Ripe Lilly Pilly Berries, Syzigium

G'Day,
I was pleased to get a comment back from Jane in Scotland yesterday. I have been reading her blog for a few weeks now.I think it is great to be able to read about peoples lives and interests from all over the world, and share what I am doing and thinking about while sitting in the comfort of my own home. I am learning all the time, a bit like the modern version of pen pals.
My maternal grandmother's parents came here from Scotland. They settled originally in Mt Gambier in south Australia where my grand mother was born.
My little old car is still out of action. I picked it up on Friday which was the day it had to be registered. It was jumping and jerking and stalling all the way home, so I went to the post office and the council to pay bills and fix up the rego and held my breath that the people at the council registry office didn't look out the window and see what it was doing. (The rego/council offices are also across the road from the police station)I had to drive it back down the main street to take it back to the garage and everybody was stopping to look at and laugh at my car. Most amusing. Anyway I had to stop to give way to a truck outside the garage and that is where it died. The two mechanics had to push me in the rest of the way. Most embarrassing. It is still there, I went to see them again after work this afternoon and they were looking at the fuel pump and some valve thingy that is in the fuel system. Lucky I have a sense of humor! Not so happy though about the thought of what it may cost me.I have had my little car for 4 years now without paying anything out except for tyres and rego so I guess I have done well especially since it is a 1994 model.
I had a fairly easy day at work today I must be firing on all cylinders at the moment.It is my 1st of 4 days. When I have a bad day I feel like my poor old car, not quite in tune or running on all cylinders. Short days and longer nights are here at the moment, and it is nice to snuggle up in bed on these cold nights, I must be getting enough sleep. I know what I am like when I don't.
The only flowers in my garden at the moment are the pansies, some stinky old jonquils and some zygo cactus, I have a hot pink, an orange and a white and pink edged one. The perennial wallflower will come out next, there are just a few flowers starting on it, even the old geraniums have hardly anything left.The camellia will start soon too.Then the almond tree blossoms across the road will herald the other side of winter.There are still a few of the last lily pily berries on the tree for me to munch on.

G'Day,
Nothing much happening this afternoon so I went over to Wagga to the nursery, to sticky beak. I bought some gladioli bulbs yesterday (a white one & a dark red called black stallion) and planted them out so I wanted to see what other colours I could find.I didn't find any more interesting gladi bulbs but I got a rhubarb crown (I hope it has red stalks) and Mum got a tuber rose bulb. The seed potatoes were in stock so I got some of those. One type I got was a purple potato that stays purple when it is cooked. Interesting, can't wait to see what happens with them. So snowballing along, I bought the dolomite and the sugar cane mulch in compressed blocks to make a straw garden under the old swings out the back for the potatoes. The lady at the nursery recommend the sugar cane mulch because you aren't supposed to get seeds coming up in it like you do in the pea straw I have been using. I haven't grown potatoes for several years and then it was in soil so this should be fun.The nursery lady also said it would be best to wait about a month to do it so I will have lots of time to collect newspapers to lay as the bottom layer, I have home made compost, leaves and some horse manure to add. When you add up the price of the mulch and seed potatoes though, I wonder if it would be easier to just go to the supermarket, but you cant get purple tatos at the supermarket often around here.
We told the man at the car yard we wouldn't be getting the ford territory. Too scared to put ourselves into that much debt at the moment.
In my post of June 15th I spoke about a movie I had watched and linked it to the stolen generation.Well I didn't know then, but it is now again a topical news subject because it has just been announced that due to abuse of aboriginal children in outback communities the govt has decided to send in medical teams to action the abuse and do health checks on the children and women in the northern territory aboriginal communities. My heart tells me this could become akin to what has happened in the past but my head tells me that if children and women are being abused then it is by criminals who must be stopped. Yes even if it means family and cultural break up. They are also bringing in laws prohibiting alcohol and pornography in these communities. I could say more about the short comings that I have heard of in these communities, like the young brains destroyed by petrol sniffing and the kids selling themselves to buy petrol to sniff. Horrific. How can you draw a line between protecting people from themselves and taking away their right to live the way they choose.I know that the human rights extremists would choose to let people live the way they choose and just keep giving more money to them without question but I don't think that has worked in the past either. Yep I know I would be shot down in flames for saying what I just have.It is a fine line to walk, especially for wobbly people.

