The roof has finally been painted and matches the new extension and as per usual when you do some new work it just makes all the pre existing stuff look awful. The existing house walls and windows will be repainted early in the New Year and then we will be officially DONE!! We will paint the chook shed and the wood shed ourselves but the professional guys with all the proper equipment will do the house. We have some old wood on the windows that is rotting and the finial on the garage was falling apart necessitating a new one so we never seem to get on top of everything. I spent some time painting my faithful versailles planter boxes that I bought 25 years ago in the soft grey and have planted them up with some pretty cordylines for the back deck and am now painting the stools for the ‘bar’ until I can afford the ones I love!! One step at a time Suz……We had our first batch of hot weather last week and as dusk fell on Friday after a 34 degree day we had some rather unwelcome visitors. Hundreds of thousands of flying ants arrived from goodness knows where and the birds went crazy chasing them all for a tasty snack. The ones that survived the birds were then attracted to our lights and every window and door in the house was covered in little black bugs. It has taken me days of sweeping them up and yet there are still a few survivors managing to annoy me on a daily basis. I suppose the heat activated them from their dormancy – I have no idea what function they serve in nature except to feed the birds but they are a pain in the bum.

Thanks to my friend Leigh who owns a couple of lovely shops in Berry ( Scullys and Bedroom Bliss)  I was alerted to the fact that there is a strawberry farm just down the road from me. I had seen the signs with pictures of strawberries on the highway but had always imagined I would have to go and actually pick them like we used to back in my home county of Hampshire in England. I was pleasantly surprised when I turned into the driveway to see a cute little hut all set up with produce from the farm and a fridge full of buckets of beautiful red strawberries. An honour system for payment involving a chute down which you put the correct money and voila you have a perfect little set up which means people don’t have to constantly man the stall !! The strawberries were outstanding, tasting like the strawberries of old and bursting with sweetness and flavour. They were quickly put to work on a custard tart!

The tart didn’t last long with the boys working their butts off in the garden painting the pergola, a tough job in the heat and with years of lichen on the bricks and posts.Now it is all fresh and white we can continue to wrap the wisteria around it with hopes of it dripping beautiful lilac flowers in Spring and Autumn.

In nature of a more appealing kind we found this little fella wandering around on the ground seeming to hide behind logs and looking a little lost. He hadn’t quite got the hang of flying yet. He could launch himself from a height and manage to fly but didn’t have the thrust to get off the ground. As we were a bit worried about potential attackers we popped on the heavy duty gloves (they sure can nip) and put him up on a branch near Mum and Dad. How cute are they when they are little!!

Our avocado tree has survived the winter winds but is still basically a stalk with a few lateral twigs, a rather long way away from a tree laden with heavy perfect avocados ripe for the picking! They take at least 3 years to fruit apparently so we will have to exercise some patience (not known for having TOO much of that) and in the meantime we buy at least 4 a week at varying horrific prices and find they are either too hard or we wait too long for them to ripen and then they are too soft. This is a situation I think most Aussies would be all too familiar with……

I had an unexpectedly nice week with the surprise arrival of the youngest son who starts a new job next week and thought he would take advantage of his last few days of freedom to come down to The Meadow and relax. We had the house to ourselves as hubby was away on a golfing week and we enjoyed the simple things like going into ‘town’ for a coffee and happy hour with a cheeseboard on the veranda watching the clouds make patterns in the sky over the escarpment. We sat together mesmerised in disbelief as the American election unfolded, seeking solace in cooking up a storm as we felt the rumble of discontent from all corners of the globe and our world just felt a little bit more scary despite being on the other side of the world. Let’s hope that he surprises us all and puts aside his divisive ideas and seeks to indeed be a leader worthy of all the many many votes he received from a disgruntled middle America. Strangely enough the more the real world becomes scary the more I and many other people take solace in the simple things – appreciating them all the more when the world is a bit wobbly.

Tom was here for Remembrance Day, always a particularly special day in our family, and we decided to go somewhere reflective and peaceful to mark the 11/11/11 occasion, venturing up the mountain to the Cambewarra Lookout where there is a 180 degree view of The Meadow and it’s surrounds. Even on a hazy day the view is a knockout and having a coffee on the veranda with gorgeous King Parrots perched next to us I gave thanks to those that had gone before to enable us to live here in peace.

