Skeleton Coast by Clive Cussler

This is number 4 in the Oregon Chronicles series.

I'm not finished reading this so I may just change my mind about it after I've got to the end. I am having to read this for one of my book groups and if it weren't for that I would have abandoned it after Chapter 1. As far as I am concerned it's full of nonsense, toys for the boys, macho claptrap.

One of the more ridiculous bit was where one of the main characters, Juan, who has an artificial leg, has parachuted in to the desert. When things go wrong during the jump he ends up separated from the rest of his party and tries to join a convoy of Zimbawean (?sp) rebels. He uses some plastic explosives which he had stuffed in the artificial leg, to weld said leg to a round something and used the parachute to parasnowboard along the sand to catch up with the convoy. Oh please!

Ian's Christmas 2007

Ian got some books from Santa, Tools of War: the weapons that changed the world by Jeremy Black and Richard Hammond's Car Confidential.
He also wants to do a motorbike cornering course (??) so is investigating that.

Oh yes, but we can't show it because there might be children watching, he also got a banana guard!!!

Heidi's Christmas 2007

I put in my order for a Bushranger Firefighter helmet. Although we get issued with a free helmet, I wanted this one because it has a pull down visor which means I might not need to wear goggles with it - I can't get the regulation goggles to stay on my face no matter how tight I pull them. I think I might have to do my firefighting in swimming goggles otherwise!

Ian also managed to get a sticker with my name to go on the back. I just have to make sure I put it on straight now.

I also bought for myself a copy of a new picture book, Puff the Magic Dragon. It's a beautifully illustrated picutre book and comes with a CD of the song and a few others by Peter Yarrow.

I remember fairly well having Puff played on BFBS radio for my 5th birthday so it's very special to me.

Jamie's Christmas 2007

Jamie also got the same backpack and will get Japanese Yen for his trip to Japan on 8th January. He also got a copy of Matthew Reilly's latest novel - signed by the author. Jamie has been on the library reserve list for this title for ages so I thought I'd get it for him for Christmas. When I went to the bookshop in Penrith last Thursday there was a huge queue wending its way through the shop. Turned out Matthew Reilly was coming to do a book signing. I stood in line for about 3/4 hr and got it signed. Jamie was rapt.

Rob's Christmas 2007

Robbie requested and got a new backpack and a tent. The tent is a one man one, only about 50cm tall at its highest point, 2m or so long and very claustrophobic looking. He put it up in the living room - the cat thought it was marvellous.

Ishbel's Christmas 2007

Ishbel got books (cute Jack Russell Dog Detective - we also have a few on talking book in the library so I'll get her some of those too) and a pink unicorn (from the social club at Council). Named Sparkle, the unicorn is her favourite toy of the moment.

Christmas Day 2007

We had a really nice Christmas day yesterday.

Had a chat on Christmas Eve with Mum and Dad and Fiona via Skype. Spent a lot of the time we were online trying to fiddle with getting the webcam to work (without success) and then with the NORAD Santa tracker on Google Earth. Sorry I wasn't very chatty. It's not easy skyping when the kids are trying to watch something on TV as they were at the time.

I had been worried we hadn't very much for the children. I had been unable to bring myself to buy anything for Ishbel when out shopping the other night; she has so much junk in her bedroom, none of which gets kept tidily and I couldn't bring myself to add to that junk. As always, however, as I wrapped up the bits and pieces I realized we had plenty.
Christmas morning came (not too early thank goodness) and everyone happy with their presents.

I will do posts for each of the family with their favourite Christmas thing separately, youngest to oldest.

We headed down towards Roey and Pete's place just after 11am. There we had the full traditional Christmas dinner, not usually bearable in December but this year the weather was cool and we were in jumpers most of the day. There were oysters, prawns and various dips and cheeses to start followed by roast turkey, ham, tatties, salad etc. and later, quite a while later an icecream Christmas pudding and a 'normal' Christmas pudding. We tried hard to get the brandy to flame but just succeeded in blackening the spoon and wasting lots of matches and gave up in disgust.

During the late afternoon we went for a walk round the bay. Pete's mum Pat was with us. She's in her 80s and not used to walking much because its not flat round where she lives, but she managed the walk really well. We walked round to some rock carvings done by some of the early white sailors to Sydney - the ships would be dragged up in one of the bays near where Roey and Pete live to be shaved of barnacles etc and while there the sailors carved messages on the rocks.

We discovered it was almost 8pm by the time we got back to the house! Had no idea it was that late, the day passed very quickly. A last beer for Ian and we were on the road home by 8:30 and home by 9:30pm.

