Mist....

A typical late summer morning in Australia, subtropical Northern Rivers ... Mist in the valley, which later burnt away into blue skies with scattered clouds... Beautiful.

Getting there

Red the Builder (not related to Bob) has been chipping away at the bathroom in what at the Myth is called Anjes´room. Putting in the plumbing is the most complicated job but he managed to make sure there is water (yes, hot and cold) and no leaks... When this is finished the house will have turned into a three-bathroom residence... The wall frames have started to go up as well. A few piccies for those interested in the building process.

Covers

Today the covers for our new primary course, Magic Adventure (level 1) arrived in the mail. Nice!

Hosses!

As Tess, Yarrow and I were sitting on the back deck, eating our dinner in the mellow early evening quiet, the ´hosses´trundled up and started having dinner with us... Duchess says hello to Niki ... Promise to Anjes ... and Samson, well, Samson was just being a big lump of a horse, as always....

Blast from the past

I came across this photograph of a dinner Niki and I had with the Young Learner Special Interest Group committee. I forget now which town it was in, but I think it was Exeter? The joke that was told must have been very funny, from the looks on our faces... Little did we know that a few years later...

Sunny

A sunny day, for a change, Down Under. After weeks of rain ... finally some blue skies and white clouds ... Plenty of grass for Duchess, Samson and Promise that´s for sure... Tess and Yarrow have now started on double whammies for circus this term, which means they have joined the Performance Troupe classes. This, in turn, means them turning up twice a week (on Mondays and Fridays) for intensive and in-depth training in aerial work, acrobatics and ground work. They´re enjoying it to their hearts´content.

Ants in me pants - a lesson in critter control

Well, OK, there´s no actual ants in my pants, but followers of this blog will have read a few posts back that Termites had been discovered in the lovely cottage that until recently housed K2 (yes indeed, and before him K1 lived there - K stands for Kevin).

Termites are part of the course here in subtropical Northern Rivers, there´s nothing much anybody can do about that. It´s not only a Paradise for humans, it´s also Ant Paradise. They build huge nests in trees (like on the picture to your left, read about that one further down) or deep underground and are very difficult to track or trace. They are ferocious little monsters who have been known to simply eat away at the timber frames of houses (or, in the case of houses consisting solely of timber, at floors, walls, anything) without their owners being aware of it until, one day, their house just collapses...

They´re very clever - like bees, they live and work as a swarm, as one conscious entity, one entire consciousness. They build their nest, maintain it, destroy bits of their environment they can use, and procreate. (A bit like humans, really ...) And they don´t like paint, so they will leave your painted wall as if there´s nothing wrong with it, until one day you shift a chair into the wrong spot and go through the floor or poke the wall and realise there´s only a thin layer of paint left keeping it together...

Now, to avoid any Unnecessary Panic, it´s not that bad and my property has been chemically protected against the little buggers for years now. Annual inspections and three-yearly renewals of The Barrier have kept them away. Having said that, and the Barrier being up for renewal in a few months, a colony of them had found their way (back) into The Bails (the cottage) and started munching away at some of the floorboards. The photos show you what they can do to solid almost 2cm thick tropical hardwood...

The damage is limited fortunately and can be easily fixed (this is where Red comes in again!) but (and here´s The Paradox of the Year) we´re actually waiting for them to come back first. before making repairs. Indeed, they BUGgered of when disturbed (No doubt, being Australian, they said to each other: ´Chuck that for a lark!´and, literally, left the building). The Pest Control Person needs to see where they are coming from, and they will come back, so he can exterminate.

Now the Where may not be that much of a mystery anymore. In the meantime, my neighbour Debbie, whom I was having a cuppa with the other day, noted that they had just found a White Ants (same critter, just another name) nets up a gum tree on the edge between our two properties. Ah! Well, that might explain why they´re in my Bails...

Anyway, not to worry (for those who get a bit squeamish reading about Critters Like These), it´s all under control.

Wet

One of the social highlights of the high school calendar in Australia is the swimming carnival, which Tess and Yarrow took part in. Tess got awarded for the most creative costume. The colours are the colours of their respective houses within the school... How they would have swum like this, no idea... but apparently they had a great day!

