Some nice help.

Finally after a couple of years since I terminated the palms in this pipe it had loosened enough to be lifted a little.

My friend Errol was happy to pop over with Tilly so rather than exert ourselves a wire rope and Tilly did the work. Errol like myself is married to a Philippines lass.

Now we just have to decide where to use this pipe next.

Spring is well and truly here now.

Officially too, here's one of our blooms.

The mango is blooming strongly too.

Baby rocket.

Olivia asked me to buy some vegetables when I popped up to Coles, eventually I saw this, I have no idea what baby rocket is but the price seemed right.
I hope Olivia can find a use for it.

Made in Philippines.

When I fitted this new hard drive to my main computer last night I happily noted it was made in Philippines, I hope it's a sign of progress for them.

Olivia having fun.

We went to a community meeting to do with Sing Australia this morning and happily Olivia loved it, it gave her a chance to meet people and sing, here she's singing a little ditty. Jimmy doesn't really have the puff or the voice to do a half decent rendition of most their catalogue but at least one of us in in their element.

Here Colin Slater OAM who runs Sing Australia leads us in a song while Rita Phillips does a excellent job on the keyboard.

The leaders pose here for a group shot.

Times change.

I saw this sign today and immediately took a photo as the spelling error was quite obvious, a lovely lass working there was curious about it but had to check it against the spelling on a calendar in the stand before realising the whoopsie. I couldn't help but think of how our standards have changed over the years, in my days at school I failed English, with my spelling being abysmal, the word beautiful escaped my limited ability until about a decade post-school. I don't think the term fail is even used these days, and even in my time I had it very easy compared to my Grandparents' generation, they indeed had the training to go forth into the world.

Nearly done.

This morning I had the puff to thread the pipe that I'd cut, I'd used the board in the background to lever a bit of pressure under it to get it started, from then on it was just hard work.
Here I fitted a female union to it.

While threading the replacement section I noticed the camera, so naturally I smiled, a scary moment for Olivia.
All my old pants are extra loose on me these days so I put an elastic belt over them to avoid embarrassing disasters, It can't be seen here but I follow the fashion of the legendary Fred Astaire by wearing the buckle on my left hip, gee he had talent.

 Here it's in place waiting for a final tighten up but after that I'll leave it exposed for a while so I can check for leakage.

This may help me avoid a jail term but the work I've done is downstream of a tap. We live in such a regulated country that almost anything you can think of doing has a law preventing it, and we have generations now who won't even attempt to do so, even the word asbestos will have plenty cringing.