Armidale's Antiques Weekend

One of our favourite shows on TV is the UK's antiques roadshow. And we had our own version of it Armidale this weekend ... but minus the TV crews and interviewers. Each year antiques dealers from all over the Eastern States, NSW, Victoria and Queensland come to town to exhibit their wares and over the years we've bought a heap of stuff. In past years, I acquired a throne, a late 19th century filing cabinet with marble top and 16 leather fronted boxes each in its own slot, a lovely c. 1930 Art Deco display cabinet, a hall stand, a dinner gong, a nude Coalport figurine, a metal tea-caddy from Sheffield, a century-old silver condiment set from Birmingham, a Victorian padded chair for the bedroom - useful for sitting on while trying to tie shoe-laces, and so on.

Well, we visited the show early yesterday morning and spent maybe 90 minutes wandering around all the usual stuff one finds in an antiques show, with most 'stuff' dating from the early 18th century onwards. Australia has very little 'stuff' dating back to Elizabethan times or before. I, in particular, like looking for unusual pieces of furniture and one caught my eye. The item shown here was advertised as a music stand and on looking at it I realised that it would make a lovely drinks stand with room down below for my many bottles of whiskey and ageing red wine, a drawer down below that could house coasters, corkscrew, and so on, while the beautifully inlaid top could be home to our dinner gong and a tray containing glasses and jugs. So here it is installed in our dining room. I like it!

If that was my purchase, Dot was very much taken with a large collection of Moorcroft vases - items that commentators on the Antiques Roadshow often drooled over. I can see why, and Dot fell in  love with a piece called "Whoot", one of a numbered edition designed by Rachel Bishop. It's a very attractive vase with owls painted on it, as shown here. You can just see my throne on the left edge of the pictures.

So, we keep on adding to our collection of interesting furnishings a little a time, but the house is getting crowded. To locate the 'music stand' we had to relocate my antique book-case to the study and that took an hour. I say 'antique' because I made it what seems like aeons ago and by the time I expire in maybe 30 years time it will definitely have gained antique status! What will it be worth at auction given that it was constructed by someone of my reputation. I only hope there's room for the kids who inherit all our 'stuff' to display and use them in their own homes.

And I've forgotten to mention the 54 works of art, including original paintings, numbered drawings, Japanese wood block prints, etc.. We have on top of this a variety of objects like wooden clubs and spears from NZ and Pacific Islands, a Korean wall hanging, some English pottery hanging on the wall, not to forget embossed metal plates from such unusual places as Tabriz in Iran and somewhere called Moscovskii Kreml, which bought on the spot in 1966. Heck, that's 51 years ago! I wonder if I'm recorded in KGB files making the purchase. That reminds me. We've also now got two small statuettes of Swiss or Austrian guys with hiking or climbing gear. All this explains why we've just about run out of space to hang things. I hate to think what we're going to do if we downsize at some stage.

AS

Indonesian Music in the Mall

New experiences come thick and fast in this little town. Today, Dot and I went down the 'markets in the mall' which take place on the last Sunday in each month. We usually stock up on such things as honey, jars of relish, punnets of interesting flowers for the garden, hand-crafted and fragrant bars of soap, fresh vegetables, interesting croissants, a cactus or  two for my collection, occasional 'creatures' and-crafted from scrap metal, perhaps Dutch, German or Asian foods and so on.

In a way today was no different, except for one thing. Sure we acquired many of the above items, but who'd expect an Indonesian Gamelan Orchestra to be performing on-stage at one end of the mall - between the post-office and the old (historic) court-house. As you'll see from the pictures, the members of the orchestra were local, nearly all the instruments were percussion apart from a little and rather primitive flute-like object that looked and sounded little different from an Andean flute that I think Max once had. However, most of the percussion items were exquisitely tuned, like the xylophone objects in the front row and the bell-like objects on the right. And the music created was gentle and relaxing - altogether very pleasant.

I don't who set the performance up, but I do know that decades ago the University of New England's department of music acquired a set of gamelan instruments and performed concerts locally. That said, I haven't heard such a performance in years. By the way, the little girl in these pictures had escaped from her parents and was riveted by the spectacle.

AS

Interesting Cloudscape

I was out for a walk a two evenings ago after yet another hot and steamy day. I'd done about 3 km and was on my way home concerned about some heavy storms lurking to the south and also the fact that it was beginning to get dark. So I quickened my pace and was looking around principally at the houses and gardens in my neighbourhood. Suddenly I looked up and was greeted by a glorious spectacle. The last rays of the sun were illuminating the clouds in front of me, but simultaneously light rain was falling from them creating a rainbow effect. I couldn't resist whipping out my mobile phone and taking a couple of quick shots of this event, both attached here, with the second being, in effect, an enlargement of the first.

