More Internet Hassles

Well, James spent 6 hours fighting bigpuddle - the world's worst internet provider - into doing 3 minute job last night. We're online again as a result. Sadly that - and telstra are what we have to have here. I just don't get this company - surely hiring half a dozen competent techs would be a lot cheaper than outsourcing to somewhere - where I suspect they pay peanuts - but the job takes 200 times as long as need be?

Pads and Clare flew back to the UK yesterday - should nearly be there by now. It was a close run thing as the plane was delayed in Lonnie, and they only had two and half hours... before the delay. Anyway, they scraped in, and all is well that ends well. We miss them already.

The wind is really roaring and howling and shrieking today (just as well they're not flying now) and we - Barbs and I fly tomorrow. Barbs is going to a Scottish Dancing workshop/course near Shepparton tomorrow, along with the wife of one of the local pilots. I'm going for the ride, and to keep the pilot company flying back... weather permitting. Right now, it isn't. This morning it REALLY wasn't. We had hail - enough to make a white shroud across the ground. It dropped the temperature by about 5 degrees in five minutes - I am very glad I wasn't fish farming any more, or keeping angora goats.

I've rigged an old infra-red light to try and warm the potting soil so I can get some melons and watermelon to germinate - with a short warm growing season here, getting them up, big and going fast is vital. I'll transplant them into my hot-boxes - via Jody-suggestion I have made some small portable 'cold-frames' which I can move very easily. I hope this way I can get them to a reasonable size before summer starts. I've also filled our next planting tank with old sheep manure and soil from the shearing yards. If the hot-system works the capsicums will be next.

Oh, we have had our first artichoke, and first few asparagus (I'm only cropping off our 3 year old crowns - but the rest are growing vigorously.

It all comes down to distances

Well, the boys flew out this evening, starting the long trek back to South Africa. They're young at Uni and have more to find in life than a remote island can offer at this stage. But I miss them. Savagely, already. That's the one down side about being here. We have moved far from all the aspects of SA I don't miss - from the taxis to the vuvus. But we're also far from many people I hold very dear. Anyway, we still have Clare for a bit. I'm really not used to having a semi-daughter (possibly) around the place, although I know fate if had given me a daughter she'd have been like those silly tittiping women in high-heels and impractical skirts with the flutes of champagne and the half-eaten salad, complete with inane giggling and the vapid discussion of fashion, shoes and their boyfriends' jobs in banking, from the next table up in Hobart. Shudder. I am sure the world needs them for something (and yes I eavesdrop, and watch people. Writers need to) but I am very very glad Pad's tastes run to someone who can climb, dive and weild a spear :-) and who doesn't run to impractical skirts - and to whom shoe shopping is not a thing of joy.

The boys took along a good solid loaf of my oat and ginger dwarf-bread, for fighting off muggers and clubbing rats with in big bad Lonnie. There was no room in their bags so it flew across on James's lap - which at the Island News dinner brought up the subject of various cakes - including a wedding cake that have flown across the same way -- It can be a bumpy flight... I had this mental image of several tiers of cake swaying their way through the turbulent cumulous, and was very sad to find it flew in sections. Where is their sense of adventure!?