I haven’t posted for a while, but have been a avid reader of Mark’s ‘blogs. His description of the train journey raises so many images, as well as questions. I can understand his hesitation to involve himself in others’ affairs, the English way. On the other hand, Australians seem to have a different attitude, although still not intrusive on others, I think.
As you walk down the street, in Australia it is common for complete strangers to greet each other, in passing. Of course it doesn’t happen in crowds, and less even in the more-densely-populated areas in cities, but out here in suburbia as I cycle to work, passing complete strangers in the morning is accompanied by brief greeting from both of us. I remember one of our friends, another expatriate Englishman, telling a story about how he went back to Hull, greeted someone in a cafe as though he was in Australia – a complete stranger – and was met with complete incomprehension and misunderstanding!
I also like reading the descriptions of the plays. Ones I will never see, of course. Nevertheless the critical appraisals are interesting in their own right. Both Dido and Coriolanus seem worth the trip to see, if you can.
Finally, for this part, the description of Grange seems to me to be spot on, from what I have seen on my visits. Long may it be neglected by the supermarket chains. It seems just like the country towns from when I was a child. I wouldn’t want to live there, though, just visit and be nostalgic.
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We are downsizing, so I am told, and so we are taking the opportunity to pass on items we no longer use, or if all else fails, we will throw them away. Some are throwbacks to my/our time in England, and in some ways it is sad to see them go. My canoe, a sixteenth birthday present, has gone to a new home – someone who may actually use it: I have not done so for a decade. My sailboard has gone the same way. The two boys beds no-one wanted, although some other furniture has gone. My old car-maintenance equipment has been sold – it goes back to when I owned an Austin A40, my first car.
Tonight our collection of “compact cassettes” has gone. That was an interesting exercise: in making the decision to give them away, I went through and listened to many of them again – and came to the conclusions that the cassette was a truly awful way of recording high-quality music. Even with our old Bang and Olufsen 8004 player, which was state-of-the-art in its day, they sounded terrible in comparison to my vinyl LPs of the same vintage, let alone our Compact Discs. So a select few – specific interesting or rare recordings – were made into digital recordings, and the rest were sold, going with my old JVC 720 recorder, tonight. If you like that sort of thing, the JVC with 200+ cassettes was a bargain, as was the B&O – they both went for $50 each. The former to a local enthusiast and the latter to a B&O collector who arranged for it to be shipped to himself in Perth (WA) ! I was just glad to see them go to good homes. I have kept three recordings which I thought Mark and John would like (they still have a player in Cark) – a full BBC recorded set of the Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy radio series, and two spoken word recordings of Alan Garner’s “Weirdstone of Brisingamen” and “Moon of Gomrath”.
Incidentally, e-Bay is useless, in my experience. Costs money, no replies. Better to go local, and I had success with “Gumtree”. I wonder what the equivalent is in England – Oaktree ?
Next are the VHS cassettes, which I have just started. I might just as well junk all the recordings of “Have I Got News For You” right away, but what about the recordings of BBC/ITV/C4 Shakespeare productions? What about those recordings of Inspector Morse, or Absolutely Fabulous? Actually, Sue has a good point – the VHS recordings are really awful, noisy and fuzzy, and if I really want something, better buy the programs on DVD. Anyone want a VHS recorder and a pile of home recordings? I thought not – even worse than music cassettes.
What, no pictures this entry? No, got rid of them on Gumtree …..