While Not Working

 Spring arrived in Melbourne.  Ornamental cherries bloomed in the nature strip and the wisteria in our street put on a bold display complete with a halo of buzzing bees. BD conquered the metro/train system and moved on to independent use of level-floor trams.  She started looking for places to live and I started thinking about going home, at which point it became evident that I had a problem.  Two problems actually, not counting international shenanigans which may or may not result in diesel rationing. My first problem was the capricious citreon which still refused to start whenever things got a little hot and sweaty, and randomly lost and regained functions at the mercy of its demented little electronic brain.  I had learned how to live with the citreon while Roger diligently researched its replacement and as such it was a problem now under management.  This has nothing to do with citreon-related trauma, but there's a word for when a dog (or other hungry b...

Fantastical trees lined Goulburn's street.  We left early, in anticipation of unplanned stops along the way. Rolling green hills marched beside the Hume Highway, dotted with fluffy white sheep and jutting outcrops of grey granite.  Long valleys lay patchworked with flourescent canola crops, splattered by cloud shadows.  The car shed functions with unpredictable abandon: here the parking brake ceased to work, there the air conditioning gave up the ghost, now we were stuck in economy mode which condemned us to chug up the hills at 80-90km, keeping company with trucks while everyone we passed on the downhills zoomed past us to the top. Lacking a parking brake, I found parking spots that faced downhill into gutters and lunched in Albury where we could get parking chocks at Supercheap Auto.  The parking brake came on when I applied it manually, but the citreon had long ago lost its status as a trusted life partner. By 4pm we were in Wangaratta, at the Central Motor Inn wh...

The cockatoos turned up early to supervise the beginning of the day. The autoelectrician arrived early too,  but he didnt share the cockatoos' good mood. "A citreon!" He grumbled. "How stupid is that? The French, they make stupid cars!" He gestured to the space under the dashboard. "Look at that! How am I supposed to get in to that?" I refrained from pointing out that he, not I, was allegedly the expert in these matters, and suffered a 20 minute lecture on the foibles of citreon before I left him to it. Somewhere in France the employees of an entire citreon factory suffered an acute attack of burning ears as he lay out on the bitumen in the hot sun, swearing volubly about citreon. The cockatoos gave up and flew away. I gave him a glass of water.  It didn't improve his mood. One rather expensive bill later the autoelectrician grumbled on his way, and I was now the proud owner of a citreon with an after-market push-button ignition and a new battery t...

We left Sydney in the bright morning and stopped off to admire the Seacliff Bridge just south of Coalcliff.   From the Coalcliff public toilet block, and we hadn't even got to Seacliff yet. I was excited: I'd wanted to see the bridge for quite a while.  Mind you, the bridge itself was constructed so that people like myself had to concentrate on their driving and couldn't get distracted by gawking at the views over the sides.  Then we parked and BD took one look at the walk down to the bridge itself and that was it for her.  "Are you walking all the way along it?"   Now 1.3km isn't far when you're the one walking with the sun sparkling on the sea, a cool breeze ruffling your hair, and a hundred tourists posing for photographs around you.  However, if you're the one sitting in the car waiting while your mother walks with the sun sparkling etc etc... yeah, that takes a while. "Nah," said I.  "I'll just go take some photos at the start....

Artarmon was a leafy inner suburb with narrow streets lined with Federation era houses in various stages of renovation.  Our house was a rental and as such lacked a little in the maintenance and upkeep departments. Wind leaked in around the doors and whistled through the ventilation openings near the ceiling.  Our pet owners left a huge basket of blankets in the corner of the lounge and in these we swaddled ourselves every evening in an attempt to ward off the winter chill. One morning I walked from Bondi to Coogee beaches, along the top of the cliffs and past a comfortable plethora of coffee shops and cafes.  The paths were busy with tourists and locals, all out enjoying the sunshine while a few hardy souls declared winter over and jumped into the ocean pools for a few brisk laps.   Better than nothing, I suppose. Shark bait. The modern face of surf lifesaving. We were in Sydney to visit the grand baby, and in Artarmon to care for Bertie, which translated to tw...

Sydney was noticeably warmer than Melbourne, and with more sunshine too. Mind you, it helped to have a working heater in our little cabin in Lane Cove National Park. We were marking time before moving into our August house sit. I undertook a terrifying drive in night time traffic to Macquarie Park to buy a cheap camping table so that I could grind out the requisite two days of work while BD, confined to the cabin by a gammy leg and inconvenient steps, ate chocolate and taught herself to touch-type. I took my evening walk in the Macquarie Park Cemetery which turned out to be much larger than I'd anticipated and held the usual fascinating glimpses into life and death in long ago Sydney. When not strolling cemeteries I went back to Lane Cove and wandered along the river. Pathways. Trees. Some trees were bleeding. Back at the cabin hopeful cockatoos congregated in the sun every morning, ready to descend on any breakfast left unguarded outside.  And scrub turkeys prowled for pickings on...