January 2024 Newsletter

Bluey playing cricket with January 2024 text

Welcome to the January newsletter. I’m getting this one out a little earlier than the last couple of months. January has been pretty good got some reading in, watched a lot of cricket, did some sewing and hung out with friends. Apart from the stupid humidity and the heat it would have been a perfect month. I hope you are all going well.

From Around the Web

Just a few things that I enjoyed reading or watching from around the web this month

Books

  • Harbour Street by Ann Cleeves – Vera Stanhope Book 6. Yep within the month I’ve gone back to the streets of Newcastle, England. This time DS Joe Ashworth is with his daughter on the train when they find a lady murdered. Vera heads to Harbour Street and meets all the characters of the street, uncovering their secrets and finding the murderers.
  • A Three Book Problem by Vicki Delany – Book 7 of the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series. This time we are based at a Sherlock Holmes gathering at Suffolk Gardens House. Gemma, Jayne and Ryan are the cateries and it is all going well until the host gets murdered in front of Gemma and Jayne.
  • A Stroke of Malice by Anna Lee Huber – Lady Darby Mysteries Book 8. It has been a while since I visited Scotland in 1832 with Lady Keira Darby and Sebastian Gage. This time they are at a Twelfth Night Party and discover a body in a crypt. No problem you would think but the body is only 2-4 weeks old. Keira and Sebastian are asked to investigate. They have to dive into the secrets of the host and hostess’s family to find out who the murder victim is and the murderer.
  • Playing it Safe by Ashley Weaver – Book 3 of the Electra McDonnell Series. This time we left the bomb raids of London behind and went to Sunderland. I love Electra she is a wonderful heroine. This book was a bit of a change without her family with her. The mystery was good and the finale was great. Also, her side story about her mother took a twist on the last page.

So I now have a quandary all of the next books in the series above aren’t available at the library. Which is annoying. The quandary is that there are sometimes later books in the series, so do I just jump to them, do I buy the missing books or is there some other method that I haven’t thought of yet?

Art Gallery

So I have made it to the Art Gallery of NSW a few times on a Wednesday night for Art After Hours. I attended the Kandinsky exhibition. Ensemble Offspring was performing every night in the foyer of the Main Gallery. They are always very interesting and sometimes challenging to listen to. Their music selection was inspired by the Kandinsky exhibition. There is some of Ensemble Offspring’s music on YouTube. Mara and I also went to a beading workshop where we got to make spiders and contribute to some massive webs.

Sport

Of course, the sport for the month was cricket. Not going to say more about that you can probably guess that I sat on the couch and watched a lot of Australian, NZ and South African cricket.

Orchestra

So I’m back at Orchestra for the year. Which is very exciting. We have our first concert of the year coming up on Sunday 10th March at 4:30pm. The details haven’t gone up on the website yet. The concert is free and outdoors at St Leonard’s Park in North Sydney (right next to North Sydney Oval). Also, the September concert is now up on the YouTube Channel if you want to check it out. You can play spot Filita. Also, look out for James and Alera.

The month ahead

So it’s back to university for first semester of the year. Not sure how I feel about the subjects but I’m doing two subjects Survival Analysis and Stochastic Processes. Also off to watch some live cricket at North Sydney Australian and South African women going head to head in 2 ODIs. Also might get to start going to some shows. Very exciting. Also, the motorsport session starts. Bathurst 12 hour, NASCAR, Supercars, Extreme E, Rally and Superbikes.