Post 310 Mostly buried in a spreadsheet.

 

My library booking for an electronic copy of this came up yesterday, so I downloaded and began reading. This was drawn to my attention by Ann Borthwick. She and my late husband worked with Natalie Conyer on the Myer Committee in the 1990s, working on a national set of key competencies for high school graduates.

This is Conyer's first novel, a crime mystery set in Cape Town. It creates a strong sense of time and place, is well-paced with memorable characters and no stereotype in sight. While it is a legitimately described as a police procedural, it is overwhelmingly an exploration of state corruption, more comparable to Le Carre's Cold War espionage novels than traditional police procedurals. I found its world hard to come to terms with and wanted the plot to move faster. I will be very interested to see the series develop - there's a sequel in the pipeline..

While I was reading there were visits from a dove or two, then two Magpie-larks turned up. I think my friend Vivienne may be right when she suggested they find spiders on apartment balconies. They paid attention to a railing container that has a web on it. They didn't stay long.

I spent several hours throughout the day on my spread sheet. By the end of the day I had completed it and made a summary of some of the statistics. I'm very pleased to have done this. It is fairly tedious work, but makes the next writing task possible - and more enjoyable. It's been a reminder of how good some of these stories are. That's where the strength lies, rather than in analysis.

It was a very pleasant day in Adelaide - or so it seemed from my windows, which was the only way I saw it. It is lovely to have the doors open on to both balconies and get a breeze through. I'm grateful for this comfortable weather.

My 2019 Christmas poinsettia, which is doing quite well on the Western balcony, has a single red leaf that catches the sun and the eye in the last rays of the sun. I don't mind that the other leaves are all green. One red leaf is enough.

On Thursday, when I missed the parcel delivery I had been thinking that Monday, as well as Friday, was a public holiday. It isn't, of course, which means I can pick up th e parcel tomorrow.

It hasn't been a big stitching day, but I did make some progress on Lady Anne's Flowers. I'm now well into the tree trunk, which will occupy time tomorrow, when I am not picking up parcels