de bon matin

Today, with the day barely begun,

I take a plate out of the dishwasher & find a baby gecko, about 1 inch long, clinging to the edge, very much alive &, I'm guessing / hoping, unwashed. I take the plate outside & flick the gecko into the garden.

I go out the other door to have a cigarette & tread on a dead mouse, no doubt brought there by the cat, intact except for a couple of teeth marks, but very dead. I throw that into the garden as well, for the ants or birds. If I'd put it in the rubbish-bin it would be stinking before the rubbish was collected. A grand-daddy gecko, about 6 inches long, watches me.

Three black cockatoos, rare visitors here though they're around other nearby parts, drift across & land in the gumtree in the back garden. Beautiful birds, red on the underneath of their tails, much more laid-back & raucous than their white counterparts. Birds of good omen, though amazingly pre-historic in their facial features when seen up close. Rainbow lorrikeets yodel from one of the other trees, feeding on the yellow flowers. The more they eat the less end up in the pool.

The TV tells me that David Hicks has been granted British citizenship – his mother was British. Now, perhaps, he might get out of Guantanamo Bay.

My summer cold seems to be disappearing. The sneezes & sniffles have gone, & the coughing is indistinguishable from my normal smoker's cough. I'll probably go back to work tomorrow, but today I'm catching up on my domestic duties. & my blog-reading.

The temperature is already well on its way to the predicted 38º Celcius. Just under a 100 Fahrenheit. I'm not a great fan of air-conditioning, but it's necessary here, so I'm running the ceiling fans all through the house to get the air moving before I close it up & do the dreaded dead.

I have finished (re)reading Robert Crais' entire output. I'm definitely a crime novel fan. But who to read next?

The washingmachine beeps & reminds me of my domestic duties. I hope there are no geckoes inside.

I hang out the washing. Lizards scuttle away. Green ants promenade on my legs. They're tenacious little bastards, stick their pincers in & refuse to budge. You have to flick them off at just the right angle.