FOR THE LOVE OF A GOOD BOOK

What is Labour Day? How can a day named as such not require any actual labour?

These are questions I'm unfit to answer, but I do love a long weekend, and on this long weekend, we attached our caravan and towed it to Harrietville.

The long weekend was preceeded on Friday by the school sports, so I worked from home to maximise my opportunity to score dad points. I made it down to the sports ground earlier in the day to see Jesamine in her first 800m race. She didn't come last!

I missed the kids in their sprints at the end of the day, but both Jesamine and Connick came second in their groups, so they came home with ribbons. Yay for happy healthy chil'ns.

We headed off about 4:20pm, and hit long-weekend peak hour traffic in Melbourne. After a stop for tea somewhere along the Hume, we didn''t arrive until about 11:30pm or thereabouts. We set the van up and mum and dad's house for the weekend.

On Saturday we did the Myrtleford market. The traders appear to be the same at every seasonal market around the northeast region. The highlight for me was finding secondhand bookshop open in town - and ain't I a sucker for a book.

So, here's the haul:

1. Czerny - The Art of Finger Dexterity
2. Charles Darwin - The Voyage of the Beagle
3. John Wyndham - The Seeds of Time
4. John Wyndham - The Kraken Wakes
5. Tom Sharpe - Vintage Stuff
6. Tom Sharpe - Blott on the Landscape
   

What can I tell you about them - without actually having read them - well:

• Karl Czerny, born in Vienna, 1791, was a student of Beethoven, and went on to become a piano teacher himself - teaching Franz Liszt (amongst other notables) - and also a composer of many technical studies, the two most reknowned being The Art of Finger Dexterity and The School of Velocity.
• Charles Darwin - if you don't know, and don't know his ship was the Beagle, then you're not invited to any trivia night with me.
• John Wyndham (1903-1969) wrote (predominantly) science fiction, and is best known for Day of the Triffids.
• Tom Sharpe is one of my favourite British authors of comedy. Ever heard of "Wilt" - filmed in 1989 with Mel Smith and Gryff Rhys Jones?

Other than buying books, we had a few of the locals over for BBQ on Saturday night, which meant guitars out and singing around the campfire until 2am (ish) - by which time I was bleeding profusely from my fingers (and more than a little, shall we say, tipsy).

Sunday I went fishing up a short stretch of the Ovens River in Smoko.

Statistics:

• 30 odd takes
• 15 hooked
• 13 landed
• 1 kept
• all on one Elk Hair Caddis - and it was still floating (then I lost it in a tree)

Plenty of action, but all tiny. Even the one I kept was only snack sized - but a damned tasty snack at that.

Anyway, we're home now. Left the van in Harrietville and drove back over Dargo - in a little under three and a half hours.