Brrr in summer

It has been unseasonably cool this summer and I don't mind one little bit, hey EC. Sister, Bone Doctor and Jo are holidaying in the north of the state and visited Mount Hotham and it was snowing. This is Sister's car.

R's oldest sister in the north of England sent a photo of the park outside her front door and it isn't really a surprise to see snow there and of course it is winter. So pretty.

Jackie in Toronto posted this amazing photo of a partly frozen Niagara Falls, a place I remember being very warm and humid. 

Tradie Brother is staying tonight as he has jury selection at the County Court tomorrow, so I can only give you a quickie this morning.

Town Hall Tuesday

Tram 58 to Victoria Street, tram 57 to Errol Street, tram 57 to Union and Maribyrnong Roads, tram 82 to Moonee Ponds Junction, tram 59 to Abbotsford Street, tram 57 to Errol Street, tram 57 to Victoria Street, tram 58 home. All done in the name of two town halls photographed, plus coffee and a mural discovery.

This is Moonee Ponds Town Hall, at times known as Essendon Town Hall. It is a bit ordinary really and not a grand Victorian period building like the other town hall I photographed earlier. It is now a performance space. The original building was built in 1880 as Essendon Mechanics Institute and has been altered and extended since. It became Clocktower Centre in 2000 after significant renovations. It is within the City of Moonee Valley, formed after the amalgamation in the 1990s of City of Essendon and part of City of Keilor. 

There is pleasant space opposite the town hall from where I took the photo. The area looks quiet doesn't it? It is not. Behind me asewer of traffic moved slowly along and on the far side of the town hall another sewer of traffic slowly moved along. It is a complicated six way intersection with the through routed tram 59 and the terminating 82 tram, along with a large bus interchange. Even though it was early afternoon traffic was banked back around 800 metres along Mount Alexandra Road towards the city. It was nice travelling around in areas I am not so familiar with.

R is reading a book

He must be enjoying the book. Well I know he is. He hasn't read a book for a a year or so. The tv sound is muted and all to be heard is him turning pages, the rattle of the keyboard as I write this and the occasional tram gong from the street below . Oh, and the wind, the shocking wind.

On line public nonsense

I make mistakes when I am writing. Quell horreur! But I am a averagely educated working class person. I am not a large multi million dollar private company nor a government health department. People are paid well enough to get these things right and I become very annoyed when they don't. 

How about this COVID instruction on our state health website? We've had around nine days without community transmission after a small outbreak. I know which rule I would choose from below. To save you the bother of checking, the places, the dates and the times of possible infection sites are all the same. Just the advice above about how to react is different. 

New train timetables begin at the end of the month. I've been looking at the extensive changes. I bumped the live timetable forward to the 31st of January and look at the nonsense on the PTV website. If you are familiar with the Sandringham train line, I despair. I gave up looking at this point. Ok, briefly explained, trains start at Flinders Street Station and terminate at Sandringham. They do not start at Richmond Station.

Returning Jo Home

Last Sunday we took Jo into the city and had lunch at Riverland, a bar on the edge of the Yarra River and it was a very pleasant day. We then thought to take her to ACMI, The Australian Centre for Moving Images, but it was closed. Ok, lets go listen to the Federation Bells, upside down bells on a hill in a park. Well, maybe later. We'll take Jo into the most important Protestant church, St Paul's Cathedral, in Melbourne. No, closed. Myer Christmas windows? Removed. Buskers in the Mall? None. Still want to visit the bells R? No, tired now and hot, so we came home, R and Jo had a swim in the pool and then Jo created some artwork.

It was Sister's suggestion that on Monday we catch the relatively new ferry service to Portarlington on he Bellarine Peninsula near to where she lives and she would meet us there and take us for lunch. We caught a couple of trams to get to the ferry departure point at Docklands. Unfortunately the temperature was forecast to be 37, nearly 100F. But the trams we caught had air con and the ferry was very well air conditioned. Generally I took photos through glass. I wasn't standing on the decks in the heat.

