“People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.” ~Leo J. Burke

So by way of congratulations to my favourite brother and his favourite wife, on the occasion of the arrival of their daughter Erin, my new favourite niece, I offer a photograph of the other newborns we're following, the puppies from up the road.

I can't remember their names, but Eloise can.

Their growth has been prodigious.

You may have heard on the news, if you listen to news that's international in nature, that it's been raining cats and dogs in these parts, and that the floods are back in Queensland.

Not in this part, thankfully, though it did rain for a week and the Kedron Brook Floodway was once again living up to its name for a while. But no flooding here, unlike inland around Roma, Mitchell and suchlike places where inundation has been widespread.

Here, the sun is out again, and it has been hot. The Queensland Ladies call it "disgusting" when it gets a bit hot and humid, as though the Sunshine State is somehow treacherous in its delivery of summer.

The sweating aside, I kind of liked it.

Eloise was complaining about the heat on our walk today, and suggested we should air condition throughout the house. We looked on it as an exercise in mathematical education, and though she arrived at some good answers, I can't help but think that the essence of the argument escaped her.

Ironically, she was complaining of being cold later on as we perused the Aisles of Crappy Part Favours in Spotlight in the air-conditioned warehouse of household cheapery.

Nicole and I have taken up swimming whilst Eloise is doing after-school stuff. On a Monday she has a swimming lesson and we take the opportunity for a half-hour swim.

She's doing dancing three times a week now, and two of those are ninety-minute sessions so away we go to the pool and get in a quick bit of up-and-down.

A year ago I would have been, and indeed was, dismissive of the practice of swimming up and down a swimming pool, but now I'm doing it, I find it kind of meditative to watch the bottom of the pool sliding downwards and listen to the sound of bubbles rushing past the ears.

And it's nice to be outdoors doing it in a fifty-metre pool in the sun at a nice relaxed place while the nutty kids in Squad Training go hell-for-leather in the rest of the pool.

I might even start to get a little bit fit and healthy. Underweightness possibly beckons.