I've started keeping a diary...

 I've started keeping a diary, an almost daily record of what I've done and when, bike rides, interesting things I saw online that I might follow up on, that sort of thing.

I've never really kept a personal diary before. Travel journals, yes, and work and project diaries, yes, but personal day to day diaries, no.

Which in retrospect is a pity, there's been a lot of interesting little snippets along the way that I should have noted down.

I'm structuring the diary like one of my work or project diaries - essentially a journal rather than a diary.

I've always found work and project diaries useful to keep a record of what was done when and indeed where we are up to, as well as in the days when I had to do such things, compile the dread annual activity statement.

Strangely I didn't keep a work diary for either of my projects with the National Trust, instead just relying on my utterly illegible work books, and the spreadsheets I created along the way.

My reasoning for not keeping a work diary were that they were both 'start at the beginning and keep on going until you reach the end' type projects.

In retrospect that was a mistake, especially in the case of Dow's, where there was a hiatus of nearly fifteen months  due to the various Covid lockdowns and closures. While I did document my decisions along the way in various blog posts, they don't give the level of detail a proper project diary gives.

In the absence of any real project plan or an external project manager, I found I had to make decisions along the way about how to do things, which I documented in various blog posts.

However, keeping a project diary would have been useful to record the various useful out of scope things that happened along the way and supplementary information and documentation that I generated.

At Lake View, that was less of an issue, as the project was more tightly defined, but again a project diary might have been worth keeping.

I did start keeping one towards the end of the project, simply because I was also spending time up at the Athenaeum, and I needed to keep a record of what I did for which project.

I've carried on keeping a project diary for my work at the Athenaeum, into which I add other bits and  pieces, like blogs posted and odd little ad hoc bits of research, like my work on the Friends of Russian Freedom.

Likewise I've been keeping a travel diary for years, at first just for our longer trips, but now for most trips, I find it useful to be able to put us in a place at a particular time.

So, now a personal diary. Today's the first day of it, so it's pretty boring so far but I'm hoping a written record of things, books I mean to buy, and other useful snippets might prove useful.

The other thing about the diary is that I'm keeping it in a hardback notebook -  a cheap Amazon basics notebook and writing it with my trusty Lamy nib pen.

The paper quality of the cheap Amazon notebook is not too bad - not quite as nice as ClaireFontaine or Moleskine, but smooth enough to write on with a nib pen without any blotches.

I do find writing in a notebook with a nib pen helps fix things in my memory more that simply just using Evernote or OneDrive to manage documents, or indeed to use jrnl on one of my computers to make a day by day record.

We'll see how this goes...

A curious lemon

 A few days ago, we took the last few of last year's big old lemons off the tree in the yard to make way for this year's crop.

Some were still good enough to juice, or slice up to garnish chicken roasted in the oven or indeed a pre-dinner tipple.

We sliced into one of them 

and found a lemon seedling growing inside the lemon.

Havn't seen that before ...

A return to some sort of normality

 After the disruption caused by Lucy's passing, after which neither of us was good for much while we grieved, not to mention helping our remaining cat adapt to being the only cat in the house - he has been calling for Lucy, and sometimes, when he goes out on the deck still looks behind him to see if she's following him.

Still, cuddles, love and attention seems to be soothing him and I'm sure he'll come to terms with her not being around.

We have soothed ourselves by putting a little cat sculpture in the garden to remind us of her and I must admit I caught myself talking to it while working in the garden in the same way I would chat to our cats

The weather has been quite wonderful, warm afternoons but distinctly chilly mornings and evenings. I've been able to press on with tidying the garden before winter, and have been continuing my probably vain attempt to get all the couch grass out of the garden bed.

It will probably soon be time to start planting our winter vegetables, and I've had a bit of a cock up there.

Earlier this week Ausnet turned off the power to the street to do some maintenance to the power poles and as it was going to take them several hours we went out, first to the big Bunnings hardware store in Albury, and then on to Talangatta for lunch at the bakery.

While we were in Bunnings we bought some plants in pots and trays, plus some seeds. I don't know what happened, but when I put the plants in a cardboard box to protect them I seem to have forgotten to pick up the seeds, or else I dropped them.

Whatever happened, they weren't there when we got home, obviously my bad, so I reordered them online and hopefully they'll be here next week.

For obvious reasons, I've not been for a bike ride for almost two weeks, despite it still being (just) warm enough to ride in the mornings before breakfast, and it's now getting too late in the year for riding in the mornings - the sun's not up till after seven, and even if I set off a little before sunrise I'm having to contend with the start of the morning commuter traffic, which kind of spoils the pleasure of it, so I guess the answer is some afternoon rides, like my ride to Baarmutha a few years ago, before winter proper sets in.

Up at the Athenaeum it's been cataloguing and more cataloguing. Again no real finds this week, just the usual mix of Victorian novels lightened with some 1930s crime and romance novels, the escapist literature of the time ...

Lucy, 2017 - 2026

 

Our cat Lucy died today.

She had been sick for some time, not really eating, losing weight, and generally fading away. 

A few times she seemed to rally, and we thought there might be hope of a recovery, but it was not to be.

We of course took her to the vet, where they ran the standard tests, and couldn’t find anything obviously wrong, she was simply ill.

A second trip to the vet was a little more hopeful and she seemed to be picking up, but again, it was not to be.

We had discussed treatment options with the vet, but given that she was already weak and ill, and it could well be cancer or lymphoma, there really wasn’t anything further to be done.

