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!


Sunday, September 06, 2009

Travel

The general wisdom, when about to head off on a inter-hemispherical, crossing multiple time-zones flight, is to go to bed early. General wisdom also says have a holiday when you are on long service leave.

But it makes me very happy that writing on my book has been going well these last few weeks. My gentle blog readers have received their chapters (thank you, all, so very much). On the other hand, it is now time for a holiday. We leave tomorrow morning for two weeks of mad touring around in Italy, and a few days in Paris and London.

So it also seemed important, tonight, to print out our various hotel reservations and google maps, and opera tickets (the barber of seville, performed in a palace in venice) and tickets to tour the houses of parliament (london) and my sister's phone number and the bus numbers to her house from the tube station, to find the list of hotels our cycling tour has booked us into, to find the Globe tickets for As You Like It. To say nothing of raiding J's music library to put some fresh music on the ipod, as well as, yes indeed, the third CD in the Ci Siamo Italian course.

I've shown my other sister how to feed the fish and the dear little cat, though she's hardly eating anything these days.

I have my book for the plane: Steve Carroll's The Art of the Engine Driver

What's left to do in the morning? Finish the washing; run to the bank and the chemist; pack. And, if I have time, to take up the hem of my new pants... Oh. And pack.

But now it's time for that early night. See you in a couple of weeks.

5 comments:

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Safe trip, and have a fantastic time.

Hannah Kilpatrick said...

I hope your Barber of Seville experience is better than mine was when I was in Italy! The tenor had only one gesture and used it every other line, the mezzo was in her 50s and moved like it, while sneering at the tenor, and the only thing the director could think of to make the act 1 finale interesting was to have a random jester come on and hit them on the head while they stood around repeating themselves. And the only song in which words were not forgotten, stumbled over and made up was the mezzo aria in the first act, which is one of those songs that most italians know by heart anyway.

meli said...

agh - i guess it's too late now but i'd be more than happy to read anything if it's helpful! (the leeds email address is still working - engmrdatleedsdotacdotuk)

in any case, have a brilliant holiday!

This old world is a new world said...

Thanks, all.

Meli, if you'd be willing to read the C20 chapter when it's written in a month or two, that would be fantastic. Thanks!

Update: I don't think I will, actually, be taking up the hem of those pants. Perhaps a bit of careful ironing and a few strategically placed stitches will turn them into cuffs...

meli said...

oooh, C20, my favourite! count me in!