Agnes and Ecstasy – vol XVII 

February

Wonderful time of the year! Lots of rain filling the dam and the water tank. Clumping bamboo fathering extravagant numbers of massive shoots. Bougainvillea still drawing everyone's attention to their Moulin Rouge abundance of colour dancing in the hill top breezes. Roses of course given their quarterly prune then resprouting and budding within a week. They have no shame! The herb garden has gone into a partial decline under the tropical heat, refusing to allow baby lettuce the joys of youth. Aubergines and cucumber are in abundance from the vegetable garden along with spinach and the odd tomato plus Tom's favourite produce, the watermelon. Still no flowers on the passion fruit vine - the suspense is killing me! Asparagus has 18 inch lush feathers although the sweet corn seems to have miniaturised itself... most odd.

We started a diet this week (into Day 3). One of us (who will remain nameless but is not the one who is Webmistress of this site) needed to go on a diet and the other one of us, being a truly loving, caring and sharing wife, has volunteered to go on it as well. Albeit with a few modifications to suit her needs. The diet is called Optifast which involves silver foil sachets of a vanilla smelling powder which, when mixed with water, become as palatable as a berium meal. That's to my taste buds but Tom says it tastes fine. He is on three sachets a day supplimented by bowls of green leafy veggies and lettuce-tomato-cucumber-mushroom salads plus lots of water and tea. I decided on one sachet a day supplemented by leafy veggies and salads and lots of water and tea plus two dry biscuits and chicken or fish or any meat my little heart fancies plus a glass of wine with dinner. So the plan is to get both our BMIs down to 24.5 by July. The only bad part about this dieting lark so far is that we miss cooking - the 'hunting and gathering' of the seasonal offerings and then the preparation and tasting and finally that time together at the table over a glass of wine to savour the day. Peppie and Coco (our dogs - keep up) don't care for this dieting at all as their little treats during preparation time have fallen to Nil !

Busy month around the home - Harold Staats started work on the deck and it is progressing very well. He starts at 6am and finishes around 2 pm which is ideal in our Summer. I shall update the Sea Change House page and give you the 'blow by blow' of the only steel frame pool deck on Planet Earth. Existing decks had to be oiled again which is easy really but I like to make out its very hard work cos then I get more kisses from Himself. This time I tried the 50% linseed oil to 50% turpentine mix instead of the brand name brew and it saves a lot of money plus comes up rather well. As an ex-yachtie, I would never again varnish timber so looks like I have a job for life with all these timber decks!

Now then - have you heard that all free to view Australian television transmissions will be digital by 2008? That most programmes are in fact already transmitted digitally and some even in High Definition? Did you get that initial heads up in 1998 that digital was coming to a television near you and analogue would be given the boot? You did? Well bravo to you - cos that info didn't seem to reach the Council that administers Agnes Water 1770. Or else they hoped it would go away cos Agnes is in, what is repeatedly referred to as, a Bad Spot. So they put up a you-beaut new relay transmission tower to give us all the analogue programmes from Bundaberg (Mt Goonaneman transmitter) but it cannot relay digital. When Bundaberg ceases transmitting analogue in two years, we may all have to take up chess. But what about all the folk who have non-anachronistic TV sets right now?

This little village is being touted by developers hungry for a quick return, as a millionaires' holiday place (which I thoroughly disagree with cos there is nothing here for millionaires who don't want to just quietly retire, fish and grow veggies and no way to get here other than a long road trip). God forbid if such prey want decent television reception! ABC Digital Reception Advice Agnes Water

But there is a happy ending for some. Luckily Tom and I are amongst those happy few as it transpires that we live on just the right little hill in just the perfect position.

When we discovered the Agnes dinosaur relay tower limitations, we called Ken Armstrong the Antennae man here and described our plight. One with which he was most familiar. He carefully went through the reasons why there was probably only a >12% chance I would be able to get either Bundaberg or Rockhampton digital transmitters in order to enjoy 21st century television in Agnes Water. That being understood, he agreed to come and carry out some roof top tests for a fee that I thought was ridiculously low. Naturally, I kept that thought to myself. Oh Joy Oh Bliss - after his inspection and testing he returned to the roof with objects foreign but unobtrusive and fixing sounds were heard from above. Then he came into our home and vanished through the man-hole doing wondrous but unseen things in the dark. Then did mysterious but marvelous things with our TV's and Voila! - we have purrrfect digital TV and HD and I just think Ken is the cat's whiskers (for you old crystal radio set makers). Coming from Rockhampton, not Bundaberg due to the hills. I was already impressed by this professional young man but when he gave me the bill, he had deducted an amount for our other analogue antennae because he said he could use it else where. Egad, that makes the seventh honest bloke we have had work on our house - is there a new trend starting?