Exploring and reading with Hugh in 2026, part 1

Now that I've surfaced after an enjoyably slow start:

HIPPO


GNU


EAR


to all and sundry!

Finished a re-read of Tigana shortly after midnight last night, so by about 25 minutes it counts as the first read in this thread. It's as much of an enjoyable, satisfying, thought-provoking read as ever. Despite the length of the book (almost 800 pages in my copy) I came away wanting more, namely variations on answers to the question "what happened next?". Did Alessan manage to unite the Palm? Did the wizards manage to make their craft respected as it should have been? If so, how? What did the Night Walkers find on the next spring Ember Night, and was Baerd with them when they did so? And so on. All of which speaks to me of brilliant world-building and writing.

Great was my delight on Monday when I found a shiny new copy of A Brightness Long Ago, which I started reading with the "early" morning coffee today. Only 20 pages in, but it looks like high expectations will be met.

>1 hfglen:
Beautiful, and thank you!

>4 Bookmarque: Big thank-yous for that!

>1 hfglen: Happy New Year and happy new thread!

I currently have a copy of Tigana on my wish list, I've read it, but don't own a copy for some reason. I hope to correct that soon. I enjoyed A Brightness Long Ago and the two that followed it Children of Earth and Sky and All the Seas of the World. The last two had some loose tie-ins to The Sarantine Mosaic.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Thread! I wish you a wonderful year in books.

It seems to have begun very nicely 😊

Happy new year! I look forward to following your reading and to more of your photos!

I really need to find my copy of Tigana. I’m long overdue for a reread.

Happy New Year, Hugh! I really need to read more of Guy Gavriel Kay.

Happy new year and happy new thread, and eager for the photos …

>1 hfglen: Happy New Thread and Happy New Year! Love love love the photos!

Happy New Year!

@pgmcc will no doubt be interested in this story. Maybe somebody should copy it into the "We will miss them" thread.

>15 hfglen:
Thank you for the article, Hugh.

This week's Sunday picture is inspired by @haydninvienna quoting a favourite Ogden Nash couplet:

If you think the elephant preposterous,
You’ve probably never seen a rhinosterous.

Rhino poaching is down from the grimly dizzy heights it reached during Covid, but for the safety of the animals it is still better not to say when or where I saw these.

>2 hfglen: and >3 hfglen: Both of those Guy Gavriel Kay books were enjoyable so you're starting out your year on a high note (and obviously well-prepared to photograph local wild life.) Happy new thread!!

>17 hfglen:
Nice picture. You got the exposure perfect so we can see the detail on the shady side of the animals. Amazing to see these animals casually having lunch in the wild.

>17 hfglen: Great picture and I'm happy to hear that poaching is down, let's hope that trend continues.

>17 hfglen: I'm going to echo what >20 Karlstar: said. Hide those beauties.

Happy new year, happy new thread, and thank you for the gorgeous pics.

>17 hfglen: What an amazing sight!

>17 hfglen: What a great photo. I hope poaching of these magnificent and other animals keeps on the downward trend.

Reread of The Truth. What can one say about Sir pTerry's sense of humour and inventiveness that hasn't already been said a thousand times? Every bit as enjoyable as the first time around. Possibly more so because working on the family history reminded me of an uncle who was a newspaperman just like William de Worde. (Reuters during WW2, Rand Daily Mail later, in due course becoming associate editor; he edited South Africa's oldest surviving newspaper from 1970 until he retired in 1981.) So I know from near-at-hand if not first hand that Sir pTerry's depictions of The Ankh-Morpork Times in general and William de Worde in particular rings absolutely true in all details.

>25 hfglen: I'm so glad you enjoyed this. I'm planning to listen to this one at some point this year.

>25 hfglen:
I really enjoyed The Truth which I read only about a month ago for the first time. Like you I had a family connection to the industry and a particular interest in the changing technology that made certain jobs obsolete. My late brother joined The Irish News as a trainee compositor in 1958 and remained working at the paper until he retired in his late sixties; almost 50 years in the same company. In his career he went from melting and forming lead to make text strips to be blocked in advance of printing, right up to fully computerised typesetting and layout planning. He played a major role in negotiations with the paper to ensure no compositors lost their jobs but rather received the appropriate training to operate the new technologies. This meant that I was particularly aware of the engravers in The Truth when the new technology reduced the need for their work.

