Diary for the day of the Winter Solstice

Diary for a Day - the Winter Solstice in Geelong.

THE TRIVIA OF DAILY LIFE

12.15 a.m. listen to the quiz on ABC radio 774.  Panadol pills  taken at  10 p.m. not working.

Get up and fix a hot water bottle and apply Deep Heat.  Turn on lounge room heater (where clothes are drying anyway)  and warm up old bones.

4 a.m. Awake again and on  internet to read Fiji media news, Age and Addie. Make cup of tea.

6 a.m. Listen to the radio FM  3MP Classical.

7.30 Sun is at last coming up – today is Winter Solstice. Feed guinea pigs with Dutch carrots and celery.

8. Make porridge from  muesli and say gooday to family.

 9.  Look up candidates for Corio, etc. check out a few parties not known.  Justice for Animals looks okay and of course Greens.

10. A friend brings a gift of vegetables and fruit. We are very grateful.

10 30 a.m. Go to early voting  in Yarra Street and take walking stick.  Only six in the queue.  Peceli’s name not listed so someone has told him about his passing.  Senate ballot paper is huge – as wide as a car.  Walk to Dimmeys and buy black tights and seven Rio in brilliant colours.  On the way back Andrew puts recycle bin back at church. The sun is shining, the sea is silver and the Youyangs float in a dream.

Make hot milk coffee the way my mother used to make it, with toast.

As it’s a bit sunny, put guinea pigs onto front lawn to eat grass blade by blade on the edges where the lawn-mover didn’t reach – for twenty minutes but it gets cold.  They are still hungry so give them the seed stuff from the Pet Shop. They nibble on the lot.

1 p.m. Watch old movie on Gem – comedy but rather ordinary, not like the brilliant ‘Passage to India’ that I watched at the weekend.

1. 30 Make lunch for Andrew and  me with baked beans, peppers, onions, and leftover potato.

2 p.m. Check email and facebook again and  delete several files on stick, write some comments, and  post old story found on stick. The Divided House. Cannot find the image of Rick Amor's painting.

Bring guinea pigs inside in a box, to be near the heater, put Vitamin E skin lotion of Darryn’s itchy back.

4 p.m. Two grandsons call in for their laptop and mail. They’d been to an orientation at a factory to start work tomorrow.

5 p.m.  Take flowers to cemetery, tidy Peceli’s grave and  say a prayer. It is freezing cold – from  the Antarctic it seems. It is Peceli’s official (birth certificate) birthday though we’ve celebrated  it in July for 49 years. So next month we’ll have some kava on July 21.

5.15  to 6  p.m.  Watch ‘Murder she wrote’ on TV, and  then  news.  Exercises for ankles and  knees from rocking chair.

6 p.m. Bones aching so take Panadol pills.

7 p.m. Andrew prepares dinner for three with ribbons of pasta and mince steak.cooked with spinach, ginger, onions, and chillie pepper.

Watch ABC news.

8 p.m. Tuck guinea pigs in for the night by covering puppy pen with blankets.

Watch the countdown 20 to 1 on Australian movie actors.
Watch Britain's got talent.
10 p.m. Wash the dishes and tidy the kitchen, eat a mandarin, then to bed with radio tuned to 3MP Classical music.
Read from 'The Message' some pages from Proverbs.