How come more then six months have passed already since Les died? So much has happened during this time. Still, it feels likethe monthsdid pass very quickly. There is really not much I can do within one day. When a day has gone, I have not been able to do much at all. It is as though a day has only 16 hours instead of 24. And this includes about ten hours sleeping. I may overall have 14 hours when I can be awake. But during these 14 hours at the most I can do only as much as what normally people can do in less than 7 hours. So, I am always behind. Still, I try to do as much as possible.
I don’t know whether what I write here makes a lot of sense or not. In short, I have the feeling I am always running out of time. I have to get used to it to do everything slowly. This means I cannot do everything I would still like to do, unless I can get a lot of help.
How much help can I get? At this stage it is actually just 3 hours per week!! I am hopeful that perhaps I may soon get about 4 more hours per week. – – –
Of course my family helps out a bit whenever they have a bit of time for me.
This post was to be for the month of June. So, what happened this month so far? Today is only the 8th of June, It is the King’s Birthday weekend. This means tomorrow, Monday, is a public holiday. We had planned to drive up to the Southern Highlands today, that is my daughter Monika had planned to give me and her daughter Natasha a lift to the Highlands. I would have liked to stop at Mittagong to see my friend Gerard. The trip had to be cancelled because of sickness.
Today we had another look at Berkelouw’s Book Barn after we had not visited it for many years. It was a very good place to meet up again with G and H.
In one of Berkelouw’s pamphlets it says:
WE BUY BOOKS AND PRINTS IN LARGE LOTS OR SMALL
The Book Barn at Berrima is the first of its kind in Australia and responds to the demand of the reading public for inexpensive fine quality secondhand books . . . . ”
After not having visited the Book Barn for a number of years, we were astounded, how the facilities have improved. There is a huge restaurant area as well as a well established winery and a magnificent place for wine tasting!
I very much liked the pizza and the salad with flowers for lunch and later on a glass of wine at the cellar door.
The poplars that lead to the book barn look as healthy as ever!
bookbarn@berkelouw.com.au
On the way home we had a quick stop at Robertson Pie Shop.
And then we had to drive down MacQuarie Pass in dense fog and rain!
All the way home it rained steadily. Luckily the rain was not as heavy as it had been the day before. Last night we had some flooding in our home. When we arrived home today, there was still a bit of rain but thankfully no more flooding. Also after yesterday’s heat-wave with temperatures well over 35C, it is very much cooler today. Australia Day is coming up next Tuesday. Already today, Friday, a lot of traffic was building up for people going South to have a long holiday weekend.
Auntie, Sister. Grandmother, Great-Grandmother, Mother and Wife of German Descent I’ve lived in Australia since 1959 together with my husband Peter. We have four children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. I started blogging because I wanted to publish some of my childhood memories. I am blogging now also some of my other memories. I like to publish some photos too as well as a little bit of a diary from the present time. Occasionally I publish a story with a bit of fiction in it. Peter, my husband, is publishing some of his stories under berlioz1935.wordpress.com View all posts by auntyuta
8 thoughts on “A beautiful Day at BERKELOUW’s Book Barn, 22nd January 2016”
The C-SweetEditThe salad looks delicious – what a nice little surprise to find all the upgrades to the little bookshop, including of course, the wine bar!!! It’s hard to believe the fog/rain photo was taken the same day.Reply
auntyutaEditThanks for commenting, C. Berkelouw Books are well established. They still have about eight book stores in NSW, and one in Queensland. Apart from secondhand books they also sell a few newly published books..To us it is a well known fact that towards the top of the pass a lot of fog can develop. Luckily the pass is well signed all the way. Peter, my husband, is 80, but he has long practice negotiating along the pass, that is, there were times when his work required that he drove up and down the pass on a daily basis. So I am proud to say, that he hasn’t lost his touch yet and drove confidently around all the bends in fog and rain! Reply
auntyutaEditI did choose Riesling. They served it beautifully chilled. The grapes for this wine came from their own estate. I was very happy with this drink.
gerard oostermanEditWe enjoyed sharing food and wine too at Berkelouw’s. Uta. We drank some of their Semillon Blanc last night. We had a great day and pleased Peter still manages all those S bends down the Pass.Reply
DebraEditOh my goodness! I would love the Book Barn. This is my kind of place for sure. I have very little self-control when given an excellent used book shop, and this one really appeals to me. It’s probably good I don’t live nearby. LOL!Reply
auntyutaEditWe’ve been collecting books for over 60 years, Debra. To keep too many books if the space is limited, can be overwhelming. Right now, we are in the process of throwing some books out. In future we want to resist the temptation to buy more and more books. Some books we simply cannot let go, and eventually we’ll probably buy a few more books that we think are of special value. You are right, the Book Barn is the place to go to, to look for excellent used books.Reply
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A beautiful Day at BERKELOUW’s Book Barn, 22nd January 2016
Today we had another look at Berkelouw’s Book Barn after we had not visited it for many years. It was a very good place to meet up again with G and H.