Portarlington is bottom left of screen.

This is perhaps the only old wharf left now, with the rest demolished to create Docklands. Unfortunately it has been declared unsafe and businesses had to close and move out. I told Jo we used to go to dance parties in the shed up until the late 90s, along with several thousand other gays, lesbians and those in between. 

The ferry departed right on 10.40 as scheduled. It was quite impressive and the $30 return fare for oldies with Port Phillip Ferries was quite reasonable. Unfortunately the speed limit in the river is very low but once out of the river into the bay, the catamaran flew along. The Melbourne Star Observation Wheel has great views of the occasional movement in the docks area, along with the occasional shunting freight train in the railway yards.

Where have I seen a building like this before? 

Wattle was once a tug boat.

Under the Bolte Bridge.

Thingies to remove containers from ships.

Approaching the Westgate Bridge. It is very high to allow container ships sail under.

Now out in the bay with the city skyline in view.

Approaching Portarlington. On a clear day it is just visible as a mound on the horizon from  home. The trip takes seventy minutes.

I've never seen so many people on this beach. It was even busier when we departed at 4.30.

We lunched in a area called Wallington at the Flying Brick Cider Company.

The meal was good. I am not a cider drinker so I had wine. R had a paddle of four different ciders. His favourite was the chilli cider. Only a few brave people in the heat outside, no doubt proclaiming how glorious the heat was. That did not include us in the cool but moaning about the heat.

We went back to Sister's place for coffee, a chat and in R's case a nap. Sister, Jo and I watched a couple of episodes of Derry Girls. The trip back was uneventful and we were home by about 6.30, exhausted but it had been a good day.

Trams (and a bus) for tourists in Melbourne

I have written about this before and I know it was helpful to at least one person. 

Ah, no international tourists at the moment, but life will return to normal. Maybe we will allow New South Wales tourists back soon.

Route 96 from Bourke Street in the city to St Kilda, the light rail. Guaranteed to have 'interesting' characters on board and a good way to get to a popular destination. Catch the 12 back to town from Park and Fitzroy Streets via a quiet and very local tram for local people. 

Catch the route 16 tram from Swanston Street to to its end. Such a variety to see along the one and half hour trip. You travel through St Kilda, the bagel belt of Balaclava and Caulfield, the lauded shopping strips of Malvern and admire the large and very expensive houses between there and Hawthorn with its large cosmopolitan population of students. From the route 16 terminus in Kew, catch a 109 tram back to the city via Richmond with its large Asian population and certainly more interesting characters along the way. If you need a 'fix', stop off in Richmond and you will readily find a dealer.

The route 58 tram along William Street takes you to the north of the city. Aside from Melbourne Zoo, there is not a lot to see, aside from a nice tram trip through Royal Park. If you go further and you can see out the tram front window, there are some ok views of the city as you return.

Route 58 to Toorak also from William Street is not bad either if you want to travel through posh areas of shops and towards the end houses and apartments. 

But here is a great and unknown bus trip for anyone, the 605 bus from Queen Street in the City or if you like, the Casino tram stop in Queensbridge Street.

You will travel along the premier boulevard of St Kilda Road after passing the Arts Centre. You then head to the eastern side of the beautiful Shrine of Remembrance with great parks in both directions and the running walking and the track The Tan where the beautiful people and celebs run and walk and circumnavigating The Royal Botanic Gardens. COVID never killed the café latte corner of Park Street and Domain Road. The 605 makes  just a swing to the left and the left again for a braked descent down the Anderson Street hill and pick up the lasses at Melbourne Girls Grammar, except thankfully they weren't at school when I travelled the route.

We turn onto Alexandra Avenue and travel along the southern bank of Yarra River, and we follow its curving path until we turn up Williams Road, along a Toorak back street to Toorak Road and then down Orrong Road. There I left the bus to catch the train from Toorak Station back home. By all means stay on the bus as it weaves its way through residential streets of Armadale, eventually travelling along Kooyong Road. I haven't done that part of the bus trip yet.

