Most Fridays I go to and from work with Lindsey.

Friday just gone I went with Lindsey, but she wasn't coming back. I was on my own!

I decided that I would still go with her and would come back by public transport.

So I left work at around 3:15 and got a tram a few minutes after I got to the tram stop.  It takes about an hour to get from Summerhill to Southern Cross Station. I got there with plenty of time to catch the 16:54 train. No rush, no scramble for a seat.  Even better, that is fast train. It stopped at Footscray in Melbourne and then only at Bacchus Marsh and Ballan, before  arriving in Ballarat just over an hour later.  Excellent.  I had just missed the bus out to the University but there was only 15 minute wait for the next one. Jim met me at the University so I didn't have to walk up to Hill House, where we are spending the weekend. I don't want to walk up the most direct route in the dark - it's only a walking track, not lit and quite uneven in parts.

I have to say that it was a very pleasant trip. I read a really, proper book. I read a couple of online magazines.  I read the (online) paper which was full of articles about the day's political shenanigans.  I was quite happy.  But all up it took nearly 4 hours which isn't sustainable on a regular basis. Pity. It was much less stressful than coping with the Ring Road and the freeway, which can be very busy at that time of day, at least until Melton.

I woke up yesterday morning at about 4:30 for a loo stop. A few minutes after I had got into bed I heard the click, click, click of Great Dane claws tripping up from the lounge room. Then I hear Rupert whine a bit. This usually means that he too would like a loo stop.  Yesterday morning, though, he stopped whining. Odd. Then I heard a rattle, then a slight clatter.  A pause.  Then another rattle and a slight clatter.  Then Rupert appeared in our room and climbed gently onto the bed.  At least he didn't lurch himself at us as though propelled from a trebuchet, which is what he does when Jim is in bed after I have got up.  But how did he get in?  It seems that we hadn't properly locked the child gate when we had gone to bed and he had worked out how to nudge it open.  Hugo was waiting patiently on the other side. The gate was ajar but not enough for him to walk through. Hugo is not usually inclined to nudge things open. Unless there is food on the other side!

We shut the gate properly when we went to bed last night :-D

We had a pleasantly quiet day yesterday. Jim did a bit of gardening. The sun shone in a bright blue sky. We went out to Elaine to the farm shop. Otherwise, we didn't do much.

It is foggy this morning. And I should get organised.  We are going out for lunch later and there are things to do before then

New things

The fridge is up and running and we have started to put things in it.  It is a very shiny, lovely new fridge.  It even has a water reservoir so you can have cold water on tap - provided that you remember to fill the reservoir!

Jim very carefully measured the fridge cavity in the kitchen before we went shopping. We triple checked the dimensions of the fridge before we paid for it.  It fits pretty much exactly, except that it juts out by a few centimetres.  We can live with that.

It's quite a big fridge, by our standards at least. The Tupton fridges (they were consecutive; we didn't have two at once!) were "under the counter" fridges and this one is considerably bigger than that.  It has a built in shelf for cans in the door.  I suspect most people would put beer in but I have filled it with cans of soft drink for visitors. There is also a two bottle wine rack.  At the moment the wine is in the cupboard above - and I can't reach it when the fridge door is shut!  Fortunately Jim can 😉

The bottom is a freezer.  It's still empty. I crammed everything into the freezer in the garage when we emptied the old fridge/freezer.  I'll sort it all out when time permits.

And here are the glasses I got in Clunes last weekend

I had bought two of the little ones the last time we were there, got home and, of course, thought that I should have bought four. So I dropped in to get two more.  While I was there I bought four of the tall ones.  They were fairly expensive for glasses (at least they were expensive for me). I came out of the shop feeling very much like the woman in the poem "Warning" by Jenny Joseph.  Not so much: 

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter

More:

I shall spend our money on drinking glasses, pretty things,

At market stalls - and say we've no money for milk or bread

Fortunately we have milk and bread, not to mention a full garage freezer.  All is good

The Weather Dogs

were very obliging  on Sunday. The day was filled with rain showers, snow showers, sunny spells, sleet, hail, strong winds.  And yet, whenever we were outside it was sunny, or if not sunny, at least not actually wet.

