A Whirlwind Week

I just can't slow down, however ill I've been, and this week is testimony to this. On Monday, I left home on a 31 hour odyssey to Poole and Plymouth in the UK prior to taking off tomorrow for Zaragoza in Spain. Despite the long trip and 9 hour time shift I was running around all day on the Tuesday and Wednesday was even faster paced.

I arose on Wednesday at 6.00 for a brisk (fast?) run-walk to Bournemouth Pier and back. That took an hour for the c. 8 km. Phillip and I then spent the morning walking on Brownsea Island in Poole harbour, which is the second largest natural harbour in the world after Sydney's. The island is famous having been where Baden Powell set up the scouting movement and it was still crawling with lots of young people camping out in not-so-good weather. The island is notable for its wildlife and we had the luck of seeing a red squirrel on one of its last refuges.

We had to run to catch the ferry back to the mainland and lunch with cousin Eric and his wife Sue. They have moved to Christchurch (near Poole, where Phillip lives) and it was good to catch up with them again. Believe it or not, our previous meeting was in Canberra, Australia last April! After lunch, I met briefly with a long-standing friend, Richard Snow, who also lives in Poole, before Phil and I departed to play a game of bridge that evening at the Christchurch bridge club, one of the strongest in the region. Well, Phil hadn't played for two years and we'd only played once before many years previously. Unsurprisingly I had to learn his system (ACOL) which I hadn't played for years. With this background, I hoped we would come in the top half of the field. Well, we won with a 63% score, roughly 3% ahead of second, north-south. That was some achievement!

After a sound sleep I went for another walk over the same course before driving with Phil to Plymouth, a 3 hour journey over crowded roads. The reason for the visit was to go to Opera in the Park ... an extravaganza at a local country house on the edge of Dartmoor. That was the theory! In practice it was bucketing with rain much of Thursday and the event was transferred to a tiny church in Cornwood ... also on the edge of Dartmoor ... just a few km from where my niece, Joanna, lives at Lutton. Moreover, it's the church where she was married five years ago! One defect with the church as a venue was the columns holding up the roof! The other was its inability to accommodate the 400 ticket-holders because the pews held <300!>

Now to the performance. It was Verdi's Rigoletto, performed by a local amateur group augmented by some talented professionals. I thought it was well done, though the set was strange. Instead of 19th century dress, the setting was Mussolini's fascist Italy and Il Duce himself put in an appearance. For the record, there were two Australians in lead roles! After a quick visit to Plymouth's aquarium this morning and a trip to the Hoe (where Drake played bowls before going out to beat the Spanish Armada), it was off to Poole. Luckily we had time with Joanna's two daughters, Lucie and Hollie. Come to think of it, perhaps I had better keep quiet about this part of the trip when I get to Spain!

AS