Morse

Morse
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Sunday, 11 December 2016

Daylesford Summer Dispatch - Sunday, 11th December 2016




 Dear Friends, we have enjoyed being back home again – cutting roses for ourselves & friends; opening early Christmas cards; learning to love our revised lounge setup; catching up with local friends, and enjoying the beauty of Daylesford, which is still very green & Springlike.

While we were away, we had the saga of the printer. My printer had refused to print when I put in a new HP cartridge, so I went online, did everything I was told and it still was obdurate. The next step was to contact an online Help person, who took me through all the things I had already done, plus some more. Finally, on the Thursday before we left, he advised me that the Advanced team would be in touch.

We went away without hearing from this team, and suddenly I was inundated with emails telling me that HP were going to replace the printer, even though it was 3 years old & out of warranty. I double-checked & triple-checked that I was to be the beneficiary of a new printer and agreed for it to be sent to our home. I advised Judi, who was doing all the worrying about mail, watering, bins etc to expect a printer last Monday week, 28th November and she agreed to pop in both morning & afternoon.
    
     
In the meantime, we were at the cricket, where I missed umpteen phone calls from Joanne in Sydney, who left her phone number, but wasn’t there when I rang back. She eventually emailed me & asked me to confirm my address & that it was OK to leave the printer. I sent a return email agreeing, cut Judi in on all this, and after two days & no reply from Joanne, discovered that my emails were not getting through to her. EEK!

When I arrived home on Friday, 2nd December, the printer was sitting at the front door, having been delivered after Judi had been (of course). On Saturday, I thought I would install this new printer, so carefully played the DVD instructions and discovered that, unlike every other piece of equipment I have ever installed, it expected me to have plugged it in, turned it on, removed some very tricky pieces of packaging & be ready to go. Eventually I was & it is working perfectly.

This has been a much quieter week for me than I expected as my head cold worsened and the asthma wouldn’t go away. I had to cancel gym, postpone a facial, look after my own nails, miss out on Mah Jong, and take care not to get too tired. Wes, of course, was wonderful. Not only did he cook some great meals, and walk Bilbo daily, but he seemed to be twice as busy as usual.

On Monday, he visited Leanne, as it was a while since he had seen her and we had a gift from Penola for her, as well as a large bunch of our roses. Then he caught up with his friend, Deane Wells, who flew to Melbourne for the day. Finally he was able to spend some time with Tom Tyrrell & Deborah Fowler and they enjoyed a wine together before he hit the road back here.

I had finally planted our tomato & zucchini seedlings – about a month later than usual. I left them in our greenhouse to make life easier for Judi and they all had growth spurts while we were away. Bilbo came with me to the Wombat Hill Nursery to buy chilli & parsley seedlings. Jeff & Donna recently said goodbye to their Labrador, Lennie, and I knew they would love giving Bilbo a pat or six. Win, win for everyone really!

Wes showed the film ‘The Light Between Oceans’ to a good audience of 18. I had hoped to go, but was still coughing too much & I think it is very rude to cough & sneeze at any kind of performance. The film was 2hrs 15 mins, which was too long to risk. Everyone there enjoyed it, so perhaps we’ll catch up with it at another time.

By Wednesday morning, Wes had my cold and was feeling quite miserable. However, he had promised to accompany Barbara to the spinal cord unit at Ballarat, which he did. He arrived home around 2.15pm and went straight to bed, sleeping the rest of the afternoon.

My coughing finally settled down on Thursday and I was able to speak with Leanne over the phone for a while. It was a very wet morning, so we all stayed put until Wes kept an appointment with Brian Nash. He arrived home feeling tired again, so had another quiet afternoon.

My only forays out were to collect the mail, bring in the bins & pick roses for the vases I have dotted around the house. I seem to have taken forever to get on top of things since our return & that morning it was time to do a few Trip Advisor reviews before I forgot all about the lovely or not so lovely places we visited on our little trip to South Australia & back.





Because next year’s Test is part of an Ashes Series, I went online to see whether I needed to do anything about accommodation. And I was so pleased I did – our usual haunt was fully booked, a recommended hotel was completely booked & I was lucky to secure the last apartment at Adelaide Dress Circle Apartments in North Terrace. I suspect that Travel Agents & Cricket Australia have snapped up everything desirable to add to their packages. However, we don’t need seats or plane tickets as I am confident we will be able to book our own seats & we will be driving over again.

We had hoped to have a long overdue brunch catch-up with Gail & Terry White at Boathouse Daylesford on Friday, but Wes found himself back in bed after a couple of hours up & was coughing his heart out. Gail was very understanding – she’s had a bad cough & cold for 5 weeks.


Yesterday I left early to visit Leanne as it is her birthday today. I landed with presents from us, Smokey (her cat) & Bilbo & she was very thrilled indeed. We had a good time together & I left after lunch, so she could have a rest before Peter & Anka arrived for a visit. They were in Melbourne for the final One Day Cricket game against the Kiwis, which we managed to win convincingly for a clean sweep of that small series.

Wes was up & dressed when I got home, but taking things very quietly. I joined him sitting in the lounge and read Saturday’s Age, before getting back into my current book. This is an autobiography by J I M Stewart, called ‘Myself & Michael Innes’. It is a very amusing, erudite, and whimsical account of his life, but inevitably it is unsatisfying as it doesn’t really explain how he came to write detective novels, why he took the nom de plume, Michael Innes, and where John Appleby, his detective, came from. However, he & his family spent 10 years living in Adelaide, which I hadn’t known and he loved everything about Australia except our accents!

This morning I have Bilbo at my feet, anxiously looking up every few minutes to check I haven’t snuck out to the Sunday Market without him. What he doesn’t know is that old friends, John & Jan Smith, will be at breakfast, and Jan, in particular, will be delighted to see him. He is going to get extra spoilt I suspect.


John & Jan had afternoon tea with Glenn Mack yesterday – Glenn baked this very attractive lavender & apricot cake in their honour – the lavender came from our garden.

When we return from breakfast I am going to make our Christmas pudding. I am at least two weeks later than usual, but I am sure it will still be yummy. Even though we have no-one to feed on Christmas Day, Wes and I will enjoy the pudding hot on Christmas Eve ourselves.


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