Hello? Anybody there? I guess Z & R you both have quite a lot going on in your lives at the moment - family bereavement, starting teaching course, getting the kids back to school, not to mention getting Z's building works finished off so you have the whole house liveable again?

We've just had going back to werk after the winter solstice break, and the minor excitements of the Wards Corner community campaign taking the council to judicial review over their plans, and I'm organising a Seed Swap Sunday on February 22 at Bruce Castle. Lots of weather, none of it good for gardening: freezing over Xmas and the first couple of weeks of January, then sodden rain. This weekend, we had planned a nice bird-watching walk around the local reservoirs to work up an appetite for lunch at The Ferry Boat pub just opposite them (using up discount voucher) -- but given the rain we just walked down to the pub and had the lunch. Did see the brilliant turquoise streak of a kingfisher heading along the channel back of the pub on our way out. And plenty of back garden birds -- we now have goldfinches and chaffinches as regulars at the feeders.

Tonight is Burns Night, dedicated to poet Robbie Burns, so we have haggis to eat for dinner. Cheers and TAGW...

Ice Sculpture

To the allotment for a brief half-hour this afternoon, to replenish the bird feedery but not to do anything else, because the ground is much too hard to dig. As an illustration of just how cold it's been, consider this: the water in both the water tank and the pond on our plot, each of them about two-thirds of a metre deep, has a thick, unbreakable layer of ice on top.

An actual illustration of how cold it's been: this ice sculpture, formed by a thin spray of water leaking from the connecting hose of a water tank on another plot. During the day, the water falls as water; during the night, when the temperature falls below freezing, it creates these interesting blobs and icicles. V cool, eh wot?

Hamish and his buddy (Tom Walker) being flag bearers at the opening of the Australia vs South Africa test cricket match at the WACA before Christmas.

We are now back from our Christmas break in Albany. We had a lovely Christmas and New Year - with the typical amounts of overeating and drinking - and spent just over a week strolling down to the beach each morning, coming home for lunch and a sleep and then playing tennis or on the new "ripsticks" or old skateboard in the afternoon.

We are now back at Perth and I have a couple of weeks until Uni starts. I still haven't finished the enrolment process - which is very involved and complicated - a bit like an initiation test to see if you really deserve to get into Uni after all! Hopefully I will get it all sorted tomorrow.

Bye for now.