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.