Toohey and Barbecuey.

Extremes

While the south shivered today with the coldest August day for 30 years.....Archerfield, just up the road, recorded a temperature of 30 degrees...ok, the distance between there and here is over 1800km and would take more than 20 hours to drive it.....but in Australian terms....it is quite close!

Enter Tasmanians.

We have visitors!Terry, Will's brother and his fiancé Fiona have arrived from Tasmania.They are staying in their van in the front garden.It must be positively tropical for them.Snow is forecast in Tasmania tomorrow and we can expect 26 degrees here.It was not far off that today.......but I still kept my fleece on!I am soooooooooooooooooo acclimatised!

"I'm a Non-Entity.......Get me out of here!!!!!!!!!!!"

I am getting a little jumpy!A white van drove slowly past this morning...it looked familiar... and workman-like.Yesterday Mal from "Shithouse Plumbing" arrived. I went out to meet him."Is anything wrong with my work?" He asked."No," I said......I suppose I could have said "Well, the sealant around the downstairs loo is a bit untidy and the water pipes to the washer are a bit noisy and twice the upstairs loo has not stopped flushing!" ......but I didn't.In the great scheme of things....it didn't matter."Only, I haven't been paid a cent for my work," he said.I sat on the steps.A month ago we had Dave the tiler ringing practically nightly complaining that he had not been paid. The day after I arrived back from the UK I got an email from the electrician asking for his payment.The thing is.....we have paid Keith, the building manager......$15000.......it is out of our hands.....except the guys can't seem to get hold of him and so they come back here or contact me......as I was the 'face' they saw everyday during the building work.I am, as Dulcie would say, fairly 'pissed off' by all this now.Mal's brother in law is a Barrister in Sydney.....he is going after Keith.So....is it any wonder that I am a little jumpy when I see a white van cruise slowly past.It turned out to be the 'Illusive Electrician'.....he had come a day early, he had some spare time......he had tried to ring but could not find our number........and then couldn't remember which house it was.Hello?!!!!!!He's been here twice! I would remember it after visiting it once!Happily we now have electricity back to the sockets in the kitchen.Did I mention that the fault, probably, lay in a junction box located in the roof which we cannot get to because the builders did not replace the loft access when they put the bathroom ceiling back?No matter.....our electrician has bypassed the faulty wires and put in a completely new wire.I was slightly alarmed as he pulled out a drill and pushed it out through the wall and the plastic cladding outside....I had envisioned the wire going down through the wall cavity like the others....but no......it goes out of the kitchen wall down through a tubular duct and into the downstairs wall.I am kind of losing the will to live with all this.All we need now is for Keith to turn up to put in a new loft access...........surely not?But, oh yes!.....................it is on the cards.I might get to meet Tracy Grimshaw, from A Current Affair yet!  

Commonwealth Games Commentary Dulcie Style.

During the Medal Ceremony for the Women's Sprint at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow the gold medal winner Stephanie Morton from Australia invited the silver medal winner, Anna Meares, also from Australia to share the top podium for the National Anthem. It was a proud moment for Stephanie as she beat Anna, her cycling idol from an early age and now her mentor to become the Commonwealth Champion. As they stood there, clad in the green and gold lycra cycling suits of the Australian team, arms around each other and tears of pride in their eyes, the sound of  'Advance Australia Fair' began to play.Dulcie piped up....."They look like they've peed themselves."It was true, the triangular gusset of their lycra suits appeared to be a darker green than the rest of their suit.It was unfortunate and very funny.Some time later Chris Pritchard finishes his race and rushes into the crowd to propose to his girlfriend who was holding their child which was wearing ear protectors."Aw, he asked her to marry him," I said."So he should!" Said Dulcie, "if that bloody kid is his!"