Bailey proudly wore her ‘puppy poppy’ sold this year to remember all the animals that also participate in conflicts – dogs, horses, camels and donkeys for the main part. She was all shiny and smelling beautiful after subjecting herself to the ‘dogwash’ in a nearby service station. Tom and I had to laugh as  she cowered in the corner and refused to jump up as if it was a fate worse than death. She doesn’t know how lucky she is, this has warm water and warm air for “blowdrying” whereas our last dog literally got the cold hose in the back garden and no such doggy boutique styling, her only option being to lie in the sun to get dry.

The poppy sellers in our local area are usually fairly old, having both the time and passion to sell to a sometimes reticent public but I just LOVED the picture of my great niece Amelia selling poppies in Wales, a great tin jingler and who could resist that little face? She sold loads of them needless to say!!!!

               My poppy loving family!

Our fruit and veg are starting to be a bit closer to being useful with our passionfruit and blueberry bushes both fruiting and the raspberries, zucchinis, peas and beans all flowering ahead of theirs. Our asparagus is giving us about 12 pieces a week and our lettuce and silverbeet are in constant use. Yesterday we made a lovely homemade mulberry pie and we still get a kick out of using our own crops. We’re not quite back to the stage we don’t need to buy anything from a supermarket/farmers market yet but give us a few weeks and we will be!

With 6 weeks until Christmas I’m probably leaving it a bit late to make a Xmas pud. I have never made one before and have very fond memories of making them with my Mum as a child – back in the days that you used to stir in a lucky threepence to the mix before hanging it in calico in our cupboard under the stairs to mature (Mum’s word for letting all the brandy soak in….). For the past 20 odd years my sister-in-law’s Mum has made one for us but now I guess it’s finally my turn. Not that it will be eaten by anyone other than hubby and I as the kids are not fans of anything fruit-cakey and I instead spend hours making their preferred Xmas dessert – chocolate cream pancakes, a stack of souffle pancakes layered with chocolate powder and drenched in cream before baking in the oven. I can only make this a few hours in advance – a crazy hot pudding option considering we live in Australia and the last thing we generally want is an oven on! The things we Mothers do for their families……

 

 

 

The mulberry pie which we devoured with lashings of fresh cream!!!

I had a lovely trip to Sydney this week. I still venture to the Big Smoke every 5 weeks for my bookclub meetings. We have shared these meetings for 21 years with essentially the same group of gals and we have seen just about everything together. We have raised our babies, some who are now Mothers themselves, seen a divorce or two and a couple of new loves and marriages, people have moved cities and countries, downsized and upsized, cancer has touched us, parents have aged and died and we have been there for each other at every single stage. A diverse group of women who came together ostensibly to talk about literature but ended up with so much more. Therapy of the best kind and what women do so well, supporting each other through what can sometimes seem to be overwhelming situations, a non family opinion of whatever is happening and unconditional friendship. We are seriously blessed.

This week my trip to Sydney made my heart sing. The sky was blue, the sun was shining and the magnificent jacarandas were in full bloom, endless puddles of purple dotting the horizon as I drove north. It’s hard NOT to love Sydney on days like these and even though I have moved away and love my new life I still get a little flutter when I see the harbour with it’s boats bobbing gently on the sparkly water. Catching up with both my boys for lunch is always a highlight and we enjoyed a “hipster” salad and caught up on all the news. I started the search for a Mother of The Bride outfit, finally having a perfect excuse and occasion to give myself permission to look at some designer dresses. Despite the rather scary prices you can feel the difference as you slide on these garments, gorgeous fabrics with that perfect womanly fit!!

Earlier in the week the nation stopped for the Melbourne Cup and unlike the days of old when we may have gone along to the races in Sydney we instead took the dog, a bottle of chilled semillon and went to the River and enjoyed some local fish! The weather has been temperamental with those pesky winds featuring yet again. The man of the house is decidedly unimpressed on the bad days but what can you do? When they die down it is beautiful but you never know quite when that’s going to happen!!

Bailey is very happy now that her ‘collar of shame’ is off and relegated to a cupboard in the garage. Her paw seems much better and when I was at the vet checking on her progress the conversation turned to our little pigeon that we took to them a few months ago. It was a racing pigeon that had been attacked by a hawk as it ‘raced’ from a few hundred kilometres away and it had a big gash on its neck and most of its wing was an open raw wound. The builders who were here at the time laughed at my attempts to leave some food and water for it, saying it would be dead in a day. Well our little pigeon had other ideas and after a week of it pecking around in our garden and taking shelter in our garage at night we took it to the vet so they could read it’s microchip and see if the owner wanted to get it. Sadly they didn’t want to know once they heard it was injured and our lovely vet nurse Carly took it home with her instead. She tells me that Peter Pigeon is now looking completely normal with a full head and wing of feathers and has found love!! Carly also has another rescue pigeon and they now spend their days cooing and snuggling up together in loved-up bliss. You’ve gotta love a happy ending!!!

