Long Time No Blog

You can tell I started working properly again last year. I thought it time to write a new post and lo and behold I had not written one page in 2015.  I suppose the thing is really that I had a baby when I first arrived in Australia, but my creative side needed an outlet (and the quiet listening ear) which was my blog.

That side of my brain is now completely absorbed by choreographing, dancing, teaching, paperwork and then other lesser, housewifely tasks, probably fall to the other side of my brain.  And there is a little bit left for the party girl in me of course.

So I am making it my mantra this year to blog at least once a month, as it is really all I can promise myself.  And whoever is left reading this after one year of blogging drought.

Hello and welcome back readers!  I will upload some recent photos to make the blog a little more colourful.  As soon as my bloody iPod will behave itself and talk to my laptop, whereupon I can retrieve the pictures.

Ta ra!  And Happy Christmas, New Year, Easter, Birthdays and Anniversaries I have forgotten.

Mountain Girl

Had a little family jaunt to Mount Dandenong.  Stayed from Friday afternoon til Sunday in a little house perched on the side of the mountain.  Heaven.  Log Fire.  A balcony with a view of just the forest and NO BLOODY NEIGHBOURS.  Loved it.  Revelled in it.  Smelled that fresh air and all those lovely Eucalyptus trees.  The boys played "army" in on the grass, in the forest, on a walk.  Henry and Rufus smeared their faces with charcoal from a blackened tree to get in character.  It was rather embarrassing.

Jonty was not feeling well.  Still reeling from the flu a couple of weeks ago.  So I took him on a drive.  Ended up at a Real Estate Agency - "just have a look" - I thought.  Before I knew it the agent was my new best friend (along with the hairdressers and the lady in the teashop). We had sorted out all my housing needs and I had booked our family in for a viewing at a property up the road at 2pm.

What the ….?

I had to literally drag the family kicking and screaming to the viewing (that was just The Accountant really).  And when we got there it was…..nirvana.  Paradise.   I even knew where our bookcases would go, how I would position the fridge, which bedrooms for children and which for guests.  1.5 acres of a country retreat, surrounded not by brown countryside and farmland, but trees and rhododendrons.  Not one entertaining deck outside, but two.  Chickens.  A stable.  A bloody ride-on mower!

So now the hard work starts.  Do we uproot the children from their amazing school?  Their friends and activities?  Our own new friends and activities?  Social life?  Or do we scrimp and save and forever shop at K-Mart and spend $1million on a 2-bedroom unit on a main road with no garden?  Hmmmmm…..

Trivia Night Part II

Deciding to attend the annual Kindergarden Trivia Night is like some nightmare ritualistic ceremonial test for adults.  It is right up there on a list of have-to but don't-want-to.  Like doing a tax return or booking a dentist appointment.  You don't want to, but you know you have to join the normal people and grow up sometime.  The funny thing is the last time I went to a Kindergarten Trivia Night, the adults were acting like teenagers.  Like caged animals who had not been let out for years and finally went on party safari in the wild.

It might be a bit like that.  Or it might be OK.  We have a very busy weekend ahead but all of it revolves around the children.  Football Saturday morning.  Gymnastics Saturday afternoon.  The Accountant taking the boys to watch an AFL match.  Me attending the dreaded Trivia Night.  Sunday morning I am taking part in the school Working Bee.  This is not a comedy script this is really happening!  Followed by taking Jonty to a party in the afternoon.  The bigger boys are going to a scouts show (like the Gang Show only Australian).

And then tonight the boys are going to the school disco!  Not me dancing my pants off, but the 7 and 9 year old.  Unbelievable.  I think there is time on Sunday between 9:10pm - 9:20pm where I will have time to have a cup of tea and read my book right before it falls out of my hand and on to the bed and I drift off to la-la land.

Spirit of Tasmania

The trip did not start well.  The night before we were to embark on the Spirit of Tasmania, The Accountant and I went to a wedding.  It was a lovely wedding, but as the Accountant was busy counting, he could not arrive until the reception.  There were the usual speeches, toasts and dances but the Accountant kept elbowing me in the ribs to leave as he was concerned about not finishing his work before the family holiday.

