SUMMER 2018

Early in January I watched a very different type of TV program – “slow TV”. This featured a Ghan train trip between Darwin and Adelaide. There was no dialogue. Occasional historic or other features were highlighted by printed captions. Some cameras had been mounted on the train so there was much real time movement. Lasting for three hours, the program was strangely fascinating. I enjoyed it, liked the concept and hoped there would be more.

Having travelled on the Ghan in 2011, much of what was shown on that program was familiar, and why I watched it in the first place. We have not yet managed a trip on the Indian Pacific, across the continent, though it is on the bucket list. Maybe there might be a slow TV feature on this in the future?

With a hot summer, and a swimming pool, we saw quite a bit of the Melbourne grandchildren, son and his wife! John was getting really fed up with maintaining the pool. He rarely used it. I did, when the state of my leg permitted.

 “Cake” I made for grand daughter’s birthday lunch

Son told us of a recent incident, when one of their traffic control vehicles was stolen from the depot by some “ethnic” youths. The onboard GPS tracker enabled the vehicle to be followed, a lot of discarded traffic control gear was retrieved, as was the ute, and the offenders caught and charged. There seemed to be a real increase in various parts of Melbourne, in offences and violence due to these groups. Home invasions seemed to be a regular occurrence, heavily featured in the media. Quite scary.

John’s summer vegie crops were plagued, seemingly, by rats eating a number of the plants, and also the ripening low-down tomatoes. Eventually, the trap he set caught the culprit… not what we were expecting. It was released back into the garden.

Fat and healthy on our vegetables (bluetongue lizard)

The quite ordinary weatherboard house across the street sold for well over $800,000. Clearly, it would be going the way that its neighbour had – demolished, along with the lovely old style garden, four units built in its place. More construction site disruption in the street.

Vallota Lily inherited 32 years ago from my mother

We continued the twice-weekly Skype maths coaching sessions commenced last year with the Bendigo grandson, now in Year 9. Right through primary school, reports had indicated that he was working at the expected standard and that there were no concerns. But in Year 7, it soon became clear that he was a couple of years behind where he should have been in Maths. So we had stepped in to try to bring him closer to standard. When his younger brother started primary school, this year, it was definitely not to the same school his brother had attended!

Oops

Something different in the way of minor disasters…discovering that exploding hard boiled eggs have a far greater impact than one would expect. I had put a couple of eggs on to hard boil for our lunch, went out to pick some salad greens for same, become distracted, then more distracted. Some considerable time later came a couple of loud bangs. Very loud explosions. The sleeping Couey got such a fright that she wet herself! It took me ages to clean fine egg particles from the stove, the walls, cupboard fronts, even the ceiling.

Egg on the ceiling….and on my face, metaphorically speaking