Uno

During our 1770 holiday Niki developed a competitive penchant for a card game called Uno. As I write, Toby, Anjès, Yarrow and my love are yet again embroiled in an intense game of defeat, deceit and determination to win! After a while Anjès finds herself promoted to card table ... Shadow, basking in the distant warmth of the wood burner, doesn´t seem interested in the least...

Orse

A lovely little clip of Niki, just after she arrived, training her horse (and herself) ... in our (then under repair, but now fixed) roundyard called Cooper´s Yard (the name of which is after Cooper, one of the horses Mieke and I once owned, lying peacefully buried there).

Cakes

Anjès is settling in nicely, has been reunited with Toby, and has developed a veritable fascination for Patisserie baking. She´s looking around for courses to do so develop her skills. Here´s a gallery of the, almost daily efforts - all scrumptious!

cakes - slide show

45!

A day full of surprises and fun activities - my love´s 45th birthday. Not the first time she celebrated this in Australia: in fact on her previous two birthdays she was also here. After waking up (too early...), a fitness-inducing run down (and up!) the hill, birthday hugs and a piece of scrumptious chocolate cake baked by Anjès, and a surprise Skype video call with Susanna, Rita, Tony, and Xana, we set off to town to get Niki a new set of reins (not for her, but for her horse). At one PM a birthday lunch had been booked at the Harvest Café in Newrybar where we had the most congenial, pleasant and delicious 3-hour lunch at the Community table, ending in complimentary Bubbly and meringue for the birthday girl. A birthday wouldn´t be quite complete without a bonfire, so tonight we´re set The Pile alight that has been accruing over the past few months. For Sunday a birthday ride on Duchess has been planned with Maxine.

Niki´s birthday 2011

Quick update

Post-1770 we´ve (collectively) been inging, i.e. cooking, writing, lounging, baking, reading, thinking, driving, sleeping, and ...ing (to be completed with any verb denoting all of the other activities, purposeful or not, that we have undertaken). Martina, Bertie´s daughter, joined us for the week on Monday and is, as I write, cooking up a scrumptious brew in the kitchen. The dish she is preparing we dubbed Martina´s Delight, after a meal Bertie cooked for us earlier this year called (well, that´s what we called it :) Bertie´s Delight: spinach ricotta pasta. Tomorrow we plan to go whale-watching in Byron (they are passing the East coast between April and October every year); visit Eagle Farm (a property on the coast owned by friends with ample space for bush walks) and have lunch in Brunswick Heads. Earlier tonight we visited the Office (the local pub in Eltham) where we met Ton, Ellen and Mieke.

1770

We´re just back from 1770, the tiny town on the Queensland North Coast where we´ve spent a week on our winter holiday! We (Anjès, Tess, Yarrow, Niki and Hans) had a great, largely sunny week, relaxing, reading, cycling, boating, canoeing, playing games, watching movies, sipping coffees and teas, sitting in the sun and enjoying the sunset in one of the three places on the Australian eastern seaboard where you can see the sun go down over water. (Have a think about that one for a bit - it took us a few days to get our heads around it ...)

The week was a great opportunity for all of us to spend some quality time together as a family - after all the arrivals, comings, goings, work and settling in ... and it worked out really well!

1770 - free slideshow maker

Orsing around

Aren´t holidays lovely ... (after one has done one´s annual tax return and re-registered one´s car and paid bills and and ...). Yesterday we were horsing around in the round yard down the hill with Promise (Anjès´ horse) and Duchess. Niki took some nice photos. The weather has finally turned lush - warm days, cool nights (fire burning as we speak), blue skies - let´s hope that next week, when we go on our little sojourn to Seventeen-Seventy, the weather makers will be equally generous...

Yesterday we ´orsed around in town, helping Anjès get settled in bureaucratic and homely ways: registering for Medicare, getting her a bank account, arranging a sim card for her phone, getting her an Australian driver´s licence, buying a little fridge for her room ...! Settling in!

Finally ... holidays!

We can´t quite believe it ourselves but ... the holidays have started! What a strange phenomenon! No work, no computers, no stress and deadlines. I could get used to this...

I do apologize to my faithful readers for the dearth of news over the past few weeks. We simply haven´t had that much news to share - apart from the fact that we are still ecstatically happy to be together here, and have been continually embroiled in the linguistic entrapment of China grammar. Levels 1 and 2 have now finally been delivered, despite delays, setbacks, editorial foibles and authorial frustrations... Also Magic Adventure 2 has now been completed (my love decided on a dedicated pre-holiday spurt of writing frenzy yesterday and today to deliver the teachers´ notes).

On a family note, Anjès has arrived and settled in. It´s just wonderful to have her here: she has effortlessly blended in, taken possession and care of her room, ad has been zooming around the countryside in Niki´s and her Twinkle car. We´re extremely happy to be reunited again! It makes our family feel so much more complete! She seems to have decided to go on a baking / cooking quest, and has already baked macaroons! Mieke and Anjès have also spent a day together, catching up earlier this week.

Tess and Yarrow have relished the presence of their older sister and they are mightily pleased she´s here. Lots of girly gossip and sisterly socializing going on! Both Tess and Yarrow have been working hard over the weekend (Tess at the pub and Yarrow at the popcorn stall). They have now gone to Mieke´s for the week, so it´ll be the three of us here, in holiday mode! The plan is to do horsey stuff, go to Byron Bay with Anjès, to lounge around, read, and generally do holiday-y things until, early next week, we go for our beach holiday up north.

Today Anjès and I went to the Lismore boot market and came back (via Howard´s Butchers & Cafe and a cup of chai) with a bedside table, which was lacking in her ´suite´; later this week we´ll get her a small fridge so she can have some frigidaire privacy. She´s been out with some friends tonight and has just returned to join us at the open fire (yes, it is still cold at night, although not as bad as a few weeks ago).

Our friend Bertie´s daughter, Martina, has also arrived in Australia and spontaneously rocked up to stay hi while we were having lunch - a nice surprise: she seems to be happy hanging out with her friends and will be staying with us later in the month.

The finished tracks for Heartbeat, my next CD with Peter from Holland, have arrived - I´m in the process of designing the inlay booklet so hopefully we´ll have a finished product in a few months. It´s lovely to be able to spend some time on this during the holidays, just mucking around with photos, artwork, lyrics etc.

I haven´t got a lot of photos to share, so will endeavour to get some done over the next few days. So, for now we´re siting at the fire: Malouf has arrayed himself around one of Chicco´s front paws (very tactile cat, is he) to bask in inter-species comfort; Anjès is looking up more recipes to make; Niki is reading. And I, well I am going to throw another log on...