Yesterday

... was a horrible, horrible day.

It was VERY hot and VERY VERY windy.

Actually, according to Lindsey's outside thermometer, it probably didn't get much above 35 or 36, which isn't unusually hot for this time of year.  It was much hotter in other parts of the state.  The wind was worrying, though.  It was a swirly, twirly wind that made the trees dance.

From Hill House you can see right across the plain as far as the Grampians.  If there should be a fire in that direction you would be able to see it well in advance.  You can't see any fires coming up behind you, though.  The Hill is in the way!

In fact, there weren't many fires near us.  A couple of small ones that weren't particularly concerning. We needed to be watchful, though.  We didn't want to be trapped at the top of the driveway, not able to get off the property.

I was very worried about the wind. Hugo kept going outside and lying down under one of the trees. I could see why that would be enticing if you happen to be a Great Dane.  He, however, was not remotely concerned that a large branch might blow off the snow gum and squash him.  Or, indeed, that the tree he was lying under might squash him.

Had I realised that the fire danger rating for the day was Extreme, I might have bundled everyone into the car and gone away. But by the time I did realise I could see a cool change coming across from the west. Anyway, as far as I could see the whole state was rated at Extreme.  There didn't seem to be anywhere much safer to go.

It was somewhat surreal, though, when I got a breaking news alert to say that residents of Bundoora, Mill Park and Greensborough were under immediate fire threat and that some parts of Bundoora had been advised that was too late to leave.  Bundoora!  That's near the surgery.  It's a suburb of Melbourne.  It's true that it used to be a semi-rural area and then became an outer suburb.  But it isn't now. It's been well and truly swallowed up by suburban Melbourne. Fortunately, all was well. It was all a bit bizarre though.

In the end, the cool change reached us on Hill House.  It brought some rain with it.  Not enough to trouble the rain gauge at our place when I checked it this evening (although I don't really know how much it rained at the bottom of the hill). Enough, however, to reduce the risk of grass fire round about us.  I poured a glass of wine, sorted out a chicken salad for dinner and relaxed.

It's much cooler today and the forecast is much, much better.  We were lucky. Much luckier than the people in East Gippsland.  Conditions there remain horrendous. I must say that had I been holidaying or even living there, when "They" called for people in East Gippsland to evacuate a day or so before the expected fire storms - I would have gone. It is very, very unusual for an early evacuation warning to be issued for a whole region.

The Liminal Days of the Interfest

We had Christmas Day breakfast at Hill House, prepared by Emily and Andre

We had lunch at our place

We had Christmas Night dinner at Simon's place, prepared by Simon and Christian

We had Boxing Day breakfast at Ghost's House (prepared by the person who makes the muffins for the 7-11 :-D)

We have had summer lunches out and light evening meals in.

The sun has shone and the weather has been glorious.

Stella has been at Hill House with Rupert and Hugo. So have we.  Lindsey and Ian have been in Sydney.  Now we have taken her back to her house.  Rupert, Hugo, Jim and I remain at Hill House.

Today it is hot and windy and we are watchful for fires and smoke

We have, of course, been confused about what day it is. Although I mark them off on the calendar, the calendar is at our place and we are not.

I have updated the website to reflect a retirement and new beginnings and new patterns. I go back to work tomorrow and the days will return to something like normality. But not full normality. Not yet.

For we wait. Poised for something.

The end of a decade.

And the start of a new one.

Christmas Eve at Hill House

 If you are going to have a hearty meal, first you must walk the hill:

The house is dressed for the festivities:

Lindsey found teeny, tiny crackers:

For a decent feast you need feasters:

Emily and Andre came to join us

So did Simon and his friend Beth.  Jim's here as well
So are Freyja and Stella just not in shot

At the Feasting Table, including Freyja and Stella
(but not Emily or Andre  who are there but not pictured
- and, oddly, no photos of Ian at all :S )

I was particularly pleased with my vegan friendly trifle

 I seem to have loads of photos of Hugo and none of Rupert.  Unusual for him to be so bashful!

A quiet weekend

We didn't really do very much over the weekend.  A little bit of shopping. A bit of tidying. A bit of pottering. A bit of baking.

Apart from that nothing much. We didn't even leave the house and garden yesterday.

We did have a visitor

I think it's a bit shy. It was sat outside the laundry door, quietly, minding its own business. It didn't seem particularly minded to come inside.  I think it might have heard Jim suggesting that we should "remove" it. We may have slightly overdone the warnings about the dangers to be found in some Australian critters!  I might not have been quite as sanguine had a redback spider been sitting by the back door but a huntsman won't hurt you. In fact, they are quite companionable creatures to have around.  They don't usually dash about, but tend to stay in the same place for several days unless disturbed.  They eat flies and other annoying insects. There are worse visitors to have.  Although it must be said that they are definitely alarming if they get into the car and unexpectedly drop on you while you are driving :-D

I wonder if it's still there.  I'll go out shortly and have a look.