My brother went from being a compositor to being a planner. I think "planner" is not a great title and it does not convey either the meaning or weight of the title "compositor". Still, everyone made the transition successfully and the paper continued going from strength to strength. It is still the Northern Ireland (NI) paper with the highest distribution figures, so much so that all other newspaper distribution piggybacks on the network designed to distribute The Irish News. As you can imagine that represents quite a counterintuitive arrangement given the political make-up of the NI population.

Eric Rosenthal's books of history are well researched, if less than meticulously referenced (which does make them more readable, until you want to check up on something). I have just finished a re-read of his Tankards and Tradition, which at 65 years old is beginning to show its age. This one is a history of beer brewing and consumption in South Africa and Rhodesia, and includes a thumbnail history of hotels in these countries. I read it to discover what beers the family would have had available when they moved to Johannesburg in 1903 and 1912. That information is there, but I was mildly surprised to find no mention of the brewery which was, ahem, aromatically obvious in Ameshoff Street (Johannesburg) when my grandmother moved into a brand-new flat (US: apartment) across the street when I was in my early teens; although that was after the book was published, the brewery had bee there "since always". Some years later the brewery building was taken over for the newly-founded Rand Afrikaans University, which raised wry smiles at the time.

A Brightness Long Ago. The expectations in #3 were, perhaps, a bit too high. My overall impression was of a worthy member of the second tier of Guy Gavriel Kay's works, rather than a star like Lions of Al-Rassan or Tigana. Indeed, even though the book is only half as long as Tigana, I found it dragged at about the 3/4-way mark.

100 essential things you didn't know about maths and the arts. Evidently a re-read, but still the ideal format for bedside reading. There are 100 bite-size (one to four page) chapters, every one interesting. Sometimes I even understood the maths.

Currently reading two very different biographies: a very scholarly one of Harry Oppenheimer (he of diamonds, gold and Anglo-American) and Pieter Dirk Uys's autobiographical memoir, which displays his sense of humour to the full.

It's quite uncanny how much an African Fish Eagle looks like an American Bald Eagle. But the cry is much louder and more penetrating, and to us here is the essence of wild Africa.

>29 hfglen: That was my experience too, it is good, but not his best, but I didn't want to alter your experience before you read it. The novels that follow are better, mostly

>31 hfglen: They are quite similar. Great picture.

>32 Karlstar: Thank you!

Between the Devil and the Deep is Pieter-Dirk Uys's autobiographical memoir mentioned in #30 above. It's mainly about acting, and how he navigated the minefield of censorship in his satire during the dark 1970s and 80s, even using the censors for publicity (which can't have pleased the Mother Grundies). The later chapters cover work with the underprivileged, and show the more sympathetic side of his character and work -- and of Evita Bezuidenhout, of course. One thing and only one thing holds me back from recommending this one unreservedly to Dragoneers. Mr Uys is the model of a perfectly bilingual South African, and took the architects of apartheid down in their own language. So, of course, some key passages are in Afrikaans without translation: fine for our Dutch-speaking members, but most in this pub will miss significant juicy bits.

>31 hfglen: What a majestic-looking bird!

>33 Karlstar: >36 Sakerfalcon: Thank you both!

I've been working on an article for the Railway Society (I give a talk to them on Wednesday), and so have been revisiting a memory of an enjoyable, long ago (1981) visit to what was then called the Kew Bridge Steam Museum, now the London Museum of Water and Steam. If I knew then what I know now I might have enjoyed it even more, especially having just been reminded that their address is Green Dragon Lane, Brentford.

Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces had rather more of this than was comfortable last week, and @haydninvienna makes it sound as of Brisbane's getting it now.

For no good reason I recently picked up and read a copy of Elizabeth our Queen, a book produced by Richard Dimbleby for the Coronation in 1953, that's been on my shelf for ages. About 2/3 of it is biographical and as uncritical as one might expect. But the last third is an intelligible (not easy) and reasonably accurate (less easy) description of how the British constitution works in practice. More interesting than expected.

See, allowing something to sit on the shelf for ages isn't such a bad idea after all! Although, speaking as a non-citizen of the United Kingdom, I am wondering just how confusing the British constitution might be. At the risk of revealing my appalling lack of understanding, I thought it was primarily based on Magna Carta. And you've had a bi-cameral Parliament for forever....

I've just been looking for something else in an elderly (1958) Parks Board offering, Our National Parks, when I found the basis of a story I think Peter will find heart-warming. In a description of the elephants in various areas they say "There are 22 members of the species in the Addo Elephant Park, and ... in the Kruger National Park approximately 1000 of them are distributed." Best current numbers I have are 400+ and 12 500.

