Back to the doctor

I'm now on my third lot of antibiotics and tire very easily.  It probably wasn't a great idea yesterday to go for a walk down a slope so steep it was surely only for mountain goats. The road was deceptive at first, seeming to be a gentle slope, but then it dropped sharply.  I don't know how anybody could possibly manage to survive in such an area - many of the houses had inclinators from the road down the sheer drop. Without one, lugging groceries down and children up would be next to impossible.

This shows a house perched on the edge of a precipice:

A lost soul...

Still feeling sick, I took myself into the city on Thursday to take my mind off myself.  I wandered round Circular Quay (between the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House), and visited the Museum of Contemporary Art:

where I looked in astonishment at exhibits like this:

I found a nice place to have lunch at The Rocks.  The highlight of my day was when one of the waitresses came over to talk to me - she'd arrived from The Netherlands three weeks ago, found a flat in Bondi and a job!

I then went to Woody Allen's film about Rome, which I thought was terribly clever - a real sendup of our stupidity.  I loved the music, which reminded me of the 60s when I was learning Italian in Newcastle.  I completely disapprove of Woody's morals and stopped seeing his movies when he ran off with Mia's adopted daughter, but went in spite of this...shows how desperate I was to fill in the day.

Baby, it's cold outside!

The other day it was 29 degrees and I thought of having my first swim of the season, but decided it mightn't be a good idea with bronchitis.  Yesterday it was between 15 and 19 and Muffy and I nearly froze to death.  I opted for a woolly jumper and scarf while she headed for the bedroom and snuggled under the doona!  Sorry, but I do think she is so very cute!!!!

Later in the afternoon, this was her chosen spot on the sofa:

Sick of being sick

The doctor tells me I'm no longer contagious, so Emma came downstairs to see me yesterday, the first time for a week.  I'm sure she's grown 6" in that time!  She practised the piano, had a chat, then suggested we do some cooking.  From one of her recipe books she chose these desserts, and we had a lovely time preparing them.  They're full of sugar and butter, so I wasn't a bit surprised when her father told me she didn't actually want to eat them!  The fun was in the making.

I'm on a health kick again, so did not allow myself the usual huge packet of chips when I shopped just now at Aldi.  I stuck to salad vegetables, fruit, grain bread, tins of fish.

It's really only a week I've been out of action, though it feels much longer than that.  Tomorrow I'll try to get back into normal routine, starting with the English lesson for my three Japanese students.  Theoretically I'm supposed to have a Japanese lesson after the English one, but I haven't looked at anything for weeks, though I did go through all my notes and sort them out. (My sickness followed the school holidays, when we all had a break.)

I had my first piano practice yesterday and didn't do too badly.

Oh dear - sick.

I've been coughing and spluttering for more than a week now, and am on my second dose of antibiotics after having caught a bug that went through everybody upstairs.  The doctor thought it might turn into pneumonia, so I had an X-ray, but it seems to be only bronchitis, which is unpleasant enough.

BTW, Frank, since I got your email about freezing lemons, I've been doing just that.  Once you take them out of the freezer they soften, making squeezing the juice so easy.  I used to be always throwing lemons away, so this is a very useful tip for me.

Michael, I agree with Infogenium - that is brilliant!!!!!  I will send it to any of my friends who speaks German.  I'd never seen HAND, but now that I have, will start using it.

This morning I went to the library with a list I'd got from the pc of Man Booker prizewinners.  Sitting in the sun with my hot lemon, honey and ginger drink, I've started Anita Brookner's 'Making Things Better', which she wrote after her award.  Must say I'm struggling to work out who's who in the first chapter.  I don't think this is the sign of a brilliant writer...

HAND (Have a nice day) everybody!

Good Lord!

For weeks now I've been listening to BBC radio 4 all night every night (except when I doze off).  I absolutely love the discussion programs with so many highly educated, clever, witty, people speaking so eloquently, the dramas performed so professionally, the news from all round the world - in fact, I enjoy every single program!  The thought did strike me when I was in Chelsea earlier in the year that there is a level of wealth in UK not experienced in Australia and now I am coming to understand there seems to be a level of educated people that we don't have here, either.  Of course, the difference in population would account for that - you have 62 million people and we have 22 million.

And it almost goes without saying that the opposite applies, too - there are many poor, uneducated people in both UK and here.

