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This week: I have struggled, nay, soldiered on with a cold. Monday and Tuesday I was the sickest person in the world. If that was a real competition, I'd have been given a trophy. A bronzed box of tissues, say, or a giant perspex lozenge. Thursday and Friday, meanwhile, were wretched filthy hot: aggressive dry furnace heat that knocked you down when you opened the door. I am glad the cold didn't coincide with the hot, else I'd have just had to lay down and die.

Pertinent to both having a sore throat and needing to cool down: I am not a huge fan of frozen ice-creamy things, but these are a treat, f-list. I recommend them for both illness and hot weather.

My mother is a subscriber to the local theatre, and on Thursday night she had two free tickets to the launch of the 2019 season. There will be some interesting shows next year: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Bell Shakespeare, a few small independent plays. She was late booking her tickets for the launch, so we had to sit in row S. Row S, f-list. The ignominy! She was determined not to suffer that fate for 2019, so Friday, my day off, we braved the heat and went back to the theatre to book our tickets for next year's shows. I thought this was very eager of us, but we weren't the only ones. We had to queue.

That done, we headed back outside. In front of the council office was parked a car with fishing rods poking out at various angles, all dangerous. A man in a ranger's uniform was taking photos of it, and he had to step back to let us pass. "Oh, say," he said to my mother, "have you caught that little cat yet?" He, it turned out, was the ranger who had failed to catch Tojo a few weeks ago. My mother filled him in on the Tojo news. "Aw," he said, "that's too bad. He looked like a sweet little fella."

Things I regret doing this week: I saw a knothole in the magnolia tree, a little nub of wood that looked loose, so I poked it. It fell out, followed by a torrent of big shiny ants.

Things I learnt this week #1: Lemon, lime and bitters is an Australian thing. I am genuinely surprised. What does everyone else do when they need "a mildly sophisticated drink that could be served to people of all ages"?

Things I learnt this week #2: A man coughed up a blood clot the shape of his bronchial tree. (He later died. I mean, obviously.)

Targeted advertising update: Thanks to searching for garden products, I've seen less of the hairy chest hoodie this week and more retractable hoses. Also, mysteriously, ads about a man called Josh, who paid too much for his business insurance. Poor Josh.
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This week: The lime tree is at peak lime. This little bowl barely makes a dent in it. At least I won't die of scurvy this year.

It's been a low-key week, this one. Alistair had his annual vaccination from the mobile vet on Friday. At least having a home visit means we don't suffer the collective trauma of taking him anywhere. No hyperventilating and falling to the ground panting. He still had a reaction to the vaccination, though, so it's been a weekend of him lying sadly on the sofa refusing to eat. He is such a drama llama. (As I write, he is grooming for the first time since Friday, so I think he's recovered.)
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Honey is magic. When I had that sore finger a couple of years ago, it improved markedly once I started smothering it with manuka honey. (Of course, that was also after it was cut open, scraped and cauterised, so that might have had something to do with it.)

Early this morning, we picked up the seafood for tomorrow: prawns, calamari, and some smoked salmon instead of scallops ("The boats haven't brought in any scallops for the last couple of weeks," said the fish lady. "I think the season has ended early.") Then home to play with hoses: setting up the hidden hose along the back fence for summer watering, then moving a hose that has just been hanging, unused, along the side fence. I've been meaning to do that for ages. It looks so much better. Then in to look at washing machine specifications. All go, then.

Weekly knitting update: I joined the front and back in the round, and knitted two rows. Not really worth taking a photo.
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I wrote yesterday about Geelong's high tech parking meters, only to open today's paper to discover that the City by the Sea is getting even higher tech ones. Apparently our new meters will link payment to a registration plate, so if I only use 30 minutes of my hourly ticket, I won't be able to pass it to someone else. Boo. That's something I've always liked about our parking lots, people offering their tickets as they leave.

I looked out the kitchen window this morning and saw a little dog dashing about the garden: Chester Next Door, who is not allowed out of his yard. We still don't have a fence between us, but Brian built a temporary, waist-high, dog-proof fence half-way across their lawn. Only not dog-proof, apparently. I called Chester over then picked him up and carried him home, noticing that the not-dog-proof fence had been moved a couple of metres further out.

