, a charming eating house There are so many more things to think about when you’re travelling with that looks as though it is set in a library. There are books on shelves all over an oldie! There aren’t any decent ‘toys’ in the bathroom, either. Who on the place. Part of the establishment is a lounge, with a bar and armchairs or earth thinks we’ll have time to use strawberry bubble bath? sofas, and part is a restaurant. On our table when we arrived was a special menu paying tribute to the asparagus — every dish on it featured white or John set about getting the laptop computer running as his first task. I green asparagus, or both, except the desserts. We had a lovely meal, accom- unpacked and ran around finding things for him. When he finally handed panied by a syrah wine from Chile, which lasted us through main course and over the computer so that I could look at my email, I found one asking how a shared cheese platter. On our way back to the hotel, Ellen found a place we were. ‘Tired and scratchy’ was my response. to buy a new sim card for the phone and offered to help John set it up. We wandered home through what seemed like broad daylight. Yes, we’ve arrived I had made the mistake of not having a telephone number for granddaughter in this far northern city at the time of year where the sun goes down late and Ellen, but I felt sure she would have answered my last-minute email from gets up early. When Ellen left us (having escorted us safely back to the hotel, home asking that question. During our ‘regrouping’ time in the foyer at our over cobblestones and tramlines and having ‘fixed’ the phone), she bade us first attempt to check in, I discovered that I could deal with my email at the be sure to close the curtains carefully because there is nothing more annoying public computers in the foyer. There was an email with Ellen’s number so I than being woken at 4 a.m. by bright daylight coming in at the window. Once sent her a note saying she should contact us on the number I had put on top again, we hit the hay, and slept. The bed is soft, so I hope I don’t finish up of our itinerary, a number that John had secured when he bought a Wool- with a sore back. (In Tours, France, in 2003, I slept on the floor for a week worths Global Roaming sim card. It’s a bit of a shame he didn’t put away the because the bed was so soft.) The bed is made up European style, that is, we cardboard cover that came with the card. After it had lain on the dining room have a bottom sheet for the entire bed, then two single duvet quilts, each table for three days, I threw it into the recycle bin — along with all the encased in its own cover, and a fairly heavy cover lies across the lower part of necessary numbers that made it possible to use the card. I wasn’t popular. the bed. I can take my quilt out of its cover when I make the bed and leave Not much wonder Ellen couldn’t get through to us, but we were able to just the two-sheets’ weight on my side. The windows don’t open and I have phone her, so we arranged for her to book dinner for us for 6 p.m. and for the air-conditioning as low as it can go, but I still find it’s too hot. her to come to the hotel at 5.30 p.m. I promptly retired to bed (it was about 2 p.m.) but regained sufficient consciousness to set the alarm for 5.00 — and Friday, 24 May 2013 I slept right up to the alarm. There was just time for a quick shower and a Valuing Wagner tidy-up before there was a knock at the door, and there was our beautiful Ellen. Breakfast is included with our room fee at the Sokos Vaakuna, and it’s the kind of breakfast where you can help yourself to anything and just about as Ellen is the elder daughter of John’s younger son Don. Officially she is a much of it as you like. I’m pigging out on berries and fish; there were four third-year Arts student at Melbourne University, but she was able to secure a kinds of fish to sample this morning. With full tummies we were ready to dive one- semester exchange to the University of Helsinki, and she arrived here into our first adventure.

62 Richard Gill, the Melbourne conductor, is a national treasure. For at least them. It was a wonderful spectacle as well as being good music. The hall itself the last two years he has run a three-concert series each year called ‘Ears Wide has curtains that are lowered for concerts to keep out natural light, and raised Open’. With the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra responding to every move- for intervals and at the end of the concert. The hall is like Hamer Hall in ment of his baton he dissects a piece of music and explains how the conductor Melbourne, in that it is below ground level. We were so excited by the uses the instruments of the orchestra to achieve what is in the conductor’s experience that we have signed up for another rehearsal on Wednesday. The mind. Each concert lasts for 80 minutes and it is both entertaining and music will be Haydn, Eliasson, and Stravinsky. John says he has had enough informative. At the concert in March, Richard Gill happened to mention that Wagner for a while. Finland, a country with 5 million people, has 38 symphony orchestras! With 23 million people, Australia has just eight symphony orchestras. It seemed We had a drink and a snack before we left the Music Hall. On the way back to me that if we were coming to Helsinki we should at least try to hear one to the hotel, I passed a post office, so I went in for a fix of stamps and postcards of these orchestras, so I fiddled about with the help of Google and discovered for great nieces/nephews/grandchildren and non-email friends. We got we could attend final rehearsals for 3 euros each. So this morning we made back to the hotel not long before Ellen appeared again to help us enjoy the our way to the Music Hall and asked where we needed to buy tickets. ‘The afternoon. concert is sold out,’ the Information Officer said, ‘but I do have 11 tickets here for a group that hasn’t turned up yet. If they don’t come, you can have a ticket.’ I made sure that I sat right in his line of vision, with John in front of me in the wheelchair, and in a very short time, we were whisked off to Door 6, where we were admitted to the upper level of the beautiful auditorium, in a wheelchair position that was right above the double basses.

What an experience we had. We watched the orchestra members gather. We saw the conductor appear, a man named Leif Segerstam, whose waist measurement looked to be at least twice John’s and whose movements made him appear to be even older than John (can you imagine!). Google tells me he was born in 1944, so I hope he never gets to read this diary. John was fascinated by the number of microphones in the room and the places at which they were deployed. The program was all Wagner music from the operas, so there was plenty of brass. I counted 101 musicians on stage at one point. There was every instrument you could imagine, from tiny piccolos to concert harps and hanging bits of metal that John says only ever appear in Wagner music. I was amused to see how the different double bassists approached the playing of their instruments: one stood, two either sat on or leaned against the ‘bicycle seat’ high chairs they were provided with; three played with their left feet on ordinary chairs; one had special footplates on his high stool — I was quite goggle-eyed. The bassoonists and oboists had special headrests; I think, as much as anything, the headrests were to protect them from the noise made by the brass instruments behind The double basses, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.

63 Sightseeing at sea When we arrived back at the hotel John succumbed to tiredness and had an hour’s sleep. When Ellen arrived to take us out for an Italian dinner, he was As we emerged from the hotel, the sun emerged from behind the clouds and still asleep and it took him quite a while to rejoin the world. During a very we cheered. We made our way to the harbour for a 90-minute cruise around pleasant meal, when we were served by a young Estonian man who was 6 feet the historical island fortress of Suomenlinna and other islands in what is 6 inches tall, John reckoned, and had spent six months in Australia (he called the Eastern Archipelago of Finland. We saw some splendid houses adopted us as ‘my Aussies’), Ellen asked John what we would be doing hidden away amongst tall conifer trees, and many of the houses had little tomorrow. ‘Nothing,’ growled John, so I think he needs a rest day. He was in sauna cabins right on the edge of the water, so that when you’re well and bed soon after 9 tonight, but I have stayed up typing this diary just to see what truly heated by the sauna, you can leap into the very cold water to refresh time there really will be no light left in the sky. It’s now 11 p.m. and you yourself! Ellen says ‘sauna’ is the only Finnish word that has been incorpo- couldn’t really say it’s dark yet. But the sun will be up again about 5 tomorrow rated into English, and you can see why there is no English word for such a morning, so perhaps I’d better sign off at this point. barbarous practice! Ellen told us the story of going away one weekend with friends who, when they came to a fuel station on the way home, discovered Saturday, 25 May 2013 that there was a sauna there, so they filled the petrol tank and had a family Touring by tram sauna before continuing on their way. I can’t think of any equivalent to that in Australia. We slept late this morning despite there being bright daylight by 5 a.m. John was up first playing mah jong on the laptop while I listened to another chapter We started our trip on the m/s Doris sitting up on the top deck with a drink of my talking book. We had breakfast at about 10 and then John announced at hand, but the chilly air soon drove us downstairs to a more sheltered spot. that he wanted to ride a local tram. Ellen and John even copied the locals by using some of the blankets supplied to wrap themselves up against the chilly wind caused by the boat’s movement. We sallied forth and caught a tram right near the hotel at 11.16 a.m., and On the way back we had to wait for a swing bridge to move by 90 degrees to paid for a 24-hour ticket. The tram was 3T but it changed to 3B along the let boats through. The bridge does this every half hour, and road traffic on way. I realised that one of the maps we had collected in the hotel foyer had either side of the bridge simply has to wait for 10 minutes while the operation tram numbers on it (albeit in 4 pt type!) so I was able to follow our route to is completed. some extent once I picked up the National Opera House as a landmark. We rode around for a couple of hours, observing among other things the tulips Back at the wharf, we said au revoir to Ellen who went off to do her own thing growing wild as well as planted in gardens. There must have been at least one for a couple of hours. We dawdled around the market. By this stage John had cruise ship in port somewhere, because groups of Americans joined the tram given up being wheeled across the cobblestones, and was pushing the chair from time to time. One sat right behind us with the photocopy of her himself, using it as a ‘walker’. I bought some postcards, but we resisted guidebook that took us right along the 3T/B route, so we gleaned quite a bit strawberries, blueberries, bananas, flowers, and all kinds of handcrafts. We from her. Another couple even had the guidebook as a talking book, but they wandered back to the hotel past lots of designer clothing shops, including didn’t seem to be able to work it. Marrimekko, a store that was having a fashion parade to exhibit its wares. There were brightly coloured bean bags on the footpaths outside the store As we took off away from the main railway station I started to notice what and flowers were being handed out to passers-by. There were several restau- looked like garage sales on footpaths and flea markets in parks, gardens, rants with chairs identical to the chairs one sees all over France, and lots of municipal squares, and car parks. Eventually one of the guide book owners people eating and drinking and enjoying the sun. explained that it was ‘clean out the house’ day, so lots of people had gone

64 Island fortress of Suomenlinna.

65 through their wardrobes and their households to determine what they no Eating with Ellen longer needed. It seemed to be a perfect example of ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’. We loaded John into the wheelchair, but he has now decided that he won’t be pushed over the cobblestones, with the risk of being tipped out. If he can’t We’ve decided that the car fleet seems to be about as old as ours at home, sight smooth paths ahead, he gets out of the chair and uses it as a wheeler to and the composition of makes seems to be very similar, except that there are get himself over the cobblestones. a lot more Mercedes Benz here, and they’re a significant part of the taxi fleet. We made our way to KarlJohan, a restaurant that Ellen had chosen because I knitted my way around the journey (it turned out to be a figure of eight and Trip Advisor gave it lots of ticks. We’d be more than happy to add our tick, we did it twice), but no one took any notice of my activity, unlike the buses though John did find his white fish a bit tasteless. Ellen had reindeer and I in Los Angeles where I was an absolute eye-catcher. had lamb kidneys, and we returned our plates so clean they barely needed washing. We complimented the food with a bottle of bubbles in honour of When we alighted from the tram John announced that he was hungry, so we the occasion. Again, we made it an early night, because Ellen was going to betook ourselves to the Vltava restaurant (or ravintola as the Finnish word is) party at her place and then go out. Back in our hotel room John managed which turned out to be Czech. John ordered a pork dish but it turned out to to find an episode of New Tricks on TV, in English with Finnish subtitles. After be much too rich for him. I had a salmon salad, entrée size, and that was just that I stumbled across a movie starring Shirley McLaine and Toni Collette, about perfect. The menu recommended particular beers to go with each of which I’ve seen before, but I’m blowed if I can recall its name. (Time to call the dishes. As the beers came in pint glasses, the next thing we did after that on Google. It seems the movie was called In Her Shoes. I can only conclude I was lie down and sleep! John slept for a couple of hours and when he woke saw it on a plane!) When I woke up and it was still playing I figured it was I could fuss around with the iron and the ironing board to make sure I got time to go to sleep. the creases out of the new black silk top that Lincoln Wu brought for me when he arrived last week from China. Since we were going out to celebrate Sunday, 26 May 2013 Ellen’s twenty-second birthday, we thought we should make an effort. On the way back from lunch I bought her a bunch of lily of the valley from an old The tram tickets we bought yesterday were good till 11.15 a.m. this morning. lady seated in the railway square. (I don’t think I have seen lily of the valley I argued that so long as we were on the tram by that time, we were within our since I planted some in the garden at my Toorak house in 1975, but here it rights; that’s the way it is at home. As it turned out no one ever looked at our is on sale in many places, and Pam Christoffel, our American house minder, tickets. This time we decided to ride the 6 tram, but it turned into an 8 and brought some lily of the valley soap when she arrived this week.) Ellen’s mum we couldn’t follow the route on the map for much of the time. It was almost sent with us a fun birthday gift (a tube of Vegemite!) for us to present on the as though we had taken the 109 in Melbourne out along Victoria Street, and day. A proper birthday gift will arrive with them, from Istanbul, on Friday. at the corner of Church Street, Richmond, it magically changed into the tram When Ellen opened the Vegemite she was delighted. ‘It’s the best thing I that runs from North Richmond to St Kilda and never goes near the city know for curing a hangover for me,’ she said, ‘and I have been rationing my again. Since John was chief navigator and he was sure we were covering last tube.’ Apparently when she left us last night she went to a party and then ground we’d seen before, we alighted from the 6 or 8 and caught another to a nightclub. She said that when she was making her way home at 4 a.m. one even though our tickets were expired by then. We came to the intersec- the sky was already light. tion near the Opera House and the Olympic Stadium and John announced that we were getting off again and catching our favourite from yesterday, the 3T, back into the city. By this time I had figured out that the fare we should

66 be paying was 2.80 euros, so I put the right amount of coinage on the driver’s her in touch with Minna and Minna’s family, and they have become firm little tray but I’d have to say he wasn’t very gracious about it. friends too. Today was the day that had been arranged for the three of us to go out to Minna’s home. Minna’s husband Ville was scheduled to collect us We noticed on Sunday that there were several dogs on the trams or waiting at the hotel at 2.30. Ellen arrived at about 2.15 looking a bit tired after two at the stops. Maybe that’s the only day they’re allowed to ride. One was an very late nights (early mornings) celebrating her birthday. She was carrying aggressive little daschund who told a dog outside the doors that there was no a bag containing a TV set (15-inch screen?) that Ville had loaned her for the way he was getting on this tram! The trams were full of women wearing a kind length of her stay here. We waited outside for about 15 minutes, and it wasn’t of fuchsia pink t-shirt and some had matching windbreakers. We asked a lady all that warm! When Ellen finally phoned Ville he explained that there was opposite us what was going on. She explained that it was a women-only some kind of fun run on and the traffic was all snarled up. We were able to 10-kilometre marathon (is that a contradiction in terms?). She asked if we add our bit of information to that. were English and when we said we were Australians she told us she had a Welsh boyfriend. I guess that’s why her English was good; it must be easier Ville arrived with his daughter Laura in the car with him. Laura is nearly than learning Welsh! eight, and she has been to Australia once and to the Cook Islands and New Zealand with her family and my sister and her family, but Laura still doesn’t The first tram took us to a port area where there were ships berthed that were speak any English. Ville speaks good English, and we had quite a conversation big enough to be cruise liners, but maybe they were just ferries. There were with him on the way to Espoo where they live, covering family news as well as a few Americans among the passengers today but not as many as yesterday. some of the things we have been curious about since our arrival. On this trip Only one small boy of Indian origin was impressed by my knitting. His mother I finally spotted some single dwellings. told him that she was planning to learn to knit so that she could knit him a sweater. When we arrived at Minna’s house we remade our acquaintance with her parents Ahti and Marjut and her brother Mikko. Ahti and Marjut run a I commented to John that in all our riding around over the last three days, cleaning supplies business and Mikko and Ville work in the business too. I had not seen any single-family dwellings, only apartments, except for houses Minna is a nurse, working in drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Mikko laugh- on the islands we saw during our trip on Friday afternoon. He said land was ingly explained that the family works together five days a week and then goes probably very expensive in the heart of Helsinki and single dwellings on holidays together as well. He says his friends can hardly believe such an wouldn’t be affordable. I said I thought it wasn’t much different from East arrangement. Melbourne, which is also near the centre of a (much more populous) city and there are plenty of single dwellings there. Marjut had prepared a delicious fish and potato soup that apparently Ellen fell in love with when she went with the family to their holiday home in Meeting up again with Minna Lapland at Easter time. We each had a couple of bowls of soup accompanied by various kinds of bread and rolls, and drinks of our own choosing. There Although Ellen’s presence here was the catalyst for our trip, we do have was much discussion as to how the soup should be made and how often it another Finnish connection. Back in 2005, my sister Felicity Woolley hosted needed to be tasted in the process. Marjut reckons she probably used the a Finnish student for six months under the AFS program, the same one that equivalent of a bowl just in tasting! After soup and exchange of gifts, the took me to America back in 1963. Minna fitted into the Woolley family so business of the afternoon became a cooking lesson for Ellen on how to well that the two families have been in regular contact and have visited back prepare cinnamon buns that she had also fallen in love with. Ville ran around and forth ever since. When we knew that Ellen was coming to Finland we put gathering ingredients while Minna produced a huge bowl of pastry which

67 home. At the moment they are building a deck at the back with a hot tub on it. Of course they have a sauna as well. I had half-expected that we might be invited to sauna, but the afternoon was a bit full.

