Snippets.

I've always wanted to write a Snippets column. Growing up in the sixties, I loved stealing Dad's Herald - the now-defunct Melbourne afternoon newspaper - and reading In Black and White by E. W. Tipping. Others wrote the column after Tipping was gone but he was the best.

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Six-thirty Sunday morning. I was driving across the foothills of the Dandenongs towards Healesville. The hills rose away to left and right as I crested a rise and was suddenly gazing over the Yarra Valley, its early morning mist like a liquid gold sea, lit by the rising sun. A hot air balloon in the distance hung still in the air, like a light bulb in an empty room.

There is something special about Sunday mornings.

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The 'mountain run' at Healesville was on a loop of 4.3 kilometres which we ran three times, crossing the dam wall each time. The scenery was beautiful if you cared to notice it. Running up the hills was hard, but down the other side was worse. I almost ended up in the scenery several times.

Afterwards, the usual post-race morning tea with the usual contributions from everyone. Except for 19-year-old Tom, who uncharacteristically brought along a bag of fruit - oranges, apples, bananas. Turns out his parents are overseas for a couple of weeks and had left fruit for Tom and his sister. They don't eat fruit. Tom was off-loading it.

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Sunday night: roast lamb. Baked with a sprig of rosemary from the garden and garlic cloves. With roast pumpkin, roast potatoes, roast onions. And cabbage, par-boiled and then sauteed with finely chopped bacon and butter. And a kind of mint gravy - mint from the garden, chopped and simmered with some vinegar, a little sugar and boiling water, added to the pan juices from the roast.

Glass of red. Sleep.

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Malcolm is one of my running friends. His wife was due at the same time as T., but has just had the baby, three weeks early. They are returning to Scotland after a year of guest lecturing and were having trouble with the red tape associated with getting a visa for the babe. You'd be tearing your hair out.

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T. thinks it's a boy. We have a boy's name picked but not one for a girl. A few weeks ago, T. was coming out of the osteopath's when a woman, another patient, approached her, looked at her bulge and said, 'I can tell that your baby is a boy. I've not been wrong in over 200 guesses! And it's not about the shape, it's just that I can tell.' Well, she would say that, wouldn't she? We will see.

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21 degrees today and yesterday. And a drying north wind. We're in the depths of winter, but today was like an early spring day. Drought is choking the country. Rain is forecast for tomorrow.

Late today, the forecast changed to 'light' rain.