A few hours later I woke up in a fever feeling ill and dizzy.  I promptly fainted in the hallway and woke up lying diagonally on the floor with my head jammed up against the wall.  The Accountant looked slightly concerned as he pulled me up, and went to get ice for the back of my head and a cool flannel for the fever - all the time muttering that he was not getting his necessary rest….

I awoke feeling not great and spotted the blood stain on the wall from my head on my way to the kitchen.  I was feeling not so great as I took the boys to school and even less human as I worked with the dancers in the studio.  There was still packing to do and last minute washing.  We had to get to the boat by 6:00pm.  Who organises a family holiday on the last day of school, the day after a wedding, where both parents are working and one of them has a bump on their head?

Over a quick dinner in St. Kilda The Accountant regaled me with stories of 20 foot waves in Bass Strait and other ferry disasters.  He knew I was nervous about the voyage.  Luckily the Korean ferry disaster had not happened before our holiday, otherwise I would have gone to the airport.

The family cabins were very cosy and comfortable, and whilst I looked on enviously at people quietly enjoying their wine or tea, our family headed straight for the games room.  After that ordeal was over it was straight to bed for everyone and a very easy night of putting everyone in their bunks.  I did not sleep so well, even though it was very comfortable, as I woke with my bunk tilting sideways and the ferry creaking ominously.  The engine speed was determined by the huge waves pounding the ferry.  And I spent the rest of the night making sure Henry did not fall out of the top bunk.  He kept rolling toward the outside rail (about two inches high - who designs these things?) and I kept getting up and pushing him back (whilst trying not to look at the foaming water outside).

The last words The Accountant offered me before he went to sleep were: "If you see the waves above this porthole - then you know we are really in trouble.  Goodnight".

The Bad Book

Had a pretty easy walk to school yesterday morning.  It was a lovely sunny day, Jonty was on his scooter and Henry and Rufus were busy firstly shooting lasers at each other and then secondly being on hotted-up motorbikes.  These are all imaginary of course.  Not the scooter - that was real.  At the traffic lights they were discussing in great detail the dimensions of the smoke-pipes on their bikes (exhausts).

I did get some funny looks as I was trundling along with one pram, two backpacks, two school jackets (thrown off during the heat of the game) a library bag and occasionally a hand on Jonty to stop him going pell-mell on to the crossing.  The pram is for when it all goes to pot with Jonty on the way home. Which it frequently does when tired.  That's me, not Jonty.

Normal families walk along nicely.  Ours is like some sort of travelling circus freak show.  After a day in which a great deal got done, I had prepared dinner, bathed Jonty and everyone was playing nicely.  I therefore settled on our porch with a glass of wine and current book The Great Gatsby.  THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE.  It was the best ten minutes of the year so far.

At bedtime I read to Henry and Rufus from a book I had got from the library that day - The Bad Book.  It is literally a book with illustrations about everything bad.  Hilarious.  I highly recommend it for anyone with children aged between 6 - 10.  The last story in the book is about how everything was bad.  Once upon a time everything was bad.  It goes on to say how it got badder and just when things couldn't get any worse they got very bad indeed.  The last ten pages of the book just get badder and badder and badder and badder and badder…….

Photo is from recent picnic on the river with some friends.  Rufus and Jonty not looking at camera.  Henry is not good with dogs but got quite attached to this one for the entire day.

Portrait

My new boss at the ballet school asked me if I had a professional head and shoulders shot to put up in the lobby.  (I didn't want to tell her that I had wondered why the previous contemporary dance teacher's portrait was still up there - but also had that unnerving feeling when starting a new job that they are just waiting for you to trip up - and therefore no need to get rid of the portrait. I must have passed whatever test was in store.)

