More water divining

Last night, as a result of advice I get from this website , I log on to MSN Messenger to see if I can get a better experience with my webcam. Who do I find online? My daughter Cara who is no doubt up to no good but we chat for a while. What a nice surprise!

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The comments made by dido and myself, on 1st October, about water divining, produced this message from Phillip, who lives in Australia.

I was interested to read about your dabble in “water divining”. In 1967, as a young Lieutenant, I was leading a group of some 20 Australian soldiers on a well digging project in a village on the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea. Their existing water supply had mysteriously diminished and a potential health problem existed. Over a couple of days we manually sunk a bore hole nearly thirty feet deep only 25 yards from the bank of the mighty Sepik (full of crocodiles I might add!). Amazingly, we could not find water. A second attempt at a likely spot produced a similar result. The soldiers were tired and frustrated and morale was not good…not too many social distractions that far into the country. The village natives thought our efforts were laughable. One of the soldiers suggested “water divining” but was ridiculed. I decided to give it a go and stripped a thin y-shaped branch of its bark and took the forks in hand. Strolling around the areas we had been working in was fruitless. I then moved further away from the river and at one location the branch seemed to take a mind of its own and pulled downwards. We dug and struck the water table at 5 feet!! Not surprisingly my skepticism was relieved. Only three of our party could get a result with a branch. One fellow got a result with shaped galvanized wire.........

Cheers, Phillip

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It was another glorious sunny day, at 21c, as we met Bob and Lynne (and puppy Harry, now 8 months old) at Meli Melo, in Anduze, for lunch. It was nice enough to eat outside on the terrace, which is actually the space between the carpark and the main road. This is an interesting restaurant that offers food from five different countries (French, North African, Spanish, Italian and Thai). Normally I would run a mile from somewhere that offered such a wide range but they have a Thai chef and Thai food is our favourite. It's a better than average attempt, but in a 'dressed up for the French' kind of way. Next time I'll give 24 hours notice and ask for something more authentic. That could be fun. When we got back, I'm sure Max thought that we'd been unfaithful because he could smell Harry as he sniffed and licked us all over. Sorry Max, but you are now just too big, even for outside dining.