It has been cold in recent days. I think for a second time in maybe 4 days the papers are reporting we’ve had the coldest June day in the last 20 years. I guess climate change sceptics are probably smiling now.

I had a reasonably miserable weekend and it wasn’t just the cold. I did my back in on Friday. I suspected it was the night before, sitting on a couch at Susan and Matthew’s home for the church small group meeting, which slowly got the back caved in. But I get a bad back episode 1-2 times a year anyway. The trigger could be anything or nothing at all. It just comes when it wants to, mercifully just 1-2 times a year.

So on Sat morning as we lumbered through a very cold morning I was walking around funny and feeling stiff and not happy. When we eventually made it out of the house late morning, we went to the Nunadwing home centre. I had wanted to get one of those slow/pressure cookers to cook some winter warmers and both The Good Guys and Harvey Norman were having financial year end sales (as is every retailer Down Under). We walked away from The Good Guys with a model which on the face of it, was a steal. We made a $70 savings, which appears to have been maybe a touch under a third of the “RRP”.

We then lunched at Madam K’s (who had put up the prices) and then went to get some groceries. Later that night we took a drive to Tullamarine to pick up S & YL who had been back to Malaysia. We got back home, watched the last quarter of the Saints stealing a win against the Cats (yay…) and then watched a movie on Netflix (Tom Hanks’ Road to Perdition).

Early on Sunday morning I watched the Euro 2016 Croatia v Portugal game on my iPad. It was on TV too but it was again very cold and it was far easier to remain in bed, doona pulled well up to under my chin, with the iPad tucked just above the doona.

My back was marginally better when we left home for church.

We usually sit in the far right section of the church hall (left, if you’re looking from the pulpit) but yesterday morning when we got in a touch after 10am, that section was completely deserted. It could be the cold, or it could be the school holidays but there wasn’t a soul  in that section so we sat in the right side of the middle section instead. Our usual corner soon filled however but not before a few people came up to us to rib and remark/ask “what’re you doing in this section?”.

Peter continued with his “Fruitfulness on the front line” series, which we had missed twice because of our holidays to Oahu. After church we decided to  go to a different joint for lunch, partly because Madam K had put up her prices substantially but also partly because many had been putting up FB posts on a new joint off Doncaster Road. We decided Madam K was still better, and Tress and I stopped by on the way home, to get a couple of takeaways for later in the week…

After a bit more groceries shopping – for cooking the week’s meals on the new cooker – we walked the little fellow, which I enjoyed a lot. It has been so many days of wintry conditions – wet and cold – that although it was still cold, the drier and sunnier afternoon made for a very pleasant walk. We got home, we both had a coffee and did some office work on our laptops, and then I cooked and Tress did some ironing. We went through our respective tasks listening to the Hawks v Gold Coasts Sun game on the radio. Hawks won and went to the top of the ladder, as the Swans had a bye this week so they sat on second place.

Masterchef on TV was very entertaining, with teams serving dinners on pods on the Melbourne Star. As we sat watching the teams frantically working on their dishes, the smell of my chicken/mushroom/pumpkin “risotto” wafted through the home. Winter comfort…bad back notwithstanding.