Skirting the question... and more before and after

This is a section of the wall in the living room. Probably the house did not orginally have skirting boards (see the traditional original green goes to the floor). Skirting would have been expensive. This room did originally have architraves (though not all the rooms did). Sometime in the house's history this room was painted and skirting added (the cream colour stops short of the floor). Then in the 70's the room was stripped of both skirting and architraves, and panelled with the synthetic cladding, which was *truly* awful (and which we removed). The question then was: would we put skirting back, or not? In the end we did in the living room, though we've opted not to in the two 'simple' bedrooms, such as the one in the post below (More on 'simple' vs 'special' rooms later). We did find architraves in the original style which we used as replacement.

After removal of panelling

Walls restored, skirting added & architraves replaced

During and after: bedroom restoration

A bit quiet on the blogging side but much is being achieved on the restoration and farm front! One of the jobs is the slow and painstaking restoration of the interior walls. Some of the rooms had been panelled in the 1970s with a horrid synthetic multiply cladding, which we have been taking down (where it hadn't falled down already). Other rooms had simply fallen into disrepair (having been beautifully painted by Val Battistuzzi in the '70s and '80s in nice pastel shades... and then abysmally treated by the last owners). Despite having used a pressure cleaner on the interior house when we first moved in, the walls still require washing and scrubbing. Then the walls and ceilings are sanded. Then the gaps between the boards are filled with an acrylic elastic sealant. Then the painting (first by brush along the boards, then with a roller), in two coats. All in all many hours of work on each wall.

During ceiling restoration - early stages, new white coat. The walls are gap filled already.

Door and original lock restored

Ready to move in! This is now Yarrow's room.

Rainwater maths

Since we hooked the tanks up to the guttering, 77 mm of rain has fallen, which has filled the first tank to 3/4 of its height.  Given that the tanks are 22700 litres in capacity, that means the 77mm rainfall has given us 17062 litres of water. So, each mm of rain falling on our roof gives us approx 221 litres of water (not a bad deal). Our annual water consumption is 195,803 liters (well it was last year). Annual average rainfall in this area is 1793 mm, which should offer us a potential 396,253 litres per annum. Theoretically, that is: at times, the tanks will overflow. But in general, we should have enough storage, unless we hit a very dry spell.

Here below is an image of the impact of the last 77mm of rainfall on our local river, the Wilson River at Eltham.  Not unusually, it's risen by about 3 metres.

The cats get the best seats in the house?

An evening scene on a cold winter's night. Our wood burning stove is the source of heat (and we cook on it too quite often). The chairs are drawn in closer, Yarrow is reading a book on the floor in front of the fire (she's reading "Little Women" for school). Sunny and Inkling are in the best chair (got to feel sorry for Inkling with his leg in plaster), our 'new' cat Minnie - who we inherited due to the marital separation of our good friends Julie and Trevor - is on the wooden chair. She's still a bit wary of the other two, but that will improve. John's successfully solving the crossword with the help of his porter gaff.

You can just see a bit of the new skirting boards and architraves that I have mounted around the room. I love the rich warm colour of the native teak floorboards.

A homely scene :-)

It never rains but it pours :-) ... which is positive news in this case

Things are looking up :-)

John and I are getting out of the dip :-))). Mam's recovering (though it has taken a heavy toll); Pap's getting used to his new medicines; Anoush is home again from her long stay in the hospital in Melbourne; Marc is also out of hospital, has cheered up and has a new girlfriend (possibly the best thing for him). Our cat Inkling has a cast on his leg, and we might not have to have his leg amputated after all.

I'm climbing back up the hill of merriness and the sun should start shining again...



But wait! The sun isn't shining: it's absolutely pouring outside and I'm DELIGHTED! This is because John and I have connected the house to the huge new water tanks with stormwater pipes, polypipe, and other paraphernalia (I built a pumphouse for the pump too) ...  and I can hear the sweet sweet sound of liquid gold H2O pouring into the tanks. The first tank is already half full (so that's 11,350 litres of water in a little over 24 hours). We still need to connect a few things and get a plumbing approval arranged but we're nearly ready to harvest our own water. Just in time for the government and council rebates :-)


See the snazzy expandable linkage that John designed and built between the two tanks? That's to allow expansion and contraction of the tanks depending on how much water they contain. Clever hey  ....

The little pumphouse is made entirely of recycled materials and allows the pump to be accessed and receive maximum airflow without it getting wet during downpours.

