Imagine, if you will, a hot sunny afternoon in Tingalpa (Brisbane). It has been boiling all day and my brother, Bill, and I have been looking forward to a nice cool dip in the spa. I go out to the spa first and notice a few magpies grubbing around in the ashes of the fire. I think the magpies are after the bruised piece of pear that I spat out onto the ashes.

“That’s funny,” I think to myself, “I thought magpies were mainly carnivorous.”

I throw the half-eaten core of the pear onto the ashes because I think the magpies might like some more of my juicy pear. They ignore it and I wish I had eaten a little more of it myself – ungrateful birds.

I say hello to Manuela, the girl (in the red and yellow spotty swimming costume) who I painted on the fence last year, and I get into the spa. Bill soon joins me and we spend a few minutes removing leaves. At last the pool is sparkling clear and Bill and I dunk ourselves low in the water (to avoid the mosquitoes) and we kick around and do a number of those little exercises one always does when one is in a spa (because you can’t actually swim, and you have to do something!). So I’m doing a bit of scissor action with my legs and I’m looking in the direction of the table, and I see that one of the magpies has picked something up in his beak – I think it is a red credit card.

“Bill,” I call out, “that magpie has something in his mouth!”(They can be very human-like.) “Is it a credit card?”

“Credit card?” Bill looks. “That’s not a credit card, that’s my cigarettes!” (He has very flat cigarettes on account of them being in his short’s back pocket.)

With that the wily magpie realises there is no time to waste and he flies off the table, straight over the Ute and down to the end of the garden where he thinks we won’t follow because we’re having such a great time in the spa. The magpie does not realise that cigarettes are almost as expensive as gold-dust in Australia these days and even three flat cigarettes are worth leaping out of a spa for. So Bill jumps out, as quick as a flash, and I follow a tad slower (well, they aren’t my cigarettes). I half hope that the cheeky magpie gets clean away over the far fence into the neighbour’s place – it could be a good time to give up! – but he becomes nervous with Bill hollering at him and he drops it under the tree on our side of the fence.

I am back in spa already (no point in two of us searching) and Bill hides the flat cigarettes under my towel before getting back in. I’m still marvelling at how those cigarettes looked like a credit card and Bill, who is keeping vigilant, sees a magpie hooking a cigarette butt from the ashes. “Crikey, he’s desperate for a smoke!” I think to myself. I reckon that Bill wishes he had never started smoking outdoors. Those magpies are very impressionable. I told you they were like humans.

No need to book – all comers welcome!

Down at Cabbage Tree Point yesterday the sailing boats sailed by, the gin palaces glided past, the little boats returned with fish, and then a small house pulled up by the beach. It was a mini houseboat; the owner designed it and built it himself over two years. And all the while a well-fed pelican looked on approvingly from his lofty perch.

The pelicans sure are friendly down at Cabbage Tree Point. I saw one waiting by the water’s edge and he let me photograph him. He soon lost interest in me and he waded into the sea to greet a party arriving in a boat. They came into shore and I spoke to a young girl.

“He seems to prefer you to me. Do you know him?”

“We have a slight advantage,” the girl smiled, “We have fish!”

Just around the corner from us here at Tingalpa of course! So much easier than catching them.

My friend, Lorelle, went off to work; Michael the Bavarian engineer (and backpacker for three months) went off to Maroochydore (my computer wants to call it “Hydrochloride”) with her; and I was left all alone. I did some hoovering and brushing up (trying to be a good guest) and considered packing up my things and heading off early, with the idea of calling in to see one of my nieces en route to Brisbane; but I remembered how those visits can seem a little rushed, and then there’s the peak traffic to contend with… so I dismissed the thought and decided not to make any arrangements that would commit me to a particular timescale. There was no need to hurry. I had all day. I was still drowsy from allergy tablets. And it was hot…

I looked out of my bedroom window onto the pool and noticed that quite a few yellow leaves had dropped in overnight. Lorelle has always emphasised (to the point of brainwashing me) the dangers of organic matter ruining the ph levels of the water and clogging up the pool filter, therefore, I hurriedly popped into my hot pink bikini with the frill (the one Lorelle “wouldn’t be seen dead in”, and set about my labour of love. It wasn’t until every leaf and groat had been removed that I allowed myself the pleasure of taking a mermaid swim.

