Yes, I’m a little chilled. Only two days ago I was hot and sweating on a 29C day. It rained steadily last night and today it only made 20C, and I noticed it. And it’s May Day, 1 May, two months into autumn so it’s about time it cooled down. I believe it’s official, the seasons have shifted a bit. Summer starts a bit later and lasts longer, and our “winter” is a bit delayed compared to 40-50 years ago. I remember what it used to be like.

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I’m writing this at 1am, unable to get to sleep. I tried for an hour but I couldn’t stop my legs and feet squirming and shifting. I haven’t used Phenergan for the whole week and feel a bit better in the morning as a result. I’ve just had a cup of Roogenic Tea to test its sedative claims. I’ll let you know.

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More car trivia:

• When I mentioned that I found a fusebox in the glovebox, I forgot to mention that I also found the security wheel nut adapter. This car, being French (sniff) has different wheel nuts.
  
  All cars I’ve ever owned have had wheel studs (threaded bolts embedded in the wheel hub), and when you mount the wheel on the hub, you apply and tighten nuts onto these studs.
  
  Not this car. This car has threaded holes in the hub and you fasten the wheel onto the hub using bolts, like this.
  

I haven’t actually tested this yet, and I hope I won’t have to. How do you hold the wheel in place and centred before inserting the bolts, for example?

The other thing is that each bolt has a plastic cap press fitted over it, hex shaped and chromed. They look like nut heads, but you can’t get a socket over them – not enough room. You have to use a small plastic tool to pull these caps off first. I haven’t found that tool yet.

Clearly one bolt on each wheel has a different shaped head, which requires this adapter to undo it. I’d better test that soon.

• I forgot to mention that this car has auto headlights (as soon as it gets dark enough they come on low beam, which means in underground carparks), and self-steering headlights so you can see around corners, and auto rain sensing wipers. It all seems a bit much, I think, but … merde chaude.
• Another thing is that when you open the doors, the frameless windows lower themselves by about 10mm, and when you close the door, the window raises itself again so as to fit under the rubber water seal around the top edge. Clever.
• The boot – there’s no key hole to open the boot. As long as the doors are unlocked, you press the centre of the “0” in the 407 badge and click, the boot unlatches. Subtle.
• The tyres have pressure sensors in them, to warn of low pressure or a puncture. When you turn the ignition on, it goes through a self test (how computer geekish) and one of the readouts is “Pression”, French for pressure, in case you hadn’t guessed. Strange how everything else is in English, but they left that one French word.

I’ve found a place which can supply Peugeot car keys, cut and programmed to the car. $95 each. The only thing is, they only come in one colour, a light brown. It’s called khaki. 🙂

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I had the house valued last week to satisfy the bank and oh dear, it’s a bit lower than the valuation two years ago. In theory, I’ve dropped $110,000 on what I paid in 2013. Too bad, I would have paid even more at the time and I definitely have not regretted my purchase. This is absolutely the best house I have ever lived in. I love it.

But I hope the upturn in the property market lately will show through on this place soon. It doesn’t really matter, as the only time this place will go onto the market is after they take me out of here in a wooden box.

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I’ve realised that I can read Kindle books on my Samsung tablet quite cheaply, around $7 – $10 per book, and I’m a bit addicted at the moment to a series of six books by the same authors about a fictional World War 3. Yes, it’s a bit juvenile, but I used to love reading “war comics” when I was a kid and this is a bit like that, without the pictures and cartoons.

I’m halfway through the third book at the moment. The writing is a bit pedestrian (“The Commander smiled as he visualised the torpedo heading for the Chinese ship.”) As if.

But the authors (there are two) develop their theme that Russia attacks Ukraine, NATO and the US respond and it develops into a very hot war in Europe. Then China sees their chance to make an alliance with Russia, which has actually been in the planning for several years. North Korea uses nuclear weapons, ICBMs, and one gets through, vapourising San Francisco.

Then China invades North Korea from the north and badly damages the US fleet. They also take the chance to invade Taiwan, which quickly falls as the US is too busy to come to their aid. Likewise, massive Chinese forces invade and capture Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar (with almost no opposition from all those except Viet Nam).

Meanwhile, the Chinese call a meeting of all the SE Asian countries, including India and Indonesia, and applies pressure on them to form a SE Asian Alliance with China. That means Australia and Indonesia become enemies. I’m just starting to read that at the moment. Two old Indonesian fighters are shot down by the RAAF F35s over Bali airport. Wow.

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All this makes me think – if it does come to a shooting war with China in the future, a big war, one thing they will need is massive quantities of steel to make new and replacement armaments, tanks, armoured fighting vehicles, ships, and ammunition. Steel is made from iron ore. Who supplies the iron ore? Western Australia does.

If I were a Chinese war planner, I would be planning on how to secure the WA iron ore supplies. China has the forces to overwhelm anything we could do to defend our ports and mines.

Our only hope would be that the shipping lanes between WA and Shanghai are very long and pass through narrow straits. China could probably fly troops and equipment here to take the mines and ports, but getting the giant loaded ore ships back to China would be very difficult.

Makes me think. But I’m too sleepy now to expand on this.