More of a diary entry today. There is a half-sized blue-tongued lizard living by the back stairs. These are very calm

Steve's koala checking for any chewy bits

creatures and I have handled it a few times moving it from a spot it had been sunning itself to a spot where it wasn’t under the wheels of the scooter.

The Butcher Bird has started coming to the feeding table outside the door and doing the maddest series of cackles and whistles to get my attention so I know he is there to get a bit of sausage. (I have named him Cackleberry) He sings to me in the morning right outside the window at about 6:30 am then again at about midday and later just on dusk. If I whistle to him he will copy the whistle in quite a pretty little voice and this bird is said to be one of the most beautiful singing voices on earth and when he lets that side of him rip it is amazing. I feel privileged when he sings back to me.

The Magpies do that stuff half an hour to an hour earlier. The problem with the Magpies is the volume. Two or three of them pounce on the little bits of sausage I leave for them in the morning and warble to tell me they are there right outside the neighbors windows. The noise is loud enough to shake the glass in the window sills and can be heard for a kilometer or more. My neighbors have never said anything so I suspect they are like me and consider the bird calls one of the treasures in life.

Amazing place. There are maybe a few different types of owl hunting the little critters that come at night to eat the bird seed. So far there are not many things eating the bird seed and I will have to keep an eye out and stop feeding if anything looks like rodents

My brother would have been fifty on the 28th of this month.  I guess this a feature of living into middle age, this sense of loss.

My built-up boots have been at the boot makers in Toukley for a few weeks but I haven’t been well enough to go over and get them.

I am taking the grim stuff out of the blog although there is a lot still to be dealt with. One of the delights (sarcasm!) of depressive illnesses is going back over old writings you had a good feeling about only to find you were wallowing in self-pity like somebody’s demented Aunt Dorothy so I am going back and fixing it bit by bit.