My beloved and I returned on Thursday from a couple of nights away, which we spent in Daylesford.

The end of lockdown has brought an exodus from Melbourne into country Victoria. I wasn’t sure that we would get anything in the rush, even though we were going mid-week. We ended up with a place called Lake Orchard Villas. The main draw with this property was its location, walking distance from the lake. You could also, theoretically, walk to restaurants and shops on Vincent Street. This would have involved a couple of fair size hills, though, so I have to ‘fess up — we drove.

The villa had two bedrooms, a spa bath, and a kitchen. The last was essential in allowing us to make breakfast for my beloved, ensuring that she got at least one “safe” meal a day. Being weatherboard, it was all very charming in a Chekhovian sort of way. The only really startling thing was a whistling kettle. (The first time I boiled it, I thought I had set off a fire alarm.) There was even a bowl of chocolates, of which I had one. One could sit on a little balcony out the front, and there was a bigger area at the rear with a barbecue and a large dining table. We are planning to go again, when I will definitely be looking to fire up the BBQ one evening.

An unexpected feature of the place was Netflix. We watched several episodes of Emily in Paris, a rather anodyne series about a young American woman suddenly sent to Paris for her work. The whole thing is really an excuse for some gentle cross-cultural comedy, and to show off the leading lady’s wardrobe. (That of her boss, with whom she has a fractious relationship, isn’t bad either.) It is all quite fun and totally undemanding — just the thing for a holiday.

We returned on Thursday via Clunes and Ballarat (where a modest-looking restaurant yielded a cracking Chinese meal). The next day the dishwasher people arrived (early) to put in the new dishwasher. I had been a tad nervous about this. Old dishwashers tend to leak: if the guys removed the old one through our place, I could see the carpet getting stained. Fortunately they had a trolley with soft tyres, allowing the appliances to be brought in and taken out via the courtyard. Once up the steps, everything happened on a tiled floor.

The installation was mostly uneventful. The old dishwasher had started leaking, and this moisture was mopped up by the installers before putting in the new appliance. Dishwashers sit on adjustable feet; if these are jacked up, the gap which this creates underneath is hidden by a kick plate. The Siemens was not quite as high than the old Dishlex, so I had to choose between having a noticeable gap at the top (between the dishwasher and the underneath of the bench) or a bigger one underneath it. I chose to even them out and have some gap top and bottom. The new kick plate is a lot more recessed than the old one, and this exposes a grout line in the floor tiling that we had never seen before.

The kitchen floor is tiled in a diamond pattern. Underneath the cabinets, for some reason, this changes to a square grid pattern. The grout line from the second pattern is what is now exposed, along with a gap of 1.5 cm or so underneath the dishwasher. It is possible to have the old kickplate trimmed and fitted back underneath the dishwasher. That will mean that it matches the cabinet underneath the sink, but not the dishwasher door (which is stainless steel). Anyway, all these things can be fiddled with at our leisure. The installers ran a test load, and the Siemens is certainly incredibly quiet compared to the Dishlex, which used to groan, gurgle, and thump away.

I had a bad moment reading the warranty leaflet, which mentioned a factory warranty of two years. This was a surprise, as the store had advertised a five year warranty for this brand. I got on the blower to the salesman, who knew straightaway what I was ringing about. The leaflets are printed overseas, and reflect the warranty offered in other places. Siemens dishwashers in Australia have a five year warranty. He sent me an email to this effect so that I had it in writing.

Having taken what will probably be the last trip in the Camry, I read with interest a road test of a Mercedes Benz GLC 300 PHEV. (PHEV, as you will no doubt know, is a plug in hybrid electric vehicle.) This was the same model that we had hired over a year ago when I won sixth prize (!) in the 3MBS-FM radiothon. (That one, though, had a diesel engine.) The GLC is a big vehicle, to be sure, but I really enjoyed punting it around the Dandenongs for a day. $80,000-odd is out of our range, though, so we will probably end up with another Camry. The last one is still going strong after sixteen years, just getting a bit elderly and cranky — like one of its owners.