We had a flying visit from Katy this weekend. She lives in Hong Kong with our daughter and is one of her bridesmaids and she was so excited when she was sent to Sydney for 3 weeks with her work and could pop in and see us at The Meadow. After living in HK she really appreciated the trees and wide open spaces and we managed to give her the short version of the tourist tour before she whizzed back to the city!!

Things are busy at the house with the roof now primed and undercoated and weather permitting will hopefully be completed in the next 10 days. As we have had no rain in ages we spend a large part of the day watering the garden and especially the veggies. The veggie patch is struggling a little this Spring with some of my seedlings turning their toes up which is a little disconcerting. My gardening Guru tells me that because of our wetter than normal winter there have been more bugs around as well as some soil viruses so it’s a case of trial and error with the crops. He recommends overplanting in these circumstances as we dont want to waste time waiting for things to improve just to have to eventually rip it all out and start again, so at this stage I don’t have much more than lettuce and spinach to actually eat of our own but hopefully the tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, beans, eggplant and zucchinis won’t be too far behind.

Today dawned as a perfect Monday morning (as it so annoyingly often does) and the hound and I ventured to the beach for our morning walk. How lucky am I to live so close to this and to get the beach all to ourselves!! However, even after 33 years in Australia I still am hopeless at judging the tide – after leaving my flip flops in what I thought was a safe spot I walked back to find them bobbing in the ocean. My loyal water loving labrador leaped through the waves to retrieve them for me thank goodness as it’s still a bit chilly in the ocean for full immersion!!

Last weekend we packed up the Ute and the dog and headed south to Milton for a weekend with friends all gathered together for a long table dinner put on by the South Coast Food Alliance and hosted by our gorgeously capable friends at The Old Church, Milton. It was a beautiful balmy evening with that golden light that invites you to share glasses of crisp bubbly and freshly shucked oysters from the Clyde River. The marquee looked beautiful decked out with huge branches of Moreton Bay Fig and table runners of living moss and candles. The food was provided by four local restaurants – Bannisters, Tallwood, Cupitts and St Isidore, each of them being responsible for a different course and accompanied by (plenty of) beautiful wines. 137 people had bought tickets and it was wonderful to see so much support for local growers and passionate foodies.

Each restaurant had used one of the themes of earth, wind, fire and water to choose their food and one of the Claydon Park pigs had been cooking on an open fire for most of the day, an arduous way to cook anything and much harder than using a dependable oven! Luckily the weather was on their side that day and the little piggy ended up cooked to perfection on our plates after some beautifully prepared and presented fish and veggie courses. Pretty as a picture!

The next day saw the weather decline into a freezing cold wet day and about 25 guests with a few sore heads demolished a big barbequed brunch before embarking on various local activities (ok yes, I went shopping in Milton) and a book by the fire for some or an afternoon snooze for others before we did it all over again that evening with a spit roasted cow! Luckily Phil has an amazing machine to do this and didn’t have to rely on a fire pit which would have been a non starter in the inclement weather. 29 degrees and sunshine  one day and 12 and rain the next – ouch!! As always Claydon Park was a joy to stay in and as a special treat for us non farming types 5 little piglets were born on the last morning and I defy ANYONE to not fall in love with those cute little things. They definitely peak then though as the older ones are more about their character and personality than their good looks…..

As usual the place was a hive of activity, hangovers or not the horses, pigs, dogs and chooks still need to be fed and the cattle checked on and the market garden which now supplies lots of the local restaurants needs a lot of work to stay looking as neat as a pin – farming is certainly a full time job!!

Bailey as usual had a wonderful time hanging out with the other dogs, there were 4 this weekend and they played and ran all day until collapsing in a tired heap at the end of the day all snuggled up together in a big outdoor caged run. It’s nice for her to have some friends to play with and 100 acres to run around on and she literally slept for 2 days when we came home. When she did wake up however she was incessantly licking and grooming her rear paw and after a few days started hobbling as well so off to the vet we went. $150, a steroid injection and a course of antibiotics later she is home very unimpressed with her new collar which she has to wear for at least 3 days. She can’t quite gauge how wide she is now and staggers around like a drunk bumping into everything. Hopefully the treatment will work as her paw was red raw and bleeding yesterday and she was not a happy bunny.

