Travel Thoughts

Travel has been the least of my priorities for 18 months as I was very ill during my last trip to Britain and Ireland in 2012. Assured it was due to my growing gluten intolerance I am slowly beginning to develop the travel itch again. I am now keeping a journal of possible destinations; France, Croatia, Scandinavia - hopefully I can go where the dream and wistful thinking leads me.

Kindle is such a wonderful invention. I am reading Our House in Not in Paris,this wonderful book by Susan Cutsforth. While there are many books about renovating houses in France this one seems to have a special resonance as the couple are Australian and only spent 6 weeks of every year in France. They also use our open Australasian way of thinking and acting to build a range of new French friends who help them oversee the renovations. Susan has just published another book, Our House is Definitely Not in Paris, this has been added to the journal I keep of books read and books to buy, order or dream about reading.


As expected my friend Ron has become reluctant to use his technology to develop his reading repertoire and has lots of books waiting to be downloaded and put on his VRS. Explanations of the wonderful transfer software seem lost on him so perhaps I can help him to download it one day.

Listening to radio interviews yesterday, one about a woman constantly sipping on a water bottle during a performance of Dvorak's cello concerto and the ensuing discussion on the prevalence of these awful bottles and another interview with someone whose life was changed after reading the poetry of William Butler Yeats reinforced my decision to read more poetry this year. The awful poetry we were made to read and analyse at school is so removed from the beautiful words of the milieu of poets published today it seems a shame I have wasted so many years not reading these moving compositions.