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Set in 12th century England, this is the story, told from numerous points of view, of the building of a cathedral in the fictional city of Kingsbridge.

Follett is better known as a thriller writer but tells us in the foreward that he became fascinated by cathedrals after a visit to Peterborough Cathedral which 'enraptured' him. The writing of this book took over a decade, during which time Follett continued to publish in his usual genre.
I only got to the end of Chapter 1 (p. 84) before giving up on this book. It's a shame, history is my thing and I was looking forward to settling in with a nice big tome for the Christmas holidays but I found the writing dull. The main character of that first chapter is Tom, a stonemason who, like Follett, is enraptured with cathedrals and longs to be the master mason in charge of building one. However, when the story opens, despite his skills, he is out of work with two children and a pregnant wife to get through the winter. The little family is robbed of a pig as they travel through a forest and Tom's daughter is knocked unconscious by the thief. A mysterious outlaw, Ellen, comes to their aid. Despite his wife, Agnes supposedly being his soulmate, Tom is attracted to Ellen. When Ellen reappears later, with Agnes dead only a short time after giving birth to a baby boy, Tom makes love to Ellen who declares she loved Tom from the moment she first clapped eyes on him. Tom gets over the death of his soulmate very quickly and I got over this absurd story.
In the introduction Follett writes, "Clowns should not try to play Hamlet; pop stars should not write symphonies. I should not have risked my reputation by writing something out of character and overambitious." How true.

Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer attempts to rehabilitate Ann Hathaway/Shakespeare who has not been treated sympathetically by the bulk of Shakespearean commentators.Little is known of the life of Shakespeare and even less is known about his wife, but people are willing to speculate and fill in the vast gaps and Ann Shakespeare has not come well out of the speculation. Her advanced years at the time of their marriage (she was in her late 20s, he in his late teens) has led the commentators to assume Ann tricked her husband into marriage and that he later left her for many years to bring up their family alone in Stratford while he persued and acting and playwriting career in London not only for ambition's sake. His bequest in his will of the second best bed has been interpreted as evidence that William Shakespeare hated his wife.Germaine Greer, who gained a PhD from Cambridge University with a thesis on Shakespeare's early comedies, looks at the scant documentation regarding William and Ann Shakespeare and, with a good measure of social history to put their lives in a 16th Century and not 20th or 21st Century context, gives her opinion that William and Ann Shakespeare's marriage was not hate-filled and presents Ann Shakespeare as probably a shrewd housekeeper respected in her community, in her family and esteemed by her husband.
An interesting read although her detractors may argue that Greer vehemently defends Ann Shakespeare's reputation on as scant evidence as Ann's detractors do. Most of the book is fairly accessible, although I found myself skipping bits.
I do love the cover.

I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson

In the late 1990s Bill Bryson returned to his native America after 20 years in Britain. Bryson was asked by a colleague to document his thoughts about America for a British newspaper. This book contains those column pieces in which Bryson holds a mirror up to American culture and wittily exposes its absurdities.COMMENTS : Do not attempt to read this book on public transport unless you want your fellow passengers to arrange for the men in white coats to greet you at your destination. This is laugh-out-loud, lose-your-breath, tears-streaming-down-your-face funny.

Bad Hair Days by Pamela Bone

In 2004 former Melbourne Age journalist Pamela Bone was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, an incurable cancer of the bone marrow. Her prognosis was poor, with an estimated life expectancy of between 1 and 8 years. Bad Hair Days is best described by the author herself: 'This book is an account of a journey with cancer: two years of my life in which the state of the world at times seemed to be reflecting the state of my health, or - to be less solipsistic - my state of health seemed to be in a similar condition to the world's. It is not an autobiography, though there are elements of that in it. It is not a textbook for cancer sufferers, although there are descriptions of cancer treatments and the various philosophies involved in treating cancer. It is about cancer, war, journalism, chocolate cake and a few other things.'
A very moving read. As she writes above, there is stuff about her cancer, which she so aptly describes as a 'sniper' picking off one in four people at random, but also about many other things. There is no self-pity here, Bone does not rail "why me?". There is a lot of humour and a lot of hope, Bone comes back time again to the theme of the inherent kindness of strangers. We are exhorted at the end of the book to take pleasure in the here and now, not to seek for happiness somewhere else and to live life to the full.

How fire fighters amuse themselves when things are slow . . .