>41 jillmwo: Er, Jill, I'm also not British, and have always been mystified by the murkier recesses of their unwritten constitution.

>42 hfglen:
Very interesting.

>41 jillmwo:
Where is a constitutional lawyer when you need one?

A nephew of mine, who is now a KC (King's Counsel), was in his undergraduate studies. He was studying constitutional law for his examinations. He had a large grey book on constitutional law and he described it as a large grey book for a large grey subject. He came into the room one day when a trailer for a John Grisham film was showing on TV. I think it was The Pelican Brief. He came in as Julia Robert's character was being introduced and described as a constitutional lawyer. His immediate reaction was to utter the words "Boring B****h!". I think this was a reaction to his long hours of studying his large grey book for a large grey subject.

Harry Oppenheimer: diamonds, gold and dynasty. An exhaustive, but by no means exhausting, biography of the second generation of the Anglo American dynasty, and a painstakingly fair assessment of his subject. Looking at the copious endnotes and voluminous bibliography, it is no surprise that the author missed the initial deadline to submit the manuscript -- it must have taken forever to assemble all this information. However the result is a good job well done. We are presented with an eminently readable account of a complex, active and long-lived figure of great importance to South Africa.

Long overdue post: I reread The QI Book of the Dead because one of the biographies has to do with a "what was happening nearby and could have affected this family" half-chapter in a family history I'm writing. The book was just as enjoyable and informative the second time around, and reading it was no hardship. I also found the information I wanted, both there and on Internet Archive.

And, at last, a picture.



Hyena near Lower Sabie in the southern Kruger National Park, 26 October 2009.

>48 hfglen: Is that a young one or is it fully mature?

>48 hfglen: That is a lot cuter than photos of hyenas usually look. I'd still not be tempted to pet it though.

>49 Karlstar: If not full-grown then very nearly.

>50 Sakerfalcon: You'd be the world's most unpopular tourist if you tried, and your troubles would only start with losing your hand.

>48 hfglen: and >51 hfglen:. So the species is generally unfriendly? I know that the sound they make is irritating (the hyena laugh) but they aren't sufficiently like wolves or dos in liking to have their ears scratched? That really would make them undesirable as neighboring wildlife.

>31 hfglen: What a gorgeous bird. I'm glad it's got a voice to go with its appearance, as bald eagle calls are often very unimpressive. I've been told they often substitute the cry of a red tail hawk when using the eagle for propaganda purposes.

>48 hfglen: What a beautiful animal. As others have mentioned photos of the adults in a pack are usually not so endearing.

>48 hfglen: So cool! 😊

I've read your comments and will henceforth resist the temptation to pet a hyena.

>48 hfglen:
I thought you had a new puppy until I read the text.

No, I have never felt inclined to pet a hyena.

Proof that pretty much everything is cute at that age.

>57 Bookmarque: Right?

As for touching one - eeewww. Never had the desire. But that cute little one? It would be tempting.

Singapore and Malaysia Not yet old enough to be historic, but well and truly outdated. Clearly the library is cash-strapped and I'm close to the bottom of the barrel for reading matter.

The Dreadful Judgement. History of the Great Fire of London, 1666, emphasising all that was gruesome. Probably accurate, but Dragoneers may find that it is only appropriate reading for Halloween or the Day of the Dead.

It's a while since we had an elephant for Pete, so here are two.



Kruger National Park but I've forgotten exactly where, March 2014.

>61 hfglen:
Hugh, thank you. These elephants are very much appreciated.

>61 hfglen: Wonderful! Thank you 😊

>53 jillmwo: I recently finished a book about spotted hyenas. They're social creatures, although rigidly hierarchical. I was surprised to find they're considered an apex predator and that lions steal their food!

>48 hfglen: Absolutely gorgeous! I love hyenas, one of my favorite animals.

>64 libraryperilous: That does make them interesting as a species, doesn't it?

>61 hfglen: Great duo!

>62 pgmcc: to >66 Karlstar: Thank you all! Your comments are much appreciated!

No doubt you remember the trouble The Little Prince had with baobabs in Saint-Exupéry's story? Here's one with a story of being useful.



This tree is called Von Wiellegh's Baobab, and is close to where the Letaba River joins the Olifants River, not far from Olifants Rest Camp in the Kruger National Park, before flowing through the Lebombo mountains into Mozambique.

