Tuesday, February 23

This Summer seems to be never-ending.  Normally, we would be seeing the cooler weather coming in by now but today is to be another 31 degrees.  I'm fed up with shorts and yearn for  the days when I have to scrape the ice from the windscreen in the morning.  (Well, maybe that's not quite true.)

Jamie and Nera came around on Sunday for a barbecue.  We're an odd lot, we humans.  We strive for millions of years to evolve to the point where we have some of the most comfortable houses on the planet, with air-conditioning, modern cooking appliances, hygiene, recliner chairs, etc but, at any opportunity, we leave it behind and head for the great outdoors.  We pretend to enjoy uncomfortable chairs on uneven ground, flies, ants, warm drinks out of plastic beakers, paper napkins which fly away.  We happily eat under- or over-cooked sausages and and $30 a kilo Scotch Fillet which tastes like leather.

I remember Eric Bogle's great song, The Aussie Barbecue.

    .... solemn bands,

Of glum Australians watching their lunch go up in flames.

But, it's an institution, up there with the Hawaiian habit of cooking their food in holes in the ground or the Japanese penchant for raw fish.

Thinking about the great outdoors, I noticed someone on Gumtree trying to sell Outdoor Pantries.  Yes, can you imagine the conversation.  'Let's go camping, love.'  'OK, but only if we can take a zip-up canvas pantry so that I can remind myself of home.'

Jamie gave us a couple of episodes of the new X-Files to watch.  Never having seen the original series, we were flummoxed by what was happening so we decided that we needed to go back to the beginning.  Too much to download but I found a complete boxed set on eBay: 9 series, 59 DVDs, 202 episodes and 2 movies.  It should arrive next week, just in time for the cold weather to start so we will have an excuse to stay home to watch it.