Hi all: Thanks for chat and Ernie info - don't forget to read the last few posts of last week to catch up on folks.
Brenda: My sister has been to the Chelsea Flower Show several times and has always loved it. Do hope the weather is kind on your day.
Patriciat: How nice that people were so generous with your fund-raising efforts. Good for you - you must have a winning way!!
dibnlib: Thanks for spelling out Ernie's "real" name. Doesn't sound half as much fun as his more familiar name. Actually, I remember now - Premium Bonds - they were being sold when I was still in the UK. I think my sister also has some that she bought way back when....
Emma: Painting is done - although just noticed a smudge of Pot of Cream (the paint) on a wood ceiling beam. How did it get there!! Took all the blue painter's tape off the glass panes this afternoon and put the hardware back on and it looks pretty nice. Do need to do some tidying up where paint trickled under the tape and also onto the hinges a bit, but all pretty minimal.
Have been keeping tabs on Trucker Steve, whose cat has an eye problem. He's going to take her to the vet. He's got a hard trip this time - three days of 11 hours a day to the next stop in Wisconsin. He's in Montana now, where it's well into the evening.
Off to see how EJ is doing. Have a nice Sunday morning all.
Oh AQ; How sweet - how old were the kids? - and what's a "reception" class? It's hard to believe that we probably look ancient to them. :-( My granddaughter interviewed me for a class project eons ago and I told her about being born in the middle of WWII and how my sister and I each had gas masks that used to hang in the hall and scare me!
Hi, AQ. Our posts crossed. Didn't mean to ignore you. Your description of the class visit was wonderful. I laughed out loud. Did you have an indoor toilet? LOL LOL Kids are so honest. Sounds like you were very patient with them, and it also sounds like they enjoyed it very much. You must be great with the wee ones.
Diane: No update on the bear or the Canadian Goose wandering down the road.
AQ: I loved the photo of the abandoned farmhouse - I always wonder what these places were like when they were brand new and the first people moved in - what their hopes and dreams were and how they turned out. A bit sad sometimes.... I thought there was iron and sandstone in the rocks, but am basically clueless.
Wild winds are back here again the next two nights. A very odd May...
Wow, AQ, wonderful photos!!!!!! That is really desolate country. Ghostly, but very beautiful. Do the people of Cradock drive to larger towns to work? Are they close enough? I loved the pink ribbon on the Lace Monitor. LOL Hope those fellas aren't really that big. He would be a little intimidating to run into.
Annette: I hadn't really connected the dots and realized that you were living in the UK during WWII. What a very scary time and place to be a kid. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that was frightening enough.
Diane; I only lived in the UK for the second half of the war (was just a twinkle in my father's eye before then!) :-) I was just looking at Trucker Steve's site. He's parked in a really dark place tonight (just across from his delivery spot) - I always wonder how on earth he, or any of those guys, can sleep in those huge truck parking lots with those brilliant lights on all night. Anyway, on his blog he mentioned problems with the site and that he wasn't getting many comments, but maybe it's all okay now.
AQ: There was a story on the telly last night about coal mining in NSW and how a man from a long-time mining family was trying to prevent the expansion of the mines due to the health, etc., problems resulting from the mining ops...
Thanks, Annette. That is, indeed, a really dark place where he is parked. Some of those places would be downright scary. I don't know whether I could sleep in some of those spots. The big, busy truckstops wouldn't be so bad, but places like that spot tonight would make me plenty nervous. BTW: I think trucks usually have blackout privacy curtains that the drivers can pull closed, either between the sleeper and the cab or around the windshield and side windows -- or both. The trucks come equipped that way, or you can buy the curtains in truckstops. They're expensive, though.
Diane & Annette - Questions, questions, you are as bad as the kids. (Only joking.) Reception is the first year of school, usually they start at 6 years. Dau said these were 6-7 year olds. So they have only been at school since end of January. Also some of them are from homes where they have not been to kindergarten/pre-school so they had no idea how to sit & listen. One year Dau had to teach her class how to walk in a line without wandering off to play!
Until I was about 10, we only had an outside lavatory, down at the bottom of the garden. Not used at night, path too dark and creepy, spiders in the trees along the way. Of course we had a pot under the bed.
The few people living in Cradock probably work on their farms around about. Or maybe retired farmers. When my sisters were teenagers, they thought nothing of driving 50 miles to a dance Friday, then 30 miles on Sat. They carpooled with others from nearby town. Country people think nothing of driving an hour to work anyway.
Lace Monitors are the second-largest monitor in Australia after the Perentie. They can be as long as 2.1 metres (over 6ft 10ins) with a head and body length of up to 76.5 cm (2½ ft). The tail is long and slender and about 1.5 times the length of the head and body. Maximum weight of lace monitor can be 20 kg (44lb), but most adults are much smaller. (Thanks to wikipedia for this). ((I've never heard of Perentie!!! Here I go again surfing the net LOL).
Diane: I figure they have blackout blinds, but they'd have to fit really tightly to keep those lights out. I wonder if Trucker Steve packs any heat...
AQ; We had an outside toilet but an inside one too. I didn't like the outside one because of the spider webs. I've never had to drive that far to work - my last gig was the worst . I could do it down the freeway in 15 minutes (not during the rush hour), but it was a 50 minute ride home stop-and-go. Ugh. Geez. Lace Monitors at nearly 7 feet tall? Do they bite?
PS for Diane - I wouldn't have the patience to be a teacher. I taught Dau1 all the things one teaches a baby/toddler, then along came Dau2. What, I've got to do that all again?
PS for Annette - I often think of the women pioneers. It was fine for the men with their dreams to own their own land. First years by chance were OK, then drought, the soil cleared & broken up with so much labour, just blew away. The small blocks of land were too small to be viable without the fact they were trying to grow crops where rainfall was too unreliable. It must have been so cruel, so lonesome for the women. Isolated without family support, miles from other women. I remember reading a James Michener book (Centennial?) where the woman found her food in the safe covered in fine soil/sand.