While Not Working

I left Roger and Fluffy to each other's tender care, collected BD, and thec two of us headed to the hills for the weekend. That wasn't as exciting as it sounded, mind you,  involving a couple of hours following Google through endless traffic to escape Melbourne's suburban clutches and then high speed concentration on the motorway, dodging potholes (shame on you, Vic Roads) while dessicated paddocks marched past the windows. Tasked with finding dinner in Bright, BD was overwhelmed with options. Bright dressed itself in lights at night, and tourists congealed at the bakery,  the American Diner, the pub, and don't forget the ice cream shop in seductive lollipop pink. Saturday saw us on the road again, winding our way up the hill to Mount Hotham and Dinner Plain. The mountain was quiet, taking a breath in the hiatus between the end of the ski season and the beginning of the summer holidays. A few hikers were out and about and the Bycra Boys had completed their early morning...

Barely had Roger unpacked his toothbrush and taken a crash course in Fluffy's routine when I packed my bags, caught the skybus again, and jumped on a plane to Sydney. Tragically I was granted a middle seat, with a window seat buddy who spent the entire trip buried in her kindle with not a glance at the cloudless day outside. I think airlines should enforce mandatory viewing time for passengers lucky enough to have windows. I had a moment of confusion when the hostess delivered me a cup of special tea, with a wink that encouraged me to quell my questions and just take the damn cup. Special tea came in a takeaway cup complete with lid and dummy tea bag tag, but was born in a bottle with bubbles and that's all I'm going to say about that. Having visited one son and his beautiful wife in Huddersfield, and BD in Melbourne, it was important that I complete the offspring trifecta so off to Sydney I went. Sydney turned on a stinking hot day. I got up early and went for a walk in th...

Just like the last cat, the little fluffy dog had aged since we cared for her several years ago.  Her owner explained that she injured her back in a fit of silliness last Christmas, and spent 8 weeks unable to walk. "I thought I would end up with a wheelie-dog, but she came good."   Little Fluffy dog had a daily Physiotherapy regime and was strictly forbidden to play fetch due to her habit of sudden turns and injury-inducing slides on the wooden floor of the long hallway. We went for twice daily sedate walks instead, Chickens! and she spent lots of time supervising me while I worked.   On the assumption of summer I had brought minimal jumpers with me to Melbourne, and took even less with me to visit my Beautiful Daughter (BD) in her new share house in Kew. Rain slapped against the tram windows on the way to Kew, and the Melbourne air had a cruelly un-summery chill. On the return journey I regretted my lack of wardrobe planning, waiting for a tram while rain spla...

"I only wanted to go to Melbourne for the weekend." The woman from Port Pirie sat with me in uncomfortable airport seats, watching all the ticketed passengers saunter onto their flight.  "And I've got to come back tomorrow and then drive back to Port Pirie."  She sighed and refreshed the Qantas app.  "I'm going to get coffee and figure out if this is worth it." Luggage trolley queue. All this waiting resulted from something going up in flames over at the Qantas terminal in Melbourne the night before.  Planes with all of a sudden nowhere to unload were parked all over the tarmac, the terminal was evacuated, and Qantas passengers found themselves cancelled and re-booked all over the place.  All the passengers who had planned to fly from Adelaide to Melbourne on Friday night found themselves booked on my flight on Saturday morning, and I was relegated to the side-lines.  I drank overpriced airport coffee and watched all the morning activity outside. S...

The old cat lay stretched out on the artificial grass in the courtyard, belly up to South Australia's fickle sunshine. He hadn't moved all morning. "I think he's dead, " I said to Roger, and poked him with my toe. He snorted and opened one disapproving eye to glare at me. OK, still alive. We'd cared for this cat intermittently for the past four years and all of a sudden he'd become an old man cat. At the ripe old age of 17, mind you, so nothing to sneeze at in cat years. Living his best doorstop life. "He sneezes quite a bit," his owners informed us blithely as they nipped out the door bound for Africa. "Make sure you give him his medicine." Medicine taken, the cat settled next to Roger on the bed, both of them channelling their inner geriatric. Next minute an explosion of sneezes echoed down the hallway, followed by howls of horror. Roger appeared in the kitchen all ln a rush, franticly washing his glasses in the kitchen sink. "He...

 Real life was calling. We jumped on a plane and flew out of Perth on a beautiful morning. I had a window seat and the plane was old enough for me to have full control of my window, so I took a lot of photos and now I'll share them with you. We flew over the Canning Dam, one of Perth's  water reservoirs. And over the Lake Grace salt lakes and Chinocup Nature Reserve. Islands in the salt of Lake Dundas formed delicate scallops of salt, sand, and earth.  Somewhere between Balladonna and Caiguna we flew off the edge of the world, and into the clouds. Clouds stayed with us all the way across the Bite, gave a teeny tiny glimpse of Port Lincoln at the bottom of the Eyre Peninsula, and an even more fleeting glimpse of the shoreline of the Yorke Peninsula. Then there was a peek at the Barossa Reservoir, and before Roger could say " This is smoother than I expected" we were touching down in rainy Adelaide. Hmm, are you sure we've left the UK? We collected our luggage, reun...