Tress and I did our usual coffee and errand runs on Sat morning. However, we went a touch earlier and after that, we headed to Blackburn station and got a train into the city. We headed to the Vic Markets, to get stuff for a dinner party we were hosting that night.

TT and Maudrene Quah, Cheng Hsian and Bernie Tay, Jason and Mel were our guests and we thought we’d put on a simple barbeque dinner. Tress did a cold salad of mango, avocado and cos lettuce with some dried fruits. I did a warm salad of pumpkin, eggplant, capsicum and mushrooms. We got some ciabatta bread, and some scotch and porterhouse for meat and salmon and leather jackets for fish, all of which I threw on the Weber. I had cleaned it out the weekend before, and on Cup Day a few days ago Tress and I tried it out – we needed to do this as the last time we cooked anything on the barbie was probably Easter.

Our guests enjoyed the food. Cheng Hsian brought a very nice bottle of French red, and Mel brought a sticky date pudding. TT brought a snapper which Maudrene caught, and we popped it into the oven and it was very good. Jason also brought a bottle of his usual Mt Langhi but it wasn’t a bunch of drinkers so it was left unopened.

The party finished up relatively early and by about 11pm we were already cleaning up and we went to bed just after 12. I was up though, at about 5am on Sunday morning, to watch the Villa game. It was a bad start, trailing 0-2 by early second half but thankfully we got back in and won it, courtesy of the “little Mexican”, Hernandez aka Chicharito. He really does look like Solskjaer in the role that he plays.

After the game, I made some coffee, Tress and I had a smallish brekky and we then went to the Edge Church in Doncaster East. It’s a brethren church and the early service (9am) we went to was a traditional one. There were only about 30+ people there, and most were older folks. We spent some time talking to people after that. After that we went to drop off a couple of food collection boxes at Blackburn North. Wesley Mission had contacted my office for volunteers and I had dropped off the box at the IGA in Blackburn a few weeks back and they came to me again, this time for Woolworths at Blackburn North.

When that was done, we went over to Madam Kwong’s in Box Hill for a very nice lunch, and then headed home.

It was a glorious day – warm, sunny and slightly breezy. Tress and I took Scruffy out to Forest Hill reserve for a long walk, then came home and lazed around the house – taking in a lazy snooze at one stage. The only blemish was in the way the Aussie batting crumbled – losing 3 wickets in a 20+ minutes spell. Later that arvo we took another walk – someone was flying a huge kite in the park across the road from the house so we went there and took the little fellow again. We did another walk, this time through more familiar route.

After a dinner of barbie of a bit of leftover fish from Sat night, we got ready for the week and finished up the weekend with a video chat with Kiddo, who has some interesting plans on her plate but that is for another day…