I said to Kim Next Door, "There's been a breach of the perimeter." She shook her head at Chester, and he looked back, unrepentant.

"I think it will be behind the shed," she said. "He was sniffing around the back of it while I was hanging the clothes out. Did you see Brian moved his little fence? I made him do that because he'd put it in front of the clothesline, so I had to lift the clothes trolley over it to get to the washing line." We tsked at Brian's lack of priorities.
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I haven't done much today, other than make a vast number of small quiches. I cooked all morning. So many quiches. But that's not really enough for an entry, is it?

From the garden, the quiches used: an onion, a lemon off the lemon tree, tarragon, oregano, parsley, and the one spear of asparagus that was growing. It's not prolific, but it's hardy, that asparagus. The garlic isn't ready yet, or I'd have used that too. I've started the summer seeds in my little benchtop hothouse. Will this be the year I successfully grow a watermelon? Only time will tell.

Brian Next Door came round to tell me that a man is coming to look at the fence tomorrow, with a view to building a new one at some point in the future. So I had to move the rubbish bins and assorted behind-the-garage detritus from, well, behind the garage to give him access.

And that was my Very Dull Day.
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A corner of the garden is filled with self-sown love-in-a-mist. All winter I've walked the same path through them. Desire lines, those paths are called, and now the plants have grown tall around it, nearly ready to flower.

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Alistair has walked the same path all winter too, but now the plants are tall enough to hide him, that's where he wants to be, winding his way through the feathery jungle. Tiger in the grass.

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I have eggs! Twelve of them, from last week's runaway hens. The woman and one of the boys brought them round last night to thank us for helping find them.

I also have limes. So many limes. My lime tree has been prolific this year, but I've left the limes on it for too long and now they look like lime-flavoured lemons. So I had lime dressing on my lunchtime salad today and lime marinade on my chicken for dinner and I made some salted lime brownies and took them to work and now I'm about limed out. But I still have limes.

Last Thursday our two youngest staff members organised a team at work to enter a local pub's trivia quiz. I said I'd be part of it while I'm still here. We came third out of seventeen, so that was a good first attempt. But! When he entered the team, Luke the receptionist just used our work's name. So when the quizmaster read out the list of teams we looked at each other in increasing embarrassment as he introduced Table 1 as John Triviolta and Table 2 as Professor Plum in the Library and so on, knowing that Table 11 was going to be Boring Office Name. So today our two young organisers have put their heads together and so this week we are going to be Spongebob Quizpants. We surely can't lose now.
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The time for cucumbers is upon us. I have cucumbers. I have so many cucumbers. So many. So very many. I am running out of people I know to give them to. They have been coming in manageable dribs and drabs over the last couple of weeks, but now they have hit their stride. I picked ten on Saturday and ten on Sunday and there are more to come. My mother is pickling some. She is going to give a jar of them to her friend who has the pickled turnip.

I also have some zucchini. Not as many as I have cucumbers, but a fair number and they are large. They are stealth growers. One day they are fingerlings and the next they are as big as my forearm. I made zucchini brownies yesterday, in a 24x30cm tray (about 9.5x12 inches), which is a fair old size. It's a lot of brownie. The recipe calls for 2 cups of grated zucchini. I thought, yes, that will use up some of my zucchini. Half of one, is what it used. I used the other half to make a zucchini slice, then I had zucchini slice (with cucumber on the side) for lunch, followed by a zucchini brownie.

