Feeling a bit grim in this the first week of our stage 4 lockdown in Melbourne. Numbers of cases go up and down - up today; hospital admissions go up - by a lot today due to people from aged care homes being transferred; deaths go up - including today, a man in his thirties. To cheer myself up I've been exploring the garden. It's freezing out … [Read more...] about Lockdown Garden – August 2020
Living in Melbourne
Darebin Creek Trail
On the 16th of July Joe and I walked along the Darebin Creek, not knowing that a couple of weeks later we'd be prohibited from driving anywhere to have a walk. On this day we drove to Alphington Station and from there walked down to the Darebin Wetlands. This is a lovely park created on an old rubbish dump - shows what can be done. It was a … [Read more...] about Darebin Creek Trail
Lockdown Look
Our second lockdown in Melbourne had been more depressing than the first. Caused, no doubt, by the daily reports of more and more cases, more people in hospital, more patients in intensive care and more people, mostly but not all very old, dying. The numbers go up and down but thus far have all been in the hundreds. Today we had 357 new cases and … [Read more...] about Lockdown Look
Opera At Home – Wagner
Der Ring des Nibelung The Metropolitan Opera commenced free streaming of some of their productions in March as New York closed down due to Covid-19. I found out about this via a post on Twitter by @Operachaser. Another reason I love twitter - handy to be linked on social media to like-minded people. And so it was that we spent the better … [Read more...] about Opera At Home – Wagner
Life In Lockdown
The Start It's three months since lockdown started for me leading to a period that has put my sense of time out of kilter - oddly the 12th of March feels like ages ago but at the same time very recent. By the time we went on our much delayed Canberra trip - originally scheduled for January but put back because of the bushfires - the idea … [Read more...] about Life In Lockdown
The Ambiguous Ethics and Politics of Simone De Beauvoir
Simone De Beauvoir always said she was not a philosopher which seems strange when she was one of the brightest philosophy students in France in her year and wrote lots of philosophy during her life. She said it because in her view a philosopher was one who had developed an entire philosophical theory - Kant, Hegel etc. She always regarded her … [Read more...] about The Ambiguous Ethics and Politics of Simone De Beauvoir