too real..

In Victoria we've been in the middle of an extraordinary heat wave.. For more than a week the house has felt as though a thick block of material has been pushed in through the windows and doors and is now stuck there.. It reached 45 this afternoon-113 in the old scale-following a week of 43s and 44- and now there's a bit of north wind to ramp things up even more.. The past few nights I've slept in the lounge with the air con on ..Alone.. The sofabed too narrow, the mattress springs too uncomfortable for two bodies to plot a path to sleep through...My husband prefers to lie directly under the ceiling fan in our bedroom.. Last night I woke at one stage and clutched the bottle of water beside me and thought of the daphne in the pot on the front porch.. During the day it had wilted to the point that like the dead parrot sketch it was a plant no longer. I got up and dosed it with a jug of water from the kitchen..

Elsewhere there's a lot going on..The train systems's up the spout, tracks have buckled like cheap plastic rulers in the heat..Electricity supplies have been on stop-start mode in many parts of the city..and there are bushrires-deliberately lit- on farmland at the edge of my old home town

But this news is not the worst..

On Thursday morning just before 9 am while driving his kids to school across the Westgate , the bridge that links Melbourne's east and west, a man who'd apparently agreed a day earlier to shared custody arrangements for his three children, stopped his car, opened the back door, lifted his 4 year old daughter out of her seat, carried her to the edge of the roadway then dropped her over the side into the water below.. Just like that..