When the house tour was over, we sat down to the cinnamon rolls and coffee, and John got his first decent cup of tea since leaving home. (Minna, bless her, even loaned us the electric jug and a couple of mugs so that we can make tea in the hotel room. It just shows you how different cooking styles can be. There’s no way we could manage without our electric kettle at home because of the way John cooks.) The rolls were delicious, and everyone had more than one. Minna served the coffee in a retro coffee service straight from the 70s that she had bought the day before at a Cleaning Day sale, for 10 euros. Marjut had bought a whole lot of clothes for Laura, 20 euros the lot, and we were treated to a fashion parade. Laura chose one to wear to the birthday party she went off to right after the cinnamon buns. It was a four-year-old’s party, and Ville had bought as a gift a capsicum plant with both green and orange capsicums on it, and a watering can to go with it. How much better is that than a toy of any description!

Laura, Ellen, and Minna making cinnamon buns.

she had ‘prepared ahead of time’ in true cooking demonstration fashion. When we were here in 2005, Mikko was living with his parents but about five Arrayed in an apron, Ellen set about rolling out the pastry then spreading it years ago he bought a property about 5 kilometres from his parents and his with butter (‘more, more’, Marjut kept saying) and shaking cinnamon and sister and he is gradually renovating and restoring it, so we were driven out sugar over it (‘more, more’). Then together Ellen and Minna rolled up the in Ahti’s very comfortable Land Rover to see it. Ahti’s English is not as good pastry and cut it in a particular way to make the rolls. Meanwhile Laura had as Marjut’s, so she got to do all the explanations to us, and she did a wonderful been using some of the pastry to make what looked like a gingerbread man job. We were very appreciative of her caring for us in a way that isn’t easy for with raisins for buttons. The little man and the rolls were brushed with egg her. (whisked by Ville) and all went into the oven (lit and cleaned by Ville while the preparation was underway on an adjacent bench). A second batch of The buildings on Mikko’s land are about 75 years old and they’re in a heritage pastry was spread with apple sauce and cinnamon and rolled and cut in the area of the forest (the land is 2.7 hectares) that overlooks a lake and backs same way. They finished up in paper patty pans though and I never quite got onto a national park. Although Mikko says he isn’t obliged to keep the to the bottom of that, but it might have been to do with some unpractised buildings as they are, he has chosen to use the same stain as was originally rolling and cutting by Ellen. applied, and is making different windows fit the colour scheme. The out- buildings include a former cold-store shed that he has converted to a practice While the rolls were cooking, we did a tour of the house. When John and I room for his band, and another that will become his summer sauna. There visited in 2005, Minna and Ville were just beginning an extension. That is is a winter sauna in the house itself. The renovations he has done inside make long since finished,and they now have a very comfortable three-bedroom the house a very attractive rustic style.

68 Yet again, the light had us deceived, and by the time we got back to Minna’s on Friday, and the relevant web sites, we could do our own bookings. I had it was 7.30. Ahti and Marjut were going home to have a sauna. Ville suggested scheduled that phone call for 9 a.m. this morning. Apart from that we had we might as well leave at the same time, and he drove us back to Helsinki, no plans for the day, till we visit Ellen tonight in her little apartment, and dropping Ellen first at her student apartment and then dropping us at the have dinner with her. hotel. We’ll see the whole family again on Friday night, when they’re all coming to meet Ellen’s parents, Don and Anne, who are flying in from When I knew that we would be travelling business class, which allows us two Istanbul that day. The three of them are moving on to Norway next Tuesday. 23-kg suitcases each, I offered to bring home anything Ellen might like to send back. I packed my suitcase inside a bigger one and gave her the bigger I had noticed that there was a supermarket attached to the hotel, so I left one when we arrived. Ellen won’t be here when we come through on our way John to go up to the room, while I went to see if I could buy milk. Of course home, so we asked Ville yesterday whether he would be prepared to bring it I couldn’t read much but Nestles Nescafe looked exactly the same as it is at to the airport that night. The plan is that at Heathrow John will be booked home and English Breakfast tea was recognisable too. I took a chance on right through to Melbourne with our two suitcases and I will be booked to some packets that looked like cupasoup, and bought a half-litre of milk like Helsinki with no luggage. While he sits in the Finnair lounge till our the carton I had seen at Minna’s. With hot tea and cinnamon buns, we didn’t Melbourne flight, I will go out through Immigration and Customs and meet need any more to eat. I could barely keep my eyes open and it was almost Ville with Ellen’s suitcase. I will then check in for the flight from Helsinki to 9.30. Melbourne, with my suitcase, and hope that I get seated next to John! Our Melbourne travel agent has gone through all these arrangements with Monday, 27 May 2013 Finnair in Melbourne, but there are still chances that ‘the best-laid plans of Mucking up Monday mice and men etc.’ When I asked Ville yesterday if he’d be part of this plan I said I would email him the flight details. To my horror, when I looked at Ellen told us last night that she didn’t think she could accompany us on our the itinerary this morning, I saw that we were due to land at 11.55 p.m. I proposed day trip to Tallinn tomorrow because she hadn’t done any study thought a midnight trip to the airport was above and beyond the call of over the weekend, but she would be happy to book our tickets. (She is hoping friendship so I told John I thought we should ask Finnair if there could be that when she completes her Arts degree at Melbourne at the end of this other arrangements made. At the front desk I asked where the Finnair office year, she will be able to go into a Law course called JD, or Doctor of Juris- is in Helsinki. ‘At the airport,’ said the receptionist. prudence. To be accepted for that she has to complete an exam which is called (I think) LSAT, and she needs to complete it as well as she possibly I knew that Bus 615 went to the airport, so I asked where that left from, and can. She can have three attempts. She had her first in Melbourne in October was told ‘behind the station’. Thank goodness we are so close to the station. last year, and she felt that she could do better, so she has arranged to sit again As I wheeled John in the direction we had been pointed I spotted a 615 in June, but this time in Rome. When her parents arrive in Helsinki on Friday, loading up so we joined the queue. I asked the driver for two return tickets she plans to travel with them for about 10 days in Scandinavia, then she will to the airport but that was too hard for him so after a bit of misunderstanding fly to Rome to do the exam. That means this is her last week for achieving on my part and exasperation on his, we bought two tickets to the airport, any real study time. She also has to move out of her apartment because, as stowed the wheelchair where it would fit, and sat back to enjoy the ride. When of Saturday, her building becomes a hostel for the summer. And she has to we got to the airport, I joined the Finnair Customer Service queue and waited pack a suitcase of things she wants to go home which we will collect (we hope) my turn. While rehearsing my request (and being offered alternative lines on our way back to Melbourne through Helsinki on 19 June.) We reckoned by John) I checked the itinerary again, only to discover that we are due to that with the help of the Lonely Planet guide to Finland which Ellen gave us land in Helsinki at 9 p.m. and take off at midnight. Ruefully I said to John,

69 ‘I’ve done a ferry again’, a reference to a mistake I made during our trip to but the sun is still shining. It’s such a strange feeling! Ireland in 2005 when I assumed the ferry went at 1 p.m. when it had actually left at 1 a.m. I don’t think 9 p.m. is too late for Ville to meet me at the airport Today’s grizzle is about the lifts in this hotel. They are tiny! I have to pivot so we left the service queue (to the delight of the people behind) and found the wheelchair to get it to fit in sideways and then there’s just room for me ourselves a place when John got a good cup of tea in a huge mug and I got and one other person. I’m reminded of the sixties game of seeing how many a coffee. We then retraced our steps to the bus stop. When the bus arrived, people you could fit in a phone box. the driver indicated that he wouldn’t be going back to town for 17 minutes and the correct place to catch the bus was downstairs in the arrivals section, Tuesday, 28 May 2013 but he didn’t care if we got on then and waited for him to resume the trip. Tuesday in Tallinn What a pleasant contrast he was to the first driver. I was in the bathroom this morning when I heard the alarm clock sound. I Back at the railway station we checked which bus we catch for visiting the zoo pondered that young travellers these days don’t need clocks (alarm or not), on Wednesday, then we bought some lunch and came back to the hotel room watches, cameras, diaries, pens, and paper — they can do the lot on their to eat and rest. Despite our hanging up our towels as requested, the Maid mobile phones. But we oldies still pack our essential travel aids and feel little had been in and left clean towels and had not only changed the sheets and loyalty to modern technology. doona covers but had found where I have secreted my doona (I’m just using the cover) and she left a clean cover for the secreted one as well! We followed the timetable I had drawn up for the day and found ourselves at the Linda Line hydrofoil company at the Makasini Terminal soon after 9 John spent the afternoon resting while I caught up with my diary and wrote a.m. By chance we rolled up to the window being run by the very lady I had some postcards to the greats (nieces and nephews). At 5.30 we caught a taxi spoken to when I booked the tickets yesterday. She took us under her wing to Ellen’s apartment. The taxi driver didn’t speak English and we didn’t really and made sure the boat attendants were expecting to help us onto the boat. know where we were going so it was a recipe for disaster, but Ellen had been I presented her with one of those little clingy koalas you can buy in the watching for us and she came to our rescue. She took us up to the one-room Swanston Street souvenir shops. I also gave one to the young man who helped corner apartment she has lived in since January. It has a bedroom/living us board. He thought I was offering him money and he demurred, but when room and a tiny bathroom. She has made some really good friends during he saw the trinket he giggled, and took it happily. her stay here, and this week they are leaving in dribs and drabs, so she’s a bit sad as well as being tired from the partying! We weren’t on a hydrofoil but a fast ferry, only 90 minutes instead of an hour and a half. We sat opposite a Finnish woman who was on to her second 250 Ellen offered to take us for a walk down to the beach nearby so off we went mL of white wine before we were half an hour into the trip, and a quiet woman with John in the wheelchair. I don’t know how far we walked (around three who John thought must be a good friend of the Finn, because she knew just sides of a cemetery) but we must have walked for the best part of an hour to say yes and no and nod her head during the torrent of conversation. In and boy, do I reckon I’m going to be stiff tomorrow! Then we walked to the fact, the women exchanged cards at the end of the journey so I don’t think Kampii Shopping Centre and had a Chinese meal at the Emperor Plaza, they had ever met before. The second woman was Estonian. She recom- where we reckon we could offer some staff training if they were interested. I mended a place for us to have lunch. Next to us were two gay guys who live had to load John into the chair and push him to the exit before they made in New York City, but they aren’t married, even though they are allowed to any move to find the bill we asked for. Ellen went off to another party (‘but marry in New York. All of this came out as a result of direct questions from not for long,’ she said as she kissed us goodbye) and we came home. It’s 9.30 the Finn. She also asked how long we had been married, how old John is,

70 how old I am, and how long we would be in Helsinki. She has a daughter who has competed in five Winter Olympics in ice skating, is now very rich, and lives in Russia. It was amazing to see/hear this woman operate.

On board the boat we bought 2-euro tickets for a bus from the port to the city. We got off the ferry almost last, and there was no information to tell us where to go. I wandered up to a man who looked as though he might know and in a flash, we were in his van, the wheelchair was stowed and we were in for a wild ride through odd-looking paddocks, but we finished up at the Sokos Hotel. That was our pick-up place too, the man indicated.

I’m getting quite good at picking the best spots to push the wheelchair across roads, the lowest, smoothest, least bumpy bits, and I’m getting good at spinning the chair around to go backwards over particularly difficult spots like tram lines. But I get dry in the throat, so we started with a cooling fruit drink, then we braved the modern Tallinn traffic and entered the Tallinn of old.

Tallin is the capital city of Estonia. The medieval town that attracts the tourists is surrounded by a modern business community, and all of this is reachable from Helsinki in about the same time as it takes to drive from Melbourne to Bendigo. Lonely Planet’s Finland lists a day trip to Tallin as one of the must-have experiences when you are in Helsinki. LP also describes the trip as ‘the original booze cruise for Finns’. While Ellen confirmed that within a week of arriving here in January she was swept up for a trip to Tallin to buy alcohol, we saw little evidence of that attitude today. What we saw for the entire day was the enjoyment of tourists from every part of the world as they sat in the sunshine eating and drinking in restaurants bedecked with flowers and plants. We fell across the Old Hansa, as recommended by our ferry companion and the table we chose was next to a planter box of chives, coriander, parsley and rocket. Nearby was a planter box filled with rhubarb in flower. The flower baskets included pansies and chrysanthemums. The road we chose to enter the old city began with stall after stall of flowers of every shape and hue, including lily of the valley being sold by people who seem to have picked it wild and brought it in to sell to the tourists . It was a perfumed, cololurful welcome to old Tallin. The old city wall of Tallin — and Mercedes.

71 At Old Hansa we ate salad with two fish (salmon and herring) and drank dark With good navigation from both of us at the end of the taxi ride we found honey beer, all served by a waitress dressed in period costume who claimed Ellen waiting for us at Barbecue House in the same outdoor square where to be an Estonian who had learned her English from a teacher with an Irish we ate last night. Tonight we were served by Reuben the Spaniard, who lived accent rather than an American accent. And here I thought she was just in Altona Meadows, St Albans, and Deer Park in Melbourne before he came another Irish tourist working her way around the country, like so many of to Finland. Visa regulations in Australia proved too difficult for him. Now he the backpackers that we have in Melbourne. We should have had the small (he’s really a chef) and his doctor wife are applying to live and work in New salad though; our eyes were too big for our tummies. We wandered through Zealand. the town square and visited what used to be the town prison to see an exhibition of photography and a collection of cameras, some of which John After our meal Ellen went off to a movie with some friends. John and I came knew from his days as a street photographer. In St Catherine’s Lane John back to the hotel, where he fell asleep and I caught up with my email and my suggested I leave him sitting in the chair while I went off to explore the little diary while keeping one eye on an intriguing film about a young man in shops and artists’ nooks. The lane finished in an avenue of stalls that looked France learning the perfume trade by killing young women for their scent! a lot like Victoria Market. There were all kinds of woollen jackets, capes, hats, slippers etc. in that distinctive Nordic fair isle pattern. I didn’t spend too long Wednesday, 29 May 2013 there in case temptation got the better of me. I peeked into a monastery More music garden, saw the entrance to the city wall walk, walked past the windows and doors of people whose houses are in the midst of all this tourism and The temperature reading on the building we can see from our hotel room photographed the anachronism of a late-model Mercedes Benz nosing its said it was 17 degrees at 7.30 a.m., and the sun was shining; time to break out way down the tiny medieval lane. the sandals and the silk singlet, though the shorts might have been going a bit too far. The station has flags on top that say VR, which I think is hilarious All too soon it was time to return to John, and then for both of us to make given that we are so far from the Victorian Railways. (In fact it doesn’t even our way back to the bus stop at the hotel. But we did have time for an ice exist any more. We now have VLine.) The flags indicated that a stiff breeze cream from the Garden Café. We suddenly found ourselves caught on was blowing. I know Wellington and Chicago are known as the world’s windy camera by dozens of tourists who were focusing on a particular ancient stone cities, but Helsinki might get a guernsey as well, in our experience. dated 1656, but they’re going to wonder who it was eating ice cream when they look at their pictures back home. After breakfast (we’re now getting it right -— John takes his apron and he has given up trying to get a proper cup of tea up there) we made our way to The one souvenir we did buy was a pack of playing cards with scenes of old the Music Hall, where I had to confess that I’d lost the ticket they had given Tallin on them. We used them on the way home on the ferry to play cribbage. me on Friday but I did have the receipt. After an interminable time the girl John beat me in all four games. I’ve demanded time to write a postcard for was able to print us a new document that allowed us to take our seats on the every game he wins, which leaves him with a problem — to lose so that he other side of the hall and further back from the orchestra than we were on can keep playing or to play to win as usual and pay the penalty? I bet you all Friday, but still with a closer, better view than I’ve ever had of an orchestra know which he’ll choose. in Melbourne.

Back in Helsinki we took a cab to the Kamppi shopping centre, but only after The conductor this time was John Storgards, who was quite ordinary to look the cab driver managed to interpret what I was saying and not try to take us at compared with Leif Segerstam, but Storgards had none of the audience to the Kamp Hotel. Apparently it’s a matter of how you pronounce the vowels. appeal that Segerstam did — he virtually ignored us. The music began with

72 Haydn’s Symphony no. 94, ‘Drumroll’, but when the second movement Helsinki Zoo doesn’t have a lot to recommend it, especially if you happen to started I recognised it immediately as the Surprise Symphony. It was delightful. be pushing a wheelchair! The Macclesfield lady in the ticket office had two ‘Better than Wagner,’ John whispered at one stage. The second offering was wins for us; she let Ellen in at student prices and she didn’t charge me at all a premiere of a Swedish work by Anders Eliassson, his fifth symphony, and because I’m a carer, and then she advised us which way to go to avoid the this one actually commissioned for this orchestra. I slept through it and John worst of the hills. We started with a visit to the ‘kangaroos’, which were being said he couldn’t see any reason to wake me up. The final offering was The fed at that time. We reckon they were all wallabies, but one of them had a Rite of Spring by Stravinsky, which was first heard 100 years ago and is being joey, so the cuteness factor outdid any disappointment we might have celebrated all around the world this year. John read a review of a Melbourne experienced at the labelling. There were some emus in the enclosure too, so performance in the Age later in the day. I couldn’t say I was charmed by the we had our bit of Australia for the day. From there we saw birds, reptiles, music, but it is quite a spectacle to see the musicians grappling with some- camels, reindeer, bison, lions, red pandas, and brown bears. Geese of a variety thing that must be extremely difficult to play. Again there were more than we didn’t recognise were everywhere, just like the ibis at the Melbourne Zoo. 100 musicians on stage, and some of them were switching between instru- They didn’t bother us, but there were notices that indicated you might get a ments, and that wasn’t just in the percussion section. nasty bite if you tried to approach them.

