Fred builds a doorbell

I haven't been blogging very regularly of late, so I will try to recall what we have been up to that bears retelling.

Fred arrived the day before Good Friday, and we have been noodling around with him all Easter. He is extremely scientific, interested in the world around to him to an astonishing degree. If something is broken he is compelled to fix it, whereas I am compelled to lie down. When Fred is in town we have an amazing burst of experiments. He made us a beautiful doorbell yesterday from wire, meccano and an alarm clock. Or perhaps it was a bomb. He said it was a doorbell.


Today he made a radio transmitter, out of the doorbell. And so on. Marcus loves the end result, but is too busy out climbing trees or reading to sit in for the process. Michael loyally sits through the process talking nonstop and making ingenious but impractical suggestions. Fred has the patience of a saint, and listens to all this without putting Michael in a sleeper hold (which is what I want to do when I am busy and he won't shut up).


Today we drove to Snug and went for a walk to the falls there. Snug of course is a funny name for a place, and it has certainly not gone to waste. There is the Snug River, Snug Falls, Snug Beach, Snug Primary School, Snug Tavern and of course the Snug Butchery. The walk in was mostly downhill, through fragrant bush - quite peppery. We are not sure what "mountain pepper" is but possibly this is it. There were a few parked toddler strollers on the way in - the track was much too rocky and rooty for them. We passed the family carrying their littlies out. There was not a lot of water in the falls but it was a very pretty spot. Popular too - we had to wait a few minutes for a parking spot to open up. Marcus and Fred went off to explore the lower reaches of the river with strict warnings and threats of direness if Marcus got his feet wet. When they returned he had fallen in a puddle but heroically got only his shirt, hair and the top of his pants wet. On the way out we passed the family with the toddlers again, still struggling upwards.


Yesterday we also went for a walk, around the Risdon Brook Dam. We went over that way to check the puppy situation at the Dogs Home - once again, no suitable pups in residence. We are always promised that there is a puppy tsunami just around the corner. Sigh. So we went for a nice long walk around the dam - it's about and hour and a half I think. Very pleasant when you have nothing particular else to do. By the end I was very hungry and wished I was the resourceful type who had packed sandwiches.

I have been nibbling away at the front deck railing, sanding a bit and painting a bit each day. We suspect the builders used an interior wood finish, as the more exposed parts have weathered down to a cracked and blistered mess in two years. When I started the job I was listening to cricket while I worked; now it is football. I hope to finish it before we are back to cricket again.