Gideon Retief von Wiellegh was the surveyor-general of the Transvaal Republic under Pres. Kruger. In 1890 he was appointed to survey the Mozambique border -- the Portuguese government had already had a row with a railway constructor about where the border was and hence where their contract ended. So he, Joachim José Machado, his Portuguese opposite number and their delegations undertook a detailed survey. This tree was the site of one of the surveyors' camps, and was distinguished by having Von Wiellegh's initials cut into the bark. At least until an elephant looking for moisture -- #thereisalwaysanelephant -- obliterated the marks.

After the dust of the row with the railway ended (dare I mention that he was a too-sharp-by-half American by the name of McMurdo) the resplendently-named Nederlandsch-Zuid-Afrikaansche Spoorweg Maatschappij, which claimed to have been surveying the route since they were founded in 1887 but could only start building when the Portuguese finished their bit and could carry materials and equipment to the border, could start actually building the line to Pretoria. It took 5 years for rather less than 300 km. Maybe there was a reason why the Johannesburg gold miners called the railway company "No Zeal And Slow Motion".

Returning to the subject of enormous families discussed in @jillmwo's thread, I can report on another in my tree.

Henry Harvey (1792--1850) and Mary Ann (née Witham, 1790--1865), who moved from Essex, England to the Eastern Cape in the 1830s, had no fewer than 13 children together. The seventh child (4th daughter), Kezia, was my great-grandmother.

Our local rag carried a story last week that Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife had just announced that for the first time in a very long time, in January they went for a whole month with no incidents of rhino poaching! This is the body that saved both black and white rhinos from extinction in the 1950s and 60s.

>69 hfglen: Out of curiosity, how many of the 13 children lived to adulthood?

>17 hfglen: At least 12. The date of death of one of them is unknown to me.

>70 hfglen: That is good news.

>70 hfglen:
I hope that continues.

Nice photograph.

>70 hfglen: Love this photo, and that is great news!

>74 pgmcc: >75 clamairy: Thank you! PS to #70: a later report says that black rhino, evidently from South Africa, have been reintroduced to Uganda. Evidently the Powers That Be consider that a decently safe move.

>76 hfglen: Wow. Excellent news.

The Chronicles of Pendre Sidings (from the Railway Society library) contains far more day-to-day doings of the Talyllyn Railway in Wales than most of us would have the patience to read, but for no reason that I can fathom I managed to finish it.

In my last year of primary school or thereabouts (equivalent to about 7th grade) it was hammered into us that the passive voice was only to be used in cases of direst necessity, and failure to observe this rule would result in one's work reading like the most boring of corporate bureaucratic documents. Unfortunately that message failed to reach John L.H. Bate, who rarely uses anything else in this book. Everything that long-forgotten teacher said on the subject is true. And so in boredom I started mentally reformatting the odd paragraph here and there; I concluded that a good copy editor could have shortened the book by several pages, made the prose less deadly and saved the (small, indie) publisher some money. I'd be curious to hear @jillmwo's opinion on this point.

In summary, then, this one's best avoided except by rail nuts, who will need stiff draughts of Welsh metheglyn or other fortifying tonics if they're to find the potentially useful information hidden in here.

(Let's try the new Image facility.)

In the weekend thread I mentioned the Valley of 1000 Hills. Here's a view I took a few years ago from a few yards off the road I drove on Saturday.

>79 hfglen: ...the Valley of 1000 Hills. What a lovely poetic name.

Oh, and for the record, the image thing worked perfectly for you! ;>)

Another attempt (after #78) to pick @jillmwo's brains.

A reread of A Song for Arbonne leads me to start to form an hypothesis that the very best stories (another example would be Tigana) invite one to ponder, after reading the last page, the question of "what happened next?" Here, for instance, how did Blaise go about repairing the damage to Gorhaut? Who did Rinette marry? and so on.

>81 hfglen: My response was beginning to come together as I sat and tried to compose here on LT. Then the system ate it. Grrr. Give me another couple of hours. To further complicate matters, my husband is "concerned" because it's edging up on dinner time.

>81 hfglen: Long Wall of Text Incoming... Your question about whether wondering what happens next to a set of characters is indicative of a quality story – that’s a good question. I’ve been thinking about it in the context primarily of genre fiction, because in the current publishing environment, it’s highly desirable. In the past fifty years, fan fiction emerged, fueled by good characters on screen and in classic literature. (Jane Austen prequels, sequels, re-versioning, etc.) All because people want to work out what happened after the final chapter. But much depends on the area in which an author is working.