In the interval between the second and third offerings, I watched a lady do An hour and a half was about enough for us. As we got back to the entrance a complete run of exercises, including balancing on a step and rising up on a bus arrived, so I didn’t even get into the shop to see what postcards I might her toes, using the hand rail to do squats, and exercising all the joints in her buy. We rode back into town, and Ellen went off to do some study and to arms and her neck. My yoga teacher would have been proud of her. Only have dinner with a friend. when the other people sitting in her row arrived did I realise she was just killing time so people didn’t crawl over her to get to their seats. I wonder Meeting Mr Right what chance we would have of instituting exercises for all the people I see at (Correctly that heading should be Meeting Dr Wright, but that would spoil the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall or the State Theatre standing by the walls for my alliteration.) the very same reason? Many of my friends are not in the least surprised to find that I know someone We feel very privileged to have fallen across these rehearsal concerts by the just about everywhere we go, but meeting my doctor in Helsinki would have Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in the Music Hall — two people at two been a real story if I hadn’t arranged it before we left home. Our wonderful concerts for a total cost of 3 euros! GP Richard Wright, in the course of helping me find out the cause of my irregular pulse, mentioned that he was going to Helsinki and we discovered From the Music Hall we made our way through bright sunshine to the bus that we would be here at the same time. Through the wonders of email and stop, where we picnicked on some fruit we had acquired from the breakfast text messaging, we arranged to meet Richard and Gustavo for a drink before buffet, while waiting for Ellen to join us for a trip to the Helsinki Zoo. We they caught the ferry to Tallinn. We spent a highly entertaining 90 minutes like to visit zoos on our travels but we reckon we haven’t managed one since with them, well lubricated by numerous gin and tonics. When they went off the Berlin Zoo in 2004. The bus ride was almost a half hour and the route to catch their boat, we decided we’d copy Ellen from the night before and took us through the part of town where various embassies and consulates are see The Great Gatsby. We found our way to the cinema, bought our tickets, situated. There were some grand houses among them and the whole area discovered that you can go to the toilet only by waiting till someone comes was leafy green, with the sea visible in the background from time to time. out and you grab the door before it shuts and locks or by reading the four-digit code on your ticket (who would have guessed!) and then went off

73 to have a Greek meal. We ordered some of the things we normally order at We caught the bus back the way we had come but stopped off at Ellen’s Agapi in Swan Street, Richmond, and decided that Agapi does them better, favourite restaurant, the Café Regatta, which is right on the seafront and is but our main courses (fish for me, veal liver for John) were both good. A open every day of the year. It’s near the beautiful Sibelius monument, which bottle of cab sav from Chile went well with the meal and ensured that I slept I fell in love with last time we were here. We sat at an outdoor table and drank through the entire movie! I did wake up for the credits though, and sat there tea and coffee and ate blueberry cake and cream and cinnamon buns. All grimly, the second last person to leave the cinema, till I saw the name of around us people were enjoying the afternoon sun. The café even keeps a Adrian Hauser, son of our friend Don, who worked on the movie in a fire going for people to grill sausages, and there was a family doing just that. technical capacity. I was surprised to find how many Australian actors I had Mind you, they didn’t seem to be following our practice of waiting till the missed seeing. I’ll have to borrow the DVD from the wonderful Picture Search coals are hot; they were more of the cook in the flame tradition. (in Swan Street, Richmond) when it comes out. We made our way back to the hotel at 11.15, through twilight. By the time we turned the light out at 10 All too soon we realised that the light had caught us again and instead of the minutes past midnight, I reckon it really was dark. time being about 3 p.m., it was after 5. We had made a dinner booking for 6 p.m. at a restaurant recommended by our Brisbane friend Denise, so Ellen Thursday, 30 May 2013 went into action — she found a taxi number through the café staff, ordered Resting and relaxing a taxi for us, then told the taxi driver where we wanted to go. We dropped her on the way because she said she really must do some packing and cleaning Two full days, yesterday and the day before, dictated some rest for John today, before tonight’s farewell party for the last of her exchange student friends so after breakfast we retired to our room and did catch-up things — finances, to leave town. We went on to the Sea Horse. John ordered wiener schnitzel postcards, emails, and the diary. We had hard-boiled eggs, packet soup, and and I ordered vorschmack which, according to Wikipedia, is originally an fruit for lunch. Ellen arrived at 2 p.m. and we sallied forth into a beautiful East European salty meat dish served with onions. I confess to not knowing warm Helsinki day. exactly what minced meat I had, but it was garnished with finely chopped pickled cucumber and beetroot and it was topped with duchesse potatoes Ellen wanted to take us to one of her favourite Helsinki places, Seurasaaren and served with sour cream on the side. Wikipedia says schnapps is usually Outdoor Museum. It’s located on an island about 20 minutes’ drive from the served when eating vorschmack, but I didn’t read that till I got home so I city centre. The bus dropped us at the end of a long walking bridge over to stuck with tap water. the island. On the island is a collection of historic traditional church build- ings, manors, farm houses, and outbuildings transferred here from around Before we left the restaurant I went to the toilet. It turned out to be the smallest Finland. The museum was established early in the 1900s but some of the toilet I have ever been in. There was barely room for me and my handbag. buildings go back more than 100 years before that. They’re all wooden and My elbows caressed the walls when I attempted to pull up my jeans. It was there’s lots of restoration going on. The setting is green and peaceful, but in really very funny. The experience also reminded me that I hadn’t mentioned summer, on weekends, it becomes very popular, with concerts and festivals. the best toilet paper dispenser I’ve ever seen. It was on the boat to Tallinn, There are also facilities for grilling sausages, apparently a favourite Finnish and it was like a giant Wet Ones packet attached to the wall. All you did was tradition, so guess what Ellen produced from her Mary Poppins carpet bag pull out the right amount of paper without tearing off little bits while trying of a handbag? Sausages! Another picnicking family had the fire going and to get the roll moving, or not being able to find the end at all. And each time they were happy to let Ellen put four sausages on to cook. She wrapped tissues you pulled out the right amount, there was enough left for the next person around the sausages to serve them, as did the other Finnish family. We were to have exactly the same satisfying experience! delighted to become part of the tradition.

74 Robyn and Ellen at Seurasaaren Outdoor Museum.

75 Ellen at Café Regatta.

76 We caught the number 3 tram ‘home’. I carefully counted out all the shrapnel gave the painting to the Ateneum. in my wallet only to be told by the tram driver that 1- and 2-cent coins are no longer used on public transport. I guess I’ll have to give them to UNICEF on The second floor was displaying Treasures from the Palace. The President my next plane ride. of Finland lives in a palace that dates from the time that the Russians were in control here. The National Gallery uses the Presidential Palace to extend Friday, 31 May 2013 its gallery space, so to speak, and every so often some of the treasures that Filling in our final Friday have not been seen in public for some time are put on display. The commen- tary for many of these pieces was by past presidents or their wives, who chose I had set this day aside for packing, resting, and preparing for dinner tonight, paintings from the collection to speak about. One female president said she so after breakfast I packed as much of my suitcase as I could and then settled found the gloomy old men hanging in her presidential office a bit depressing down to write postcards to use up all the stamps I had bought, especially the so the Ateneum staff went through their vaults and discovered a painting ones I had already put onto envelopes. Within an hour John was restless and called the Young Wife. It hung in the presidential palace for as long as that announced that he thought we should go to the National Gallery, or the lady was in office. In fact, the stickers we got when we entered showed the Ateneum, as the branch of the NG close to our hotel is called. It looked like head of the lady in the painting. a beautiful day outside. Whatever grizzles I have had about the hotel, there is no denying it is in a very central position, and it has such bonuses as a digital After another hour or more we finally felt that we had ‘done’ the Ateneum, time and temperature display as well as an analogue clock on the railway and we repaired to the ground floor where they have created wonderful station tower. Certainly the VR flags have indicated a stiff breeze each day we café/bookshop space by roofing in a three-storey light well with glass. On have been here, but I took a chance today and wore my shorts and a silk this beautiful sunny day, it was a joy to sit in that spot. Of course I ‘did’ the singlet, and I certainly didn’t need a jacket or a cardigan. bookshop for postcards of the paintings we had liked best and I decided to buy a print of one of them as a souvenir of this trip. Some of our 80s souvenirs The Ateneum is a short wheelchair ride from the hotel. We didn’t find the have discoloured very badly so it’s time for a new lot. We went straight from wheelchair access till we were leaving, of course, but we managed to get the Ateneum to the post office to buy a mailing tube to send the print home. ourselves inside to the ticket booth, where we discovered that there was a cost Simple, eh? Oh, no. for John but I got free entry as his carer. And then we were shown where the lift is, so we went to the top floor and started looking at the permanent The first thing you do at the PO is take a numbered ticket according to collection. We discovered that there was an audio tour, so I went back whether you are a private client or a business client. Both before and after I downstairs and acquired two brilliant audio systems — headsets with little took my ticket I prowled the shelves to find a tube. I couldn’t find one but I torch-like devices attached, which we pointed at the black circle beside each went to the counter when my number was called and asked if they had such painting with a headset symbol and bingo, the commentary came up instantly a thing. The man at the counter had limited English but he went off to see in English for the right painting or sculpture. We spent more than an hour if he could find what I wanted and came back saying that they had no tubes perusing the paintings on the third floor, most of them by Finnish painters at present. Where else should I go? Why Stockmann, of course. That’s the of Finland, but there was also a Van Gogh that charmed John to the point store that claims that if they don’t have it, you don’t need it, so it was fair to that I had to wheel him back so that he could look at it and hear the see if they could produce what I needed. commentary for a second time. It was the first Van Gogh ever to be included in a public collection. After Van Gogh’s death this particular painting John has become very good at navigating around Helsinki whereas I would finished up with a friend who was married to a Finn, and when he died she be halfway to England underwater if navigation were left to me. He has even

77 worked out short cuts, so off we went via his short cut and, of course, we back to say that I should try the academic bookshop on the ground floor. ‘No arrived at Stockmann. In perusing the boards for each floor, I discovered doubt we will see you back here soon,’ she said, ‘we don’t close till 9 tonight.’ that Stockmann has its own post office, so we went there, and I took a number. When I got to the counter the lady said no, try the main post office, but I said From time to time John says, ‘Just leave me here and you go off’, so this time I’d done that already. So off she went to consult with other staff and she came I left him in among the plants while I toured the bookshop. Yes, said one

The Ateneum.

78 lady, tubes are in the paper section. I was blowed if I could find them but Don had booked a hotel room through Bookings.com for himself and Anne when my number was called, the attendant took me to the shelf and there and Ellen for three nights in Helsinki. When Anne arrived at the dinner, she were some very flash heavy plastic tubes — for a mere 39 euros, which is about said, ‘The room is like a broom cupboard. There is no way three adults can $52. Suddenly this new print was becoming very expensive. But you can’t sleep there, and it’s so hot that I will never be able to sleep.’ We were over keep a good woman down and there are more ways than one of skinning a the road from our hotel so we suggested that Don try there for alternative cat and any other old adage you care to insert here for yourself. As I walked accommodation. He and Anne came back about 15 minutes later to an- through to the book department I spotted some tubes — with Finnish posters nounce that they couldn’t get into our hotel but they got a room at the Sokos inside them. So, for 29 euros, we are now the proud owners of a tube and a Hotel Torni, and the last we saw of them was them making their way there poster of what the ship from Tallinn to Helsinki used to look like. (The after dinner. Blossom Dearie poster in the laundry at home is pretty much faded now and due for replacement, since it was hung in 1986!) Saturday, 1 June 2013 Copenhagen’s calling So back I went to the Stockmann PO and took my number, and when I reached the counter I was greeted like an old friend. The young man who I had the alarm set for 5 a.m. but of course I was awake before that, so I served me asked if I wanted the parcel (now holding two prints, of course) sneaked quietly through the bathroom routine without waking John. to go priority or economy. Being the spendthrift I am, I chose economy and paid the sum and then asked how long it would take to get to Australia. ‘A We’ve always found in our travels that plumbing presents problems or long time,’ he said, gloomily, ‘about 10 or 12 days.’ I think he wondered why entertainment as we travel from country to country. We’re pretty good now I was laughing as I went back to report to John. at figuring out how ‘taps’ work, but the flexible hose with the spray on the end that I noticed first in the public toilet we used in Helsinki on the day we By then it was after 4 and I really needed a drink, something to eat, and a arrived, and saw in almost every toilet after that, would have had me baffled rest, so we returned to the hotel and snacked on the breakfast provender if Ellen hadn’t enlightened me — it’s the Finnish version of the bidet. John had procured this morning — hard-boiled eggs (he even got salt and Needless to say, we didn’t use it! pepper today) and mandarins. With the last of the milk and Minna’s jug, we had a hot drink each. I settled in to mend my black cardigan and then get John woke as soon as I emerged from the bathroom so I drew back the back to the postcards. John finally got around to packing his bag. curtains for the last time on the railway square and perused the taxi rank, the tram lines and the street, to find that there was plenty of activity as usual. At 7.15 we sallied forth in our (relative) finery to play host at a dinner in a While John had his shower I closed my cases, checked the bedroom for nearby restaurant for John’s son Don and his wife Anne, who flew in this anything left behind and then helped him dress, especially his shoes and afternoon from Istanbul; their daughter Ellen; and my sister’s Finnish family, socks. As he gets older his feet get further away and putting on his socks and all six of them. We had a wonderful evening of good food, good wine, Finnish shoes is a real challenge. It’s not impossible for him to do it, just easier if I beer, and plenty of conversation. Mikko made the first toast of the evening, do. to friendship. Ville led us in a toast to Brian, my sister’s husband, who died in October last year. Over 15 years, Brian’s friendship with the Finns was Reception had rung on Friday afternoon to ask if we were the party leaving wonderful. My toast was to my niece, Toni Woolley, who came home from early who had ordered a vegetarian breakfast. ‘I didn’t think we could have school and said. ‘Mum, can we have a foreign student?’ breakfast at all,’ I said, ‘won’t it be too early for breakfast?’ ‘Oh no,’ said reception, ‘we provide fruit and coffee for breakfast in the foyer for those

79 who are leaving before the restaurant opens.’ Another tick for Sokos Vaakuna. They also sent someone up with a luggage trolley to take our luggage down the seven floors to the foyer, in the staff lift. The main lifts are so tiny that I would have had to make three or four trips to get our cases down.

We were in the foyer by 5.40 and the taxi wasn’t due till 6 so I had a quick look at our email and was horrified to see one from our Copehnhagen host, Rune, saying, ‘I see your plane is delayed and won’t be landing till 12.15.’ I said to John, ‘Will we wait here or go to the airport?’ He said, ‘We’ll be in the lounge at the airport so we might as well go.’ Thank goodness he made that decision. The Finnair staff said the plane was leaving on time and would arrive on time.

When we got to Helsinki Airport there was bedlam in the Finnair terminal. I left John standing with the luggage while I went to see if I could find someone who could give us some help. ‘Business Class?’ asked the lady I spoke to. ‘Over there,’ where there was almost no one. In no time at all we were checked in and on our way through security to the lounge, while the lady who had checked us in took the wheelchair to the special luggage section.

In the Finnair lounge we had our second breakfast for the morning. We didn’t crack the system of getting on to the Internet, so instead I made an effort to catch up on my diary. At the appointed time I wheeled John to the gate lounge and we were admitted to the plane at the head of the line.

Business Class on a Finnair Airbus 320 consists of the first 8 or 10 rows on the plane, with three seats on either side of the central aisle. Business Class differs from the economy seats down the rest of the plane by leaving the middle seat vacant in each threesome. We also got breakfast on the plane (my third in four hours!) as part of our fare, whereas the economy passengers had to buy their food. The flight was 1 hour 40 minutes, and John slept almost all the way. I read; I forgot that I should be writing postcards.

At Copenhagen Airport we did our usual trick of waiting till everyone else had departed before we left the plane. We were met by an older gentleman John, with an appropriate bottle.

80 a trolley and he said yes. I then loaded my mountain of luggage on to the trolley and set off to find John and his friend.

They were sitting disconsolately beside the special luggage carousel, and there was no sign of the wheelchair. I decided we would phone Rune because he could have been waiting an hour already. The phone with the roaming card somehow wouldn’t phone Rune but the pusher loaned me his iPhone and after quite an extensive argument as to just what numbers I should use, I made contact with Rune and we told him the story. He said he would wait. What else could he do?

The pusher then decided we should walk another half-kilometre to the office of the baggage-handling company. There he took a number and waited his turn to tell the story. They couldn’t find the wheelchair so I had to supply details of what it looked like, where we would be staying and when we would be leaving Copenhagen. The pusher then took us out through the Nothing To Declare customs line (should I declare a dozen packets of Tim Tams?) and Rune was waiting for us with open arms.

