Anticipation

The last few months have been, to say the least, difficult. My father was diagnosed with lung cancer and I found myself in Melbourne for five days, accompanying him for surgery to remove a part of his right lung. This story has a happy ending in that he has now been cleared of the cancer and doesn't need to see the surgeon for six months. That's the good news.

The bad news is we had to cancel half of our overseas holiday which was to begin a week ago. This necessitated cancelling flights, a cruise and accommodation and negotiating with the travel insurance company for a substantial refund. Because my father is now on the mend, and amazingly so for his age, we are planning to depart next Thursday for the second half of our holiday. And we can't wait!

I have spent hours accompanying my father to medical appointments, tests, specialists and hospitals, here in Launceston, in Hobart and also in Melbourne. And now I am attending to his needs at home. I have also hosted visitors from the mainland and in between transcribed 150,000 words of a World War II memoir for a client; much of this was typed on an old manual typewriter in the late 1950s and several chapters were hand-written, and almost impossible to read.

Because of all of this I have done none of my own writing. As a result I have been feeling totally disconnected from my great passion and hope to remedy the situation over the next few weeks; this blog is a start.

What hasn't suffered is my reading, and in fact I have done more than usual. On my side of the bed is a small bookcase full of novels and non-fiction works I have purchased from markets, book fairs and second-hand stores. In the past few weeks I have read a number of them, all amazingly good, including two by Louise Penny (detective fiction); The Cruellest Month and The Murder Stone and two by Daniel Silva (espionage thriller); The Secret Servant and The Defector. And in between I continue to read, digest and enjoy An Introduction to Zoology: investigating the animal world by Joseph T Springer and Dennis Holley.

I have more Penny and Silva to read, along with several by Jo Nesbo and another by Sophie Hannah. And I have just begun a wonderful non-fiction book by Marilyn Johnson entitled Lives in Ruins: archaeologists and the seductive lure of human rubble.

Its just as well we have books to read, books in which we can become engrossed, books that teach and inspire us, and books that can take us away from our everyday lives, just for a while.