The weather seems to oscillate between beautiful summery days, when I stupidly decided to pack up my winter woollies and boots, and chilly wet wintry days when I have to go and get them out again. Luckily home is a nice place to be as we gradually get it the way we want it. Everyone said we would live in our new back area and they have been proved right even though I adore our big old lounge I just don’t seem to spend much time there anymore. Mr Sport Lover does of course as that is where the foxtel is and I seem to be relegated to the kitchen…………..(good job it’s one of my favourite spaces!!)

Our next project is to get a pizza oven installed outside and the Man of the House has been given the job of researching the best option and organising the brickies to build the base for it.We are going to put it where the old bread oven is, a relic from the 1890’s that we would like to integrate into the base somehow. These ovens are several hundred kilos and need a solid base to support them so it’s another job for the tradies but I can already imagine the many ways in which we will use it in the summer when cooking indoors is no fun. Pizzas are only the beginning of what you can cook in these gorgeous woodfired ovens and I can’t wait….

 

We are back in action with visitors now we are back from our holiday with a mostly completed house. Our builder is tying up the few remaining loose ends and we now have doors and windows that don’t rattle and will soon have a painted roof, then it’s just a case of attacking the garden and decorating! Our lovely friends Baz and Cathy came to stay this week and they are one of those couples that can’t NOT help. They are both extremely handy having almost single handedly completed houses from the lock up stage in the past and can turn their hands to most of the trades in some form or another. Baz was delighted to see the wonderful drill set that the kids had bought Cam for Xmas and got stuck into hanging mirrors, clocks, my utensil rack above the stove, window boxes and all those little jobs that have been on my list for a while! We are very grateful to them for all their help.

                     It was heaven to have them here and we did manage to squeeze in some fun and lots of wine and cheese  so it wasn’t all work and no play! My wisteria has had a severe haircut courtesy of Cathy and is now wrapping itself in the correct direction around it’s posts, all I have to do is keep chopping it to encourage it in the right way and soon we shall have a lovely feature on the west side of the house.

We made time to show them the area which Baz knew from a time long long ago when as teenagers and early 20 somethings they used to pile into whoevers car had some room and drive from the western suburbs of Sydney to the South Coast to surf. He had fond memories of Gerringong and we had a burger on the hill overlooking the ocean for old times sake after looking through one of the best surf shops you will ever see. ‘Natural Necessity’ has one of the largest range of boards you will see in a commercial surf shop and Baz had a glazed look in his eyes as he wandered amongst them all, looking rather similar to me when I’m in a shoe shop…….

We have been worrying about our little brood of chooks for a while now as they seem to have been in moult for months! It is normal for them to lose their feathers for a few weeks in which time they lay less eggs as they need a lot of protein to grow new feathers. Ours have been laying on average 4 a day instead of 7 and the feathers are still looking very shabby, we were worried they may have been pecking each other and have been keeping an eye on them to no avail. A poultry auction held at The Showground last Sunday was the perfect place to ask wise chook people’s advice. Cam took some photos to show them and straight away they recognised the problem and said we had to increase their protein intake, so on top of their high protein pellets they now have rice mixed with cat food three times a week and hopefully we will soon start to see some improvement. I couldn’t bring myself to get any cat food containing chicken as it seemed rather wrong so beef and fish is the protein of choice. They absolutely can’t get outside fast enough when they see me coming with their special rice concoction and they eat all the meaty bits before the rice so I think the chook whisperers were right…….

Cam has been hard at it in his office in Berry so we literally only saw him in the evenings. Happy hour has been a hit and miss affair depending on the wind. Some days are just perfect and we can sit outside in the golden afternoon light with a yummy cheese board and chilled rose and other days we’re inside with a glass of red and our ugg boots on!! We have had little rain to speak of and our water tank that supplies the veggie patch is nearly empty. Luckily we are also on town water so we are going to fill the tank up by running a hose from the house next week if Mother Nature doesn’t come to the party. The boys dug up a whole load of sandstone pavers which had led to our old washing line and laid some new turf so we need to keep the water up to everything at the moment.

Cam still manages to finds some time for a little relax in the garden with the Chocolate One however, the Dynamic Duo are often to be found here……………..

We are off later today to Milton for a long table dinner cooked by highly regarded local restaurants and some dancing under the stars so until next week dear readers I will bid thee farewell……

 

I’m not sure which is my favourite time of the day down here, normally it’s the morning with the promise of the day to come but every now and again I happen to look out of the window at dusk and see a magnificent sight, as if someone has spilt all their red, gold and orange paints across the evening sky and I just have to run outside and soak it all in.