Another thing that has really surprised me is the number of people with titles who appear on the programs - Lord This, Baroness That!!!!  In Australia we have the odd Sir, but the title would almost never be used - we are really egalitarian in that respect.

You win some, you lose some...

I must make it clear that it was my Australian friend-who-knows-everything, Infogenium, who told me the other day that one of the men I most admire, Melvyn Bragg (photo) had been made a Labour life peer in 1998.  That's a long time for me not to have known!

Check out Lord Bragg's credentials.  (Must say, though, last time I listened to one of his programs I could barely make out what he was saying - was I almost asleep or was he mumbling?)

A sad, sad week...

We've just got over - does one really ever 'get over'? - the rape/murder of Irish woman, Jill Meagher, in Melbourne and now the horrendous abduction/murder of dear little April Jones in Wales.  I've been tuned to BBC radio 4 all week for news of April, feeling sick to the stomach, like millions of other people all over the world.

Another one of those days...

I put it off and off, but eventually I have to go through bills, letters, brochures, etc, and yesterday was the day!  As usual, Muffy wasn't far away.

No matter how I try to tell myself it's simply another thing to do, I absolutely hate it!

Why I detest the modern world...

Trouble is, I'm part of it!  In spite of my best efforts, I've been glued to Facebook recently, following the rape/murder of Jill Meagher in Melbourne, the appalling comments of Alan Jones in Sydney and now the missing 5-yr-old April Jones in Wales.  Not that I ever use my own Facebook account, as I can't understand it!  It's nothing but a big mess to me, but I keep it open just in case I want to find a friend lost along the way.

And, in spite of your best efforts, Infogenium, I still can't figure Twitter out.  Now and then I get an email telling me somebody has tweeted me, but it's never anything I need to know.

A couple of weeks back, after sitting in a restaurant for nearly an hour waiting for a friend who was sitting in a similarly named restaurant a couple of kilometres down the road, I finally got my Techno Wizard friend - yes, you Infogenium - to get me a mobile.  I'd got rid of my first one years ago, as I kept forgetting to take it with me, found recharging a pain in the neck and had difficulty hearing on it.  I was buying $30 credits and finding that on the rare occasion I wanted to make a call, it was out of credit.  It took ages for me to realise it ran out according to time, not number of calls made.  If I'd kept it for a year, it would have cost $360 for one or two calls. Ridiculous.

But this new one will last for 365 days on $20 credit, so that suits me better.  However, I haven't had occasion to use it and probably never will.

Olga, you are treading on dangerous ground suggesting I download whatever I want to!

Infogenium - I had thought of taking my pc to you to fix the night we had dinner at the Lebanese restaurant.  Pity it burnt down the other night!  Lucky we weren't inside it when the blast occurred, or we would have been blown to Kingdom Come.

Don't do it again!

I did as you suggested, Frank, and asked Philip and suffered his wrath.  He cleared the download with a dire warning of NEVER DOWNLOAD ANYTHING!

Oh dear

Everything in life is so damned difficult!  Nothing comes easily to my poor brain and I am constantly frustrated...

The other day - for only the second time in my life - I managed to check the air in my tyres and you've no idea how happy that made me!  Whenever I figure out how to do anything at all, I'm overjoyed!

Even doing this blog is always a struggle.  Nothing is straightforward - getting the pictures in takes many steps and it doesn't always work the first time.  Of course, anything to do with computers nearly drives me mad.  About every second day I almost give up, and think I'll never bother with emails again because I get so many, but I try to do something about it, like unsubscribing from the hundreds of things I must have subscribed to over the years or deleting some of the thousands in my Inbox (don't even think about the Sentbox), rereading them first, in case they are important.  But I never manage to clear it.

Yesterday I foolishly allowed myself to be taken in by an invitation from JustCloud, promising storage among the angels.  I don't have the faintest idea what it's all about.  But since I filled in their wretched form, I've received about 97 messages from them, telling me the trial is just about up - nobody mentioned it was only a trial - and now I must subscribe for money but they'll give me 20% off.  Help, Infogenium - how do I uninstall??????  I filled in an email filter but their messages just pop up, so that didn't work. The one redeeming thing is that it appears to be only on my second laptop - the one Philip gave me when the main one had viruses - and this one seems to be clear.  I don't dare ask Philip as he will hit the roof that I downloaded it in the first place.