Another Year Older

Yesterday was my birthday and so I have no guilty conscience about having a bog-free day. Here are two of my cards: on the left, cowparsely from my baby sister, Anne and on the right a textile design by Jacqueline Groag from my work colleagues. Isn’t it wonderful when you receive just the cards that you would have chosen for yourself.

I am still reading, and loving, Eucalpytus by Murray Bail. The chapters have become shorter and are an ideal length for my four stops on the train from home to work and back again. I have to confess that I have almost consciously taken to catching trains that my “train friends” WON’T be on because of course you can’t really stick your head in a book when someone you know is sitting next to you and eager to chat about what an awful day / amazing holiday they have just had. Sometimes I even have to speak French, or to be more accurate, listen at French because a lovely woman from Paris travels in my direction every now and then. She speaks at breakneck speed and with a heavy accent so I have to maintain close eye contact, as well as watching the movements of her lips, in a vain attempt to use all my senses to take in the information so that my poor brain can compute the data into something that makes sense. I resort to smiles and nods and once every few paragraphs of her stream of consciousness I interject a v e r y s l o w attempt at a sentence which she corrects charmingly for me and then speeds off again in her narrative. So by leaving for work later than the train gang and leaving for home after they have travelled, I am able to breathe in the Eucalyptus fumes for a few moments.