Daylesford Dispatch - Sunday, 27th November 2011

Dear Friends, there is never a dull moment with us it seems. The big drama this week has been the ‘Great Fire of Daylesford’ to rival the famous ‘Great Fire of Essendon’, which occurred on 26^th February 1973, the day Tom arrived running up our driveway to announce the arrival of Becky. Not to be outdone, we promptly caused a fire in the chimney which necessitated the fire brigade and made for some wonderful stories.

This fire was a little more dramatic. Our dishwasher was playing up for 24 hours and refusing to complete a cycle, so I thought I would teach it a lesson and turn it off at the wall, to give it a chance to reset itself. However when I turned it back on, it got its revenge by making that expired noise that appliances do when they have burnt out. So I opened the door to let the contents dry before taking them out and went downstairs to tell Wes we would need a new dishwasher. Five minutes later the smoke alarms started blaring. We raced upstairs into a thick wall of black smoke and discovered a small intense fire in the door of the dishwasher. Wes smothered it with bath sheets (we both forgot about the fire blanket and fire extinguisher within easy reach), I put the boys in the car and then rang 000. The fire brigade arrived quickly, told us we had done the right things and checked downstairs to see if the guest bedroom was alight (something we had overlooked). It wasn’t!

We are very lucky as we weren’t injured apart from some smoke inhalation. The electrician arrived within 30 minutes and confirmed the fault was in the dishwasher. We had to wait until the next day for a plumber to come and remove it. In the meantime, Wes rang Andrew Mengyel at OAMPS and he organised an assessor, who arrived that evening from Ballarat. She authorised cleaning to be done and quotes for repairs. We had 4 cleaners all day on Thursday and they will be back again tomorrow for another full day. Sadly the paintwork in the kitchen hasn’t cleaned up as well as they would like, so it may have to be repainted. The lounge suite has been steam-cleaned, but will need another go as it is still marked with soot. Our floating cork floor is still available, with a similar pattern, but the whole of the upstairs of the house will have to be replaced, as well as some carpentry work on the island bench and probably the bench top.

We are hopeful that at least the floor can be done & the dishwasher replaced before Christmas as we have 12-14 friends for lunch on Christmas Day. We will probably be able to stay put while things are being done (we can sleep downstairs & use that bathroom), but Bilbo & Frodo may need to go into kennels while the floor is re-laid.

We found ourselves quite shocked by the suddenness of this and have nothing but sympathy for anyone who experiences any kind of fire. We can still smell the smoke whenever we come in the front door, and I imagine it won’t leave us until the old flooring is gone. Needless to say, we decided not to tell Viva about this little drama as she has enough to worry about with getting her strength back, without being worried about us.

I visited Viva on Wednesday, the day after the fire, so that Leanne could spend a couple of hours out of the house and I was pleased to see that Viva was a better colour, her voice was better and she seemed to be physically stronger as well. One of the young carers, who shower her, has had shingles earlier this year and is very understanding and sympathetic.

Sunrise 25/11/11>      

We’ve had to eat out quite a bit as we had no access to the kitchen on Wednesday and Thursday. We ended up having a lovely dinner on Thursday night at the Farmers Arms with Judi, Michael, Gillie and Glenn and it did us the world of good. Wes went to a Men’s Lunch on Wednesday while he really enjoyed and he also went to Rotary, but I was too tired after driving to Melbourne and back.

Wes has spent quite a few hours with Barbara getting the ‘Hepburn Voices’ laptop operational and helping her with other computer issues. He has his new phone, which is a Motorola Atrix, the newer version of my Motorola Defy, so I have been showing him how to download apps, how to get his home screen working for him and how to use Skype and Viber. Our only problem is making sure we have different sounds for all the messages, calls & reminders that arrive on our phones!

Yesterday was Daylesford Show Day and we had so much rain, as well as a strong wind, that it was washed out. Such a shame as it is fun, like any country Show. I stayed in bed all day, as I was absolutely exhausted. Wes didn’t do too much computer work and enjoyed catching up on recorded programmes and spending hours reading The Age. I even got DA’s crossword out before lunchtime, thanks to the Anagram Solver & Dictionary apps on my phone!

Today we had a wonderful breakfast at Café 3460, where Kim outdid himself as usual with a huge variety of dishes. The boys and I had been to the Sunday Market early and they were very keen to see Gary and get their toast and vegemite, to say nothing of leftover smoked salmon & corn fritters. It’s a beautiful day here and we each hope to spend some time in the garden, as weed pulling out is very easy after a deluge, as you would know.

We are not sure what this week holds as far as kitchen repairs are concerned, but no doubt our assessor will be in touch soon. The first Test against NZ starts on Thursday and it will be interesting to see how our new boys fare – 5 changes is such a big thing for our Test side.