In one of Berkelouw’s pamphlets it says:
WE BUY BOOKS AND PRINTS IN LARGE LOTS OR SMALL
The Book Barn at Berrima is the first of its kind in Australia and responds to the demand of the reading public for inexpensive fine quality secondhand books . . . . ”
After not having visited the Book Barn for a number of years, we were astounded, how the facilities have improved. There is a huge restaurant area as well as a well established winery and a magnificent place for wine tasting!
I very much liked the pizza and the salad with flowers for lunch and later on a glass of wine at the cellar door.
The poplars that lead to the book barn look as healthy as ever!
bookbarn@berkelouw.com.au
On the way home we had a quick stop at Robertson Pie Shop.
And then we had to drive down MacQuarie Pass in dense fog and rain!
All the way home it rained steadily. Luckily the rain was not as heavy as it had been the day before. Last night we had some flooding in our home. When we arrived home today, there was still a bit of rain but thankfully no more flooding. Also after yesterday’s heat-wave with temperatures well over 35C, it is very much cooler today. Australia Day is coming up next Tuesday. Already today, Friday, a lot of traffic was building up for people going South to have a long holiday weekend.
Auntie, Sister. Grandmother, Great-Grandmother, Mother and Wife of German Descent I’ve lived in Australia since 1959 together with my husband Peter. We have four children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. I started blogging because I wanted to publish some of my childhood memories. I am blogging now also some of my other memories. I like to publish some photos too as well as a little bit of a diary from the present time. Occasionally I publish a story with a bit of fiction in it. Peter, my husband, is publishing some of his stories under berlioz1935.wordpress.com View all posts by auntyuta
8 thoughts on “A beautiful Day at BERKELOUW’s Book Barn, 22nd January 2016”
The C-SweetEditThe salad looks delicious – what a nice little surprise to find all the upgrades to the little bookshop, including of course, the wine bar!!! It’s hard to believe the fog/rain photo was taken the same day.Reply
auntyutaEditThanks for commenting, C. Berkelouw Books are well established. They still have about eight book stores in NSW, and one in Queensland. Apart from secondhand books they also sell a few newly published books..To us it is a well known fact that towards the top of the pass a lot of fog can develop. Luckily the pass is well signed all the way. Peter, my husband, is 80, but he has long practice negotiating along the pass, that is, there were times when his work required that he drove up and down the pass on a daily basis. So I am proud to say, that he hasn’t lost his touch yet and drove confidently around all the bends in fog and rain! Reply
auntyutaEditI did choose Riesling. They served it beautifully chilled. The grapes for this wine came from their own estate. I was very happy with this drink.
gerard oostermanEditWe enjoyed sharing food and wine too at Berkelouw’s. Uta. We drank some of their Semillon Blanc last night. We had a great day and pleased Peter still manages all those S bends down the Pass.Reply
DebraEditOh my goodness! I would love the Book Barn. This is my kind of place for sure. I have very little self-control when given an excellent used book shop, and this one really appeals to me. It’s probably good I don’t live nearby. LOL!Reply
auntyutaEditWe’ve been collecting books for over 60 years, Debra. To keep too many books if the space is limited, can be overwhelming. Right now, we are in the process of throwing some books out. In future we want to resist the temptation to buy more and more books. Some books we simply cannot let go, and eventually we’ll probably buy a few more books that we think are of special value. You are right, the Book Barn is the place to go to, to look for excellent used books.Reply
I am ninety. So I know that my time is very limited. But that does not matter for as long as I feel happy about being alive and maybe can also still do a little bit of writing. I very nuch care about relationships. To devote a great amount of my time to respond to what people say is important to me. Without significant relationships I am nothing. I have to say that relationships that I did have in the past do count a lot too, and I want to be able to tell about them and write about them. However I feel I should not forget to write about present relationships too!
So, where am I at this stage? Can I prioritize and devote myself to the things that are the most important to me? How can I still make the most with the time that is left to me? Even though I cannot know exactly how much time I may still be given, I can still try to make the most of every day that I still feel alive enough to be doing something at all. To be able to do something is such a blessing!
