Thursday, September 11

I had to go for a blood test this morning and needed to fast.  That's not usually a problem but, we're without a car at the moment (in reality, our daughter-in-law is without a car and has borrowed ours) so the logistics were interesting. There are only a few buses a day coming through our area and my best option was to catch one at 9.30am with a return at 11.  I would have to ring the bus company to make sure he would watch out for me waiting on the side of the road, and make a detour to drop me off near the doctor's.  

All too hard, so I rang Jamie who picked me up.  While waiting for him, I put some seeds out for our birds.  The galah with the broken wing is a regular and I think he is dependent on us now for his food.  I've been watching him over the past few days and noted that he has four different trees which he uses to perch in between feeds.  I don't know how long he's been in our yard but he seems to have worked out a routine which works for him and, clearly, we're expected to play our part.

Marilyn has already organised for Jamie to take on feeding duties while we're away.  Another interesting anomaly this morning: the usual flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos arrived when they sensed food was around and in among them was something different.  I dragged out my bird book and discovered it was a long-billed corella, native to Victoria.  There are any number of reasons why one might be in Tasmania but it was nice to see a little more variety in our collection.

I started an on-line course in Writing Fiction this week.  All the courses I've done in the past have encouraged contact between the participants, but I've always avoided that; this course, though, is reliant on students commenting on each other's work.  I've already had a couple of not-so-positive remarks and I suppose I'll have to get used to it.