It’s been a productive week in The Meadow as we begin the process of ‘finishing off’ the extension. Our snazzy custom made fly screen doors are all installed now and just in time as the flies have started to wake up with the warmer weather although goodness knows how they manage to fly in the massive winds that have still been buffeting this part of the coast. I feel sorry for all the animals as they stand resolute in the paddocks with their backs to the wind. It has certainly been relentless this past couple of weeks and even those people born and bred here are officially OVER IT!!! Even our iron furniture got blown off the new veranda – crazy!

My kitchen shelves have been installed and my not so small cookbook collection looks very much at home on them, giving the kitchen a nice lived in look and an injection of colour. It will be lovely once we get all our artwork framed and up but in the meantime I have loads of beautiful roses and flowers from the garden that liven the place up a bit.The roses are going bananas and even the Man of The House has come to appreciate them!

Work has now begun on updating the original part of the roof to match in with the new one.  A local guy who has known this house since he was small is doing it and he LOVES a chat. He really is a wealth of knowledge about it’s history and inhabitants but he always seems to catch me just as I’m trying to sneak out to the garage or to put some washing on the line and 20 minutes later I’m still there listening to his stories. I think it’s lucky that for the most part he will be up on the roof which will cut down on chatting opportunities quite considerably! Despite the wind he managed to get the whole roof pressure washed ready to begin painting it in the new ‘Windspray” – a nice soft grey which will make the whole place look fresh and clean.

I have had great fun this week harvesting my mulberries. I fill a bowl on a daily basis at the moment and I’m not sure how I’m managing to pull the wool over the birds eyes but they don’t seem to have noticed the bumper crop residing in the middle of our garden! The new manhandling of the tree’s natural branching habit has worked a dream and now I just have to find a few recipes involving mulberries, if anyone has a good one please let me know??

The bathroom and laundry areas are now a joy to work in, all the new surfaces are so much easier than the old ones to clean and the sunshine pours in through the laundry window making it impossible to be unhappy even whilst folding the sheets!! Good old black and white is a classic and never seems to go out of style so despite the update it still ties in nicely with the old house.

                                  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now that renovation things are basically finished we are back in action with our guests. We have quite a few people staying with us over the next 10 days which will be lovely especially if the weather comes to the party and starts to behave. As the Christmas merchandise starts to appear in the shops I am endlessly reminded how quickly this year has gone and how soon it will be 2017 and WEDDING YEAR! Every time I get lazy in the garden I remind myself that I need to get in some hard yards now to reap the reward next April. Gardens always pay you back in spades whatever small thing you do to them (haha – did you see what I did there??) rewarding you with food to eat and flowers to enjoy which does make the weeding side of things slightly more bearable. However Susie is a bit boring if she is all work and no play so I gave myself an afternoon off yesterday and went up to Kangaroo Valley to visit my girlfriend who has a house with an amazing view down the valley. She has renovated the old dairy that was on the property in an authentic rustic style and I enjoyed a quiet cuppa with a book on the deck listening to the amazing birdsong up there. So many beautiful areas in this part of the world, I still feel so lucky to be living here! If you want to have that feeling for a weekend too you can rent the dairy and/or the main house (see details below)

Can you feel the serenity?

The Old Koonabulla Dairy can be rented through https://www.airbnb.com.au/rooms/2311138 or https://www.stayz.com.au/accommodation/nsw/south-coast/kangaroo-valley/144525

Until next time, this is Heavenly Hirani (as hubby calls me) signing out………… 🙂 🙂

Well despite the erratic weather I think Spring has definitely sprung! Living in the middle of the countryside we are much more aware of the activity of all the animals and birds at this time of year. There are at least 4 nests on the go in our garden at the moment with a lot of very purposeful flying to and fro creating nests worthy of the bird equivalent of “The Block” So focused on the task in hand, a couple of birds have crashed into our new extension french doors and were left stunned for a few minutes before continuing on their merry way. The rabbits and hares are everywhere in their bold attempts at wooing a mate and Bailey is constantly on guard, hackles up as she watches them bound through our land and into the adjoining fields. The other morning she went troppo and just didn’t stop barking. I came outside to find her barking at a lump in the middle of the lawn so I put her inside and went to investigate. The lump started moving across the garden and I finally saw it was an echidna! I don’t know who was more surprised to see each other out of the three of us! It rolled itself into a prickly ball at the base of a big tree for an hour or two before ambling off to bask in the sunshine by the wood shed! Goodness knows where it lives or where it is now…..