What about loneliness? It is said the feeling of loneliness can be a killer as much as any sickness. For most people it seems to be important that they have someone to hug and to kiss. How can hugging and kissing be so important? But it is. Instead of generalising I want to tell here something about myself. I think for most of my life I was more an introvert than an extrovert. Has aging changed me in some ways? Maybe yes. In my old age I find it usually not very difficult to be somewhat outgoing in communicating with people who in the past perhaps would have been very much out of reach for me. Also I find now often some increased desire to hug and kiss people.
Looking back at my longtime marriage, I think it lasted fot that long because we always had some kind of love and respect for each other. Now that I have a ‘boyfriend’ who is nearly as old as I am, we too love and respect each other. He too comes from a very long lasting marriage. It seems to me he has sometimes difficulty treating me just as a girlfriend. I like him very much, but I like him as a girlfriend, not as a wife . . . .
So, where am I? I am happy that Les and I have found each other. We have lots of fun together. Les has a wonderful sense of humour. He often makes me laugh. And he likes me to laugh a lot! 😂
“The Dry” by Jane Harper. I was able to get this novel from the library and started reading it last week on Wednesday when Peter had his treatment day in Wollongong Hospital. Last weekend I finished reading this book in between sleeping a lot. I needed a lot of extra rest for I had a tummy upset. Still, it was good that I could use the resting time to finish reading “The Dry”. I was really interested to find out how this crime novel would end. It is a first novel by Australian author Jane Harper. The novel is set in a small country town in outback very dry and hot Victoria. A family is being murdered during the hot summer month of February. Who is the murderer? I thought there were very interesting clues and characters in this novel. After a while I just could not put it down anymore.
My tummy ache had already started early in the morning last Saturday. But this was the day when we had planned lunch with our friends at the club’s Treasure Court Restaurant. I actually managed to eat my vegetables with ginger/shallot sauce and boiled rice.
These vegetable were very crisp and fresh. I think this sort of meal was just the right thing for me to eat on that day.
Yesterday, Monday, I felt much better. But to be on the safe side, I stayed home all day. Today was different. Peter and I left early in the morning to go to Warrawong to see a movie in the GALA CINEMA. Our choice to see was
VICEROY’S HOUSE, a movie about the partition of India in 1947.
In the review by
Paul Byrnes
it is said towards the end:
” . . . This last bit is where Chadha may have taken liberties. She relies on a book by former Indian diplomat Narendra Singh Sarila, a junior member of Mountbatten’s staff. Sarila contends that Churchill decided two years earlier that partition was necessary to ensure that a newly created Pakistan would become a strong bulwark against the USSR, thus protecting the Middle East oilfields. . . . ”
The last few weeks passed very, very quickly! So that, really I do have a lot to catch up on as far as some writing is concerned.
I think I already started on writing about some of the things we did with my brother Peter Uwe and sister-in-law Astrid. While Peter and Astrid were here the days were filled to the brim. Now, five days have passed already since they left to fly back to Germany. And still I did not get much of a chance to write anything!
I just want to start with a picture I took the other day of our ‘tray of happiness’. It is really Peter’s ‘tray of happiness’ for I do not think I depend on it for happiness. If I remember correctly, Matthew used to give Peter’s tray with all the different jams on it the above name. This name shows indeed how important for Peter is this tray. There need to be five different jars of jam on it. If only four jars are left. it is time to go shopping for another jar. It is very, very important for Peter that at all times there is an adequate selection of jams on that tray!
Only four jars of jam left? Well, it must be time to buy a bit more jam!
To the left of the tray is Peter’s mug that he likes to drink his water from. He needs to drink at least two litres of water every day. So every morning a big two litre glass jug is filled with water. That means Peter’s mug to drink out of has to be refilled on a regular basis. The large blue cup on the right side in the picture is Peter’s coffee cup for breakfast.
For old people that we are, it is good to have a daily routine. The difficulty only is that my routine overall is often slightly different from Peter’s. For instance instead of buttered toast with four or five different jams, I prefer to have a cooked breakfast. A good breakfast for me is vegetables and an egg sauted in some butter and served with some green salad leaves. But I usually have for breakfast the same sort of coffee that Peter has. I do not always manage to do some cooking for breakfast. Then I might just have a slice of buttered toast with vegemite and maybe some yoghurt.
In conversation with family we often mention Peter’s ‘tray of happiness’. I think this is why I just did find it easy to write about it. I actually enjoy writing best when I can do it in a conversational way.
The last few weeks were filled with German talk in our house, for Astrid has a very limited knowledge of English. Peter Uwe understands written and spoken English somewhat better and can say something in English if he has to. However he prefers to say everything in German. When I talked to Peter Uwe and Astrid I tried to speak strictly German without any English words added to it. This was at times rather difficult. Sometimes I was lost for the exactly right German word. When I asked Peter to help me out, he often could not find the right German word straight away either!
