This is why cameras were invented.

Amen.

Perusing from voxy neighbour to neighbour, I came across the Literal Video version of Total Eclipse of the Heart from here.  Genius!

Having once sent flowers to my sister in law in Texas, I now get reminders from Interflora to send flowers on every possible flower-related day.  This includes things you might expect like Father's Day (not sure about the flowers on that one, but not being one to subscribe to stereotypes, I guess there's no reason why that couldn't work).

You will all be interested, I have no doubt, to know that today is Sweetest Day.  Yes.  That's right.  Sweetest Day.

If any of you are thinking, as I was, a hearty "WTF?!", I bring you this extract from the wikipedia page for Sweetest Day.  As we all know, if it's on wikipedia, it must be true.

Once known as a day to spread love and cheer to the unfortunate, this popular holiday in the northern U.S. is now known as a day to show affection to the loved ones in your life. It is described by Retail Confectioners International as an "occasion which offers all of us an opportunity to remember not only the sick, aged and orphaned, but also friends, relatives and associates whose helpfulness and kindness we have enjoyed."  Sweetest Day has also been referred to as a "concocted promotion" created by the candy industry solely to increase sales of candy.

Sweetest Day a concocted promotion?!  Surely you jest, wikipedia!

Celebrate the special peeps in your life, bloggers.  Send flowers on Sweetest Day.   I will happily provide address details if you message me, and provide your credentials.

but if I were to utter a prayer...
a single song up to the heavens,
it would be transformative.

It would be this.

Lord unchain my hands
let me sing inside the crowded trams
let me dance among the traffic jams
we're going to sleep
on the St Kilda sands

 

Lord unbind my feet
let me mingle with the good people
we meet
water rising up into the street
unbind
my
feet

In musical form,

this makes my spirit break free and run, jump, dance uninhibited.  It reminds me to stop and look. Look at the beauty of the oft unseen.  Hear the rhythm in the chaos and the melody on the wind.  Smell the magic.  Soar in the energy of a teeming mass of people moving and delighting in time, as one.

The Cat Empire are not a serious band, but they are seriously talented.  Only the live shows reveal it.  Recorded, they are fun and silly and brassy and cheeky.  Live they are SO much life and fun, I barely know where to begin. 

Another track for you to enjoy that gives an idea of the ridiculously fantastic brass.

40 +++ degrees C.

Strong, dry winds.

Years' dry timber.

Throughout Victoria, at least 36 49 50 65 106 people have been killed and 640 homes erased.  Destroyed into piles of melted, twisted metal and debris, still glowing with embers red. 

People who were caught by surprise by spot fires tried to escape in their cars and didn't make it.  Burned to the ground in the shells of their vehicles.  The heat and torturous end for those people is incomprehensible.

Thousands of others don't have homes, pets, or in some cases towns to go back to.  Farming communities have lost precious land and even more precious tanks full of water, which disintegrated in the scorching heat.

A southerly change represented by a narrow ribbon of cloud bears the hopes of many.  At best, it is predicted to deliver less than 1mm of rain.

Firefighters are no match for it and all are in the mercy of the weather.

Members of my family left our house hastily this morning upon the news that Peaks Ridge on the Central Coast of NSW, less than 10km from their home, was ablaze and the fire out of control.  They got home safe and so far are not under threat. 

EDIT: They are fine and the fire front seems to be under control.  The focus remains on Victoria.  

At this stage, there is nothing we can do but sit and hope for the best.

EDIT:  The Red Cross and Salvation Army are taking donations - cash is the best help at this point as they are unable to deal with the logistics of equipment donations.  You can go here to donate if you would like to help.  

EDIT (9 Feb, 6.35pm): The number of deaths is now over 131.  I cannot bear to keep updating this number so will do so when the figures have settled. There is a renewed warning for fire danger so it seems Victoria is not yet out of danger. 

Please cross your fingers for those in the troubled areas.  If you are that way inclined, please pray for them.  If you are more mystic, please send white light.  Whatever it is you do, please spare a thought.

Please donate - these people have nothing left and some of them are lucky to have their lives.

I took the day off today.  Before you get too excited for me, it was so that I could drive to Sydney and back to go to a follow up Doctor's appointment.

