Author Archives: susan

Last week I dropped my little external hard drive on the brick floor. It landed with a crash –  as you’d expect – but in addition there was a rather worrying sort of cracking noise as well. My IT genius … Continue reading →

It’s only Saturday night, but I’ve already got that gloomy Sunday feeling. Perhaps it’s because night is falling earlier and earlier – and soon, when daylight saving’s done, we’ll be plunging again into the dark part of the year. So … Continue reading →

I’ve been going places with Patrick Leigh Fermor. He is the most delightful travelling companion; interested in history and art and architecture and plants and birds and clothes and popular songs and cloud formations and politics and cigarette cases and … Continue reading →

I posted Rembrandt’s shell last week , before I headed off  for a beach holiday at Phillip Island (for anyone who’s not a Victorian, it’s an island connected to the mainland by a bridge, and quite famous as the home … Continue reading →

I went to Melbourne on the train yesterday – well, by train as far as Gisborne, where we all had to troop off and catch buses in to Southern Cross. The bus trip enabled us to see where the weekend’s … Continue reading →

“Feeling hot, hot, hot!” This heatwave has really caused a bit of a meltdown in my reading habits. I took a vow a few years ago not to confine my reading to –   well, to re-reading. I was especially … Continue reading →

I have just finished The Wealth Beneath Their Feet: A Family on the Castlemaine Goldfields by Marjorie Theobald.  Though it is a history book, I read it as I’d devour a  fascinating novel – quickly, almost all in one go, … Continue reading →

I don’t know what we were talking about, but some part of our conversation spurred a friend to lend me Elizabeth Jane Howard’s autobiography, Slipstream. That was on Sunday afternoon – I’ve just finished it. You could say I devoured … Continue reading →

On the last Saturday of 2013, with  head-cold (probably caught while seeing Hobbit 2 at a very air-conditioned cinema on Boxing Day), I lay and watched a DVD. I ended up even snottier than I started, and in floods of … Continue reading →