2016

I've kept this blog, on and off, since 2006. In 2015 I used it to chart daily encounters, images, thoughts and feelings about volcanic basalt/bluestone in Melbourne and Victoria, especially in the first part of the year. I plan to write a book provisionally titled Bluestone: An Emotional History, about human uses of and feelings for bluestone. But I am also working on quite a few other projects and a big grant application, especially now I am on research leave. I'm working mostly from home, then, for six months, and will need online sociability for company!


Thursday, November 20, 2008

Bells: Strike Three!

I'm at home marking honours essays and theses this morning, but can hear, as I heard last night, the very distinctive sound of a bellbird. There is a little community of them at a certain turn of the Merri, where I walk most mornings, and in summer you can see their mossy green bodies at eye level as they hang upside down feeding in the trees alongside the path. I've not heard one in our garden before, but it is a wonderful piercing and distinctive sound. If you follow the link above, you can hear exactly what I'm hearing.

On my desk at work is a beautiful tower (ok, vase full) of pink Canterbury Bells, given me by a student, in commemoration of Chaucer, and even more specifically, of Criseyde, whose name and reputation will be rung like a bell down the centuries.

And on my bedside table, the novel I was reading on the plane home, recommended by the same student for the purpose, Dorothy Sayers' Nine Tailors, which is structured by bell-ringing in a little East Anglian church. I'm not a huge reader of detective fiction, but I had read this before (and completely forgotten the plot). It was nice to buy it in a bookshop on Venice beach, though!

Ringing the bells for serendipity this morning.

OK, now back to the marking.

5 comments:

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

'Cats, bells and mirrors,' said Lord Peter. 'They're queer, and it doesn't do to think too much about them.'

Suse said...

We usually have a gazillion bellbirds out here in the semi-rural hills but I was commenting to the mister just yesterday that they've disappeared lately. Now I know where they've gone!

Anonymous said...

The butler did it :-)

Hannah Kilpatrick said...

And, courtesy of Bunter's mother: facts are like cows. If you look them hard enough in the face, they'll usually run away.

I find I usually forget the plots of detective novels. With Sayers' books, I remember the romance plot but have no idea who did what and how, so those bits are re-discovered every time. Funny what information our brains choose to retain.

genevieve said...

I am not a crime reader at all, but if you and PC are Sayers readers, it is probably time I took a gander.

Bells always ringing here too - though less than usual, I think parrots are starting to crowd the bellbirds out.