Apropos of this it occurred to me that I have been 25 years in the business, and I have never once had a head and shoulders shot to use for publicity etc.  Lots of dancing shots.  Lots of me pretending to teach people dance.  Lots of ugly photos of me in the theatre/studio in the middle of rehearsals.  And one very funny picture of literally just my head which went into the Oxford Times, Banbury Post and Buckinghamshire Herald - unbeknown to me - until DH and I bought some copies at the petrol station. How he laughed!  Three weeks of non-stop laughter.

Anywho, at the grand old age of --, I need to get a proper professional portrait taken to put in the lobby of the dance centre for all to see.  I will need to wash my hair and get some bloody good lighting going.

If it is any good I will post it on my blog in a couple of weeks.  So you too can laugh for about three weeks.

Future Music Festival

Went to a Music Festival.  It was nothing like Glastonbury unfortunately.  The Chav/Bogans who turned up should have been told that denim shorts showing much bottom for the ladies and singlets with logos for the gentlemen are so passé.  It was OK.  Things I did not like:

1.  No wine, sparkling or otherwise.  Instead we were offered only canned pre-mixed drinks.  Yuk.

2.  Seven stages of dance music/DJs or live artists - all completely the same!  No variation whatsoever.

3.  No ambient tent/stage.

4.  34 degree heat and not much shade.  Not very well thought out by the organisers.  People were being carried off everywhere by ambulance workers.  But perhaps they sniffed something they should not have.

5.  The price - a whopping $170 for what?  So-called International DJs and bloody Pharrell Williams (more of him later in the blog).

Things I liked:

1.  Hanging out with Karolina and Jo - thanks girls!

2.  Tinie Tempah.  Fantastic stuff.

There is something very odd indeed about drinking a G&T at one in the afternoon in the baking sun and listening to dance music.  It is meant to be like you are at a club. But you are not.  You are at Flemington Racecourse trying to find some kind of ambience or atmosphere, and hopelessly despairing at the lack of creative genius as well as any kind of dress sense.  Kate Moss and her little dresses and wellington boots with bohemian plaited hair are another universe away (and 24 hours as well as completely the wrong season).

We had lovely greetings from the DJs/live acts "Welcome fucking Melbourians!  You mother-fuckers!  You are fucking awesome!  Fuck me!  Yeah!"  And then they would pretend to sing.  How inspiring - it turns out they know how to swear and everything.

Poor old Pharrell Williams must have thought 30 minutes of work was 30 minutes too long.  He couldn't sing, couldn't perform and could not muster any kind of stage presence.  What a disaster.  His backing track sounded so much better than he did, and the audience knew the lyrics - so he did even less.  Perhaps he should have been having a cup of tea somewhere and then the price of the tickets would have been about seventy dollars less for the rest of us who really didn't give a fuck.  Look I can swear too!  Perhaps I will take up DJing…..

The Toff In Town

Had a girl's night out last night.  We had dinner and drinks at this marvellous place on Swanston Street in the city. Climbed lots of stairs in the heat and walked into - nirvana.  A gorgeously bohemian place filled with secret booths made out of old railway carriages.  Buttons to call your waiter like a butler.  Nothing better than a delightfully young camp waiter in a white t-shirt with good suggestions. The food was Thai tapis, and my Champagne Bellini had red rose petals floating in a 50s glass.  It was very cool.

Then we went clubbing in the same building.  Now as you know readers I am partial to a good night out, although I must say my clubbing days are not as many in a year as they used to be.  But they were playing exactly the same music I have been dancing to for the last three decades.  EXACTLY THE SAME.  All of the young men sported beards.  And all of the young people new the words to Witney Houston and Ah-Ha.  I ended up dancing with a young man who may or may not be blowing up a plane today - big black bushy beard.

It was so daggy it was good.  Nothing like a bit of Ce-Ce Peniston to make a girl feel good again. Perked me up no end.  I even stayed out with the late-nighters and came home at what I thought was a very respectable 2am.  Rock on.

Ballerinas

Got a new job readers.  I work!  I am helpful to the community and to my family. I leave the house at a certain time - and come back when it is dark.  It is fun.

