Kitchen tap.

Amid all the worries and upheavals of the past six months, there has been one constant; every Tuesday night Ben attended tap dancing classes. With lots of help and encouragement, and very determined regular practice at home in the kitchen, the absolute beginner has learnt to tap dance. He's not in the Studio D All Stars concert but we will be in the audience for the Sunday matinee performance, singing along to the chorus of Johnny O'Keefe's Shout. Why tap? Well it was the only class available for adults at the local dance school and it turned out that the tap class was a lot of fun. We have to thank Kelly, the teacher who started term three on crutches, and the other students for all their help. Special thanks go to Kathleen, without exaggeration the most organised person in the whole world and also an experienced tap dancer, who patiently and happily mentored the new student every week.

Yoga in the kitchen.

Ben does yoga exercises every morning for an hour before breakfast. He attended a few classes at the Ringwood School of Yoga back in July and some at Mount View Yoga in August. Mostly, though, he's self taught and learned many of the positions from a book. In the evening we both do stretching and movement exercises for about forty minutes before dinner. In the final few minutes of the session, we do a "winding down" exercise lying on the floor and slowly relaxing from head to toe while paying attention to the breathing. It's very much like meditation but lying down and I have to admit to sometimes nodding off during this part of the routine.

Today we had two very welcome visitors to our kitchen; one's a very good friend who, many years ago when she was single, shared our house with us and the other was someone who we'd never met before. He was, however, happy to try out the yoga mat and demonstrated his skill at the flat-on-back quarter rotation, effortlessly moving himself from along to across the mat. He also displayed the part-way-over axial rotation which will, with a little more practice, develop into a full axial belly flop. It's nice to have visitors and we hope to see Yumi and son Shaun again soon.

The painted door.

It was 215 days ago that we slowly walked the long corridor on the lowest level of Launceston General Hospital and passed through the painted door. From a distance it looks transparent and you can see the office on the other side but it's just been painted that way. Once you enter, someone has to push a button to let you out and sometimes they won't. I did secretly take an overnight bag on that rushed trip to the hospital, thinking that a good night's sleep and a few tablets were all that was needed. Ten days behind the painted door was a relatively short stay by all accounts but it seemed unbearably long at the time.

Kitchen battlefield.

It's calm in our kitchen where the real battles are mostly internalised. Skirmishes do occur for an hour or so each day. We've stopped playing chess, probably because the games took ages and we assiduously played them out to the bitter end. Scrabble/Scarble is still in the repertoire and, recently, the Warhammer pieces bought in Germany two years ago have been assembled and glued. The rules of the game are complex and the mental arithmetic required to play can be daunting. I have a new-found respect for the 'trekie' kids and adults who hang around Games Workshop and actually understand what they're doing. The rule book for our older set is out of print and we purchased one online from an American supplier called Nerdvana.

The results of recent scans have mirrored the results from Germany last December. Both times the MRI suggested something unusual but further tests found no discernable physical basis for symptoms. A local ENT specialist also checked the sinuses and declared, "It's like a Mercedes Benz in there!" The Helios team at Bad Saarow have done an excellent job.

Occasional animation.

There's an old TV and DVD player in our kitchen but they're only used occasionally. A few months ago, it was impossible to sit and watch for more than a few minutes because of the discomfort that sitting and watching caused. Slowly the duration has been extended and thirty minutes is now achievable on a good day. It's taken weeks to view a single video, and we've given up on some which felt a little too suspenseful (Karate Kid!) and others that were too long (The Party). Anime has proved to be a favourite genre and, thanks to Tess, we have a very good collection to work through. It's hard to be animated when you're unwell, thankfully there's enjoyment to be found in watching these amazing stories. The medication dose is now almost six times higher it was originally and occasionally we see signs of animation and improvement.

Spirited Away

Laputa: Castle in the Sky

Porko Rosso
(web images)

Everything changes.

The cottage is on the market.

We only managed to stay in the cottage for a few months. It was very liveable and I really liked the location: set back from the highway (but with full view of the occasional passing traffic) and beside the track leading to the cemetery. Lots of stories could be, and some have been, told about the events of the past autumn and winter in this little cottage on the edge of town. It would have been nice to spend the summer there, and that was the plan, or one of the plans depending on how things worked out. We were potential buyers for a while but, somewhat sadly, that now seems increasingly unlikely. Everything changes, and we move on.

Scarble Deluxe.

Scarble Deluxe™ We often sit at the kitchen table and play Scrabble. It's been difficult to complete a game in one sitting and usually takes a few days to finish. A few years ago, Uncle Peter and I inadvertently invented Scarble; Scrabble with spelling mistakes that are discovered well after the letters have been placed on the board. Ben and I have just invented Scarble Deluxe where the spelling of the very first word was incorrect but we convinced ourselves it was right and kept playing. The Scarble Deluxe™ game pictured has at least two spelling mistakes, including that extra special first-word error.