Update from Paradise

And then suddenly I found that I had been back for more than a week already... Time flies when ... erm ... one is jet-lagged and trying to catch up with deadlines that suddenly loom ...

Red, ´my´ builder, has been around since early this week to work on the improvement of the guest accommodation in the main house. Only yesterday, cleaning lady Edith referred to him as ´The Handyman´, thus neatly establishing the right kind of classless interpersonal footing this country lacks.... Red sighed, as he was mucking about with pipes and dirt, working on putting the new bathroom in in Anjes´room. He said, ´I wish I didn´t have to work for me money.´ (The stress was not on the second ´I´, fortunately, which might have suggested he thought that I wasn´t...)

A bit later, over a cup of tea and some lunch he sighed, ´Another day in Paradise.´ Hmm, do we like living here, in the Northern Rivers? I guess so... So, hurry up, Time, and bring Niki here, too!

Niki and I have reverted to daily Skype gatherings which, let´s face it, despite the fact they are wonderful and loving and ´Geez, just imagine twenty years ago this would have been impossible´, are Making Do. On the other hand they are a reality for us right now and neither of us can wait until, soon, these modes of communication will no longer be necessary.

In the meantime, while Pondering Life´s Conundrums ..., erm while Writing and Making Deadlines rather..., Red stayed Down To Earth (literally) and produced what can be seen in this pictorial representation: the pipes which will underlie the floor of the bathroom, shower, toilet and vanity. Not exactly poetic and concurrent with loads of concrete grinding noise and dust, as well as dirt and grit, but nice to see it grow. Tomorrow the pipes will be covered and concreted over again, after which a new window will be put in and the walls of the room will go up.

Returning

While Niki was making delicious cheese scones and another batch of delectable speculaas (aren´t they looking more and more like ´real´speculaas, by the batch?), yesterday I packed my bag to head off to Amsterdam, and on to Sydney, via Hongkong. Niki and I are entering the longest period of separation so far, 9 weeks. In situations like ours, where distance is a hard and inevitable fact of life, for now at least, such separations can not be avoided. The up side is it will give me an opportunity to spend lots of time with Tess and Yarrow, who have been troopers in accepting my long absences while Niki and I get ourselves sorted out. The last of the nine weeks I will spend for work in the Middle East, on IATEFL business, after which I´ll go back to Lisbon for a month.

So tears flowed, knots in stomachs were tied and untangled, but our journey continues stronger than ever! Another bit of good news is that I was not stopped at Customs this time, despite thorough checking of my passport, so The Other Johannes Mol (most of you won´t be aware of so I´ll fill you in when I get back) who is apparently much sought after, may actually have been apprehended... let´s hope so, because being mistaken for somebody on the wrong side of the law is no joy.

Obidos

Obidos is a small medieval town about an hour north of Lisbon. It is also known as the ´Wedding City´. Traditionally it was a bridal gift by the kings of Portugal to their queens. What a present to be given, hey! The custom was started by Don Dinis and Dona Isabel in 1282. Although much of Obidos was rebuilt after the 1755 earthquake it has really kept its medieval feel. The fact that it is walled all round probably helps that - and walking the ramparts was certainly no mean feat for me... it´s high and there are no rails... but I did it!

Plank

While I was away with Tess and Yarrow, Niki made another attempt at baking Speculaas cookies but this time with the Speculaas plank from the Zaansche Schans! You´d think that you couldn´t get more Dutch than that. Result: it´s an experience, but they did taste scrumptilious! Niki feels she still hasn´t found the magic touch but I for sure ain´t complaining...

Business as usual

The next few months are going to be nice ´n busy. At home, fortunately, Duncan the gardener has been keeping the grass and weeds down so that´s not too much of a worry. Some building work will have to happen, but seeing as I´m not a builder nor a painter (unless it´s of the artistic kind) I can happily leave that to those who are. There´s quite a bit of workwork happening, though, which will no doubt make the 9 weeks ahead rush past... A few highlights:

• FracasEnglish is going to need a lot of attention to make the company grow and develop into what is already an exciting future.
• The Eastern European primary course, Magic Adventure (level 1), a project in which Niki is also involved as the writer of the Teachers´Editions, is nicely coming together and should be on the market around May, after which we will speed on to levels 2 and 3.
  