Somehow I managed on reputation alone, to secure a new job.  I am teaching contemporary dance at the Australian Conservatoire of Ballet.  They are proper ballerinas.  I mean serious dancers.  I cannot tell you how satisfying it is to work with dancers of this calibre again.  It gives me so much pleasure to see my choreography on astute bodies.  Also they get my jokes.

Of course the childcare has to be arranged with military precision.  Henry and Rufus are often to be found at school pick-up looking vacantly into the distance, wondering which young babysitter brandishing Jonty will be taking them home. The Accountant now gets home before me and has to go into full take-over mode.  It is join-the-dots parenting though as I have cleaned the house, made the dinner and prepped the babysitter beforehand.  I even found laundry neatly-folded into piles when I arrived home, but then remembered it probably was not the work of a man.

Especially when there is roast chicken and salad to be had.

White "Hot" Christmas

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The Twits

What kind of freaks decide to move into a house, unload a bunch of boxes, and then promptly move out again?  Well you are reading words from one of them.  The Accountant and I did take The Addams Family House.  Decided that the smell and the prickles in the garden were deal-breakers of one kind and another, and as The Accountant looked as if he might have a stroke any minute, clearly decided it was a terrible idea.

No sooner had we unloaded the last box back to lovely Christowel Street than the landlords gave us our notice.  Happy Fucking Christmas.

So folks for some reason this has sapped all of my creative energy, and even though I have had a million blogs going round in my head, I have not managed to tap these thoughts on to my laptop.  Until now.  So get ready for a surge of blogs about……ah, stuff that doesn't really matter to anyone in particular but me!  And now you.

Tax Return

Oh Joy!  End of the tax year and so Australians were meant to lodge their tax returns by midnight yesterday.  So of course I was sitting in bed with my laptop at 11:30pm doing the bloody thing.  We are trying to secure another rental property, find out tax information, get the children ready for Halloween and then of course I had to leave amongst all the chaos to go to work in the evening.

First things first.  How crap is Halloween?  I mean really.  Children pull a sheet over their heads and then beg for sweets at various neighbourhood houses.  It is sort of cute and fun, but also a bit shit really.
And our boys did not have proper costumes so they went as a dragon, Spiderman and a Star Wars Stormtrooper.

Our tenancy in our lovely house is coming to an end.  So when a big house almost across the road went up for rent on the weekend we decided to have a look.  Suspiciously it was cheaper rent than our current house.  We soon found out the reason.  A very old house by Australian standards.  Almost reminiscent of The Adams Family.  So I guess I'm going to have to change my entire wardrobe to look like Morticia.  But it is a nice big old house, even though it is very simple in terms of kitchen and bathroom.  Instead of nice shiny floorboards there is carpet everywhere.  I can just imagine the amount of food that will be embedded in that carpet in a few years time.

How bad would plastic on the floor look in the dining room?  Not up to Camberwell standards I'm sure but hey ho.

The tax people ask questions like "Did you, or do you, have you, or have you ever had, a reportable superannuation fund which you may or may not make contributions to, now or in the future and if not why not?"

What?

What Cheeses Me Off

There used to be a rather popular show in Australia when I was a little girl called "Hey, Hey It's Saturday".  The basic premise of the show was a man, Daryl Sommers, and his puppet Ostrich.  Sounds crap but it was very funny.  Anyway, years later it became more of an adult show on a Saturday night.  (For further research watch Australian film "The Castle" for an insight viewers demographic.)

Anywho.  There was a segment on the show called What Cheeses Me Off, and people would write in - literally as this was before email - with their grievances.  I mean this blog is really about that anyway.  And here is another one -

What really cheeses me off is single friends - and by single I mean without children yet, who bemoan their action-packed lives.  Young and carefree, without the constraints of time and dinner-cooking and unpacking and re-packing of lunch boxes (my whole life!).  These Facebook-looking, Twitter-participating, night-club dancing, iPod-listening, iPhone-texting singletons really get my goat.

