Quartet the Movie

We went to the movies this moring with friends to see Quartet. I can highly recomend it.

Qartet

Just released, Qartet is one of those great comedies only the Brits can produce, although with the help in this one by freshman director Dustin Hofffman.

Picture the scene: We’re in Beecham House,  a retirement Home for retired opera singers and musicians, similar to the Casa di Riposo per Musicisti in Milan, founded by composer Guiseppe Verdi himself, only this one is in rural England, but it even looks similar to the original. The residents, instead of playing bingo and bowls are practicing their former metier in music. There are singers rehearsing Gilbert and Sullivan, while others play orchestral instruments including trumpet and clarinet.

Enter retired opera diva, Jean Horton (Maggie Smith / The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) who was once married to tenor Regy Paget (Tom Cortenay / Little Dorritt) for 9 hours. Regy never forgave Jean after she confessed having an affair with another opera singer just after their wedding and has been trying to forget the unfortunate incident all those years ago. But now Jean has moved into the same home and old wounds are opened up again.

Beecham House is run by Dr Lucy Cogan (Sheridan Smith / Benidorm) and money is tight to keep the home operational. Another resident, Cedric (Michael Gambon /Maigret), a former director of opera, sees an opportunity to reunite the famous quartet for an anniversary concert to celebrate Guiseppe Verdi and to raise much needed funds to keep Beecham House going. The Quartet consisting of Jean, Regy, Wilf (Billy Connolly / The Man Who sued God) and Cissy (Pauline Collins / Shirley Valentine) who suffers the onset of Alzheimer’s but never-the-less tries to convince Jean to join them.  Of course Jean thinks resurrecting the quartet is preposterous and refuses to consider doing so. But petty jealousy between divas finally delivers the quartet to the stage for a last performance of the famous Rigoletto quartet in Act 3.

There are some very funny lines in the script by Reginald and Donald Hardwood, beautifully delivered by an outstanding ensemble cast.  Billy Connolly as the resident dirty old man is superb, as is the conductor, Bobby Swanson (Andrew Sachs / Faulty Towers). Anyone with an ounce of love of comedy, opera and classical music will highly enjoy this movie. Anyone not enjoying ‘Quartet,’ I feel sorry for you.

Bill 

My favourite Drop

Regular readers of my blog know that Chateauneuf du Pape is one of my favourite wines. Christmas Eve and our daughter Carol-Ann and son-in-law David joined us for our Christmas celebrations including dinner with, you guessed it, a bottle of CNdP.

It was wonderful.

Melbourne Cup 2012

Today is the day when a horse race stops this nation, The MELBOURNE CUP. On the strike of 3pm in Melbourne a bunch of horses at Flemington start racing anti-clockwise around and everyone watches it in Australia. Australia comes to a stop. Except school teachers, Diane tells me, have to watch a replay after school.

Or friend Colin has been excited for weeks studying the form and picking a winner. Once again, Diane and I had a quiet lunch for two on the balcony before the race.

For our overseas readers, here are some pics of the event, taken off the telly:

Our Melbourne Cup Luncjh, cheers.....

Here we go.

A couple of Royals came out to watch the race.

There in the starting gates.

Let's go...

...and they're off.

A real shot of the field

Coming up to the first bend

the field approaches

The winner GREEN MOON passes the gate

The proud winner

The winner gives a TV interview.

No doubt, we'll do it all again, this time next year.

Western Plains Zoo

We spent a most of the day yesterday at the Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo. I've visited many zoos around the world and I am extremely impressed with this one. There are no visible fences between the animals and visitors and you can drive, cycle or walk through the entire zoo.

Here are some of my pics. I have taken mostly video footage which i will edit later on.

there were....

Meer Cats

Giraffes

Antelopes

Hippos

Elephants

Rhinos

Tigers

Camels

And many many more. No doubt you'll see on Diane's blog soon......

Mobile again

We're mexicans again (south of the border) on a road trip. The reason, is we attended the 50th anniversary reunion of Diane's Teachers College, this time in the nation'a capital, Canberra.
We left Brisbane and drove down the Pacific Highway stopping every 2 hours to alternate driving.

Here are some snaps from the trip so far.

First stop Nambucca River to change drivers.

 Then we continued until we finally decided we had enough driving for one day, so we pulled into Port Macquarie and booked a room in a nice resort.

The sunset was fabulous across from the resort 

Next morning we continued towards Sydney guided by our trusty Kate (GPS) who pointed us in the right direction.

We had a bit of bother across the harbour tunnel in Sydney where a car had broken down, so Kate made us drive down to Randwick before we could turn left towards Vaucluse where our daughter Carol and S-I-L David live. After a nice evening with them and a good night's sleep, Diane and I got up early to take a walk along the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean before breakfast.

The cliffs are stunning along the Vaucluse coast.

While we were in Sydney, Carol and David took us to Shark Bay for a wonderful lunch.

Shark bay on the Sydney harbour

 They also took us to see Vaucluse House where we all admired the gardens. Unfortunately the house was closed to the public on that day.

Vaucluse House has a beautiful garden

 Then it was time to move on again to the nations's capital, Canberra. The road from Sydney is very good, 4-lane highway all the way with 110km/hr speed limit, so it didn't take us long to get there.

The Black Mountain Tower overlooks the capital

 We were very busy for 3 days with the reunion but had a chance to visit the biggest celebration of spring festival, the Floriade which was in full swing in Canberra.

Masses of fields of tulips on display at the Floriade.

One of the main reasons, we drove down to Canberra instead of flying was Diane wanted to drive up into the Snowy Mountains for a hike. I wanted to see the famous Snowy Mountain Scheme. So we had planned that after the reunion we would drive up to Cooma and Jindabine for a few days.

Well on Thursday, the weather report mentioned rain or snow falls and very cold weather up there so upon investigating, we found going west would be the best (warmest) option, so we drove to Young in NSW where we are now staying overnight. The Snowy Mountains are still on our 'Bucket List.' But next time we'll go in summer. Colin, our good friend is here in Young, visiting his 90 year old mother who lives in a retirement village. So we called in and picked them both up after lunch and they showed us around this beautiful country town.

The Chinese Tribute Garden at Young

More later, we're leaving for Dubbo in the morning.

Yet another Mag

Our friend Ann emailed us this story this morning. Thank you Ann,

On Thursday, Channel 7 starts screening the latest series of Beauty and The Geek Australia. New Idea magazine journalist interviewed Bernie and Sonya while they were in Sydney recently.

Air Traffic Controller

Our daughter Carol-Ann had to fly up from Sydney to Brisbane for work for a couple of days. We picked her up on Friday night and she spent a night with us. Tonight we took her back to the airport for her flight back to Sydney. This gave me a chance to try out http://www.flightradar24.com/

It's a web site where you can view any airplane up there in the sky flying anywhere in the world.

Here's Carol's flight:

(CLICK ON THE PICTURES FOR A BIGGER VIEW)

QFA553 BNE to SYD has taken off 

7.56pm QFA53 has crossed the QLD - NSW border

QFA553 has just passed a Jetstar plane heading for BNE
it was 1000ft below at 8.09pm

QFA553 has just passed Muswelbrook at 8.35pm

QFA553 has banked to the left, heading for SYD at 8.40pm

QFA533 has now banked for Sydney at 8.48pm

The plane is in final approach at 8.50pm

Flightradar 24 is a lot of fun chasing planes all around the globe. Check out the traffic over the USA:

At other times you can't see the map from all the planes in the air, especiall over London between 6 and 8am in the morning in the UK.

Try it, have fun...

http://www.flightradar24.com