Oh - and I have finally sorted out the calendars. I still don't know why some photos could be used and others not, but I converted a load of photos into Jpeg format and they were all acceptable.  Because I made them so late they won't get here until January is well underway.  So I  have made the starting month February.  Recipients of the calendars will be members of a Secret Society who will celebrate New Year's Eve on January 31st, New Year's Day on February 1st and the Queen's Birthday on February 2nd (which is Stella's birthday).

I'm just not sure what I'll do for a kitchen calendar for January 2020.  I may have to draw a calendar for the month so I've got somewhere to put appointments and fun things

Friday

It was ever so slightly on the warm side on Friday.

I was out watering the vegetable boxes by about 5:30 in the morning. We soaked the front garden.  We closed the curtains and shut all the windows. Then Jim wandered up to Hill House and I went to work with Lindsey.

It was quite quiet in the surgery. Come to that, it was quite quiet in the shopping centre. Very quiet when you consider how close it was to Christmas.

I went to Costco to collect sandwiches and chicken wings and sushi for lunch.  I got there about 15 or 20 minutes after it opened.  It was absolutely PACKED. People were obviously getting their Costco shopping done before the full brunt of the heat hit. It might also have explained why Summerhill was so quiet.

We had a practice lunch to celebrate the imminent retirement of one of the partners.  We closed the surgery at lunchtime for an hour. We had LOTS of food - not only did we have the Costco offerings but also pretty much everyone who came brought something. We borrowed bench top ovens from some of the staff to heat the sausage rolls, meat balls, Lebanese pastries and other things.

And everyone came.  Staff who weren't working. Retired doctors and their partners. Plus, of course, those of us who were already there. It was a lovely little party.

This is how Lindsey's car dashboard looked on our way home

Just a bit warm.

Shopping

I spent most of the weekend shopping.

Not unusual, I hear you say. You are often to be found shopping. You go to markets and farm shops and the butcher and the greengrocer and the supermarket.

True. I do. And I did. We went to the Lakeside market on Saturday morning. We went to the supermarket. I didn't get to the butcher.

I hardly ever go into Myer. Come to think of it, I don't very often go into any department store.  So I was somewhat surprised to find myself in the Ballarat store not once but twice over the weekend. And, I actually bought something!  Jim and I had gone in with Lindsey (who was intending to buy things) but I had had no actual shopping expectations.  But there, in front of me, was the very thing I had intended to buy for my Christmas present exchange partner on Christmas night.  So I figured I might as well get it, since it was there.

They have been extending the Delacombe Town Centre shopping complex over the last year or so. There is now a Bunnings (think B&Q). We've been into the Bunnings a couple of times since it opened. But just recently they have opened a Dan Murphy wine store and a Petstock and a little arcade of smaller shops. There were already a Kmart and a Woolworths. The Delacombe shops now have pretty much everything we usually use (apart, of course, from the markets, farm shops etc, although it does have a butcher's shop and a greengrocery). No need to drive to several locations around the Ballarat city centre any more.

I think I now have, or at least have ordered pretty much everything I need for Christmas.  Except I haven't made the calendars. I must, must, must do that tomorrow. The difficulty is that the webpage I use to make the calendars is refusing to accept many of the photos I want to use - and I can't work out why.  It isn't the file type. It doesn't seem to be the file size.  I took two photos, seconds apart of very similar things. The file types are the same. The file size is the same. I can't see anything different between the two photos. But one is acceptable and one is not. It's very odd.  It's not an insurmountable problem. I can change the unaccepted photos into a format that is acceptable but that is time consuming and inconvenient. It's very annoying.  I've looked at other websites but the same problem arises.  I guess I'll just have to griddle my lions and get on with it. Tomorrow. I am about to go to work now.

 

Birthday Feasting

It was my birthday last Saturday.

On the whole it was a very quiet day

Especially if you are a pampered Great Dane

The dogs are being very quiet.
I wonder where they are?

We started the day at Hill House and meandered down to our place around lunch time and pottered about in the garden

Lindsey and Ian came by at around 7:15 (in a taxi) and took us to Kambei where we had what is becoming the customary Birthday Dinner - the 6 course tasting menu. We've been there for 3 out of the past 4 years.  (We stayed at home and had crayfish salad for the missing year)

My birthday weekend continued to be quiet and peaceful. We pottered in the garden some more. We pottered in the house. We pottered out to the Delacombe shops. We pottered into the evening.  Lovely!