(The appointment was with a check up with a specialist who is very happy with me and who thinks I am looking great - How very astute.)

The reason for the trip is, incidentally, quite incidental to this blog.

Ever the opportunist, I thought this would be a fantastic chance to do some snappety-snapping on the run and present you a with a photo blog (phlog?) to enjoy.  Some of the photos were taken whilst driving.  As I was alone on this venture, this may cause you some concern.  To relieve you all of worry let me hastily add:

No one was harmed during the shooting of this phlog and there were no near incidents (or actual ones, for that matter).

Now, on with the show.

Let me start by reiterating my undying and ever flourishing love for my car.

My baby turned 30 today.  I'm so proud.  Seems only yesterday when I was eagerly awaiting his delivery.  Those 3 months seemed interminable. And now, look, he's all grown up and flying up the Freeway at 100-and-[mumble,mumble] in 40 degree heat with a temperature guage never wavering from the perfect middle point between hot and cold.
Here's a happy snap of the big 3-0 milestone:

The first bit of the day is unnecessary to detail - let me give you the abridged version:

• Get up late.  Go - argh!
• Drive and get stuck in abomination of road work near airport that has rendered it largely inaccessible - objective achieved, surely?
• Drive
• Drive-drivey-drive-drive
• Driiiiiiiiiive
• Dr is running late (Thank GOD)
• Park
• See Dr for 5 minutes
• Wave good-bye to $120
• Drive
• ooh, lovely Sydney people being all busy-like whilst I'm pottering along being very lah-de-dah
• Arrive at Coogee

I've never explored Coogee before, so I parked The Best Car in the Universe and popped my thongs on (that is, footwear, not underwear - just so we're clear) and sauntered down to the beachfront.Then my toes told me they wanted to go onto the beach and down to the water.  The toes are currently wearing "Vixen" so it's not like I was going to argue with them.  Toes will have their way and, as we all have learnt the hard way at one time or many: Frankly, you don't fuck around with your feet - you follow them.

So I did.

The sand was hot.  Scorching.  Hint: burying your feet as you walk is clever because the sand isn't so hot there.  It's still hot, but it's not molten or anything.

I got to the water and my feet insisted on having a dabble. So I let them.  See how happy they look?

The waves shooshed up the shore and seemed very pleased.

Having pampered to the pedantic peds, I went exploring.  Coogee was most accommodating:


As is my wont, I decided to carve this blog into the sand.  The waves had other ideas.

(Not the whole blog, obviously, just the name.  The whole blog would have taken aaages.)

A seagull looked on contemptuously at my somewhat pathetic and not very thoroughly planned attempt to write my name in the sand.

Seagulls are always contemptuous.

I ventured back up the beach, giving the troublesome tootsies a little shower to rid them of that annoying sand, and walked up the headland.  

I love the beach.  At the beach it's perfectly commonplace to see lots of lovely, fit, semi-naked boys. You also see lots of boobs.  That may explain the ready supply of semi-naked boys.  And really, who doesn't love boobs?

Read more exciting Friday in Photos Phlog action in Part II.

This is part II.  If you haven't seen part I, it's probably because I haven't posted it yet.  Go away (please).  And come back in 10 minutes or so.  You will be richly rewarded.

(I can't promise that, actually.)

Leaving Coogee behind, I drove further north to Clovelly and stumbed (intentionally) upon the Waverley cemetary.

I would not ordinarily describe myself as a morbid person.  That aside, I do love a good cemetary and Waverley is an EXCEPTIONAL cemetary.  It has been there forever.  (Well, not actually forever, but a while and by a while I mean in Australian terms, which translates everywhere else as not very long at all, really.  For us, though, it's kinda old.)

The cemetary tumbles down the headland and overlooks the ocean.  It must be one of the most picturesque cemetaries - and the one with the best ocean breezes. 

I can't imagine any better silver lining to being dead than being interred with the view you will see below.

I entered via a side gate and up a small flight of stone steps.  I disturbed a critter who scampered away and pretended to be invisible.  Invisibility clearly means put your head in the dark and hope the monsters don't notice your tail is hanging out.

The headstones are so incredible and detailed, they take my breath away.  The white marble set against the shocking blue sky is a stunning contrast.