Lindsey drove us to Talbot, where the monthly market was in full swing.  I don't think there were as many stalls as there were in the summer, but it still an impressively large market.  I managed to get some little dishes to replace the soap dishes.  The bloke was selling a tiny, tiny tea set for $10.  I didn't actually want an entire tea set - just the little dishes.  Not quite sure what I would do with 4 tiny tiny tea cups and a minute jug.  I dithered.  The bloke said, somewhat hopefully, that I could have the lot for $5.  Bargain.  I'm sure I'll find a use for the tiny, tiny tea cups. Lindsey said to use them as egg cups but they aren't a suitable shape.  Anyway, I have loads of egg cups.  I've put them in the cupboard for further thought.

From there we went to Clunes where I bought some more of my pretty (drinking) glasses.  I would show you photos except they are in Mount Helen and I am in East Melbourne.  I'll take photos the next time I am at home.

Then on to the garden centre in Haddon, where Lindsey bought fruit trees and not-fruit shrubs. It was spectacularly busy and there were food stalls, things for the children to do, all kinds of buzz. Turned out they were having a family day to raise money for the farmers and for drought relief.

So not a bad Sunday :-D  We got home slightly chilled (although I had taken winter kit with me) but dry.  And spent the evening playing with the Apple digital TV box.

Now I am off to the optometrist to see about getting some new glasses.  It is getting a bit tedious having to wear my sunnies whenever I want to drive the car.  It also limits what time I can hop into the car.  Has to be in daylight hours, which isn't always convenient!

Remind me to show you our magnificent new fridge when I am next at home. It arrived on Monday and is very lovely

I meant to tell you

and completely forgot.

Last Monday I was sorting out the fridge and found, tucked at the back, two meatballs which were slightly past their best.  I thought I might take them up to Hill House and donate them to the magpies.  Then I thought I might just put them out in our courtyard and see if the local magpies fancied them.  So I did that and got the ironing board out to do the week's ironing.

The bit of the courtyard where I put the meatballs
Jim is weeding it
We are planning to grow zucchini and melons there in the summer

I became aware that there was a large crow sitting on the roof of the unit next door. It hopped down onto the fence, then hopped along until it was near the meatballs. Then it jumped down, grabbed a meatball and flew up back to the gutter of the place next door. It dropped the meatball into the gutter where it meets the roof valley.  It checked very carefully that no bird was watching. (It knew that I was watching but didn't seem perturbed by me.) Then it carefully covered the meatball up with all the leaves and twigs that sit in the bottom of the valley.  Then it flew down, grabbed the second meatball and flew away all the way over there to a stand of trees.

The unit next door.
There's another one behind us but the crow showed no interest in that

Bundle of twigs and leaves behind the baby gum tree

Just as I was finishing the ironing the crow came back, uncovered the meatball and sat in peace on the guttering while it ate its lunch. The magpies didn't get a look in - though there are lots of them about.

Such a very clever crow!

In other news, yesterday Jim and I went out and bought a new fridge/freezer, which is coming tomorrow. While we were about it, we also bought an Apple TV (that's a digital box, not an actual TV). The signal here is terrible and often we can't watch the TV at all.  I was going to buy a signal booster (and I may yet do that) but with the Apple TV we can watch many of the free to air channels that we would have watched anyway, even if the programs are not at the time of broadcast. Plus we can watch some of the subscription channels. Finally my Netflix subscription is looking to be value for money!

It's been snowing this morning!  It's stopped now and the sun is shining, though there are black clouds about.  We are trusting to the Weather Dogs (a dubious plan, I agree) and are shortly going with Lindsey to Talbot to the monthly market, then to Clunes to see if they have any more of the cute glasses I bought last time we were there, and then possibly to the tree nursery so Lindsey can get some more fruit trees. I had better go and look out my winter weather gear!

Glasses

Jim and I were at Lindsey and Ian's place on Monday evening, as is our habit. We were sat in the lounge room watching television.

At one point in the evening I took my glasses off to look at something close up. My glasses are varifocals but I have always found I can see better, if reading or using a computer, if I am not wearing my glasses.  In fact, my distance vision has improved a bit over the years. As long as I don't want to read something far in the distance my vision is good enough even without my glasses.  Inside I often don't notice whether I am wearing them or not.

