The good...and the not so good...

This afternoon I headed off to a 'fete' meeting. Our parish has quite a busy program of fund-raising this year and as a consequence there will be a 'Twilight Markets' event in September. I missed the first meeting as I was at my niece's for her daughter's 2nd birthday last month. So today was a 'catch up' meeting I guess for myself and 2 others who had missed out.  We mainly discussed craft ideas and looked at samples of others' work. From experience I know that time will just fly and September will be here before we know it. So I guess the idea is to start making items as soon as possible.

When I arrived home and walked around to the back door to let myself in I saw that I had some bird visitors in my garden. Two were young magpies who still had their brown feathers (mature magpies are black and white) and one very special visitor (well to me he/she was special), a kookaburra. These birds are icons of Australia; related to the kingfisher, the kookaburra has a call that sounds like a laugh. That's why their other name is 'laughing jackass'. They are seen less and less in suburbia, compared to when I was growing up, so any sightings are delightful. Here was one sitting on the fence... and he/she stayed while I went inside, 'threw' the grocery bags on the kitchen floor, grabbed my camera from the desk drawer, opened the sliding door and went out on to the veranda to take some photos. Just after that another kookaburra swooped down towards the first one and they both flew away.

Then I checked the answering machine and found the not so good part of the day's events. It was the bank saying that there was 'suspicious activity' on our card and to ring the number on the back of the card. Yep! Someone had used 'our ' card in another part of the country; had spent thousands of dollars. It gives you an awful shock and even though it's all sorted out and we are not liable for those accounts, we have had to cancel that card. It happened to me in 2008 when my bank was suspicious of an online transaction . I didn't bother to get another card.