Commentary: October 2020 Archives

Tonight I watched the thirteenth and final episode of Against the Wind.

This show was aired on Australian television in 1978.  I was five.  I have memories of watching it on tv as it aired.  At least I thought I had memories of it.  I thought I watched it and enjoyed it, but when I think about what my bed time would have been back then I just don't know.  Maybe Mum might remember?  

Anyway, I certainly remember it being on, and I remembered the theme song.  

Recently I was scanning Dad's slides of our trip to Old Sydney Town, and it must have been that that triggered the memories of the series.  So I Googled that crap.  Some kind soul has uploaded the whole series onto YouTube!  So over the past few weeks I've been watching through it all.  

As it turns out, the series is, in fact, awesome!  I really enjoyed watching through it all again.  Although as I've said previously I did quite often get distracted looking up the people and events depicted.  Maybe I got taught some of this crap in school, but I certainly didn't remember it.  Did you know Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty fame was governer of New South Wales for a time?  Until he was ousted in Australia's only military coup.  Must have been a bit of deja vu for him!

Brilliant series, go watch it!

Perhaps some time last year or maybe even the year before I started reading through the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (in five parts).  The first book is pretty good, and parts of the second one are ok.  But ultimately it's a bit of a mess of a series.  It's very disjointed after the characters go their separate ways.  Some of them you never find out what happens to.  Poor Marvin lives for millions of years until he's killed off.  Book four tells the story of the girl who realised the meaning of life, the universe and everything at the beginning of the first book, only you barely get any story at all.  She has an affair with Arthur and forgets to hit the ground when falling.  And after the fourth book you never hear about her again.  It's all over the place in both time and space, with no explanation of how things came to be that way.  At the very end I basically felt exactly the same as the alien - welp, and put on a little light music.

I mean I really like Douglas Adams quirky writing style, but his story telling could have done with a bit of polishing.

I did snapshot a couple of funnies though.  This was a rant by Agrajag, a being that kept being reincarnated to be killed over and over again, either directly or indirectly by Arthur.  One time he was reincarnated as a bowl of petunias ;)

And I know they had floppy disks back in 1984, but he was *totally* predicting usb memory sticks ;)

I borrowed the book of the play off Noah either late last year, or early this year, and read it earlier in the year.  It was definitely helpful to read.  I mean you don't get any extra detail in the book that wasn't in the play, because it was literally the transcript of the play.  But it was helpful to pick up things that I simply missed because I couldn't quite hear or because the play goes so fast you don't have time to digest it before it's moved on.  Worth reading if you've seen (or want to see) the play.

So we have a new local!  Herbert's at Evatt.  When you Google Herbert's Evatt, some of the results are for Herbert Evatt, who the suburb was named after.  Learn something new every day ;)

Tony has been going there quite a bit over recent months.  It's been super popular over the covid period, with people working from home and going there for lunches and dinners - he's had to book in advance just to get a table.  With people going back to work now, and now that it's not so "new", business has dropped a little, and with covid capacity restrictions easing it's easier to get in.  So couple of weeks ago I met up with Tony and Jess and Keira for lunch. 

Their favourite brewer is Tumut River Brewing Company and they have several of their beers on tap! 

When we were in Tumut in August we heard about TRBC's Fifty Shades of Purple, which Herbert's had on tap, so I finally got to try it!

It was purple when they first tapped it - Tony got to try the first glass!  But it was quite blue by the time I got to it.  It makes your whole mouth turn blue!

I was going to be going out for a birthday barbeque in the evening so I thought I'd go for a light lunch and order off the starters menu.  I got four mac and cheese balls which were quite yummy, but huge!  I was actually *full* all afternoon!  Whoops!

Last Friday I met up with Tony and the Chrises for lunch again.  They still had some Fifty Shades of Purple left, so had some of that, as well as a Ginja Ninja.  This time I thought I'd order off the starter menu again and got the lemon chicken skewers.  Also delicious, but I was *full* all afternoon - whoops!

I'll have to get the sweetie there some time.  Would be a great place to drop in for a drink after work.  And if they start doing breakfast on the weekends we could do brunch there sometimes :)