sunday 2 nov

This morning early I took M&C out for the usual park walk, they hadn't been in a position to get in the water since they were washed last weekend, and so they were busting to stink up, which they did. Millie in particular smells ghastly today and I suppose they need another wash, though it's apparently going to rain all week so this might not be such a doable thing.

Today was a surprise birthday incident for my father (70 tomorrow). It went, surprisingly, without a hitch despite (word has it) Lina saying to him on the phone yesterday, 'see you at your birthday lunch tomorrow' - he either heard this and didn't take it in, or didn't hear it, or forgot it, or was just a good actor when it came to the surprise element, but I don't think so. Anyway, this is his and Tanya's new whippet, whose name is Beth or Bess I'm not sure. I think Bess.










Here are some of my nepheices with Bess, who had to be tied up a short distance from the lunch table.









Here are Mia, my father, and my father's friends Malcolm and Betsy at the luncheon table.

nice day

This is/ these are the dogs just pre-walk, then we walked for half an hour in the park, saw the first snake I've ever ever seen in the Jacana reserve, a black snake, Mia assumes a red-bellied black snake.

sunday

Drove Mia to Bunnings to get D rings (you hang pictures via them) and then we each had a pretzel from the great pretzel place at Broady. If I had a month to live I would just sit in there all day eating their pretzels and occasionally going to the gelo bar (30 seconds away) but sadly I do not.

One week till teaching begins. It is no doubt only a matter of time before my students uncover this blog, if they give a loose root about anything I do outside lecturing/ seminaring them. Well, that is fine, I don't do anything here I'm ashamed of particularly unless you count revealing my appallingly boring behaviour. (A colleague I respect said the other day he was impressed by my ability to write 60 000 words on a relatively obscure subject, I told him my specialty was to find boring things interesting.)

Applecore yesterday was pretty great, what I saw of it (I got sick of it after a while, particularly when the drink started to kick in amongst those around me and they got all talky about totally nothing). Unfortunately the great fig trees in the garden where it was being held were not offering anything of edible standard, either too unripe or too ripe. Sad as I was quite into the figs all day thang which incidentally leads me to momentarily go off onto another tangent of things I find staggeringly irritating in 2008:

1. People who say thang
2. Discussions about vegetarianism
3. People who, in seeking to convey how annoying they find a particular sound, way of talking, etc, replicate it really loudly
4. People who might be accusing me of being a revisionist historian (if it's me they mean)
5. People who titter
6. Boys who utter obscenities on the train.