I'll get the doctor, to take a picture

My diagnosis of Hattie's injuries after the tree incident was called into question. As a result she ended up at the hospital on Saturday afternoon to have an x-ray and let someone with slightly more training than myself have a look at it. It turns out I was right all along - minor cuts and bruises, apparently though I should have strapped the little finger of her left hand to the ring finger of her left hand and not the ring finger of her right hand. This may explain why she was struggling to use it properly.


George took part in the Joondalup festival last weekend. His class and a couple of others represented the school in the street parade. The boys were samurai warriors and the girls were geisha's. Wendy, somehow got roped into doing some face painting - everyone ended up with a white face and a droopy black moustache and goatee beard... and that was just the geisha's. The Japanese teacher chose some appropriate music to accompany them on their way round, namely Kungfu Fighting (Craig Douglas) and Turning Japanese by the Vapors. Bearing in mind the true meaning of the Vapors' lyrics the song probably wasn't that suitable after all. I'm sure it would have been more appropriate if all the boys had been teenagers.

This week I have mainly been learning about parrots, two in particular. Firstly, the Galah - this is the grey and pink parrot that appears in the photo gallery on the left of this page. It's a bit clumsy and not too bright and has been known to drop out of trees - hence calling someone a big Galah, especially someone you don't know, is offensive and can lead to a flamin' row. Australians do like a bit of a confrontation, which is why they have 37 different words for 'argue' (like Eskimos with snow). The other parrot I am now an expert on is the one known as the 28. It's very colourful in blues and greens and is so named because when it calls it sounds like it's saying 28. The only time it ever makes the call is when it's going to rain which is why it's also called the rain bird. I can vouch for this, the other day when I walked to the train station they were all calling and sure enough twenty minutes later it was raining. Mind you, there were some pretty dark rain clouds around at the time. In fact, you would have to be a Galah or Michael Fish not to know it was about to chuck it down.

We recently made a bold attempt to buy a house we liked but our less than generous offer was turned down. The system for house sales over here is quite different from the UK. Basically, you put your offer in writing and if the vendor accepts it - that's it, you've bought the house, it's legally binding and there is no way out of it. This, tied to the fact that the market is slowing down and that we aren't in any hurry to move, led us to put in a very cautious offer...one that the vendors were not at all impressed with. They responded by dropping the price by $5,000 which was still $44,999 and 98 cents more than we were offering.

Disaster. Hard Jubes are temporarily out of stock - in the entire State, I think it may be my heavy consumption of them that has caused this inbalance in the demand/supply chain.

Next time: Hatties birthday, George the artist of International renown, new hairstyles administered under general anaethestic, ANZAC Day and Australian weddings (probably).


This weeks essential ipod top 5: (1) The cutter > Echo and the Bunnymen. (2) Keep it clean > Camera Obscura. (3) Rich and strange > Cud. (4) There there my dear > Dexy's Midnight Runners. (5) Twist and shout > Deacon Blue.