Think about the British Golden Age of puzzle mysteries. Agatha Christie tended to wrap things up tidily in her books, even with a recurring detective like Poirot. If there was a romance, the happy couple got together by the end and that was it. The puzzle was done and the story ended. However, if you look at a stand-alone such as And Then There Were None, the action of the plot largely closes with ten dead bodies on the island and no explanation. The obvious question at that point has to be “Well, wait a minute. What happened once the boat could finally reach the island?”. To satisfy the reader, Christie moves to an epilogue which has two police investigators discussing exactly that question, summarizing how their investigation had gone and their dissatisfaction with the loose ends. The absolute final segment of the book is a letter sent to Scotland Yard written by the murderer, explaining the specific details of the where’s and how’s. No one needs an additional book after that. The puzzle was solved.

However, if we’re talking about a series (and publishers love a money-making series), the situation changes; the author builds up a cast of characters that recur. Louise Penny in her Three Pines series with Armand Gamache as the lead has a team and over the course of 21 books, you pretty much learn what happens to all the various members of his team as well as what’s going on with his family and neighbors. It’s a comforting approach and readers keep coming back (even if the author might be tired of the current set of available characters).

I read something today about Jan Karon who made a ton of money from her Mitford series back in the ‘90’s and who apparently is about to release another segment. A running set of characters populated the small town and their lives were the main impetus. Finding love and family took the reader from book to book. Calming domestic fiction (I know @MrsLee loved the series.)

In the context of SFF, there’s a bit more room because of the variety of plot directions. The genre supports coming of age stories, it can support quest stories, it can have the arrival of aliens, etc. (You’ve got people like George R.R. Martin who stretches the series out past all bearing; Game of Thrones as a series of books will never be completed. There’s tons of characters to build on but the man is like to die before the final volume hits the presses. Sorry, personal irritation.)

Perhaps that’s an important element as well. The world-building in SFF. If an author can paint a wide enough landscape, then he’s not reliant on using the same characters over and over. Guy Gavriel Kay explores cultural and political dynamics so well! (In my view, his focus is on that rather than filling in all the bios of supporting characters.)

By the way, in response to #78 above, passive voice is boring but gets used as a means of conveying viewpoints in an objective fashion. (I’ve been chastised for using it and inevitably, I was trying to walk a very grey line of diplomacy.) And copy editors are critical to good writing but (in my experience) sometimes they can run amok.

>79 hfglen: Another magnificent photo. I love this shot.

>79 hfglen: What a beautiful photo! Thank you :)

>79 hfglen:
Very nice.

>83 jillmwo:
I enjoyed reading your answers to Hugh.

>81 hfglen: I'm glad you enjoyed your re-read of A Song for Arbonne, I originally skipped that one and when I read it a couple of years ago, I really enjoyed it. I'm currently re-reading Tigana and enjoying that more than the previous reads. I just think I wasn't in a place to enjoy it the first time.

Solar Electricity Basics was published in 2010 and is already showing signs of age. Are lead-acid batteries still the ideal power storage medium? Also, the author shows signs of USAnian and specifically midwestern blinkers, which makes applying his advice elsewhere that much harder. In particular, he dismisses theft and vandalism in three unhelpful sentences. Suffice to say that in this town we have a plague of monkeys.

Watched this YouTube video this evening, and couldn't help wondering if @pgmcc would approve of the place they stay at. Ikhaya Ndlovu in SiSwati means "home of the elephant" ;-), and the place shares a boundary with the Kruger Park. And most of what they saw this particular day was elephants. It may explain the background if you know that just over a month ago the Park, particularly the northern part, had floods that may have been worse than those in 2000.

>90 hfglen:
Great clips of the wild elephants and the elephants in their tent.

I am not a great enthusiast for tents, and the heat would be more than I can stand. I heard them mention 50C. I start getting uncomfortable at 30. 40 is just too much for me.

>91 pgmcc: 50C! Isn't that just barely survivable?

>92 Karlstar:
Precisely. I have experienced temperatures in the 40s and that was more than I could take.

>90 hfglen: I don't have time to watch the whole thing, but the parts I watched were lovely.

(I don't do that kind of heat.)

