07:00 I get out of bed and bring us back a cup of tea each. I look at my smartphone, and see that the bushfire danger zones (red i.e. most dangerous, plus orange and blue) are much the same as last night - the current bushfire near Perth, Western Australia, is threatening the house where our younger daughter Sarah lives, together with Francis and their 7-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie.
flashback to December; the family on holiday near Albany on the Southern Ocean
(left to right) Lily, Francis, Sarah and Jessie
08:15 I text Sarah on whatsapp to ask if the apparent stability of the zones means that the bushfire itself has been stabilized. To our surprise she texts back that they are getting ready to evacuate: they expect to leave the house by 5pm (9am our time) - yikes!!!
Sarah's family live in Lower Chittering, in the north central blue zone
Sarah doesn't say exactly why they've taken the decision to leave, or where they're going to - we assume they're going to one of the Evacuation Centres, perhaps to the north-east of their address.
I don't like to go back to her with any questions because they're obviously getting out of their house under some pressure. However, at 10:40 am our time she texts us to say that they are going to be staying with friends in Tapping, Joondalup, which is the big city due west of the bushfire area, between the fire and the ocean. It's an area with lots of lakes, so it's difficult to see the bushfire doing much damage there, which is reassuring.
the city of Joondalup - with the suburb of Tapping in the north-east
It'll be a relief for Lois and me that the family are now with friends. Over the past two days we've been helping them out by monitoring the progress of the bushfire using the websites bushfire.io and emergency.wa.org.au . We had instructions to wake them with a phone-call if the situation in their neighbourhood became more serious.
flashback to 2018: Lois and me at Joondalup Resort
10:00 We speak on the phone to our other daughter, Alison, who lives in Haslemere, Surrey with Ed and their 3 children, Josie (14), Rosallind (12) and Isaac (10). The family has been trying for several months to move to a quieter location in the same general area, and Alison thinks the deal may perhaps now be imminent - maybe next week, although they won't be moving before March at the earliest.
(left to right) Ed, Josie, Rosalind, Isaac, Alison, at a local pub
near Haslemere, Surrey
The house they want to buy is a large 5-bedroom house on a quiet road just over the county boundary, in Hampshire.
At the moment they live on a very busy road, and they have to keep their Danish ex-alley-cat, Dumbledore, and their British kitten indoors, Otto indoors: the Danish cat's brother was run over by a car a couple of years back. If they do manage to move, it's going to be quite a pantomime moving all the family's pets: the 2 cats, a Danish dog Sika, and numerous tropical fish - my god! The rest of the move will be a piece of cake, that's for sure!
11:00 We go for a walk on the local football field. Only one dog-walker about today, which is nice. Also an elderly walker - not that we're elderly of course haha! Some parish council guys are standing around gassing with each other: it's unclear what work they're engaged on - no surprise there!!!
we go for walk on the local football field -
today the tops of the hills are shrouded in mist
16:00 We haven't used the car since last Saturday when we had our astrazeneca coronavirus vaccination, so we take it out today to "keep it ticking over", and to post a birthday card to Lois's nephew Aiden in Oxford.
17:00 We come home and I see that Sarah and Francis's house in Lower Chittering has now been taken just marginally out of the blue zone, so in theory at least it isn't in any danger for the moment. But I suppose it only takes a change of wind direction to put everything into a state of flux again. We don't know - we're not experts in bushfires and this is a first for us. We don't get bushfires in the UK, which is a relief, to put it mildly!
Also not being in any coloured zones is not as good as it sounds because they need to travel through the coloured zones if they want to get out of the area - my god!!!!
But Sarah and Francis and the twins will hopefully be sound asleep by now at their friends' house. It's 1:15 am over there.
the situation at 17:15 Thursday: Sarah's house is now just to the north of the blue zone
20:00 We settle down on the couch and watch a bit of TV, the first programme in a new series about the Irish coastline, presented by actor and Ulsterman, Adrian Dunbar.
Tonight we see presenter Adrian Dunbar in the pub in the little coastal town of Listowel, once owned by the Irish playwright John B. Keane. Adrian is talking to Keane's son, Billy, and they're waxing lyrical about the attractions of the Irish pub's traditional camaraderie.
Billy says, "You might have some poor fella, when he's at home, he doesn't get a word in. The pub is his stage, and he just talks away, and there's a great camaraderie in the pub.
"It was a sense of maybe the wildness in the Irish people. I truly believe we're a pagan race, even though we have the trappings of Christianity occasionally. It's only a veneer really, And I suppose in the pub is probably where you see the true sense of paganism... and the landscape lent itself to that kind of wildness, that kind of a sense of escape from duty and from religion and conformity. It just lets you go wild: it's a part of that wildness, a sense of freedom".
I don't know. What crazy people the Irish are! But we love them !!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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