Well, I'm not sure where the past few weeks have gone, but gone they are and I feel hopelessly behind on everything that happened to us.

Noosa

Niki and I went to a town called Noosa, up the coast, on the Sunshine Coast (not to be confused with the Gold Coast). Niki had to work at a language school there and while she did that I worked in what appeared later to be the staff room where everybody normally had lunch: only this time I was there and hogged the place. We had decided to spend two nights there and had a couple of pleasant nights there. The apartment we had rented was really nice, quiet, lovely pool. On the way back we unfortunately drove through Maroochydore (if the name wouldn't keep you away from there, then at least its reputation should, because it's the pits), and then detoured through the wonderfully quaint Glasshouse mountains where we had lunch. Lovely weekend, and Noosa is a very friendly and interesting place to spend some time.

Horses

Another weekend we set off on a horse-riding adventure with the Richmond Valley Riding Club. With the help of John, who proved to be a horse whisperer of sorts, we managed to convince Duchess it was quite OK to walk on to (and stay on) the horse float; loaded them both up on Saturday morning and made our way to the lovely, erm, location of Mummelgum. That afternoon we had a fascinating, scrambling-type of a ride with a group of about 25 or 30, on and around the property of our host. A warm fire kept us in meat and warmth at night but we soon succumbed to sleep and when the rain started to tumble, nay, bucket down we hid in our tent (the outer tent, that is, as this nincompoop had forgotten the inner tent). Despite said lack of bedroom, the outer tent kept us dry enough while outside the weather became ominous: lightning, thunder all through the night. In the morning there was great hesitancy among the horsey people as to whether the planned 4.5 hour Sunday morning ride was going to happen, and when an almighty thunderclap struck at 7.30 am you could hear numerous voices piping up around the field where we were camping: ' Right, that's it. I'm off.' Within ten minutes the site was empty and we, too, made our way through torrential rain, homeward to freshly rained on paddocks.

Other than that we have been working hard, trying to ensure a little break over Christmas and as I write this my love is waiting at Brisbane airport to go to Numea for her week's Cambridge work. It's been a goodly while since we've been apart for this long and neither of us are liking it, really. No doubt we'll settle into a temporary routine and the week'll be gone before one can say, erm, well what one says under circumstances like that.

Summer

Summer has, in the meantime, entered the fray with a vengeance, and is smothering us in hot, tropical, humid weather - which I actually quite like, although it doesn't help the hot flushes I have to say... Our friend's the green tree frogs are back in action... and we're using the pool lots, both during the day and at night.

English

On the work front, a new website has just been launched for my 25-year old " blockbuster"  (lol) course Real English (www.realenglish.nl). The site contains, amongst other things, a video clip in which a teacher talks about her and her children's work with the course. It's so nice to see it being used in a classroom: one of apparently more than 3,000 (which is 37.5% of Dutch schools).

Banana

Ton and Ellen once gave us five banana plants, one of which grew up to be a substantial banana tree - the other day Niki ran in excitedly to announce the birth (?) of a bunch of bananas. I must admit it's amazing the way they grow. 

Beautiful, no?