It was our weekend to go to Mount Martha to visit Stella.

Lindsey and I went, as usual, to the mushroom farm and to the Elaine farmgate shop on Saturday morning.

Jim and I headed to Mount Martha after lunch. It was a good trip down, not too much traffic and no real hold ups.

We had steak and stuff for dinner.

On Sunday morning the three of us headed into the Mount Martha shops and bought hot chocolates all round. Then we drove to a little car park overlooking the beach and drank our hot chocolates watching someone wind surfing and someone else kite surfing. There were people walking and playing on the beach, and a golden retriever who was having a lovely time digging holes in the sand and chasing balls and sticks into the sea. It's a lovely little car park to sit and watch the beach from. And then we went back to Stella's place and had roast chicken for Sunday lunch.

It was a pleasant, uneventful and restful weekend.

We were driving home and approaching Bacchus Marsh on the freeway when I noticed a couple of trucks on the Melbourne-bound side of the road with flashing orange lights. Behind them was an absolutely enormous object on a huge truck bed being towed along. Behind it were two more trucks with flashing orange lights. I don't know what the object was; it was about as wide as a train carriage I think but seemed to be longer. Whatever it was, it must have been taking up much more than its fair share of the road because the tailback stretched as far as Myrniong, or around 20 km. My sat nav knew about the delay on that side of the road. I hope that it might have suggested coming off the freeway before I hit the tail back, had I been heading to Melbourne. Fortunately, on my side of the freeway there were no delays and we made it home with no excitements at all.

We were making our way up to Rupert and Hugo's place yesterday afternoon and turned into their road, which is an unmade road above the forest that the University sits in. Ahead of us were a woman and a small child walking along the side of the road and slightly ahead of them was another woman leading a horse.  I slowed right down and passed as far to the right of the horse as I could. I had no wish to startle it and have it bolt away. Shortly after that I went to turn into Rupert and Hugo's driveway - and there, parked at an angle, just inside the drive was a Mercedes. It was not a car that I recognised. I stopped and a woman appeared and asked if I had room to get by.  Yes, probably. But this was not a woman that I recognised. It is very unusual for there to be strange vehicles and people actually in the driveway.

I asked if she was all right. It seemed she was waiting for a horse. Steve the Horse Man had rung from his holiday destination and asked her to head to Hill House, where he agists horses. She was waiting for the horse that was being walked along the road. We continued up the driveway - and there at the top was a large van. It was the Council ranger's van. The ranger was talking to Lindsey. The horse had escaped from the paddock. No-one was clear if only the one horse had escaped or if the others had gone too. There should be four but none were in sight.  Jim and I went inside to talk to Rupert and Hugo, while people more intrepid than we are climbed up the hill to see if the other horses were merely out of sight or if they too were missing. Fortunately, they were happily munching grass in the paddock. All horses were now accounted for. Everyone went about the rest of their afternoon.

I recently bought Brandy and Whiskey another climbing platform.  They were quite suspicious of it when it first arrived.  I think they have decided it is an acceptable addition to their furniture