Jan 17, 2010

Gas Mark 43

Melbourne On the subject of the phone, which a few of you might be interested in, we found out just before farewelling Brisbane that we had no dial tone and a short investigation revealed that some unsolicited lawnmowing with the blades set to Savage from our next door neighbours had severed the temporary umbilicus linking our telephone to the ether. It was temporary because Telstra couldn't be arsed to do a proper job of fixiing it when it went wrong last time and haven't been arsed to fix up their half-arsed job in the last however long it is. And that's at least a year.

So anyway the phone should be up and running again on Monday.

Anyhow on with the Melbourne story. On Saturday it was stinking hot. Like 43 degrees centigrade hot. I don't know what it is in Farenheit - if you care you're probably from that generation that could actually do mental arithmetic and would know the formula and can therefore work it out for yourself.

We went into the city, parked at Federation Square, an architectural monstrosity reminiscent of a huge petrified square pair of combat trousers. It's shaped like a building but it's covered in what looks like camouflage. Interesting.

There was a book sale on there that wasn't cheap. so we followed Josie and Adam around, past Flinders Street station, across the river, onto the South Bank and into a restaurant where we ate and drank for hours on a covered balcony.

There was a leather sofa in the sun by the path. If you touched it you burned. However the heat abated slightly from time to time as a breeze wafted up the surprisingly dinky Yarra whilst Eloise made friends with the people at the next table and danced to the ho-hum guitar music being played within.

Having eaten and drunk, eventually we left and sort-of-retraced our steps back the car and drove around the bay to a very crowded beach at Williamstown with chilly water. Eloise and I played tennis whilst everyone else dutifully swam. Good for them.

Another late night for Eloise. Perhaps unsurprisingly the sun again did not set until late, though it took us by surprise again.

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