John and Rune outside one of Rune’s coffee shops. Back in 1984, when John was Assistant Director of Adult Education in Victoria, he came home one night and announced that he had volunteered who took John’s arm and escorted him out through the airbridge to a waiting us to host a Danish scholar. We met the delightful Ebbe Lungaard and he electric cart with a wheelchair secured behind it. I climbed onto the back of stayed with us for about four nights. In 1988 he returned to Australia for a the cart with the carry-on bags and John sat beside the driver. We raced holiday and brought his wife and his two children, the younger one being through Copenhagen Airport very quickly and I was pleased we didn’t have his son Rune, then aged 12. Ebbe and Rune made several trips to Australia to walk. We seemed to go an enormous distance, and past a lot of lovely shops. after that, usually not together, but we saw them each time. In 2004 we Eventually the driver parked the cart and unlocked the wheelchair, then took happened to be in Copenhagen for the first time, and Ebbe turned 60. He John the rest of the way to the baggage claim in the wheelchair. He led John had been a Minister of the Crown in the 1990s, so his party was a big affair. to the Special Baggage section to get our own wheelchair and sent me to the On that occasion we spent two or three nights with Ebbe and his wife and carousel to get the rest of the luggage. Like an idiot, I took the carry-on cases another three or four nights with Rune in his inner-city apartment. In 2009, with me instead of leaving them with John. That meant I needed a trolley to sadly, Ebbe died of cancer, but we have stayed in touch with Rune, and we collect the two cases and John’s pack. By the time I had figured out where to last saw him when he and his partner Lena and their daughter Lisa spent a get a trolley, the luggage was coming out, and I finished up with all five pieces month in Australia in 2010. When we told Rune we were planning to pop and still no trolley. I decided I’d stand still and wait for John and his pusher into Copenhagen after Helsinki, he insisted that we must stay at his house, to come and find me, but they didn’t come and didn’t come and ... guess so we accepted, and that scored us a greeter at the airport as well. He who got impatient? A couple of men were sitting close to me and one was confessed that while he was waiting, another group near him was waiting ... speaking English, so I asked if he would watch my luggage while I went to get with an Australian flag! He felt a bit remiss in his welcoming routine, so he

81 was glad that group had gone when we finally emerged. Ebbe was principal when he first visited Australia. I can’t pretend to remem- ber the Danish name of the food in question, but they were hot bread rolls Since we were here in 2004, Rune has sold his apartment and bought a house of various types which we filled with the many fillings that were on the kitchen in the suburbs south of the city. About six months ago he and Lena decided table — butter hard, butter spreadable, margarine, cheese, tomatoes, salami, they wanted to move so they put the house on the market, but it didn’t sell, cucumbers, jam. You name it, it was on the table. Washed down with real tea and now they’re very glad — they feel it was the right decision to stay. The for John and coffee for me, it was a delicious breakfast, and the conversation house has three bedrooms, a bathroom, three living areas, a galley kitchen, that went with it made it that much more delicious. The most startling thing and garden on three sides. Best of all, from our point of view, it has an extra we saw was Lena cutting and buttering a hot croissant and then slipping into bedroom at the far end of the house, with its own bathroom. Talk about it one or two squares of dark chocolate, which melted on the hot roll! Lena luxury! is built like a beautiful whippet. She runs and exercises every day, but she loves butter, ice-cream, and dark chocolate. She’s a real conundrum. Lisa, the older daughter, nearly six, was at a party when we arrived, but Rosa, who will be two in December, was in charm overdrive. Carlos the dog was a In the course of the conversation over breakfast, Lena said that Rune is the bit hostile for a short time, but John soon had him under control and under organised one in this family, and almost on cue, he brought out a list of things his feet as well. It was well after noon, so Lena set out an amazing array of we might do on our day together. (Lena was staying home to spend the day food and we nibbled at it while exchanging news and retelling old stories. with the girls so that Rune could look after us. It was very good of Rune’s three ladies to give him up to us for almost a whole weekend.) After canvassing various active activity ideas with us, Rune made the wise decision to drive us to the new Arken art gallery that has opened close to When we stayed with Rune in 2004, he and two friends had just established them in recent times. He took over pushing John’s wheelchair, and we had a company called Risteriet (Danish for ‘roastery’) with plans to open a coffee a pleasant hour or so wandering through the exhibitions. In the evening shop at which they would serve coffee that they had roasted themselves, as Rune cooked sausages on the barbecue, while Lisa cooked salmon in the well as supplying coffee to other businesses and private people. The first oven. Just as dinner was served, our wheelchair was delivered. There was a coffee shop had been acquired but not opened when we visited. Now, Rune delicious salad, there was bread, there was fruit salad — what an array of food! told us proudly, they have three coffee shops plus another that runs in a We produced the gifts we’d brought and there was much merriment all summer resort and the odd ‘pop-up shop’ (my words not his) at various round. Once again the light caught us by surprise and it was after 10 before festivities. This morning we visited the newest of the coffee shops, established we fell into bed. in an area that seemed to us to be the equivalent of Carlton — students, tourists, and inner-city residents. It’s a small space in the lower ground level Sunday, 2 June 2013 of an apartment building. Rune ordered coffee for us and we also asked for Travelling with a tour guide ‘one of those’ as an exotic-looking glass went past. It turned out to be thin, almost drinking quality, yoghurt spiced with nuts and rhubarb. It was deli- When we finally emerged for breakfast it was obvious that the family had been cious. waiting for us, at least for the adults to eat. Rune had been out early to purchase for breakfast what he said was the favourite Danish food of our From the coffee shop we visited a sand sculpture competition at which mutual friend Robb Mason. Robb worked at CAE before and after John spent Risteriet had the coffee rights (the pop-up shop idea). We’ve never bothered his time there, and Robb knew Ebbe Lundgaard so well that Robb spent a to drive down to Frankston for the sand sculpture competition that happens couple of periods of months teaching English at the folk high school of which down there each year, but after seeing these remarkable presentations, we

82 might. We then drove out to the Little Mermaid. John said he had seen it last time, so he stayed in the car, but I popped over to the fence and grabbed a shot between tourists. Rune said you couldn’t be in Copenhagen without seeing the Little Mermaid.

The next stop was the ‘square’ (it’s more like a circle) around which the royal residences are built. Rune could point out the queen’s palace but he wasn’t too sure where we’d find our Mary and her Fred. He had read that on the following day the Royal Family was to go sailing around some of the Danish ports before they went on summer holidays, so we figured they might be packing, and a bit busy to be out on the balcony saying, ‘Nice to see you. Come in for a beer.’ The Danes seem to be very relaxed about their Royals.

From the royal squircle we drove through some of the more salubrious suburbs of Copenhagen on our way to the old capital, Roskilde. Whatever Rune told John along the way will remain forever a secret because ’er in the back seat went to sleep, and missed the entire introduction. But I did wake up for the effort put in to finding somewhere to park. Eventually, Rune gave up and dropped John and me and the wheelchair as close as he could get us to the Roskilde Cathedral, then he went off to park the car.

The present brick cathedral was started in the 1170s, but the first church on the site was built in the 900s. For an Australian whose non-Aboriginal history goes back no further than about 1788, it’s all a bit hard to take in. The cathedral houses dozens of tombs of various important people through the ages, but at the same time it is still a working church, and if we had arrived a bit earlier we might have attended the morning service. Compared with other cathedrals we have seen in England and Europe, this one is so light that it quite gladdens the heart. It seems to be painted white on ceilings and walls and there are many windows that are clear glass rather than stained glass, and all of this adds to the light. It was a most pleasant visit.

From the cathedral we went to the supermarket (is that from the sublime to the ridiculous?). Rune wanted bits and pieces for dinner that night and John was on a mission to find hot English mustard. He and Lena had had a discussion the night before over spicy mustard. We couldn’t find any pre- pared mustard that looked as if it would be hot enough to impress Lena, but Robyn at Roskilde Cathedral.

83 we did find Colman’s Mustard Powder packed exactly like Keen’s Mustard at home. When Lena tried it that night, you could see that her sinuses were being given a real workout!

From Roskilde we made our way back home and soon after we arrived, Rune’s friend Farig, who is a great fan of Dr Robb Mason, came to have dinner with Dr Mason’s friends. We had a wonderful meal around the dining table, swapping stories about Dr Mason and hearing something of Farig’s back- ground. Farig’s one great desire is to be able to take to Iran all the friends he has made since he had to leave his home country many years ago. When he left Rune’s house that night, he was still inviting us all to accompany him on that trip.

I almost forgot to mention that after we had finished our first course, Lena insisted that we all had to go for ice-cream at a special shop they visit near a yacht club and marina. So Lena drove us and the girls and the dog, while the men cycled to the spot, and we all met for delicious ice-cream that came in cup or cone, and dribbled all over your fingers if you didn’t eat it fast enough!\

Monday, 3 June 2013 Meeting a master

We appeared for breakfast at about 8 a.m., in time, we thought, to say farewell to Lena before she left for work, taking the girls with her to their pre-school and day care. But Lena explained that Rosa was so tired that she figured she would deliver her to day care before we appeared and hope that she would get a good long sleep under the watchful eyes of her carers. Lisa is going through some separation anxiety, so Lena decided that it was better for her to be left behind by her mother than to have to say goodbye to her father and mother and the visitors as well. So we four adults had a great chat over another delicious breakfast. We farewelled Lena (who works as personal assistant to a guy who has developed a series of hair-care products based on Hawaiian ginger) and then we packed the Opel (the car big enough to take the luggage and the wheelchair, as opposed to the little Peugeot) and went off to visit Rune’s warehouse. As well as the roaster, the warehouse houses the online shop’s product s (coffee, coffee machines, T-shirts, posters) and a repair shop. Rune starts work each morning at 5.30 a.m. and has the The Age item that led Robyn to meeting Rene Redzepi.

84 roasting done by mid-morning. One worker then supervises the packing of followed by Sun over Hauser Plads, in honour of our friend Don Hauser orders and the driver packs the van to take orders to shops and customers, (Schønnemann’s is at Hauser Plads 16). It was hot-smoked salmon, grated and parcels to the post office to mail to on-line customers. The repair man radish, chives, and egg yolk, served on caraway bread. Rune isn’t a fish eater, works part-time, fixing private and professional coffee machines either at the so he had veal liver pate (with mushrooms, veal bacon, and cucumber salad) workshop or at the machine’s venue. As well as doing the roasting, Rune followed by a beef dish that I can’t track down from the menu. keeps up the Risteriet web site, and has his office at the warehouse. We heard a good deal about how the business is run. We’re confident that Rune is doing The waitress explained to John and me that we should drink snaps with our well, and his dad would be very proud of him. herring. On the table were tiny stemmed glasses that looked like medicine glasses without the markings. We were invited to have a little, a bit more, or While we were planning our trip early this year I read in the Age Epicure that a lot. Of course we took the lot, which meant she filled the glasses to the brim! Denmark’s most famous chef, Rene Redzepi from the restaurant called We had to take the first sip with them sitting on the table. (I was reminded Noma, likes to eat lunch at a restaurant called Schønnemann, which has of our first trip to China when we went to a restaurant where the waiters proudly served open sandwiches since 1877. Rune hadn’t heard of the place, served tea from teapots with yard-long spouts. The waiters stood away from but I figured that to take him there (and Lena if she could come, and Kirsten the table and fired the tea into tiny Chinese cups and didn’t spill a drop.) Lund, another Danish friend who, as it turned out, wasn’t able to come) One sip of the snaps was enough to lift the top off my head, but John was would be a good way of saying thank you for hospitality to us, so I emailed game for a second glass, so we finished up sharing three different snaps the restaurant from Melbourne and made a booking. Just as well I did! When between us. What a meal it was! we arrived, at about 11.20, the doors had not yet opened, but when they did, at 11.30 promptly, the German couple waiting to have lunch and at least As we were preparing to leave, the waitress came up and said that Rene another couple who came in after we were seated were told that the restau- Redzepi had finished the meeting with his restaurant staff and would be rant was fully booked for lunch, and that’s the only time it’s open. happy to greet me. So, you foodies out there, eat your hearts out! I’ve shaken hands with Rene Redzepi and had a conversation with him, and what a I told the waitress who served us that we had come from Melbourne to dine pleasant young man he was. there on the strength of the information that Rene Redzepi dined there. ‘You’re in luck,’ she said, ‘he’s booked in to come today.’ We spent a bit of From the restaurant, Rune drove us to the airport, and didn’t just drop us, time figuring out which young man he was, and when Rune pulled up a photo but came in with us. I said that the information we had pointed out that the on his phone, I was quite sure which one it was even though he is bearded check-in desk for our flight wouldn’t open till 4.25 and it was now about at present. We spent some time trying to snap photos of him, but that didn’t 3 p.m., but Rune ignored my diffidence and marched us up to a line waiting seem fair, so we stopped that nonsense and concentrated on our food. to book on to Ezyjet flights. He then left us to go home to spend time with his family. He wasn’t there to see a staff member come out and guide us to The waitress suggested that two dishes would be appropriate and we could the top of the line, swap our chair for an airlines chair, and point out where order more if we needed it. John and I started with a beer each, but Rune we should book our wheelchair through. We were flying Ezyjet and restricted was driving, so he stuck to the soft stuff. John had fried herring in beer broth to one check-in piece each, so I left behind at Rune’s house the suitcase in (herring fried in Schønnemann Ale, served with onions) and herring tatar which I had carried gifts from Australia. (rough-cut sherry herring fillets mixed with herbs, capers and onions and topped with the yolk of a bantam’s egg). I had the Schønnemann’s Schnapps We were then free to go through security and find a spot to wait till our flight Speciality (boiled potatoes, spicy herrings, red onion cream, and onions) was called. I used that time to catch up on the diary. Just before it was time

85 the airline chair right to the stairs leading up to the plane’s rear door, and left it there.

Entering England

John slept all the way in the plane and I wrote postcards. I don’t know that I’m ever going to get to the end of the pile I bought in Finland.

We were met at Stansted with a wheelchair and pusher by someone who was a wonderfully garrulous Englishman with one of those British accents that I can never anchor to anywhere in particular but a local could with no trouble. He took us on the train that ran from our terminal to the main terminal, through all the formalities, to the baggage carousel, and waited till all our luggage came through. With some difficulty I followed him with a supermarket luggage trolley (you know, one where the wheels don’t want to go where you want to) laden with my case, John’s pack, our two carry-ons, and the wheelchair in its cover. (We had been warned that Ezyjet were very strict about the size of a carry-on and you could carry on only one bag, including a handbag and laptop. There were notices around saying just that, but no one seemed to care that I had my handbag over my shoulder. I could have got it into my carry-on at a pinch, on top of the laptop, but I didn’t have to.) Once the wheelchair toppled off the pile and when I picked it up I realised the cover had suffered some Rune and John outside of Schønemann’s. damage, but whether it was from the luggage handlers or my ineptitude, I couldn’t tell. We’ll get it repaired when we get home by the nice man who to go to the gate lounge, we ordered some food, but I ordered badly (John wanted to charge us $440 to make a cover. isn’t chancing pork at the moment; his tummy is a bit sensitive) and we left most of it on the table. We then set out for the F4 gate lounge and I thought Our pusher stayed with us while we organised the hire car through Avis, and we might be walking to England. I reckon we walked at least a kilometre — then led us right to the door of the Ford Focus, and supervised my stowing well, I did; John had quite a pleasant ride. And the corridors were absolutely the luggage. Then he left with some of the English coin I found in the filing silent and deserted. It’s amazing that in such a big airport there could be cabinet before we left home. It was probably small reward for the service he moments of solitude. Eventually we reached the right place and once again had rendered. (And I’ve forgotten to put it into the Expenses spreadsheet.) were conducted to the line that was going to board the plane first. I pushed

86 went on! The travel agent had said it would cost more to hire an automatic car, so I blithely said to take a car with gears. Of course I can drive one of those, and what fun I had the last time I did it in Ireland and in the Cook Islands! Were the indicators also on the left then, I wonder? This time, there seemed to be so much going on with my left hand — gears, indicators, and those bloody directions that kept slipping off John’s lap, covering the gearstick.

There’s a good chance the inside of the car could have matched the deep blue of the outside on many occasions during just that trip. Google said we could make the trip from Stansted to Cambridge in 40 minutes. I think it took us nearly two hours, and only when we asked directions (John asked directions!) at an off-licence did we find out that we were in the vicinity of where we wanted to be, and that man, bless him, was also able to show me how to get the car into reverse. Whoever would have thought of lifting the gearstick before moving it to the left?