The Pott's.

A Flower for the Pottsies.They loved their garden.
Mrs Potts was buried today. She was in our nursing home for about 6 months after fighting not to be there, after quite a few visits to the acute care ward. She was a nursing sister herself, a very intelligent woman and the wife of our dear Dr Potts who died about 3 years ago. He was the local G.P. here for well over 30 years and a well loved and respected member of our community. He had a funny sense of humor that always told you he was a bit smarter than the average. If you met him and said how are you he answered I have Craft disease. Stands for. (Can't.Remember. A F#*!ing. Thing) of if he was on the ramp he would answer to your greeting, looking up! or looking down depending which direction he was going. He caught me with that one for ages before I changed my greeting to just G'Day. Then he would go on his way with a satisfied smirk. He had other funny things he would say to th staff and leave them to work it out. All of the oldies trusted him and if they were confused you only had to tell them "Dr Potts said so" and they were satisfied and settled down.
His funeral courtage toured the town and the streets were lined with people. I didn't try to go to his funeral because I stayed at work to look after things so other people could go. We had all the residents who could, out on the front lawn to watch him go by and stood to attention when it came along. One of the residents, Belle, did a classic and yelled out "Hey you! sit down in front", it lightened the moment considerably, he would have been laughing. Belle is great and you never know what she is going to come out with next.
The town's people always said that Mrs Potts gave the town her husband, they are together again now I reckon. He worked right up to the day he died and that was the way he wanted it.
Mrs Potts was ready to go, she had suffered enough. Sad yes, but not sad too. The end of an era for our town.
I know that character develops with age, but I wonder if todays doctors will stick with one town so loyally for so long like they did.

G'Day,
Pete and I looked at and drove a car today in Wagga, cars are so expensive and it is a scary thought to put your neck out and be in debt to get one, but I think it is about that time. It is a 2006 ford territory, all wheel drive. Lots of money but I guess it is normal in comparison to what the market is nowadays. We are looking at trading our ford falcon in for it. We had a half hearted look at a few other car yards but nothing else took our fancy as much as the ford territory did.
My car was passed for registration yesterday when I got it back, but its running horrible. They must have taken it apart when they were looking for what was wrong with it and not put something back right. It needs a few more things doing on it but nothing to stop it being registered. I haven't got the bill yet.
I fired a bisque yesterday too. Everything looks o.k. It is my month to exhibit at the potters club so I am hurrying to get a few more things done by the end of the month. I hope to do a glaze firing at the club to finish off. My favorite copper red glaze. It is from Brian Kemp's Glazes for fibre kilns book. Potash Feldspar;35.76, Nepheline syenite; 166.32, Kaolin; 7.74, Flint; 88.74, Gerstley Borate; 64.37, Whiting; 41.30, Red Copper Oxide; 1.21, I don't have red copper so I use black and it works fine. You need to start reduction at 780 degrees when the melt first starts and maintain it. I do Cone 9 down, 10 half way. The picture at the top of this post shows it on a recycled clay, it shows up better on a really white body. I don't use porcelain though because it is too expensive.
I watched a movie today that I really like."Strange Bed fellows".I have seen it before and I laughed just as much this time too. It is very silly and corny, but suits my sense of humor. It is about 2 blokes who find a loop hole in the tax system, one decides that if he has a same sex partner he can get away with paying less tax so he has to convince his friend to pretend he is his gay partner. It is set and filmed in a small town in Victoria called Yackandandah. Very funny, I giggled all the way through. One of the main characters is Paul Hogan of Crocodile Dundee fame. Not that I loved that movie but it was funny the first time I saw it. Paul Hogan had a comedy show on T.V. in the 70's that was really dumb and funny too.
The weather report I heard this afternoon said the expected minimum temperature tonight is -4. The maximum temp here today was 10 degrees. The wind is freezing. The washing I did yesterday when it was sunny was all wet again this morning, that will teach me for not bringing it in. Mum loves to hang washing every where inside and thinks that our living area is an extension of the laundry which drives me mad. We do have a clothes dryer but only use it when we really have to as it costs a fair bit to run.
Thats about it for the last few days. Bye Love Linda.

