On a cold and grey Chicago (Lord Howe Island) morning

After some unexpectedly beautiful weather mother nature reminded us not to take her for granted. The wind changed direction last night and brought squalls with it; strong wind and heavy rain.  If the water tanks weren't already filled, they are now.  The new eco focus in cities has returned the joys of tank water, although it didn't happen early enough for us, so it has been a return to childhood experiences not only to drink rain water, but to shower in it as well.  Hmmm, soft.

All pictures in today's post were taken earlier in the week.

My usual alarms were muted by the wind ripping through the palms and the cloud was so heavy and low it was difficult to tell what was the time of day.  As I said in a previous post the palm fronds scraping together are so loud it is not easy to determine when it is raining.  There was no trouble this time, it was torrential.  By 9:30 the rain had eased off and the wind had become sporadic gusts so we grabbed our umberallas and walked down the hill to the cafe at the museum for breakfast.  The next excursion was to the 'liquor store' so American, sadly it didn't open until 1pm.  The weather still didn't look committed to clearing so went home and flopped on the lounge to read and play games. Supplies were running low of the wine we brought from the mainland so we would be back come hell or high water - or in this case tropical squall.

A walk through the walking trees.  Slower than ents.

For any literary buffs out there I am reading the English translation of the 1st edition of the Grimm Brother's folk anf fairy tales.  It's quite interesting to see where Walt Disney acquired so much of his inspiration, not to mention the Little Golden Books of my childhood.  It's also interesting to see tales so familiar to us birthed and rebirthed in slightly different fashion.  Most fascinating, however, is the sanitisation/Christianisation of the stories for the middle classes and Disney wasn't totally responsible for this, the elder of the brothers Grimm also had a hand in that.  Curiously, as I had thought, the tales are not all cautionary tales for children and nor does the good guy always win, often the bad guy gets up.  In general, men are weak, women are strong, step-mothers are evil, maidens are always beautiful and talking animals are generally enchanted princes.  If you are up for tales of magic, cannibalism, torture and treachery then this is the book for you.

As the afternoon blew away we thought it safe to venture back to the liquor store to purchase the much needed supplies.  Happily, after twenty years the prices are much more in keeping with your local bottle shop - not Dan Murphy's discount, but reasonable prices and quite a good range.  Back at the Treehouse sipping Veuve on the verandah the intellectual focus shifted to Jatz biscuits.  I kid you not gentle reader.  I picked up a Jatz, ignored the cheese and looked at both sides of the scrumptious little aussie biscuit before I popped into my mouth.  Jayne was, I believe, incredulous.  "What did you just do?" she asked, not understanding what she had just witnessed.  "I was looking to see which side was salted so that side went onto my tongue," I replied, nonplussed.  "What?" she asked, "Jatz are salted only on one side?" she enquired.  So, I drew the next biscuit from the packet and showed her the salted and unsalted side.  "Well, I've learned something today," was the amazed reply.  And the world turns. Sorry, no photos of the Jatz biscuit is available aside from this one purloined from the web:

Look closely and you can see the salt crystals.

Now the only decision to make was a late lunch at the Anchorage or dinner elsewhere.  As I've said before these things need to be planned in advance because there are only a couple of venues open 7 days.  If you do not plan carefully and don't want fine dinning, you could end up at an island fish-fry every night.  A slight exaggeration but it is possible.  Eventually we opted for the blackboad menu at the Bowling Club and booked for a fish-fry at Milky Way tomorrow night.  It is really stressful being on holiday.

So, where was I?  Just back from dinner at the bowlo.  When we arrived there were 12 cars, 2 step-throughs and 14 bikes.  We were worried we wouldn't get a table, but it was just barefoot bowls and few locals having a beer after Thursday afternoon touch.  The evening was quite pleasant with a reasonable choice of food from steak through to seafood - although seafood dominated as you would expect.  And another perfect dat in paradise comes to a slow, lazy conclusion.