MIDWEEK

There were three laughing their heads off when K arrived midweek for a few days. He never comes down midweek. Now, that's hardly ever.

The one on the/our left looks like a baby. And there's lots of baby black cockatoos around by the sound of the open throated pleading calls coming in the evenings from the giant gum poking up from the gully. 

I wasn't certain what that call was, and even thought it might be mating. Then a few weeks ago I found myself walking in Centennial Park with a bird-feeder of a certain eccentricity. She shamelessly carried a bag of raw mince meat which she dispensed to Magpie families with mutual familiarity. 'This one's got two' she would say as a Magpie would hop over to her and take a big lump of mince in its beak and toddle back to two open throated young making that call. 'This one's got one' got a lesser ration.

So, here we are midweek, babies and all. The rain has cleared and the skies are brilliant. I can't find the comet that's meant to below Orion.

While I cooked we listened to a 1947 recording of Tennesse Williams camping it up with Pancho and then ate watching La Dolce Vita. The phenomenal Anita Ekberg has just died. There's the legendary Trevi Fountain scene of course :

I wish I could find the surreal hospital sequence which edges dangerously close to a boundary as the still clothed overdosed fiancée lies unconscious splayed on a stainless steel trolley, legs slightly askew, in a vast and otherwise empty sterile emergency room. Or is it a mortuary.

Lighter in tone is the deliciously subversive ascent to the top of St Peter's :

There's a wonderful seance as the rich and beautiful slip beyond amused indulgence into the realms of vulnerability and higher powers. The sequence where the blond bombshell ends up sensuously collapsed on the table, breasts up of course, is nowhere to be found in youtube land. Sadly.

But there is this brilliant spoof from Toto, Peppino e ... la dolce vita :

Come the morning.

There's jobs to be done. A hundred eucalypts planted. A hundred grasses to go. Tomorrow. Is this what retirement might look like. Tomorrow.