A lot of very valuable land surrounded the sporting oval Orrong Park and it was sold off to developers and guess what? They built developments and with the five or so minutes I had to wait for the train, I had a look outside the stations' western entrance. Not too bad at all.

Visiting Mum's House

The house is rapidly disappearing behind the growth of bushes. I kind of like the out of control luxuriant growth. Pre climate change, the garden would be almost dead at this time of year without being watered. Settlement for her house will be in a little over a month and there is much to be done and Mother in hospital and frail is hardly capable. The latest rumour is that she will leave the hospital on Saturday and return to ABI Brother's place who is her government paid carer. Extra professional visiting care will kick off in February.

R says she should be in a nursing home but our government tries to keep people at home with services and the time is not right yet for her to move into care. It will one day be a case of hospital to a nursing home, but not quite yet.

R and I with two trips took about 14 full sized garbage bags of her clothing, drapes, curtains, window lace, cushions and so much bedding to charity bins.

Ex Sis in Law and Oldest Niece had been there the day before and were covered in cobwebs, so we missed them. They took a few bits and pieces to their liking. We took Mother's very kind neighbours across the road to the house today and she took a couple of bits of crystal ware. 

Mother's extended family is really coming together to sort the house out before settlement on the 18th of February. She will then have around half a million dollars at her disposal and she is just too fucking frail and old to enjoy the largess. But knowing my mother, and her having gone through two substantial amounts of money, she will have a good go.

The canna lilies? along the back fence look beautiful. The neighbour said under the mound of grass could be your late Step Father's aluminium dinghy. I believe him as he was not here when Step Father had dinghy. Learnt knowledge that we have forgotten about.

What's your energy like?

Personally, pretty lousy and thanks for asking...oh, you didn't.

But I am talking about how your electricity is generated. Australia has a mix of generation and fortunately we have never had a Chernobyl, Three Mine Island or Fukushima as we don't generate electricity by nuclear reactors. Long has our general population been against nuclear, in spite of such being pushed by vested interests. The Nuclear Disarmament Party was very active in Australia and took no prisoners of either the Labor Party or the Liberal (conservative) Party.

Our electricity is predominately generated by black coal, while my state of Victoria's electricity is mostly generated by burning dirty damp and polluting brown coal. But we do have hydro electricity in two eastern states and the island state, Tasmania. Tasmania's electricity is dominantly by hydro, but some environment was destroyed in the process to build retaining dams. 

Generally our power generating assets were sold by governments to overseas investors who are not there to provide a service but to make profits. Who knows who owns the poles and wires. Who knows who your wholesale power company is which is different to your retail power company. But the system is actually quite strictly controlled by authorities, especially the NEM and in my opinion it works reasonably well. 

The problem for these overseas investors with our coal power plants is their age and their polluting factor. Our conservative Federal government, wanting to protect investors in the dinosaur generation business, is encouraging them to invest in new 'clean and green' coal and gas power plants. They don't pollute too much, just a bit.

But our pro capitalist conservative government has been overtaken by capitalism. 

Solar panels on rooves, wind farms, solar generation are all generating so much power they are making our power system unstable. Capitalism again kicks into action, starting with Elon Musk's big battery in South Australia to store renewable power. There are plans for storage batteries in every state. 

Our dinosaur Liberal Party needs to get into step. Coal and gas power generation will soon be history. There won't be anymore wilderness areas flooded to make hydro dams. In the longer term oil powered cars will be history, so a wise investor would steer clear of oil. 

You can add to this that our home appliances and no doubt industry machines have become much more energy efficient. All those LED lamps replacing incandescent, fluoro and 250 halogen bulbs per two storey McMansion must make a difference.

My generation may have screwed up many things but we have at least left this still up in the air but very foreseeable environmental result of renewable power at a very cheap price.

