You can vote in Perth too....

The election in France doesn't really make top news in Perth.  Among the hot topics here are the Roe 8 project and why the West Coast Eagles can't win at the MCG.  Its the flip side of the coin - in Australia we think Le Pen is something the French write with and Macron is a sort of cake; similarly maybe the French think a West Coast Eagle is...well a bird that prefers to hang around the côté ouest and Roe 8 is a keen enthusiast of open boat oarsmen!

Donc. As it's the election Michelle had the opportunity to vote.  Oui, although to see and hear my wife, she sounds completely English but can turn on the French lingo at the drop of a hat.  I am really jealous, especially when she laughs at my more amusing faux pas with the language. I will persevere however!!!  Just keep the gender of cats away from any topic discussed in public.  Anyway.. it turns out the the local Alliance Francaise here in Perth had a booth set up for the Presidential election. It was very popular too. I never knew so many ex pat French lived in Perth, but then again,  pourquoi pas!?   The weird thing though is the process is completely different from anything I had seen before.  They have all the candidates names, face up, on cards to choose from.  Now here comes the sneaky bit. You have to choose at least two of these in clear view of the officials and take them with you to your booth.  I suppose you could take them all if you wanted absolute privacy! Then you discard the one(s) you don't want, putting your single selection in a little brown envelope.  Seems a bit of a waste of paper to me, but who I am to question nearly 150 years of democracy!

But I have to say I do like the simplicity  of just voting for one person. At the recent State election here in Western Australia we had 58 different candidates to choose from.  In theory this would mean I would have to mark them down in preference from 1 to 58. I have enough trouble finding something laudable in my first choice candidate.  To work out the pros and cons of the 58th on the list would be a full time job!  I tried to take a photo, but would need telescopic hands to fold out the concertina form.

Kitchen

Well... Sid, the chap who sanded and re-varnished our floors did such a great job we asked him to have a look at the sorry state of our kitchen.

Bedroom floor now without paint flecks, with skirting board varnished and sealed!

Since the floor was leveled the kitchen has sort of ‘sunk.’ Well not actually sunk as such but it has that effect as the since the ground floor was leveled all our kitchen units are suddenly 6cm lower than before.  It really is a perfect kitchen for a hobbit. 

The kitchen was always on the list of things to do, so we thought it time to grasp the nettle and get on with it…or at least let someone else far more capable than us get on with it while we were away. 

Until now when we  had always got by with a microwave and a fridge, hence most of  our meals were cheese, ham, olive, salad and bread based.  No problem at all for us but the time will come when it gets a bit chilly and we fancy something cooked.

The kitchen at the moment...note the lack of sink. 

The house did come with a large gas cooker.  It's a bit ugly and doesn’t really lend itself to the small kitchen. Half of the cooker is taken up by a big gas canister; and the other half sublet to a family of spiders and other invertebrates. We never got around to getting a gas bottle.  It just sits there, gathering dust and we only use it to balance the microwave! 

The kitchen sink is great. I love its style and size.  If only it were in the kitchen itself.  Like the rest of the kitchen it’s now that bit lower. Plus we need to have a pump underneath to help the water navigate itself to the drain. 

Which comes to us asking if Sid could lend his hand to remodeling our kitchen.  The sink and the oven are both going, and we are going to put the sink in the kitchen itself.

So this is a rough computer impression of what it might look like. The old sink is currently locate below the side window. That is now going to be a window seat that will double as a place to store wood for the wood burner.  Fingers crossed it will all be done by the time we get back there!