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 'Unione 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...