But let me tell you why.  They will constantly tell you they have literally no time.  That is because they have filled it with all sorts of social media.  Including the time-poor posting of every single second of their lives.  Look a picture of me in my bedroom.  Look a picture of me putting make-up on. Look a picture of me on the loo.  Oops!

I recently went on a girl's holiday with English pal Emma B to Noosa.  She won't mind me telling you that we were both in hysterics over the fact that I was actually enjoying the palm trees, the balmy breeze, the pool, the cafe with the view and she was living it by posting all of it on the internet through various communications.  She was so busy tapping the keyboard, taking photos, sending endless texts that she forgot she was meant to be whale-spotting and missed the bloody whale.

Every week I get extremely short emails from singletons "I've got 2 minutes to say hello...".  Bullshit!  They have hours and hours of free time.  Only they don't know it yet.  Before I had children we didn't even have a TV.  We didn't have social media.  The internet had only just arrived - but I didn't know about YouTube in those days.  What did we do with our free time?  I remember a fair amount of drinking and parties and lying in the garden.  But we also bemoaned the fact that we had no time.

Kiss Me By The Sea

The Accountant and I had a one-night opportunity whilst The Grandparents No. 1 were here to go away.  No dinner to cook.  No nappies to change.  No chasing children around the house at bedtime.  A friend has a lovely B&B in a place called Mount Martha.  The funny thing is - there is no mountain, more of a molehill (ha!), but there is a lovely view of the sea.

We had champagne (some of us had a little too much), spa bath, dinner and quiet time.  We could not get my iPod to work.  The Accountant only has two songs on his iPhone and one of them is Eye of the Tiger.  So we chatted in the moonlight whist Neil Diamond blared from the stereo.

Since I have been back in Melbourne I have had the flu.  Today whilst Jonty had an afternoon nap I thought I would do the same as the headache, sore throat and chills were getting the better of me.

Jesus! The incessant noise of gardening machinery from across the road was deafening.  Even with a pillow over my head I could make out that four different machines were operating at the same time.  If we lived in a less salubrious suburb it would be quieter as these rich folk can afford to have four gardeners working at the same time.

It was two houses at once.  The most annoying people in the street.  "The Flanders" we call them - as they resemble Homer Simpson's Christian neighbours both in tone and character - "HI NEIGHBOUR! Hey diddly Ho!".  And also Mr Obsessive Compulsive.  If one tiny leaf flutters on to the driveway, Mr OCD has to get out The Leaf Blower.  The single most annoying gardening instrument ever made.

I say let nature be natural.  Let the leaves fall, let the grass grow and, god forbid, let those bloody hedges grow in a normal un-box like manner.  Otherwise as a formal protest I will go out in my natural state with a daisy-chain around my head singing appropriate folk songs from yore.

Goundhog Day

It's a bit like that isn't it?

Some days you wake up in a panic and wonder if you have slept in (Ha!) or if the baby has slept in, or the whole world.  And what on earth is the time.....What day is it....Oh it's only Saturday.  No hang on Friday.  Right everyone up.  Lunches stuffed in bags, drink bottles, reading books, library books, bikes, scooters, pram, helmets, dummy, blanket, purse, phone, keys.  Boys!

The other day I left the house in such a hurry that I told Henry to close the door behind him (still brushing his teeth and putting on his shoes) and I headed down the path with Rufus and Jonty.  At the corner Rufus wondered if I was really going to leave Henry so far behind.  I looked up the street. Finally a small figure came came pedalling down the hill.  When he reached us I asked if he had shut the door.  No he had not.  Back up the hill he went whilst we all waited.

A certain man and his dog pass us every day.  If they pass us around the corner then that is fine - we are on time.  If we see them on our street, then we are late.  Today was going to be one of those days.

We have all noticed that our special school crossing man Michael, has been missing in action for some months now.  First it was rumoured that he was seconded to another school.  Now the latest is that he has retired altogether.  Michael was such a character - he knew everyone's names and their little character traits ("Rufus!  What a legend!").  We are now on our third school crossing man.  As we were  heading to school the other day, we crossed with Man No. 3 and Henry in his most carrying voice said "First it was Michael.  Then Barry.  And now this old guy..." and he nudged his head towards the offended man.  I offered what I thought was a wry smile.

