Torquay, and surrounds

Curious locals.

Night-time drinkies spot.

Foreshore scrub.

Misty morning.

Nice chassis.  Car not bad too.

HMS Enterprise.

Ships wench.

Going bush

.

Leaving Melbourne for a few day and heading to beautiful downtown Wedderburn, in central Victoria.

Back late Wednesday.

Be good and play nicely.
...

First of the year. Possibly the only one.

.

Sitting in bed, drinking coffee, doing The Age crossword, listening to light rain on the roof.

Happiness.

The new year off to a flying start.

Can it get any better than this?

Well, yes. The light rain could ratchet up to heavy rain for a while. Not a lot of chance of that, though.

But I got the crossword out. First time for a long time.

Perhaps I should stop while I'm ahead.
...

National Girt Day

.Yesterday, the 26th, was Australia Day; a day in praise of the only nation on earth with the word 'girt' in its national anthem. To celebrate this all round good thing, we (Margaret, Richard and I) packed up a picnic and went to the cricket.

No, not to the Australia vs India test match, to the local district cricket match. It didn't matter who was playing, we just watched for fun, sitting in the shade, sipping champagne and shouting out "Oh, smashing shot, Curruthers!" or 'Damn fine catch, Witherspoon!" as the mood took us.



Come the evening, Richard went off to a mates place for the night and we opted for a BBQ dinner, of sorts.


I say 'of sorts' because this was no 'paper plates on your lap' BBQ dinner but a nicely set up table out in the back garden.


The green and gold zucchinis, from an earlier post, so suitable for Australia Day, made a guest appearance on the BBQ.

...

Father's Day - Australian version.

Unlike the majority of the world which celebrates Father's Day on the third Sunday in June, Australia celebrates Father's Day on the first Sunday in September.

So, it was bacon and eggs in bed with the paper. Side orders of grapefruit and coffee.

I am off doing a LifeLine shift tonight (yes, I know, poor planning) so the official dinner was last night with my parents over as well. The meal was done by Martin and Richard, Simon's in Beijing and so was given the year off. Martin's girlfriend, Roni, was in the thick of things as well. The menu was a prawn and avocado starter, coq au vin with ratatouille, finished off with creme caramels.

Suitably spoiled, it is now time to return to studies...

◊◊◊

Freudian footnote: when I first typed the last line, I wrote "it is not time to return to studies".

Greedy footnote: I went to Wikipedia to check up on when the rest of the world celebrated Father's Day and found that their are 21 different dates around the world. Hey guys! There must be a way to cash in on this!!
...

Wicked but nice.

We had a log fire on Saturday night.

In this whole climate change environment we probably shouldn't have but it was lovely. Wicked things often are.

We had had our dinner and sat in front of the fire, flipping through travel brochures and planning our adventures.

2008 is going to be very busy.

And then I found myself reading some psychology articles on travel. Big mistake.

The gist of the findings were:

1. We have an overly rosy view of our holidays before we go.
2. While on holidays our view is generally positive but tempered by all the minor annoyances that we didn’t include in our rosy anticipation. Such as weather, lost things, bugs, etc.
3. Looking back on a holiday we return to having a rosy view, comparable to the pre-trip view. We edit out the boring bits; sort of like the edited highlights of a cricket match.
4. The same rosy view applies to our view of our home as our return from holidays approaches.
5. The worst holidays make the best memories.
...

What if...

I attended a short course at a local college a while back. In the course the instructor asked us to imagine our best holiday. What would we do, where would we go, if money was no object? How would we travel? What would we eat?

Dream the ultimate holiday.

Once we had done that, we were asked to determine what values we were applying to our imaginary holiday. Were they values of curiosity? Adventure? Luxury? Indulgence? Education? Culture?

What values did we draw on to make our perfect holiday?

And then the killer question: what would happen if you took the values that you applied when you were on four weeks holiday and applied them to the other forty eight weeks of your year?

What if you walked down the street as if it was a foreign land and actually looked at the houses? Smelt the smells? Heard the sounds?

What if your shared your self more with people you met?

What if you ate out more and tried different cuisines more often?

What if you visited more galleries and museums?

What if you permitted yourself to really relax?

What if you had more hot baths and massages?

What if you did more 'interesting' things because you needed to do them while you were 'here'?

What if you woke in the morning and looked forward to the day, eager to see what it offered you?

What if you put flowers in your hair and danced naked in the moonlight?

What if.
...