It never rains but it pours? :-(

Seriously, for a while there things were not looking very bright... All manner of things went amiss, amok, awry, adrift. I was sad for a while ... which is why I wasn't blogging very much.

In a nutshell: my father was in hospital; then my mother went to hospital for a minor operation which went wrong and she nearly died; my brother Marc in Amsterdam was terribly ill as well as distraught for very real reasons; my sister Anoush suddenly had to have major back surgery. My relationship with my darling John was going through a dip, which grieved me muchly :'-( ... and our young cat Inkling got hit by a car (miraculously survived, phew). On a more minor note, the header tank at the top of the property collapsed, which besides losing our water, crushed the tank beyond repair.

My life felt like this poem, which I recall reading in a book by Spike Milligan:

Since I hurt my pendulum
My life is all erratic.
My parrot, who was cordial,
Is now transmitting static.

The carpet died, a palm collapsed,
The cat keeps doing poo.
The only thing that keeps me sane
Is talking to my shoe.

New tanks have arrived

I know, I haven't been posting much. Life has been hectic... But today our new big water tanks arrived: two Duraplas 22700 litre tanks, ready to catch all that lovely rainwater and allow us to get off (pricey) town water. The good people from Duraplas asked for a couple of helpers, but even so I was wondering how to get these half ton monsters off the truck and onto the level site that we had prepared ...  but as it turns out, all you have to do is shove them gently off the truck. In the right way, of course. Thanks to Greg from Duraplas, and Hans and Tassie who lent willing and capable hands.

A good book

On the plane on the way back, relieved to be relieved of the responsibilities of running the unit in Bangkok, I read this beautiful, very positive novel, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. John recommended it to me, having found it at the local market and bought it ($2 ...  a bargain!).

Set in an unnamed South American country, it tells the story of a group of high-level executives, artists and politicians who are kidnapped and held hostage by a group of terrorists. Rather than focusing on horror and violence, it delves into the incredible bonds of friendship that form, and on the positive effect of music on the psyches of all involved.

Highly recommended, it's been on several top book lists, including Amazon's Best Books of 2001.

I'm back again

I've returned from what was a difficult and very intensive teaching session in Bangkok. The unit that I teach there concerns (the strategic planning of) information communication technolgies in tourism, hospitality and events management. Now before anyone asks what do I know about ICT, let me say that the main point of the unit is not to create students who are whiz-bang IT specialists, but rather to equip budding managers with the skills and knowledge to predict and prepare for change (IT is a very volatile area), to manage human resources so that everyone (clients and staff) benefit, and to understand and leverage knowledge management practices.

Knowledge management is a fascinating area. Gene Bellinger writes:

"We learn by connecting new information to patterns that we already understand. In doing so, we extend the patterns. So, in my effort to make sense of this continuum, I searched for something to connect it to that already made sense. And, I related it to Csikszentmihalyi's interpretation of complexity.

Csikszentmihalyi  provides a definition of complexity based on the degree to which something is simultaneously differentiated and integrated. His point is that complexity evolves along a corridor and he provides some very interesting examples as to why complexity evolves. The diagram below indicates that what is more highly differentiated and integrated is more complex. While high levels of differentiation without integration promote the complicated, that which is highly integrated, without differentiation, produces mundane. And, it should be rather obvious from personal experience that we tend to avoid the complicated and are uninterested in the mundane. The complexity that exists between these two alternatives is the path we generally find most attractive."

For those interested, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi does a lot of work in the area of positive psychology, which is an area close to my heart. He coined the psychological concept of 'flow', and has done a lot of research into creativity.

I like the way one can step quite justifiably and correctly from ICT to knowledge to wisdom to creativity :-).

I keep a blog for the unit and if you'd like to see it, it's here: http://isy00244.blogspot.com/

Good clean fun

Just before I went to Bangkok we had some incredibly hot days. What better way to spend weekend time than go play in one of our "swimming pools" (we have two swimming holes quite close by). Here is a clip of Tess the aerial circus artiste showing a graceful method of entering the water of Cooper's Creek at Key's Bridge. Hint: be patient, and while waiting, look for the legs in the tree ... all will become clear ...

Sawasdee ka!

Sawasdee ka! I have arrived in Bangkok to teach in the Master's program at Naresuan University. I meet my cohort late this afternoon and will teach all through the weekend.

