General Chat

Well I knew you would understand Tec but what will the others say. There were some incredible specimens - one was for sale for $4,500. I really can't see myself spending that kind of money.

Now I'm laughing :-D :-D :-D

Well good for you - there is no shame in that :-)

Wish I'd been there too

Well......it was a lovely day yesterday and we thought it would be nice to go somewhere. We ended up near Sydney and went to a bonsai nursery. I bought two young trees, five pots and potting mix. Also a little temple :-0

Susan.................what have you done? :-S

Hello everyone :-)

I am hanging my head in shame......:-(

:-D :-D :-D :-D

Hello Sylvia. Australia has a few time zones. However, Sue and I both live on the East coast, so now that we have DST, we are 11 hours ahead of GMT, so if you are 8 hours behind them, we must be 19 hours ahead of you. Of course, our Kiwis (Persie and Huia) who are both on DST at the moment, are another two hours ahead again (21) and yes, it is almost a day.

A relative of mine visited from California a few years ago. We saw him off on the plane at 5:30pm Friday. He then flew to Hawaii and changed planes for Fresno, (Cal), then another small plane to his own hometown, where his daughter met him and drove him to his own home, arriving at 5:30pm Friday. !! It wasn't easy, trying to explain it to my children at the time! They decided he must be Superman.

Hi Sue, and everyone


I well remember our 10 month stay in Melbourne in 1975/76 ........................ very few places had air conditioning in those days, not even hotels or shopping centres.


Our saving grace in the apartment was that we were on the ground floor of a 2 storey building, so we did get less hot than the upstairs people

My cousins sweltered in their houses, in Melbourne, Canberra, Gold Coast, etc.


We visited with one couple in Townsville .............. they had spent time in Canada and the US in 1972/3, and had decided that if we could heat our houses, there must be a way to cool their house ........... so on returning home they had managed to search out a free standing air conditioner unit that they placed in the hallway between the bedrooms. What a difference it made!

Unfortunately, we weren't staying with them ............. we had to return to our motel with the ceiling fan, and the gecko climbing the wall :-D





.............. and what a change by the next time we visited in 1981 ................... the cousins had all installed some form of air conditioning in their houses, not built-in of course





it has been a beautiful fall day here ................... sunny, blue skies, and the changed leaves just shining on the trees

It is most definitely cooler though




We turn our clocks back tonight ....... so I will once again be 8 hours behind the UK ........ and who knows how many hours behind down-under!!

I know we're usually on the day before :-)


I think I'm usually around 18 hours behind Mudgee in NSW, where my friend used to live

Hello all. My weather is the same as yours this time, Sue. Three showers and thunder rolling around, which brought the 34 down. To-day, we are only epecting 24. That' a big drop and feels quite cool in the morning. .. Another bushfire in the Blue Mountains. One home destroyed and damage to the bushland still recovering from last year. This one is suspicious. It's bad enough when the fire is natural, but if some gook starts it, it makes us very angry.

Goodnight Linda - I'm sure you will sleep well <3

Yes - air-conditioned house, car and shopping centres. We really don't have to be out in the heat.

Aimee loves doing scrapbooking. We put photos in her album and she puts stickers and other embellishments wherever she wants. She does a good job.

Football time, so I will log off. Keep cool Sue

34 sounds dreadful Sue, but your houses are geared up to cope with it of course.

I did lots of craft things with Eve this week, we produced, ghosts, bats and spiders. Lots of glitter was used :-D

I love being with the grandchildren too but if we have them for a few days during the school holidays we're exhausted. Luckily they're at an age when they occupy themselves very well but they love going to places that seem to involve a lot of walking.

Yesterday was a very hot day - around 34C. Too hot to go outside. In the afternoon we had a thunderstorm with wind and rain. It lasted all of 20 minutes but it was so much cooler afterwards. It's quite cool this morning.

Hello Sue, I can't wait to sleep in my own bed. It will be nice to have a lazy day, but I will miss playing games with Eve. She issues her instructions along the lines of " I will be a mummy, you will be a daddy and (she then assigns roles to her various toys). My job is to make the toys talk in different voices as we act out whatever scenes she devises.

We play for ages, I try to slip some educational content in while we play. She is very bright, so is interested in learning about things

Hello everyone :-)

Early night for you Linda and then a relaxing Sunday :-)

Two years already Amanda <3

I do hope the nuisance doesn't come back and cause havoc.

Hello Lady Persephone :-)

The wheelchair conversion sounds good Persie, maybe Tec could do it next year :-D

I hope your evicted man gives up his key and doesn't have a copy Amanda, he could cause all sorts of problems if he does get in.

Oh dear.. hope all goes well with your "paltry" man and he takes his leave sensibly but certainly does not look as though he will.

BTW your little ones looked absolutely spiffing as the Characters out of Wizard of Oz .. I am sure even Tec would have been okay with them knowing his fears (and mine) regarding the original movie.

There have been some well thought out costumes this year.. saw where one little chap in a wheelchair was converted into an ice-cream van driver complete with cap and back wheels etc.. his parents did a wonderful job...and another young lad was an excellent transformer... he converted from vehicle to robot figure with amazing agility, just like the toys do.

Hello folks :-D

Well , today was the day that the allotment nuisence has had his plots removed from him , his time was up on mid-night Thursday ( 30th ) and today a bunch of us went to pile up the heap of old pallets etc that he had strewn about the place . His two chickens have been removed by the poultry officer but we haven't got the gate key back as he refussed to come to the site !! I think he was hoping it " would all go away " and will be shocked and angered by the fact that action has actually taken place ! I just hope he doesn't run rampage :-|
I signed the paper work to put myself forward as site secretery ( I believe it is a "one horse " race :-S ) , OH is going to be a committee member .

Today it is two years since my dear brother passed away :-( It hardly seems possiable that so much time has passed by already !

We are back home and I m very tired. A week of looking after little ones is hard going. Still we had fun.

Halloween was very good. We got lots of praise from the trick or treaters. In fact it was so scary that some of the little ones wouldn't come in. There were loads of children,all of them had made a real effort with the costumes. While we held the fort Eve went round the streets with her mum and came back with a load of sweets She spent the rest of the evening answering the door to all the people who came to the house,sh e did it very well.

She was up very late of course, so was grumpy this morning, I was glad to leave it to her parents to look after her :-)