I have started going to yoga early on a Saturday morning with The Cousin.  The class starts at 8:15am.  If we walk there The Cousin needs to be at my house by 7:55am.  She usually knocks on the door looking very jolly and fit at 7:45am.  So really I need to be looking jolly and fit by 7:30am so as not to be caught out.  It never happens.  I usually greet her looking tired and grumpy with one or more children screaming in the background.  One leg in a pair of leggings and one hand putting my bird's nest hair up with the other on a cup of tea.

So Saturdays have become a frenzy of activity, as after yoga is football and gymnastics. There is all this organisation to be done - before you enter the yoga class and are told to lie down again.  Hang on. I've just been doing that for 8 hours, then I made myself wake up, jollied myself up, got myself here with all the thin people - only to be told to lie down and relax.  It is actually harder than it sounds as you know you could just drift off again.....

And after waking from the end of class yogic relaxation I think.....What day is it? Where am I.....

Photo caption: You would think it would be the parents climbing the walls, not the children.  But our boys LITERALLY climb the walls.  Just another day Lyons/Burke household.

House Inspection

Mainly for the International folks.  Here are a couple of pictures of our Melbourne abode, as we had a house inspection the other day and I took some photos whilst it was nice and tidy.  Probably the last time in our lives we would be able to live somewhere as lovely as this.  I did get a Lottery ticket last week but, damn it, the numbers did not come up.  But I did read in the newspaper last week that one Melbourne lady had a memory lapse and put two tickets in on the same day.  And so she won.  Twice.

Gay FM

Let me tell you readers that I am leading such a glamorous new lifestyle in Melbourne.  Last Friday night I was invited to a Cleaning Party.  My usual Friday nights in Oxford veered between a good night out with low lighting, funky music and a glass of something lovely in my right hand, and a cosy night in with The Accountant and the boys.  I am such a dag now that an Enjo party is the highlight of my week.

For the uninitiated these Enjo products are not for the fainthearted.  The sponges alone are $45.  No Tesco 79p cleaning products for these Camberwell ladies.  However, they were developed in Austria by a chap who had the sense to create something which would clean up oil spills in the ocean without Spray n'Wipe.  So you use no cleaning product but just these magical sponges and cloths.

It was being in a reality TV infomercial.  The sceptical among us who arrived just for the champagne and good cheese, scoffed and laughed in the corner for the first 30 seconds.  And then there were "Ooohs" and "Aahhs" from everyone as the Enjo Lady did her stuff.  Suckers.  Of course I snapped up $300 worth of products right then and there.  Do you think I am crazy enough to let this stuff go?

Another funny part of my week was the appearance at my door of the Radio Diary Lady.  She very inconveniently turned up just as I was trying to wedge Jonty into the pram for school pick-up.  I must admit I was a bit off with her.  She wanted me to put down my radio listening regime for the next week.  I tried to explain that mainly I list to BBC podcasts but this did not put her off one bit.

I have yet to find a good radio station in Melbourne and so the other day whilst I was doing my usual radio fiddling in the car, tutting at every bad song and annoying DJ (oh yes please tell us again about your D-list celebrity social event) I found JOY FM.  The news was being read by a particularly camp newsreader, complete with lisp.  I thought it was nice that this station was being so inclusive.  Then the announcer said "JOY FM.  The gayest station in the nation!".  Hilarious.  That cheered me up no end and of course I can't wait to pop that in my Radio Diary.  Disco beats at 8:30am?  Yes please.

Now just waiting for my Enjo products to turn up so I can really go crazy in the bathroom.  I might have to wear heels and a dress though so I don't feel like such a complete tosser.

