Lately Tiki has been suffering from severe pains in her chest and this morning is no exception.
By noon the gale-force winds, that were to reach up to one hundred and nineteen kilometres per hour, had arrived. They had already wreaked havoc in Adelaide and Canberra. In Mildura a woman of forty-five years had had to have a leg amputated after she was struck by flying galvanised iron.
The sand from the dunes was blown into the radiator of our ‘Galant’ and all over the road as I made my way from Kurnell to Marrickville. Upon my arrival I was told that I had covered the distance in good time. “I had the wind behind me!” I quipped modestly.
I listened to 2UW from half past twelve. Bert Newton interviewed the veteran actor, Danny Thomas, who was still in the United States. Although it was thirty-one degrees Celsius at one o’clock, the mercury was to continue to rise to a maximum of thirty-four. When coupled with the high winds this served to make the day a decidedly unpleasant one.
“Dad” had left the remainder of the two hundred and seventy-six palings leaning against our front fence. I used our wheelbarrow to transport them into our backyard. It was five past six before I again entered the house to watch the remainder of the repetition from the series, “Wild, Wild World Of Animals”, about the elephant. The female gestates for a period of twenty-two months. Males leave their mothers at the age of six years and go off to live with other males. Females, on the other hand, remain with their mothers for a period of fifteen years.
“Willesee”, presented by Paul Makin at seven o’clock, featured a man who paints underwater, in a tank made of glass. He claims to be the only person in the world to do this.
“Space 1999” followed at half past seven. As I was cleaning my teeth an hour later, Tiki informed me that she was departing to go for a walk. I ducked out to the toilet only to learn, upon my return, that she had locked the front screen door from the outside. Rummaging through her handbag, I located our other set of keys and was setting out after her when she leaped at me from that space between the house and the garage. Terror-stricken, I had to restrain myself from throttling her in the seconds it took for my fear to subside.
Following our walk, Tiki made up the free sample of ‘Tang’, which had been placed in our letter-box. It is a new drink, which contains Vitamin C.