>91 pgmcc: >92 Karlstar: >94 clamairy: That was in the car, in the sun. In the shade it would have been in the upper 30s C, which is still hot -- AFAIK in the Lowveld only Komatipoort (3 km from the border crossing on the road from Pretoria to Maputo) is hotter. So if you like the idea of watching elephants and not staying in a safari tent and being cooler (1) go in winter -- but avoid roughly the month from mid-June to mid-July, which is school holidays when the Kruger Park is packed full to bursting, and (2) stay in a hut or cottage in Letaba or Olifants rest camp in the park; the walls are solid and they're nearly all air-conditioned.

By going in winter you also reduce the already tiny chance of arriving home in the temperate Northern Hemisphere with a developing tropical disease. I am reminded of the difference between when I came down with tick bite fever after a weekend in the bush, and when a certain overseas visitor did the same. Mine was still in the days when doctors made house calls, and our family GP knew the score exactly. So he came and stood in the bedroom doorway, and all he said before writing out the necessary prescription was "so where's the bite?". Hi did explain the prescription before leaving. The overseas visitor, on the other hand, got passed around several London experts before landing with the Royal Institute for Tropical Diseases, where they eventually found someone who'd seen it before. So instead of pumping him full of the right antibiotic, they called in every medical student for miles around to take a look!

I shudder to think of Pete arriving in Dublin with that bug brewing -- the most obvious symptom was aptly described by a fellow-student thus: "the headache lasts three weeks; you spend half that time worrying you're going to die and the other half worrying you're going to survive". Quite.

>95 hfglen:
I shudder to think of that too, Hugh.

>95 hfglen: That does not sound like fun.

>95 hfglen: As someone who (long ago) was at the center of an examination by medical experts calling to one another, "Ooooh, I've never seen one like this before." I am fairly sure that your visitor would have been less than charmed by their excitement.

>97 Karlstar: It wasn't, but the natural immunity afterwards lasts at least 50 years.

>98 jillmwo: Quite. You have my sympathy.

The Pleasure of Reading, edited by Antonia Fraser, is a collection of essays by 43 Great and Good writers (the initial caps are intentional) on why they enjoy reading, especially rereads, and what their favourite books are. I get the "enjoy reading" bit, as would anybody in this pub, but the overwhelming impression created by the list is "who are they trying to impress?". Books that do well among the Dragoneers are conspicuous by their absence, and not just because most of the essays were written a long time ago. It seems that good sales count against, rather than for, books commented on here.

This week's "good news" comes from the local knock-and-drop, and takes the form of a plaintive statement from Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife that they're desperately looking for a suitable home for the overpopulation of elephants in several Zululand reserves. They say if they can't re-house them they'll have to think of a cull!

>101 hfglen: Where is @pgmcc when you need him?!

Here's the picture that should have gone with #100 for Pete.



It's actually in the northern Kruger Park in May 2014, but they also have somewhat of an oversupply of elephants.

Oh that my garden was bigger than 20ft by 40ft.

Elephants are like books. You can never have too many.

>101 hfglen: That's great news, I hope they find somewhere to locate them.

Has anyone read "Stress Smarts: Strategies for a Calmer Life" by Andy Reven? What did you think?

Not me. Never heard of the author.

By the way, does anybody know if R.T. Kaelin is still in the land of the living? He was a GD member when he wrote Progeny, which I am enjoying re-reading. I dimly recall beta-reading Prophecy at the time. One feels there should have been a third part to the saga, but all I can find is a number of shortish stories about the young Nundle.

>109 jillmwo:. I just checked his member profile. The activity monitor characterizes him as being inactive. It may be that real life has intervened in his writing career in some fashion. I'm not seeing anything on the larger Web that's dated any later than 2013.

>108 hfglen: I have no idea. I also have the first book in that series. I just assumed he left LT / The Green Dragon after he was done promoting his books. I will do some snooping.

Editing to add: I am friends with him on Facebook, and while he has not posted himself in some time his wife is constantly posting and tagging him in the posts and referring to him in the present tense.

>109 jillmwo: >110 clamairy: Thank you both very much!

Watched a video about Chateau de Chambord this evening. It caused me to wonder if it's anywhere near being within day-trip range (a deliberately vague distance) of @pgmcc's "secret hideout".

>112 hfglen:
Chateau de Chambord is my favourite chateau. It is about 40 minutes drive from our underground bunker. We have been there several times. I trust the video was interesting. Did it mention that the attic at the chateau was used to hid many of the treasures from the Louvre from the Nazis during the occupation?

I was pleased with the picture below that I took of Chambord some years ago.