Yesterday afternoon I joined four other ladies for our Friday games which I had missed while our visitors were around. One of the ladies asked me, whether our German visitors had liked it here in Australia. And I said, that they had enjoyed their stay in Australia very much, and that we had done a real lot of things with them. And we had very much loved to have them here.
Yes, it was a terrific time with them here. When we have visitors from overseas they are always astonished how beautiful the area is we live in. For us it is marvellous too, when we can go to all the different places that we did get to know and love over many years.
Some bloggers that looked at some of my previous posts might remember perhaps a bit about the Illawarra area and beyond. To mention all the interesting places makes really a long list. Even though we could take our visitors to a lot of places, there was in the end not enough time to take them to the Blue Mountains, or to Berry on the South Coast. Also a trip to Canberra or Melbourne could not be fitted in. Peter Uwe had Queensland in good memory from a previous stay in Australia some eighteen years ago. Astrid had never been to Australia. Peter Uwe and Astrid decided to book a one week holiday up in Cairns, Queensland. They did fly to Cairns and stayed in a hotel there. They were lucky with the weather. It was good for swimming and snorkeling.
They also loved our solar heated swimming pool in Dapto and went there twice in a row. They were also happy to meet our extended family several times.
Today is already July 30. I think it is about time for me to catch up on my Diary.
The last few weeks have been difficult as far as writing for the diary is concerned. I had often very mixed feelings about what was going on in the world. Usually I felt I could not concentrate enough to do much writing. Just reading what the newspapers said and hearing the news on radio as well as watching them on television became very tiring and upsetting. However whenever I found myself with some spare time I tried to catch up on reading novels. I also went for walks as often as possible. After a bit of walking I usually sat down in the sun for a while to relax. I was always grateful when the winter sun made its appearance. I tried to catch as much of it as possible. 🙂
If you are interested in well written conversations and in theatre, please go to the above link! I reckon the story you find there is a real treat! It was published one year ago. I only found it today and could not resist trying to reblog it.
Dr Maria Simms is a published novelist and short story writer who has worked as an academic for many years. Her crime novel, The Dead House, won the New Holland Genre Fiction Award. Maria has been a general editor; lecturer in creative and academic writing; head of a large university academic study centre; and director of university continuing education programs. In an earlier incarnation she worked in theatre and graphic design. Her interests include creative and academic writing, textual and cultural theory and Australian history with an emphasis on the place of women in the narrative of Australia. She loves a good yarn and hearing about the lives of people she meets.
Maria is the managing director of WordCraft Consulting, a company specialising in academic, business and creative writing. She can be contacted at: maria.simms@bigpond.com
Hi Geraldine, to your question about writing I can only say that I am not a very qualified writer but I love writing. If I talk to people on the phone for instance I tend to forget important messages in the conversation whereas when I communicate by email I can always look up what has been said and remember it better. I think I write my blogs on the whole similar to how I would write an email or a letter. I feel there is always something to tell about my life, what I have experienced, what I have been reading, the movies I have seen and so on.
It depends of course who you want to communicate with. What you write about your life, you can also call it a diary or a journal. You write it either just for yourself in order to remember later on what happened in your life at a certain time. But of course you can also address people you know and who are interested in what is going on in your life. By showing you are interested in their life they might give you some feedback and to this you can answer again. And so it goes on. I find it is never boring because you try to concentrate on the things that may be of some interest to some people. If you take photos they can often be a starting point to a conversation or make you think about something of interest.
Do not worry about how you start your writing. Just write down what’s on you mind without analysing it. This is a first draft. You can always change it into a second draft, which may look quite different from the first draft. It is fun to spend some time with improving what you have written. Sometimes it may be better to leave it as it is even if it isn’t perfect writing. As long as you honestly tell something about your life, your feelings and your thoughts as well as about your observations.
Have fun writing! Wishing you a great start. Hope I have been a bit helpful. I guess you are probably a young person whereas I am pretty old: nearing 80 actually!
Best Wishes, Uta (I live near Sydney, Australia)
I tried to send this to Geraldine as an email, however without success. I don’t know what went wrong with the email address.
In this week’s Time Magazine JOEL STEIN writes that people are wasting a lot of time. They should really leave that to the professionals.
He says about 20% of the 31,000 volunteer Wikipedia contributors spend more than three hours a day editing entries.
People answer surveys on pop-up ads, phone calls and e-mail. – – – –
He points out that before the Internet came along, most people rarely wrote anything at all for pleasure or intellectual satisfaction after graduating from high school or college. – – – –
AuntyUta 