The High Wood

It’s been over a week since I last blogged and we have been very busy. You can pick up a lot of the details via Robert’s pages.

The flat threw another little surprise at us a few days ago. The hot water heater in the bathroom started making noises like it was going to explode. Hurriedly I flicked the switch on the front that said On-Off into the Off position. This had absolutely no effect. I traced the power cable back to some inaccessible point behind the unit but couldn’t find any actual power switch.

We closed the bathroom door on the principle of containing the boiler explosion if it happened and thought harder. We couldn’t find the powerboard for the flat so, in some desperation, I went down to the ground floor and turned off the entire power to the flat. This worked but had some undesirable side effects such as everything else being useless.

Fortunately Pamela immediately discovered the instructions covering just this eventuality and I was able to turn the power straight back on. A quick check of all devices indicated no damage except for having to reset the clocks.

Anyway, there were detailed instructions on what to do if the boiler making odd noises which seemed to cover the situation. The power board for the flat, we were interested to read, was behind a secret panel in the downstairs toilet. Yep, fell for the old secret-panel-in-the-downstairs-toilet trick.

Armed with the instructions we were able to first disable the by now very distressed heater by cutting its power supply. We then, as per instructions, adjusted the pressure and turned it back on. Voilà! Aside from this the flat has been remarkably incident-free.

We have been kept pretty busy visiting. Besides sundry museums we paid a visit to Legoland which was a huge success. We went to visit my sister Jane in East Anglia and had a good time. Check the menu on the front page for links.

Yesterday both Robert and I were pretty tired and I had a bad cough. I went to see a doctor but she said there was no sign of anything but a cold. When I described the unfortunate series of events leading to my being in hospital last year she decided some pre-emptive antibiotics would be a good idea. I think this is a good idea too.

Robert and I spent the day quietly at home while Pamela went into town. Her expedition included a visit to the Globe theatre where she saw a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. I would have liked to have gone but I needed the rest and Robert would probably have been bored silly.

Robert has discovered the ‘Challenge’ channel on Sky. He is now a complete devotee of Gladiators and the Ninja Warrior programme from Japan where would-be ‘Ninjas’ compete on ludicrous and difficult obstacle courses. We now have to devise Ninja Challenges for him which isn’t easy in a flat this size.

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Tuesday was a total write-off for me as I came down with the heavy cold that Robert has been suffering from. I spent most of the day either sleeping or wandering around in a daze. Robert wasn’t much better.

Wednesday was an improvement. Mostly we pottered around the flat and Pamela took Robert out to the park at Coram’s Fields. In the afternoon Pamela delivered her manuscript to Orbit and I took Robert to the park again.

That was about it really apart from me doing some updates on the website. Feeling better today so I am planning to visit the Victoria and Albert. We will take Robert with us but I suspect he will prefer to be at the Science Museum again.

Pamela has to meet another set of publishers this afternoon. That should be all the actual work she has to do until she has a publishers lunch at the end of next week. Robert and I may well have another easy afternoon.

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Well, 2007 was quite a year with ups and downs well outside the normal standard deviations.

The year started well with a holiday on the central coast at Happy Halliday’s which had plenty to keep Robert occupied and thus gave Pamela and I a bit of a rest. While we were there the spectacular Comet McNaught was in the sky.

Robert started school and his baby teeth started to fall out.

In March I turned fifty but with the help of friends managed to survive the trauma.

In June, Pamela got her doctorate and we put up her website.

Then in July, we all went down with the ‘flu – a particularly nasty one. Not content with this, I upstaged everyone with pneumonia. This put me in hospital for 11 days and left me feeling very weak. A week in Cairns, organised by my wonderful wife, helped with convalescence and eventually I made it back to work.

Things got much better in September with the publications of Pamela’s first adult novel Blood Ties and associated book launch. We built a second website to support her adult books. We have started going to SF Conventions again including Conflux in Canberra.

Robert started playing cricket and continues to do well at gym. He survived kindergarten and starts year 1 in February.

Oh yes, and I finally replaced my 20th century mobile with a new 21st century model. Most of the features I don’t use but the camera is useful for taking snaps where you don’t have a proper camera with you.

Next year is a little imponderable. Pamela has sold the US and UK rights for her trilogy and the first volume will be coming out in those countries in May. This is excellent but ultimately it all depends on sales. The volume of sales is likely to affect our lives considerably.

In terms of my own writing my interminable project for a novel is nearly at the end of the umpteenth draft and should be feasible to show to people. I had planned to have this done by the end of 2007 but circumstances intervened. 2008 for sure. Really.

Robert will probably continue in much the same manner, going to school, doing sport, learning the piano and generally growing up. We are planning a trip to England in May – the October 2007 trip which got nobbled by my being sick (it took a good three months to recover properly from the pneumonia). We will visit some SF conventions.

Watch this space.

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A couple of weeks ago our wheelie bin disappeared. It lives in the back lane near the garbage bins for a block of flats so we wondered if it was in the flats somewhere. But it wasn’t.

