The temperature is about twenty-eight degrees. That’s quite hot, isn’t it? For half past eight in the evening, anyway. Cheese Cake, the little terrier in my charge, and I are hot. As much as he loves to lie beside me on the sofa for a cuddle he can’t bear the constant heat and, every so often (when neither of us can bear it anymore), he walks over to the other end of the couch for a cool down, then he comes back for more loving.

I keep wanting to call him Cream Cracker – well I think it’s similar even if you don’t; he answers to his new name so he must agree with me! Every time I call him Cream Cracker I think of Alan Bennett’s poignant monologue, “A Cream Cracker Under the Sofa” (from the “Talking Heads” series) and tonight  “A Cream Cracker on the Sofa” would be rather an apt title.

Cream Cracker Cheese Cake had a bath today. I shampooed him three times in the laundry sink and he came out almost white (before he looked red from the red soil here on Coochiemudlo Island). I had to cuddle him close to me whilst washing him; he nearly fell to sleep and my top got wet and red. When he was combed and dry I put a thin red lead on him (actually we didn’t have a collar on which to attach the pretty lead so I held the end with the catch, and the end with the loop for my hand went around his neck). He could slip out of it whenever he wanted but he knew he looked good and he didn’t pull away too much; and when he came free accidentally, he stopped and waited for me to pop the lead over his head again.

Speaking of clever animals, lollipop the donkey has a few tricks up her sleeve. She had noticed that the euthanised cockerels were being cremated (humanely) and the clever girl practically stood over the fire to fumigate any pests residing in her coat (also a bit red like Cream Cracker’s).

And what became of the brew of lavender made by Victoria, my ex-neighbour (today I moved from my railway carriage into one of Hayley’s houses)? Sadly the mosquitoes were not deterred in the slightest by the home-made (and not yet patented) repellent, but I found another use… I had forgotten to bring along my toothpaste… Now I know that Aborigines used to use charcoal for the purpose (at least that’s what a part Aboriginal girl at school told us many years ago) but I didn’t happen to have any charcoal at hand (we hadn’t cremated the cocks by that point). However there was a big cauldron of stewed (or “infused” as Victoria put it, more elegantly) lavender sitting on the stove… and, to add a clinical touch, also I dabbed a tad of tea-tree cream onto my toothbrush. It looked slightly greenish like bile and tasted vile but it cleaned my teeth, and with great relief, I found I had a breath of lavender.

My bedtime approaches and I’m about to use my lavender toothpaste yet again (there are no flies on me!). Cream Cracker is under the table, not the sofa so far, but soon he will be on the sofa on the other side of my fly-screen door and I shall be in a king-sized bed all to myself… just so long as the little chap, now nice and clean, doesn’t cry in the dark on his own.