Hallo-one-sie

Tess and a friend went out trick-a-treating on Halloween, in Alstonville. She didn't actually look very scary ... or did she? I guess that would depend on the fear or laughter threshold of the person whose bell was rung. 

For those who are unfamiliar with these latest fashion (or fad?) statements: what Tess is wearing is a onesie (pronounced one-zie), the latest in casual and comfortable home wear ... It comes with a hood, actually, which makes her look like a, erm, what exactly?

Samson and Delilah

Two of our horses, Samson and Delilah (oh sorry: Promise) were moved to another property today where they actually have grass ... What, like, grass? Yes, you know that green stuff: we're completely out of it on account of there being no rain but these people (neighbours two clicks down the road) had some stashed away in their paddocks and were more than happy to receive two guests to keep it down. So, Monday morning 9 a.m. Dick the truckie rocked up to load Samson and Promise up and take them down the road. We had decided against riding / walking them their as Samson hadn't been ridden for at least a year and doesn't like cars, and Promise is unbroken and would probably be quite nervous being led down the road. We used our neighbour Peter's stockyards to lead them on. Both Samson and Promise thought it was mighty weird and a tad scary to go onto the truck like this. Dick was extremely kind and quiet, and we got Sammie on after about half twenty minutes; Promise got on in about ten or fifteen with a final nudge (or rather 'poke' with a stick by Peter). But yeah, you know, what do you do when you have gates closing behind you and the only way is forward ...? Well, you go forward ....

Samson and Delilah

Noumea!

Today my love announced full of beans that in December she'll be heading to Noumea, New Caledonia, for a week to do work for Cambridge ESOL at / for a language school there: examining and monitoring at this school, and promoting the Cambridge exams at other school. She will be flown out and hosted by the director of the language school. Excitement galore and what a lovely opportunity! No idea where Noumea is? Well, go to Brisbane and fly east for an hour and a half. Oh, and apparently, they speak French there:

Third largest island in the Pacific after Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, New Caledonia is only 1,500 km east off the coast of Australia. Seeing this "Terra incognita" in 1774, the British navigator James Cook found a similarity between the mountainous terrain of the Grande Terre and his native Scotland, whose former name was "Caledonia." From coast to coast, New Caledonia, which stretches some 500 kilometres passing through the archipelago of Loyalty Islands, is home to surprising and remarkably diverse landscapes. Acting like a, a mountain range separates the Grande Terre (the main island) into two coasts, both with distinct characteristics.

In the southwest, Noumea, the economic heart of the country concentrating population and economic activity, is a European city in Melanesia. Pavement cafes, luxury boutiques and beaches shaded by palm trees give the city a French Riviera feel, while its relaxed atmosphere and wide blue skies add a touch of the Pacific.

Here's a photo gallery.

Sad day, good memories

Earlier this week a sad day announced itself. It was to become a day on which we celebrated the life of our dear and good friend Maxine, with whom we rode horses quite frequently around the valley and beyond. Maxine had been taken into hospital about two weeks before and proved to have liver cancer. She passed away late last week, a mere three weeks after having been admitted. 

Her husband Trevor and family organised a commemorative on Tuesday, to which Niki, Yarrow and myself went, and about 100 other people from near and far, in the Peaces Creek Community Hall (just around the corner from us). At the end of the service we, Maxine's riding buddies, placed ourselves on horseback (Niki on Duchess, Jenny on Digger, Maggie on Taj and myself on Emu) in front of and behind the hearse and accompanied her down Houghlahans Creek Road, for about two kilometres, to the paddock where her horse Jack was agisted. Maxine would normally drive down there, hoot twice and then Jack would come cantering up the hill. We thought it was a loving and memorable way to farewell our friend.

Maxine's obituary and some posts from friends.

PRAIN, MAXINE "COOKIE"
04.01.1955 ~ 15.10.2012
Passed away suddenly. Very much loved Partner of Trevor. Loving Daughter of Maxine and Jock (dec). Loved Sister of Lynette, Marion, Heather (dec), Jenny and their Families. Relatives and Friends are invited to attend a Ceremony in honour of Maxine's Life to be held at Pearces Creek Public Hall, Pearces Creek Hall Road, Pearces Creek on TUESDAY (October 23, 2012) commencing at 10.30am. After the Service a private Cremation will take place. Please bring a favourite flower from your garden. 

