1800. One house was dated 1788 (and Don & Shiela seemed to wonder why I commented on it), the oldest one there was dated 1750. Most of the houses were in good condition and I would not have minded living in any one of them. In the afternoon there was the RISFA (Rhode Island SF Association) meeting, which came to us so we just waited around for people to turn up. The event began slowly and we all sat around and looked at each other. When enough people had arrived to fill up the lounge room we moved out to the back yard where people sat in the beautiful sunlight or in the shade depending on their constitutions. Shiela had prepared cookies for the meeting and we helped ourselves to them. A group of fans from Boston arrived, apparently something unusual for a RISFA meeting so I could only assume that they had come all that way to see for themselves what Australians look like. I reckon they discovered that Australians look much like anybody else and the only way you can tell them from the normal person is because they talk funny. The main topic of conversation for the afternoon was the pardon that President Ford had granted to Nixon. Most people couldn't believe it and didn't have very kind things to say about either of those gentlemen. The other topic was that the mad stuntman who wanted to ride his so-called "motorbike" across some large hole in the ground hadn't made it. For some reason interest in this event was so high that we turned on the tv at the evening news time to see it for ourselves. It wasn't much to see. After we had plumbed the depths of these two topics we listened to stories of life in Boston. One of the fans from that city told some remarkable stories but I suppose life in this city isn't always that bad. I wouldn't like to find out. I might live a dull life but nothing of the sort has happened to me in Melbourne for a long time. As the afternoon gave way to evening Shiela cooked up a great steaming vat of food which was served out to everybody, I thought it was delicious and Shiela tol8 me that it had been specially prepared to my specifications with Valmas help. I loved it and had a couple of helpings, I hope that everybody enjoyed it just as much. Don brought out his game of RISK and seven of us set ourselves up and decided the fate of the world. I obviously wouldn't make a very good general, I was the first one to be wiped out. Gradually others fell out too until there was only Valma and Jim Sakland left. Slowly Jim wiped out Valmas forces until there was nothing left but a counter or two in Japan. I thought to myself that that was the end of it for sure but the others apparently knew the game better than I and told Jim he had had it. From somewhere Valma conjured up what seemed like hundreds of counters (well I knew that Japan was well populated, but not that populated) and wiped Jim off the board. The last of his armies fell in Western Australia so I dubbed Valma the Queen of Australia and that was that. The Boston people left and slowly the others drifted off to their homes. We spent the last hour or so of the day around the kitchen table with Don and Shiela talking about local fandom.