Along with the cute animals we have an awakening of the not so cute variety – according to the local vet snakes are waking up but are still groggy and therefore more dangerous, ticks have been more prevalent and spiders are on the move – some drunkenly weaving their way across the path or as I found out personally, some sleeping in my gumboots! Luckily I always check them and give them a good knock before slipping my foot in. This time I felt something cold and got a long stick to investigate and out came a very fat red back spider! Always worth checking…..!!!

Our garden has burst into bloom and is a real joy to wander around on a sunny day with a cuppa in hand! The roses have had their first flush and are bobbing heads alongside huge mounds of pink and white daisies, purple lavender and white salvias. I’ve planted loads of sage in the hope it will grow and pop it’s head through our steps as we couldn’t pave behind them due to plumbing issues and the wisteria is dripping with fragrant flowers.I have been busy in the veggie patch pulling out the winter crops and weeding and turning the beds over ready for the summer goodies but those pesky winds have been back big time. We have had 5 days of constant high winds and it drives you batty. Every door and window is rattling, furniture (both wicker and iron) have been blown off the verandas and into the gardens. Soil and leaves have been blown everywhere but where they should be and we are OVER IT. It has been a strong weather system all the way from Queensland to Victoria with power outages and flash floods thrown into the mix. You can’t really do anything outside which is really frustrating as there is so much to do at this time of year. If it dies down for an hour I dash outside and quickly plant veggies or stake new seedlings or take Bailey for a fast walk up the lane before it comes back raging its way through the paddocks again. So far our baby mulberries are hanging on for dear life….As we have just had a long weekend which included the footy finals for the year (silent cheer from moi!!) our boys arrived as well as our resident handyman Smutzer to enjoy the festivities. He did a wonderful job installing some lattice under our new veranda to match in with the old one and give us a cohesive look once again. We had one gorgeous warm and windless day and we christened our new entertaining area with a nice lunch and spent the odd coffee break enjoying the sunshine.Our neighbour Farmer Pat is making us a new cattlegrid for our gate as he loves a project and had some old pipes lying around. Lucky Us!! The boys spent a few minutes trying to work out how to install it before taking it back for some final adjustments. A blokey job that they all seemed to enjoy…….

So things move on in The Meadow. Hard to believe we have been here nearly 2 years but when I look back at the old photos I can see the changes. We have a lovely new extension and some great new friends. Life is busy yet simple and we can do as much or as little as we like each day. We want to get the garden into top shape ahead of the wedding and gradually fill our new room with some furniture and artwork but we also want to enjoy our family and friends and the beautiful area we live in so we wont pressure ourselves to get everything “perfect”. At this stage we have merely moved some of our furniture around between the rooms so we can use both living areas until new things become a reality and I’m sure we will enjoy it all the more for waiting. Here is the new family area finally being used!

All in all it has been a strange week of contrasts and one I’m glad is finally over. So much admin and computer work as we start the insurance claim from the trip and various car registrations, services, bills etc have all left my head spinning and sick to death of music on hold as I wait interminably for a human with whom to talk about the various computer glitches. Passwords, Usernames, Security Codes, slow internet and a thousand other reasons to hate modern technology has left me washed out and rather jaded so Spring please come back with your blue skies and sunshine and make me happy again……!!

 

 

With much excitement for what lay ahead we boarded the train from Paddington to Bristol which was the closest station to Thornbury Castle – the destination for Mum’s 80th birthday weekend. Amazingly my cousin, who had flown in that morning from New York, saw us struggling down the platform and we all ended up travelling together which was great. It was raining of course but even a grey wet day couldn’t detract from the childish wonder I felt on entering the gates of Thornbury. It was all very Harry Potterish yet warm and welcoming to boot. As usual our party was the loudest group there and we quickly seemed to overtake the place with our excited shrieking as various family members arrived piercing the calm of The Castle. Our rooms were simply divine. We were like kids in a candy store as we explored all the nooks and crannies and ooohed and aaaahed at the thickness of the huge stone walls and the height of our amazing 4 poster bed.

Thornbury has been in existence in some form or another for over 1000 years. In 1511 it was improved to the grandiose house it is today and in 1535 Henry 8th brought Anne Boleyn here when he was still in love with her and before thoughts of her beheading were on the cards and history simply oozes out of the walls. The wonderful Valerie engrossed us with the tales of yesteryear in a history tour like no other. She brought everything alive with her amazing knowledge and her talented storytelling made it feel anything but a history lesson! We could see the dips in the stone hearth of a huge fireplace where men from years gone by had worn a groove when they would have stood taking a warming stirrup cup on entering the castle to meet with The Duke. Apparently adopting the leg on hearth stance gave their calves a fine curve that was much admired in the 1500’s!! She ended her tour with some stories about the obligatory ghosts one would presume may still wander the rooms and halls of Thornbury and there was more than one of our party that had a sleepless night imagining they could see or hear all sorts of unusual things in the shadows of their rooms that night……..