My birthday celebrations continued even unto Tuesday. Lindsey and I went to Brunswick in the evening and met Freyja and Simon at the Cornish Arms on Sydney Road for my birthday present of Dinner Out. It is not a pub that I had noticed before and it has a good menu catering for omnivores and vegans. The food is very good. You can walk to it from Freyja and Simon's place. It's not really walkable from the flat but it is tram-able.  Lindsey and I had taxied there because of time constraints but we trammed back, via the city centre where we stopped to look at the Christmas lights.

So  a much feasted birthday.  We should probably turn our attention now to Christmas which is bearing down upon us at speed.

Feasting

It was a very festive weekend.

The RMG Christmas party was on Friday evening, at a pizza place in Strathmore. Lindsey, Jim and I went by train - and got rained on going from the tram to Parliament station. Ian came by car from Bacchus Marsh, didn't get rained on but also couldn't have much to drink. The good news from Lindsey, Jim's and my point of view was that we got driven home, didn't get rained on and could indulge in the wine and good food.

On Saturday Ian went back to Bacchus Marsh, Lindsey and I did the shops on Smith Street and Brunswick Street and Jim loitered in the flat. He and I had dinner in the Prince Patrick - and were engulfed by a 70th birthday party which appeared around us as we were finishing our dinner.

Sunday saw us making our way to Macedon for lunch at Chris and John's place, together with Irene and Gillie. We went by public transport. Our seniors' cards give us free tram travel at the weekends.  They also give us travel vouchers which can be exchanged for off peak travel in Victoria.  I have never used my vouchers but noticed them on my desk when we were getting ready to head to Melbourne on Friday. I picked them up and exchanged them for train tickets to and from Macedon. All of this meant that our travel to and from Sunday lunch in the country cost us absolutely nothing!  We had a magnificent lunch with good food, plenty of wine and good company.

Breakfast out on Monday at the coffee bar under our feet at the flat and then Jim and I went home.

I am, however, a bit puzzled.  My new-ish work jeans that fitted perfectly well last time I wore them were a bit on the tight side when I put them on yesterday morning. I can't think why

The surgery is getting ready for Christmas

We went to the Flinders pub for lunch on Sunday.  It has good food and some local wines and it is, of course, a lovely drive there and back, especially if you drive along the golf course road along the top of the cliffs.  Some lovely views of Westernport Bay and Phillip Island

Here is Stella doing a remarkably good job of representing the Queen in a recent conversation with her third child:

*WHAT* did you say?

And Jim, channelling Prince Phillip:

He did what?????????

Then laughing at my photos:

We enjoyed our lunches, though I am not sure Stella really enjoyed hers

Confit duck with lentils

She had to force herself to eat every scrap:

Except the green things. She doesn't do green things

I was driving to work on Wednesday and listening to the breakfast show on Radio National. There was much consternation about the weather conditions in South Australia.  Extremely hot, extremely windy and extreme fire danger, rising to catastrophic in some parts of the state.

You can keep that, I thought, as I turned into the car park.

It is true that, on the whole, our weather comes from the direction of South Australia.  Before weather forecasting got more accurate computers and modelling, if you wanted to know what the weather was going to be like in Melbourne tomorrow you would look and see what it was doing in Adelaide today. It's not an absolute given, but it's close enough.

It was therefore unsurprising that for Thursday, parts of Victoria were graded as Code Red for fire danger (the equivalent of Catastrophic in other states) and there was a statewide total fire ban.

We were not in any of the Code Red parts of the state (if we had been I would have put Jim, Rupert and Hugo in the car on Wednesday evening and gone elsewhere). But we did have very strong, swirly, gusty wind.  By lunchtime it was about 38d. We had the air conditioning on in the lounge room to keep the dogs cool, plus we had loads of containers filled with water both in and outside the house - for the dogs and the birds and anything else that was thirsty.

There were no fires close to us, although it was hard to tell what the band of cloud/smoke/mist/mirk/whatever which was heading towards us from the west was.  It turned out it was cloud and dust. It didn't bring any rain, but it did bring a cool change.  At 1pm the temperature was 38d and the wind was from the north.By 2:30 it was 20d and the wind was from the south west.  By 4pm it was 15d and when we went to bed it was around 10d.

When I got up yesterday morning I gave serious consideration to putting the heating on!!  I didn't but it definitely was not very warm. My poor summer vegetable seedlings, some of which I have just planted out, are very confused.