I have been to see Hidden Figures. It is a solid, respectable film, and I enjoyed it. More than I enjoyed La La Land, which I didn't like as much as I expected to. The story was too flimsy to hold the weight of all the references. For what it's worth, I did like the ending, which many people don't seem to. I saw La La Land with my mother, who loathed it. I could tell from her posture. Outside the cinema, she said, "Halfway through I started thinking, just throw the ring in the fire," which I understood to be a reference to the grudge she still bears about going to see an early morning screening of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King straight after she finished a ten-hour night shift (her idea). Heaven help Elijah Wood if he ever meets my mother, because she has some stern words for him about all the time he wasted, and I quote, "farting about instead of climbing that mountain".
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I hate myself for clicking on click bait. I am impervious to What the Cast of [Insert Show] Looks Like Now Will Amaze You, but I saw one today promising to tell me The Unconventional Appliance Housewives Love. Ooh! What could it be? Click here to replicate my experience of disappointment )

Tuesday's random reviews:

10:25 – Buying fresh fish – ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
And other thrill-a-minute activities )

Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow I have actual plans, so that should throw up something more interesting.

We're supposed to be able to see an aurora tonight. Fingers crossed.
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I went for my usual Sunday walk at the beach this morning, and found it coincided with the monthly farmers' market. I bought some organic cucumber seeds, but I am not allowed to plant them for another month. The woman I bought them from was most insistent about that.

These last few days there has been much coverage here about a news story. I say news story, but it is more of a news hint. The news is teasing us with the palest wash of watercolour of a story about something that happened. Something happened, but no-one knows what or why. Does that sound vague? Honestly, it's no less vague than the actual story. What to make of that?

Knitting! The second sleeve continues )
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What I like about the Olympics are those moments when they have a wall of screens showing people paddling and running and fencing and playing volleyball. Or when they finish a race, then go straight to the action in the table tennis or the judo. Just the idea of all those people doing things in a relatively small area, and none of them me.

No knitting photo again this week. My cast on row from last week remains on the needle, untouched.

What have I done this week instead of knitting? First, I had a cold. Not a bad cold, but a lengthy one. I didn't have a sandpaper throat, for example, but I had a slightly dry throat for about four days. My nose hasn't been particularly blocked, but it's been sniffly for days on end. It's an irritating sort of illness.

Second, this week my decision to resign was made public. That's been quite draining. I feel a bit like the proverbial frog that can jump out of hot water water but doesn't notice cold water coming to a slow boil; I am good at identifying sudden onsets of the glooms, but this time they have been descending so gradually I didn't realise. It's only now I look around and find I'm shrouded in clouds. Anyway, my boss asked me to give it a week to really think about it, which I did and came to the same conclusion. So he sent the email out. It began with "I am deeply saddened" and ended with "she will be much missed". I was tempted to Reply All with "I'm not actually dead!"

After that, I received many kind emails. My favourite was from Doctor E, our very posh English doctor, aged 72. He is a leading light in his town's amateur dramatic society and he is lovely. He sent me the first verse of Byron's "She Walks In Beauty" with the subject line "I am distraught !" I will miss Doctor E.

Since there is no knitting photo this week, here is a selection from the garden. Colour! )
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I haven't mentioned them since the day I was caught in them, but the City by the Sea's surprise! roadworks continue apace. They are digging up and resurfacing every second corner in the CBD, so everywhere you turn, there they are. Luckily I now have a housemate/landlady/mother willing to drive me to work, so I haven't had to worry about it. Because I haven't needed to park anywhere, I haven't been into any car parks until I cut through one on foot today, and lo! they've dug that up too. I suppose it's one way to get cars off the road.

I noticed an unusual bee in the garden the other day. It was rounder than a normal honey bee, and it was black and white instead of the usual black and yellow. I didn't know if I had just discovered some sort of nasty invader, so I looked it up. Happily, it's not a nasty invader; it's a perfectly good native bee known as a blue-banded bee. It seems like whoever named them missed a perfectly good chance to call them the White Stripes, but maybe the band wasn't invented when the bees were named.

This week I have been to the cinema to see The Dressmaker. It is a film that asks the viewer to believe that Liam Hemsworth (b. 1990) is older than Kate Winslet (b. 1975), which was a bit of a stretch, but other than that it was a delight. An all-over-the-place delight. It was a sort of western, in which a stranger rides into town and makes dresses... for REVENGE. So that was fun.

