OK what next?

You just have to love Melbourne don't you...never a dull moment

• One moment you're sweating through temperatures in the high 30's, then the change comes through and within half an hour the temperature has plummeted and you're looking for more clothes. One night you throw all your bed clothes off, the next the doona/duvet isn't thick enough. (you say duvet which is French, we say doona which is Italian. You say courgette, French, we say zucchini, Italian).
• Usually, driving east towards our beloved Dandenongs we have a beautful vista of a heavily wooded range of hills with TV towers on top. Last week they were invisible 3 times for 3 different reasons; the first was when the atmosphere was smokey, the second was on the day of high winds when they were totally shrouded 'cos of dust and then finally the next day it rained and they were invisible in clouds.....
• And last night we had what could either be described as a "small earthquake" or a "strong earth tremor". Scoring 4.6 on the Richter scale with the epicentre near Drouin, a town in Gippsland south east of Melbourne, it was the strongest tremor I've ever been in and while not big on a global scale was enough to scare the daylights out of me and others, given that this is not an earthquake zone. Fires we know about, 'quakes, avalanches, snow storms..not.

My house is an old 2 storey weatherboard one which has already got cracked plaster due to the shifting earth as a result of the drought..one week we can't open the laundry door, the next week its a bedroom door etc. Its one of the quirks of this type of house.

Anyhow, there I was all alone and just getting horizontal, tired after a training session which involved low wattage but high RPM's..4 mins easy the 1 min high RPM's and there was a distant rumbling which initially I thought was either a tree falling or a truck on the nearby road. But it kept on getting louder and sounded wrong for a tree falling, maybe it was a truck running OFF the road towards my house..although that didn't gel either cos there were no sounds of tree and fence wreckage that would have to also be there. Isn't it amazing how your brain works, how many thoughts pop up are examined and discarded or accepted in the blink of an eye.

The noise continued to get louder and then the shaking started by which time I was putting clothes back on, grabbing glasses and making for the door (there was a definite element of panic there...it was not a smooth action or a pretty sight and my trousers went on back to front and why did I bother putting them on anyway??!!); but I knew I needed to get out and being in the dubiously extended second storey of an old weatherboard house was NOT where I wanted to be!

By the time I was downstairs it was over so I then patrolled the house to see if any of the cracks had got larger..(nope!) and looked for the cats who were nowhere to be found..they had fled..probably well before humans realised there was a problem.

When I was assured the house was unscathed I turned on the radio..we have one station which changes from entertainment/news to information ++ when there's an emergency ..usually bushfires and given our recent bushfires, my radio was already tuned to it. Within minutes there was calming info and reports of no damage or injury but despite this I went to bed fully clothed and it took me an age to get to sleep.

Enough already...we just want to get back to the quiet life