Roads and Shopping

Last weekend was the annual national bike championships in Buninyong and Mount Helen, which sees many of the roads closed so the bikes can do their racing stuff.

This event irritates me far more than is merited by the level of inconvenience that it causes me, which is minimal and only lasts for a few days.

I don't know who decides when road repairs should be carried out in Ballarat, but I would lay a hefty wager on whoever it is having woken up one morning and thought: Now what can we do that will irritate, inconvenience and annoy the Good People of Buninyong and Mount Helen to the greatest possible extent? I know - let's dig up Whitehorse Road, which runs between Mount Clear and Sebastopol and provides an alternative route to that side of Ballarat when the Nats are on. And let's reduce it to just one lane for traffic so that everyone has to queue. And let's do it on the very weekend that the roads are closed in Buninyong and Mount Helen for bicycle racing. Oh, and even better, let's close the road that the entrance to the car park of the Aged Care Facility is on so that people who aren't familiar with the roads around the back can't get in, always supposing they've been able to get to Mount Clear in the first place.

Fortunately, we know about the roads around the back.

I went out shopping yesterday. On my own! I hardly ever go shopping on my own, apart from visits to the supermarket. I went to Kathmandu in town and bought a picnic blanket which had been reduced from $60 to $30. I had a $20 Kathmandu voucher. So my brand new picnic blanket cost me the princely sum of $10. Bargain! 

I also went to Bunnings, where I got some reduced price mulch and seedlings for the front garden beds. It's a bit late to be planting out seedlings but the spring and first couple of weeks of summer were so cold and wet that nothing summery would have survived anyway. Might as well give it a go and see what happens.

I went to Wilsons and bought some not-reduced fruit and veg.

Then I went home and had some lunch.

Yesterday Lindsey and I bought flights to and from Japan at the end of March. That was definitely exciting. We hadn't expected to be away for so long when we left in November 2019 and for a while thought that Japan might not open its borders  again in our lifetimes. But now it has, and they're fully open so we can move around as we wish. We're going for two weeks and will base ourselves at Austin, Kaori and Tatsuki's place. They've been in their "new" house for two and a half years and we haven't seen it yet!

My bank balance is looking a tiny bit unhappy now. No more wandering around the shops on my own until its health improves!