If you are looking for something to listen to today (from 9 to 9, London-time), f-list, may I point you in the direction of a live streamed reading of The Odyssey by a company of highly respected British thespians? (Back in August, they did the same for The Iliad, which is also still available.)
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I found my poor little living stone uprooted and thrown on the ground when I came home yesterday. Hmph. It lives on the patio, under the kitchen window, so it wasn't the wind. I blamed the baby magpie, which has been running around tugging at seedlings in the vegetable garden. It doesn't come close to the house that I've seen, but who knows what mischief it gets up to when I'm not here to see?

When I opened the door this morning, though, while the living stone was fine, the potted plant next to it was on the ground, still in its pot. Also, one door of the cabinet of garden tools the plants sit on was open. That suggests something more dexterous than a bird, doesn't it? Perhaps I've got a possum.

My mother went to her annual quilt camp last weekend and returned with a new laptop bag (this pattern) for me.

New bag )
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Hello, f-list. Here is a fun game: what is your name an acronym for? I think mine is Amiable Llamas Ice Cakes In Attics.

I had an eye check-up yesterday. My eye pressure is officially excellent, so well done, eyes. On the other hand, they managed to get a little bit more myopic in the last two years, so I need new lenses. I'm also getting new frames. The list she has to give the frame demonstration lady is very long. They can't be: too wide, too high, too round, too large, too thin, too far away from my eyes, or rimless. Or red, although that's my own rule, having tried on several pairs that made me look like a tomato. In the end, I think this pair passed muster, although I can't be certain. I remember them as having a stronger turquoisey-aqua colour for the accent.

The optometrist was prepared with brochures about contact lenses and laser surgery. Apparently contact lens technology has moved on since I last tried them twenty years ago, and they might not irritate as much as they did. Also, laser surgery has definitely moved on, because it wasn't even an option for me twenty years ago. I said I'd think about them, and I did, briefly. But I like wearing glasses, even if there are only about five pairs in the shop that I am allowed to try on, so I discarded the idea very quickly. Maybe one day.

Also yesterday, I ate my first ever asparagus spear. I mean, not the first one I've ever eaten. The first one I've ever grown. Three years I've been waiting for that spear. Maybe next year, it will grow two spears, so I can share with a friend.

November books read

* Threads of Deceit - Mae Fox & Jan Fields (2014)
Read more... )

* Castle Waiting: Volume II - Linda Medley (2013)
Read more... )
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There used to be a wonderful blog about terrible knitting patterns. I mean terrible knitting patterns. So terrible you wondered what was wrong with the designer. What trauma had so badly afflicted that poor person, and why could it only be expressed in wool? Sadly, that blog is no more. Some of those terrible patterns appear in this slideshow , though, so we can all still savour them. Dear me, that balaclava.

I bought a new lawnmower over the weekend. That is the sum total of excitement happening here right now. Well, no. The excitement was probably when the blade sheared itself off the bottom of the old lawnmower, thus rendering it completely cactus, as they say. But I never liked the old lawnmower, so I wasn't terribly saddened by its loss. It was an electric lawnmower I inherited from my mother, and I did not enjoy being constrained by an extension cord. It was like mowing on a leash. Sometimes you just want to run free with your lawnmower, you know? My new mower is battery-operated and it looks like it's made of Lego, but it can do my lawn and the strip out the front and still have some charge left in the battery, and that's all I ask.
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This weekend I pulled out what was left of the summer vegetable garden. By popular demand (well, one person), here is a photo of my final haul:

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That's thirteen white eggplants, a handful of chillies, seven normal-sized capsicums and about 300 dwarf capsicums. That's only the last of them, remember. I'd already picked about that many, if not more. I've kept a handful, but, really, I'm about capsicummed out. My mother took what she wanted plus a few for her neighbour. I took the rest to work in a big bag and told my colleagues to have at it. So that's the end of them.

While I'm messing about with photos: Mushrooms and slippers )

Myki ('my key') is the ticketing system for Melbourne's public transport. I don't usually have to bother about it down here in the faraway City by the Sea, because a day's travel on Melbourne trains, trams and buses is included on a regional return train ticket, and that's more than I ever need. Anyway, I had to look up something today, and found this as one of their website's FAQ:

5. Can I use the myki money on my myki card to pay for my myki pass?
You can use the myki money on your myki to pay for a myki pass at a myki machine.


