Journal: 103

I haven’t had any work for the past couple of weeks, not that you could tell from either my reading or my blogging. I do have a job booked for next week, and I finally sold a trailer that has been on the market all year, so my bank balance is fine. Crass, I know, to talk about money. But having been broke previously as an owner driver I am very happy to be properly capitalised this time around, and anyway, I’m old and a comfortable or at least non-destitute retirement is always on my mind.
Now I’ve sold both my A-trailers, I will no longer run as a B-Double or B-Triple. My standard configuration will be a double road train – two drop decks connected by a dolly. If that’s double dutch, sorry, just let it go. But here’s another truck pic if that helps.

Arum lilies: Last weekend I went down to Gee’s bush block on the south coast. Arum lilies are all through her block, all through all the jarrah/karri/tuart forests; the “cane toads of the South West” according to the ABC. So I spent some hours grubbing out a patch close to the house, till working on 45 deg slopes did me in. Then we started the much delayed business of burning off the undergrowth which the previous ageing owners had allowed to get out of control. It was a bit damp, a bit late in the season, but at least that meant it was unlikely to get away. In fact we had to keep raking material, bracken and leaves, up to the fires to get them to move at all.

We rewarded ourselves with a trip to the local restaurant brewery, the Boston if you’re down that way, and seeing I for once wasn’t the driver I had an excellent 7.5% IPA to go with my also excellent (v & gf) pizza.
Going down and back I listened to the second Eden Robinson “Trickster” novel, Trickster Drift, which I won’t review, except here to say it was disappointing compared with Son of a Trickster. Just a drily told story of Jared’s first year away from home, with a lot more Native magic, and none of the grunge or romance of the first.
For my real reading I’m struggling to find the time/concentration to read Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy. I got Jack London out of the way before the month was over (just!) and now I’m started on Agnes Grey. An excellent Introduction by Angeline Goreau – who has written a couple of interesting-looking books, one about Aphra Benn and another on C17th women – gives some more background to the New Woman, and that is, by the 1850s there were nearly half a million more women than men in Britain, so of course they needed jobs.
That’s it for news. I’m on a diet – the 5 and 2 – properly this time, after getting 15 kg above my weight when I stopped swimming (in 2017), and I thought I was 7 or 8 kg overweight then. Exercise is a struggle, but I ride to Milly’s once or twice a week (when I’m home). Seeing as I often talk about us living on opposite sides of the river, I got Google to make a map, though in the middle (below) it takes a short-cut past the football stadium, so let’s say 5 km each way.

Recent audiobooks
Holly Wainwright (F, Aus/NSW), The Couple Upstairs (2022)
Mark Brandi (M, Aus/Vic), The Rip (2019)
Ian Bone (M, Aus/xx), The Song of an Innocent Bystander (2002) – YA
Helen Fitzgerald (F, Aus/Vic), Keep Her Sweet (2022)
Cecilia Ekback (F, Sweden/Lapland/Canada), The Historians (2021) – Hist.Fic./Crime
Susan Wiggs (F, USA), Briar Rose (1987) – Nonsensical medieval romance DNF
Eden Robinson (F, Can), Trickster Drift (2018)
Currently Reading
Jack London (M, USA), The Iron Heel (1908)
Anne Brontë (F, Aus/Tas), Agnes Grey (1847)
Alexis Wright (F, Aus/Qld), Praiseworthy (2023) – this will take a long, long time!
AWWC May 2023
Date | Contributor | Title |
Wed 3 | Elizabeth Lhuede | The gambler’s wife and the fraudster’s daughter: Norah Skeffington Carroll |
Fri 5 | Stories FTA | Norah Skeffington Carroll, The conversion of a celibate (short story) |
Wed 10 | Stacey Roberts | Aboriginal domestic servants in colonial women’s fiction, 1854-1906 |
Fri 12 | Stories FTA | Jeannie Gunn, The Little Black Princess (fiction extract) |
Wed 17 | Bill Holloway | Caroline Leakey, The Broad Arrow (review) |
Fri 19 | Stories FTA | Caroline Leakey, The Broad Arrow (fiction extract) |
Wed 24 | Stacey Roberts | Female Domestic Service |
Fri 26 | Stories FTA | Mabel Forrest, “Frances Floriline” (short story) |
Wed 31 | Whispering Gums | The Australian Literature Society’s Women’s Nights, 1920s |