When we finally got to the hotel, I parked the car, probably illegally, and fell through the front door at about 8.50 p.m. Julie, the lady who met Robyn and the accursed car. me, told me how to get to the hotel car park, where we unloaded the luggage and dragged it all the way from the back to the front of the hotel. Fortunately, we were in the front room on the ground floor, so once we had Cursing the car into Cambridge the luggage inside, and I had signed the registration form, we could make ourselves a cup of tea, phone Pen Pollitt to make arrangements for the next I left home armed with a swag of Google directions sheets, but they all depend day, and fall into (the very comfortable) bed. on knowing how far you’ve gone, so before we left the Avis lot, we asked the relatively surly young man how to set the trip meter. With bad grace he Tuesday, 4 June 2013 figured it out, then locked the door of the office and left, maybe so that we couldn’t ask any more questions. Mind you, questions such as ‘how do you Pottering about with Pen get the car into reverse?’ and ‘where are the headlight switches?’ hadn’t occurred to me on a light-filled evening at 7 p.m. Our bedroom at Hamilton Lodge is right on a busy road, but neither of us heard anything last night. We woke refreshed and took ourselves to breakfast No amount of driving our friend Muriel’s car (and I’ve done that lots of in the dining room, where a door had been opened to admit bright, warm times) has erased from my brain the instinct to switch on the turn indicators sunlight. I considered the cooked breakfast options and worked out that with my right hand. After all, that’s the way our car does it, so it must be there were four. I wasn’t interested in cheese on toast, but I could eat each correct! Well, for the first hour (day, week!) of driving this car, you could tell of the others on the three days we were staying there, so I started with kippers. when I was going around a corner because that’s when the windscreen wipers Bearing in mind the words of one of the cardiologists I saw in recent times, I ordered decaffeinated coffee and was faced with a new-fangled device, a

87 kind of cup-sized dripolator, which sat on top of the cup while I poured hot help ourselves smiling, whether the stories were true or not. We could water through it. It even had a lid to keep the heat in while the dripping was envisage most of what our punter told us. occurring. On our return journey we were surrounded by several punts being steered We had arranged for Pen to come to our hotel at 10 a.m. to be our guide by private people, not professionals, and the presence of brown bottles with around Cambridge. Dr Penelope Pollitt is the eldest daughter of John’s long necks indicated that those punters probably weren’t up to the job. Our former family solicitor, Cedric Ralph. Pen did her PhD in Cambridge and punter never spoke to any of the other professional punters, no matter how also married a Fellow of Queen’s College (now deceased), so she has strong close the boats came, but he had some exasperated words for the private links with Cambridge and spends some time here each year, although we see people who were making a mess of the activity. her most often when she is in Melbourne. Pen rode her bicycle to Hamilton Lodge and locked it up at the front wall. We made her a cup of tea to help When we returned to our starting point, the Scudamores staff helped John her recover from the ride, and then she phoned a taxi to pick us up and take out of the boat and proceeded to put us and the wheelchair onto the road us to the Silver Street Bridge, where we caught the hop-on hop-off bus for an that we needed to follow to see if we could find a bank in order to get some orientation ride around Cambridge. I had a little sleep during the trip, but cash. I had offered a 10-pound note to the bus driver and he said he couldn’t was wide awake when lunch was mentioned! Pen led us to the Graduates Club take it because it was an old one! He said a bank would exchange it for us, on the third floor of a building overlooking the Cam River, and we had lunch but even one new £10 note wasn’t going to get us far. During our search for while watching the antics of people punting and being punted. I couldn’t a bank we passed a remarkable clock that has been installed in one of the wait to get down there, so we went after lunch and reserved three places on former bank buildings. The detail of the clock is at , but as far as I was concerned the re- feured punting’, Scudamores. The staff stowed the wheelchair in their office markable things about it were the beauty of the gold and the ugliness of the for us and helped John into the boat, and away we went. Our punter was an creature that sits atop the clock. Perhaps that’s exactly the contrast the clock’s acting graduate who freely admitted that his punter performance would look inventor was looking for. good on his CV. The first cash machine Pen and I tried refused to recognise my Westpac debit The weather was idyllic, and we were witness to so many images that have card, but the bank employee said we should try Lloyds or HSBC. Leaving been part of our lives as colonists a long way from the Old Country. As we John sitting happily in his wheelchair in the sun, Pen and I went off to Lloyds pushed off we passed a group of four students sitting on a lawn close to the and succeeded in exchanging the old note and getting some more cash, and river arguing earnestly some philosophical question or other. Many groups we took time to admire the beautiful building in which the bank is situated. were picnicking, and they were not just students. There were retired couples We then caught a taxi back to the hotel. The driver was very helpful with and families, as well as single people lying in the sun or reading books under John. In fact everyone who has dealt with John and the wheelchair has been trees. Ducks paddled about the river as we glided by. I felt as though I had polite and helpful. People in the street often don’t realise a wheelchair is stepped on to a film set for some story set in Cambridge. there till we make it known, and some almost walk into you because they’re so busy concentrating on their phones or the people they’re talking to, but Our boat trip took us past the backs of colleges, but through the splendid in general, we’ve had nothing but goodwill. trees we could glimpse famous scenes, especially that icon of Cambridge, the King’s College Chapel. Some of the stories we heard might well have been We had been invited to afternoon tea at Girton, a suburb of Cambridge with spurious, but they were delivered with such sly good humour that we couldn’t the friend of a friend. Her name is Sandi Irvine and her husband is Robin

88 Cambridge punts.

89 The Cam riverside.

90 Irvine. They served a splendid afternoon tea (French biscuits, scones with were numerous young sweet pea plants being trained onto climbing frames, jam and cream, and cake) in their beautiful rear garden, with their two tortie but the frames weren’t like ours (metal ones from Bunnings). Instead they cats providing entertainment and birds filling the afternoon with song. Robin were actual pieces of wood from trees, standing like teepees and tied at the is a professor of biochemistry, so he and Sandi and Pen knew people in top. The really funny thing was that many of these timber frames were common. We had a lovely hour with the Irvines and wandered back to the shooting new leaves, even though they were no longer attached to trees. At hotel without incident, having Pen to guide us as to where we needed to drive. one point we had a long conversation with a volunteer who keeps the She invited us to join her for dinner at a pub that had been recommended lawnmowers running. because of the Chinese food it served, which you chose yourself and handed over to the cook for his attention. I chose steak, and was surprised to see the We’ve been told that England is an ageing nation, and we know it’s the same cook hurl it away. It turned out that he was throwing it onto a hotplate distant at home. I think the National Trust benefits from this, because there are from the wok burner where he was working. Having cooked the vegetables, many retired people who volunteer their services in any number of ways. It he then concentrated on the meat. I was sorry I didn’t have the camera with involves continued learning for the volunteers, and an interest that keeps me. them busy for as much time each week as they wish.

Pen is about to house-sit for a couple who are going to Canada for three The other thing we have observed is how much the English love their dogs. weeks, and it was they who recommended the pub. They asked Pen to bring They take them everywhere! They’re in shops, tied up on footpaths, and us to their house for coffee, so we visited their lovely house and their being walked regularly. It’s good to see. We haven’t seen too many border enormous garden and had a pleasant hour of conversation. They then gave collies, but we’ve seen lots of spaniels. us explicit instructions as to how to get back to our hotel in 20 minutes. An hour later, we chanced upon the hotel while the air in the car was still royal We strolled to the farm and saw donkeys, sheep, draft horses, and pigs, blue as opposed to navy blue. We were doing well until that ‘diverted traffic’ including a week-old litter of black and white piglets who tumbled over each sign, and when we got to the Newmarket Park and Ride, at least we knew other and squirmed into tiny gaps between their litter mates in an effort to where we were on the map, as opposed to where we wanted to be! And I keep even warmer than the sun was making them. After lunch at the farm figured out how to turn on the headlights, which was an advantage at 9.50 café we visited the beautiful old dairy, tiled to keep the milk and cheese cool p.m! in the days before refrigeration.

Wednesday, 5 June 2013 The buggy arrived at the farm to collect us and drive us to the hall. With John Wandering around Wimpole Farm and Hall in the wheelchair we toured the ground-floor rooms, then John was left in front of a DVD to see the rest of the house while Pen and I did the actual When we were planning yesterday what we would do today, we discovered tour. In one room, two book conservators were working to conserve books that Pen had never been to Wimpole Estate, a National Trust working farm from the extensive library that had been damaged by water coming in and stately home in the vicinity of Cambridge, so on a fine, warm Wednesday through the roof. They were happy to chat to us about what they were doing, morning we motored off to Wimpole. With John in the wheelchair I was and we had some conversation about the book by Geraldine Brooks called deemed to be a carer and got in for free, saving me £16.10. A buggy drove People of the Book, which deals (in fiction) with the work of a conservator on a us to the walled garden, where John had a lovely time looking at all the fruit particular book. It’s well worth a read (or a listen, as in my case) if you haven’t trees and vegetables and Pen and I enjoyed the flowers. Both within and come across it. outside the walled garden were beds of flowers to be cut for the house. There

91 Pen, Robyn, and John outside Wimpole Hall.

92 Robyn and Pen in the Wimpole Hall library.

93 Wimpole Hall is the largest house in Cambridgeshire, and the present reverberation in the chapel of several seconds, so the cantor let the sound of building was begun in 1640. Its last owner was the daughter of Rudyard his voice die away completely before he sang the next phrase. The choir, Kipling. When she and her husband bought the hall in 1938 it was in a sad under direction, did the same thing. state, so she spent 30 years bringing it back to its glory days. She left it to the National Trust, along with the royalties from all the Kipling books except The The first lesson was read by a chorister who obviously understands the Jungle Book, which had been sold to Disney. The farm is a working farm acoustics of the chapel, as did the priest in charge. The young woman who specialising in rare breeds, so that provides income to the estate as well. read the second lesson didn’t. She had an American accent, which was a bit harder to understand; she was so short that you couldn’t see her or hear her Historied out, we made our way back to the car park (we were smart enough over the lectern; but worst of all, she didn’t read slowly enough or wait till to bring our handicapped sticker with us and so far no one has challenged the echo of her voice had died away before going on, so we understood our parking in handicapped spaces) and drove back into Cambridge for our nothing of what she read. I loved the way the lectern was turned around, next adventure. though, so that each side had a Bible with the appropriate reading, rather than her having to riffle through the pages to find her place. And the lectern, Kindness at King’s like the choir stalls, was lit by candles in hurricane glasses. She pulled the candles close to the bible so that she could read. The prayer for the day was With the help of the Irvines yesterday, we worked out that we could get to for St Boniface, Patron Saint of Germany. We thought of our close friends King’s College Chapel for evensong at 5.30 today. Unfortunately the boy the Misselhorns, who are exploring outback Queensland while we’re wafting sopranos don’t sing on Wednesdays so we had to ‘make do’ with the men, around over here. but we had no other time, so that was it. Pen guided us to a commercial car park, and then we wheeled John through the streets to join the queue waiting We left the chapel last, so that we could enjoy the Rubens painting when the to get into the chapel. It was about 5.15 when we got there. No sooner had crowd had gone. We came out into the early evening air feeling very uplifted. we lined up than a gowned man beckoned us to follow him to the top of the Across the road I spotted a little shop selling postcards, so I hopped in for a queue and we were conducted into the chapel first. Our ‘guide’ was full of fix. It’s probably just as well the official King’s College gift shop was closed. droll humour as he led us to seats beside the choir stalls. We declined Pen’s invitation to join her for dinner. Tonight is our last night King’s College was founded by Henry IV in 1441. It has 600 students. I don’t in Cambridge, and there is much to do to plan for the next leg of the journey. think I have mentioned that there are about 30 colleges in Cambridge, and I had contacted a former Publications Branch colleague, Alison Littler, who you can only get into the university if you are accepted by one of the colleges. house-minded for us in 2009, I think. We were hoping to see her and Nick (Connected to that thought is one far less lofty: students of Cambridge on our way from Cambridge to Shropshire, but the landscapers at her house University are not allowed to have cars, which is why there are so many took up two of our available days and on the third day Alison had a choral bicycles in the town!) The chapel is famous for its outstanding architecture commitment, so a change of plan was required. The Sheehys, the friends and its beautiful stained glass. Our guide also pointed out to us the Peter we’ll be seeing in Shropshire, had told us once about an opportunity they Paul Rubens painting The Adoration of the Magi, which hangs behind the altar, had to be involved in flying birds of prey. When I spotted a brochure for the a gift from an anonymous donor that must be worth millions of pounds. Bird of Prey Centre at Old Warden Park in Bedfordshire, I asked John if he would be interested. He said yes, so I sat down and transcribed the Google Evensong was sung by choral scholars. The music was by Dowland, Tallis, directions from Cambridge, producing the kind of route chart that the Bush Byrd, and Caustun. None of the singing was accompanied. There is a Bludgers have used for years to meet at camp sites in the bush. It took quite

94 Kings College, Cambridge (from a postcard).

95 a long time. We had enjoyed a big lunch, so we made do with some packet their perfumes across the lanes and roads. The roadside wildflowers make soup that had come with us from Finland. We also repacked our bags so that you want to throw yourself into them, because they look so soft and sweet — we wouldn’t have to open our big cases for the next few days, even if we didn’t and there aren’t any snakes, well, no poisonous ones anyway. leave them in the car overnight. We left Cambridge for what Google said was a 26-mile trip. Wisely I haven’t Thursday, 6 June 2013 recorded the proposed time or the distance we actually drove. John’s daugh- Being surprised at Shuttleworth ter Gail had told us to double all times that Google mentions, but I’m not sure that is enough for us either. Anyway, we left Cambridge at 8.15 and we On our final morning at Hamilton Lodge I treated myself to the full English arrived at our destination at 9.45. One little victory along the way was finding breakfast — poached eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, and mushrooms. We a post office with a parking spot outside so that I could buy some stamps! I wouldn’t need lunch, I thought. Ha! didn’t snap at John for at least 15 minutes after that, even though we were still going through the ‘turn here and then stop so that we can consult the Our marriage has survived the odd hurdle, but the first few days in this map again’ routine. (The route chart I had spent so much time on was never accursed car with me driving and John navigating have certainly tested us even looked at!) more than somewhat. Our friend Ian Sapwell once complimented me (I think) by saying that I ‘drive like a man’. He wouldn’t have been so sure this When we got to the bird of prey centre we discovered that it’s just an offshoot week, as I have crashed my way up and down six gears (who on earth needs to the Shuttleworth collection of aircraft and cars, ‘a world famous and six gears, especially on these tiny roads, where you can’t see around corners unique collection of historic airworthy aeroplanes’. Yes, all of them can fly or over hedges so you can’t go fast), flipped indicators and wipers willy nilly, and they are kept in flightworthy condition, though some are not taken out careered from one side of the intersection to the other as the navigator very often. The collection was founded in 1928 by an extremely wealthy only shouted ‘left’ while I was quite sure the sign indicated right, and desperately son with a passion for aeroplanes and fast cars. He was killed while flying at looked not only for somewhere to park so that we could both look at the map, night on 2 August 1940, when he was only 31. His mother, in 1944, formed but making sure it was at a place wide enough to do a U-turn without going the Richard Ormonde Shuttleworth Remembrance Trust ‘for the teaching into rotten reverse! Sometimes I wished there was some way of recording my of the science of aviation and of afforestation and agriculture’. (There’s a thoughts and silent comments during this saga but it’s probably just as well stately home lurking in the background of the collection where there was a I couldn’t and, thankfully, what is said in the car is left in the car, so we don’t wedding exhibition for two days, but we didn’t get a chance to look at that.) stew over what has been said for any period of time. Mind you, ‘I’ll promise not to interfere with your navigation if you keep quiet about my driving’ isn’t While I was buying reviving drinks for the battlers in the cursed car, John a bad ground rule. I even recall saying at one stage, ‘I promise not to read found out that the aeroplane collection looked much more exciting than the any more signs’, but that didn’t last of course. birds of prey, so it looked as though both of us were going to have some fun. We did one hangar of the collection, then took ourselves off to hear about The scenery is such heaven to drive through that you can’t get angry. It’s just eagles and owls and to watch them demonstrate their training. We viewed so unbelievably green and lush. The horse chestnut trees are in full flower, lots of owls in cages and were a bit sad to see (and hear) a lone kookaburra. huge trees with blossoms that stand up like candles. They’re in gardens, yards, The keepers who spoke about the birds knew their patter, but we were a bit and paddocks (fields? meadows?) all over the place. The hawthorn comes in doubtful about some of its authenticity. John was not interested in holding red and white blossoms and it’s either individual trees or rows of trees that any of the birds or flying them, but he did want to see the kind of plane that have been cut into hedges. The hedges are full of blossoming plants that waft Bleriot flew across the English Channel, so we made our way back to the

96 restaurant, fortified ourselves with jacket potatoes topped with cheese and to admit that I was getting too tired to drive, and we pulled off to look for coleslaw, and made our way through all the hangars except the eighth. There somewhere to stay. Eventually we found a hotel, but the lady running the was an audio tour which helped me to understand some of what I was seeing, reception desk had graduated with honours from Rude School (tram con- but I was actually more interested in the cars than the planes. I took quite a ductresses used to go there) and said with great satisfaction that she couldn’t few photos to show to our friend Colin Jenkins until I realised that he can help us. When we asked for some advice about an alternative, she mentioned get them all on the net far better than I can depict with my camera. a Travelodge that we never did find. She couldn’t have known, of course, that she wasn’t dealing with the brightest pair in the world when it comes to Moping up the motorway finding your way around England. Oh how I was wishing for the American system, where every interstate exit has a handful of motels for people who On our first trip to England in 1986 we stayed with an adult education friend just want to stop for one night. And speaking of exits, once you get on to one of John’s in Nottingham who took us to see a property recently acquired by of the M roads here, you’re just about there for life! Exits are unbelievably the National Trust. It had not yet been opened to the public, but we went far apart. Never get on to an M road thinking you’ll go to the first toilet you right along the wonderful driveway to see the front of the house, and ever find. That ways spells disaster. since I have wanted to visit Calke Abbey. That was to be our next destination. Both of us had looked at the map (I had done a route chart) and we agreed By sheer luck (I say, John says it was good navigation) we found our way to that using the M1 was the most sensible thing to do, so the navigator got us Tamworth, and there was the Holiday Inn Express. Never have I been so glad onto the M1 and we sped along it with everyone else. to hear someone say cheerfully, ‘yes, we have a room for you tonight’. We booked in, had a meal downstairs (no gourmet treat, but enough to satisfy Roads in England are infested with signs. I thought the American interstates us) and then fell into bed. I told John I wanted to watch the Melvyn Bragge were bad, with all the advertising boards they have beside them, but in program at 9 p.m., but he hadn’t the heart to wake me up! England there are signs at knee height, waist height, eye height, and above eye height. There are even signs on the road! There are speed signs through Friday, 7 June 2013 every village. There are signs that tell you the road will be slippery. There are Combing Calke signs that say the next few hundred yards will be through z-shaped turns. There are bus signs, street signs, lane signs, town signs, house names, B&B The fee at Holiday Inn Express included a continental breakfast -— which signs, farm shop signs -— you name it, there will be one of them in England! turned out to include all sorts of cooked things as well. I suppose it’s just as But when you get onto the M roads there are no speed signs indicating how well breakfast doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone everywhere. fast you can go. There are plenty of signs with speed camera warnings but if I don’t know how fast I’m supposed to be going, how can I be fined? I suppose You would think that after waiting 27 years to see this place I would have that’s one of the things that you should bone up on when you’re hiring a car, checked just when it was open. I discovered too late that it is open from and I do remember that our French atlas has all sorts of driving information Saturday to Wednesday, but I found out that special theme tours are run on in it. Our car doesn’t even have a handbook (clients steal them, Pen says) let Thursday and Friday, so we aimed to get here on Friday for a special tour alone a book of road instructions. and then we could decide if we wanted to see more on Saturday.

