Dear Everyone, we’ve
had rather a social week, which has been enjoyable. After a very quiet Sunday,
we woke on Monday to find it was too wet and cold to consider golf, so Wes
walked Bilbo and I took it easy. I have been reading all 11 Kurt Wallander books by Henning Mankell,
and can’t believe I found them so hard to read the first time I tried. I think
that seeing umpteen Swedish episodes of Wallander
starring Krister Henriksson has done the trick and I see him very clearly when
I am reading the books.
Another project I have
is to knit 49 x 20cm squares, which is the minimum requirement to make a rug
for the Keeping Daylesford Warm project.
I have knitted about 30 so far and am experimenting with patterns and colours
and hope to have a good variety to give someone to sew together. By the time I
finish I think I’ll have a great sense of achievement and will start
stockpiling beanies and squares for next year. When I have finished each day’s
cryptic and ordinary crosswords, I usually do a few Logic Problems from
dedicated magazines I subscribe to from the UK and Australia. As well I play
Scrabble on FB with two friends, which is always challenging. I find that I
can’t cope with too much social activity in a day, so these are good ways to
keep busy and stimulated.
On Tuesday we held
a lunch for our friend, David Hall, whose wife Lorelle died three months ago.
David’s daughter, Natasha, was visiting him, so she came as well. We had also
invited our friends, Nick & Lindsay, who were recently returned from a
six-week holiday in the UK, where they traced some of Lindsay’s ancestors and
followed an Agatha Christie trail as well. Lunch went well in every respect,
except that our guests had between them requested no seafood, no fish & no
mushrooms. We live on these foods and most of Wes’s recipes incorporate one or
other of them. So he decided to serve roast lamb with vegetables and made a
fish pie for me.
It was cool enough
to light the fire, which gave a lovely atmosphere, and everyone enjoyed the
stunning views we have from our windows. While our visitors were admiring the
view, we finally received our first visitors to Fawlty Towers. We were so thrilled. We think the green rosella on
the left might be blind as it took forever to find the seed, then careered
straight into the downstairs window on its way out. Leanne has pointed out that
the expression birdbrain is probably
quite apt!
Valerie and I
played Mah Jong happily on Wednesday, while Dot was having the wires taken out
of her toes and hopefully being in less pain than she has been for the past 6
weeks. Gail was to join us, but came down with a dose of sniffles and very
kindly decided not to infect us. Wes and Barbara went for a drive and ended up
having their lunch at Vaughan Springs, one of my favourite places in this area.
After gym on
Thursday, I had a cuppa with Jane Barrett in Harvest Café, which has finally reopened after 9 months. It is
being run by Donna & Greg, who opened Rubens
in Hepburn Springs some years ago, then took over the old Ice Cream Parlour and turned it into a Health Food shop. They have expanded into the Harvest Café area, increased their fantastic range of health foods
and organic products and are slowly improving their lunch options. They don’t
serve breakfast yet, but Jane was able to order raisin toast and jam as she had
missed out on eating before gym. We were both very impressed with all the
renovations that have been done and the place is so much warmer and welcoming
than it has been for years.
Afterwards I seemed
to spend most of the day on the phone to Energy
Australia as they had changed their website and payment options and I
wasn’t able to do anything except go around in circles on the improved website.
It turned out that our lovely Dual Fuel
option is obsolete and that there are only 60 of us in Victoria with this
option, so much time had to be spent cancelling the account, opening two new
accounts, getting the best of the new deals and finally, at the very end,
discovering I can pay by B-pay once again and don’t need to circumnavigate the
website after all. I was reminded of the very funny show, Utopia, which started recently on the ABC. Not everyone is enjoying
it, but as Wes and I have both had experience of the public service and more
recently, the Hepburn Shire Council, we are identifying with all the issues the
show raises.
On Friday it was a
very cold morning, which turned into a lovely sunny day. We had been invited to
lunch with Jan & Warren (Secundus) Pengilley, so walked to their place
armed with bottles of champagne and shiraz, pink and purple tulips, two soft
French cheeses and some muscatels as our contributions. I went shopping early
and all the shops seemed to be donating to Daffodil
Day.
Jan Pengilley –
always smiling
We had some dramas
around Fawlty Towers, when two
uninvited cockies swooped down and frightened away the rosellas. When they
discovered there was nothing for them to eat, they promptly flew up to the
veranda, ate all the bread that had been left for the magpies and destroyed the
hanging basket of pigface that the magpies were raiding for their nest. I
chased them away with the broom a couple of times and they haven’t been back
since! While all this was happening a little sparrow flew into the kitchen and
it took about 15 minutes to get it to fly out again after it hid, first in the
wood basket and secondly in the shopping basket.
As usual, lunch
with the Pengilleys was a delight and we were sorry to leave just before 5pm,
but knew that Bilbo would be wondering where his dinner was! We enjoyed fine
wines, stimulating conversation, and very yummy food indeed, as Jan is a
wonderful cook.
When we arrived
home, after feeding Bilbo, I discovered an SMS from our friend, Jane Knox, to
say she had been rushed to hospital during the night. She had been complaining
of flu like symptoms and is being given massive doses of antibiotics. As well,
the doctors have decided to fit her with a pacemaker, to help her heart cope
with the effects of post-concussion, which continue to plague her after all
this time. I offered to fly up to help her on her return from hospital, but she
is in isolation at present, and her husband, David, is planning to cut back on
work so he can look after her on her return home next week. Needless to say, we
were immediately sobered by all this news and wishing we weren’t so far away
and could be of some practical assistance.
Sadly the Blues
were woefully inept against a rampaging Port Adelaide, so there was no cheer
from that quarter and Wes turned off the TV and came to bed before half-time as
it was obvious that things were only going to get worse, especially after Mark
Murphy was accidentally concussed.
Our friends, John
& Jan Smith arrived home on Friday after six weeks travelling around the
top of Australia. They have enjoyed some wonderful experiences and we look
forward to their next visit to Daylesford to catch up with their stories. We
have seen all the photos on Facebook (which is such an easy way to keep friends
involved in your travels). Also our friend, Gillie, is currently in Venice,
studying Italian and living in cloisters, as part of a three-month trip
primarily to England and Italy. Here is a photo of the cloister chooks, which
must make Gillie feel right at home, as she has a lovely brood herself back
here.
Yesterday Wes went
to Ballarat to do a couple of courses as part of the Writers’ Festival, while Bilbo
& I had a walk into town to buy fish & salad for lunch. Wes came home
very stimulated from his two events and was pleased to discover all he had to
do was quickly cook the tuna steaks as I had made the salad, cooked a dish of
potatoes, onion & tomatoes, and baked a fruit cake.
That afternoon we
watched in amazement as Collingwood lost three more players to soft tissue
injuries, but managed to take the lead late in the last quarter and hold on for
a gutsy win against GWS. Before these latest injuries we had difficulty fielding
two teams for the weekend and it will be even harder next weekend, the last
round of the season before the finals. Geelong & Hawthorn then staged
another amazing game of two halves with an unexpected result – Geelong were
comfortably ahead at half-time, but completely overrun by 11 goals to 3 in the
second half. It’s going to be an exciting month of Finals.
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