Inundation

Lindsey and I left the flat in East Melbourne nice and early on Tuesday. It was very quiet on the roads so it didn't take long to get there.

I was scheduled to start at 8:30. I was thinking that that gave me plenty of time to get some breakfast, have some coffee and make a gentle start to the day.

Then I walked through the pharmacy towards the surgery and saw that the gates were still closed, and there were people standing around in the entrance area.  This was most unusual!

The run of Terrible Tuesdays had continued.  We were closed because of flood!!!!!!!

It seems that someone (we suspect the pharmacy overnight security bloke) had used the patient toilet overnight and that the flush button had been pushed down and got stuck.  We assume that he had also used large amounts of toilet paper.  This had caused the toilet to block and overflow. We believe that he had noticed an overflow and had subsequently gone to the public loos by the supermarket.  We have reason to think that he said nothing to anyone but had let the overflow continue. It also appears that the clinic has a very slight slope down towards the back that we had not previously noticed.  The water did.

When the 7:30 receptionist arrived she headed down towards the back of the clinic in the dark.  We don't put the reception lights on until 8:00 when we are ready to open.  "What is that funny noise?" she wondered as she let herself in.  "And where did this water come from?"

By this time the entire clinic was covered in around a centimetre of water, from the patient loo all the way to the back.  The nurses' treatment room was covered.  All the doctor's rooms.  Physio and podiatry.  Pathology. Kitchen.  Everything except the entrance area which is the other side of the errant loo.

The 7:30 receptionist and the diabetes nurse were on the phone cancelling early morning appointments.  The other partner was talking to the pathology people and turning back people coming for blood tests.  I rang Lindsey, on her way to visit one of the nursing homes. She turned back. I bought coffee and toasted sandwiches from the muffin shop, since we couldn't get to our kitchen. Then I also set to, ringing people to put off their appointments.

Most people were very obliging.  One or two elderly people were a bit put out that they couldn't see their doctor as planned, but I think that they hadn't fully grasped what was going on.  One bloke was extremely put out that he couldn't have his blood test and refused to go up the hill to an alternative pathology firm (It's not far, only a 5 minute walk - we weren't sending him kilometres away) and came back every 20 to 30 minutes complaining grumpily that we weren't open yet. Eventually we told him more firmly that we wouldn't be open for ages yet and he should go elsewhere. He did. Everyone else had disappeared without complaint and either came back later, or had gone up the hill.

I have to say that the shopping centre management responded magnificently. In no time at all there were people in place with water sucking machines. Men with mops. The clinic was dried, disinfected, dried and disinfected again.  Big machines came to blow dry the rooms with carpets.  They were VERY noisy machines but also very effective. We managed to have enough doctors' rooms dry and ready to start working from 1:30.  The machines continued to blow in the rooms with carpet.

We had them on again overnight on Wednesday to make sure the carpets were properly dry.  You don't want musty carpets anywhere, but especially not in a medical centre.  On the plus side, the surgery floors have probably never been so clean! And none of the computers were damaged, even though the boxes sit on the floor.

But Terrible Tuesday continued for me.  As Lindsey and I left in the evening I remarked that I had left my jacket in the (locked) clinic.  Oh well.  I could probably manage without it until the morrow.  It wasn't until we went into the flat, ready for wine and something to eat, that I remembered that my car key was in a pocket in the jacket.  And I needed my car on Wednesday, for Lindsey and I were headed in different directions after work.  Nothing for it but to borrow Lindsey's car and drive back to the surgery to pick up the jacket.  Sigh!  It did mean that I could check that the cleaner had noticed the note asking her to leave the machines on.  But I could have done without it.

Choo Choo

We did have a lovely and quiet weekend. Nothing urgent or arduous to do. Nowhere we particularly had to be. Gentle domesticity to some extent.  Washing and ironing, because we were beginning to run out of clean and presentable clothes. Tidying. Sweeping. No gardening, because it drizzled merrily for most of the time. Cooking, eating and catching up with Masterchef (although I will have to watch last night's episode again - I dozed off while watching it).

We went to the Brown Hill market. We went when it first opened and it was so crazily packed that we left again.  We figured that it would quieten down as the first flush of interest dwindled and meant to go back, but hadn't got around to it. Saturday's market was nicely busy but not too packed.  Jim and I came home with baskets of vegetables. We went to the farm shop at Elaine and got some meat. A lamb shoulder, which I have to say was a bit disappointing. It tasted lovely but was fiddly to eat. It was full of little bones.  I should have served them as little ribs!

On Sunday we went out on a steam train trip. It was the Ballarat Heritage Weekend and there were all sorts of things going on at Sovereign Hill, in the museums, around town.  And the steam trains had come to play. They left from the station and went out towards Lal Lal before heading back. Took around 45, 50 minutes.  It was an excellent way of spending a chilly, damp, late autumn Sunday afternoon.