G'day,
Today is tuesday, a cool drizzly day. I must be becomeing acclimatised to the weather, I said cool not cold. Ha.
I took mum to Wagga to see her accountant. We had a dawdle around the shops , I didn't buy anything except some cocky seed, and we ate lunch at the R.S.L. club. My car is still out of action but they worked out that it was some part broken in the distributor. The part will be here tomorrow so I should have it back in th afternoon. The registration is due on 22nd and it has been passed so everything else is o.k. I guess it will cost a bit but it is worth it to have 2 cars again and not have to share cars and get out of bed early to take each other to work. I had to get petrol before I left this morning and a woman was parked front of the petrol bowser and having a social visit in th shop. I waited about 10 mins, during which time her daughter had gone in and told her to move and she had come out of the shop and gone back inside twice, so I voted with my feet and left. I got petrol at the other garage. I must be getting old and impatient, but I wasn't in a good enough mood to wait for stupid women. Just outside of Wagga the police had her pulled over on the side of the road, poetic justice.
We all went out for tea at the Indian restaurant on Sunday night for Michaels 25th birthday. It has great food and is my favorite restaurant, but it was Michaels choice. My son is 25, I must be old. That's the picture above.

Friday

G'Day,
I just watched a movie set in Ireland in the 1960's I think, about girls who were disowned by their good catholic families because of teen pregnancies. They were taken into asylums where they ran laundries and their babies were sold without their consent. The girls were emotionally, physically and sexually abused while imprisoned there. A very emotional and confronting movie. We all know of horrible things happening , I just hope that we as a society have become more kind and compassionate as the years have gone along. There are, I know, still horrific things happening today i.e. the way females are treated in Muslim extremist cultures. I used to work with a woman [now in her 60's] who was in a girls home in 1960's Australia, just the next town across from here, Cootamundra. A very infamous place, also run by catholic nuns. She had a baby girl while in there who was taken from her for forced adoption, many years later, she was able to trace and reunite with her as an adult and met her grandchildren. Everything worked out well for them, I know it is not so successful for everyone.
The home at Cootamundra is also infamous because it was where a lot of aboriginal children were sent to live. A govt. policy of integration [part of the white Australia policy] was in place at the time where aboriginal children were taken away from their parents to teach them how to be useful members of our white society. They also learned that Australian aboriginal blood can be bred out very quickly so they did that too. They were trained as domestic servants and manual laborers in the case of the boys. They were not allowed to see their family and all traces of their culture was discouraged and removed. They became known as the Stolen Generation.They were treated cruelly and you still hear many sad stories of the pain and emotional suffering caused to them and their families. It happened all over Australia. A giant ink blot in our history pages. A movie was made about one story a few years ago called The Dingo Fence. I think at the time the govt thought they were doing the right thing but a lot of bad things have happened in our past by the govt doing the right thing and in the name of religion. You have only got to look at the attitudes and beliefs of some of our older and indeed our own generation to see that damage continued. O.K. I had better get off my soap box.
I am sitting here tonight very slowly and painfully typing my post via the on screen keyboard as the wireless keyboard on this computer has decided not to work. The batteries are different size to the other rechargeable ones have. I am hoping that a faulty battery is the cause of the breakdown because even I know how to fix that. Apart from that, Peter and Mum love football on the tele and I hate it so they can have the tele tonight, I would rather do this.
Nothing happening on the pottery front for the last week. I have ideas, I just have not made the time to action them.
Out in the back yard all is green. The deciduous trees have lost most but not quite all of their leaves and the only flowers left are my intrepid geraniums and the large single yellow flowers of the mermaid rose in the old almond tree. I climbed up the ladder to tie it back a few days ago and got stuck because the long springy autumn canes grabbed onto my knitted jumper and I got all tangled up in it. I got away with scratched and prickled hands but my old favorite cuddly jumper is intact. We have had fog most mornings lately but still no more than a sprinkling of rain. Day time temperatures have been around 10 to 15 degrees celcius and yesterday morning the minimum temp was -3. Brrrr. There have been good falls of snow in the alps, just a few hours drive from here.
Work was o.k today, all ran easily. I guess that depends on who is there at the time and how busy the place is.

