Although most people are wearing the “Brave Face” there is a depressed aura about the place. There are empty shops in the major shopping mall and more to come – Dick Smith – Sazzi Shoes – Mensland – Spotlight- Thompson and Waddington ( Optician) – Link Engineering – Martelco Plant Hire – and our major employer, Arrium Mining ( Former BHP Steel) is hemorrhaging cash and trying to negotiate with State and Federal Governments for a major financial bailout. They asked the employees to take a 10% pay cut but they voted against doing so because they had just been awarded a 3% pay rise, and that was to be scrapped so in essence what they were really asking was for the workers to take a 13% pay cut. It effects us all but we will lose two families from the church because they were sponsored by Link Engineering, which is now no more. Both husbands were employed by Link and without employment they have to go back to South Korea and they have been here for three years. I realize that these names mean nothing to you, but names are not really important because what they represent is people loosing jobs. Link Engineering and Martelco Plant Hire are not recent start-ups – they have been around for a good while The upshot of part of this, however is that I may be getting a second dog. One of our Korean couples has a small
dog and they cannot find a home for it so it’s either surrender it to the RSPCA – the Council Pound ( Kill Pound) or put it to sleep. Sooah was told by one of the older ladies that she should talk to me and ask if I would be willing to take her – yes it’s a girl – I had a talk with Herself and she agreed that we would take the dog. We don’t know the dog’s name but if it’s a Korean name, we’ll have to change that :o)
Robert Burns wrote in “To a Mouse” – ‘The best laid schemes of mice and men gang (go) aft agley (astray) and leave us naught but grief and pain for promised joy” and Easter was sort of like that. I had plans – Thursday, take trailer to dump and empty same – go to sand yard and fill trailer with 20mm stones, (1 ton) come home, lay out weed matting and start to spread out stone, going back for further loads as necessary. Good Friday – Church / R& R. Saturday, back to work/ Sunday, Church and Family / Monday finish off and tidy up. One of our (older) ladies died and we had to organise a funeral. I designed and prepared the Order of Service after I was notified on Tuesday Evening. Discovered that the church photocopier was gaga, so all the printing had to be done here on this computer and my printer. Funeral was on Thursday. Good Friday and everything closed. Now move to Tuesday of this week – chucked it down most of the day – Wednesday Medical appointments for Annabell, so now here we are on Thursday and I am about to go outside and connect the trailer. Hey, it’s only a week late :o)
Sand yard, one load of stone laid – back to sand yard, second ton, not laid, need more weed matting. Will carry on Friday after medical appointment. So yes, it will take a while but I will get it done and I hope it will look nice when it’s finished. I will brighten up the area by having at least two medium size raised flower beds and fill them with potting mix and then, of course, some flowering plants from the Garden Center, then sit back and watch them die – which is about normal for me. Actually, a good start was to get the plants home in the car without Benji chewing them.
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