Gillie’s magical garden

Enjoy the last few days of Spring!

Daylesford Dispatch - Sunday, 20th November 2011

Dear Friends, we’ve just had a lovely surprise visit from old friends, Kathy & Gerard Lazzaro, who were between Open Gardens. They had driven from Warrnambool this morning to see Paul Bangay’s Denver garden & were planning to see Stuart Rattle’s Musk garden and then drive to Geelong to catch up with their eldest son, David, his wife, Helen, and their three children, Jessica, Maya & Daniel. We were thrilled to see them – we’ve known each other for nearly 40 years and shared many happy times together.

This has been a busy day – Bilbo & Frodo’s 7^th birthday, which started with early morning bones, followed by cabbage leaves at the Sunday Market, then celery back here at home, toast & vegemite at Café 3460 & doggie shasliks as a special treat. They are now attempting to help Wes in the garden, but really they just want to sleep, digest and work up an appetite for dinner! Their Auntie, Leanne, bought them huge marrow bones yesterday, and we’ve decided to wait until tomorrow to give them those!

Breakfast at Café 3460 was very special. Kim outdid himself with treats, we even got the strap for not eating enough food, and then he and Gary announced that they are putting ‘The House Next Door’ on the market tomorrow, as they can no longer run two businesses and do justice to them both. We have been dreading this day of course, but can only be grateful to Kim for his concept and for offering us such a wonderful home away from home. With a bit of luck someone who loves it will buy it and continue it as a café, but equally it would make someone a good family home with a glorious garden within walking distance of everything. We can’t thank you enough and will make the most of the remaining weeks and days.

Yesterday, while the rain bucketed down all over Victoria, I drove to Melbourne to see Viva and give Leanne a chance to go out for a couple of hours. Viva was exhausted after the previous very hot, humid day, so she was asleep in bed when I arrived. She wasn’t strong enough to get out of bed, so I left her sleeping, answered the phone, and kept Smokey amused, so that he wasn’t terrified by the storm. We had a good chat when she woke up and I hope that she will be feeling a little stronger today with the cooler weather. Leanne is doing such a great job of caring for Viva – our family is very lucky that she is able to fill this role and enable Viva to be at home.

We’ve had quite a social week, starting last Sunday night with a lovely meal shared with Gillie and Glenn – Wes’s venison was cooked perfectly and he sent our guests home with a third of the leftovers. On Monday we were visited by Lovely & Malcolm. Lovely was very keen to have lunch at ‘Wombat Hill House’, in the Botanical Gardens, so we went there and spent about 90 minutes together. Wes and I feel that this cafe desperately needs a maître d’ or table service, instead of making us take a menu and queue up to pay every time we want to order something. It has a great position and is charging Lake House prices, without the famous service.

The Trentham Golf Course was closed to us this week, so we weren’t able to follow up our game of golf last week. Instead on Tuesday, while Wes spent most of the day with Barbara in Ballarat, I helped Jim Swatman with his computer, then had a massage with Ann Holden and did some gardening in the afternoon, before spending an enjoyable couple of hours with Judi at her place catching up.

Bird trying to get out of bird box in Glenn’s garden

On Wednesday we drove to Melbourne to see Viva and allow Leanne some time to do shopping. We had a good visit, but left after 90 minutes as we didn’t want to tire her out too much. Wes surprised me by taking me to Collingwood’s home, where we bought a new flag and the boxed DVD series of last year’s finals. Then we drove into town and enjoyed Yum Cha at Westlake, before coming back home. I gave Rotary a miss as I was tired after the big day, so Wes went and enjoyed the evening.

Wes had requested a quiet day with no visitors for his birthday on Thursday, so we had exactly what he requested and ended up with a lovely early meal at ‘Mercato’ that night. He received lots of cards and emails and a few gifts as well, which was great. When he gets a new phone tomorrow, no doubt there will be some calls there to catch up on. The boys and I gave him a bottle of Jameson’s Whiskey to accompany his painting and camera, which were early presents.

On Friday he and Jim went to Stuart Rattle’s place to help erect tents and put the Rotary barbecue in place and they will take everything down again tomorrow morning. I had hoped to walk into town myself to do a few messages, but it was too hot too early, so I washed Teddy and drove in instead, where I enjoyed bumping into a few friends and getting a new battery for my car keys which had died!

Enjoy the coming week and I’ll be in touch next Sunday for my last Spring Dispatch!

