A hideous week

Yes, it has been a completely depressing, sad, awful week as Australia realises the absolutely tragic devastation of the Victorian bushfires and the lives lost.  I am completely overloaded by the media coverage and cannot watch another thing because it is so depressing.  I don't want to watch men (or anyone for that matter) crying anymore.  I don't want to hear how many bodies are yet to be identified.  I just can't bear it.  I feel helpless to do anything useful to help these people other than to donate some money to the Red Cross or to Wildlife Victoria, who are doing what they can to help injured wildlife.  The RSPCA have also set up a triage centre to care for the hundreds of injured domestic animals. 

By now, we've probably all heard the happy news of Sam the koala who was filmed drinking water from the bottle of a volunteer firefighter.  This is her below, with her paws bandaged, sharing a cage with a male koala called Bob, also rescued in the fires.  According to the story, they are getting on famously and seem to be comforting each other.  Anyway, everyone is just inhaling this story because it really is the only good piece of news out of the Victorian bushfires and everyone loves a happy animal tale (yes, okay, so I am one of them.  What's wrong with that?)

How lucky we are! Here were are, living in lovely homes with all our cherished belongings, food on the table, clothes to wear and our friends around us and it's not until we hear and see what anguish others are going through that we really appreciate how good we have it. My brother Hugh is at the scene of the fires for CNN and this is one of his reports.

Embedded video from CNN Video

On a happier note, I had to go back to my oral surgeon today who decided there and then that we couldn't wait another two weeks 'til hospital so he did my surgery this afternoon, under local anaesthetic in his Evil Chair.  It was a bit traumatic (& I won't go into details involving sounds, sensations and needles) and now I am in quite a lot of discomfort & a bit miserable & Bad Tempered. However, I am sure I'll feel a whole lot better in the morning!