Mum had reserved the Baronial dining room for her birthday dinner and we spent a couple of hours decorating it with all the paraphernalia you would expect for an 80th. My sister had organised as a surprise to have Mum’s family tree on both sides drawn up, which we displayed on the walls along with a slideshow of all the photos we could discover of Mum going back through her life all the way back to her childhood in the 1930’s. It was lovely to see her as  a beautiful young woman and to be able to share it with her sister and her oldest friend who were celebrating alongside her. A suitably delicious meal and many beautiful wines completed our dining experience together with a cake (representing her time in the Navy as a Wren, a time which she holds very dear to this day) cleverly concocted by my talented sister.

Over the next couple of days we had plenty of opportunities to catch up with all our different family members and remember old times, it was really wonderful as we never get the opportunity to all be together, ever. It was especially nice to see the younger family members get to know each other and reconnect and we are very thankful to Mum for her generous gift to us all. Her first big birthday party – and what a way to do it!! The hotel was just lovely, warm, inviting and grand to boot.

I seriously think I will never be able to have a better a hotel room in my life. Everything about it was amazing. The size. The bed. The walls. The decor. Look how tiny I was in my ginormous bed – like a real life Princess and the Pea!!!

We all parted company for a couple of days until the girls reunited in Milan for 5 days together relaxing in Varenna on beautiful Lake Como. It is my second time on the Lake and I loved it just as much the second time around. It is packed full of every charming and picturesque thing you could ever imagine with a photo opportunity on every corner. A sensory overload of beautiful scenery, colour and an overwhelming sense of peace and relaxation. I cannot recommend it highly enough. To sleep at night with our gorgeous old doors flung open to the lake with the moon shining on the water and not a breath of wind or a mozzie to spoil it all was intoxicating. The rooms, simple and cool with their terrazzo floors and a ceiling fan lazily circling and with a little balcony to sit and watch the world go by was everything you could wish for. The church bells were the perfect backdrop to a town that has barely changed in hundreds of years.

We spent our days discovering various little towns on the lake. This was easy as the ferries criss cross the lake all day long and we could hop on and off at our pleasure. Bellagio, Mennagio, Lenno – all became familiar names and after a pootle around the various markets and an old villa or two we would invariably end up in the delightful village squares with a coffee or an aperol spritz and while away an hour or so before deciding where to lunch. The prosciutto and melon was out of this world, the wines cheap and cold and the pizzas thin and crispy. The lake fish was plentiful and tasty and every terrace offered views that took your breath away. I wish I was a painter as I wanted to replicate the views at every turn. The ochre coloured houses stacked on top of each other in a topsy turvy avalanche of gelato colours covered in blazingly bright bouganvillea all tumbling down to the lake made me want  to whip out an easel and some paints. The fact that I was sharing this with some of my favourite people in the world only enhanced the experience and is one that I will treasure forever. Mum was amazing and never balked at the steep steps up to our hotel or the chunky cobbled lanes that dotted the town or the 30+ degree heat ( a great excuse to sample the local gelati of course!!) I can only hope to be half the woman she is at 80!!!

We discovered some beautiful little towns on the lake, lunching at most of them and we decided we could probably come back here a dozen times and never be bored – there is something here for everyone and it’s supremely relaxing. There are gorgeous villas to explore, castles and churches to trek to ( they are always at the top if a hill) and a gazillion cafes, bars and restaurants in which to while away the afternoons. An intoxicating mix of things “to do” and things to love.

Beautiful Varenna – a little bit of my heart shall always lie there.

What is it about Paris that gets under your skin? It has a heartbeat and rhythm unlike any other place. I always forget how magnificent the buildings are, how spectacular the French women are and how cosy and inviting the bistros are even though they are all offering pretty much the same thing as the French are so traditional their menus are identical. It is comforting that you can get your favourite dish at any one of the thousands of bistros that dot the avenues and boulevards of Paris. In this city of Lights there are so many romantic corners to snuggle in it’s hard not to feel like a voyeur as young lovers gaze into each others eyes over their entrecôte and frites. It is also not the sort of place you want to be by yourself and especially not when you had spent months anticipating being there with your husband and all of a sudden you are there solo. This is exactly how our long looked forward to holiday begun however.

