Richard's Ramblings

You know that feeling after a lovely holiday away, your body is back home but half of your mind is still at the place where you’ve just spent two restful weeks … ? Leisa and I wondered why I slept so well. The holiday cottage bed was comfortable, but so is ours. There was no night-time noise in Speewah, except for scrabbling possums. Even with my hearing aids out, there is always intrusive sound on Greenwood and Thuringowa Drives. And of course Kirwan has ambient artificial light on all sides, while our cottage grounds were bathed only in moonlight filtered by rainforest. That lack of light, such an aid to sleep, posed its own problems when we took Yannie for her pre-bedtime walk. Leisa sported a headband torch, but how could we be sure that an indistinct shape looming up through the gloom wasn’t a cassowary or wild pig, endemic in the area? It can truly be said of them, that you don’t want to meet them on a dark night. In literature, sacred and secular, the dark has always hinted at u