Today, I’ve phoned up and asked someone to remove a dead parrot from INSIDE my stove... only in 
Australia, as they say. Punch lines on a postcard. Yes, this is an ex-parrot. And it’s in my stove. Not exactly what I expected to say the day before completion, and the day I get my first look inside the prospective purchase since I had a quick 10 minute look around the inside.
Of course, the first hassle was parking. Never mind the 7 – seven! – car park spaces this place, apparently have. After the local residents have been helping themselves, including one cheeky chap who’s been parking his Ute under what will, tomorrow, be my car-port, at the far end of my drive, on my property, in the mistaken apprehension that MY stands for “Mine is Yours” I finally got in the door.
Two thoughts: And the first sight of this wondrous abode – in the dark, on a windy night – was that this place is much bigger than I thought it was. And the second is that it’s falling down faster than a heavily leveraged tower block in Dubai, and that living in a Travelodge would be way more comfortable.
It was so quiet you could hear a mouse drop.
And then, the horror struck. The birds! The birds! Yes, goodness knows how it flew in there, but there’s a Night Parrot. It’s sitting firmly inside what, tomorrow, will be my stove. And it’s also firmly dead. If it wasn’t propped up in the logs, it would be a pushing hup the daises. Goodness knows how it got there. Very pretty it looks too, having a mottled yellowish green belly, and, with a rather squat, fat – overfed – appearance. Maybe that explains by the blasted thing obviously flew down the chimney, and died. Probably in shock at the look of the hovel. It looks a little stunned: maybe it’s pining for the fjords, instead of gone to meet its maker. Sometimes I wish I could just erase parts of my memory. Then when I sit and think about it, I’m glad I saw him. I also would rather someone else went and removed the poor thing, and instead of nailing the deceased to its perch, it would run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.
One other fascinating observation. There is hot water! Lots of it! Yes, in an act of almost incredible stupidity, the vendors have kept the 5kW Hot water emersion heater switched on for the past three years, while the building has been abandoned! That’s about $0.25 an hour, $6 a day, $2190 a year, or $6,500 they’ve wasted! Incredible! Unbelievable! I almost feel good about the $4000 I lost changing the deposit from GBP to AUD at the wrong time...
