So ... home from the smoke. I am not yet a wireless enabled laptop user who emails or blogs while travelling.

The fourth and last of my successful series of SLT eye operations (truly, five to ten minutes each, no more) happened last Wednesday and I was OK to enjoy that evening at an amateur drama production. Used to know quite a few of the cast plus their perennial director -  but alas, time has worked its cruel deed: most of the team have moved on and, I am ungracious in saying this, half of the fourteen performers had somehow missed out on a  hypothetical Acting 101 class, the bit that says "Say your lines AT THE AUDIENCE". Of course, a good chunk of this audience member's experience is down to overall grumpiness plus diminished but undiagnosed hearing acuity. What? - ME, deaf?  Why do people mumble these days? And WHY do they print stuff so SMALL? Hey?

Mmm. Right.

Lovely spell of autumnal weather - almost back to summer in patches. There was a family group SWIMMING in the sea when I stopped off at scenic Port Vincent on the way home on Thursday. Mind you, must have been a bit nippy, and I was happier to sit in the car munching a lunch of hot chips from the kiosk.

Because I'd had an earlier than necessary start for the three hour drive, I also took a small detour to the BHP tourist lookout  above Ardrossan, which is a clever use of the giant heap of quarry tailings; accessed  via a steep and twisty gravel road worthy of some outback rally.

Our Tuesday song rehearsal this week will be ... Monday!  Can I still call it Tuesday practice?

New Speaker in the House but no garden sprinklers

South Australia's parliament has a new Speaker, Whyalla MP Lyn Breuer, and the Deputy Speaker is the Member for Bright, Chloe Fox. Certainly a first, females in the "two top roles" as Greg Kelton put  it in today's Advertiser. It is unfortunate that Breuer's first words in interview with media were stridently sexist, as she declared that she would keep order in the house - the Speaker's proper job - "because they can be naughty boys." Headline: Women Rule the House.

Still, I liked the paper's second front page heading: Garden Sprinklers Facing Extinction. The context was serious enough, Water Minister Paul Caica reflecting that despite good rain for the start of autumn, we will be urged to give up forever the old ways of garden watering.