I think you'll agree that this was some display!

Yesterday evening, at around the same time, we were hit by a truly violent storm which passed directly overhead with ample lightning and massive claps of thunder. One casualty of the intense wind was our garden umbrella, which was lifted from its stand and dumped on the ground, fortunately undamaged. The storm produced c. 25 mm of rain (1 inch) in just half an hour and put one of our TV channels, the ABC, off-air - and back on again - about twenty times, We gave up watching the who-dun-it because we missed key elements of the plot. Fortunately there was no hail unlike parts of Sydney that got trashed earlier in the day!

There's a similar forecast fro this evening, but a search of the Bureau of Meteorology's rain radars shows that the nearest rain event is nearly 500 km away and, right now, I'm seeing a lot of blue sky. The temperature at 1.30 pm as I type this post is approaching 29 C (or nearly 85F) - very pleasant.

AS

Missed Opportunities

I'm interested in rare astronomical events and two presented themselves this weekend. Yesterday (11 February), comet 45P (Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova) made its closest pass of Earth at a mere distance of 12 million km away and it's popularly termed the green comet. Since I've always wanted to see a green comet I duly woke an hour before sunrise - about 5.20 am and, armed with Dot's binoculars, rushed outside into the cool morning air and eagerly scanned the sky between Arcturus and Saturn looking NE from our back garden. Well, after doing this for some 15 minutes I came up with nothing. There seemed to be a little haze in the sky and the binoculars were a little ancient... so perhaps the task was a little beyond me. There was an upside of sorts. Our hot weather makes sleeping at night sticky and uncomfortable and standing in the cool night air bare-foot and wearing only shorts was kind of refreshing. In case you think this might be crazy, the temperature was still 21 C at 5 am.

Not to be put off, I prepared for the next event 17 hours later ... at c. 00.40 am on the 12th ... this morning. Armed with a camera, I awaited the disappearance of the bright start Regulus as the full moon passed in front of it. Again, wearing only shorts due to the heat ... would you believe 33 C degrees at 1000 m asl just after midnight ... I observed the moon for about 30 minutes, but Regulus failed to show. Maybe I was too early or late, so I despondently went to bed, but here's a picture of what I was waiting for, with Regulus shown on the right:

So, the next task is to try observe object 2016 WF9 on February 25th. Perhaps I should ask if UNE's observatory is open that evening!

We're surviving the heat OK here, but today sees a forecast record 37 C or almost 100 F. Armed with this forecast I jumped on my bike early this morning at about 6.30 am for a 17 km ride, bringing my total for the week to c. 108 km !! And, when I started the temperature was already 24 C, so I threw away my singlet and rode bare-chested! I wasn't the only guy attired thus. There were several joggers, one other cyclist, and one dog-walker. Still, the sensation was pleasant ... nice and refreshing.

AS

Update on warming

My last post complained about the heatwave we're experiencing, but I expected it would be over by now. The maximum temperatures for Armidale, both recorded and forecast, over the first 12 days of February are, according to the data I have at my disposal, the following:

32-33-34-33-32-33-33-26-28-33-36-37 in degrees C or
90-91-93-91-90-91-79-82-91-97-99 degrees F

And today's predicted temperatures here are warmer than Cairns (17 degrees S) or Darwin (12.5 S).

So the average maxima for the first 12 days of February here will likely be 32.5 C or 90.5 F. That's an amazing 7 degrees C above the long term average, and we're struggling to sleep at night when the minima are about 20 C (68 F) rather than 12 C. This afternoon, the temperature of our lounge reached 35 C (95 F) - now 36 C!

Fortunately, the humidity dropped today - just leaving just the heat behind. In a way, the effect was stunning because of huge light intensity coupled with crystal clear air. But for the last 5 days huge thunder clouds appeared around Armidale and some places nearby received torrential rain. Indeed, one storm went right over the top of us at about 3 am. I awoke to the crash of thunder and a torrential downpour that deposited 32.5 mm (1.3 inches) of rain in a couple of hours.

So for the moment we have runaway grass growth in parts of the garden. The best time to mow is probably about 6.30 am, but I suspect that our neighbours might object! Anyway, that's when I go riding my bike. When we had the high humidity for the last few days I returned home from the ride wringing wet, so this morning I just wore a pair of shorts for the trip, much to the surprise of passing motorists! But thus attired I rode even faster than usual, completing the 15 km (9.3 miles) in the near record time of 43 minutes (or 21 km  / 13 miles per hour)! Not bad, eh, for someone approaching 72!

The humidity respite will be short-lived, however, as showers are forecast tomorrow.

AS