There were a number of family crypts, but this was the most impressive - it's HUGE and ever so slightly gaudy but does yell "Look at me!"

Actually, the idea of the family crypt does weird me out a bit.  I do rather like the concept of families wanting to be laid to rest with their loved ones - that's not my issue.  My issue is that so person number 2, 3, 4, etc... can be laid to rest, person number 1, 2, 3, etc has to be disturbed.  How do they do that, as a logistical thing?  Do the lay them on top of each other?  Some crypts/family spaces are quite small.  Odd.  I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but I'm a sciencey type - how do they actually do it?

Most odd was perhaps the pair of semi-dressed naked boys walking through the grounds.  Actually, no, the most odd thing was that I took a photo of them before wondering whether it was appropriate (a) to be semi-dressed in a cemetary and (b) to be perving on semi-dressed boys in a cemetary.

Cemetaries: a moral quandry.

Here's one more lovely shot of a fence.

I pottered about, drove across to Glebe and was denied lunch at Le Petite Tarte (it was 3.30 and the kitchen had closed, so not entirely unreasonable on their part).  I had a potter around Gleebooks and then decided it was time to be heading home.

1 hour and 20 minutes later, I made it past the outskirts of Sydney.

In the interim:

Note - the temperature outside!  Ouch!

Finally, I cleared the Friday afternoon traffic And it was wheeeeeee all the way down the road.

Until...

Some undisclosed distance before the next service station, I noticed something.

Something bad.

It was introduced by a happy chime from the car, but it wasn't a happy story.

It appears I'd had a lapse in judgement when deciding not to pop into the earlier petrol station.

It's HOT outside... And I'm running out of petrol.

The airconditioning got turned off.

I slowed down (to the speed limit) and lowered the revs down to the 2600 point.

And prayed.

I'm not a religious type, but I figured I'd earned some brownie points visiting the cemetary and now was the time to cash them in.

And I prayed some more.

Finally, from the distance, emerged a Sign.

And I invested some more money

And the car was happy again

I pumped the AC back up, piped up the stereo and sang all the way home.

The end.

Driving home at 9.45pm.

The headlights from oncoming traffic sliced wedges out of the thick, hot air.

Window down an inch.

The acrid tang stung at my nostrils and throat and twinged at my eyes.

Spring was wet.  Thus far, Summer has been too.  All the while the feverish undergrowth has pushed gravity-defiant.  Pushing, surging waves of green across the country. A tsunami of fertility.

Now, the mercury takes flight and soars, like Icarus craving freedom.

The rain is gone, now.

The undergrowth is wilting. The heavy seeded heads upon stalks of dry grass take their toll.  The blades bend, dry, whittle and crack underfoot.

The air is still and it is hot.

Hot.  And dry.

In the air toinght, the smoke seeps in the window and taints and stains.

It's fire season again.  My mind glances back to when a day burned orange, when singed leaves fell like armageddon and the birds deserted us, leaving us with our impotent hoses and prayers of rain.

Oh, let it rain down, down on me.  

So, imagine my surprise tonight when I was flying home from a small regional airport...

Imagine my surprise!

At 6pm, while passengers were still entering the departure lounge, security decided that it was time to go home.  So they cordoned off the x-rays and opened the bypass corridor up.

One man, utterly flumoxed approached the barrier from the departure gate side saying "don't I have to come through there?"

He was met with the reply, "Nah mate, we're done for the day."

Another 4 passengers followed the man, all a little disconcerted.

It's OK, I thought.  Everyone knows that all terrorists have a strict 6pm curfew.

Phew!

It seems to me that the energy invested in a spinning class is entirely wasted.

Newton told us that matter is neither created nor destroyed.  Is this the case for energy also?  And if it is, then why not harness the energy I put into that resistance wheel about 4 times a week?  In fact, why not harness the energy that everyone puts into their resistance wheels every day?

Think of all the active peeps getting up at 5am on a working day across the spinning world, burning fossil fuels to get to their gyms in order that they can be spinning, spinning, spinning and never getting anywhere! 

What a ridiculous waste.

In our push for renewable energy sources, we have looked at wind and waves and gravity's pull on water towards the sea, amongst a number of other things.  My question to you, oh great and wise universe, is this: why aren't spinning bikes hooked up to the grid?!