While Not Working

Two small dogs went out for a walk one cold and cloudy morning.   They persuaded their person to take them early, because the forecast rain and wind would prevent later walks and if they didn't go for a walk they would just squabble all afternoon. D1 fought wildly at the end of his lead for the first 300m of his walk.  He snapped and growled and threatened and bullied while D2 grasped his own lead firmly between his teeth, ignored D1, and took himself out at a nice brisk trot.  Frustrated by being ignored, D1 excelled himself with fighting and snarling to the point that he pulled himself out of his collar and his person yelled his name very loudly which was quite shocking.  Before he knew what was going on his collar was back on and he was walking in dog Coventry without any chance of snapping at D2 at all. Once the magic 300m mark was reached D1&2 decided they would comport themselves like normal dogs, and everyone was happy.  They even got to walk over the big pedestrian brid

In Melbourne my daughter was afflicted with feline paralysis, a devastating condition which results in periodic inability to move due to the presence of a sleeping cat (feline) on one's lap.  The feline in question was my new grandcat and I had no choice but to meet her as soon as possible on arrival in Melbourne. So I did. Roger immediately caught cat paralysis too.  It's very contagious. Melbourne turned on a beautiful morning for us to move into our next home. Small white boats floated on a blue silk sea and the cliffs at Red Bluff were reminiscent of the Fleurieu Peninsula. The good weather persisted long enough for us to take the dogs for a walk and explore the local area, before coming in miserable and reminding us that winter wasn't over yet.  The little dogs recovered from the trauma of being abandoned by their owners and transferred their fickle allegiance to us as soon as we fed them. Food and walks.  It's a simple life. I quickly realised that canine paralysi

Doing a repeat house sit in Belair was almost like coming home: I already knew where the kettle was and where to go for my morning walk.  The comfort didn't last long sadly: I worked two days, spent another day cleaning and packing, and then off we went on our next adventure. You're leaving me? For all that there was so much to explore between Adelaide and Melbourne, as usual we just didn't seem to have the time.  Mind you, there was always time for a cup of tea, over which I showed Roger the Landrover on the pole at Keith and he was suitably minimally impressed.  The wind was cold and the sun was absent.  We had a very brisk cup of tea. Having ping-ponged back and forth between Adelaide and Melbourne quite a bit in the last 12 months, crossing the border didn't generate as much excitement as it may once have done  Ho hum.     Cold and cloudy turned into cold and rainy the next day.  We hightailed into Melbourne with a quick break for smoko at Lake Learmouth. Lake Learm

 I take back my comment about the Belair house being warmer.  The Belair house looks warmer because it has cosy things like carpets and lots of heating options - reverse cycle air conditioning, wood fire, gas heater, doors to shut between spaces. Except the doors have to remain ajar so the cat can get to it's kitty litter.  The ceilings are high, the floors are off the ground, there are large expanses of window, and I suspect a dearth of insulation in all the places where it matters.  Belair is also higher and consistently 4C colder than Hallett Cove, as reported by Roger who has monitored this discrepancy closely. I went to visit him at Belair and in no time at all I had my puffer jacket and beanie on and was looking for a couch blanket because the cat didn't cut it as a hot water bottle.  It was with great sadness that I had to say goodbye and take myself off to the warmer climes of Hallett Cove where work awaited me.  Yes, work slowly expanded when I wasn't looking and

Once there were two people who did such a good job of house sitting that they found themselves in the (un)enviable position of sitting two cats in two separate households at the same time. One of them had to stay in Hallett Cove and the other one went back to Belair and the Belair one got a good deal with a warmer house and a cuddlier cat. They couldn't get too side tracked by one of them moving up to Belair, because they were still locked in an epic battle for overall winner of the Tour de Turtle and the stage was set for the final bicycle battle at the Happy Valley Reservoir. Stage3: Happy Valley Circuit  The Happy Valley Shoreline Trail was a complex course, made more so by the Sunday crowd of L-plate MTBers and family groups complete with golden retrievers and wobbly flocks of training-wheelies.  Not knowing any better, our competitive duo started off in an anti-clockwise direction thereby ensuring for themselves maximum steepness of hills. The course started with the ceremoni

  Tour de Turtle Stage 2: The Mountain Stage Today the Tour promenaded along the world-famous Coast to Vines Rail Trail, taking in the section, as yet unexplored by the peleton, between Hallett Cove and Seaford where they would catch the train back to base.  The starting flag had barely fallen when Roger left the blocks with the speed of a startled rabbit, roaring up the hill beside Waterfall Creek gorge and making a play for King of the Mountain right off the bat.  Choking on his dust, Catherine plugged up the hill on a bicycle which surely had tyres made of glue. She conceded the King of the Mountain to Roger with no struggle at all and demonstrated that some days riding a bicycle is effortless and on other days it... isn't. The high point of the course came early, with a neutral time zone declared for a short side trip to check out the historic site at Old Reynella, where John Reynell planted his grapevines and started South Australia's wine industry The long downhill from

Every morning for the last week I've gotten out of bed in the cold and dark to watch the daily highlights of the Tour de France.  I am coming to the slow realisation that I may not be the super-dooper uber-cyclist that I always thought I was.  It's possible that those pretty boys in France could ride circles around me both up and down a very slight incline, let alone the Alps or the Pyrenees. I blame this sorry state of affairs on a lifetime chocolate habit, a reprehensible lack of multi-million dollar sponsors, and the fact that almost all of those pretty boys are younger than my own children which suggests that I, alas, am getting long in the tooth. Inspired by the pretty boys, Roger and I got back on our bikes and started our own multi-day bicycle extravaganza to rival the shenanigans over in France.  There may be only two of us but competition for the yellow, polka-dot, and green jerseys was fierce: thank goodness for the recurrent neutral zones occurring with every Necessa

"I'm the mentor and Petanque trainer. They call me the tor mentor. See, they gave me this cap at our annual meeting. I teach the newbies how to play and I'm tough. I don't let them get away with bad playing. We spend all Sunday here. We play and hang out at the club house. Petanque was invented by a fella in a wheelchair, hence you have to stand still when launching the ball and we pick up the metal balls with a magnet on a string." How, you may ask, did we come to be learning about the game of petanque from the Tor mentor in Gawler? Well it all started with the trains. Last year we set out to ride all of the Adelaide Metro, but we didn't include the Gawler line because it was running boring buses while the line was being electrified. Just when we relaxed, thinking we'd ridden every available meter of rail, the Gawler line opened and blow me down we had a whole new line to ride and with shiny new electric trains too!  Actually due to supply issues only one