Week 2 Blue or White Monday

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Week 2

Blue Monday

Maybe just in Europe...?


(from nu.nl)Monday is Blue Monday, the name given to the 'most depressing day of the year', usually the third Monday in January. The phenomenon was invented by British psychologist Cliff Arnall, who even designed a formula for it.


The day would make people very depressed because it is usually gray and dark and they are far from having a holiday.

The Blue Monday idea received a lot of criticism, especially from scientific quarters. Yet it comes back every year and is used by the commercial community for all kinds of promotions.


But...our weather people are predicting snow... for a White Monday


This photo was from last week showing the results of a dam bursting. The houseboats and others were left high and (not so) dry.



Aging Out. 

I read an interesting discussion on a boating forum - more ocean going than our canal adventures - about "aging out" i.e. getting too old to handle the boat properly. Most of them favoured downsizing or "hanging on until the last" - very few admitting to giving up altogether. The thought crosses my mind now and then, but probably more so in terms of being able to keep up the maintenance on our property. One of my brothers-in-law said that the place was "lived out" when we bought it - since then, I have operated on the the thought that "maintenance is the interest on our investment" (which was my Fire Service payout). We've had some inspired good luck along the way - including the refugees and our current work, so I'm probably in the camp of hanging on until the last - with the boat and the property :-)


The cost of a T-bone

Probably too often, we walk up the road for a restaurant meal, usually as a treat for simply negotiating another week - or if Janny has been working hands-on with the kids. Saves me doing the cooking!

But, last Sunday I was rather shocked to see the prices. I've heard talk of inflation but we have hardly noticed it ourselves - apart from the all too obvious energy prices. For a few years now, the cost of a T-bone steak was €29,75 - a price that I "felt" was way too much - the last one I had was about 5 years ago. This week the price had gone up to €39,75 - for one T-bone steak! 

I did a search for "Cost of a T-bone steak in a Melbourne restaurant" - this was one of the results...(for buying them to cook at home)






Just as an aside, it brought back the memory of me being a too young 18 year old in the Fire Brigade at headquarters in Melbourne. We had to cook our own meals or heat up something brought in from home. One of the chaps lived in St.Kilda - he had a deal with a butcher at the old St. Kilda Junction - T-bone steaks for 50 cents a piece. And without exaggeration they were larger than the plates! This would have been 1970.



Newspapers and Log Fires

I happened across an article suggesting that the UK government is proposing a health warning notice on Log Fires! Apparently, log fires are seen as being "only for the rich" due to the price of firewood. The writer made the case for poorer people in rural areas being more dependent on them than city dwellers.

I got to the end of the article and saw other suggested reading and realised that I had stumbled on the site of a not very good newspaper! (shakes head in dismay at where people get their "news" from these days).

Again, I remembered Osmond (late father-in-law) telling me that The Sun News-Pictorial was for people who couldn't read, The Herald was for people who couldn't think and that only left The Age  - also in the early 1970's. One would have thought that the Internet would result in better informed people rather than what we now see. Fox News, GB News...shakes head again...

Electricity

From Monday onwards we had intermittent power failure in the apartments and Day Activity area - we spent days trying to find the cause and then on Thursday it just stopped altogether. Resetting the circuit breakers did nothing and then one of the 3 main fuses blew. (This is a big issue if it goes that far). Years ago we had larger fuses installed - for which we pay a higher rate for our electricity (for some reason).

Anyway, we slowly pieced it together. On Monday, the builders had been clearing the water and mud from the trench for the new foundations - and there runs the main cable from the house to a secondary meter box for what was then a milking shed. This was all before my time, so I had no accurate knowledge where it was or which direction it took - only that "it must be there" - by logic and piecing together the history from Janny's Mum and brother. eg "the flat roof building came later - so the cable probably runs under there". They must have just nicked the cable so that a little water seeped in - hence the intermittent failure. Whether they own up to it is another question...




So, on Friday we hooked up a new cable from the house meter box to the secondary meter box - with the thought that "if this fixes it then we know what the problem is". 


This has indeed fixed the problem - so now we have to decide whether to repair the old cable (now under the concrete foundation) or run a new cable?

Luckily, we were able to go ahead with our Kids' Weekend. 

I did some more insulation work in our apaprtment. Next week (tomorrow), we start on the 8 metre stretch - first having to remove the heating system and a couple of power points.



Janny found an old photo of a couple of our kids - still with us but much older and bigger!


Ben is now in Chile

He had to wait for his luggage but eventually found out that it had arrived in an earlier flight. 

He makes a point of doing some extra travel/sightseeing wherever he goes.

But, he had to figure out that this meant "Union Strike" as he waited for a bus that never came...















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