No the spaceship hasn't landed. This year we went into Canberra to see the fireworks and the bands in Civic. We caught the last half hour of Joe Camilleri (who was great) and here's Annie and the Armadillos who started and finished the night. The staging was good and the Playhouse beside the stage looked like a hovering UFO.

Some kids could stay the distance ok, other's collapsed in dad's arms.

The fireworks at first seemed a bit flat because they were not reflected in the lake and contained by the buildings around, then as they came higher over head and you were standing under them as the showered down, the effect was great. Big pulsing explosions, pulling you visually into the centres. .

Daughter Jackie came up from Melbourne with her friend Lauren who had cancelled her holiday in Sri Lanka because of the tsunami. She would have been heading right into one of the main areas of devastation and was due to fly there the day after it happened. I think she felt a bit flat about fireworks in Civic but we were glad she was here, not there.

One of the plusses of fireworks in the city was the reflections in the buildings.

There have to be New Year's Eve lover's kisses, and there were plenty around. Here they were with glowing Mickey Mouse ears.

They look like immature cuckoos and I'm betting that they're now grouping together after some poor local bird has fed them up nice and fat. I don't know at what age they start to call but it could get pretty noisy around here soon. At 4.00am I toyed with idea of chasing it off from the tree outside our window, but as they move on every half hour or so, instead I wished they'd hurry up and head back to New Guinea.

I mentioned that I don't like the rash of metal fences being erected around Bungendore. I've been continuing to photograph examples of metal and wooden ones and I'll share them with you over time. I don't think that it would ever be possible to bring in a by-law that would prohibit metal, say for heritage reasons, but from the examples I've documented something needs to be said in the defence of wood.

If there was one single thing that would change how Bungendore's suburban sprawl could develop in a more visually pleasing manner, it could be to ban fences of sheet metal I reckon. I know the arguments, I appreciate they last a long time, but they really don't look any neater (as in the above wobbly example, compare with the ones below) and they make the town look like a mining camp. Wood feel's organic, it weathers to an attractive neutral grey if unpainted, it cracks and warps, but if constructed properly they as straight and neat as you'd wish for. Someone has to have the railings side (which can be metal, with metal uprights set in concrete and palings fixed, but people seem to choose to display a flat front to their street.

If people want to surround their backyards with metal, where they can only be seen by themselves and neighbours that's ok, but any public display should be banned. You would have to have some clause that relegates them to areas between consenting adult neighbours. Maybe we could make it so that if one neighbour didn't want a metal fence they could object and the resulting construction would have to be wood. (You're forced to pay half of a dividing fence and I reckon that gives you a right to choose the materials. What happens when you sell and a new owner wants wood, I don't know.

We've got a lot of neighbours because of the way our long block is beside a corner, with six blocks that back onto us on one side. All of them are wooden (in one case there's a wire mesh fence that lets them look into our trees and pond in winter but get screened in summer. We can just wave to each other through the gaps.

Thinking about that a little bit more, it's usually the older homes that replace their fences with metal. It's probably driven by money or lack of it, ("I can't afford to replace this fence every twenty years"), and sometimes it's because they need more secure 'storage' for their dogs. although one neighbour, a few doors down, just after they'd completed fencing the entire half acre perimeter, found that their dog could easily dig under the fence and escape. She now has to put concrete all around the edges. Saving money?

I'll come back to this I'm sure, I'm not done yet.

Tuesday 11 January '05

At the Market deli I bought a small wedge of truffle infused parmesan cheese and now I don't know what to do with it. Eat it perhaps you suggest? Well, I cut of a small slice to taste and wow, it was so strong that I had 'truffle mouth' for hours. Maybe it's for grating I thought, over some pasta but as we're giving the pasta a miss for a while, I grated some to put on a morning soft boiled egg. Mmmm it imparted a warm woody taste, hid the egg flavour and I've still got truffle mouth. I'll do a web search and maybe there are some suggestions there.