Had another talk with Irene and John about houses and boats; asked then if they knew a good plumber, and it turns out that John is a plumber himself. However, also found out about some other local tradies, which could be useful down the track. We promised to have a pair of house visits and drinks to check out each other’s houses.

Also talked with Geoff and Ginny; we met Geoff (an Aussie) last year when he was doing the Compostelle walk through Moissac and this year he has brought his UK wife with him. He remembered our boat from last year and so dropped by to say hello; they are here for the Festival of the Voice this weekend.

Went out to Weldom’s to get lots of paint and painting gear, then up to the house for an afternoon of painting. Started on bedroom #1, with cleaning the walls, stripping old paint, laying covers. Then we undercoated half the walls before deciding to call it quits for the day. Took the iPad up and hooked it up to the wifi and found it gets reception through the entire house; much better than the wifi at Taggerty (must remember to get newer more powerful wifi box for Taggerty). Listened to satire program on Radio National, commenting on the change in PM, then Tony Delroy. Nice to listen to the ABC while doing the painting.

Given that I was doing some more house painting, I had to continue the FV tradition. The FV tradition started nearly 50 years ago, when my dad went to hospital for a small operation. While he was away, my brother (Bernie) and I decided we would paint the kitchen for him, and enlisted the help of good friend Frank Vella to help us with the task. The kitchen walls had been painted many years previously with dark green semi-gloss paint, and later with cream semi-gloss paint (without having the walls properly cleaned of the accumulated kitchen grime). As a result, the cream paint had been peeling for years, assisted by us kids as we sat at the dinner table, trying to get the most imaginative shapes when peeling off the cream paint. We decided that we would need to sand back the cream and green paint layers to get a good base for the new flat grey paint. Frank had brought along an orbital sander and got to work on the walls. As a bit of fun, he started the job by sanding his initials, FV, onto the wall. We had a good laugh, and left them there as we got on with the rest of the job. However, less than an hour later, we got a phone call from the hospital saying that dad had been released early and should be home within an hour or so. Panic! Less than an hour to go and a huge set of FV initials carved onto the wall. We didn't have time to sand the rest of the walls, so we just got on with painting the wall from which the initials stared out at us. One coat was not enough (the light-coloured initials stood out dramatically from the dark green background surrounds), so before it had dried we put on another coat just before Dad arrived home. Knowing what was under the new paint, we swore he would be able to see it. But he was so impressed with our industrious nature, including our apologies for not finishing the other walls, that he didn't see the initials or at least say anything about them. After we finished the rest of the kitchen over the next few days, including a third coat on the offending wall, we were pretty happy with ourselves. No one saw anything. At least not immediately. But over time, as the paint dried fully, the initials started to show though, until finally someone asked, at one of our Friday night post-squash parties, whether they were just imagining it or whether they could see Frank's initials appearing from the wall. We tried to keep a straight face, but eventually we cracked and admitted our little misfortune. Even Dad thought it was funny. The picture below is for Frank (and also for Dad and Bernie).

After dinner on the boat, Rita headed uptown to see what concerts were on in the Festival de la Voix, but I was too buggered to go anywhere.