People were coming into the surgery on Friday and commenting on the smokiness of the air outside.  It was blowing in from the fires in East Gippsland, spreading the smoky love both eastward towards New Zealand and westward towards South Australia. Lindsey and I noticed it when we left to go back to Ballarat but it wasn't too bad. As we headed further on our trip home the smoke got more and more visible - and visibility got more and more reduced.

It made us cough!

Then, as we went up the Gordon hill, the smoke cleared and the air became almost pure.  We were obviously up too high for it to have reached. Yet. No sign of smoke pollution in Mount Helen, although it smelled faintly smoky when I first got up yesterday morning and went out to put the sprinkler on the garden.

The smoky smell had gone when we went to the Bridge Mall Market.  It was a lovely morning, although it clouded over as the morning went on. There weren't all that many stalls at the market - not unusual in January. Tim from Masterchef was there with his toastie oven.  He does fancy toasties which are often a bit too fancy for me at what is more or less breakfast time.  Yesterday, however, among his offerings was a four cheese toastie. Lindsey and I shared one and it was perfect for a sunny breakfast.

Everyone decamped to Melbourne for the afternoon.  Emily and Andre were having an engagement party at Welcome to Thornbury - a place I have often gone past on the tram. I have often wondered what it did. And now I know.  It has a bar and a large outside space. It has food trucks.  There are rooms inside. Emily and Andre had booked some tables outside. Fortunately the smoke had gone and the sun had come out. We could all breathe and see. Everyone who was in or near Melbourne from both sides of the family was there.  So were lots of Emily and Andre's friends. It was good to catch up with Ian's family - I haven't seen them for ages. (It was good to catch up with my family too, but I have seen them fairly recently :-D )

Then Jim and I came back to Mount Helen, where Rupert and Hugo were very pleased to see us.  It was well past their dinner time.

We have definitely had a cool change overnight. It was gloomy, wet and cold when I got up.  It's still raining.  I am wearing my winter dressing gown. Hugo went outside for his morning wee, stopped dead, looked horrified, turned around and trotted rapidly back inside having had no wee. I think he had forgotten about rain.  He was eventually persuaded to go outside but he wasn't very happy about it!

I shall go down to our place in a bit and see if the rain has excited our rain gauge.  It hasn't registered any rainfall since the beginning of December.