I don't know. I think they could have squeezed the word myki in at least a couple more times.
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Hey-ho, f-list. I keep thinking that I should write something, but I have done nothing to write about. Nothing at all.

I am writing another essay. Another essay, because apparently you have to write more than one. Who knew?

I was always impressed by people who could just whip up an essay the night before it was due. I could never do that. I find writing essays so hard. I have to start weeks before hand and set myself a daily word limit and stick to it. And I do, but every word is a battle. Which is ridiculous, because I find it very easy to prattle on here. Not quite the same, I suppose.

What else? My dwarf capsicums have gone mad. I could open a shop called Crazy Daisy's Discount Capsicum Emporium, I have so many of them. Mostly green, some red and some that I think are trying to turn purple. Also a couple of plants of normal-sized capsicums and green chillies, neither of which I planted. They just appeared from nowhere, wanting to take part in what was obviously a Good Summer for nightshades. I like a dwarf capsicum. I mean, obviously, that's why I planted them. I can pick one in the morning and slice it into a wrap for lunch. But I've got so many of them that it would take me months to eat them one at a time, not that they'd keep that long. So I roasted and marinated some this weekend, and I still had a bucketful (with as many left on the plants), so I took them to work. They're someone else's problem now. Come and visit me. I'll send you home with a capsicum. And maybe a white eggplant, because there are a lot of them as well.

Here is an article that could also be called Science done by people who have never met a cat.
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I got my essay back. I've been feeling slightly sick about it since I submitted it, but look at me now with my High Distinction for a 'highly engaging read with outstanding critical analysis'. The next one is coming up and I expect I'll be all cocky about it after this, only to plummet to my doom like Icarus, if Icarus's problem was that he was a bit blasé about writing essays on organisational design rather than flying too close to the sun.

I finally got round to getting my mushroom boxes for the autumn. I've got two boxes of Swiss browns, which have always grown best for me. That was all I was going to get, but this year they had golden oyster mushrooms to grow too. I've never even tried them before (neither to grow nor eat), so I've got them too. I was slightly tempted by the pink oysters too. They're so... pink. Maybe next year.
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I walked past an inspirational poster this morning:

You Don’t Need to Know How to Do It. You Just Need to Start.

Is that really a good thing to tell enthusiastic young doctors? You don't need to know how to do brain surgery! Just open it up and have a go.

I bought a new broom this weekend. I know, my thrilling life. My old one was ancient. It was made of twigs it was so old. So I splashed out on a new one and I don't like it. It's a bit too... enthusiastic. I give one little push on the broom and the dirt goes skittering to the other side of the room. It took me ages to get it all into one little pile. So that will be good exercise, if nothing else.

Also this weekend, I went to the local art society's annual show. They have a member who is two letters away from being my namesake. Same first name, surname starts the same but has a different ending. I'd forgotten about her until I saw her entry. Last time I went she'd painted a fantasy picture of a dominatrix on a carousel horse, or some such. This time she painted a pair of doves. Much less exciting.

And I finally got round to transplanting a yucca that had grown too big for its pot. It's been too top-heavy for ages; a slight breeze knocks it over, and we've had more than a slight breeze the last couple of weeks. So I decided it was time to take it out of the pot. My first thought was for it to swap pots with the bay tree, which is in a tub that is too big for it. Except I couldn't get the yucca out without breaking its pot, so I left the bay tree where it was and decided to put the yucca in the ground. So I dug a hole, dragged the yucca over to it and set to work loosening the ball of roots.

Then I realised that the roots had grown through the circle of mesh that had been on the bottom of the pot. I couldn't pull it out, so I found my little axe and started hacking away at it to no great effect. That drew the attention of Brian Next Door, who is a professional gardener. He said, 'Hang on, I know what to do,' and disappeared. He came round a few minutes later with a large, sharp knife that sliced the roots like butter. I said something about professional garden tools being useful, and he said, 'No, this is Kim's good kitchen knife. Always handy in the garden as long as I wash it before she gets home.'
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Last year I bought some cat thyme. I thought it might be a little treat for Percy. Was it ever. Even one little leaf of it turns him into a wild-eyed, tree-climbing loon. Potent stuff.