I sped along with the best of them, wishing I had discussed with John my We arrived just before 11 on Friday morning (relatively easy run from instinct to stay somewhere near our departure point and drive in the morn- Tamworth — could it be that we are getting better at this or was it just that ing, rather than drive first and find the accommodation later. At 5.30 I had Calke Abbey is signposted so well?) and signed up for the special tour. The

97 Calke Abbey.

98 lady pointed out that there were stairs, so she said we could have John’s money back if he felt that he hadn’t got the benefit of the tour. We then loaded ourselves and the wheelchair onto Brian’s buggy and enjoyed the ride through the main gates to be delivered to the entrance. Brian is a lugubrious gentleman who doesn’t hurry for anyone, whether it’s loading the buggy or telling a story, but he got us to the front entrance in time for the tour to begin, and off we went through some of the show rooms of Calke Abbey.

Calke Abbey began life as a priory in the 1100s. It passed through various families until the Harpur-Crewes got hold of it. Sir John Harpur rebuilt it between 1701 and 1704, and the house was lived in continuously till 1981, when Charles Harper-Crewe died and left it to his younger brother, along with £8 million in death duties. Nothing had been done to the house since the 1880s, when Sir Vauncy Harpur-Crewe inherited it and spent his time and money on natural history collections. Calke is unique amongst National Trust properties in that it is presented pretty much as it was when it was given to the Trust in 1985. The Trust has put a new roof on the property and prevented further decay by fixing leaks and the like, but no restoration work has been done. It tells the story of one of the great houses of England sliding into (almost) ruin. Many similar properties were simply pulled down. Our tour led us from reasonably presentable rooms through rooms just left as they were found. The guide told the story of the last owner going through the 100 rooms one by one, simply opening the doors, looking in and closing the doors again. Charles had finished up living in only three of the rooms.

There were two guides on the tour, one at the front of the group and one at the back. When it came time to go upstairs (wide, shallow stairs so that Sir John’s family and guests wouldn’t catch their spurs as they walked up), John could manage the climb, and a wheelchair was given to us on the first floor to go through the rooms we were shown there. When it was time to come downstairs, our wheelchair appeared as if by magic and I was able to wheel John in that much more easily.

From the tour we went to lunch (nice restaurant set up in the stables, which were damn near as big as the house — Sir John was determined to show he had married wealth) and then to the garden. By then we had decided that we would come back on Saturday to see the house before we took off for the Stained glass windows in the Calke Abbey church.

99 west. Brian of the buggy suggested we leave seeing the church till Saturday Head in Stafford for lunch, initially in the conservatory, but finally in the morning, because then we could get a good photo of the light coming garden at the back of the pub because the sun was so bright that the through the stained-glass windows. conservatory was hot! From the garden we could see wonderful scenery and flowering trees and a big house tucked into the hillside nearby. There was a Having learned our lesson yesterday about not having accommodation in family picnicking on the grass nearby, with a baby having lots of fun. It was place, we asked the National Trust people for recommendations. They came the kind of day that made you smile. up with a list of possible places, and Brian of the buggy added one that he favoured. I tried a couple of romantic-sounding places, but without any luck, We found our way to Oswestry where we did some shopping at Sainsbury’s so I opted for the Premier Inn at the East Midlands Airport. We knew it would and got some money from a hole in the wall to pay the lady from whom we be clean, comfortable, have Wi-Fi and probably a restaurant, and practicali- are renting our cottage. We had never successfully paid a deposit, so I wanted ties beat romance most of the time. ‘They have terrible beer,’ growled Brian. to pay her as soon as we arrived to make sure we didn’t get off on the wrong We didn’t sample the beer, but we did have a pleasant dinner with a bottle foot. of Australian red, and I did have time for a bit more of the diary. Holidaying at Hafod Saturday, 8 June 2013 Coming again to Calke We’re staying at The Zen Cottage at the property called Hafod in Llynclys. Janet and John (do all you Victorians remember the Janet and John books The best-laid plans ... etc. We arrived at Calke just before 10 and engaged (a at school?) have at the back of their house this cottage, set in its very pretty different) Brian of the buggy to transport us to the Calke church to photo- garden, and, separately, a space for a mobile home, with a little outdoor patio graph the windows and to wander briefly in the little graveyard. On top of and a shower and toilet nearby. J&J are working at converting another shed the cross at the east end of the church we saw a robin singing cheerily, which to a bunkroom so that they can offer accommodation to ramblers because pleased me immensely. But plans went astray after that, when I discovered there are lots of walking tracks in this area. Our cottage has a kitchen; a that the house didn’t open till 12.30. We did a conservation tour to hear what bedroom cum sitting room, with TV, armchair, and desk; and a bathroom. techniques the National Trust is using to reach its aim of conserving but not It has Wi-Fi! There’s an outdoor setting by the little stream that runs through restoring, but I couldn’t ask John to wait several more hours to get a good the garden, and a summer house with a table and chairs. What more could look at the rest of the house. Ah, well, we always need something to come one need for a relaxing week in the middle of a busy trip? back to. And I do have a wonderful book at home that I bought in 1986 and have never read completely, so that will be a project for our return. We’ve come to this area to see our friends Michael and Bobbie Sheehy, who have moved to Pant, the next village from here, from Daventry in the Our next destination was Oswestry, on the border of England and Wales. I Midlands, because their son Martin lives about 20 minutes away, in Wales, had a couple of attempts at suggesting we go on minor roads, but John made with his wife Natalie. I’ve known Michael since 1967, I think, when he came it clear that it’s easier for him to navigate on the major roads because there to Portland as the radio officer on a cargo ship, and I was sent by my sister are fewer places we can make mistakes. And I’m getting better at reading to the Missions to Seamen to ‘entertain’ the sailors. She couldn’t go, because what is written on the roads with regard to the lanes we need to be in when she was going out with a Portland boy and the Portland boys didn’t like girls we’re careering around roundabouts. So at about 12.15 we took off for a who went to the Mission. It’s a bit ironic that the Mission was run by the journey that was supposed to take a couple of hours. We finally pulled into Anglican Church, so it was the girls who went to church who went to the our destination at 4.45, but we had fun on the way. We stopped at the Saracens Mission.

100 John and I stayed with the Sheehys in Daventry in 2005 and 2007, so we were economic situation in our respective countries. At about 3 p.m. John an- keen to see them and their new house but not to add to their stress by staying nounced that it was time to go, so we said our farewells, burdened Rosemary when the new kitchen was being installed. But we did spend the first night with a postcard to post for me, and wheeled our way back to the car. John of our holiday having dinner with them in their dining room, overlooking got us on to a major road going the right way but in a relatively short time I the village of Pant and enjoying the view across to Rodney’s Column on the announced that I needed a nap, so we pulled off into a parking lot and I had nearby hills. We also had the cheek to take our laundry with us to dinner and a 10-minute power nap before we were on our way back to the cottage. Once Bobbie very kindly put the load through her machine while we were eating. again we dined with the Sheehys, who had spent most of the day emptying After dinner, while it was still light, we motored home to our cottage and I their kitchen into the rest of the house, but had also given some thought to pegged the clothes onto the clothesline before we fell into bed, congratulat- planning the week and that has given us a framework for our holiday. ing ourselves on our progress with the English road system. Monday, 10 June 2013 Sunday, 9 June 2013 Cooking a curry at the cottage Roaring off to Rugby to meet Rosemary In our continuing adventures with overseas plumbing we have come to a We flew into Stansted with the idea of seeing our friend Rosemary Westwell cottage where the roof is so low in the bathroom that the cottage owners (she and I did Dip. Ed. together in 1968) at Witchford near Ely. But Rosemary decided they couldn’t install a proper shower so the bath has one of those was sunning herself in Spain when we arrived, and had a busy schedule in hand-held shower devices. The bath is quite deep and the sides are high so connection with a book she has published recently called John, Dementia and John’s shower has become a two-person exercise. At 85, and with arthritis in Me, a ‘fictional’ account of her marriage to a man who suffered early- onset his back, knees and hips, he doesn’t bend easily. He’s still learning which way dementia and has been in care more than 20 years, and the battle she has is most comfortable to get into the car, and there was no way he could get had to have his care funded under the National Health Scheme. The only into the bath and sit there to wash (he hates baths anyway, he says it’s sitting time we could see Rosemary was today, when she was staying with her elder in your own dirty water) so I stand there with the shower above him and he daughter who is married to a teacher at the famous Rugby School. washes as usual. I reckon I look a bit like the Statue of Liberty holding her torch aloft. Even given our newfound confidence with the English road system, we allowed more time for the journey than Google recommended. We left the I, on the other hand, have decided it’s quick and easy to have a bath, but I’m cottage at 9.45 and arrived at the restaurant at 12.30, leaving enough time amazed at the memories that come flooding in while I’m doing something for a recuperative coffee before Rosemary arrived. Mind you, we did have to that I rarely do at home: memories of sharing the same bath water with the have help with the last hundred yards or so of the journey. I went to ask a entire family when we lived on the farm in 1953–54 and had only a tank for man in a video shop just where we would find the restaurant and I took with house water; of sharing a bath with Felicity’s girls when they were little; of me the Google page that had pictures on it. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, pointing to a how Mum longed for a bath when she was in care so when she and I went to photo of a historic-looking door, ‘that’s the Rugby School and the restaurant Queensland for a holiday I made sure there was a bath in our hotel room, is right opposite. They filmed some of Harry Potter behind that door, you but she was horrified when I took a photo of her in the bath so I had to cover know.’ The things you learn when you travel! her breasts in the photo album with a post-it note labelled ‘don’t look’! Yes, it could take me a long time to have a bath, but in some things I can be a bit Lunchtime conversation ranged over many topics, from simple catching up disciplined. on family news (we haven’t seen Rosemary since 1998, I think) to the

101 I brought a mild cold with me from Europe, just annoying enough to require Tuesday, 11 June 2013 deep-cleansing blowing of the nose every couple of hours. Of course John Wandering around in Wales has caught it too, and with the state of his lungs it’s no surprise that he has a terrible cough, a ‘coldy’ voice, and a runny nose. But we had arranged for We woke to find the ground damp, the sky cloudy, and gentle rain falling the Sheehys to come to dinner here tonight and it had been decided that a from time to time. This is the first day since we arrived nearly a fortnight ago curry would be the appropriate dish, so we had to do some shopping. We to a rainy morning in Helsinki that we’ve had anything other than fine began to drive to Oswestry but on the way found the Llynclys Hall Farm Shop, weather. John’s cough still sounds dreadful but he says he doesn’t feel bad, which Michael had recommended as having good meat. In an effort to do so after a leisurely start to the morning we took off south on the A438 towards something for the local economy we bought meat, fruit, and veges there, and Welshpool, which is in Wales. I followed a sign to what I thought was an then drove on to Oswestry. First we found a computer shop, where we could Information Centre, but The Old Railway Station in Welshpool turned out buy a cable to allow John to download the photos from the camera to the to be a shopping outlet with some rather nice clothes. We poked around for laptop. (Yes, we have two cables at home, it seems, but neither of them got a while and John came across some CDs at 3 for £8. We’re not up to having packed. Now we have one that can stay with the laptop.) Then we went to talking books in the car (too distracting), but we have enjoyed a couple of Sainsbury’s and, with John in the wheelchair and a basket on his knee, we music CDs I’ve borrowed from the cottage, so a few more will be good. As we sailed through the aisles seeking the ingredients for our dinner. Back at the were leaving he had another look at the short-sleeved check shirts on sale at cottage John prepared the curry and I made up some packet soup for lunch, 2 for £30 and came away with some to replace American shirts he has been with bread and fruit. I did some ironing and washed out (in shampoo, as wearing since the ’80s. We had a look at the display shed for the Welshpool directed) a silk shirt our friend Lincoln had brought for me from China, and & Llanfair Railway, which gave the history of this narrow gauge line built to we both had a rest. At about 5.15 I stopped writing the diary and went to set link farming communities with the market town of Welshpool. A ride on that the table outside in the sunshine. Something in the brook caught my eye — train is one of the things Bobbie has recommended we might do while we an old rag? No, it was the silk shirt, which had blown off the clothesline into are here. the brook on the other side of the fence, but had been washed through. How lucky was I! It could have washed further and never been seen again. As it From Welshpool we drove further along the A438 to Newtown, although we was, I could fish it out, rinse it clean, and hang it in the summerhouse. did make a side trip to see a castle advertised on a brown sign beside the road. We missed the castle completely (probably only remains anyway), but we had Eating outside was cool, but the curry was pronounced, largely, a success, a lovely drive along a narrow road that wound from deep, shadowed, green though John said he could have done better at home. We repaired to the glades, to high ridges with spectacular views over farming valleys. The road sitting room for ice cream and stewed rhubarb cut from Janet’s garden that ended in someone’s property, so we returned the way we had come, hoping morning. The Sheehys reported that their kitchen was bare and the process that no one would come towards us, because it would have been a very long was continuing satisfactorily. We made arrangements to meet for dinner way for either car to reverse to find a suitable passing spot. tomorrow night at the Cross Guns Inn in Pant. Newtown did not offer much that was exciting, but we stopped by chance All day I have been itching to get to the computer to see who was on the near a little café that had a ‘Kangaroos for the next 25 kilometres’ sign in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in Australia. Imagine my delight to find my window. We never found out why, but it seemed to be a good omen, and favourite female folk singer, Judy Small, my friend Robyn Wallace’s good certainly the leek and potato soup we had was delicious. On our way back to friend Jan Harper, and, best of all, our friend Hazel Edwards. What a lovely the cottage we stopped at Buttington Wharf outside Welshpool. It proved to end to our day. be just an open spot beside the Montgomery Canal where about 30 primary

102 school kids, all in life jackets, were paddling canoes back towards town. Each was a good day to be tucked up in our little cottage. I caught up on the diary canoe held four paddlers, and every two canoes were attached so that they (and made the mistake of calling the episode I sent number 14 when it should looked a bit like twin-hulled vessels. have been number 13, as a couple of readers pointed out) and John got all the photos renamed. At 2 p.m. Bobbie and Michael arrived to collect us for Back at the cottage John got into editing and renaming the photos while I a visit to the home of their son Martin and his wife Natalie and their had a sleep and then sat in the sun in the summerhouse writing postcards. menagerie of animals — one horse, one (stable) cat, two goats, two chooks When John came out with his eyes practically crossed I took over the and two dogs. The drive out to the house was magnificent — more of those computer to go back to the diary till it was time for us to meet the Sheehys tiny, hedged lanes, but this time up steeper hills and down into deeper valleys. at the Cross Guns. I haven’t written down the name of Martin’s hamlet (all six houses of it) but I’ll find out tomorrow. A hamlet is a village without a church. Martin’s house The landlady at the pub, Alison, confessed that she was new to the district, used to be a Methodist chapel, but apparently that didn’t fit the definition having arrived in March. The Sheehys said they had arrived in February, so of church, even though people come to look at the building where they or a it was a learning experience for everyone. We asked about the history of the family member were married/christened/farewelled etc. The builder who pub, and Alison brought us a book put together by a previous owner showing sold it to Martin and Nat had attempted to convert it to two houses, but the pub and its innkeepers being mentioned in censuses going back to 1851. without planning permission, so when they bought it they turned it into one John offered (me) to write a summary of what the census documents showed, splendid house, with fabulous views from its windows. We had tea/coffee and and that earned him and Michael a free drink, so we think we’ve done Nat-made chocolate chip biscuits plus conversation for an hour or so, and something to help the Sheehys settle into the community. We also deter- then Bobbie drove us back via an even more spectacular route, though it was mined that the food the pub serves is good, so we left wishing Alison all the a bit harder to see it because of the steady rain falling. best for the future, and the Sheehys said they would be back. Travelling with the Sheehys allows us to ask questions on the spot about signs, Wednesday, 12 June 2013 road rules etc. to say nothing of village customs, local happenings, and just Having a layday at Hafod about any other topic that comes up. It’s the kind of in-depth experience we like to have, one which we can’t have in non-English-speaking countries An English grey squirrel came to visit as we were having breakfast at about because we don’t have any other language in which to converse. 10 a.m. today. He darted along the top of the fence that separates our garden from that of the main house. We haven’t seen a lot of wildlife — rabbits Bobbie dropped us back at The Zen Cottage and I promptly retired to our around Cambridge and in the paddock here, a squirrel at the Bird of Prey very comfortable bed for a nap. When I woke about an hour later John centre, a pheasant at Shuttleworth, and some deer in the distance one day suggested we return to the pub we went to last night, the Cross Guns at Pant when we were getting lost. Of course there were deer in the park at Calke (Pant means ‘hollow’ or ‘depression’, Michael tells us). We were greeted like Abbey, but they were being farmed rather than running wild. There were old friends by Alison, the landlady, and we ordered the special of the night, Portland sheep at Calke too. All of the Portland sheep have little horns, both curry and a drink for £6.75. We ordered a beef vindaloo (in honour of Lister, male and female, even the lambs. Apparently there were longhorn cattle from Red Dwarf) which had a four-chilli recommendation and a lamb marsala, there too but we didn’t spot them on the long, lime-tree bordered drive into which had a one-chilli recommendation. I can’t remember the last time I the house. We have seen Highland cattle as well as dairy cattle. had a curry that brought me to tears, but the vindaloo did, and the marsala was almost as hot. If John prepared a curry as hot as that at home, I’d refuse We’ve had a really quiet day today, and given that it was damp and windy, it to eat it, but since I had ordered it, I thought I should give it my best shot.

