Scratch Pad 80 February 2012. 22 pages. Based on *brg* 74, a fanzine for ANZAPA (Australian and New Zealand Amateur Publish- ing Association). Written and published by Bruce Gillespie, 5 Howard St, Greensborough VIC 3088. Phone: (03) 9435 7786. Email: [email protected]. Member fwa. Ditmar’s Birthday card Somewhat to my surprise I reached the age of 65 on 17 February 2012. (It was 1972 last time I looked.) At a small gathering of old friends on the night before, Dick Jenssen (Ditmar) presented me with the birthday card shown on the right. The image was generated by Dick using his own DJFractals program. Dick writes: ‘The escapetime fractal takes a progression of keyboard characters and converts them into coefficients of two cubic functions, and then uses these functions to generate a fractal. For your card, the characters were: HappyBirthdayBruce. But, of course, I then used my program’s bell and whistles and tweaks to generate the final image...’ 1 What are we seeing? Christmas Day, 2011. We arrive home from Christmas dinner. Greensborough has been hit by a rain and hail storm. We look out the back door and see the scene shown in the photo (right). What are we seeing? On the left is one of our compost bins. It is over a metre high and about a metre in diame- ter. Beside it is the col- lapsed cat enclosure, made of very tough netting. The white blob is the reason why it’s collapsed: a great ball of unmelted hail nearly as big as the compost bin. It took 24 hours to melt. (See story below, page 3.) 2 Contents Politics is too chunderous to mention in a family fanzine. Cover: ‘Happy birthday Bruce’ :: Ditmar (Dick Jenssen) I don’t want a cloud of gloom to ruin your pleasant Sunday afternoon. All I want is a smidgeon of subject matter that will set me burbling. 2 Editorial meanderings :: Bruce Gillespie What, then, has given me the greatest pleasure over the last few 3 FAVOURITES OF 2011, months? PLUS TASTING NOTES 3 Favourite popular CDs heard for the first time in 2011 Lots of events, but they’ve been tarnished by writing about them on 5 Best popular boxed sets or reissues bought during 2011 Facebook. It takes only a few lines on Facebook to write about any 6 Best classical boxed sets bought during 2011 event, so I do so. Off the screen, out of mind. But they are the kinds 7 Favourite classical CDs heard for the first time in 2011 of events that used to fill fanzine pages. 9 Favourite NOVELS read for the first time in 2011 9 Favourite BOOKS read for the first time during 2011 We did have fun on Friday night (3 February). You might remember 12 Favourite films seen for the first time in 2011 Joy Window from the Good Old Days of 1976. I featured a few 14 Favourite music DVDs/Blu-rays seen for the first time in 2011 pictures of her on the cover of recent ANZAPA mailings, showing her 15 Favourite films seen again during 2011. emerging from one of the mechanical Daleks that competed in the Dalek Race at Unicon 2 at Melbourne University. She had dis- Proofread by Elaine Cochrane. appeared from our sight many years ago, but a few years ago she and Elaine ‘met’ again on the Internet as a result of doing freelance science editing for the same publishing company. She had kept in touch with fellow South Australian fan (from the early 70s) Alan I’m sick of editing textbooks and compiling indexes for a living. I’ve Sandercock, and in Scratch Pad 79 I published her article about sent out those little email messages telling you to download your visiting him and Jane in Atlanta. She and her partner Andrew Roberts latest Gillespie fanzines from http://efanzines.com. Addressing were visiting from near Lismore in New South Wales. We hadn’t met envelopes is a task too boring for words. So far I’ve sent out only Andrew before, and of course we were a bit nervous about meeting six print copies of Steam Engine Time 13. I’ve looked at the Joy, as we hadn’t seen her since 1977. But there she and Andrew documents I must fill out so I can apply for an old age pension on were, last Friday, outside the Australia, and it felt as if no time had 17 February. I’ve pushed them aside. I need to do is write something passed since we had last had a conversation 35 years ago. The — but what? conversation just fizzed along as the various members of the ‘Friday night group’ arrived at the Australia, and we then went on to Ciao I could write about the recent changes to ABC’s second radio restaurant. The group included such old MUSFAns as Dennis Calle- network, suddenly brand-changed to ‘Radio RN’. That would make gari, Francis Payne, and Alan Wilson. We were also joined by the me all hot and upset. You wouldn’t want me writing long strings of whole Wilson family, Judy, Timothy and Andrew, as well as Carol swear words about the ABC, would you? Kewley and Thomas Bull. A sort of mini-MUSFA Bistro Night, although not loud or drunken like those infamous 1970s events. I could write about politics, as Jack does with a flick of a keyboard. 