End of year reports

All three kids are home with their end of year reports and all have done well. James in particular; he got first in class for English and Science. I was trying to scan the certificates just now but there is something amiss with our printer/scanner so I might have to add things later.
The end of the academic year is on Friday. Then the kids are on holiday until the 29th January 2008.
Ian is off over between Christmas and New Year and the first week of January. I am working between Christmas and New Year and have a few days off during that first week, but not all - the library stats have to be attended to. We are both back at work in the second week in January then I have another 2 weeks leave until they go back to school.
Jamie is off to Japan on a school trip on about the 9th January for 10 days.

Ishbel's diary

Ishbel has been keeping a diary. I said I'd transcribe it for her so here it is - as is:

Sunday 9.12.07
Today I am going to my friend Rubys house for the day. Ruby has a dog called Nellson. He looks like my dog Bella. The first game we played was crack the egg. The second game we played was schools in the cuby and then me and Ruby watched a movie called Sleep-over when the movie was over we went next door to play with the kids there names were Bridget and Liam after they left we went to Springwood pool for a little play but we stayed for three hours and I was with them for seven hours me, Ruby and Oscer all got chips with tomato sauce but Ruby didn't have sauce but we all had solt then we went back in the water to play.
When we where in the water we went in the werlpool and Oscer ws after us. We were swimming away from him. Then we had to go so me and Ruby hid after a wile we went out of the water and went home when I got home I had a souer and the I got dressed Then I played with my builda bear then I went on the computer and I went on my website and played Mixy's cubby house. I had fun that Sunday. For dinner we had paster The next day I went to school and at lunch I played with Kate, Elki and Ruby and at recese I played with the same people pm Thursday Ruby came my house for a play we had fun.

Liaising with the SES

Last Sunday a thunderstorm ripped through Blacktown in the western suburbs of Sydney. Lots of damaged houses, cars, etc. and a state of emergency was declared.
The agency that deals with this kind of thing is the State Emergency Service (SES) who put up tarpaulins, cut down trees and so on. Such was the extent of the storm, however, they needed help and the RFS was called in too.
A crew went from Valley Heights on Friday and at 6:45 on Sunday morning I joined Bert, Pete and Matt from our brigade at the station. We then met up with another 11 crews from across the Blue Mountains at Glenbrook and, after a bit of a briefing, we all went down to Blacktown in convoy.
We gathered at Homebase, Blacktown where the SES, in similar numbers, were also gathered. While we waited for our deployment orders, we were able to get free food and drink from McDonalds.
We were assigned one-on-one to an SES team. Our team was from Bungendore near Canberra. Our job was to provide support but we were told we weren't allowed to climb on roofs; we haven't been trained to do so.
We were given addresses of households that had reported problems we should see to. We were told not to door-knock to ask if anyone else needed help - apparently some people had been door-knocked three times and were getting a little bit tetchy about it.
The first place we were sent, we had to crawl round half a dozen streets - hardly any evidence of storm damage and even then, six days on, most had either been sorted already by some other SES crew, or had sorted themselves out. The only evidence of the storm was brought to us on a plate by one man who had three cricket ball sized hailstones in his freezer. He said they'd been burying themselves 50mm into the ground.
We then had to sit in the truck while the SES crew radioed in for our next deployment. After a 15-20 minute wait, we were sent back to Homebase for more coffee.
Then we were sent to another street which had been quite badly hit but, as I said before, six days on, most had either been sorted already by some other SES crew, or had sorted themselves out.
Another 15-20 min wait for redeployment.
The next house we went to, the old lady did need help but, because hers was a fibro roof (and might contain asbestos) the SES refused to touch it and she would have to wait for the NSW Fire Brigade Hazmat team to deal with it. She'd been seen by an SES team earlier in the week but someone obviously hadn't taken her off the list.
The next house I actually got to help - I took a ladder off the SES truck. There there were 3 little holes in the roof which the SES were going to fill in with silicon (gives you an idea of the minute size holes we were dealing with!) but couldn't get to them through the roof space, nor would their ladder reach onto the roof. The SES lady assessed them from outside and reckoned that they wouldn't leak water anyway. Then the householder had her climbing up a tree to check on the contents of an icecream bucket he'd nailed there for birds!!!!
Our Deputy Captain, Bert, was NOT impressed.
Well after that strenous activity it was time for lunch - free at an RSL club. Said goodbye to Bungendore SES who were heading home.
Then we had to go to SES HQ to await redeployment. And we waited and waited and played cricket and rescued the ball from a drain and got a chocky from Santa and waited and waited some more.
At 3:40pm we were stood down and could return home.
Bert, already in trouble from his wife for going out so close to Christmas, was trying to work out what to tell her about the day . . . it wasn't looking pretty!

Name change?