Thursday, 25 October 2012

Maxine- still not used to calling "Cookie" by her given name. What I liked about Cookie was her love for all animals...and her love of good times at the parties she attended. Too young to be gone...but Cookie being as spiritual as she was..she hasn't gone too far..she'll be keeping an eye on her loved ones.

~ 

Sunday, 21 October 2012

My last memory of Cookie will be from the recent birthday party held for Cheryl. It was a fancy dress and Cookie came dressed as Captain Cook. Light hearted Cookie had a monkey draped across her shoulder and tied around her waist, making people laugh with her antics. Cookie will be sadly missed by all, she was a bright star glowing in the dark.

~ 

My deepest sympathy to you at this time. Maxine will be missed at our sessions at Riding for the Disabled on Tuesdays. She was a caring and generous volunteer. She always made a special effort to help the riders enjoy their lessons and always brought some special treats (carrots usually) to reward the horses at the end of the day!

ADFAS

Being a writer can be a somewhat lonely occupation (although I have always felt I have a large and active social network spread out over the globe and haven't actually experienced the lack of interaction that much). Nevertheless, I am also trying to bond a bit more with the community directly around me, and have been accepted on the committee of the local ADFAS group. ADFAS is The Association of Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Societies. It is a group of 34 Societies that offer their members a series of monthly informative and entertaining illustrated lectures plus some workshops covering a broad range of subjects relating to art. ADFAS lecturers are mostly from the UK , some are Australian. They are experts in their field and are often curators of galleries or professionals who have written widely in their subjects. Overseas lecturers come to Australia to tour one of three circuits and lecture only to ADFAS members while on tour. ADFAS is based on the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (NADFAS) founded in England in 1968 and I believe Niki's mum Ann has been involved with that organisation.

A local Society is managed by a volunteer chairman and committee who organise the presentation of the annual program of six to nine lectures.I've had my first committee meeting a few days ago. I think it will be a lovely opportunity to get out and about.

Girl guides

Niki today is being initiated as a volunteer into Girl Guides Australia. Needless to say, she hasn't become a Girl Guide herself (yet), but is being installed as a unit leader for the youngest age group (7-9) in Clunes. She'll be doing activities with the girls to help them work towards their badges (for those of you who used to be brownies, guides, cubs or scouts that will sound familiar), and she'll have the opportunity to grow within this international organisation (leaders also have objectives and goals). Girl Guides' main aim is to enable girls and young women to grow into confident, self-respecting, responsible community members. It's tradition in Girl Guides to give each other a Girl Guide name, and the girls in Clunes have dubbed Niki kookaburra (on account of the fact that she laughs so much...). Niki is happy to become more enmeshed in the community around us, and this looks like an excellent opportunity to do so.

Business Update

In 2002, Joanne Collie (a co-author I have worked with ever since on many projects) and I co-wrote a business English course called Link-up. It was published initially in the UK by a small publishing house called Chancerel, which was then sold to Klett in Germany, who placed it with Klett & Balmer in Austria. There the course, unfortunately, languished. Professional rumour has it (certainly at the time) that German publishers are notoriously bad at marketing outside their home grounds, Germany: perhaps they feel that the German market itself is big enough.

Getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of effort on the Austrian side, as well as the lack of communication and, more importantly, income, after intermittent bouts of negotiation spanning a few years, I regained the publishing rights to the course leaving Joanne and I free to try and get another publisher to take it on. We were fortunate that the publisher of my English for tourism and hospitality book, Garnet Education, had it reviewed to positive acclaim, saw its publishing potential and signed us on.

So now, in 2012 an updated, revised and revamped, sparkling supadoopa new version of the course, called Business Update, is being published by Garnet in the UK for distribution on a global market. Going through the (re)editing, re(designing) and (re)writing process, it has been wonderful to realize that the things we wrote then were, largely, timeless and that not too much was needed to bring it into the 21st century. 