Yesterday I went to visit my favourite temple in Bangkok, the wonderful Wat Po temple. Of course I paid my respects to the Reclining Buddha, and I admired the beautiful murals all around the walls. The beauty and the artistry is incredible.

If you would like to read part of the travel epistle I wrote for John (it's ok ... I have edited out all the mushy/romantic/x-rated material...), then please click here for a pdf. For larger text size you can zoom quite a way by clicking on the + button.

I had been feeling quite poorly...

This post is for family and friends to explain some recent endocrinological events in my life ...

For a while of late I had been feeling quite poorly: fatigued, poor concentration, low mood, pins and needles in my hands and feet, a sore tongue (!) (weird huh), quite severe pitting edema in my legs, and a number of other obscure ailments such as occasional bouts of angioedema.

It all came on quite slowly and I put it down to general malaise after the severe flu I had last semester, and some poor lifestyle choices among the many insiduously entrenched in our western society (processed food, alcohol, lack of exercise). I resolved to pull up my proverbial socks, exercise more, make more healthy choices and fewer unhealthy ones ... but it didn't seem to help and I felt I was losing ground, it was getting harder and harder. When I got to the stage that I could not keep up with my weekly jazz dance class, my concentration was shot, and walking down to feed the hens became something I started to worry about, I knew something had to be done.

So I drew a picture of my body and drew arrows pointing to various areas of my body, outlining my problems both mental and physical, and gave that to my good GP doctor Dr Marcus at our excellent Bangalow Medical Centre. Marcus quickly surmised (correctly) that I was experiencing hypothyroidism due to a too-low dose prescribed by a previous doctor (I had Hashimoto syndrome as a teenager and lost my thyroid function) . And he ordered a full blood count too.

He was right about the hypothyroidism, but what we found to our surprise was that my free Vitamin B12 levels - which should be over 250 (and up to around 600 or so), were down to a paltry 3. Three! Insane. "Your B12 levels are in your boots", Marcus said, and promptly ordered thrice-weekly injections for me. His colleague Dr Graham came to see me as well and said he'd never met anyone with a B12 level so low.

But why so low? My diet is not really poor, even if I berate myself for not eating healthily. We actually have a great diet with lots of fresh vegetables, lean meat, fish, and so on (and John's an absolutely awesome cook who makes fantastically healthy tasty meals). More tests were done, and it turns out that autoimmune antibodies against parietal cells that I had been carrying around (dormant) for years had finally kicked in. And thus I can no longer produce intrinsic factor, a glycoprotein which processes B12. Without this protein, you can't absorb B12, no matter how much vegemite you eat. This results in what is called pernicious anemia, a condition once fatal but now (happily) easily treated by intramuscular injections of B12.

"Pernicious anaemia:
Pernicious anaemia is the classical symptom of B12 deficiency, but it is actually the end-stage of an autoimmune inflammation of the stomach, resulting in destruction of stomach cells by the body’s own antibodies. Anaemia is a condition in which red blood cells do not provide adequate oxygen to body tissues. Pernicious anaemia is a type of megaloblastic anaemia."

I've had four injections. I probably need about 20 to get my levels to where they should be and from then on a maintenance dose of once a month or so for the rest of my life.

I'm cool with that. At least I'll be able to scamper down the hill and feed the chooks with aplomb, I will once again enjoy John's curries without a sore tongue, I can get back to fitness classes, I can concentrate on things with more focus than a chaffinch, and my ankles won't look like marshmallow puffs.

Yay for modern medicine and the good doctors at Bangalow Medical Centre.

"I don't eat Aplomb. I like Darling Down Best Layer Mash, thank you very much."

   

Smith has a bath

And enjoys it too...

Damp days: flooding in QLD and Northern Rivers NSW

There is much lovely stuff that I have not yet blogged about, such as Sarah's graduation and Briony's birthday and the two short but lovely holidays on Stradbroke Island. But it's raining and damp and floods have been affecting Northern NSW and QLD. At the time of writing Brisbane CBD is being evacuated, Ipswich has been evacuated and closed down (the electricity to the city has been turned off); and Toowoomba is reeling from the flash flooding. Gympie is cut in half by floods (you OK, Tony and Tuffy?). I sincerely feel for those who are affected by the floods, espeically those who have lost homes and family.

Fortunately, here at The Grange we're so high on the ridge that I cannot imagine a flood ever reaching our house (though we do get rain inundations which turn our driveway into a small creek and we frequently get cut off by road when the Wilson River breaks its banks, which it does at around the 8 metre mark.).