I wondered about the omnipresent old neighbour (who may be Austrian) who used to spend much of his time working by the back fence whenever I came to stay or house-sit at Lorelle’s… I couldn’t see him through the gaps in the fence, nor did I hear him. I reasoned that it didn’t really matter if he was there or not – after all, if he had seen it all before, why become so prudish all of a sudden? Besides, mermaids are very quiet creatures and do not splash about too much or, by any means, draw attention to their presence deliberately.

And so, like a water-baby, I had the most delightful of swims on my own (my first since a year ago).

Later on I learned that, at around the same time I would have been travelling on the Bruce Highway, had I decided to visit my niece, there was a bad accident between two caravans and a car on the highway. The road had to be blocked off and the traffic was held up for hours. So glad I decided not to rush.

For those of you who love white beaches and sunshine…

Yesterday afternoon, when Lorelle was at work and I was terribly drowsy as a result of taking antihistamine tablets for my allergy rash (cause unknown), I took a short walk down to the beach path to perk me up a little. The sun was shining, the sea was azure blue, the sand was white and a cool breeze came in from the water. I had intended to walk farther along the path to the exercise machines but I was drawn down to the sand and sea – it was so beautiful. I took off my sandals and waded in the water.

A kite-surfer scudded along the tops of the waves and took off occasionally (but I was not quick enough to catch a photo of him in the air) – up and down he went until his strap came off and he came out of the sea at just the point where I was walking. I stopped,he stopped and we chatted… I felt quite perked up as I walked back to Lorelle’s.

Today, here at Lorelle’s place on the Sunshine Coast, we said Auf Wiedersehen to one group of German backpackers and hallo to Michael from Bavaria. Because Michael is travelling alone my good friend and I invited the young man to go with us to Caloundra (fifteen kilometres away), where we had arranged to meet up with another friend from school. En route my Sat Nav kept reminding me, very politely, every time I exceeded the speed limit by even two kilometres per hour and this led to a discussion about speeding offences and fines.

Michael, who speaks excellent English, recounted a run-in with the Australian police that happened to two German friends of his when they were backpacking in Australia two years ago. Apparently the travellers were pulled over by a police car with flashing lights.

“Let’s pretend we can’t speak English,” one suggested.

“Yes, let’s speak German,” the other agreed.

“Sorry, aber wir sprechen nicht Englisch (Sorry, but we don’t speak English),” said the guilty pair.

“Das ist in ordnung, ich spreche Deutsch (That’s alright, I speak German),” said the police officer who had emigrated from Germany to Australia fifteen years ago.

The speeders had to pay a fine of $250.

As may realise, I usually put photographs on my blog when I haven’t time to write or when nothing exciting or interesting has happened; today it is a bit of both – I want to go out for a walk on the beach and nothing extraordinary has occurred (swimming in my pool is not extraordinary, just very pleasant). Today I shared my pool with Lorelle and the German young men who have been staying recently (my friend does B+B), but really I prefer to have the pool entirely to myself.

On my own the pool is not merely a swimming pool, it is a blue lagoon and I am a mermaid. Mermaids like to think and sing to themselves rather than to make conversations with people, even when the people are three hunky young men (well, the eldest is only twenty-two!). Mermaids in lagoons like to dream up stories and blow bubbles through their noses… But today I was not a mermaid – just an ordinary pool-cleaner and swimmer.

And now I am going to the beach – I’ll take some photographs on my mobile camera just in case nothing interesting happens….