Daylesford Dispatch - Sunday, 13th November 2011

Dear Friends, it’s overcast Sunday morning as I sit here at my desk looking out over our lovely garden and onto the Lake. We had a beautiful breakfast this morning, enhanced by Lauren Kennedy’s presence. Lozza & two friends have spent the weekend here in a house and she accepted our invitation to share breakfast with us and a few of our nearest and dearest in Daylesford. Kim outdid himself with a wonderful banquet; Gail grabbed the conversation as often as she could, and we let Lozza get in a word or two herself. It was lovely to see Gail & Terry so happy with the arrival of Alexander Matthew, their 4^th grandchild, although that happiness has been tempered by the altercation Terry had with a kangaroo in Gail’s new car.

We are both hoping to get a bit more weeding before getting ready to entertain Glenn & Gillie who are joining us for an early dinner of roast venison. Wes had wanted to do a barbecue, but we will be sitting inside if the skies break the way they are threatening. We are slowly but surely getting back into the swing of a social life after weeks of being inactive!

The very good news this week is that Viva is home from hospital. I visited on Wednesday as someone needed to collect tablets from the pharmacy at the same time as the District Nurse was coming to assess Viva, and Helena was coming to cut her hair! So I did pharmacy & Woolworths shopping, this left Leanne free to cope with all the other activities. I was thrilled to see Viva looking much better than she had in hospital, but she is still very weak and it will probably be Wednesday again before I can revisit.

When I left you last Sunday we were expecting 24 visitors for a soiree – we had 22 including a 3-year old, who learnt all about dogs after Bilbo and Frodo had given him a few kisses. Bronnie & Lee did the catering brilliantly and we had lots of yummy Asian goodies to go with copious quantities of wine and very little debriefing of the Art Show. We had invited John & Russell, who were not on the committee, but never get invited to their wives’ catering appointments and they enjoyed themselves very much. We threw visitors out at 6pm, but somehow or other Jan & Warren; Brian & Roberta were all still here at 8pm, when we seriously threw them out!

Red rose growing on our standard freesia! 

On Monday Wes and I had our first game of golf in weeks and were pleasantly surprised to find we could still hit the ball – we didn’t lose any golf balls, Wes shot a birdie, and I got a bogey, so we were very happy indeed. During the morning his phone died, in the afternoon my printer died and in between a lost dog came to the front door wanting to play with the boys. Wes is 10 weeks short of fulfilling his contract with Telstra, so is without his phone until 21^st November when he will get a Motorola like mine. He likes the large print of the HTC, but has found the rest of it difficult to manage.

The next day was hydrotherapy in Ballarat for Barbara and Wes and that went well after a break of some months. I missed Rotary on Wednesday night as I was exhausted after driving to Melbourne and back, so Wes represented us both, and said it was a good night. He had enjoyed a lunch meeting for ROMAC in Bacchus Marsh that day, and had an appointment in his role as Executor of a friend’s will before Rotary, so it was no surprise that he was tired the next day.

Lauren & Travis earlier this year

On Thursday afternoon I drove to Ballarat to have a ‘face rub’ with Sarah, and on Friday, after Wes laid a wreath at 11am at the Cenotaph, on behalf of the ALP, we went to Castlemaine to deliver the 6^th Raffle Prize to a chap who works at the Castlemaine Copy Centre, a sheltered workshop, where we had our raffle tickets printed. Afterwards I took Wes to yum cha lunch there and we met up with Marie Anderson. Then I introduced him to ‘She Sells Seashells’, a wonderful fish shop, where we bought oysters and swordfish. Wes poached the fish that night & it was magic.

So many of our friends seem to be unwell at present – we are thinking of you all and sorry that we haven’t been in touch as much as we should. Tomorrow we are having lunch with Lovely and Malcolm at ‘Wombat Hill House’, which will be a good way to catch up with them. What the rest of the week holds, we’ll have to wait and see.

6 weeks until Christmas – where has this year gone to? I keep getting cross at seeing all the Christmas stuff in the shops and the decorations, but I guess it is fair enough with only 42 sleeps to go.

I’ll be in touch again next Sunday. Thanks for your emails and messages.

Daylesford Dispatch, Sunday, 6th November 2011

Dear Friends,

Wes and I are just rejoining the world after spending two weeks eating, sleeping and breathing Art Show. And what a Show it was! We are delighted – we had 400 more visitors than last year; sold 4 more paintings; made almost double the income ($11,000 up from $6,000); had more participating artists and more paintings, and had just enough screens to show them all. A week before the Show I was panicking as we hadn’t reached 150 entries, but Artists are notoriously slow with paperwork, and by the time we opened we had 219 paintings on display. Our Opening Night was a huge success with 186 attendees, including about 50 who didn’t reply to the Invitation, about 20 who weren’t invited, and 35 who accepted and didn’t show!