The video below shows the astounding speed at which a flash flood develops, as well as its incredible power as it sweeps the cars away.

Photo: Sydney Morning Herald

Twisted kitten attempting Sudoku

I agree, it just kinda does your head in after a while ....

Christmas with the girls

On Christmas Day, John and I first went to Claudia's to open presents with Briony and Bella, and then to the Myth to share presents and have an extended lunch with Tess and Yarrow, and the rest of the family. Hans put up some of my photos of the lovely lunch on his blog (click here to see them).

Bella had used her photographic and organisational talents to create twelve amazing portraits of our four girls, collated into a calendar as a Christmas present for John and myself. Here above are our February, May and July pinup girls :)

New kids on the block

We've been looking around for a new kitten, for ourselves and to help make Sunny happier again. Our dear friend Willa (who is a vet) recommended this lovely kitten through Northern Rivers Animal Services, a volunteer-run pet rescue and rehoming organisation. He was born at the carer's home in late August (the lovely carer supplied a whole CD full of kitten photos and clips!). He is Siamese in shape, jet black in colour, and he purrs constantly. We've named him India Giles Raven and he's here to stay :-)

Sunny's very happy with him and so are the girls, so to see!

Another 'new' arrival (well, appearance really) is the Eastern Rosella fledgling of the two rosellas who made their home in the nesting box I made. Unwilling to disturb the precious nest, I have resisted my burning curiosity and not looked in the box so we had no idea how successful (or not) the breeding season was for the young couple (click for previous posts).

Today Mr Eastern Rosella (we call him Captain Rainbow) the proud father was feeding his young one through the hole. I managed to get a blurry shot of the fledgling peeking out ...

Not to worry, the cats cannot reach the nesting box, and are locked up at night to help keep nocturnal native wildlife safer.

Night time shenanigans

I wrote the description of night time shenanigans, below, in an email to various family members. They'd like me to share them with you. To reap the full benefit :-) you need some background information:
- Sunny is our ginger cat. He used to care for Remy our Russian Blue by providing food (mice, rats and rabbits) for him, which he would announce by yowling loudly until Remy came running.  Remy was killed on the road. Sunny misses Remy a lot.
- My father did recently accidentally chop through his foot with an axe (blocksplitter actually). 
- Marc my brother lives in the Netherlands, and he has six children, the youngest of whom are twin girls just turned five years old. Naturally, his children speak Dutch.

>>
Saturday, 3 am:
Sunny comes in yowling vociferously. He doesn't stop yowling. He wants us to see this amazing, incredible thing he caught. We've GOT to come and praise him for his magnificent efforts. He is actually willing to DONATE this massive meaty gift to us, poor insipid humans whose diet is peppered with green things.
He doesn't stop yowling. The walls are reverberating with his half-siamese yowls.
Oh, ALRIGHT, I'll come look. I shamble out of bed.
Sunny's sitting on the rug with a teeeeny, quivering mouse.

He's caught a baby mouse, I call to John. John hoots with disbelief "A mouse? Is that all? With all that noise I was expecting him to have brought in a wombat!".
I peer at the catchling, grinning. I can just picture Sunny lugging in a wombat...  Nope, just a baby mouse. Maybe it was a hard mouse to catch, who knows.
A snort of laughter emanates from the bedroom.
The mouse scampers away and Sunny hoofs off after it.
I go back to bed.


Sunday night, we're in bed, asleep ...
2 am, Sunny comes in carrying a large, extremely cross rat and offers sweetly to give it to us, on our pillows. He's very modest about this one. "I brought you this small token of my esteem", he says, "Nobbut a stripling", he manages to squark, though his mouth is stuffed with rat fur.
I take a look and shiver. That's not a rat, that's a small yak, I think.

Well, that gets dealt with and we go back to sleep. But not for long.

Same night 3.30 am, my mobile phone rings .... rings out, then rings again, and then the bleep signalling a voice message.
Uh oh, says John, this might be your parents, maybe something's happened?
I'm thinking, maybe Pap has put an axe through the other foot? Unlikely at this time of night but you never know.
I shuffle through the living room and kitchen looking for my phone. It rings again, briefly, then stops before I reach it, but at least that's helped me locate it. I look at the screen. It says "Marc".
I bring the phone back to my bedside table. It was Marc, I say to a very sleepy John. Well if he rings again I'll pick up. I hope everything's OK... Not much I can do at 3.30 am though ... I'll listen to the message in the morning.

