If you can't take the heat...

Stay out of the car...

It's been a busy few days, and I've battled to find time for the blog, family, a little work, a lot of cooking. So the Blog has suffered. Anyway, there is a minor lull now so some catch-up. James and Alanna arrived, got whisked to Scottish dancing after a trivial 48 hours awake. It's a great help for dancing. I had pot-roasted some roo-shank which came out very well, tender and rather like a cross between an ostrich and a turkey drumstick in appearance. The next day as the weather had played ball with us, had me taking them some morning fishing at Fotheringate, with rather a lot of wrasse to carry back, a quick stop at Trousers point,


home, a very hurried roll, and kids and dive gear in ute and off to Cave beach for a low tide dive. This a was very disapointing as a dive (murky water) but wonderful as an excercise in bondage, or at least getting into wetsuits. Alanna had never used a snorkel before so it is plain that women are not trained how to be in trouble, as us men are, where we learn to use snorkels from a very early age, or perish miserably. I had not been aware, previously of this lack. (I guess I've been using a snorkel (both to dive and survive) for so long I'd forgotten how intimidating it is to breath face under water. She did get it though, although it was a cold and not very exciting learning curve. Still, clare discovered the joy of built-in hoods on wetsuits, so some good came of it. Then I had to rush about and make pizza, before the board-game evening. As Alanna comes from little land-locked Zimbabwe it was a chance to try her on some of the topping seafoods as well as a An opportunity to try (as an entrée) some of the large South Australia prawns we got from Alan and Annie. I'd rate them every bit as good as Mozambique prawns (in Moz, fresh), if not better. Our little tryer didn't like squide tentacle much but thought Abalone was quite nice, a bit like chicken ;-). Heh. Terry Pratchett is so right (everything tastes a bit like chicken if you are hungry enough). Then we went out into the wilds of Whitemark, clubbing... well, to play board-games at the CWA rooms. It's much the same thing really, just clubbing is quieter. We played Cranium. Some people do not know what country Mecca is in... ;-).

Then Saturday we went off fishing off East Kangaroo, and Alanna had her first experience of catching flathead and getting soaked. Us getting soaked and not the flathead, which were moderately recalcitrant, but we got a few.


So we had some tea on the beach admired the pelicans who were so much better at fishing than we were,


and we came home to do dinner for 13... Well, we only had to do starters. It was one of those quiet demure evenings, as you can imagine.

This morning we had to trundle the mob to church in Lady Barron, and Alanna started feeling sick (no, really, nothing to do with the sermon) so B ran her home in Peter's van... and turned around and had it overheat in great glurbering clouds of steam - in the cab as it's a van, and hence B had to stop and vacate.(Hence the title). So we had to mount a rescue, and later Bill and I went out to examine. With added water it drove fine, getting to mid-range on the gauge as we got home. Unfortunately it was gurgling when we got home and Bill opened it up... And despite the cloth... it erupted, a lot hotter than the gauge indicated And it's a van. ie inside the cab...

I think we have a head-gasket problem at best. And the way I work: you borrow it and break it, you fix it or replace it.

Heh. My life does seem to move from one expensive chaos and disaster to the next... Ah well. Onward!