Day 2 of 5 on KI

8am

Although awoken numerous times by numerous sounds throughout the night (including starlings in the guttering, rain on the roof and car-hoons driving up the hill), I managed to sleep soundly.

With rain still pouring down, we’re heading back to the old house to retrieve up to 6 car loads of cra… leftovers.

Yep, it’s pouring down out there, pissing down cats & dogs , yet I’m forced to … Wait a moment. I’m a guest, I’m on holiday, I’m … I’m going to help out now. My wife has promised many nice things based upon my input.

8.16am

Instructions as follows:

(1) Endure FIL on drive to old farm; (2) Take lots of photographs for my Redbubble, Flickr & LostBunyip galleries; (3) Be nice when he asks silly questions.

I reckon I can handle that much work.

I’m expecting the rewards to have both automatic & manual focusing rings, yet I bet they’ll be made of chocolate. (By which I mean that my 40th Birthday cake will look like a DSLR & lens!)

11am

We all spent the first half of the morning packing many boxes with package-food & condiments, crockery & cupboards, bed sheets & shed-tools.

Then the father-in-law and I drove a van-load to the new house. Somehow I survived and we returned back to his old house to find the ladies still sorting thru 50yrs of Tupperware. What an amazing assortment of translucent & multicoloured plastic!

Someone mentioned burning excess rubbish and old cupboards. Within moments, the pyromaniac within me reared his ugly head! After tipping an old cupboard end-over-end around to a suitable location, we lit a match to petrol-soaked paper. Yeaaah!

An assortment of burnable products – an old fax machine, a bed-head, old leather shoes, kitchen utensils, bags of unopened junk-mail, petrol-soaked pygamas, plus anything we found not tied down – all made their to the centre of the flames, producing thick black smoke. Turns out the old man loves burning stuff as much as I do!

When we finally ran out of burnables, I vacuumed all the rooms, washed the outside of every window – including the back of his van!

5.30pm

All over. Finally we transported the last three car loads with the remaining crap to the new house.

As I sit here tapping this diary entry into my Apple Touch, SWMBO and her mother are filling every conceivable drawer & cupboard with the food, plasticware and utensils.

I’ve smartly decided that the kitchen is their domain. Yep, I love this new house. More to write after I feel refreshed & revived.

8.45pm

Just finished discussing with my father-in-law the features of my tiny hand-held computer. Despite having seen me tap furiously upon it several times a day, he still hadn’t known nor realised. Now he is both impressed and staggered by the advancements of technology.

This discussion was followed by the virtues of reading ‘The Australian’ for a fuller and non-biased view of the world, rather than only ‘The Advertiser’ which only shows him a 1-sided view of the politics, people and prejudices around Australia. Yes, of course, he didn’t agree nor wanted to know the truth. Sad.

He’s gone off to help finish unpacking with the ladies. Sigh. I guess I should also help.

Tomorrow I plan to visit the nearby beach and harbour for land and water scape shots to display in my galleries.