Day 111 (Saturday)

Saturday is leisurely breakfast day and today we went in to Broadbeach for a change. M took the short way in and beat us by a good few minutes - which meant she was able to check out some venues. She made a good choice - Alto - and there was something there for each of us - including tepid coffee which is a shame because we'd ordered ''very hot". It's amazing how many places can't or won't do hot coffee - although, luckily lots of places do. And they do wonderfully hot long and short soup as well - which was lunch a few hours later. Of course we did some things in-between including shoe shopping - a little more than planned - I'd already purchased a pair when S sent me off in search of some anklet socks she'd seen. On the way, I fell into another shoe store - and while the attendant was very good she wasn't able to send me out with another pair of shoes - even though I really wanted her to. But I did continue on my way and did find the socks.

Bach of home, there was other stuff to attend to - like a power nap for S, viewing of that classic "Moby Dick" for me. I wonder if I would have been as keen to see it if we hadn't gone whale-watching the other week? I had remembered it quite differently. And wrongly! There was a big white whale and a whaling boat but there were considerable differences - probably too numerous to mention.

There was also, as the evening drew in, cleaning out Hermes' water barrel - it had accumulated a bit of gunk in it, even though it was full - so we had to tip all the water out, scrub the barrel and then refill it. Both Beazley and Tink came out to watch - and Pearl came out to help - because she likes to help wherever the hose and water is involved. And she did a good job, managing to not get totally wet as she helped so we didn't need to towel her down before we let her back inside. M said that had Hermes been out while we were doing it, he would have been very interested to see what was happening. As we could have told M, if Hermes had been out while we were doing it, we probably wouldn't have been doing it!

The swallows are obviously growing - as is the amount of material they are depositing over the side of the nest. We have newspaper spread out below to catch what drops; even though I did read somewhere that some people put tree branches there and then just throw them out. That seems like a very eco-friendly solution except I'd be worried about what else might be getting caught (snakes anyone?) in the dense foliage - and you would need dense foliage otherwise the droppings would fall straight through to the ground.

Maggie is still living above-ground and is spending most of her time on the kitchen table - using one of the Turkish tablecloths M brought back from her travels in faraway places as a bed and pillow combined. The amount of fur she's shed onto it reminds me of David's shirt when she was sleeping on it - but rather than stark white, the cloth has a lovely combination of purple flowers and green edgings.

They talk about the bird kingdom having a pecking order but I never realized I would see it in action - or not understand what it was all about. There are a few juvenile kookaburras around Latimers at the moment and this morning I watched as a willy wagtail started pecking on the back of one of them ... until the kookaburra finally flew away from the fence where it had been perched. There has been more trying-to-peck activity at the swallow nest where it appears there is still a "turf" war.