This engine is 130 years old and was made in Ballarat.
It pulled us back from Lal Lal

This engine is 90 or 100 years old.  The bloke did tell us but I forgot.
It pulled us towards Lal Lal

The carriages were built in the 1920s

My ticket

It was a good run out to Lal lal. The train line goes to Geelong and was, once upon a time, a passenger route. Now the passengers go by bus, and the line carries freight.  And steam trains, sometimes.  We drive alongside the railway line often, but had never ridden on it.

Choofing along

It's been raining here harder than at home

This is steam from the train, not fog!

Mount Warrenheip

Very new technology, viewed from the very old

And passengers

I am there too, but I am behind the camera!

The disadvantage of dozing off during Masterchef (apart from not seeing what happened) is that is 3am and I am awake. I shall finish my cup of tea and then go back to bed so I am ready to face the new week at a more appropriate Getting Up time.  It is, or it is supposed to be, the last of my many weeks of extra hours. I wonder what it holds in store

That was the week that was

I was going to entitle this TWTWTW but then I thought that many people wouldn't know what it stood for.  An ancient television program. A retrospective on the week.  And this week, much as last, deserves a retrospective!

It was an odd week.  I didn't work Thursday, but I did work many extra hours, including Monday (I've got one extra Monday left and then I hope to drop back to my regular 3 days a week).  But it was an unsettled week in many ways.

There were lots of grumpy people. Lots of demanding people.  Tuesday was notable for its number of grumpy, tetchy, difficult, demanding people.  On Wednesday I declared that if anyone looked at me sideways, I would almost certainly yell at them.  Fortunately, nobody did - but one or two people did get one of my librarian's glares.

Friday was notable for the number of emergencies we had.  We had people ringing up to tell us about emergencies (Don't ring us up and tell us. What are we supposed to do, from a distance?  Call 000 and ask for an ambulance!!!)  We  had one or two crises and alarums.  And then the pathology people had an emergency in their room.  This was troublesome because it took the path room and one of our nurses out of action for quite some time.  And all of this was in the morning.  The afternoon was almost completely quiet.

On the plus side, one patient did tell me I was lovely. And one or two did say thank you when we tried to sort things out. But you would think that people would realise that people try harder for you if you are nice and polite, rather than yelling and grumping and demanding and complaining.

Anyway. That week is over. And I have a rare and unusual weekend with no actual plans in prospect. It's the Ballarat Heritage weekend so there are things we could do. But nothing we MUST do.

Excellent

What a week!

My goodness but that was quite a week.

I worked 46 hours, which was a significant increase on the 21 I usually work and even quite a lot more than the 33 I was expecting.

There are people away, so I knew I would be doing extra on the desk.  I knew I was working extra on Monday, not finishing until 6 or so.

I was not expecting to have to go in on Thursday, though.  In addition to the people who were away on leave, suddenly we also had people off sick. I agreed to go in to cover lunches and the afternoon, early evening. It's quite pleasant driving to Melbourne mid-morning.  There's not so much traffic about.  I got to Reservoir with time for a sandwich for lunch before starting on the desk.

I was just about to say that I would head off to the flat at a little after six.  The last few patients had arrived. The phones were nice and quiet.  There is usually only one person on for the last hour or so.  As I opened my mouth to speak there was an  ENORMOUS bang at the front of the pharmacy, accompanied by lots of yelling and commotion.  My colleague picked up the phone and called security.  I closed our barrier gates and locked them shut.  There was ongoing commotion and yelling. I didn't know what was going on (and wasn't going out to find out!) but whatever it was, we didn't want it coming into the surgery and nor did we want the patients to go out into it.  We unlocked the gates when the commotion had died down and we could see people walking up and down in the centre.

It turns out it was someone who  had raided the pharmacy till and then tried to jump over the little fence they had where they display the tissues, washing powder and other household stuff that some pharmacies sell.  One of the pharmacy employees had grabbed him in a headlock and he had crashed into the little fence (that was the bang that we heard).  Would have been very much more sensible to have grabbed the cash and then run like the wind out through the door rather than trying to hurdle the fence.  But then I guess that trying to raid the pharmacy till isn't a very clever thing to do anyway.

So that was Thursday's excitement.  The surgery in lock down and all sorts of commotion in the pharmacy which, as commotion often does, spilled out into the rest of the shopping centre and then went away.

