I’ve been offline since Boxing Day apart from some email checks and one post while staying with my parents. Here’s an update: 1. We visited my parents at Moe. It’s awfully hot everywhere at the moment, and the Latrobe Valley was no exception. After a couple of nights, Juliet and I went to Melbourne for [...]
Christmas mayhem
Tis the season to be jolly and all that, but Christmas morning for parents is madness. We managed a seven o’clock sleep-in this year, only because the big kids were under orders to wait until the toddlers woke up. James was the last to rise. We then opened presents, which in proportion to the time [...]
A walking atlas
I don’t know why it is, but strangers seem to regard me as a walking atlas. Perhaps I have a knowledgeable face and an ungrumpy countenance, which I can’t say that I feel. Wherever I am in the world it’s happened that people I’ve never seen before or since come to me and ask for [...]
Zimbabwe comes close to home
I’ve written a few times about Zimbabwe. Today, there’s a personal touch to the comments I make. I visited Zimbabwe in 1991 when it was a prosperous happy country and before Mugabe went bananas. My employer at the time, a Victorian farming newspaper, encouraged me to write some freelance articles about the agricultural situation while [...]
Hard labor
I’m fairly fit, but today I used muscles that I didn’t know existed and I’ll definitely pull up sore tomorrow. Our back yard looks like a First World War battlefield thanks to pipes being laid for connection to the new sewerage scheme. The plumbers left it a right mess. We need to plant grass seed, [...]