>113 pgmcc: Your photo could be a postcard. That's a perfect capture of the chateau.

>113 pgmcc: Woooow! This is almost otherworldly. Thank you :)

>114 Narilka: >115 Alexandra_book_life:

Thank you. I had it made into a jigsaw as a present for one of my brothers.

>113 pgmcc: Thank you; it did indeed, with contemporary pictures. When Better Half and I were still relatively newly married, we moved to Pretoria. Our first home was a flat in a block absurdly named Chambord: 12 floors of habitation on top of 3 of parking, plonked on top of a hill and surely a contender for the title of "world's ugliest habitable structure".

>117 hfglen:
Sorry to hear your first Chambord was not as architecturally pleasing as the French one.

I remember the first time I visited Chateau de Chambord we went onto the roof terrace. The mixture of extraordinary architecture made me think of Gormenghast. It is very dreamlike and fairytale.

>116 pgmcc: I hope he enjoyed the gift. I know I would have :)

Not to be difficult, but allow me to jerk you all back into reality. Yes the photo taken there by >113 pgmcc: is lovely, but consider what the heating bills for a chateau like that must run. And while one might argue that it doesn't matter if the heat doesn't reach all the furthest bits in the attics and/or the cellars because that's where the servants sleep, it could still be awfully chilly running the food from the kitchen areas up to the formal dining rooms.

>120 jillmwo:
Look at the number of chimmneys.

>113 pgmcc: Sweet baby cheeses. Now that is spectacular.

>113 pgmcc: That is a spectacular building! >120 jillmwo: Not to mention the cleaning! I barely keep my own house clean!

>120 jillmwo: When I worked at Kew in 1980-2 we sometimes went to the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court. From the visitor parking to the Chapel involved walking past the kitchen and being aware that the royal dining room was the other end of the palace, some hundreds of yards away. We often wondered if Henry VIII (or William and Mary, for that matter) ever got a hot meal. The wondering was sharpened one winter Sunday when we saw that the drip outside the kitchen had frozen.

>113 pgmcc: What a great photo of a glorious building!

>120 jillmwo: Sure, there are downsides but just think, you'd never run out of space for books!

>120 jillmwo: If I can afford a house that size then I can afford both the heating/cooling bill and the staff needed for it's upkeep ;)

>119 Narilka:
He did. He had visited the chateau a few years earlier and had loved it so he was happy to get the jigsaw.

>122 clamairy:
Thank you. It is a great building and I was fortunate to find myself in a spot where the chateau fitted in the field of view of one of my lenses. It all came together nicely.

>123 catzteach:
It is indeed an amazing building. Leonardo da Vinci was involved in its design. There is a double helix pair of staircases in the centre that blow your mind.

>125 Sakerfalcon:
Thank you. We really enjoy visiting that chateau.

>126 Narilka:
That is the way to look at it.

Many of the fancy chateaux in the Loire valley were build by people trying to outdo one another in impressing the King with the grandeur their home.

>127 pgmcc: we’ve been there! Didn’t realise it until you mentioned that staircase.

I couldn't help thinking of Peter when this arrived yesterday!

>129 hfglen:
Excellent. There is always an elephant.

Will THIS be one of the Irish highlights in Durban?

>130 pgmcc: :-) No. The programme lists the site of the Battle of Congella, the Ordnance Road military cemetery and the Old Fort. All of these had to do with a dust-up between the British and the Boers in 1843. I was in that general area yesterday (for a World Ship Society lecture; thank heavens someone else was driving!) and came away delighted that I don't usually go there!

It's a long time since we last had a picture, so seeing it's the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" (without the mist) in the southern hemisphere, here is a delicious local wild fruit often grown as a hedge here. Its local name is amaTungulu, scientific name Carissa macrocarpa.



My father took this at a place called Hluleka on the Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape in 1969.

Just below the fruit you can see one of the Y-shaped thorns that make it a good hedge. Plants are shrubs growing to just over man-high, and at least the ones at our church respond well to enthusiastic pruning. The fruits are just over an inch long and can be eaten fresh or as jams or jellies (yum!). @jillmwo may be less than thrilled to know that unlike many members of its family it is not poisonous, though it does have milky, sticky latex.

Read more about it here.

>132 hfglen:
Nice picture. @jillmwo will be disappointed by its lack of toxicity.

>132 hfglen: Thanks, I love hearing about new (to me) plants.