• The Dutch Realtime project will ask my full attention as series editor: editing three of five levels (written by approximately 10 authors) is a magnificent challenge!
• I was approached by a UK publisher who wants to commission a new secondary course for Mexico and surrounding countries and Niki and I are pitching for this project.
  

Another interesting development, which I keep forgetting to mention, is the fact that a business course which I co-wrote some 6 years ago, together with Joanne Collie, and part of which was written by the late Gillian Porter Laddouse, is getting a new lease of life. We had never been happy with the way in which the German publisher of the course, Klett, (a giant in its own right) had plugged this course into the international, i.e. global market. That is to say, they hadn´t, as German publishers tend to shy away from international markets. (Had Germany been an island, German publishers could easily be accused of being insular.)

After a few years of complaining about this, and after some insistent negotiation, late 2009 we managed to retrieve the rights to the international edition of the course . I immediately took the opportunity to scout around for a new publisher and found one in Garnet Education, a middle-sized but prestigious UK-based publishing house with a big and active international network of distributors. (They have also published the Award-winning series that my Tourism and Hospitality English book is part of). They had the course assessed by an external expert and the verdict was ´This is excellent material, and why isn´t it out there!´ Nuff said. So, an agreement is in the making and Link-up will be published under a new name, early 2011. It´s wonderful, for once, to be working on a project which has already largely been written! It will no doubt take considerable work to update it and get it out there, but we´re happy that we´re getting this opportunity.

And so...

And so...

Tess and Yarrow have gone back to Australia, and Anjès has settled into her new home near Eindhoven. The Aussies arrived safely last (European) night, and Mieke picked them up from Sydney. Thank you, my lovelies all, and that includes Anjès of course, for spending the time with each other over the past few weeks and for being such wonderful, wonderful daughters! You make your father very happy and proud to have such sociable, intelligent, pro-active, polite and well-behaved children.

Oh, but Tess and Yarrow, you do have to cut down on the sweets... Hmm, what did I hear you whisper about pots and kettles, there?

I´ll see you next week!

Bon voyage

And yes, the time has come for Tess and Yarrow to go back to Australia. Their bags are packed, the forms are filled out, the plane is waiting. It was a fantastic time, my loves, and thank you for sharing that with Niki and me, and with all our other friends and relatives - all the people you have met, and the places you have seen: I hope they will stay in your memory for a long time to come. Bon voyage and, oh, see you next week...

Red eyes blue

A few more photos of the ´baboons´as Marc calls them, taken on Saturday when we visited Marc and Mandana, Mieke´s brother and sister-in-law and their six children. I took the liberty of doing a red-eye correction, though, Marc - I know you prefer the devilish originality of the red eyes but they did look sort of very nefarious and satanic, nay, even Mephistophelian...

Music photos

For those who´d like to share in the good humour and fun of our latest recording session, go here.

Moving out

Today, Sunday, we visited Anjès who moved out of the parental home today. She now lives in Geldrop, close to where she used to live with her mum Myrna and stepdad Wil, and her stepsiblings Martin and Julia. Anjès moved in with her friend and study partner Margé. She had been looking forward to inviting us to Tea in her new home, so off we went, by train, now speeding through countryside that looked decidedly green, no longer white. It was the last big excursion on Tess and Yarrow´s programme, as they will be leaving for Australia again on Monday. The photos below show you something of the very pleasant afternoon we spent at her new home - and we wish Anjès all the very best! Anjès´mum, Myrna, had made lovely pasta and I sampled Rosé beer ... an interesting (female) market-driven concoction and a variety of the delicious Hoechaarden Witbier... She´s made an important new step into her future and we hope she will enjoy every minute of it. Bon Voyage, Anjès!

At some point in the afternoon, Tess was invited to be a guinea pig for one of Anjès´school assignments and was treated to a professional make-up session.