103 a converted eighteenth-century barn that now houses the restaurant. The Sheehys collected us at Hafod at about 10.30 and drove us through drizzle to the centre. We pushed our way past big pots of colourful azaleas and through some desirable homewares that took Michael’s eye to the restau- rant, to revive ourselves with a cappuccino (tea for Bobbie). Conversation went on for so long that we eventually decided to have lunch before we went on to look at the shops. John had a jacket potato (they’re very popular in the UK, it seems, at places other than street parades and music festivals, which is where we’ve seen them most often at home) and I had parsnip soup. I’ve had leek and potato a couple of times since being here but parsnip was new. It was pleasingly sweet.

Fortified for the afternoon we wandered off through shops that sold shoes, clothing, guinea pigs, rabbits, fish to put in aquariums, every manner of bed and toy for dogs and cats, books, cards, crafts, food, and all kinds of things for the garden. John found a bargain-priced Bill Bryson book to add to our collection, and a packet of rocket seeds, which he’s had trouble getting at home. For all their looking, Bobbie and Michael didn’t buy anything. Apparently they’ve been getting stick from their son about the number of John, with Michael and Bobbie Sheehy at Coed-y-dinas Garden Centre. plates and mugs that they own, so they’re careful about buying anything more before the new kitchen is finished and they’ll know just what storage they We’re now having a quiet night in. John is snoring gently in front of the TV have. and I’m sharing our evening with you. Sweet dreams, everyone. From the garden centre we went to the local Tesco store. John and I vividly Thursday, 13 June 2013 remember shopping at Tesco in 1998 and discovering that all signs are in Eating as entertainment Welsh and English. This time we’re a bit quicker about finding the English. I also found out from Michael the name of the hamlet (seven houses) where Today’s weather has been a total mixture — drizzle, rain, wind, sunshine — Martin and Nat live. It’s Bwlch-y-ddar! As close as I can render what I thought and just enough of each to make it difficult to decide how to spend the day. I heard Michael say, it sounds like Boo-ka-thar, and it means Pass of the Oaks, The plan had been to go to Powys Castle if the weather were right and we all although Michael says there isn’t an oak to be seen there. felt up to it, but Michael’s feet were troublesome and John was miserable with the cold so we opted for a visit to the Coed-y-dinas Garden Centre at We arrived back home at about 3 p.m. and I took myself off for a nap while Welshpool. When that decision had been made, I nipped out by myself in John went back to working on the maps for our next journey on Saturday. the car to the post office at Pant to buy some stamps for thank you letters I’d By then the sun was shining through the kitchen window, so when I re- had the chance to write yesterday. appeared I sat in the sun and wrote postcards to small folks at home until it was time to dress for dinner. We were very close to being ready when Bobbie Coed-y-dinas Garden Centre is a big shopping centre that has grown around appeared at the door, indicating that our lift had arrived. Martin and Nat

104 have a seven-seater vehicle, so Martin opted to drive us all. When I had It was quite late in the evening when we left to come home. I was glad that clambered in and we were underway I asked what the vehicle was and I was Martin was driving, and if he’d dropped me on the way I could have been very surprised to hear Aldi. I know that our friends the Misselhorns buy all lost for life. For a land of 63 million people, it’s amazing how much farmland kinds of things from Aldi but I hadn’t heard about the cars. I was fairly quickly and forest there is in the UK. Wikipedia says the land area of the UK (and I corrected; it’s an Audi. don’t know if that includes Northern Ireland) is about 94 000 square miles. I seem to remember from primary school days that Victoria is 88 000 square Nat and Martin had suggested we all go to dinner at a (reasonably) local miles so it’s remarkable to me that there can be so many people and so much place where only Nat has been before. Talk about Shangri-la! We made our land in an area not much bigger than my home state. way up hill and down dale through tiny hedge-lined roads till we came upon a reservoir called Lake Vrynwy with a remarkable-looking dam wall proudly Friday, 14 June 2013 built in the 1880s and a Rapunzel-like tower housing the pumping mecha- Living the last day at Llynclys nisms. And high on the hillside overlooking this beautiful scene is a hotel that looks like it escaped from a fairy tale. Inside it is every bit as romantic as Today has been the wettest day we’ve had since we left home. We hunkered the outside suggests, with great fat armchairs and settees (and love seats) down in our cottage and let the rain pour down and the wind blow. John sprawled beside fireplaces (not lit at this time of the year, unfortunately) and read the Age on his iPad and revisited favourite YouTube sites and noisy huge windows giving wonderful views of the lake. It was hard to take in so games. I packed my suitcase for tomorrow’s departure and wrote postcards much beauty. Most of the trees that we could see covering the hillsides were to greats. At noon John cooked lunch using leftover vegetables from Monday conifers, but there seem to be enough deciduous trees to make this a place night’s dinner, snaffled cheese from last night’s dinner and eggs from our worth visiting in autumn when the leaves are in full colour, to say nothing of landlady’s chooks. The egg yolks were unbelievably yellow so the omelette winter when the snow is over everything and the fires are lit. I could just was delicious. We then climbed into our Ford Focus and motored off to imagine myself tucked up by the fire with a warming drink in hand ... Maybe Welshpool to visit Powis Castle, a 700-year-old property built initially as a on another trip. medieval fortress for Welsh princes. It gradually changed into an impressive residence lived in by generations of the Herbert family. The property was Dinner was served on the basis of two courses or five courses, we had been bequeathed to the National Trust in 1952, along with a sum of money told, but it seemed that if you ordered an entrée and a main course you dedicated to keeping the property in good order. automatically qualified for the five courses because there was the possibility that you would order dessert! I ordered a terrine and a salmon main course, We drove into the property along another beautiful tree-lined drive. We think which qualified me for mixed vegetable and orange soup to start (served in the trees are lime trees, as were the trees at Calke Abbey. I’ve now learned to a coffee cup with a teaspoon!) and a sorbet served the same way between the drive to the top of the car park to find the disabled parking spots, but by entrée and the main course. John and Martin had lamb for main course and doing that this time, I missed the entrance where we had to pay money. We it was tender and tasty (the bit of John’s that I tasted, that is). All the produce got through the stables (with the video showing the 2009 wedding of the served at the hotel is sourced locally. We really had a lovely meal, with a couple elder daughter of the current earl — she was married at the castle and used of bottles of cab sav from the Spee Wah to wash it down and lots of the 150-year-old State Coach) and the Clive Museum (treasures brought back conversation to spin the evening along. All the time we could observe the by Clive of India, whose son married a Herbert girl in 1784) before we were lake and the weather over it, from bright sunshine, to mist, to more rain. Just sprung. The National Trust lady made me promise to pay our fees on the way have a look for Lake Vyrnwy on the web to get an idea of what we saw. out. She then allowed me to park John in the foyer of the castle while I made my way through the wonderful state rooms upstairs. From the windows I

105 Lake Vrynwy, Wales.

106 Powis Castle.

107 could see the beautifully laid-out and maintained garden basking in sun- a series of small animals. I’ve secreted among them one of those little koalas shine, but there were still some nasty gusts of wind. Finally we finished up in much beloved by tourists, the kind that clip on to a camera strap and hold a the castle courtyard, where we were entertained by the squawking peacocks tiny Australian flag. I wonder how long it will be before she finds it? and their demure peahens. We found the National Trust café and tucked into hot drinks and chive scones. Yum. Our next stop was at the Sheehys’ house in Pant, to return a shopping bag they had loaned us, now containing the various bits and pieces of food we We drove home through alternating rain and sunshine, and had time for a had bought but not used. We also inspected the new kitchen, which has been little rest before going back to the Cross Guns at Pant for a final dinner with installed this week. It’s not finished yet, but we saw most of it. Then off we the Sheehys. The dining room was quite crowded and there was a noisy group motored into the Shropshire countryside, the Welsh countryside, the Shrop- in the billiard room, so it seems as if the landlady’s wish for the pub to become shire countryside, the Welsh countryside ... yes, it’s like that in this part of an integral part of the community is coming to fruition. One of the locals the world. The border is not straight. And the scenery is just stunning. stopped at our table and told us that for the last five years the pub hasn’t been worth visiting, so those words are a good omen for the new owners. Two of the special pieces of beauty I have neglected to mention so far are the copper beech trees and the laburnum trees. The copper beeches are Saturday, 15 June enormous trees, a kind of purply brown colour, and they add such depth to Travelling tales while the scenes of green trees and the various flowering trees. The laburnums are Trooping the Colour heavy with golden blossoms, so they add their colour to the scene too. Apparently the nuts of the laburnum tree are poisonous, so there is a move to make sure that they do not grow in schoolgrounds or parks where children Yes, my friends, if these tales seem even more addled than usual there are might play. Bobbie told us a horror story of her first year of teaching when two good reasons: I’m watching the Trooping of the Colour and I’ve just had she showed the children a series of nuts, and one of the boys ate the ones a gin and tonic to reward me for driving today without shouting at anyone that came from the laburnum tree. He finished up in hospital having his other than the car, which still can’t get its gear changes right. The spectacle stomach pumped. on TV is truly spectacular. I suppose it’s shown at home, but I don’t recall seeing more than a snippet on the news. I have in my mind a vision of a very Our next stop (you can be very proud of us, we didn’t get lost once!) was the young Queen Elizabeth riding in a blue velvet cloak. At 87 she’s a bit old to Land of Lost Content, in Craven Arms, recommended to us by our friend fill that role now, but she is still standing to take the salute of all the groups Lesley Birks and her husband John Fife, both British born but resident in of soldiers and that’s no mean effort. There are 75 horses on parade this year, Australia and making visits to the UK every couple of years. It turned out to including two Clydesdales, who are the drum horses. My mum would just love be a National Museum of British Popular Culture, and it’s the work of a all this. couple of people who think that much of what we have invented and used in the twentieth century will be lost because we won’t value it, so they’ve My morning started on a sour note, literally, when the milk I put into my collected it. The three-storey building that was built to be a corn market now coffee turned lumpy. Just as well I brought my Chinese tea. The day was holds just about anything you can name from the twentieth century, from murky too, but we got up and underway and by check-out time at 10 a.m. we matchbook covers to portable radios, from girls’ overcoats with velvet collars had packed the car, left the cottage neat and tidy, and bundled up the linen to a gorilla suit. And it’s all stuffed into the building to the extent that you to present to the landlady, with the key. I gave her a tube of lemon myrtle have to squeeze through it. In fact John said he doubted that the museum hand cream, which I hope she will enjoy. I also left her a tiny surprise. Above would be allowed to operate in Australia because in case of fire you’d be hard the door leading from the bedroom to the bathroom in the cottage, there is

108 pressed to get out of the place, even assuming you could find the exits. But with chips for John and mashed potato for me, and peas. The English we had a couple of pleasant hours of nostalgia, and a cup of tea/coffee along vegetable of choice when you eat out seems always to be peas, either garden the way (John’s first real cup for the day because of the milk disaster). or mushy. And the garden peas always seem to be fresh, not frozen. But where is the broccoli or the spinach? Where are the beans? From Craven Arms we went to Ludlow, again on Lesley’s recommendation. By then the weather was pretty ugly, so we drove through the town and then, In Queensland in February we came across the first of these food courts because we did take a wrong turn (towns are hard!) we looked down on it beside a motor way and then we discovered one on the Hume Freeway at from a hill and decided that it would be a nice place to spend more time, Benalla and now we’ve eaten at one in England. I think we must have been especially in some sunshine. leading closed lives. I bet everyone else knew these existed.

At about 2 p.m. John said, ‘I thought we’d have hard-boiled eggs for lunch’, So we’ve come full circle for this diary entry. The Trooping of the Colour, meaning the remainder of the ones he had bought yesterday for the ome- apparently only a part of what is properly called the Celebration of the lette. ‘If you find somewhere nice, pull over.’ Any time he mentions some- Queen’s Official Birthday, is over, and now we’re into rugby or mindless thing like that, immediately nothing turns up for miles. It’s like looking for quiz-type games. John was amused to see that the movie Con Air is showing a B&B. You can pass dozens on most days but the minute you’d really like at 10 p.m. We once fell across that at Campbelltown in Sydney because it was one, there are none to be had. Eventually I did a quick left turn, following a the next film showing at the multiplex where we had stopped and it turned brown sign (usually an indication of something worth looking at) to a church. out to be better than we expected, though I can’t say I’ve ever been as excited The side road to the church was labelled ‘gated road’ but we thought the about the plane careering through a shopping centre as John is. (It’s 8.40 gate might be on the other side of the church so off we tootled ... only to be p.m. and John is tucked up in bed, so I don’t think he’s going to see Con Air confronted, on this tiny hedged road, by a truck pulling a trailer. Not only again.) did I have to reverse, but I had to reverse uphill! And the truck just kept coming. I finished up with my head out the window trying to reverse straight. Sunday, 16 June 2013 As soon as I could I reversed across a farm gateway and when the truck went Warbling at Wavendon past, with the driver smiling and waving, I just stayed there, and that’s where we ate lunch. We had a wonderful valley below us with different styles of Sunday morning television at home is The Insiders and Business Sunday. This houses showing up clearly. The wind was blowing raindrops into the window morning we had 90 minutes of lovely gardening programs and then a cooking but we had our picnic. And then we were on our way again. program. If checkout hadn’t been at 11 a.m., we might still be there.

In the Town of Bransgrove I passed a Holiday Inn and suggested we stop Linda was the receptionist who booked us into Days Inn last night. She had there, but John wanted to keep going. When we managed to get onto the been there since 5.30 a.m. and we discovered this morning that she didn’t road we wanted, but going the wrong way and needing to do a U-turn (that’s leave till 7 p.m. last night. She was so nice to us (complimenting us on our when I went in the entrance of the Holy Trinity International School and out accent, making sure we got extra milk in our room, delivering a delicious the exit), I suggested the Holiday Inn again, but he reckoned that as soon as breakfast this morning) that I presented her with one of the little koalas, and we got onto an M road we’d find a hotel. And sure enough, we got to the if nothing better happened to her all day, she was certainly happy when we Warwick Services and found a Days Inn. It’s not a luxury hotel, but it has left. clean linen, hot water, decent TV, and free Wi-Fi. It doesn’t have a restaurant, but there’s a food court nearby where we found very well-cooked lamb shanks I’ve been a fan of the British singer Cleo Laine since I was first introduced

109 to her by my friend Jan Westwood back in the 70s. I’ve seen a couple of her The concert today was called ‘Harry and Edna’s Vintage Afternoon’ and we concerts in Melbourne, and when we were in America in 1991 I learned that knew it was to be music of the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s. When we got back from she and her husband John Dankworth, the great jazz musician, had started lunch we discovered that there were lots of people dressed in ’40s costume a music centre at Wavendon. So when I was looking about for things we might and one woman was doing doo-wop hairdos — those wonderful rolls around do in Britain I was delighted to discover there would be a concert in the the back of the head and curls at the front. I was just a little bit tempted. garden of Dame Cleo Laine on 16 June. (On 22 June, Cleo Laine herself is There was vintage clothing and vintage jewellery. I splashed out on a little appearing in concert but that would have involved staying another week and pearl bracelet, but five minutes later, as I gave John a hand to help him out now that we’ve left the cottage John is on his way home!) of his chair, the bracelet broke, so I might have a go at rethreading it when I get home. So today’s navigational adventure was to find The Stables in Stockwell Lane, Milton Keynes. We had about four hours to do it, so I wasn’t worried when John wasn’t interested in wandering around, but I explored all the bits of the John announced that he reckoned we had got on to a wrong A road. We garden that weren’t labelled ‘Private’. I got some nice photos in the garden consulted the map together and worked out that we could still reach our goal and of the house though I couldn’t get to the front of the house without by a slightly different way. In the last stages of the journey we were relying on trespassing. street signs. Thank goodness the Brits are so good at those. By noon we had arrived, so we then had time to go off and find somewhere to eat, knowing The concert turned out to be two singers singing their sets to recorded music. that we could get back to The Stables in good time. We found the Wavendon Their voices were pleasant but not great. The ’50s was represented by a Arms, where we ordered roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and finished up couple of rockers called the Broadway Twisters, one playing an electric guitar, with a wonderful meal. The waiter had talked us into ordering cauliflower one playing a double bass. Their music produced some jiving in the back cheese as well, but we didn’t realise that other veges came with the roast. rows, which indicated that the eldery folks flinging themselves around had After all my sounding off last night about the only vegetable being peas, today been good at it in their day. Their music also made me think, for the first we got broccoli, snap peas, green beans, carrot, and cauliflower in a separate time, probably, how shocking the music of the ’50s really was — all that noise, dish, as well as baked potatoes and red cabbage on the plate. The carrots all those rude suggestions (they did Elvis’s ‘Tutti Frutti’), all that energy! We were so fresh and sweet I reckon they were dug this morning. The peas were were also intrigued to see that the bass was strung, we think, with piano wire, a joy to eat and the red cabbage was delightfully sweet. What a wonderful and its bridge was made of hard plastic. The snapping of the strings on the meal. plastic produced a sound like castanets; it was almost like having a third instrument for the set. The weather was quite iffy, with a shower at one stage, Most of the other diners at the hotel were there for Fathers Day. I commented but the English were not deterred; they continued to picnic on the lawns, or to John that 20 years ago, you wouldn’t have thought of celebrating Fathers sit under little umbrellas. There weren’t all that many people sitting under Day away from home, especially with little children. The couple at the next the marquee where our seats were. The concert ran from 2.30 to 5.50. Dame table had a girl of about six and a boy of about four. They were seated before Cleo did not appear, but I was happy anyway to have been to Wavendon. In we arrived, and I heard the mother say to the little girl, ‘Here’s the menu for fact we’re going back tonight to see Anne Reid, who starred recently in Last you to choose.’ I don’t know if the child could read, but the mother got very Tango at Halifax on the ABC, who’s doing a cabaret show in The Stables terse a while later, saying, ‘Make up your mind. The sooner you choose, the Theatre. We’re just marking time for an hour or so at the Hilton, Milton sooner we can order.’ Free choice is all very well, but there should be some Keynes, which is a remarkably quiet hotel. limits. Bobbie Sheehy told us last week that when she started teaching she was at a

