saturday

i'm having trouble throwing off this pernicious virus which has seen me in bed for the last 3 fridays :( it's very frustrating...

but i slept in until nearly 10.30 this morning and feel much chipperer.

it's anzac day here - commemorating a day of complete and utter slaughter when the australian imperial force landed at gallipoli in turkey on 25 april 1915. my grandfather william dickinson and his brother arthur were both there. i wrote about them and their brother in law leslie clark, last remembrance day.

in Australia it is a holy day - a day of great and real solemnity - which is not an emotion australians go in for as a rule. but anzac day is something apart.

all the shops were shut until 1pm and when we went around to psarakos found that they were shut for entire day. unruffled we trotted around the corner to pippa may cook and had some much needed coffee hot chocolate and a raspberry coconut slice chosen by w.then a stroll down high st to the hardware shop to find something for my challenge quilt and then a further trot to the pet food emporium for cat food. salce's is one of those old fashioned feed stores - barrels and sacks of grain and mysterious poultry mixes, bales of straw and shelves full of everything your horse, hen, dog, cat or guinea pig could desire.

then we took billthedog for a walk back to high street and checked out the other second hand bookstore. a better selection than the usual one but a tad more expensive and em and i decided we liked the poeple in the other bookshop better. w scored 3 picture books (at $1.50 each they were bargamonoius), i got a couple of novels and em picked up a janet evanovich.