The top photo was taken this morning at with the A7RII and Minolta 70-300mm lens at 300mm(Using Sony A to E Mount adapter). I was braced, but still managed to get this photo on quite an angle. I think it has been straightened enough.

Yesterday we phoned Mum and had FaceTime with Matt. Robyne took Mum to the family gathering at Bec and Grant’s house, and even took her home again. We spoke with her briefly, just to wish her Merry Christmas. I had been in touch with Robyne earlier as she sent photos.

We had the FaceTime session with Matt. Part of the time he appeared to be watching the TV, which did not get switched off. He was in the lounge room. Not entirely satisfactory, but lovely to actually see him after two weeks. We will contact both again tomorrow morning as it is the normal day.

Apart from that we rested all day. Restaurants were closed, so we ate at home and had a walk later in the day.

Today we decided to go to the concert at the State Opera House by taxi, there and back. Stephen still has pain in the chest area, which he feels is muscular, but feels odd in a way. We had a call from Allianz and he spoke with the nurse. She said that he could have really stretched the muscles during the seizure – it’s easy to hurt yourself because you don’t feel pain at the time. He had a bit of this in hospital, but it seems worse. After coming home from the concert he had to stay as upright as possible because he was in a lot of discomfort.

Stephen asked the question again: ‘am I likely to have another seizure, or has this been a one-off’. To which he got the usual answer: ‘we don’t know’.  We will continue to wonder if it will happen again and be watching anxiously for any sign of a pending fit. This will wear off over time, but it has only been a week since it happened and we are not ‘there’ yet.

We had a bit of a problem with the taxi because we forgot that, apart from Tin, Matt’s taxi driver, they can’t necessarily respond on time. He was late, but still got us to the concert with a little time to spare. To make up for it, he was waiting in the car for us at 1800 hrs, which we had set as the pickup time.

The concert was lovely, the choir has been going for about 80 years (looked like with the same conductor – joking of course, but he was quite old). It wasn’t miked and excessively polished as it would have been if the choir had been American or Chinese, but all the nicer for it. They sang extremely well and it was quite a varied concert, with a girl playing the violin accompaniment to a couple of the pieces and the pianist doing a Mozart solo.

There were lots of little children in the audience – I imagine they particular enjoyed the dancing at the end, with children from about 14, I guess, down to about 6 years playing different roles. The choir appeared to be mostly young teenagers, which certainly helped the sound, but meant that there were only three boys as by that age voices would have broken.

Three girls did have mikes to do announcements – in Czech, German and English. That was rather fun though we had more luck comprehending the German than the Czech. The Czech written language can sometimes be interpreted, but we can’t pick up anything spoken yet.

I couldn’t get a good shot of the outside of the theatre as it is on a busy road and there was nowhere to easily cross it. So, this will have to do.

We had noticed a Museum Cafe on the map close to the theatre, and were delighted to find it open. We spent an hour there having coffee (me) and hot chocolate (him), and enjoying the atmosphere.

Then home to have dinner and relax. I’ve had a very sore back for about three days so am trying to sit properly so that it can recover a bit.