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Definitely not a bad thing, seeing two movies starring Juliette Binoche in the one weekend. Last night Jet Lag was on TV, tonight went off to Brighton to see Caché (Hidden).

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Almost half an hour on the phone to Bigpond/Telstra trying (unsuccessfully) to change the billing address for my broadband connection to go to Monash.

The online form has a number of small, fixed-length fields and no conceivable abbreviation of Rm 232, Bldg 28, ITS Division, Monash University, Wellington Rd, Clayton 3800, Vic. can be made to fit in the small, fixed length fields.

The Bigpond telephone staff tried, but finally admitted that they too were confronted by "the new billing system" with its small, fixed-length, fields and could not change the address. They transferred me to Telstra, who they explained could enable "single billing" of broadband and phone service, but then split this and send the broadband to a different address!

Telstra staff reviewed "the notes attached to the account" and stated that while they could change the billing address for the phone account, they couldn't do anything about the broadband. They transferred me back to a Bigpond billing consultant.

The Bigpond billing consultant stated that I'd initially ended up with sales staff, but promised to work it out. He tried several ways, but eventually admitted that he was confronted by the same small fixed-length fields and could not make the supplied address or any variation fit.

The only other option I was presented with was to receive email bills, but these cannot be sent to any address other than my bigpond one "for security reasons". So I now have to receive my bills at my Bigpond email address, automatically forward these to my Monash email address, then manually forward them each month to the administration staff to be paid!

Determined to keep Mr Damage running by riding it at least once a fortnight, and hopefully once a week, I rode to work yesterday. Tried to leave only to discover that the ignition switch had no effect. No amount of swearing or checking fuses would get power to the bike. Today I brought in the multimeter, spanners and screwdrivers and an optimistic attitude. Viking provided a few handy pointers on where RC17 electricals are likely to go wrong. My lunch break involved the followng:

Remove fairing, swear, curse, confront row of connectors. Unplug, plug, unplug, plug, unplug, plug... unplug, aha! Scrub scrub scrub, plug. click lights, etc.

One very crusty burnt multi-way connector appears to be the culprit. Cause or effect of the high voltage that the bike seems to be plagued by. I cleaned it up as best as I could and plugged it all back together.

The latest water bill turned up and we seem to have stopped using water! I could have sworn that we're both still washing, but for the May quarter only 3kl have passed our meter. Sounds bizarre to me, a mere 32 litres per day. Time to start checking the meter every day again — something I did when we first moved in since I was curious as to what we would use in a new house.

In an odd coincidence, its exactly a year since I last took a reading from the meter, so I can see what a year's consumption works out as:

At South East Water's current rate — an enormous 77.71c per kilo-litre, or 0.07771c/l — the usage cost of the last year's 49058l of water is $38.12! Makes a bit of a joke of the exhortations to install a rainwater tank and "save up to 26% of your water usage"; we'd be saving $9 a year at most, and having to spend around $1000 to purchase a water tank and get it installed!

Water bills:

The day didn't start out well; woke in the dark to hear the wind howling around in the branches of the orange tree, rain pelting against the roof, dreading having to get up and ride over to South Melbourne for the training course — then I woke a little more and realised that it was still only Sunday and I didn't have to go anywhere today!

For around five years I've been aware of the Kellybrook Cider Festival, but I've never managed to get there. Three years ago Jo and I got married at Kellybrook winery, but we've never been back there to visit the winery, or the restaurant, or the cidery! Today, despite the freezing wind and icy rain and hail, we finally managed to drag ourselves off into the wilds of Wonga Park and find out what happens at the cider festival....

Cider; cider and apples, apples and cider, ... and morris dancers. Seems you can't have cider and a harvest festival without morris dancers, prancing rather ineptly around with bells on their ankles and clouting each other with dirty great lumps of wood.

The garden looks much the same as when we were here and got married. Perhaps more overgrown, the enormous oak tree is still an enormous oak tree, and still has all its leaves. The vines look cold and desolate, leafless in the wind. The crowd of visitors all look bearded and “organic” and many speak with English accents.

We got to watch the apples being dropped through the disintegrator — a marvellously titled piece of machinery — and the fresh juice being pressed out and taken away. On tasting were the fresh juice, fresh scrumpy cider, clarified still and sparkling cider, a thoroughly appropriate warm spicy mulled cider, and then the triple-distilled apple brandy. Very potent that last one, definitely a drop to sniff and savour in small quantities! A bottle of it accompanied me on the way home, it'll probably last a very long time.

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Definitely well into autumn now, nearly winter. Saturday was cold and damp and misty, Sunday it rained all day. Today is just damp and overcast. A lunchtime walk showed that it is peak time for mushrooms though, they were everywhere! Big juicy tasty ones, and a variety of scary looking red monsters with white spots.

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