Puzzled, but resourceful, we rang the Council and told them of our plight. The good people sent a new bin a couple of days later. Pretty good service for a council.

Two days later, our bin disappears again. I search extensively, including the vacant building block up the end of the lane but no bin. It has apparently fallen through a gap in the space-time continuum just like its predecessor.

The question now is, do we ring the council? To lose one garbage bin might be considered carelessness but two? We dithered for a while, sneaking our garbage into the flats’ ones instead. There’s one woman who gets most unpleasant if she sees us doing this. It’s probably just as well she didn’t spot me this time because I wasn’t in a good mood and we might have been obliged to have words.

It turned out that we were right to dither. The house next door is rented and the back of their garden is a bit of a jungle. Said neighbour came round and told us that she had found two wheelie bins lurking there. Either they flew in or we have a feral bin-tosser on the loose.

Anyway, we now have two wheelie bins. We are keeping one down the side of the house at the front and one in the alley at the back. We’re fairly confident that the phantom tosser won’t get both of them.

I still don’t understand why, having tossed a bin over a fence, you would come back the following week and do it again. At least if it happens a third time we’ll know where to look.

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The book launch of Pamela’s first adult novel, Blood Ties, happened last night at the Ashfield Library (or more accurately the Council Chambers upstairs from the library). The launch doubled as a meet-the-author night which the Library holds on a regular basis.

The book was launched by author and friend Marianne de Pierres who did a fabulous job of introduction. Pamela then gave a speech and read from the first chapter. The speech was totally unprepared due to Pamela being ill on the previous two days but you couldn’t tell just by listening to it.

The audience was a mixed bunch of friends, relatives and people who had come to meet the author and get a book signed. There were lots of questions – mostly intelligent and interesting ones. There were about 100 people all up which was a good turn-out. For some photos go to Pamela’s site.

The Ashfield Council Chambers were an alcohol-free zone so after the launch a collection of authors, publishers, booksellers and drinkers came back to the house to drink the celebratory champagne. It turned into a good party and hardly anyone talked about their kids (an occupational hazard when you have a child yourself).

This morning Ron Serdiuk – friend, bookseller and publisher in Brisbane – called from the airport on his way home. Blood Ties was on sale in the airport bookshop! Add this to K-Mart and the major booksellers and we might sell a few copies.

Hachette Livre have done a fabulous job on this book – great cover, great sales team. We have been really impressed.

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Pamela’s new book, Blood Ties has hit the book shops.Blood Ties represents Pamela’s first foray into the adult market. It is the first volume of an epic fantasy trilogy.    For a lot more details visit Pamela’s Website. The booklaunch is 6.30pm on Wednesday 12th September at the Ashfield Library. All Welcome.

The book has been not-quite-dominating-but-nevertheless-significantly-influencing our lives for the past four years. It formed the basis of Pamela’s DCA which took three years and for the last year there has been publishers and editors and all sorts of angst. But now it is out. RRP $24.95. Go and buy one.

Current angst involves overseas publication or the possibility thereof. At the moment it is only being published in Australia and New Zealand. While we have the highest per capita reading population in the world the actual number of capita is fairly small so it’s very hard to earn a living without selling overseas.

We have been told by the publisher that overseas is likely to be a goer it hasn’t actually been confirmed yet. Watch this space.

In the meantime, go and buy the book. It’s good.

This is the window display at wonderful Pulp Fiction books in Brisbane. Thank you Ron and Ian. You can mail-order Blood Ties (and lots of other great titles) from Pulp Fiction – pulpfictionbooks@bigpond.com.

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I am coining a newish term: progidies. Progidies are progeny who are prodigies.

The proximate cause of this neologism is Robert’s gym teacher, Andy. Robert has been going to gym classes ever since he was about 18 months old with a thing called Baby Gym. Baby Gym involves climbing over things and falling onto mats. Since Robert was doing this anyway and Pamela likes going to the gym it seemed a good idea. And he enjoyed it.

And so he progressed through Junior Gym (climbing over bigger things and learning to fall gracefully) to real gym which involves walking along beams, swinging ropes over pits, jumping off little trampolines and swinging on the Roman rings. A lot of fun actually which made me a bit envious I was too old to go and play with them.

Robert also plays soccer. Soccer practice is on a Wednesday night which is when his gym class was. His teacher thought he could reasonably go in with some boys a couple of years older on a Monday night so this is what happened. Pamela gets to work out while the class is happening.

This is where we start having problems. Andy starts enthusing about Robert’s ability and starts talking about putting him in with the even bigger boys. Then he starts going on about State representation and even International competition.

Reality check time. Robert isn’t even six years old yet. Let’s not get carried away.

• First checkpoint: is Robert having fun?

We ask him. No, he says, Andy works me very hard.

Do you want to keep going to gym? we ask.

I could go for an extra half hour, he says.

Obviously at five he has a clear sense of what fun is and it doesn’t involve working hard. The question was wrong. He must like doing it if he wants to stay longer.

• Second checkpoint: is it making him too tired?