Jim, Rupert and I were in the dining room on Wednesday afternoon, shortly before the cool change went through.  Hugo was sleeping in the lounge room.  Suddenly he came belting down the hallway and rushed out into the side garden barking loudly.  This woke Rupert up who also ran outside to help with whatever it was.  I went down to the front garden and went out to see what was going on.  All I could see was a rubbish bin that had blown over.  I wouldn't have thought that that would upset Hugo quite so much, but I picked it up and pushed it against the wall.

Later in the afternoon I heard a commotion in the lounge room.  Lindsey had returned home and was yelling at us to close the kitchen door. Hugo was barking.  Rupert, Jim and I went to find out why. And there was a young fox on the front lawn, paying no attention at all to Hugo (and now Rupert) barking at it.  It ambled off once it noticed that there were now also three humans watching it through the window.  Jim has seen it again since.  I wonder if it was the fox that had Hugo so exercised earlier in the afternoon. I thought his reaction was a bit extreme for a blown over rubbish bin!

Off to Mount Martha later this morning.  Fortunately most of the bits of trees that blew around on Thursday have been cleared away and the weather conditions are pleasant and mild. Lindsey says it was HORRIBLE driving back to Ballarat on Thursday. Much nicer today.

And home

It is quite disconcerting when you have checked yourselves and your bags in at the airport, decided have something to eat before heading airside and have just sat down with a mushroom and cheese burger, chips and a glass of wine --- and your name is paged to return to the checkin counter (just as well we hadn't already gone airside!)

I went to find out  why they wanted me and what was wrong.

They had isolated Wendy's suitcase.  Apparently there was a battery in it.  This surprised me a bit.  I couldn't think what Wendy would be carrying that would upset the battery scanner.  The staff asked if I minded if they had a look.  I did not mind.  They couldn't find a battery. We looked in all the pockets. They shuffled through the contents.  No battery.  So bit by bit they unpacked Wendy's VERY carefully packed small suitcase.  No battery.  So they divided up the contents into small bundles and put them through the scanner in little trays.  Eventually, right at the very bottom, they found a small battery power pack.  This also surprised me.  It didn't seem like the sort of thing that Wendy would be carrying, plus she had watched Lindsey unpack her suitcase when we saw the multiple signs warning that mobile batteries (like power packs) had to be carried in the carry on luggage.

The staff and I re-packed the little suitcase - not quite so carefully but we did manage to get it properly closed. Then I went back to my abandoned burger, chips and wine and to berate Wendy for not having removed the battery in the first place.

She was completely bewildered.  She didn't have any batteries of any sort. I showed her the power pack.  "What is it?"she asked.  Not hers.  But in her suitcase.  I looked at it more closely.  It had an iPhone jack which didn't fit Wendy's phone.  Then light dawned.  She was using Tony's small suitcase.  The one he used for hospital trips or short visits, say, to Ballarat.  Extra power packs were exactly the sort of thing he would carry. Wendy hadn't noticed it tucked in the bottom corner of the bag and wouldn't have know what it was even if she had seen it.  Trust Tony to cause a degree of confusion at the end of our trip.  And Stella is complaining that we apparently took him on our travels but refused to take her - and she isn't dead yet :-D

Otherwise, our journey home was completely uneventful.  We didn't get much sleep on the overnight flight from Tokyo to the little Gold Coast airport but I got a bit.  We had plenty of time to get through immigration and customs and then catch our onward flight to Melbourne (It had a 110 minute turnaround time which I thought would be a bit tight but turned out to be plenty). Wendy took herself home on a suburban bus which very conveniently goes past her street - although it takes quite a bit of time. Lindsey and I taxied back to the flat and collected her car.

And now she is at her place, and Jim and I are at ours.  I should probably think about getting dressed. It's lunchtime and I am still in my pyjamas!

Final Day

We decided to make our final day a relatively easy day, so we abandoned our luggage at the hotel and set off into Tokyo station on the train

Tokyo Station.
I have never seen the outside before.
I tend to pass through the inside looking for metro stops,
the shinkansen
or the Narita Express.
It's a beautiful building on the outside - and much calmer!

We made our way to the Hop Bus stop and then spent most of the day cruising around on the tourist buses

When you are in Tokyo, you should remember to raise your eyes to the heavens:

Akihabara, electronics heaven

Akihabara again

Tokyo Tower

Tokyo Skytree

But don't forget to look at eye level as well:

Asakusa from the bus

Sight seeing by go kart

while dressed as cartoon characters and super heroes

Watch out for wild predators:

Unexpected attack by Star Wars:

and Christmas:

Above all, remember to watch your feet: