summer of the goose

The hens are laying, the trees are in blossom and the geese are starting to pair off for breeding. I sense that winter is coming to an end.

My goose Zelda has just laid her first egg of the year, though she isn't obsessed by it this time round. I guess she figures that since none of them hatched last year, she isn't too fussed by it all.

Though I have to admit that she's off her food a bit – not her usual M.O. at all!



So this week I'm back to working a full day twice a week rather than the afternoons I'm used to doing. It's not arduous work by any stretch of the imagination, but my movements are more constrained than I'm used to.

It makes a difference to my sister's nutrition too - without me there to tell her to get moving, she has trouble getting to lunch on time with her friends.

I'm not even tempted to use the office computer to surf the net, since they're still on dial-up and I have broadband at home. If things get dull I amuse myself experimenting with the audio-editing features of Audacity (cut files up into pieces, join other ones together, amplify them, that sort of stuff.).

And (I can't believe I'm saying this) the photocopier has broken down again. *Sigh!*

At least the extra money will come in handy this month. I looked at my bank balance on the internet today and I had even less money than I thought I did.

My mother always told me this would happen. "When I'm gone, you won't be able to keep a house this size. There'll be less money coming in and you'll lose all the discounts and rebates I'm getting now." That was undeniably true and I didn't try and persuade her otherwise.

Some months everything's fine, other months I just seem to get into a hole. Not an unusual story, I admit. But I get angry with myself because it seems to me that I should be able to make ends meet - I just take my eyes off the ball sometimes and it all goes pear-shaped.

It boils down to that old joke "What happened to my disposable income? I disposed of it." Buying things on impulse doesn't help, and I spend an inordinate amount on imported magazines (you wouldn't believe what a copy of The New Yorker costs retail every week in Australia).



The new TV series Twisted Two is a follow-up to the Twisted series from a decade ago. Both shows are attempts by actor-producer Bryan Brown to swim against the tide and resurrect that forgotten genre the dramatic anthology series.

The first episode contains two suspense stories very much in the style of the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents or Tales of the Unexpected shows. The first one is a ghost story featuring Melissa George, while Gary Macdonald stars as a nervous security guard in part two.

It's not perfect, but it's a pleasant change to the flood of reality programming and silly sitcoms that make up so much of the rest of the television week. Brown says his main goal was was to (gasp!) tell original stories.

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