Within this bowl...

On top of fridge sits a large green salad bowl. We push it under the cupboard over the fridge to stop dust settling into it and it is probably used once a week anyway and so will not get too dusty. Within the bowl is a smaller white one which also gets used once or so a week. Within the smaller bowl is another bowl that is never used for food and is a repository for bits. You know, for the things you find on the floor or wherever and you don't know what they are for. Is this important to something?

I wonder how old the matches are and will they still work if we need to light a candle?

Why is the keyboard rattling so much as I type? After a day or so of annoyance, I turned it over and damn, a rubber like foot is missing. My thoughts of buying a new keyboard evaporated. I can fix this, without personal injury or strain.

Within the crates in the spare third bedroom wardrobe I found just what I needed.

It is the white bit far right now stuck to the back of the keyboard.

But when putting the salad bowl back a few days later, some kind of memory must have kicked in and I checked the bowl for bits. Sure enough, the old pad foot must have been found on the carpet and put into the bowl as a mysterious object found on the floor.  

I am working on an even more riveting post for tomorrow. Cheers.

Do not delay trams

I think by about 2032 all Melbourne's trams have to be step free dictated by disability laws. Should I live another eleven years I doubt I will see that. It was supposed to happen earlier.

The problem that this advertisement is addressing is people standing on tram steps. The tram doors won't close until the steps are cleared. If one person dallies on the step, perhaps touching on their card at a reader, the tram driver may be annoyed. If many people do the same, the service will be significantly delayed. 

Our tram service only works efficiently because it stops, unloads, picks up and departs in a matter of seconds. Stop, unload, load, move. Repeat and rinse for its whole journey. 

So as this ad describes, it is important you move smartly inside the tram and then validate your travel card. Also important is not to stand in doorways. R and myself have perfected the art of intimidating and laying guilt on passengers who do so. Often these door blockers are local people who use trams, and not those who rarely use trams and don't know. 

We stand behind them to get off the tram, and at the last minute they move out of the way, or we accidentally a little too firmly brush past them. We also do sotto voice about people blocking doorways. We may win the battle but given how long we have been doing such, we are not winning the war.

Announcements on the tram help, as does a poster like this one.

Stomp on the brakes man

It is years since I have witnessed the aftermath of a car crash down below. They were frequent and often before the intersection was redesigned. Then in two consecutive days I saw the aftermath of two crashes. Full on day today, Monday, and maybe too effed to post anything for Tuesday.

It is rare to see St Johns Ambulance at a car crash. Perhaps just passing by. I don't know who was at fault but I would wager the white car, old enough to not have ABS (non skid braking system). It is clear though that one of the cars  was at fault without extenuating circumstances. 

While it is not an excuse to not drive to the conditions, the first wet morning for ages could be considered as extenuating, especially in an older car without ABS.

The assaulted car was still driveable but the offender was a tow truck job. Is tow truck a world wide word? I will be pleased if you don't know a word in any of my posts and let me know. 

Just another Saturday

We have Niece Jo staying with us until Monday. She arrived after Sister and she visited Mother in hospital and we shared a takeaway pizza for dinner Friday night. Sister went on home to the Bellarine. We will return Jo to Sister in a rather interesting way. No, not a balloon and we won't parachute her in either. 

Today, Saturday, we visited Ex Sis in Law and her husband and the café latte coloured twins. Oldest Niece rocked up too with her three, Little M, Little Em and Little L, her boy. Tradie Brother turned up too, Ex Sis in Law's former husband. The twins mother, Hippie Niece was having a dirty weekend away with her new beau at some thermal springs. 

While it was a bit too warm for me outside, I survived and it was a very nice day with lots of chat and a barbeque lunch. The small inflatable pool was cleaned out and filled and the kiddies all had a great time. As she didn't have bathers, Little Jo did not want to go in the pool with the others, but Ex Sis in Law suggested she look in Hippie Niece's bedroom and see what she could find, and she did find something to wear in the pool and enjoyed playing with the much younger children very much.

