While Not Working

Doing a repeat house sit works well for everyone: the house owner isn't stressed about leaving their beloved pet and home in the hands of a stranger, and we don't spend the first week coaxing the pet to like us, opening every cupboard in the kitchen every time we need a teaspoon, or pondering how the latest iteration of 'smart' dishwasher works. There are down sides of course. Sometimes the sits are shorter than we'd prefer, and sometimes they clash with sits we're already doing, necessitating a divide and conquer philosophy.  Which is how I came to spend four days hanging out with Bonkers Cat while Roger, poor soul, dealt with the swanky-suburb swimming pool all by himself.   Poor old thing. Bonkers lived up to his name and exhibited the phenomenon known as 'sundowning' when seen in people with dementia. Every afternoon at 3pm his bonker-ometer went off the scale and he waged war on toes, blankets, cardboard boxes, and hair ties. He lurked beside the do...

We decided to rewrite our Christmas traditions given that it was only us and BD this year and none of us felt like doing lots of cooking and we already did our presents with Secret Santa a couple of days ago. In theory I slept in. In practice we both got up, had first breakfast, walked the dog, picked up the dog poo, did a load of washing and a spot of pool maintenance all before BD texted us to say she was up and we could come over to have brunch/second breakfast and start Christmas proper. Christmas morning walks.  Dog refusing to pose for the camera.   Second breakfast.  Or first lunch.   One Christmas movie and a plateful of pancakes later we jumped on the train and headed in to town. The trains were all free on Christmas Day, which means it's theoretically possible to pack a picnic and travel the trains all day but we hadn't thought of that in time so we used the train in the conventional manner, just to get in to town. Empty streets at the train station. Sun sp...

Cobwebs the small fluffy dog lived in a big house with one large female human and two smaller versions of the big one.   The large human was free with treats and Cobwebs agreed whole-heartedly with this largesse.  One sad day Cobweb's human took her to a veterinarian who declared that Cobwebs was fat, and as a result her food was meticulously weighed and her treats meted out with parsimonious infrequency. Cobwebs was not impressed.   To make things worse Cobweb's owner and her two mini-mes walked blithely out the door and onto an aeroplane to far-away places and in no time at all in the door walked two humans that Cobwebs didn't know and (shock, horror!) one of them was male (more about that in a minute).   Cobwebs, being much smarter than she looked, maximised on her big puppy eyes, told lies of starvation, and spent a glorious week happily devouring two breakfasts every morning because both humans thought the other one hadn't fed her.  Then one sad mornin...

Summer finally arrived in Melbourne and not a minute too soon, with Christmas lurking just around the corner. The combination of warm weather and Christmas sent us out to do Christmas things. First we headed off to look at the local Christmas lights.  We started off in fine form before realising that for the lights to work the sun had to be, you know, set; and due to that inane custom known as daylight saving the sunset hadn't happened yet.  So we found a park with a good view of the sunset, ate chocolate, and waited for nature to take it's course.  Which it did, and off we went again in search of lights. We found some lights,    took some photos, and made silly faces. A couple of days later we went to the Christmas Carnival in town, which wasn't nearly as exciting on a Monday evening as it looked when I rode my bicycle through it on Saturday afternoon. Regardless, BD and I rode the big wheel    while Roger guarded our bags and thanked his lucky an...

Last Christmas we were living in a tiny, run down little flat in Sydney's inner west, looking after a nervous cat. When I went out for my daily walk I hunted for sightings of elusive inflatable Christmas dinosaurs. This Christmas I'm sitting one ditzy little dog in a luxurious house into which I could, without pinching, fit at least eight of last year's tired little flats.  Outside, the tree-lined street is littered with Jaguars (of the mechanical not feline variety), Porsches, and the odd Lexus or BMW to bring the tone down a bit.  There are no inflatable dinosaurs in this world: the suburb's sole concession to Christmas decorations is identical red netting bows around every tree and on most of the gates.  There may be wreaths on the front doors but I can't tell because every front gate is securely locked and guarded by a key-pad and camera, before which one must beg for entry. Uniform red netting bows along green, tree-lined streets. There's always one... Ever...

We are on the downhill run of our time in Melbourne. BD is bouncing along, full of energy and making plans, and our previous house sits in SA  are clamouring for us to return and sit for them again. So much so, in fact, that we had to sit down and book out some free time to have our own holidays in 2023. In the meantime we went to see Billy Joel at his last ever concert in Australia, braving the MCG with ~70 000 other somebodies and hopefully not catching Covid in the process.   We caught a tedious combination of trains and replacement buses home, finishing with a post-midnight walk through the old Oakleigh cemetery under a rising full moon. Nothing spooky happened. The very next day we moved into our last sit in Melbourne, caring for another sweet little dog with cobwebs in its head and an obsession for (trying to) chase cats when out on walkies.  Cobwebs was a little wary of us at first and had to be seduced with treats and tummy rubs.  We had barely gained semi-ap...

Much to Roger's distress, Summer departed while we were all snuggled up in our cabin overnight. Undaunted, we put on extra layers and fortified ourselves with pancakes before venturing out into the wind and rain. Roger found friends.   I think I'll pass today.   Geelong's beautiful foreshore wasn't quite so appealing without sunshine so we gave up and spent two and a half hours ensconced in comfortable chairs at the Star Cinema, eating M&Ms and watching a tedious superhero movie where muscle bound men in very tight costumes strutted around bashing each other up and trying to achieve world dominion in the absence of a credible, nay coherent, plot line.  Emerging slightly stunned into midday Geelong, we wandered through the lane ways and lunched in a waterfront cafe run by a scary lady who told us in no uncertain terms to sit down and be quiet until she served our food. Rain began to fall and we jumped up to drag our chairs under cover, whereby she took us to task for...

A little while ago we were looking at the map of Melbourne and Port Phillip Bay, planning all kinds of bicycle-related adventures that were unlikely to happen in real life. "Look at that!" Said Roger. "There's a ferry from Melbourne to Geelong. Why would anyone do that when the train and the highway are both quicker?" Of course once we knew the ferry was there we just had to catch it and the end of our house sit with the Sillies gave us the perfect opportunity. We invited BD to come too. I don't think spending time on a ferry to Geelong and back was high on her list of Things To Do Before I Die, but along she came anyway.  Summer even showed up for the weekend and absolved us of the need to include puffer jackets and boots in our overnight bags. We jumped on the train and off we went to Southern Cross station, right next to Docklands.  We waited for the ferry in the company of lots of very happy people in fancy dress.  The happy people were waiting for the p...