At 5.30 when our alarm goes off, with some trepidation, I listen to the message. My furrowed frown quickly gives way to snorts of delighted laughter. I hit the replay and give the phone to John. Here listen to this. His sleepy looks are quickly replaced with a huge grin, he shakes his head in delight and hands me back the phone.

The voice message is this:

[a five-year-old's voice, distantly]

"Ja, kijk, die knopjes ... drukken maar... "

[translation: "Yes, see, those buttons .... Go on, push them ..."]

Holiday week one: renovations and restorations

John painting the ceiling boards

Both John and I were really needing a holiday, so we took two weeks off work. The first week was quite fraught really: having been so busy we had not really had time to work on our relationship and family, so there was some serious renovating to do on that front. Parenting is a minefield anyway but we have a blended family and that brings with it a unique set of issues, which require upkeep and attention. The stats on blended families are not cheering: 90% don't last five years, sadly. If anyone reading this would like more information or support on this topic I can recommend the University of Florida "Stepping Stones for Stepfamilies" series, and a number of other sites.

But we also had some serene times that week. We listened to some marvellous ABC RN  while we worked on restoring the interior of the living room, which when we bought the Grange was panelled in gaudy 1970's plasticised sheets. My brother Marc helped us pull those down quick smart, when he was here last year, bless him! The hardwood boards underneath were damaged but whole, though shrinkage had left many gaps in the walls. We fixed those with flexible gap filler (we used 17 tubes on the one room). Then sanding and filling of the many holes and finally a nice coat of paint. I still need to make more architraves (which had been removed in years gone by and are lost alas) and finish the cornices / scotia and skirtings. Good hard work but the net result is much better. Before and after shots are below.

I think the relationship is much better after the week's renovations, too.

Prior to purchase

Nearly finished

 

The living room after panelling removal but before painting.

50 years of love: Ton and Ellen, my parents

"You must remember this, / A kiss is ..."

My parents have been together for 50 years. To celebrate the anniversary of this lasting relationship we organised several special events. On the Friday we had a pub dinner for 50 local friends and family at our lovely local Eltham Hotel. Fine food, good guests, music and dancing followed.

On the Saturday we organised a catered formal dinner for another 50 people (well some of them were remarkably similar to Friday's crew ;-) ) at the enchanting Clunes Old School site, a federation building in lovely parklands in our village. Many old friends and family travelled from afar to join us: my sister Anna from Melbourne, our dear family friend Sybille from Adelaide, Mary Daly from Sydney, Heather (nee Russell) from Inverell. Speeches, more speeches, champagne, performances by our 'own' family ensemble groups: myself on guitar, Hans and Tess and Yarrow singing. The superb food was capably provided by Laura Hayward, a young local caterer just breaking into the market.

Heather came over from Inverell!

Diana M. made this amazing cake

Saturday's venue: Clunes Old School

Inside the Old School with teak floors

Sybille, Mam and Briony at Clunes

Dancing with the girls :)

Finally on the Sunday afternoon we finished up with a BBQ at our own place, The Grange. John cooked up a storm on the verandah bbq, Katka and I made salads and all ten of us gathered around the large kitchen table and had a chatty and relaxed lunch.

In all it was an excellent weekend and I think my parents really enjoyed it. Many thanks to all those who made the huge effort to travel so far and help us celebrate half a century of love!!

Resuming posting and catching up

Every now and then Life takes over and Things get too busy... I know I've not been posting much recently. I was quite busy with work; struggling a bit with health issues (I think my immune system was a bit compromised after the huge flu I had this semester and I got a staph infection on my thigh which slowed me down and made sitting down eXtremely painful!); feeling a bit down. But much has happened these past weeks which I will post in the near future, so stay tuned for updates on the following:
- My parent's 50th anniversary - we celebrated their lasting love with a whole series of festivities over a couple of days.
- John and I took two weeks holiday. The first week we did some excellent renovating on the house; the second week we went on an exciting motorbike tour...
- The eastern rosellas are inhabiting the nesting box: hopefully nestlings galore :)
- Romany Ruby Smudge our foal is now 3 months old and is changing her foal coat for her new adult look: a surprisingly smoky mocha body on siamese-coloured legs. For those of you who knew Skaila: well, *that* kind of colour.
- John and I have 'broken in' Rascal the affable pinto, who thought the whole process quite amusing and entertaining. Much training still to do yet but he shows promise.
- Major building work on the proposed back deck is about to start with our small project crew of local craftsmen and  women. Very exciting and much looking forward to it.
- Lot Three, the third clutch of this season's rare Belgian bantam breeding program is due to hatch on 6 December. Several of Lot One are with their new owners, Julie & Jenko; and Kevin & Steve. Lot two (there was only one of Lot Two) is still small and is promised to Gio's friend David when she's a bit bigger and can have a mate (a lucky rooster of Lot One).
- An Axe-ident happened! My Dad chopped through his foot with the blocksplitter. Incredibly, he hasn't severed any major tendons or bones, though he did manage to go right through his foot. Though in much pain, he's retained his sense of humour: he told the hospital staff at the Emergency Department it happened in a "split" second.
Postings and some photos of various to follow.