R and I call Little L, The Smiling Buddha. He is a fat little toddler who has just started to walk and he is the happiest child you can imagine and always smiling ear to ear. Not so today. Just our luck. He slept badly last night and he normally never stirs during the night but he did. He fell back to sleep and then a smoke detector went off for no reason and he woke again. It was his nap time when he arrived, he was tired and cranky and nothing like his usual self. He would not nap. Over the course of a few hours, he went A over T, one of twins went A over T and and Little Em went A over T. An occupational hazard of being a child I suppose. Generally they bounce back, unlike we of a certain age who would be like a dropped blancmange. 

Because I can

I caught a bus for no other reason than I could. I am so pleased at being able to roam Melbourne again on public transport. I will mention the bus trip in a future post. 

I also caught a VLine train, well three actually. The first left So Cross (Southern Cross) Station from platform 8S. I didn't have clue where that platform was, but I found it in time. I did know about platforms A and B but not S platforms. Is there only one S (south) platform?

The next I had so much time up sleeve to catch a VLine train and I with some knowledge, I thought I was fine to be there in plenty of time. I mistakenly left the 58 tram at Bourke Street rather than Collins Street and walked down the slope to Spencer Street and then to Collins Street, the main entrance for the station. Plenty of time to catch the train I wanted. My train was leaving from platform 16B. I headed towards the regional train platforms and briefly paused to look at an information screen. I had plenty of time to catch the train. No rush at all. I know what I am doing.

A helpful customer service person offered assistance. I said I need platform 16 so I will just walk along the platforms until I come to 16. No, he said. You need to go back, take the escalator up, walk along and then the escalator down. Oh, I have time but I better walk smartly. 

The train was on platform 16B. That was a decent walk along the platform to get to the B platform. I couldn't see why it could not have been closer at 16A. Had I had known or checked, I had walked about half a kilometre so unnecessarily from Bourke Street to the main station entrance in Collins Street and back to Bourke Street.

By the time I boarded there was a minute to spare. I was in the last carriage and I found a forward facing seat on my own. The diesel powered electric train noisily powered out of the station. Vlocity trains are so smooth and quiet running with really comfortable seats but the motors are quite noisy but I love hearing them rev away from a standing stop. I think they can reach speeds of 150 km/h but are restricted to 115 km/h. According to my phone, the train reached 115 km/h. Ok, no one in Japan or Europe will be impressed by that.

I think only the last carriage on such trains is a Quiet Carriage and that was the one I was in (duh, that would depend on which way you are travelling). A young boy in a family group was watching a video on his parent's phone. Not so quiet. The train conductor ignored the noise. I moved to the other end of the Quiet Carriage and some bloke was playing radio through his phone. The train conductor said nothing to him either, although she did tell a man to pull up his mask.  What is the point of non quiet Quiet Carriages if the rule is not enforced?  This would not happen in Asian countries, and nor would people be on the train with a takeaway coffee cup and stinking hot food smelling up the carriage. I was so annoyed, especially at the radio player, I was thinking of standing up and pointing to the sign that said Quiet Carriage, but the noise was behind me and I couldn't see who it was. The noise did stop after a while.

I've been to Sunshine by train before and it is rather uninteresting. I continued on to Deer Park. I left the train and suburban housing and a carpark stretched in both directions, as I had noted when the train approached the station and decided there was nothing here for me and with a snap decision I caught the train sitting on the opposite platform back to the city.

I am a curious train traveller. Questions arise in my mind about things, such as what is this bit of water. It turned out to be the Dynon Road Tidal Canal and this blog post was interesting. Of course I wonder about tracks branching off here and there and wherever and the perfect answer to my arisen questions can be found at blogger Marcus Wong's,  Rail Geelong which covers trains west of Melbourne too.