Friday started peacefully enough.  I opened up.  Thursday's colleague came back. The sick people remained sick. Things were trundling happily along until we thought that the phones, which had been ringing steadily, were now being remarkably quiet.  We checked.  They were indeed quiet.  So quiet that they were disconnected.  No lines in or out (although the internal lines were working).  I rang Telstra and then spent a happy hour chatting to our contact there whilst clambering around in the communications cupboard trying to find the various pieces of kit he wanted me to turn on and off.  One of them was all-the-way-high-up-there.  Lindsey produced a ladder which I didn't realise the surgery had. She climbed up it to look at things.  Then she came back down and I climbed up to look at things.  I turned things off and on.  Nothing helped.

So Telstra helpfully diverted calls to my mobile phone and sent someone to look at the exchange.  It was all very well having calls diverted to my phone - when I was at the reception desk.  If I wandered off and took my phone with me it was no help at all!!  My phone stayed at the desk when I went elsewhere.  The phones returned to normality mid-afternoon.

Television programs give you to understand that working as a doctor's receptionist is a nice, quiet, peaceful occupation.  Much like the impression they give of life in libraries, now I come to think about it.  Do not be deceived. Neither of these is true!!!!

Saturday was election day in Australia.  I stopped  on our way out to vote at the little primary school in Warrenheip.  There was the obligatory sausage sizzle, run by the local fire station. There was a cake stall and a plant stall, fund raising for the school.  It was a lovely morning and there was a queue of about ten minutes wait to vote. Was lovely and peaceful standing in the sunshine.  There were people standing around in the playground, eating their democracy sausages and chatting.  I didn't buy a sausage but I did buy a tray of biscuits from the cake stall which we had with our afternoon cup of tea.

I rejoined Jim who was waiting in the car and we drove on down the freeway, stopping in Ballan to re-fuel the car and to buy toasted egg and bacon sandwiches.  We went to East Melbourne so I could go to the (peaceful and quiet!) library to collect a book and then we motored on down to Mount Martha. It was a lovely day so we didn't take the direct route along East Link but went along toll free freeways and highways.  I think it took about ten minutes longer.  We will do it again - it was a nice drive.

We had seafood for dinner - prawns, lobster tails, whiting and chips and wiled the evening away watching the election results on the TV. A surprise win for the Coalition, who had been widely tipped to lose to Labor.

And now it is Sunday morning. It is peaceful and quiet and sunny in Stella's retirement village. There will be kippers and toast for breakfast and, probably, lunch out.

I could learn to like peaceful and quiet. However, I have bought flights to Singapore in August to celebrate our tenth (!!!!!!!) wedding anniversary.  The extra hours at the surgery will provide a nice cache of spending money for then.  Plus I am saving up for a trip to Canada towards the end of next year. I will have to defer a life of peaceful quietness for now.

Sunday sunrise, Mount Martha

Birthday dilemma

It was Lindsey's birthday on Saturday and it was very difficult to work out how I could mark it.  She doesn't actually need anything. Anything that she wants, she buys.  I couldn't think of anything to get her.

OK.  I'll do her a birthday lunch.  But not on her actual birthday - she and Ian went to the Lake House in Daylesford for a birthday lunch.  Sunday was Mothers' Day and, although there was a gathering at lunchtime at Mount Martha, it wasn't really a birthday  lunch.

So I took  birthday lunch into work on Friday.  I made a vegetarian quiche and a chicken and mushroom pie.  I made a berry cake.  One of the nurses brought in pomegranate flavoured Turkish delight.  Another brought in chocolate rolls.  The pathology people bought a birthday balloon.  It was all very festive.

I made a not vegetarian quiche and another berry cake for the Mothers' Day lunch.  There was a mighty feast with lots of interesting and yummy things. Not absolutely everyone was there but all of Stella's children were there, accompanied by any partners, and some grandchildren. It was a good gathering.

In other news, we were very sorry to learn yesterday of the death of Kaori's mother, Suzumi San in Japan. It wasn't unexpected but it was still rather sad.  She wasn't very old and she was a lovely, lovely lady.  Vale, lovely Suzumi San.  RIP.

I have been working extra hours over the past month or so.  I'll be working extra extra hours until the end of May.  The extra money is going into my travel fund.  It's beginning to look quite healthy :-D

And again, Finally ...

... A decision has come through about Jim's application for permanent residency.  Not quite 2 years after the application went in:

You can't get this visa unless you first have the Partner subclass 820 (temporary) visa.  Jim had his for all of a minute before the permanent one arrived :-)

I was given this for my 60th birthday.  I said I would open it when we had sold the house. I wasn't expecting it to be in the booze cupboard almost three and a half years later!  But I think the sale of the house and the granting of the visa in the same week merits cracking a good bottle of French Fizz.  What say you?

Finally, finally, finally ...

It's only taken 3 years but The Sidings finally has new owners.

Completion was yesterday and they didn't pull out. They have the keys and we have the money.

Here's hoping they will be very happy in their new home.