Visitors

G'Day,
I am sitting here this morning with my little electric heater blowing on my legs and gratefully soaking up the warm air. My car is out of action and sitting in the driveway waiting for the mechanic to come and take it away to be fixed. Something that wouldn't happen if I lived in the city. Pete thinks it might be the spark plugs, someone else said the starter motor, I dunno. I thought if I could roll it down the hill out the front I might start it, but if it didn't start It would have to sit down in the gully, so I left it where it is. I have had to use Pete's car for the last couple of days and get up to take him to work at 1/4 to 6 in the morning when its cold and dark and frozen outside. I am such a sook. It was booked in at the garage today anyway so I just waited. The registration check and a few minor repairs needed doing. So, as you can guess, this month will be an expensive one. I can't complain as my little car hasn't given me any trouble at all for the last 4 years I have had it.
We had a visit from my cousin and his wife and one of his daughters and grandsons yesterday. I had not seen Denny since his dad's funeral 5 years ago. He is a few years older than me but he always watched out for me and played with me when I was little. ( funny stories later) We spent all our Christmases together.I was very close to his family growing up and used to think I was more like them than my own sister. Good people. They were visiting another friend who has just moved to town. They live on the central coast which for the last week has been having severe flooding . They were lucky not to be home, they live in and run a pub there but had been camping on the river bank for a holiday at Narranderra near here. Tough people in this weather, but at least you can have a beautiful raging campfire at this time of year.
I remember when I was 9 or 10 I went rabbiting with him and a group of other kids. We trapped a rabbit and I cried so much they couldn't kill it and took it home for a pet. We put it in a cage but the next morning it had mysteriously disapeared. Denny would also play dollies with me when I was small and he showed me how to cut a hole in dolly's mouth to feed it. It got a bit smelly after a while though. Hmmm, wonder why? We had a swing in the back yard and he used to push me on it. He taught me a song to sing while I was swinging. He must of been cranky at my Aunty Joan because he taught me to sing "my !@#%%%***** fat old aunty is here again". He got in trouble for that one. We also used to play hide and seek in the wardrobes. The wardrobe fell over with me in it. My grandfather was an undertaker and we also used to play hide and seek in the display coffins, bizzare I know, but kids play with what is in their environment. I was a scaredy cat though and would run and scream, and we would have races up and down the back lane with the trolleys using them like trotting gigs. And used the crane that was meant to lift the granite slabs for the headstones on, as a swing. We were always getting in trouble. He also had a brother, my terrible twin Joe who was the same age as me whom I loved playing with. Those games are another story again. Feral children! His sister Sue was one of my brides maids. He is such a big bloke now, he had to bend over to hug me. I come up to about 1/2 way between his elbow and shoulder. I wonder what he remembers of those early times. Probably getting in to trouble because of me? Lol.
Ah well! back to work tomorrow for the next 3 days. Stir up my winter aches and pains.
Bye Love Linda.

G"Day,
Here are a couple more of the photos I took around town. They were taken from Bennett's Lookout on Rocky Hill which is just above my house. I took photos from the same spot and have them in a previous post of a dust storm over the town on February 21st this year. If you go there you can compare how the scene has changed with a bit of rain and greenery about. It looks much nicer with a bit of green doesn't it.
In the second picture you can see how the trees that were affected by the big bush fire we had last new years day are recovering.
In the distance you can see a dark green tree in the middle of the picture, that is in my street, it is huge Morton bay fig. It is heritage listed and very old, I don't know when it was planted but I don't think they are supposed to grow in this area. They are very rare around here. I don't know of any others anyway. My house is towards the hill from the tree, you can see my roof in line with it along the road. The look out is probably 3 or 400 yards above my house. Junee lies in a hollow surrounded by hills.
The small gum trees you can see in the first picture were planted about 10 years ago by a group of work for the dole kids, they have not grown much because of the drought and the area has been burnt a few times. One time years ago my eldest son and a few of his mates from school were camping up on the hill and playing with deodorant cans, spraying and lighting the contents. The hill caught fire and the houses along the Gundagai road had to be evacuated. Michael was lucky he had already come home before the fire started. When we came home he was sitting on the roof watching the action. Not long after we got home panicked parents come to our house looking for their kids. One had run to our house and the rest had scattered. His mates as punishment, had to join the local fire brigade and go to fire training with them. When they got back to school every one used to sing to them, "The Hill, The Hill, The Hill is on fire" to the tune of a pop[ song that was around at the time "The roof is on fire". It wasn't funny at the time, but when you look back........

