Travelling Man.

Annabell is still in hospital in Quorn, about 75 miles from here. Which is, as I said before, 150 miles round trip each visit. My doctor is slightly concerned about me, so I have been for blood tests and on Monday he wants me to go for an ECG. I know not why – the blood tests were good, and I am fine. I expect he is just being cautious. If I can get that done in the early morning I can still get to Quorn to visit.  I went to visit on Thursday since the blood teste were on Wednesday, my usual day for going north. Not the best of days to be travelling – temp. here 41c – temp.  Port Augusta 44c and temp. in Quorn, 45c. The hospital was nice and cool, and I have a good A/C in the car although as happened last time – the car sitting in the sun all day made for an uncomfortable drive until the A/C  took over.

Annabell has not really improved a great day. Yes, there is some improvement, but not as much as I would have hoped. For a few days I was very concerned in that when asked directly who I was, she said she didn’t know. Asked if she knew my name, she said no.   This set bells ringing in my head, but they went quiet yesterday when the boys were up with her. They held the telephone next to her with the speaker on and she spoke to me to for a few moments., so my fears were set aside. I will be up there myself today.

The Pichi Richi pass is not my  favourite  place to drive but I am starting to get the feel of it. I still can’t go whizzing through like a local, but I manage to keep a fair

speed and the good thing are the frequent areas cut out of the rock for slower cars like me to pull in and let the quicker cars pass. Despite all that I do have a favourite area of the pass – the long straight road at the other side and there is my most loved sign.  Having said all that, the Pichi Richi Pass is   22 klms. long. Not great by Rocky Mountain standards but it’s still a trial. I think I did mention before that there is an easier way though and that’s through Horricks Pass but it would mean adding a further 80- klms to the journey and I feel it’s long enough as it is.

Going back to temperatures – as I said it was in the mid – high 40s and a bit of the warm side. Then the cool change came in overnight and today I took Benji out for his walk at 6am as usual. I had to cut the walk short because I only had light clothes on and I was freezing. The temp. today is a mere 18c this morning rising to about 26c this afternoon – nice for driving today. However, this is not called a windy place for nothing and as well as the low temperature, the cold high wind was bighting, so we gave up trying to walk against it, and I was cold, so we came home. The other reason is that this street is lined with Eucalyptus trees which have killed one and injured two people more this week in Adelaide and I didn’t like the way the wind was pushing the branches around. With these trees there is no warning, and they can just drop branches. That’s what happened to the lady in the park – she was walking, sat down for a rest and the branch came down and she was killed.  It took the emergency servi9ce to basically cut her out from under it so that gives you an idea of how big the branch was.  Another incident was a near miss and the third one was hit and required hospital treatment. There is an investigation underway to determine whether or not the trees should be part of the parkland. The tree in question that killed the visitor, had been inspected by Council three months ago and was said to be fine. And generally, they are fine – in the bush where they belong not in an urban area. But they are plentiful, cheap and don’t use much water so councils like them as do countries that want to regrow areas that have been over  harvested. Me – I don’t like them, messy things that. drop toxic leaves and shed bark which makes lovely fuel source in a fire.

Question: How can a Scottish person tell when it’s summer?

Answer: The rain is warm.