We decided that since she was not obviously in pain the kindest thing would be to let her enjoy her last few days at home sitting in the sun on the back deck, something she always loved to do.

After a few days when you could see glimpses of her old playful self, she started to fade away again.

Even so, as late autumn turned colder and wetter she still wanted to be outside in the sun for an hour or two in the early afternoon watching the birds rootling around in the leaf litter and thinking cat thoughts about who knows what.

And then, as she became weaker, and really couldn’t do much more than sit on her favourite cushion, we realised it was time to let her go in as dignified way as possible.

Her last day was a cold, chilly but sunny day with snow on the mountains.

As if she knew this was the end, she insisted on sitting outside for one final time, before it was time for us to take her to the vet to be put to sleep.

Utterly heartbreaking.

She had come to us a few years ago as a former breeding queen who was in need of a home and some love, which she returned ten fold, always wanting to snuggle on a cold morning, or simply sit quietly with you while you were reading or working on your laptop.

A lovely sweet cat, she will be missed.

 

 

A little more like normal

I'd expected this week to be a bit scrappy like the previous two but life at Moncur towers has settled down again, with a couple of afternoons working in the garden in the unseasonably warm weather. (Not only have I been wearing shorts, the strawberries have started fruiting for the third time this year!)

The only trouble is that while it's been warm and sunny, it's also been dry - the soil in the garden is really really dry, which is going to be a problem in a week or two when gets time to start planting our winter veg. 

Mornings are still cold and chilly though as I discovered when I went for a bike ride just after dawn earlier this week

and while it's nothing amazing, I'm quite pleased with my performance.

Up at the Athenaeum, I'm done with prayerbooks for the moment and am back working on the historic book collection. Nothing remarkable this week, mostly crime and romance novels from either the interwar period or the 1950s.

Other than a couple of bodice rippers with bookplates from the Victorian Railways Institute Library, all the books this week seem to have been purchased direct from booksellers, which perhaps reflects the declining popularity of circulating libraries.

And I've been spending my money again on old nineteenth century postcards.

This weeks purchase is an 1896 postcard from Durban, in what was then the British colony of Natal, and is now the largest city in KwaZuluNatal in South Africa

very much a standard colonial pattern postcard of the time designed for international use - hence the 'Union postale universelle' strapline above the name of the colony.

It's addressed to a Mr R Stanton, 22 Royal Arcade Sydney.

Now vanished - it was demolished in 1969 - the Royal Arcade ran between George Street and Pitt Street near the former School of Arts

I havn't transcribed the message yet, that will be a task for a wet afternoon, but I can share that the card was sent from 80 Alice Street in Durban.

Alice Street has been renamed Johannes Nkosi Street and has been through some changes over the years and is now the site of a major transport interchange. A very quick search has not revealed any photographs of what it looked like in the colonial period, but it was already the site of a major tram interchange around the postcard was mailed...

Still scrappy

 

The weather's been glorious, and as you can see from this picture of our back deck the decidious plants are starting to put on their autumn show.

Lots of bits and pieces making for a very scrappy week, so scrappy that I didn't even manage a bike ride, despite the excellent autumn weather.

Up at the Athenaeum I've finished doing the prayerbooks, something which turned out to be a little more complex than I first thought.

Librarything isn't really set up to handle items where the chief interest is in the ownership and the graffiti in the item and not the item itself.

I ended up creating a simple stub catalogue entry, allocating a temporary call number and typing a free text description of the item and the graffiti into the comment field.

Not ideal, but really we need an asset management solution here rather than a library catalogue.

And just for fun here's the drawing concerned

Most of the rest weren't really that interesting, names and addresses and the like

However, I did have a minor win with last week's shorthand puzzle - the shorthand system used is most likely Dacomb, which dates from the nineteen thirties, and if nothing else helps demonstrate the longevity of prayer books, hymn books and other devotional publications in a less secular age.

I've also been spending my pocket money on some nineteenth century postcards, and this time I've had a win in identifying the recipient.

The actual message is in typescript and from a large department store in Melbourne confirming the despatch of an order via Victorian Railways.

It's interesting in that there is obviously an assumption that the postcard will reach an address in rural Victoria before the order arrives at a small rural railway station...

Scrappy but productive

 This week's been a scrappy but productive week - in between a visit to the eye hospital - nothing serious, last time I had my eyes tested the optometerist noticed that the pressure in my eyes seemed to be going up every year, and it needed to be checked out.

As it was it was nothing serious - my corneas have become a little thicker over the years, and the standard optometrist's test does not allow for this and tends to produce higher than normal readings. Using a more accurate specialist test showed that everying was more or less normal, which was a relief.

My other encounter with the medical profession this week was my annual flu shot - I had it done at the pharmacy in Yackandandah as its usually pretty quiet and anyway it's nice to drive over to Yack to have a coffee in the autumn sunshine - and it is autumn. 

We've hit that point where it flips over from being the tail end of summer to early autumn with chilly mornings and sunny golden days, and on the day I went for an early morning bike ride it was certainly chilly and perhaps time to stop riding in shorts in the mornings.

Workwise, I've started on the prayerbooks at the Athenaeum, as well as doing as much as I can with the story of how a book from a circulating library in Norwich ended up at the Athenaeum.

I also blogged about my discovery of Sir Frizzle Pumpkin, the little known subculture of Edwardian Flappers, and did a little more on the use of Pig Latin to obfuscate messages on postcards in the nineteenth century

In among all of this I've managed two or three afternoons working in the garden, something I find good for my soul, even if I'm not the world's  most competent gardener...