Pete & I went in to Wagga this afternoon. Pete had a few bills to pay for can assist and some other business. While he was there I went comparing treadmills. I have wanted one for a while now. I went to one shop and they weren't real interested in serving me. I then went across the road to another sports store and they had a sale and the salesman was friendly and helpful so I put a machine on Lay by. I reckon if I pay $200 off it each pay it won't be long before I am using it. I have used one at the local gym and liked it. I reckon I can do without the feet, ankle and knee twisting that seems to happen if I go walking much around town. I do enjoy walking around town but a treadmill is easier on the joins and I enjoyed challenging myself at the gym to different speeds and inclines that the machines can be set on. You also don't have to stand and exercise in front of other people and a mirror at home like you do at the gym and it will cost me less. The only thing I was concerned about was the amount of floor space a treadmill would take up, but the salesman showed me how easy it was to fold up and store. I can store it in my pottery shed and made a dust cover out of a tarpaulin for it.
While we were in Wagga we kept bumping into people we knew and getting caught up talking, We sat with some people we know at a deli and had lunch together, it was nice. We also got caught up in the sports store with someone else, its nice to talk to people but it slows you down. Pete started to get impatient.
Mum isn't well, she caught a cold. There was a little girl near us in a shop a few days ago who was coughing all over the place I guess that is where she got it from. Because of her age, when she gets a cold it hits her hard and what would take anyone else a couple of days to get over takes her 2 weeks or more.

Brrrrrr.......................

G'Day,
Today is Monday the first Monday of winter! I don't like winter but it surely is here. There was a thick fog this morning when I left home for work at 6.30 and it was cold like it is now. With the winter comes the aches and pains in my muscles and joints. My shoulders and neck have been sore and aching and so has my neck and my arm and my sciatica, have a whinge why don't ya Linny! I went to the Dr on Thursday last as I had a couple of bouts of chest pain and he gave me an e.c.g. and blood tests. I found out today that my heart is fine so its muscular pain which is a relief. I went back to taking the anti inflammatory drugs and all but my shoulder blade has stopped aching. Paracetamol doesn't work on it. I hate this weather. The temperature is supposed to get down to 1 degree here tonight. We have already had a couple of frosts in the last week.
I have moved some of my frost sensitive plants to safer spots. We have had some rain over the last week as well so the ground is nice and damp and my plants are enjoying that, the claret ash and cratageous ( don't know how to spell that , but it sounds right) trees around my yard are starting to loose their leaves. My roses are still flowering but slowing down and the little bits and pieces around the yard like geraniums, snapdragons, salvias, verbenas still have some flowers on them. The lilly pilly berries are perfect to eat now, and I have been. The little mandarin tree is heavy with fruit that won't be ripe for a few more months but is weighing the branches down. I have had the tree for ten or more years and it hasn't grown much so it must be a dwarf. It didn't say that on the tag when I bought it though. The apricot and nectarine trees still have their leaves.I might get rid of the apricot tree as it is where we park the caravan and we will have to keep it cut back out of the road. Apart from that we have fruit fly, ants and birds that compete with us for its fruit. Not insurmountable I know, but a nuisance just the same. It does have beautiful big juicy fruit if we get them first though.
I have got back my enthusiasm to make pots again. ( It disappeared with the hot weather and the snake in my shed ) I was inspired the other day by a lovely piece of wood that I saved from the wood heater and went out to the shed and made a pot from it. I made slabs from grogged red stoneware clay then impressed the clay onto the wood and got a great texture which I made into a cylinder and threw a neck for. I made another one since and I like that too so I might do a couple of smaller ones to match. The ones I made are about 40cm tall. I think a well reduced hard ash glaze that I know might suit them, if I put it just on the neck and dribble it down the texture part. It gets me back to my gutsy potting style.
I often look at things and wish I had a bit of clay with me so I could take an impression and play with it later. A tree, a rock, a bit of wrought iron or a plaque or something often takes my fancy and I want to do something about it. I think maybe I see things differently to the way others look at them. I look at a piece of fire wood and see color and texture not something just to burn. I remember when my daughter was a toddler we were going along in the car and there was a paddock full of Patterson's curse in flower and she pointed and said "Look at the blue" maybe she sees things like I do. I don't know if she still does. The flower was actually purple and it is still one of her favorite colors. We seem to have got her past the horrible selfish teenage period at 14 quite smoothly but it has caught up with us all now and she is being a pain. Of course everyone knows that when you are 18 you know everything and can do just what you want while mum and dad pay your bills, play taxi service and wait at home for you. I guess that will come full circle too if we wait a while, because she really is lovely. Somewhere in there is the lovely little girl we always knew.
Mum and I went to Wagga on Sunday looking for something to do to pass the time. We drove out along the old Mangoplah road and took a look at the way the town has grown. I hadn't been out in that direction for quite a while and was surprised to see that the suburbs of Hill Crest and bourkelands have joined together and there is a constant flow of new homes where just a few years ago there was none. We had a look at a display home in hill crest and it was great, one of the nicest floor plans I have seen and views all the way to Estella and the hills of the university on the opposite side of the city. The cost was reasonable by todays prices. $276.000 built on a flat block minus land price. 4 bedrooms, study and theatre room, en suite, walk in wardrobe & pantry, all things modern and spacious. When I was in school I would day dream out the window at the new houses being built nearby and was shocked at the prices of them. The city's growth has long since left this area behind it. That was 25 + years ago and a very good house was $50,000. You could get an ordinary house for $20 t0 $30,000 then. What will housing costs be like in another 25 yrs. In the cities, housing costs have become beyond ordinary peoples reach and many home owners are unable to keep up payments for the great Australian dream loosing their homes to the banks who have become more and more greedy, putting profit before people.
Oh well that's enough for tonight. Bye.
Love Linda.

