It’s true that more gets done when you’re busy. Certainly, very little has been done on the blog in the past three weeks while I’ve been involved in almost nothing.
Currently, we are ‘house-sitting’ for our friend, Siaren, who has gone back to the Philippines for the summer holidays. She was married in September but has had to leave her new husband there until his application for a visa to come to Australia is approved. Siaren, of course, had to return to Australia to work after the wedding. She tells us that she and Jan have rented a small apartment while she is there so they can enjoy each other’s company and start their married life without having to worry about other family members tripping over them.
Siaren adopted our cats when we retired and took on the nomadic lifestyle so we were quite happy to look after her house and feed the cats while she was away.
The days just slip away. Marilyn is using the time to recover from her knee operation and I have been re-building my ebook library in my new Sony Reader, and doing some minor chores around the house. We’ve also been able to catch up on some TV series we have on DVD. Monk is a favourite at the moment and we’ve just finished the first series of Dexter.
We wander into Launceston occasionally, checking out all the bargains to be had in the New Year’s sales. We’ve supplemented our cruise wear although we certainly had enough to go on with. Still, having the right shoes for the pool and a spare pair of shorts won’t be a disadvantage.
A colleague from Giant Steps was married last weekend, coincidentally on our anniversary. He has married a Filipina, from the southern island of Mindanao and we enjoyed their garden wedding in his father’s house in Relbia, a rural part of Launceston. Tim’s father was a farmer in the area but most of the farm has recently been sold off to developers. The day was very hot but we found plenty of shade and had a very pleasant afternoon.
I’m writing this episode of the blog on my desktop computer which I had left with Siaren to look after. Unfortunately, my little netbook has been ‘playing up’. Fortunately, it decided to expire just a fortnight before the warranty expired. This is contrary to my usual pattern where the warranty expires a fortnight before the item decides to conk out. The netbook has been returned for repair so I hope it will be back before long.
The TV has been full of the dreadful floods in Australia, particularly in Queensland but in other states as well. Even in Tasmania, we’ve had a number of houses inundated. One of our friends in Deloraine came home to four feet of water around his house. Luckily, the living quarters are up high but the garage and workshop was totally immersed. It’s the third time in five years and he’s fed up with it, so as soon as the place is dried out and memories fade, he will put it on the market. There’s such a demand for houses in Deloraine at the moment that some retiree from the mainland will snap it up. I wonder if the real estate agent will be honest enough to point out the likelihood that they will eventually get wet feet.
Sadly, I heard from our friend Kit in Calamba that there was an attempted robbery at her house last week and, in the melee, her security guard was stabbed and died. When we travel to the Philippines and stay with Kit we always feel safe because of the security measures she takes. It seems now, though, that you’re never safe.
In my search for interesting books to load on to my ebook reader, I came across a book called The Good, the Bad and the Unready by The Rev Robert Easton. It’s an irreverent look at famous (and infamous) people of history who have acquired nicknames. Some are wonderful: Elizabeth the Red-nosed princess, King Charles the Silly, Wilfred the Shaggy, and so on. Rev Easton admits that his childhood nickname was Robert the Ridiculous, and dedicates his book to someone called Harry the Dirty Dog.
He also drops in a comment that Private Eye magazine in the UK uses nicknames when talking about the Royal Family. The Queen is called Brenda, Prince Charles is Brian and the late-Princess of Wales was Cheryl.
Very little has been organised for the next week or two. We plan to be out of here by the end of next week and back in our caravan for all of February. Hopefully, our lives will become more interesting then and I’ll have more material for more regular blog episodes.
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