Daylesford Dispatch - Sunday, 4th September 2011

Dear Friends, welcome to the first Dispatch of Spring 2011. We spent Monday morning in Ballarat getting our cars serviced. We were expecting to be there until 2pm as Wes’s car needed a big service, but instead they were ready by 11am, so we were home much earlier than planned. We would have seen a film, probably “Red Dog”, but it didn’t start until 12.30pm, and we have so much Art Show stuff to do, it seemed wise to come home rather than wait around for the film to start.

Our Rotary President, Jim Swatman, is in St John of God Hospital in Ballarat, so we paid him a visit and discovered he was having his gall bladder removed that afternoon. We promised to relieve him of some Rotary duties, which helped ease his mind. His operation went well & he is now recuperating.

We put in another big day’s work on Tuesday and the sponsorships are coming in thick and fast. One of our newest Rotary members, Trish Goullet, has been collecting so many promises, which I then invoice. Wes has secured the services of Stuart Rattle and Michael O’Neill as Judges of our Art Show; Horvats Wines are sponsoring the Opening Night and the Farmers Arms have bought sole advertising rights for the catalogues.

                                                           

Wes, Jane, Judi & Karen after climbing Sigiriya, Sri Lanka 1979

On Wednesday I was exhausted and decided to spend the day in bed, reading and doing crosswords and felt much better for the rest. I was sorry to miss out on Mah Jong as Carol was better and able to play and Valerie was celebrating her 79^th birthday. We were due to have an Arts Show Committee Meeting that afternoon, but nearly everyone was an apology, so Wes cancelled the meeting, updated the members on what had been happening and took some posters to the Rotary meeting that night for members to distribute around town.

The first day of Spring was a beautiful sunny one, and Wes went off to The Boys’ Lunch at Jeff Bain’s house in very good spirits and arrived back 4 hours later in even better ones! About 30 blokes turned up with their glass, bottle and something to barbecue and I believe most of the pressing problems of the world were solved. Some were still there at 7pm and no doubt needed taxis home. I went to the U3A Morning Tea, which was well-attended and Judi brought us all up-to-date on the latest doings.

Glenn collected me and Gillie and drove us to Castlemaine, where we met Judi and Michael for yum chat at ‘A Taste of the Orient’, a new little place in the main street, after picking up the Art Show Raffle tickets which had been printed in record time. We enjoyed some beautiful dim sum together, and then repaired to ‘She Sells Sea Shells’ which has magnificent seafood. I bought some wild barramundi pieces and a marinara mix. Wes missed out on this because he had morning tea with his sister, Denise, followed by manning the Community Bank Stall in Vincent Street for a couple of hours. I was very nervous about that night’s footy, so we left around 3.30pm and got home at 11.30pm. Wes now wants those 8 hours of his life back, as Collingwood didn’t turn up and were thrashed by 16 goals in our worst defeat for 4 years.

Yesterday we manned the Rotary stall at the Farmers Market and started selling raffle tickets with Brian’s donated painting on display. It was a good morning; we sold lots of tickets and enjoyed friendly chitchat with everyone. After our shift was over, we went to ‘Gracenotes Café’ for breakfast and discovered, Annie, Barbara and Gillie all there chatting over hot drinks. Then back home to work on the computers some more and a relaxing afternoon. Wes caught up on some sleep and I watched 3 games of footy. We had the barramundi for dinner and it was beautiful. Wes did it with lemon slices and rind in foil in the oven and I had baked a dish of potato, beetroot and onion to go with it. We had macaroni pudding for sweets. I’ll need a break from cooking after all that! Sadly the Blues were no match for the Saints in a lacklustre game, where both teams were flat-footed in the first half and we were very pleased we hadn’t driven back to the MCG again.

Today we’ve enjoyed a stunning breakfast – Gillie’s last before her knee operation tomorrow.  Barbara had printed out the words to ‘Rule Britannia’ for us to sing and made a special placemat for Gillie; Glenn had dripped red blood on a hand-towel and put it with a scalpel by Gillie’s plate; Terry & Gail turned up in red, white & blue wigs and Gail had her laptop with lots of Pommy songs ready to go, except she couldn’t connect to the Internet; John took photos and he, Jan, Judi & Michael were dressed in red, white & blue. Wes wore his plus fours and a white shirt and his Bulldogs scarf and I took a teddy and pillow along with me. Kim outdid himself with a wonderful selection of breakfast goodies and Gail recited ‘My Country’ when we all refused to sing the words to ‘Rule Britannia’ or ‘Advance Australia Fair’.

This afternoon we are hoping to see Daylesford play Buninyong at Dunnstown in the second Preliminary Final of the Central Highlands League. Hepburn was beaten by Waubra yesterday and Waubra will be a tough opponent if we get through to the Grand Final.

Frodo has lost a toenail, somehow on yesterday morning’s walk and he dripped blood around the house most of yesterday, before the wound healed and dried up. He isn’t at all concerned and doesn’t seem to be in any pain, but Bilbo is doing the worrying for him and keeps giving him little bites of encouragement. They clubbed together and gave their Daddy a bottle of Jameson Irish Whisky for Fathers’ Day, which has been very well-received.

Wes continues to spend hours on his family tree and history, as well as keeping minutes and writing Bulletins for Rotary, Hepburn Voices and the Art Show. We are both involved in the launch of the Community Bank on Thursday night , so the piles of books to read by the sides of our bed are growing as we have very little time to get through them. I have a class on ‘Difficult Crime Writers’ coming up in 2 weeks and am trying to get through the list.

One last word on footy – I discovered on Friday that I was successful in getting a reserved seat in the MCC for the Grand Final – what a relief – one less thing to stress about!

            Cox Plate 1990 – Jan McClean, Wes, Mate & Karen – singing ‘Good Old Collingwood Forever’ in the Silks Lounge at Moonee Valley