Well I have been in ‘the wars’ and only now do I feel as though my face is back to normal… though will it ever be again? For two weeks I had a black scab and two black whiskery stitches from my little ‘procedure’ on my lip, then just when that was healing I walked smack into a glass door… cutting the bridge of my nose. It was very sore and shocking and traumatic. Even more so when I had to venture forth with a white butterfly plaster holding the cut together… I looked just like a Norman Soldier.

(It was so strange today when I went to Yoga…there was another lady with a similar dark red scar on her nose…she had done exactly the same thing last week!)

Probably the neighbours are holding glasses to the wall listening to see if John is practising his karate on me. Let him try I say!

Had NZ friend Lyn to stay for 3 nights, and I am worn out from being the Chief entertainment officer and tour guide. I marched her to Brighton where we sat in the sun eating peppered calamari then back to Glenelg and up and down Jetty Road. When she checked her ‘milometer’ gadget we had clocked up half a marathon.

Yesterday I whisked her into Adelaide where we boarded the O-Bahn… a wonderful piece of engineering by Mr Mercedes in 1987… and it is the only one of its kind in the world… it is a bus, that suddenly becomes a train and whisks along at 100 km an hour and you just leave the city to eat its dust… wonderful invention.

The driver just works it with foot pedals on the train lines and sits with his arms folded. Quite nonchalant I thought. When we arrived at Tea Tree Plaza, we aimed for the Japanese Shiatsu massage chairs, where you pop in $2 and it pokes and pummels you just like a real masseur. Ouch! Fantastic and just gets those knotty muscles and sorts them out. Lyn was quite bemused.

We had lunch at the Art Gallery and looked at some of the fantastic Sir Hans Heyson paintings. This artist is a whizz at creating atmosphere and painted the most beautiful scenes with gum trees and native flowers.

He lived in a house up in Handhorf in the Adelaide Hills, and I suppose his house and garden were the equivalent of Monet’s Giverny. No water lilies and Japanese bridges but some of the most beautiful paintings of trees ever seen.

He and his wife entertained other famous artists, Dame Nellie Melba sang in the lounge, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh recited Shakespeare. Pavlova wanted to buy the painting that hangs above the fire place, but was refused. I like to imagine that she might have posed in an arabesque for him, whilst his wife sewed at the window!

All very evocative of another time. The house remains as it was, and to go in, it is like entering a painting.

Anyway I would not like to sit for a portrait right now… with my scars. Looks as though I’ve had a nose job… probably need one.

I had one of those strange meetings on the tram. A lady sat beside me and I was mesmerised by her colour co-ordination. She was immaculate, her eyeliner and earrings matched, and she complimented me on my turquoise long cardigan. It was all very affable. She was a social worker, normally at work, and so was enjoying the more leisurely feel of travel at 10am. She told me about the death of her husband from a melanoma. I sat quietly and let her talk; only prompting her with the odd question. I heard of the pain that was diagnosed as pleurisy, the continuation of the pain, and the third visit to A&E, and finally the tests, and the scans and the discovery of cancer of the liver and brain. The oncologist found the primary source, on the sole of her husband’s foot. Had she noticed it? She sniffed, her 64 year old nose twitching at the memory… ‘what did he think, that I was 19 and madly in love and studied his feet in detail?????’ I could only nod sympathetically. Quite.

I got off the tram, I didn’t even know her name. Needless to say when I got home I had a good look at my feet and all my other moles….my God, it is so scary.

I created a menu for Lyn, wrote it out and served up delicious things, most of which I had never done before… the main course was quails! She loved it all, the garlic ginger prawns, spicy corn chowder, poached pears in red wine and cinnamon, and especially the poor little birds with their little wavy legs! And now she’s gone, and we have time to catch our breaths before going to Melbourne in a fortnight. I am looking forward to that, then on down to New Zealand again. John is meeting a colleague who is Korean and is apparently ‘thirstily awaiting him!’ He told John that he would love working in NZ, such a relaxing country, so much to do etc. Might explain why the job is 2 years behind! We are also going down to Queenstown in the South Island… apparently there it is still very cold, and the rugby teams are taking bad with the weather… though not the Scots of course… they just fit right in!

Look at these yellow daisies dotting the lawns!

Here the wattle is burgeoning yellow, the flowers along the esplanade are just a gorgeous patchwork of reds, yellows and orange. The bottle brush trees and the gums are now sporting delicate pink shades of flower… and above it all is the widest and bluest of skies.