>132 hfglen: that's such a good photo! It's never easy with close ups, the lighting and depth of field can be very tricky.

>132 hfglen: it is not poisonous, though it does have milky, sticky latex. It's just that I find that grossing a potential victim out through the use of milky, sticky latex is less effective than other means when one is trying to rid the world of a bothersome sort of person. But I must ask -- have you tasted the fruit jam? Is it any good?

>132 hfglen: Very interesting, thank you :)

>136 jillmwo: Yes, and the raw fruit. Delicious, but not always easy to come by.

Further to #132.

Hmmmmz. I wonder if we should tell @jillmwo about the deadly lookalike. Fortunately it's frost-tender, and probably wouldn't grow in Philadelphia.

>139 hfglen:
Do not say a word to her. The less she knows about the better.

>139 hfglen: >140 pgmcc: Gentlemen: I am simply a woman who pursues knowledge. I can't think why you should want to discourage such activity. But as long as we're on the topic, what is the deadly look-alike that won't grow well in Philly?

Oops! She heard us.

>132 hfglen: I love this photo! I am growing a rubber tree plant that looks very similar to that, but has never borne any fruit. It also gives off that milky sticky substance when cut. I bring it inside every Winter.

>132 hfglen: I love this photo! I am growing a rubber tree plant that looks very similar to that, but has never borne any fruit. It also gives off that milky sticky substance when cut. I bring it inside every Winter.

Further to the discussion over in @haydninvienna's thread, about the only literature I can think of that mentions baobabs (apart from The Little Prince, of course) is a load of exploration reports from West Africa in the 18th century and central Africa in the 19th; and sundry tree guides. But considering that Durban Bot. Garden has a c. 90-year-old baobab that's plumping up nicely, I can't think why they wouldn't grow in Brisbane. I'd just question the wisdom of growing them as street trees -- in their second and subsequent centuries they do rather take over ;-)



Here's Livingstone's Baobab at Victoria Falls, seen in 1971. The three vertical specks at the base are normal-sized fellow students.

And Richard also mentioned a street full of tamarinds, which seems to me like a better choice than baobabs. He reminded me that I had this picture, which I took only a week or so before the one above.



This enormous tamarind was growing at a place called Sinamwenda, on the shore of Lake Kaeiba, but you won't find it on any map -- it was always too remote. Witwatersrand U. and U. of Rhodesia used to share a research station there, 4.5 hours by boat from Binga village and 9 hours upstream from Kariba village. There never was any road access, and sadly the station was completely destroyed in the bush war.

Tamarind is an Indian tree, so what is one doing here in the middle of nowhere in Africa? Long after I took the picture it became clear that about 500 years ago, Indian traders did business with the locals a long way up the Zambesi. Could this be evidence of a trading station? On the one hand it would be great if an archaeological dig a la Time Team could explore there, but how would they get their instruments through the undergrowth?

Testing ... testing ... testing ...



With many thanks to @pgmcc for an html dodge that gives me the result I wanted!

The tree on the left is Von Wiellegh's Baobab near Olifants Restcamp, Kruger Park; the right hand picture is flowers on a baobab near Shimuwini (the word means "at the baobab") Bush Camp, KNP. This may tell us why @haydninvenna could have difficulty spotting flowers on the trees in Brisbane. Baobabs are bat-pollinated, and the flowers only stay open for one night.

>145 hfglen: >146 hfglen: >147 hfglen: Thanks for the pictures and the stories. Always fascinating!

>147 hfglen:
Glad to be of service.

Your pictures are great.

Thank you for the lovely photos, Hugh! I'm particularly interested in the tamarind. I have some seeds here that I want to plant. I realize I will have to bring it inside every Fall, and since I already have several gigantic plants I bring in every year I'm not sure I want one more.

>150 clamairy: Thank you, Clam. I don't think a tamarind would be my first choice for a decorative planting on Long Island. The big one in #146 is/was in a part of the Zambesi valley that is permanently, unbelievably hot. I've also seen tamarinds in the Institute of Tropical and Subtropical Crops at Nelspruit and in Durban Botanical Garden, both of which are frost free. But I will say that the first flush of spring leaves have a very pretty colour.
I saw these leaves in Zimbabwe National Botanical Garden, which AFAIK gets occasional light frost. So if you have a very sheltered spot and wrap it up in horticultural fleece on the coldest months, it might just survive.

>151 hfglen: Thanks for your input. Maybe I'll just let those seeds sit...

Time for a new thread!