Friday Funnies

I like Jewish humour. Maybe I have posted this before. I better delete it in case I post it again. While I heard it ages ago, I had forgotten where the story went. 

Years ago I posted this and it is a bit risqué. Then I reposted about the same movie last year.

The Yiddish are Coming.

#45 rallies support in Oz

A gaggle of 'the deplorables', #45 supporters, marching down below with one shouting through a megaphone, Four More Years. What fantasy world do they live in? Police were monitoring the whole 30 of them. Thirty people from a city of 5 million is not impressive but nevertheless I am so disappointed in my fellow citizens that any would support that criminal. I can't wait to see him before the courts. 

Oh wow. This photo is a whole lot more interesting because I just noticed the 2CV in the photo. I didn't see it at the time. Way cool.

Burrowing down

I become very frustrated with Google Maps on my phone and it is my fault as I expect it to be so easy to do things that I think should be instinctive. I hear bits at times about what Google Maps can do. I decided I needed to actually sit and learn more. 

We needed direction once in New York City once after coming up from the Subway, but I soon worked things out. Not so lucky in London when we exited Old Street Tube Station into an under renovation massive roundabout. There weren't street signs and I just could not work out which of the five streets or which way to walk. I could see on the map where we were and the hotel where we would stay in City Road but which way was it? I just could not work it out. I did by walking along a couple of streets and Google Maps indicated I was going the wrong way.

Thinking about it logically now I should have just asked Google Maps for directions but I wasn't feeling logical. R was weary, about to explode and ask why we didn't catch a cab and I felt stressed. 

Even more logically, why didn't I just ask directions from someone on the street? Hey, I may be gay but I am still an Australian male and we just don't do that.

What I could have done as I learnt today is touch my blue dot location on Google Maps and scan the surrounding scene, the buildings. Maps will indicate with an arrow which way I was facing and I could have easily worked it out from there. Should we ever travel again, I need to remember this. 

While I know I can see where I have recently travelled with Google Timeline, and as a person in his sixties, I have no problem with being tracked, I was surprised to find on Google Maps a history of countries and cities I have been in for the last six years. All I can say is wow! Here is a screenshot. 

Only One Cock a Year

Still no offer from a major media outlet to me as an attention grabbing headline writer.

I imagine the winner of this year's truncated Cock of the Bay yacht race is known as Cock of the Bay, as in the boss rooster fowl. The race as far as I know for the first time started from Port Melbourne. 

The Sydney to Hobart yacht race had been CC'd, COVID Cancelled, as had the Melbourne to Devonport and the Melbourne to Hobart along Tasmania's wild west coast so there was a lot of focus here on the Cock of the Bay.

While not great for yachting at speed, the weather on Boxing Day was delightful for spectators and yachties who weren't really focused on winning.

They seemed incredibly slow from our balcony. The photos are cut to not show too much building in the foreground. I wonder if I can load them full size, and I suggest you click on them to see them properly, and with a decent sized screen.

Albert Park Lake is in the foreground and is used for training child yachties in small sailing craft. Shape in Queens Road used to be called ISIS but for obvious reasons changed its name. The Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre is mid right.

I mentioned the brown brick highrise you can see in in this photo, https://highriser.blogspot.com/2013/01/lunch-on-ones-own.html

Not Monday Mural

While I have a couple of murals up my sleeve, I am not in the mood.

Indulge me, if you will and some of this needs to on the record of the online diary.

Christmas Day at Tradie Brother's was great. The whole family was there at various times with the exception of Oldest Niece, her partner and their three children who had his family to see. Gifts were lavished on the children, far too many and of course we contributed to the avalanche. It was great but exhausting. Bone Doctor changed Mother's leg wound dressing. 

Repeat and rinse at a different location on Boxing Day, this time at Ex Sis in Laws, her husband and Hippie Niece and her twin cafe latte girls. Golly they are going to be stunners when they grow up. Absent was Sister, Bone Doctor and Jo. More of an avalanche of gifts for the children. Great fun for the kiddies on a downhill plastic water slide, and fun by some not so young on the same.