Things started out so well with an upgrade to business class and a lovely meal in the 1st class lounge before we boarded at 10pm. We were so chuffed and kept saying what a great start to our holiday we were having and how lucky we were. Things were a bit short-lived however as on arrival in Doha my erstwhile travel companion couldn’t locate his passport. As we were still on the plane and he had it on arrival at his seat we were pretty sure it must have slipped down the side of his chair and an engineer was called in to take the seat apart but to no avail. It had disappeared and the only thing we could think was that someone had picked it up by mistake and they would discover their error once inside the terminal. Eternally optimistic we proceeded in and to the transfer desk for our 2nd leg to Paris presuming it would be found and delivered in time for our flight. Sadly this was not to be and our plight became apparent as our luggage was offloaded and talk turned to notifying the consulate in Abu Dhabi (no embassy in Qatar either just to make matters worse) of our situation and of having to return to Sydney to apply for an emergency passport as there was no way he could enter France without paperwork and to top it all off permission from Sydney immigration had to be sought before he was even allowed to return to his homeland – CRAZY!!!

I was told I could continue to Paris on another flight but I had to take all the luggage, apparently they couldn’t or wouldn’t separate our 2 cases so off I poddled to gay Paree without my boy but with 40 kgs of luggage not being very sure where or when I would see him next. So here I was in the most romantic city in the world eating dips and crackers from the supermarket in my bedroom my first night because I felt so jet lagged and just couldn’t be bothered to attempt to go out at night alone. When daylight came however I was in my element – off exploring the sights and walking the length and breadth of Paris along with all the other tourists. It was an uncharacteristic 36 degrees and I was grateful to be able pop into an art gallery here and a cool shaded park there to rest and recover before I one again grasped my camera, sunnies and map to discover another little corner of Paris. I must say the Parisians are VERY good at utilising their public green spaces. In the Jardins de Luxumborg there are people everywhere – playing basketball, tennis, swimming, reading, painting, playing chess and a million other things. Using every available inch of space and facility and each park seemed to have at least one cafe serving everything from a bottle of water to a 3 course lunch with wine! I enjoyed the special of the day (the flakiest, butteriest of quiches with the perfect amount of perfectly dressed salad ) and an enormous glass of rose under the shade of a plane tree all for the price of a pie in Australia!!! They are masters of the simple things done well. I was so lucky to be staying very close to the Seine and in my jet lagged state I was waking up very early and walking as Paris woke up. A beautiful time of day anywhere but especially here as I wandered through the amazing buildings that make up the Louvre totally alone apart from a pigeon and a stray cat. It really made me feel part of the history unencumbered as I was by the usual throng of tourists.

After a couple of days exploring and eating alone I was excited to board the TGV to Narbonne in the South of France to visit our family friend Brett and his wife Laura and family. He is an Aussie, an ex Wallaby who now plays rugby for Narbonne. He has two delicious little children and a beautiful wife who was happy to share her house not only with me but with another 3 people who happened to be visiting and there was a lovely party atmosphere as we had a wonderful weekend of eating, drinking and playing with the littlies. They live on the beach at a wonderfully undiscovered place called Leucate which was dotted with restaurants and pop up bars and is the South of France that the French go to!! The beautiful local seafood, Carcasonne and it’s amazing ramparted city and well preserved castle, tapas at the local bar and a cute village square together with some genuine Aussie company all helped me forget the plight of my loved one for a day or two.

By the time I returned to Paris he had managed to get an emergency passport and had bought a new flight to meet me – exactly a week after we had set off together the first time!! We were staying near the Gare de Nord as we had an early journey on the Eurostar to London so we made the most of our time walking to the Sacre Coeur and bar hopping until we found a great restaurant for dinner.

One night in Paris together before we headed off to London and the main reason for our trip – my Mum’s 80th birthday weekend. We met our daughter who had flown in from Hong Kong for the auspicious occasion and had a fab day wandering through the streets of London (l think there’s a song there somewhere!!) which was awash with hanging baskets of flowers and those fabulous pubs that I still miss after 30 years living in Oz. Little Venice with gaily painted houseboats tethered along the canals lined with Weeping Willows, Notting Hill and Kensington Wine Room for lunch after a drink in the amazing pub The Churchill which was decorated with chamber pots hanging from the ceiling and the walls completely covered in pictures of everything you could possibly imagine. Completely mad but somehow it works!!!

 

Next stop Thornbury Castle for the big birthday bash………!!!!