3 A social occasion with a different outcome was Christmas Dinner. many neighbours had suffered severe damage: in one case water Elaine’s sister Val and husband Fred invited us over for Christmas straight through skylights into a newly renovated kitchen. Since the lunch in Diamond Creek (three suburbs away). It was hot and steamy centre of the storm was the Greensborough–Eltham–Diamond Creek and a cool change was predicted for sometime during the afternoon. area, full of steep streets and ex-waterways, many houses in lower We were joined by Val and Fred’s daughter Carol and her family areas had metres of water sloshing through them. (partner, one son, two daughters), had dinner and were taking the air, sitting on the back balcony and watching the ravens and cockies Elaine spent seven hours before she could get on to the insurance in the tree nearby when we saw the storm coming. We could see company. The man from CatMax has inspected the enclosure over the entire valley from Diamond Creek to Templestowe. The damage and given us a quote, and the house repairs man has clouds were flaring with strange colours. Suddenly we could see only inspected the small amount of other damage that needs to be the closest folds of hills. Then none. Then the storm hit. The rain fell repaired. But we still haven’t heard back from the insurance company so heavily we could see nothing much beyond the house. The — hardly surprising, since there were 15,000 insurance claims from hailstones fell — straight through the laserlight plastic covering of our area alone to various companies. the balcony. One of Carol’s daughters was dancing around on the balcony, but retired hurt. A hailstone had hit her on the face. It was Most other action around here has been rhythmic and boring rather the largest hailstone any of us had seen: an ordinary hailstone than melodramatic: things that happen stop other things happening, wrapped in a large coating of jagged ice. but must be done anyway. For instance, I turn 65 on 17 February, and have to do decide what to do about it. I could decide to just keep The first storm passed. The cloud formation that was floating off working, but that has hardly been profitable during recent years. looked suspiciously like a tornado funnel. Fred inspected the Since 2007 I’ve really been living on the inheritance I received from damage. The roof of his car was covered in pockmarks from being my mother’s estate, but that’s nearly run out. I have a small super- hit by the hailstones. Carol’s car, a little more sheltered, was hardly annuation nest egg coming in: not enough to fund an Allocated dented. Pension, but if set up correctly perhaps enough to give me a thin income cushion. The answer? The old age pension, if I can run the Fred drove us home to Greensborough, only 10 minutes’ drive away. race and leap the obstacles. I’ve started filling out the forms, five of We expected the worst: at the very least a torrent of water through them so far, and I don’t know the answers to lots of questions. The the skylight in the kitchen. We looked around. No problems, but the fact that Elaine and I are a private company, a helpful setup until cats were terrified. Fred left, and fortunately arrived home just now, could be a problem. Still, I need to obtain the pension somehow before the second storm hit. We looked out the back. Oh. One of the to have any hope of retiring from freelance editing. Elaine cannot two cat enclosures had collapsed. In the middle of the mess was a apply for another six and a half years, but she is certainly not earning gigantic ball of ice formed from hailstones. (The ball had still not enough to support me. Much scratching of heads around here. melted the next morning.) We couldn’t let the cats out there. The other, small enclosure had suffered much less damage, so we let the But, you say — what have I been doing that’s been really enjoyable? cats out there in shifts.