I had negotiated that Garnet do the revisioning work, so a few external editors, and an in-house editor did almost all of the work under Joanne's and my supervision. Despite the advance of cyberspace and modern communication technology, the world of business has not changed that much and the language students needs haven't either. It's also funny, or even alienating, to see how a photo of, say, a business meeting in 2002 looks unimaginably different from the same setting in 2012: and that was only 10 years ago. 

Let's hope that the course (level 2 of which is being edited as we write will be published later this year) will be successful in its new markets (South America, the Middle East and Asia being the ones Garnet will initially focus on).

Muster

Have you ever chased a bunch of cows with the aim of getting them to go into a particular space, along a particular route? No? Well, after his morning we have - we helped our neighbour Peter, together with our neighbour Jenny, to muster a herd (well, herdette) of 15 cows and 14 calves to go from one paddock to another. The route is drawn on the map to the left. It was lovely to do and gave us that real old country-and-western-Heehaw! feel. Well, forget about the western as we are on the Eastern seaboard here, and there wasn't much of Heehaw! but it was definitely a lovely experience. One advantage (for me, at least) was / is that, rather than focusing one thoughts on sore backs and what might go wrong, one is completely focused on the job of herding the cattle to their destination paddock. Very relaxing, and we got all of them across (except for the 16^th cow and the 15^th calf, who decided to do a runner earlier on after we just started. Peter was a star, bellowing kind but firm instructions. 'Jenny, stay behind!", "Niki, move forward to the left." or " Hans, stay!" Certainly to be repeated. ("Every week!", Niki shouted after we were done.) We ended up in a ride across parts of our neighbour John's property that I hadn't seen in a long time. Great fun.

muster

 

Doggie walk

On account of Raffi's birthday (5 October, yes coinciding with World Animal Day) we had invited a bunch of friends to come (with their dogs) on a beach walk. We set off to Lennox Beach with Jenny (Barley and Indigo), Gio (Manx), Linda and Pauline (Chuck, Raffie's brother) and ourselves (Raffi) and ambled down the beach towards Byron. Great company, nice walk and a lovely coffee and chai tea afterwards in Lennox Head. After an hour and a half on the beach and constant ball chasing and playing with 'canine friends' you would think a dog would be tired, satisfied and utterly incapacitated to do anything else that day. Not Raffi - on arrival at home, the first thing he did was to get his ball and stand at the door, full of expectation, head cocked, and shooting inquisitive looks at us: 'Ball?" Where does he get the stamina from...?

dogwalk

Poo (not as in Winnie)

Having realised the paddocks, dry and desiccated after weeks and weeks of ' no rain', are full of horse poo, Niki took it upon herself to empty them of said faecal deposits.  After all, little grass though there may be, the paddocks are still the horses' dinner plates. With a little help from our new ride-on and its useful little trailer we've been picking up lots of said 'produce' and leaving it on the compost heap, in a feeble attempt to keep Raphael Worthington aka Raffi off it ... (Sunday note: well, that last bit didn't work. "Ra-Fa-El Worthington! Come here!")

Fugu

Niki was writing something the other day for one of our projects about a Japanese food fashion called Fugu, which is the art of preparing and eating Puffer fish. Fugu is quite a dangerous dish because, if not prepared well, it has so much poison in it, it can kill a human being. Imagine our surprise when we ran into exactly such a fish on Lennox Beach ... and, boy, are they BIG! 

More gingerly

On Friday afternoon, knocking off at three, my love and I decided to go for a quiet ride. It was a hot afternoon, and we headed for our neighbour John Gosper's property where we rode along the old Railway Line track. Beautiful, peaceful and the second time back on the horse for me after the back kerfuffle. It ... was ... so ... lovely ... to be on a horse I can completely trust ... It felt fine, comfortable and relaxed: I realize I have 'assumed' a new seat as a result of the back crisis and the ensuing therapy and it's doing the riding a lot of good. It was only a short ride but we enjoyed it immensely.