Doesn’t seem to be. He’s keen to go to a Friday class as well. He gets a bit tired and ratty at times but don’t we all. It doesn’t seem to be connected to the gym. Probably being fit makes him less tired.

• Third checkpoint: do we want him to keep doing it?

This gets tricky. Neither Pamela nor I were great on the athletic front as kids so it’s a bit hard to judge. We certainly don’t want him getting into the stress of competition at this age. We are agreed that (to quote Granny Weatherwax) we can’t be having with that.

We have come to a sort of compromise. He can go to the big boys’ class for a while. If trying to keep up with them stresses him out then we will scale the whole thing back. On the other hand, if loves it and wants to do more we’ll worry about that when it happens, thereby neatly putting off any decisions.

There is the distinct possibility that Andy is wrong anyway. Kids tend to advance at different speeds. Robert could be an early starter who will also plateau early. Having a progidy in the house is not necessarily desirable.

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After much stuffing around, we now have a website for Pamela: pamelafreemanbooks.com. It was getting scandalous that such a well-known author did not have a site.

The site is mainly informational. It contains details of all her books, teaching resources for said books, biographical stuff, FAQs and all the things that authors get asked about. This is particularly important in her case as her books are often used in schools.

The site does have a couple of design restraints:

1. Some schools still have only dial-up connections – graphics must be small
2. It was designed and built by me with input from Pamela. Bits of it, especially the front page, need to be redesigned by someone with artistic pretensions.

The information is good though. Pamela did all that.

Anyway, the site is there now. If you have any feedback, please let Pamela or myself know.

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It was a busy night in the Hart household last night. As I mentioned in the Myrtle story we have had a lurking rat. We called in the men from Rentokill who put down bait and we laid some traps. The score so far: Rat 1 Household 0.

The special humane tunnel traps we got turned out to be a bit small. OK for mice but not very useful for old Rattus. This particular rodent also seems to be a fussy eater since the bait has gone untouched.

Two nights ago I spotted a tail disappearing into a previously unnoticed hole under the kitchen cupboards. The hole was cunningly concealed in the horizontal board underneath the doors so it’s not surprising we missed it previously. I blocked said hole which seemed to work. But last night Rattus must have found another hole. I suspect it is behind the fridge which we’ll have to move out and check.

Anyway, Rattus found his way up to the front of the house as a little shriek from Pamela told me. I chased him down the back and saw him disappearing under the door which divides the house front to back. There is a gap of about an inch. As a temporary measure I blocked the bottom of the door with a towel. This kept him out of the front for the night.

This morning, we found a lot of chewed bits of towel in the back room. He hadn’t actually got through but it wasn’t for want of trying. Chucked towel in bin. Memo to self: cloth is not a good way of keeping rats out.

We have a friend coming to stay in a couple of days. We would not like friend to have to deal with peripatetic rodent so it is time for drastic measures. To hell with the humane traps, Pamela is going out today to buy some of the old vicious spring traps. Tried but true. If that fails I could always soak a towel in rat poison and watch the little bastard try and gnaw his way through that. He can run and he can hide but we’ll get him in the end.

On a lighter note, we also had a visit from the Tooth Fairy. Robert has started to lose his baby teeth – the two front ones fell out yesterday. We put them under his pillow and the Tooth Fairy duly swapped them for coins. The current going rate seems to be a dollar a tooth although I am reliably informed that back teeth are worth double.

Robert then asked the classic question: what does the Tooth Fairy do with all those teeth? My theory is that there is a tooth mountain somewhere. Pamela thinks they might be re-used in the building of coral reefs. Robert isn’t too convinced by either explanation.

Still the Tooth Fairy is a far more welcome visitor than old Rattus. Which is a good thing because you can’t buy Fairy traps anywhere and a towel under the door is pretty much guaranteed not to work. I wonder when she’ll come back?

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I can now reveal the end of the Myrtle the Turtle saga (you may care to read the previous post first). Pamela believes it is a female turtle so Myrtle is a ‘she’ from now on.

Pamela had a lot to do during the day so we left Myrtle in the bath. When Pamela got back, Myrtle was looking pretty miserable (to the extent that a turtle has any expression at all) and hadn’t touched the food we offered. Pamela rang me at work and we decided she would take Myrtle to the vet who had offered to find her somewhere to live.

I had just arrived at Ashfield station when my mobile (the number we had put on the lost turtle notices) rang and it was the turtle’s owner. Turned out it was the people next door. By this stage, however, Myrtle was at the vet.

Our neighbours are Koori people and had just returned from a visit to their ancestral lands up near the Queensland border. They are allowed to hunt for their traditional food and – you guessed it – turtle was on the menu. Myrtle was destined to be bush tucker.

The enterprising Myrtle had legged it out of the car boot and was making a determined effort to escape when we picked her up. As a wild turtle it’s not surprising she wasn’t happy in the fish tank or the bath.

Our neighbours decided not to bother to fetch Myrtle back – they already had another turtle ready for dinner. So Myrtle, through courage, luck and seizing her opportunities with both webbed feet, lives to swim another day.

Nice one, Myrtle.

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