Dressing for the Cold Australian Style

Daytime Pursuits

Daytime pursuits for the first week or so involved a slightly hectic balancing act of seeing relatives and old friends.

James and Jane had given us a lift up to somewhere near Duxford where we met in a very rainy McDonald's car park with Nicole's folks and proceeded to Necton where her Grandad lives.

To be honest I don't remember that much about it. It seems like an awfully long time ago. But I'm pretty sure that humus was consumed by me, and that we went out for a drink at the Servicemen's CLub in Swaffham before proceeding Southwards again.

Mum's that night, and very nice it was to see her and her home improvements, then fall asleep in front of the television (I assume).

On our first proper day in Ipswich, after my trip to Flix, we met up with Sam along with Adorable Amelia, Sarah with Potentially-Mad Max and Faye with No-Accent Esmee. We went to the local "Soft-Play Centre" (new terminology for me) where huge edifices of avoidable death for infants towered over us drinking crap coffee.

Instead of availing ourselves of crap food we went down to the docks where we consumed at Pizza Express. Jolly civilised considering the average age.

Then we popped in to see Dad and Shirley at Gavin Mansion, obviously good to see them too, before nearly falling asleep as the sun fell and jetlag set in and having to bail out.

The next morning I do believe and very early start was had by me and I drove down under the bridge and down to Pin Mill where I was forced to avail myself of the local facilities between tramping around on the muddy quays amongst the quaint old shippery.

The rest of that day is a bit of a mystery... but now I think of it, I volunteered to mind Esmee at Faye's house so we stayed there that night. So, thinking back, that might have been the day that Mum and I went out whilst the girls took an afternoon nap to check out the local churches.

The remarkable thing about that was mistaking the field at some church in the middle of nowhere for its car park... and being unable to get the car out of the field again.

Only when Mum procured help from the locals did salvation present itself in the form of a 4 wheel drive. Relief all round. The wind blew very cold over the flat lands of Suffolk that afternoon!

So that night I fell asleep at Faye's house in front of the TV.

Orwell Bridge

So morning times saw me visiting old favourite places in the early morning, driving out in Nicole's Grandad's car and getting back in time for breakfast.

Invariably youtube would be on or recently finished, playing 3rd & Bird, an entertaining cartoon we don't get in Australia with an extremely irritatingly catchy theme tune.

Jet Lag

Jet Lag means that even days after arriving back in the Motherland, you still wake up at 6am.

As the sun doesn't rise in England until 7am in late January this creates certain opportunities.

After a couple of days with James and Jane, visiting potential wedding locations and blocking their toilets (that was Eloise combined with inefficient flushing power), we set down at Mum's place. I went to Felixstowe in the morning to allow my fingers slowly to numb whilst wandering around the pier.

Later, I suffered an almost catastrophic bladder urge which was only satiated by sneaking into the leisure centre.

Night Time Dislocation

I keep waking up in the middle of the night, not knowing where I am.

Generally I suspect in the dark that I am in some rickety old cottage and generally feel my way around, almost sleepwalking, trying to avoid steps, creaky floorboards and protruding rafters until I reach some kind of light.

Yesterday I was just putting Eloise to sleep and put the book down when I fell asleep and consequently my surroundings were especially unfamiliar. It got into the hallway before things became clearer again.

I suppose that's the consequence of having slept in nine different beds in the last month or so.

International Traveling

Hmmm, well I'm packed... even if Nicole and Eloise aren't.

And I thought I'd better just write a little note before I take the computer off-line and we get ready to set off for the airport for our trip to the UK.

To the land of erstwhile plenty. Will the high streets be deserted wastelands, the tumbleweed blowing gently past Woolworths and Next? Will the banks be open? Who knows.

All I know is it's going to be damn cold!

We dropped the dogs off this morning at the doggy hotel up at the Sunshine Coast, which was a bit of a tear as they watched us getting in the car from the exercise yard barking plaintively "Don't go! Don't leave us here with this piped music and hydrobath!"

And as we run our supplies down I am out of coffee and surviving - just - on hot chocolate.

Still we're looking forward to seeing all you family people and friends. Once we get there.

Quiet Life

Not too much going on... Eloise has acquired some tap shoes from Claire at Nicole's work and various other things such as (curse) a Fairy Palace and (curse) "a cottage that is a house that is cosy" toy which are keeping her occupied.

We are having to ration her YouTube use as she is well on-target for busting our 12GB bandwidth for the month. So we are introducing her to computer games instead.

Other than that, the weather's been nice and we have been out walking in various forests a lot. There are lots of trees that have been blown over in storms so it is a bit of a challenge getting around in the woods, with paths blocked and so on, but we're seeing lots of spiders which Eloise likes.

Yesterday my shoelace came undone and Eloise decided she wanted to do it up. So we sat down whilst she performed this feat whilst Matilda rustled around in the bushes. I jumped nearly a mile when a foot-long dragon-lizard came out of the bushes and ran across Eloise's legs and into another bush with the dog in hot pursuit. Eloise didn't bat an eyelid. She thought it hilarious.

Other than that it's back to nursery and trying to keep up with the swimming.

She's going through some interesting if frustrating changes at the moment, becoming quite shy and almost scared of certain people and not as naively friendly towards everybody as she used to be. She doesn't like certain people to look at her and sometimes decides that she doesn't want to be someone's friend. I'm thinking that this is all mental development around socialisation and the seperation of her as a conceptual individual from "people" at large. She's certainly had a couple of instances of seperation anxiety at nursery which is quite unusual.

Still at least she isn't shouting at us so much....

Sunrise on a New Year

Happy New Year to everybody.

I'm sure you all had a lovely time, subject to the usual climate caveats.

We had a pretty quiet one; Josie and Adam drove up from Melbourne to stay with us for a few days and over-indulged the night before so staying up til midnight was a bit of a struggle for them but during the day we went up to Mount Glorious and had a barbecue on the edge of the rainforest as the sun set.

It was nice and cool in the mountains which was a refreshing change from the torpid heat down in Brisbane.

We've had to go swimming a few times to stay cool. Eloise is gaining confidence and nearly-swimming around. She's loving the waterslides and we had a little diving competition. She needs to work on the diving concept a little; she hasn't mastered the whole "head goes in first" thing.

Planning for the UK-trip-athon is advancing and Nicole has a day-by-day schedule drawn up that takes few prisoners. We're looking forward to it - apart from the flight and the goosepimples.

I seem to remember that getting out of a warm bed into sub-zero air makes my legs excessively itchy. Now there's something to look forward to.

Happy New Year

...from the girl who got bought make-up from Christmas.

Early Riser

On another occasion Will and I went out for a day trip.

He had the bright idea of going to see the sunrise. Unfortunately this meant getting up at 3.30. In the morning.

So with only two hours sleep, for one reason or another, it was up and at 'em and we got down to Nudgee Beach for about 4.20 and entered into a mysterious world of slowly building light, and wrong tides.

Will wanted to go down to Lamington NP afterwards but we decided that that was a bit ambitious so opted for Tamborine Mountain instead. We had a very pleasant walk down by Curtis Falls whilst having not the faintest idea of what time it was.

We got back to Brisbane a little after midday and I think I was in bed asleep by three. In the afternoon.