Aunty Marion's Pickles.

G'Day,
This morning I am making Aunty Marion's sweet mustard pickles.
My Aunty Marion died 16 years ago, and she was buried on my 10th wedding anniversary.
She was the eldest of my dad's siblings and the only girl. The towns people used to say that she would grow up lop sided as they always saw her with one of her 5 little brothers slung across her hip.
She lived all of her life in Merriwa which is in the hunter valley above Sydney. Her home was on the river bank and her house was a hand built slab hut with many layers of newspapers plastered over the walls then covered with wallpaper that was peeling off and I loved to read bits of the old stories underneath. The ceiling inside was of calico slung between the rafters and tacked on around the wall edges. I drove through Merriwa last year and its still standing and being lived in. But I don't know if its been renovated. The school kids used to go to see her house and farm as an example of pioneering history for school excursions.
She used to earn her living from selling eggs and poultry to the towns people and cleaning for the pubs and other places around town. She also kept ducks, geese, guinea fowl and the odd sheep or pig for people and was the kind of person who would take in anyone or anything if she thought they needed help. I thought she was wonderful and she would sit on the front verandah and brush my hair in the sun and I loved to follow her around and try to learn stuff off her.The first thing I would do when I was a child and we went to visit her was take a walk around her yard and garden to make sure nothing had changed because my family moved around so much and I didn't want her place to change.
Anyway I could write a lot more about her too if I wanted to keep going. She was a good old fashioned cook and preferred her wood stove to the electric one and she used her electric stove mostly to store her pots and pans in. Her pickles and jams were always award winners at the local Merriwa show. Here is her sweet mustard pickle recipe.
3lb chokos, 1 1/2 lb onions, 1 cauliflower, 2pints white vinegar, 1 cup salt, 2lb sugar, 3/4 cup plain flour. 1 desert spoon each of turmeric, curry powder & mustard, 1 tin corn kernels.
Peel seed and dice all veges then place in container with salt, stand overnight. In the morning wash off the salt. Place sugar, 1 1/2 pints of vinegar and veges in pan and bring to boil. Cook for 20 minutes. Mix all dry ingredients with remainder of vinegar and add to pot then boil again for 5 mins longer. Put hot into sterilized bottles put lid on when cold and label.
I like it thick so I added extra flour in mine. You can also add extra sugar if you like it sweeter, just made sure its dissolved. 1 pint = 4 cups. I also recommend using bottles with plastic lids in preference to metal as the vinegar can damage the metal lids over time. It keeps for years. I have also made this using different veges like cucumber and green beans and zucchini to made up the veges so I had enough. Today I used all choko and cauliflower because Lyn at work had the chokos growing and gave me a couple of bags full. Today I doubled the recipe and ran out of jars to put it in.
Please see the comments for this post as I had to correct the original recipe, sorry I was so late in changing them.