“But it is a lot easier to face the day when you know you won't have to face other people and their happiness.”

The road south, somewhere near Glenora, the Derwent Valley, Tasmania. April 2021.

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

A well constructed little mystery in the manner of Agatha Christie, I struggled with this book only because every one of the ensemble cast is loathsome. This is not new to the genre, but as we find ourselves stuck within a claustrophobic setting - a snowed-in estate in a remote area of the Scottish Highlands - throughout, there's no relief from this boring and snobbish bunch. Quite why novelists seem to struggle to think of characters that aren't lawyers, hedge-fund managers, advertising execs, and consultant-types is beyond me. They're all so dull.

Now, we are given a pair of sympathetic characters to offset the ghastly assemblage. But, alas, the wounded heroine (a grieving paramedic) and hero (a traumatised war veteran) are too clichéd to generate anything other than mirth at the hackneyed inner dialogue and overly-credulous thought patterns.

I will say that Foley does a decent job of dishing out red herrings and keeping the complex multi-perspective and parallel narratives on track to a suitably satisfying conclusion. The problem for me was that it was all just so bloody pedestrian.

⭐ ⭐

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Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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