110 A concert in the garden of Dame Cleo Laine (shown in inset).

111 primary school near here, and Cleo Laine and John Dankworth and their anxious about his navigation, he didn’t remember to cough! We hadn’t son Alec Dankworth often came to the school to perform. Bobbie went on ordered breakfast; we made do with the last boiled egg each and a cup of to say that the school was near enough to Woburn Abbey for the children of tea/coffee and we scanned the maps and directions to make sure we knew some of the workers there to be pupils. She said it was not unusual to see a where we were going. I discovered to my delight that the public areas where child turn up at school with a baby lion or tiger on a lead! the free Internet code worked included our floor, so I didn’t have to go downstairs to check incoming emails. Singing at The Stables Some of you will have seen on the ABC in the last six months the program We’re back from Anne Reid’s performance and we’re riding on air. It was a called Avebury Manor, hosted by Penelope Keith. I fancied looking at Avebury performance by her and a pianist of mostly obscure songs dealing chiefly Manor after seeing the program, so we got underway at about 10.30. We got with love, but including the love of clothes and the love of family. These were lost trying to find our way out of Milton Keynes, but we happened upon a interlaced with stories from her childhood and her theatre career. It really shopping centre, where I tried to buy some more Strepsils and paracetamol was a most enjoyable night, a total contrast to the afternoon. for poor John. No Strepsils, but I picked up Lemsip and two packets of paracetamol. At the checkout the clerk said that she couldn’t sell me all three When we go somewhere new John and I play a game called ‘Ebbe will be because the Lemsip contains paracetamol, so I could have only two of the pleased’. Ebbe Lundgaard, of whom I’ve written in connection with the three. I don’t suppose I could buy three 100-tablet packs of Panadol the way Danish section of our holiday, left Melbourne in 1984 convinced that we I do at home occasionally. Yes, the pharmacist does ask why, but when I say knew everyone. Always when we go somewhere new we try to find anyone we one for upstairs, one for downstairs and one for the car, they never argue. know. Last night we thought there would be no chance of Ebbe being Things are a bit stricter in Britain, it seems. pleased. At interval we talked to the closest usher about the theatre and she mentioned that Dame Cleo often attends ‘but she isn’t in tonight. We’ve got It took us a couple of hours to get to Avebury. John had a coughing fit as we Victoria Wood though’. So with Anne Reid on stage and Victoria Wood in arrived and I went to give him a Lemsip, only to discover that I had bought the audience, we felt that we almost knew people there. In her conversations sachets, not tablets. John sometimes says he wonders that I have the gall to Anne mentioned Errol Flynn (born in Tasmania) and Dubuque (Iowa, to call myself a proof-reader, because lots of things I don’t read properly at all. which I have a connection) and the couple sitting next to us have a nephew As we were about to leave the Hilton car park this morning I grabbed the in Melbourne, so Ebbe might almost be pleased. Avis contract from the glove box to make sure they had noted the mileage in the car before we collected it so that I could work out how far we have From the lift lobby on the first floor of the Hilton Hotel at Milton Keynes, driven. On the back of the contract I found a list of the speeds one is allowed just before we leave for Bath. to go on UK roads. If I’d read that when I got it, you might have been deprived of one of the most spirited of the emails I’ve sent during this trip. That one 17 June 2013 probably got the most responses. Aiming towards Avebury It became fairly obvious that I should have done some research into Avebury before we came as well. It turns out to be much more than the restored manor The blackout curtains at the Milton Keynes Hilton were very effective, and I house (more on that later); Avebury is a world heritage-listed site because, didn’t get out of bed till 8 a.m. Poor John is so miserable with his cold and according to Wikipedia, one of its three stone circles is the largest stone circle its associated cough that I offered him the opportunity to spend the day in in Europe (bigger than Stonehenge), and is one of the best known prehis- bed, but he decided he would soldier on. I did notice that when he was

112 toric sites in Britain. It is both a tourist attraction and a place of religious to travel that I really regretted the fact that there are so few places to stop to importance to contemporary pagans, who, apparently, will be turning up in take photos. Mind you, the photos I take are never as good as the scenes I force this coming weekend for midsummer celebrations. see, and if I want truly professional-looking photos I can go to the Internet.

Despite all this, our first stop was at the pub, for lunch. I tried the smoked It was only once we got into Bath that we got into real trouble, but with the haddock bake, which presented me with spinach as well as peas and potatoes. advice of a passing fireman who took pity on us as we were parked outside John tried the Suffolk sausages and a half pint of the landlord-recommended his fire station with our heads bent over the atlas, and two phone calls to our bitter, but his poor old system is so out of sorts that he couldn’t manage more host here at the Devonshire House Hotel, we finally arrived. Host Chris even than half a sausage before his tummy objected. I offered to rent him a room parked the car for me on the busy street outside during the passing peak in the inn for the afternoon so that he could lie down but he chose to keep hour traffic. As soon as he gave us our room key, I demanded a gin and tonic, going with the program. and then another one. John has tucked himself into bed to try and get rid of the cold. I did use the Lemsip I bought and I hope that might help him. He Avebury Manor dates from the early sixteenth century and is surrounded by has done so well, but he is so keen to get home now. gardens. In 2008 the BBC and the National Trust undertook a program to ‘restore’ seven rooms in the manor house to represent various owners over Tuesday, 18 June 2013 the centuries. In the full picture of Avebury, the BBC project is small bickies, Bathing in the beauty of Bath but I’m sure they must be getting more visitors like me, whose interest was piqued by the program. Most of the others will probably visit the Stone Circles We’re probably in the tiniest hotel room we’ve had all trip, with a shower in as well. John and I wheeled our way through the downstairs rooms, but John one corner of the room and a toilet and washbasin in the other, but the bed sat and chatted to one of the guides in the 1930s room while I did the upstairs is clean and comfortable, the TV works, and we didn’t hear any traffic last rooms. We then made our way to the tearooms, only to discover that unlike night. John awoke feeling better after a good long sleep. Breakfast this the other NT tearooms we’ve visited in the last two weeks, this one is in the morning was good. There are only five rooms in the hotel. There is another library added to the house in the twentieth century. Tea is served at linen- Australian in the other ground floor bedroom, but she has been living in the covered tables in genuine china cups, saucers, and teapots. Coffee drinkers UK for the last five years. Our host is personable and helpful. He suggested get far less elegant stuff, and certainly not eggshell thin. Apparently all the that we hire a mobility scooter for John to get around Bath, and told me china has been donated, and so have the books that cram the library shelves, where to phone to organise it. A taxi came at 9.45 and dropped us at the available for sale at £1.50 each. Over tea we chatted to a couple from Bradford mobility centre 10 minutes later. The lady was very helpful, demonstrating on Avon who had just popped up for a visit. I’m amazed at how many to John how to work the machine and sending us on our way with a map to members the NT has, and the NT staff we’ve met have been quite assertive show us how to get to where the free guided walks start. We went past a about wanting to sign us up. We forgot to bring Gail’s membership card with Barclay’s Bank so that I could get some more cash, and we found our way to us. the (very crowded) square through streets lined with some really impressive buildings. Battling our way to Bath Bath is a beautiful city with a real uniformity because of the fact that all the Fortified by our drinks (and a far-bigger-than-I-should-have-had slice of buildings, from the Roman Baths to the houses built within the city bounda- indifferent coffee and walnut cake) we began our final leg to Bath. Again the ries in the last year, are all built with, or faced with, Bath stone, a limestone countryside was so enchanting and so different just in the few miles we had quarried locally. Our tour guide, Richard, a former Radio Bristol announcer,

113 concentrated heavily on the architecture of Bath and on the smart men of the Georgian period who were proper town planners. The famous crescents and circuses, which are as iconic of Bath as King’s College Chapel is of Cambridge, are unbelievably beautiful. I’m so sorry we allowed only one day for Bath. I reckon I could stay here quite happily for a month.

At the back of our group was a local woman who was very helpful to us in finding places where John’s scooter could go when the rest of the group went up steps. She turned out to be Sue Young, and she was training to be a guide herself. She has to go on three walks with guides who will sign a form to say she has been in their groups, then she has three months to study before she sits an exam and then goes out with a mentor before she is finally accepted as a guide. The three of us had lunch together in a building almost 300 years old, looking out over the Avon River.

John was having so much fun in the scooter that he wanted to keep going around the streets so we did a bit more wandering before he returned it. We went past the Theatre Royal and checked on tickets for tonight to see Relative Values, a Noel Coward play directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Patricia Hodge, Caroline Quentin, and Rory Bremner. Fortunately (she says, as John sleeps beside her at 8.45 p.m.) there weren’t any good seats left, so we John suggesting he might abandoned the idea and took back the scooter. It cost us £1 an hour for five sample a local attraction. hours. What a bargain!

We then bought tickets on the Hop-on Hop-off bus. There are two routes in Wednesday, 19 June 2013 Bath. One takes you outside the city centre to the surrounding hills so that Heading for home you get wonderful views of this gorgeous place tucked down in the valley, with its beautiful buildings snaking up the hillsides. The other trip takes you We’re at Helsinki Airport, at the end of our first leg on the way home. The through the sights of the town, many of which we saw on our walk. By the Suitcase Pick-up has gone successfully, thanks to the wonderful Ville, who end of the second trip we were ready for a taxi home, and John even did a was waiting patiently, with the suitcase on a trolley in one hand and a coffee fairly long walk to get to the taxi rank. He had a nap after a cup of tea, while (and maybe a doughnut in a bag?) in the other. We’re sitting in the Finnair I repacked my suitcase in preparation for a 9 a.m. departure tomorrow. We lounge, just occupying ourselves for an hour or so till the next leg of the flight went to the pub across the road for a curry and a pint. Fortunately it wasn’t — to Singapore. a blazing hot curry like the one we had last week, but nor was it up to the standard we’re used to at Brady Lodge. No wonder John felt like he needed This is the fourth time we’ve been to Helsinki Airport on this trip — the day another early night. we arrived, the day I brought us out here on a wild goose chase, the day we flew to Copenhagen, and today — and every other time it has been teeming

114 with people, like the MCG on Grand Final Day. Tonight Helsinki Airport is would come for us. like Dimboola on a Sunday afternoon. Heathrow, on the other hand, when we got there at lunchtime, was the railway station in a big city in China on The only airport in the world where we’ve had difficulty with wheelchairs is the Chinese New Year Holiday — people and luggage everywhere, nowhere Heathrow. In 2003, they backed a huge forklift up to the plane to take John to sit, noise all the time. It was a relief to find the very quiet Cathay Pacific and our friend Faye and me, along with a couple of other wheelchair people lounge to relax after the morning’s adventures. and their carers, down to ground level, then they conducted us to a small room and left us there. Eventually the other people were ‘rescued’, but after John was out of bed at 6.30, reading the Age on his iPad. He doesn’t want to we’d been there for an hour, John announced that this was ridiculous and be going home, he wants to be home, but that’s not the way air travel deals he was leaving. With that scenario in mind we discussed how long we would with us. We were all packed by breakfast time and ready to eat as soon as mine wait. After half an hour I enquired and was told that there were five or six host Chris appeared in his striped apron (he and John looked like twins, with people ahead of us, but the wheelchair man would be coming. We decided John being the grubby one) ready to heat me a croissant while I ate fruit and we would make our own way to the lounge and get the staff there to organise yoghurt. We had quite a chat with him about our time in Bath, the business a chair. On the way to completing this plan we struck a couple of people of running a B&B and how to get out of the place (‘as soon as you hit the M4 wheeling empty chairs so we asked whether it was possible for me to get a you’ll be parking the car at Heathrow in an hour and a half’). Ha! chair to wheel. ‘Oh yes,’ they said, ‘just ask over there.’ ‘Over there’ was a compound of about 20 dispirited-looking people all hoping for a wheelchair Our plane was due to leave at 4.10 p.m. We always aim to get to the airport some time this century, I’m sure. The compound was presided over by an three hours before we fly, and I had allowed an hour to get the car back and archetypal public servant who doesn’t enjoy his job, and the lack of a smile complete any formalities associated with that. So that meant we had to be at on his face underlined his sour attitude to life. One of the people we had Avis by noon, leaving us twice the time that Chris said we would need — well, spoken to indicated that we wanted to take a chair without a pusher and the twice the time after we’d found the M4. Following his instructions, the map, PS just shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Get one from over there.’ We didn’t and John’s careful preparation we did find the M4, but going the wrong way. argue; we took the chair, loaded up John and the two carry-on cases and We saw some wonderful views while we were trying to find a place to turn zipped through the airport at the speed I like to travel. around and the sun was shining so brightly that it seemed unfair that we had to leave. We never did find the road that would get us to the M4 going east; As business class travellers, we were entitled to use the fast track at the security we simply retraced our steps of Monday afternoon, back on the A4 via Box, point, so we got there fast and then waited patiently while the couple in front Avebury, Calne, Marlborough, and Swindon. There we did strike an M4 of us divested themselves of just about everything but their underwear and entry, an hour and a half after we’d left the B&B. And it did take just on an the man controlling the trays on the rolling shelf stood by, waiting patiently. hour and a half from there and we did fairly well, except for getting to the Eventually it was our turn, so I abandoned John in the wheelchair, hoping terminal before we’d found the rental return place and the petrol station. that someone would look after him while I kept an eye on the two carry-on But even given all those minor trifles, we still had the car deal all finished bags, my handbag, the laptop, the iPad, the passports and boarding passes, and we were in the courtesy car to Terminal 3 by 12.40 p.m. By a stroke of and the mobile phone. It was a blessing that the fast track wasn’t busy. luck we walked into the terminal at almost exactly the right place to check Meanwhile John had found a lady who could push his chair through the in to Finnair. They checked us in. They booked our luggage, including the security area and check the chair’s security, but she had to find a man to do wheelchair, through to Melbourne, and they assured me that there would be the pat-down and there was no one about. I quickly secreted my laptop back no difficulty in my getting off the plane at Helsinki to collect the case I had in my carry-on but another lady spotted me trying to put the iPad back into left behind. The asked us to ‘sit on those seats over there’ and a wheelchair John’s bag and wanted to take it away for ‘swabbing’. I wasn’t leaving John

115 and the bits and pieces so eventually she swabbed the iPad on the spot then travelling Business Class, not just business people and retired people like us went to the swabbing machine to check that it wasn’t going to do whatever (spending the kids’ inheritance), but numerous families with children from it might possibly do. A man was found to pat John down and we were free to tiny babies to late teenagers. Obviously travel isn’t regarded as expensive by go. The patter-downer even pointed out that the Heathrow chair had a spot the people born since the ’70s! Wi-Fi isn’t good here, so I’m leaving this to underneath for a carry-on, which relieved the weight on John’s knees. send from home sometime over the weekend. There will be one final episode after this to sum up what we learned and to make some reflections on our Sighing with relief, we made our way to the haven that was the Cathay lounge, adventures. and I had three red wines and John had a whiskey. I started the last lot of postcards to greats and non-email people because I had a stack of Finnish Wednesday, 26 June 2013 stamps I hadn’t used, and I figured I could post the mail at Helsinki airport Remembering and reflecting or give it to Ville to post for me. I think the best thing about the trip was how well John managed. He made We had a couple of quiet hours at the lounge, then made our way to the gate two good decisions: to travel Business Class and to take the wheelchair. Both lounge. The plane was very full, but we were loaded first and settled into the of those made the trip much easier for both of us. Whether we should have space at the front of the A320 that Finnair calls business class by seating two taken a GPS is still a moot point. Would I hire a manual car again? Maybe. I people in three seats, leaving an empty spot in the middle. We were the certainly wouldn’t leave the hire place without finding out how the trip meter seventeenth plane in line to take off after 4.15 p.m. and there were eight works, where reverse gear is, how to turn on the headlights, and whether the more waiting after us! Heathrow is a big airport. car has cruise control. The worst thing was that John has come home with a cold that has really laid him low, and rereading this dairy this morning, I The business class food wasn’t much to write home about, but the drinks realise he has been suffering since 10 June. Aside from the cold, I think he were plentiful — even a liqueur to have with coffee and the beautiful Belgian really did enjoy himself most of the time. chocolates that constituted dessert. I wonder what we’ll get on the next leg? Will I be too tired to watch the movies? Travelling with an oldie is different. You really have to limit what you do and where you go. It’s six years since we last did this kind of trip, and there is a Thursday, 20 June 2013 marked difference as to what John could accomplish then and what he can Speeding into Singapore accomplish now. Time to rest is very important, even if it’s only time to play games on his iPad. The spin-off for me is time to do the things I like doing. The flight from Helsinki to Singapore was uneventful — reading, movie, I recognised during the trip how much I enjoy the daily writing of a diary, meal, movie, movie, sleep, movie/sleep, meal, movie. Finnair Business Class and getting feedback from people who were reading it was a real buzz. It’s is a bit more luxurious on the big planes, with bags for your shoes, toybags probably the only time I really set periods aside each day to write, and while in paper bags, menus (though the meals are still served on the economy it’s not a grand style of writing, it’s what I enjoy. Next year the US is on the trays), and plenty of drinks. The pusher who collected us when we landed agenda and maybe somewhere else, but that is yet to be determined. walked us about a kilometre to the Qantas Business Class lounge, which is huge, classy, and generous with food and drink. I wonder what on earth — Robyn Whiteley, June 2013 happens in the First Class lounge? And I’m amazed at the number of people

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