the trust you put in the postal system

All four of our passports have flown south to get a little stamp in them to say we are allowed to visit Vietnam.  This means the China Vietnam trip is getting closer and closer.  We have had immunisations and we have bought shoes.  I think we are set.  As long as the passports fly back to us.

I love the post.  It is a faith based system.  I popped our little blue books into a piece of paper trustingly at the Mt Gravatt post office - they will appear on the desk of a Vietnamese consulate worker - and then they will appear back at my house.  There is almost something Harry Potter about it.  Harry Potter in a slow motion kind of way.  My mum posted a card from Croatia, and it arrived five days later.  Magic.  People have taken that card and read it and sorted it into a little box that says Australia, and put it on a plane, and gave it to a truck who gave it to our postman, who drives the unmistakable sound of a 50cc past the house at 1.30 each afternoon.

On the other hand, I recently sent a package of goodies to some friends in Tanzania - lollies and games and milo.  I have my doubts if it will make it.

In other news I have started a little garden in a bath.

I started with 8 lettuce seedlings.  Now there are four.  See that chicken in the foreground?  I think its eyes look shifty.  And there may be a lettuce leaf hanging out the side of its mouth.

But I have fortified the surroundings with more wire - so now only birds on the wing can get the seedlings.  I look forward to crisp garden salads.  In ummm about ten weeks.  Assuming the lettuce reaches maturity and the chickens do not work out how to unhook the canny wire gate fence thing I have made.

I am watching you chicken.