However, it is a condition on my driving licence that I wear them when driving.  I went to put them on on Tuesday morning, ready for driving to work.  Couldn't find them. Searched everywhere. Eventually I retraced my steps to where I last actually remembered having them.  Here, on the couch, watching tv.  Picked up all the blankets that the dogs sleep on.  Saw the stem poking up from between the cushions.  And there were my glasses. In several pieces.  Broken beyond repair ;-(

Fortunately, I have a pair of prescription sunglasses.  Fortunately is was a nice bright sunny morning and I would probably have been wearing them anyway.  But there will be no nighttime driving for me.  Or not until I get a new pair of ordinary glasses.

My brother has a friend who is an optometrist.  I have made an appointment to see her. But not until next week.



We had a good time on Sunday with Stella and Tony. It was a lovely morning for a drive and we had a good run down. We had a pleasant lunch in the Dava. Jim had offered to drive home (though I think he was surprised when I said OK :-D ) so Tony and I indulged in a second glass of wine. I enjoyed my fish and chips.  Jim enjoyed his Senior's portion of roast pork with complementary dessert.  I enjoyed Tony's complementary dessert from his Senior's fish and chips.  Stella had twice cooked duck, not a Senior's portion. I think she cleared every skerrick of duck and most of the tiny vegetables.  Then Jim and I left them to it and made our way home.  A good day.

Orphaned

Not really orphaned. I still have both parents.  Jim and I are, in fact, heading off this morning to have lunch with them.

But I no longer have any living aunts or uncles.  I once had lots. The last aunt, Joan, faded gently away at the end of the week after living with dementia for several years.

This is one of my favourite photos of her, taken many years ago when there was an English Teddy Bear Company shop opposite the colleges in Cambridge

She walked my feet off that day!

Vale, dear Joan. I do so hope that Peter was waiting for you at the Pearly Gates with a stiff G&T in hand.

Addiction?

Lindsey, Jim and I went to the Bridge Mall on Saturday morning.

I like the Bridge Mall market.

I get big bags of mushrooms for $4 each. They are a mix of sizes and some of them are broken. This doesn't trouble me. They are even more broken by the time I've cooked them and eaten them. This week there were several enormous ones. I haven't broken them up, or frozen them.

I get trays of 30 "seconds" eggs for $8. They are all sorts of sizes. Some have double folks.  Some have soft shells.  Some are a bit grubby.  They all taste fine, though.

I get vegetables and sausages and sometimes pork. There is a stall selling bread, one selling cakes. It has a good buzz.

And, of course, I get the dukkah spice mixes there.

It was a pleasant late winter morning on Saturday and we enjoyed our visit.

Then we went home and I had a Japanese lesson at lunch time, followed by a fairly quiet afternoon.

Sunday was a lovely day so Lindsey, Jim and I drove out to Maryborough, about an hour away, to look at the monthly market there.  You may remember that Jim and I went out in search of the Farmers' Market a couple of weeks ago and it wasn't there.  It is a beautiful drive to Maryborough and none of us would say the morning had been wasted. But the market wasn't very big and was largely a trash and treasure market.  In our view it suffers from being very close to Talbot, which has an ENORMOUS market which combines trash and treasure, farmers' and general market.  Also, from our perspective, it doesn't compare well with Daylesford which is much closer to us and which is on every Sunday.  I don't think we'll go again.

Ian had been going to come with us but decided at the last minute to stay at home and mend some fencing instead.  Probably just as well. I think he would have thought it was a very long way to go for not very much. It did mean that he missed out on lunch at Bread and Circus in Clunes but he can always go there another time.

He and Lindsey came down to us in the evening and had a Middle Eastern style roast lamb with beetroot salad, lots of herbs, pomegranate and home made flat breads. The recipe was one from this season of Masterchef Australia, cooked by one of the judges, Matt Preston.  It was very delicious. I think it would be quite nice cold, too. I have added it to my repertoire.

When Lindsey told Mother than we were going to Maryborough to check out the market there, Mother said that we were becoming addicted to Markets. Lindsey said it was all my fault.  They said this as though it was a bad thing!!!  I can think of lots of worse things we could be doing other than driving around pretty bits of the state and looking at markets. We could, for instance, spend weekends  just sitting at home, eating nice food and drinking wine.  😛