JUST A REMINDER

Just a quick reminder that I am currently in Australia. To follow my travel blog and see photographs simply click on the mad Oz logo on the right hand side bar.  We have been here for nearly 2 weeks  and have travelled from Noosa to the Gold Coast, Brisbane, Toowooba, the Great Barrier Reef and now we are in Sydney.

This is the view from our apartment at Manly Beach, Sydney

Tomorrow my granddaughter and 2 greatgrandaughters depart for chilly England while I stay on for an adventure trip in the camper van with my grandson.  I think that this is going to be quite "challenging" in asmuchas some of the sites along the way look a little primative!  Like, no water, not even a loo!! But there might be a nice 5* hotel in the vicinity to catch my attention.  I wish! 

Talk soon.  Love, Ann xxx

LIFE IS A LEARNING CURVE

That's all the accommodation and travel arrangements made for the first leg of my amazing journey  around the world when we (my granddaughter and two great granddaughters) meet up with my grandson and his girlfriend in Brisbane on 11th February. 

We are going to the Great Barrier Reef, the Gold Coast, Hils parents' farm and Sydney.  After two weeks the girls go home and Vinnie, Hils and I  go on a road trip until 15th April, just following our noses, probably staying in hostels and camping. 

The next leg of the journey begins on 15th April when I take a cruise ship from Sydney, stopping off at Dunedin, Auckland, Fiji, Papo Pago, Bora Bora, Tahiti, Morea, Honalulu and Hawaii, arriving San Francisco on 13th May. 

I then fly down to meet my friends Jack and Betsy in their winter home at Desert Hot Springs.  Thankfully they seem happy to have me stay there with them for a few days until it's time to pack up and head north to their summer home in Hoodspost, near Seattle. Then another amazing road trip back to Seattle with them, only this time NOT staying in hostels or campsites!


I guess I had better start up my travel blog again! But how did I do it last year?  The problem, with age is that it's accompanied by fading memory and with fading memory comes the need to relearn every darn thing over and over again. 

With this trip in mind my girls at the office gave me a wonderful Christmas present of a new IPod Touch.  It's something that I'm sure will prove to be very useful because if I don't have access to my netbook (packed in the rucksack) I can whip out my very prortable IPod in a suitable wifi hotspot and skype, facetime, and update photographs to facebook, on the go, to my hearts content, as it where.  Well, this is the theory.

The problem is that my head is so full of technology that I have to regularly delete old stuff from my memory board.  Consequently whenever I want to do something quite fundemental I have to relearn it. Every minute of the day has become like Groundhog Day. Life is getting very complicated for me.

So, back to the travel blog. How did I do it?  And, more important, why did I do it?  I think it was because the travel blog tracks my position in the world.  But doesn't blogger do that now too?  I have to research this.  F****** H*** more stuff to learn. But I have to make the effort because if I don't record the journey I'll forget it!  At times life can a bitch can't it?

WHERE DOES TIME GO?

As I said, where does time go?  My dear friend Sue moved to Spain with her beloved husband Paul 11 years ago, much about the same time that Davy and I bought our lovely Alpine retreat.  Consequently whenever Davy and I went away it was either to Switzerland or up to Scotland to see his family.  I always promised to visit Sue and Paul but shamefully never did. 

It was through Sue that I met Davy.  I like to tell folks that he lived with her, which is absolutely truebut I sometimes omit to add that in his days as a jobbing bricklayer he lodged with her for a while!   

However............this year I promised that I would go when the weather cooled down.  Believe it or not  they had temperatures peaking at 60C this summer.  Admittedly that was in direct sunlight but that's way, way too hot for me. When I tell friends this they look at me in disbelief.  Surely not.  But Sue & Paul showed me their digital thermometer display and lo and behold there it was, highest temperature 60C. 

So earlier this month I trotted off to see them, carefully avoiding easyJet!  

It's a pretty idyllic place in the mountains above the Costa Del Sol.  I had 6 days of perfect bliss with them, enjoying the scenery, solitude and freindship.  I loved it so much that I am thinking of buying a bolthole down by the beach for us all to escape to from time to time.   

SUE AND I ENJOYING OUR MORNING "EYE OPENER"

But that's for the future and I desperately try to live in the "now".  Not, I would add, always very successfully! The "now" plan is to look into the possibilty of building a house on my plot of land following the demolition of the "black bungalow".   I have planning permission to build a four bedroom house but I had been thinking of taking the easy route which is to sell the plot and let someone else build the house. 

But you know, sometimes I get a tad bored and it would seem that I like to live on the edge a little!  Davy was a builder and I'm hoping that I picked up the building trade by osmosise. I also have really good friends in the trade who are willing to "baby sit" me. I think it could be fun.  Am I deluded in thinking that I can manage a project like this?  I couldn't start on the project for a few months anyway so I have a little "thinking time" but hey, I should be able to eat this elephant a bit at a time!



My other big news is that my beloved grandson Vinnie has now moved to Sydney with his fabulous girlfriend Hilary.  He is working as a chef in a swanky restaurant on Balmoral Beach called The Public Dining Room.   And... I hope to visit him in February together with my grandaughter Georgina and two of my Great Grandchildren, Elise and Orianne. 

I also hope to be able to pay a visit to my good friends Jack and Betsy in Desert Hot Springs this winter too, so it's all happening here.

THE POOL THAT PAUL BUILT



PAUL, FONDLY GAZING INTO MY EYES! NOT!!