Because it was so tiny, I put it in a little terracotta pot and put it on top of the washing machine (which gets the sun) for a few days. Percy doesn't spend any time in the laundry as a general rule, but he knew that poor little plant was there. I spent a weekend lifting him off the washing machine and repotting the plant where he'd pulled it out. Monday morning, I thought, I can't leave him alone in the house with it, so I moved it outside. And moved it when he found it again. And moved it again. I finally found somewhere safe for it by hiding the terracotta pot in the middle of an overgrown parsley plant, and it has spent a few months recovering.

It rained heavily yesterday, so I brought all my little pot-plants in under the patio, including the cat thyme. This morning, it is on the ground, the pot is shattered and the plant is chewed. I can't blame Percy this time, because he was asleep on my foot all night, although he did work himself into a sniffing and rolling frenzy in the dirt when I was trying to re-pot the plant this morning. Poor little plant. So potent it lures passing cats in the night.

What else? Oh, television. My mother and John were in for dinner last night. My mother generally limits her television viewing to things that have the words 'Midsomer' and 'Murders' in the title, but every now and then she will get sucked in to watching something else. Right now it is a terrible, terrible show called A Place to Call Home. Even she says it's terrible, but she can't stop, and she made me watch it last night too. And it was terrible, yet weirdly addictive. It's set in rural Australia in the 1950s, about a wealthy family whose troubles are almost entirely of their own making and who talk in some of the most stilted dialogue I've ever heard. The most sympathetic characters were Gay Grandson and English Wife*, who wants to get away from the family (I hear you, English Wife); he doesn't want to leave the family home, but then he finds himself attracted to Hunky Farmhand who likes to lift bales of hay while not wearing a shirt, so he agrees to move away to avoid cheating on his wife. So she says, 'Let's go to Sydney!' and he's all, good idea, there won't be any hunky men there! I feel there is a flaw in this plan. But those were the two characters I liked most, so I will cut them some slack.

The worst characters were the two lady villains, who were villainous for very low stakes. These were not villains that you could watch and say, 'Oh, good point, lady villain, I admire your magnificent style.' One was annoying, the other one was horrible. The annoying one was the family matriarch, Controlling Biddy. She seems to be against anything she doesn't think of first. She was clearly meant to be impressive, but she was just a pest. She was more impressive than the other lady villain, though, who is some sort of old friend staying with the family. She wants to marry Widowed Son against Controlling Biddy's wishes, although Controlling Biddy is also against Widowed Son's relationship with Nice Nurse, the woman he is in love with. Now, a different, more subtle, show would make this an interesting development: will he marry Family Friend, or Nice Nurse? This is not that show. No. Nice Nurse is a Holocaust survivor; Family Friend marches right up to her and spews out an anti-Semitic diatribe, leaving us in no doubt as to whose side we should be on. It ended with Controlling Biddy telling Widowed Son that she would change her will to disinherit him and leave everything to Gay Grandson if he doesn't break up with Nice Nurse. He immediately rushed to the hospital to find Nice Nurse and asked her to marry him. Cliffhanger! (Actually, now I think about it, Widowed Son and Nice Nurse were also sympathetic characters; I think I was more drawn to Gay Grandson and English Wife because they didn't spend any time with Controlling Biddy and Family Friend.)

Also, all the male characters on this show looked alike. Widowed Son and Gay Grandson are meant to be father and son, so that's good casting, but Hunky Farmhand, Alcoholic Doctor and Italian Neighbour all looked like them too. It was as though a plague of chin dimples swept across rural Australia, and no man was safe.





* I didn't understand why Gay Grandson is married to English Wife, but my mother said that Controlling Biddy forced him to marry her (English Wife) when she (Controlling Biddy) realised that he was in love with English Wife's brother. English Wife only found out about this after the wedding.

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