The whole of Melbourne is currently coated in a thick blanket of smoke. As the CFA fire warnings slip back out of the red and into the blues and yellows, most of the fires that were burning have now been brought under control. The hot still air however has meant the smoke from all these fires has lingered on leaving the city in a chocking haze. I half expected this cloud of smoke to stimulate a massive influx of patients onto the respiratory ward where I work at the Alfred hospital, but fortunately this fear has so far not manifested itself. The Summer months are always a worrying time, with the inevitable grass fires that the hot dry weather triggers. It is especially worrying for us now we live in one of the outer suburbs, where there is so much bush and parkland around us. As always a large number of these fires did not start spontaneously and have been deliberately started by people who obviously have serious mental health issues. One such person, responsible for the fire in Fawkner last weekend has thankfully been apprehended, but there always seems to be a fresh load of budding 'firebugs' ready to replace those that get caught.
Life post holiday has quickly returned to normal and it is already as if the holiday never happened. It is not surprising I suppose, that Barnadi was keen for us to book our next one as soon as possible. So last weekend we took a trip to our old travel agent in Northcote plaza and booked return flights to the UK. While there Barnadi decided we should pop into Telstra, our internet/phone package was about to come to the end of its contract and since we never use our land line apart from receiving cold callers, he figured it may be cheaper just to get internet alone. He was wrong, in fact if we cancelled the phone line our bills would go up by an extra $11, so not surprisingly we kept the phone line. I then wanted to check if maybe bundling our internet with Foxtel (a paid cable TV service) may be a cheaper alternative, it wasn't, but then it wasn't that much more expensive either. So after some deliberation over a free coffee that Telstra provided, it seems bribery does work after all. It didn't take long for us to decided that free to air TV in Australia is so bad it was worth giving it a go, we can afford it, and it is only a year contract, after which we could always cancel it again. Our final stop in Northcote that day was to a shop on the high street called 'the Book Grocer', a café/book shop. Books in Australia, like everything it seems, are disproportionately more expensive here than they are in the rest of the world. A new paper back, for example is likely to set you back around $20. In 'the Book Grocer' however there is not a single book over $10! We splashed out on 3 new books, which should help me through my long daily commutes to and from work. It is always nice to come back to Northcote, it was my first home in Melbourne, and I do miss living there.
That night Barnadi was working, but I wasn't and as the pharmacy in Epping hasn't phoned me to ask if I can do any shifts since before Christmas, I think I can officially say I no longer work there. So free to do as I pleased I joined a group of friends from work in the CBD for a night of Karaoke to celebrate one of the pharmacists' birthday. FM Karaoke on Bourke street takes the form of a small downstairs bar with several rooms upstairs for hire by the hour. The majority of the songs available are Japanese or Korean, and the English songs are typically at least 20 years old. After a slow start while we waited for the Birthday girl to break the ice by choosing her first song, the pace quickly picked up so that by the end of the two hours there were still a lot of unsung songs waiting in the playlist. I joined in a lot of the singing, but my one 'piece de resistance' was going all out on Elton Johns 'Your Song', in the Moulin Rouge style. It may have been a little over the top, but I decided if I was going to sing badly, I may as well go all out rather than settling for the flat monotone adopted by those who can't decided on a key that will allow them to hit the high and low notes and so end up somewhere in the middle.
For our Sunday recovery, Barnadi and I joined a couple of my friends from work, Cameron and Kirsten, down in Richmond for Brunch in a place called Top Paddock. The place was packed and had a waiting list of people to get in, this made Barnadi a little grumpy as it was getting close to 11am and he hadn't eaten yet. The queue moved relatively quickly however and it wasn't too long before we were seated inside. I ordered a dish of white anchovies with egg on sour dough toast, and it was definitely worth the wait, a very tasty if not slightly unorthodox breakfast. On our way home we couldn't resist popping into Pet barn where we purchased a couple of new squeaky toys for Goofy. He'd managed to remove the squeakers from all his old ones. Goofy starts puppy school this week and we are hoping this will help him to calm down. It's a shame there isn't a kitten school for Jessie.
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