Yarrow sings

Last Sunday Yarrow performed in front of a fairly big audience for the Hothouse Music end of year showcase. The big challenge she had to face was that her own singing teacher who was to accompany her, had just left a few days previously. As a result she had to manage with a new pianist, with whom she had never worked before. Due to time pressure, they only got to meet twice for short rehearsals before the show. As a result Yarrow felt uncharacteristically nervous, but I don't think it shows. Great performaceYarrow, very professional! I'm very proud of you!

For a previous post showing Yarrow performing, click here.

Marc's birthday

Today is 9 October and is my much-adored brother Marc's 49th birthday. With only 1 and a half years between us in age, we grew up very close. He was (and is) my playmate, my mentor, my friend, my co-adventurer, my protector, my ally, my sparring partner, my confidante, my consoler in times of great sadness, as well as a sharer of much mirth. In short, he is a fantastic brother and my life is richer because of him.

Marc, I love you very very much. Happy birthday my beloved brother.

Pre and post migration 1964

Erin our lovely house guest has a good way with Apple Mac computers and has been teaching my Mum, Ellen, how to scan and send photos. This morning in my inbox I found some lovely photos my Mum had scanned of our family: one taken just before emigrating to Australia in January 1964; and one taken just after arrival.

I'm the baby wearing white in both photos ... looks like I did a better job of staying clean than I do now (I couldn't get away with wearing white nowadays). Click on the images to enlarge if you like.

I'm looking at these photos and thinking it would have been a HUGE, huge thing for my parents to come all round the world with two small children, in those pre-cyber days when communication and information was sparse. Both my parents are intelligent and resourceful and good communicators, but even so it must have been a massive culture shock. But they coped beautifully.

I like the way the two photos portray a juxtaposition of European neatness and formality versus the Australian informality. Indoor vs outdoor. Black tie / dress vs polka dots and shorts. Styled hair vs curly hair. Smiles vs grins. There certainly was a heap of change taking place in the space of a month.

I'm also looking at these photos and thinking how very good-looking my parents were, and still are :-) 

My brother Marc's stuffed toy dog is called Bengel and he still has it, I believe.

The rain in Spain...

...falls mainly in the Wilson River catchment area?

We've got lovely house guests at present, Erin and David from America. (Erin in her undergraduate days used to come here on holidays with Oceane when Oce was at university; David is her partner). The weather gods have been treating them to an interesting time! 

After days of rain and storms, we had more huge downpours (160 mm fell overnight). The Wilson River rose nearly 8 metres in 48 hours, cutting off many of the valley roads as it broke its banks. This afternoon Tess, Erin and I went and explored the flooded areas and took many photos. We noticed an extraordinary number of insects trying to escape the floodwaters: spiders, crickets, beetles, and worms scrambled onto our legs for safety as we waded through the water (erm, worms can't scramble. They kind of slither... or wriggle ... sliggle ... writhle... whatever). What with them and the many leeches that appeared out of nowhere, it creeped Tess out a little: she's a brave lass but too many bugs are just *too many bugs*!

The downpour damaged our driveway, turning it into a small creek gully, as the masses of water washed our driveway gravel away. This afternooon John and David shoveled what gravel they could back into the wheelbarrow and carted load after load back up the hill to repair our track.

It's been hard keeping up with drying wash: all the available covered areas are now festooned with slowly drying items. In fact there was a load hanging out on the hills hoist for four days, getting 'special extra rinses', until I gave up and brought the dripping lot onto the verandah. Oh well! At least it's clean!