Garsington

It was absolute madness in a bottle.  I was meant to be jet-lagged.  Sarah expecting twins at any moment.  And Robert running about being successful club-owner/expectant father/house renovator.  And yet every night since I arrived in the quiet village of Garsington, all three of us were up until one or two in the morning.  Doing what? Rummaging mainly.  Drinking cups of tea in dressing gowns.  Organising stuff in the wee hours.

Halfway through my visit we moved house. Across the road and up a bit.  So one night I was in my usual guest bed in one house, and the next night I was in exactly the same bed across the road.  All of our belongings magically re-appearing at the new house.

I even found myself making up my dance class at 5:30am in the morning.  Typing out emails.  Making endless lists of projects for the house in Oxford.  During the day I would spend my time between the house and catching up with friends.

I think when you see black scuff marks on your walls, drips of tea and red wine in the kitchen, blackened, mouldy taps in the bathroom and guk you cannot identify in the corner - then you know you are in for a fun week of cleaning.  Don't even get me started on the kitchen ceiling (possibly a pancake Sunday gone horribly wrong?).

On Tuesday it looked like a student house. John Belushi would have been proud.  By yesterday it looked like our family home again.  I found one of the boys' old plastic frogs in a dead pot plant and put it in pride of place on some bricks.  A little welcome for the new tenants.  I also cleaned the house to within an inch of its life.  And left garden flowers in glass jars here and there.  A little reminder to the new tenants that I have a standard (see County Living magazine) and I expect it to stay that way.

I am writing this in Brunei Airport. A place I hope I never have to see again, only because four hours in a tiny airport is not that stimulating, especially having travelled for 16 hours already.  So if you find me ranting with an air of madness in this blog there is a good chance I have already lost the plot.

Jet Lagged

Very surreal to be walking around Oxford, and driving round country lanes as if I had never left.  Went to our old house.  It looked a bit crap to tell you the truth.  The garden was fantastic though; apples, figs and pears all over the place.

Have managed to get a few things done on my list today, including many cups of tea at the houses of surprised friends.  They open the door - and there I am!  Unannounced in every way.  You see I could not top up my sim card this morning. The Orange Top-Up Network had a day off so to speak.  And of course the lady voice recorded on the line sounds so bloody smug as they give you the bad news.

So I was again on a bus from Heathrow to Oxford, with no means of communication whatsoever.  In my bag were two iPods, one laptop and two mobile phones.  And yet I had to borrow a phone from a kind stranger.  You know the words no one wants to hear across the aisle of a bus pelting along the motorway, "Excuse me, would it be possible to.....".  So embarrassing.

I will tell you another thing.  If I never see the inside of Royal Air Brunei again I will die a happy woman.  I think 32 hours of travelling is a bit much really.  Still I have little bit of happy in my step and looking forward to staying up until at least 7:30pm.  Also Grazia magazine is only £1.95.

All Change

I have so many things to write about I don't know where to begin.  Last week I was going to write a blog along the lines of the No. 10 bus never comes, and then 2 buses come at the same time. Regarding the change in Prime Minister.  But I never got around to it.  I was also going to mention that no one ever talks about David Cameron's chest hair or Barack Obama's private parts.  But then, why would you?  Julia Gillard however had to endure all of that, and somehow maintain some kind of dignity amongst the back-stabbing of her own political party.

Other things on my agenda this week are Henry and Rufus' joint birthday party (photos below), where we had a very dishy guy from Reptile Encounters show us everything from stick insects to pythons.  We had 28 children in attendance, and somehow lots of Mums too.  Champagne, lovely reptile man holding a crocodile.  Just a regular Saturday afternoon.

Have had my mother staying (linen cupboard nice and tidy).  We have 3 Guinea Pigs sleeping in our laundry, and the little boys won't see them until they wake up.  Oh and yes I'm packing this evening because I'll be in good ol' Blighty in 48 hours.  See you at Kazbar Friday night.

PS You might think we made two-year old Jonty pose for these photos, but he would not stop volunteering for this stuff.  He may not look enthusiastic but he did not want to miss out on all the fun his big brothers were having.

iday night.