The best medicine

Rain in Queensland and now rain in New South Wales. From drought to flood in a twinkle of Thor’s eye. “We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan, “Before the year is out!”

I spent a lovely morning on the verandah with numerous cups of coffee until my wife decided to join the rest of the southern hemisphere.

Our first task was to shop. We visited Woolworth’s. Mainly because they no longer exist in the UK but also because the store we visited was HUGE and had about eight people in it. Five of them were staff.

Before shopping, though, we popped across the road to a lovely little deli/cafe where we had lunch. We were going to have a sandwich each when I noticed two very important things. The first was the giant cheese rounds. These made me think of mum and her newly acquired cheese fetish. I don’t think I mentioned the first meal we had together. Everything had cheese on it in some form or other – mostly melted. Dad, of course, does not like melted cheese, so mum more than made up for the years of cheese neglect. Anyway, this photo is for you mum:

The deli of the cheese rounds

The second thing I noticed was the pies. I’m pretty sure I haven’t had a real pie since leaving Australia all those years ago. They are distinctly Australian and bloody delicious! Sadly they didn’t have my favourite (meat and potato) but they did have a lovely lamb pie which I enjoyed, followed by a meat, cheese and bacon which was brilliant. I believe Mirinda’s sandwich was good too.

After lunch we spent a wonderful half hour shopping for, mainly, tonight’s dinner – my avocado crusted salmon. This generally requires a small piece of salmon but the shop only sold whole fish…so we had one each.

In the afternoon we visited Claire. Interesting communication challenge but we managed. I thought the machine dad is wired up to is amazing but it’s nothing to what Claire has. State of the art, high tech, all levels of magic, machinery. All very impressive.

In order to visit her we have to don all manner of things, scrub off the germs from our hands, and in the case of Mirinda, wear a mask (she has the beginnings of a cold and any germ could be fatal).

I found Claire quite communicative, although she can’t actually talk. Her eyes communicate a lot. I made her laugh, which was a bit of a mistake as she suddenly started choking. I realised I’d have to tone down my routine a bit!

After a long visit, during which Mirinda impressed me with her caring skills and feet rubbing expertise, we left for home.

My wife in the cafe, telling me off for something I didn't do...