Lunch at Augusta. I look worried, but I assure you I’m very happy.

I’m back to being alone in my house, and it seems so quiet and a bit lonely. What a change in my life! I never expected to feel like this. I just want to get back together as soon as I can. I’ll be going to Bali in the next two weeks and I’m happy to see that Air Asia fares are very low, $182 return! at the moment. There’s gotta be a catch.

I’ll try to arrange a Social visa for 60 days this time, but I need an Indonesian sponsor. Yudhie, where are you? I need you. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. 🙂

The villa near Lovina has been arranged by my love, available to October at least. Sounds good, all on one level, few steps, it has a pool and is within sight of the sea. Lovely.

We’re also booked into a hotel in Ubud in October for the Ubud Writers’ Festival. Wow. I would never have done that if I’d been on my own. I look forward to it. That’s thinking ahead.

Hmmm, I’ll have to arrange a postal vote for the coming federal election, too, if it’s ever announced. It seems to be set for 2 July, but Mr Turncoat seems to be dangling us all on a string. Bah!

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My grazed knees and right elbow are healing with the assistance of an antibiotic cream prescribed by the doctor for a different small wound. She doesn’t know about my two falls yet. I need these wounds healed before I go to Bali, if possible, because I don’t want to risk picking up bugs up there.

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Here’s an unusual beer I found yesterday. Ferran Adria is/was the head chef at the El Bulli restaurant in Spain, voted the best in the world at least twice. He’s closed it and moved on to beer brewing, by the look of it. The price was $22 for a 6 pack, not too expensive.

I’ve had one and it was nice, but my sense of taste is not so good, being affected by my cold and the cough lozenges I’ve been sucking. I’ll reserve judgement for another day.

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The taste of drinks was also a bone of contention last week. We were walking in Fremantle and stopped for a glass of wine on the cappucino strip, as the call it. I ordered a riesling as usual, as I want a very dry white.

Well, as soon as I tasted my $8.50 glass, I screwed up my face and almost spat it back. Sweet! Far too sweet. I couldn’t drink it. We protested and the barman showed us the bottle, clearly marked Frankland River riesling, so he wasn’t too keen to change it. We compromised with a glass of my love’s rosé, which was nice.

Last night I bought two bottles of riesling, and the first one I tried, Two Churches, was very nicely dry, not sweet at all, just as I expect riesling to be. So what’s going on? Is there no standard for riesling? How can we know what we’re getting if there’s such a wide variance in sweet/dry tastes? I guess I’d beter stick to chardy in bars in future.

However, what a nice change in the laws in this state, that we can buy a glass of wine on a weekday afternoon and sit out at a table on the pavement, with no requirement to buy food with it. How civilised, at last.

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What a change in the weather! Monday, 25 April, Anzac Day, marked the switch from summer to winter. For the two weeks that my love was here, we had balmy 25-29C days, warm enough to sit outside for meals, even at night. Now, I had to put the quilt back on the bed. Brrrr. Winter’s here.

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Here’s a strange visitor. It was on my lampshade next to my bed. At first I thought it was a mosquito, going by the legs, but I think it’s some kind of moth. The antennae seem to be folded back against the body, and what a strange upturned body. This is a Sony phone camera picture, by the way, cropped and enhanced, of course.

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Hallelujah, something’s changed in the DAB+ digital radio signal strength in this area. Some months ago the fading (low signal strength) was so bad that just shifting my position in my bed was enough to make my bedside radio fade out.

But now it’s not fading at all, and I can even bring the radio into the bathroom, whereas reception was impossible in there before. Something’s changed. I hope it stays this way.

However! TV signals in this area are distributed by underground cables from a central antenna, somewhere, I know not where. This is so that the area is not disfigured by masses of TV antennae on the houses. Great idea.

The problem is that reception on some channels is very intermittent. Guess which channels – yes, the ABC, the main channels I want. I haven’t been able to see any programs on ABC1 or ABC2 for several days. I’ll have to phone Wanneroo council to find out what I can do about it. Grrrr.