The day after Boxing Day Mother took 'a turn' and summonsed an ambulance and told the paramedics she wanted to go to a public hospital this time. They obliged and she received excellent treatment and care at a very busy emergency department, but was eventually transferred to a private hospital covered by her health insurance, which we of her children pay. But as her house is sold, that won't be for much longer.

She has remained in hospital since, even they wanted her out for New Year's Day. She will soon turn 87 and wants to feel like she is 45. It won't happen but her medications have been drastically altered. 

Both Christmas Day and Boxing Day we were caught in heavy stop start freeway traffic. Christmas Day was expected but not Boxing Day. I must remember to be careful what I wish for. Empty roads did happen last year at the extremes of our lockdowns.

New Year's Eve was spent at home. R went to bed at 10.30. I fell asleep in the chair in front of the (I just checked yesterday) 75", 191cm tv. Illegal fireworks woke me a bit after midnight and I went to bed.

Fresh faced and rosy cheeked on New Year's Day, we decided to lunch down the bay somewhere. Mordialloc I suggested? Ricketts Point? I showered and in the mean time R remembered near there is where the COVID outbreak happened. Fortuitously Ex Sis in Law rang wondering if we were free for lunch and so we joined her and her husband at Sandbar Cafe, Middle Park Beach. Chilli mussels were yum.

Saturday the 2nd we went to visit Mother in hospital, visiting hours 10.00 to 12.00 and 16.00 to 18.00, two visitors per day, only to be turned away because of COVID the hours had been changed that morning to 17.00 to 18.00. No problem. Only three hours out of our day wasted. Household management went on strike that night and not a meal to be seen, so we crossed the road in the rain and had a very nice meal at Giro d'italia. It was our first time visit and it was good. We ordered too much food and so have a large box of food in the fridge to eat another time. 

Today on my own I visited Mother in hospital. Traffic light until a car accident had five lanes of freeway traffic cramming into one lane. Three lane closure would have been enough for a nose to tail. I must have felt stressed as I left my phone in the car as I walked from where I had parked and how can I make a hospital COVID check in without scanning the QR code? Maybe you can sign a book or something but I went back to the car for my phone. There was now only a thirty minute visiting window, which was quite enough of hearing Mother's woes. I left for home just after six, expecting a 30 minute journey home.

It is not often I explode in the car but I did when the freeway was restricted to 40 km/h with five lanes merging into two lanes for road maintenance. After what I put up with going to the hospital, this is how you treat me on my way home, you effing aholes. Totally illogical, of course.

Not my doctor, not my cardiologist, not hospital cardiologists but a hospital pharmacologist worked out there was conflict with one of my heart medications and my anti tremor medication, so I had to stop the tremor medication. It took well over a week for it to be noticeable that my hands were increasingly unsteady. I arrived home from the hospital and poured myself a glass of wine before a late dinner. I had to hold it with two hands lest I spill it. I was back in the pre retirement days of stressful work and an even more stressful drive home. There is a newer medication I may be able to take. I'm going to follow this up next week.  

Ok, I do have a mural photo, nothing grand and on the wall of Victoria University in Napier Street, Footscray. 

Sunday Selections

Is it Sunday? I am so confused this week. If I have the day right it must mean I am joining with Elephant's Child and others for Sunday Selections with the penultimate South Yarra ISO walk photos.

As far as I know this is the only remaining gas lamp outside of the city. It broke in two, whether by a car bump or just rust. It has been repaired but as yet has not been fitted with the business part.

How sweet. 

Not a bad building even it was naked, but its smart accessories dress it up well.

Stunning. I am thinking $2.5 million.

How many millions behind this fence? Who knows. If you told me this is a diplomat's residence, I would believe you.

And the same for this one.

Some beautifully framed aw shucks. 

I think the corner house may quite new. 

Very nice symmetry.