We've had strong winds, heavy rain, sleet, a little snow, mist, drizzle, fog. You name it and we've had it - apart from sunshine which has been in very short supply.
We had things blown down at Hill House. The garden bench blew over and squashed a garden fence (not a paddock fence, thank goodness). The roads were covered in twigs and branches and sticks and leaves. There were trees down in the University. I think the SES had been quite busy on the roads.
It has also been cold.
We were at Lindsey and Ian's place last weekend and Rupert and Hugo were Not At All Pleased by the weather. They would ask to go out to play, put their noses out the door, look at us in disgust and come back inside. If they absolutely HAD to go outside, they rushed out, did their business as fast as possible and dashed back in.
They got a bit bored, I think. There's only so much lying about on blanketed couches near the heater that a Great Dane can do ( though they can do quite a bit of that :-D ) Rupert took to "growling" at Hugo and chewing his ears. It wasn't proper growling. It was more like the poking and prodding and niggling that bored children do on long car trips. Even so, Hugo got a bit fed up of it.
We did our best to keep them entertained (thank goodness for a very long hallway that you can throw balls down). But it has to be said that it was a considerable relief to wake up yesterday morning and find that the storms had gone away and the sun had come out and we could all go out to play.
The weather wasn't as stormy in Melbourne but Summerhill had a little storm all of its own. I was in Lindsey's kitchen on Monday morning when my phone rang with a number I didn't recognise. I answered it with a cheery "Hello, Frances here" and got a very bewildered "Oh. Is that the Reservoir Surgery?" No. No it isn't. Odd
Then my phone went completely ballistic. Now you may remember that some time ago the phone lines went down at the surgery and for a little time calls were diverted to my phone. I had understood that the diversion had been turned off. But clearly not. Equally clearly, there was a problem with the phones at the surgery.
I sent Lindsey a message (and turned my phone off - there wasn't much I could do to be helpful to patients while I was in Lindsey's kitchen!). It turned out there was indeed a problem. And not just with the surgery. Someone had cut a Telstra transmission cable and cut off telephony and internet access to anyone at the Summerhill shopping centre who had services through Telstra. We had no phones, no fax, no internet, no email. Some shops also had no card machines for processing payments. Fortunately the surgery's medical software was unaffected. And the phone diversion was moved from my phone to someone else's.
They said it would take about a week to get the cable fixed. A week????????? That seems like a long time to fix a cable.
On Wednesday afternoon the actual phone rang (not the mobile). We all looked at it in some confusion. Then someone answered it. It seemed we had phone lines again. Then the fax machine whirred into action. And the internet came back. It took a little longer for everything to be restored at the pharmacy. And now the shopping centre is more or less back to normal. So not a week. Just two days. I wonder if they over estimated the repair time so we would be pleased when things came back more quickly.
Right. I'd better go. I should be on the road to Melbourne and I'm not.
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