It was a great example of everyone getting involved – out of 32 Club Members, only 2 didn’t get involved in any way, and one of those was on holidays for most of the time. We were nearly in tears on Cup Morning as heaps of volunteers turned up and in a wonderful display of teamwork, disassembled the 84 screens that had been put up a week before. We were able to get home around 12.30pm with three paintings that had been sold & not collected, and two that had been displayed and not picked up! Wes cooked scrambled eggs on toast and I went straight to bed and watched the Cup on the big screen in the bedroom. Such an exciting race – I am delighted that we have become a ‘must’ destination to so many European and Asian racing countries at Cup time.

 Guess who as MC on Opening Night!

We had hoped to visit Viva on Wednesday, but I was still very tired, so after a relaxing morning of Mah Jong at Cafe 3460 with Carol & Dot, I went back to bed and caught up on old episodes of ‘Letters & Numbers’ that I had missed. Meanwhile Wes went to Rotary to deliver the Art Show report and was greeted by a standing ovation, which was very touching to us both. The next morning we rose early, got the Bulletin out, and then drove to Melbourne to deliver two paintings in Coburg and to see Viva. She isn’t looking wonderful, but, apart from a recurrence of the dreaded hallucinations, she is on the ball, and knew exactly how many weeks it was since either of us had seen her! She is in lots of pain with her broken tooth, the shingles and now mouth ulcers, so Leanne has arranged for her food to be pureed, to make it easier to eat.

We spent quite a long time with her, telling her stories, explaining how some of her dreams weren’t logical, and helping her with lunch. This gave Leanne a very welcome morning off, as she has been on duty visiting every morning and sometimes twice in the day.

Would you like to buy something?

Friday was a big work day – we needed to write all the cheques to the Artists that had sold paintings, refund an Artist who couldn’t get her works to us, let every participating Artist know how the Show had gone and send letters of thanks with a report to all our sponsors (53 this year, last year we had 10). We finally got all that done and I took it all to the Hepburn Post Office to be sent out. By 6pm we were sitting on our veranda looking out at the Lake sipping sparkling Shiraz!

This afternoon between 4 & 6pm we have invited all our Committee members and their partners to a ‘soirée’, as a thank you. Bronnie & Lee are doing the catering and everyone will bring a bottle. So we spent yesterday taking control of the garden and house again. We did the early shift on the Farmers Market, had breakfast at ‘Gracenotes Café’, bought some plants and got going. Wes cleaned the barbecue and hosed down the decking & outside furniture, then mowed the lawns and watered everywhere from our overflowing tanks. I planted tomatoes and punnets of pleasure in the front, weeded a section of the garden, skimmed the pond & washed the cars. In between, we watched the Stakes Day races where we won absolutely nothing, but saw ‘Black Caviar’ win her 16^th race straight in easy fashion.

We had dinner with Glenn Mack at Jasmine Thai in Hepburn last night. We have neglected our friends for quite a while with our focus on the Art Show, and it was a delight to spend a couple of hours in his company again. Without his assistance last year, we would have been struggling to get the Art Show going, and he was very impressed with the strides we had taken this year.

This morning Kim outdid himself at breakfast – so much food, so many different things and all of them delightful. I sat next to Michael and chatted about the week away that he and Judi had enjoyed in Mildura, where the highlight was dinner at Stefano’s on the Murray. John & Jan Smith had some funny stories to tell about their first trip using their new motor home, and they left today for Echuca again, knowing what they know now. Gillie looks wonderful and is back to delivering fresh-laid eggs; Terry & Gail are still in the Blue Mountains celebrating the safe arrival of their 4^th grand-child, and Barbara was busy taking photos of the plates of food so that those who missed out will be envious! We had a serious discussion at the end of breakfast sorting out Rotary’s role with helping groups in the community, and John went away to rethink an idea he was developing to assist the Men’s Shed. Both Wes and Judi had some very helpful advice.

So there you are – we are nearly over the Art Show – the suitcase has been packed away for another year, and after the debriefing this afternoon, we will try and empty our minds to make room for all the other things there are to do here in retirement.

Wes is getting back to doing his Family History; I want to sit quietly solving Cryptics and reading new Scandinavian Crime writers; the boys don’t want to be left for whole days at a time anymore; our friends would like to see us again (& us them), and even the house and garden would like more regular attention. As for my Chronic Fatigue, it would really appreciate it if I went back to managing it again, so I will.....relaxed lifestyle, here we come.

P.S. Special thanks to Danny & Kim, who came & stayed with us for 2 nights & attended the Opening, then took us to dinner at the Farmers Arms on the Friday night; and to David, Helen, Jessica, Maya & Daniel, who visited from Geelong on Sunday to show support. Jessica’s reward was meeting Artist, Brian Nash & all three kids were given cards by him. Thank you all!