It has been raining heavily on and off for the past two days, and poured overnight. The lower dam has flooded its banks again, spreading into a small lake in the backyard, and all day a steady stream of water has been rushing down the driveway and the gutters towards it. Our house is down a slope hidden from the main road, which unfortunately in wet weather means that a great deal of water rushes towards and, ideally, around the house, towards the lower dam. Unfortunately in my experience drainage rarely conforms to an ideal, and inevitably the area under the house gathers water and turns into a little clay pit, waiting for an unsuspecting pedestrian to sink their be-thonged foot into its sticky depths.

I have been inspired into various cleaning and organising tasks, prompted presumably by my pregnancy, which has now reached its halfway mark. I have been tackling the Chair of Doom, the place where for some reason I have chosen to file all our bills, tax related papers and receipts for the past two years. It is a horrid chair, but it is now mostly emptied, its contents either thrown away or filed (actually in a filing cabinet this time).

Every time the rain stops it sounds as if a dozen water features have been installed outside, water rushing down drains and trickling out of tank overflows. The chooks are hunched in a resigned fashion on their perch, waiting for a little sunshine to dry out their pen, and as dusk falls the frog chorus has started, the “bop bop bop” sound of the pobblebonks joining the longer calls of frogs I don’t know, and the occasional croaking of toads.