two weeks ago, we fired up the barbeque on the balcony. nothing fancy, just some sausages and steaks and cheeses and houseguests. a thoroughly pleasant affair that ended with the sound of midnight oil wafting over from aussie stadium. rock!

and then.

over the last couple of days, we’d been sticking our noses up into the occasional breeze, sniffing, then asking, “what’s that smell?” or “hmm… what died?”. yesterday, the boy walked over to the corner of the balcony where it smelt deadest and fossicked around a little. quite a bit of spluttering ensued as detective goren revealed…

the bloated corpse of a sausage lying at the bottom of a bin. the deceased had been a raw sausage that had fallen off the grill the night in question, and had been picked up and tossed into the bin, and then forgotten. in the meantime, there had been crazy hot days, and days of welcome gentle rain, and so now, mr sausage was rotting away in a small amount of stagnant collected rainwater. with the lid of the bin fully removed, the smell of death intensified, and made its way into the living room. oh how our eyes watered!

quick! shut that door!

eventually the boy picked up the deadly sausage of decaying flesh (using the hand in plastic bag trick used in dogpoo removal, but still!), and carried it through the apartment to the garbage room downstairs. but the odour lingered, and a couple hours later, far, far away in the park, we could still smell the sausage.

on a happier note, this morning the boy asked, “if i made pancakes, would you have some?”. i thought it was a trick question at first, forgetting that i’d already had a breakfast a couple of hours earlier. whatever, the answer was “YES!”.