As you can imagine, we get all sorts of spellings and pronunciations of our surname. I thought we'd heard it all . . . until we got a Christmas card from our local pest inspection company addressed to Mr and Mrs Coltmuttoun - that was completely out of left field.

Lunch with Karen

I was up in Katoomba yesterday for work. We are getting a new internet PC booking system installed. We bought the program years ago but managed to buy it without the installation (the only people in the whole country ever to do so). My predecessor was fiddling with it but never got it done, IT have been fiddling for over a year. It wasn't until Gillian and I went to the meeting in Canberra that we found out it was easy to get the installation done for us by the company.
Not that things have gone smoothly since we decided to stump up for the installation to be done. Someone was supposed to put in a purchase order before he went on leave a month ago and didn't. Our library admin officer had to chase around to find out what was happening several times over the last month. Meanwhile the company had pencilled us in for Tuesday and Wednesday this week. On Monday they rang to say they still hadn't got the purchase order and we had until midday or Geoff the installation guy couldn't get on the plane from Adelaide. At 12:10 they rang again, giving us 10 mins to get the PO done, or send an email promising to pay. I quickly got the authorization to send the email and all was OK'd as the taxi arrived at the Adelaide end.
ANYWAY . . . as I drove in to Katoomba yesterday morning, I saw Karen's work and thought I could go and see if she could have lunch with me. So, before going to the library I popped in and we made a date.
Had fish and chips and a lovely chat. I hadn't seen Karen or Dan for a while.
She took a pic of a big Christmas tree sculpture that's up outside the Carrington Hotel for me. I'll post the pic when she sends it. The title of the sculpture really tickled me - Peas on Earth.

Righting the truck

Just a few pics of the truck being righted.

You can see a slide show of all pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11895723@N05/sets/72157603379154328/show/

Overturned truck on Victoria Pass 2

Back down at the overturned truck we were put to work moving the gear out of the truck into another truck which was not even half the size of the overturned one. Much 'you've gotta be kidding" and expletives when we saw what we had to try to do. We got a line going, ferrying stuff from one truck to the other. Most of the stuff being moved was not in good condition, even before it went head over heels, it looked like it was more ready for the tip than relocating in a new house. I suspect the poor owner of the stuff would not have insurance to cover the damage.

Luckily it was Saturday and the traffic wasn't as heavy as it would be tomorrow when people who've been away for the weekend returning to Sydney. We were able to keep a two way flow going, only stopping the traffic entirely for 20 mins or so while the truck was righted and attached to the back of the tow truck.

Overturned truck on Victoria Pass

So Steve and I jumped in the truck and headed up to the overturned truck on Victoria Pass and found ourselves helping out.

The truck was full of stuff from a family moving house. The driver had borrowed the truck from a brother-in-law and the breaks had failed going down the very steep hill. He was very lucky that no one was seriously hurt (his young son and another adult were also in the truck when the accident happened), that he didn't encounter any other vehicles coming up the other way because he ended up on the wrong side of the road, and that he didn't go careering over the guard rail and into the 90 metre drop.

But before we dealt with the truck there was another vehicle in distress on the pass. A ute had broken down - this one had a Santa's sleigh on the back and was towing a horse box. In the horse box were 3 live reindeer!! We hooked them up and towed them up to the top of the pass to the nearest petrol station.

Rob's Bushfire Assessment Day

Robbie had his BF assessment today. His mate, Nick, was also being assessed and Nick's dad, Graham and I went as a helpers/assessors. We had a busy day in wet, dreich Katoomba. Following completing the multiple choice questions, the teams had to deal with a small fire scenario, a property protection scenario and a large fire scenario.
Graham and I had a bit of trouble keeping a fire going in some drums - even the liberal use of the drip torches couldn't keep the straw burning well in the rain. The first team we dealt with got a reasonable blaze to tackle but subsequent fires were rather laughable.

Rob's team was held up for a little while after one of the team complained of chest pains. The ambulance was called but it seems he was having a severe anxiety attack and the ambos went off to attend a motor vehicle accident (MVA).

During lunch a couple of teams were quickly put together to attend the MVA also - a truck had overturned going down Victoria Pass. Graham raced off to help while we finished off the assessment with the boys.

We couldn't go home without Graham so had a bit of hanging about to do. The assessment day was held at Firecom at Katoomba. I've been there several times as Council use the building for training but hadn't been in the communications room. One of our brigade, Helen, was working there so she gave me a quick overview of what they do.


After hanging about for some time, Steve decided he and I would go up to the MVA and have a look. We had to leave Robbie and Nick because they are not yet certified to attend incidents and they are still too young to do so even if they were.