With my workshop all cleaned up, with a place for everything and everything in its place, I put it to the test by building a small floating wall shelf to hold a kerosene lamp as a reading light in the corner above my bed in "Melbourne" - ahem! - "Bonniedoon" (I must call it by its new name).
It turned out beautifully and, of course, I had to "test" it immediately by lying on the bed with the appropriately named book, "Reading by Moonlight". And then came the rain! Fast and furious like a tropical downpour which cut off my retreat to the house - and I loved it!
The warm light from the kerosene lamp and the rain drumming on the corrugated iron roof took me back to those nights on tropical islands when tropical downpours were a nightly feature. What a perfect excuse to prolong my solitude and dream of what had once been a reality.
I must have fallen asleep because by the time I woke up it was already dark, with the light from the still dimly burning kerosene lamp the only illumination. I folded up the blanket, straightened out the bed, doused the kerosene lamp, and slowly walked back to the house in time for dinner. All along the way I thought to myself, "I am such a lucky man!"
