A few updates were needed to this post as it was so badly written. My apologies to anyone who read it earlier and was trying to make sense of it.

We’ve had interesting times on our walks lately. The first that was memorable was when we decided to walk to my younger sister’s former house in East Victoria Park. It is a little further than our normal walks and was a goal to achieve. We were unsure of the actual house, so I contacted her to check the number. Turned out that her former neighbours, who bought the house from them when they moved had demolished it and built a new house. It’s rather nice. As I was taking some photos the neighbour came out to find out why and we identified ourselves. They showed us a photo of the original house.

The new house has a dragon out the front. I haven’t included a photo of the new house as it seems intrusive.

Our second rather special walk was when we drove over to the Heathcote and took a walk along the river.

There were quite a few people around and the cafe was open for takeaway.

On Tuesday we met with Stephen’s sister and her husband at Empire Village. She had asked for the return of a jigsaw and Stephen had two for her, one of hers and a new one. This was fortunate as it was the day before her birthday and it served as a gift. We bought morning tea at the Bakery cafe.

Afterwards we decided to drive down to the beach and eventually ended up at Cottesloe. Stephen bought toasted sandwiches for our lunch as it was a couple of hours since we had shared a doughnut with icing with our coffees. I took a phone call from RPH Breast Clinic about Mum’s virtual appointment. She will continue to be cared for by the visiting GP at Regis.

We stayed at Cottesloe until after sunset, enjoying the unusual lighting as it is very smoky in Perth at the moment due to controlled burns in the forests to the north and east. On our way back from our walk out to the groin we met a woman in a ball gown. She was waiting for her official photographer and graciously allowed me to take a photo of her.

I have an edited version this photo, but this is the version on my iPad without cropping.

There were people fishing on the groin and what looked like hundreds of surfers on the south side. There were some people swimming on the north side, and just a few surfers. As it got closer to sunset the sun became very red and cast beautiful reflections on the sea.

This photo almost looks like a painting due to the smoky light.

On Thursday I had my first visit with Mum for a while. I had a flu vaccination on Monday in preparation as this was a condition of entry. We can book appointments and stay for one hour. I dropped her tax papers off to her accountant on the way, and found there was still one investment missing. I finalised that this morning, thanks to the helpful staff at Bendigo. Her tax return has gone in and the accountant has been paid. Mum should get her refund soon.

The visit went quite well although she got quite sleepy. Surprisingly, I wasn’t sleepy although I often have a nap at that time in the afternoon. She perked up when her tea and bickies arrived. I enjoyed the visit overall and it helps me to feel less guilty, even though it was the lockdown that stopped us visiting her. We have had a couple of video calls with her in the meantime.

Today we have driven to the Claremont/Dalkeith foreshore, bringing lunch to have in the van. Our plan is to walk along the river. There will be photos in the next blog.

We stopped at Ranger Outdoors to fill a gas tank this morning. This toy dog in an overlarge camping chair caught my eye.