Top marks to the reindeer beanie

Sunny and cool. No, I tell a fib. It's cold. Not car-encased-in-ice cold, but cold enough for woolly jumper AND a zip-up top garment too. A wool beanie works well, I find, especialy one with a pompom on top: and somewhere I still own one which has a green and white reindeer design. Memo. Must look it out.

Chainsaw out this morning. Wood in the woodshed, and from there to the back porch, and from there to the open fire in the lounge-room. What I really need is a chain of handy garden gnomes to keep the wood-bucket topped up. All right, you know I lead a quiet life. There's a dearth of news locally - either that or people just don't tell me. Internationally, of course, there is the normal mayhem.

How sad about the deaths in the capsized ferry on the Volga River - typical third worldly contributing reason: overcrowding / overloading. How often have you heard it? Adelaide has its River, called the Torrens, over which an individual can literally hop, if you feel so inclined. Not huge then. By contrast the Volga in places is several kilometres wide. The combo of wind and wave, with an unstable vessel, can be lethal, and in this case was.