No place like home

That's all right, Infogenium - you're doing OK for a beginner :-))

This took my eye at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  Can't remember what it is, but that doesn't really matter - my knowing what it is obviously isn't vital to life.

Tomorrow I will have been home a fortnight.  I've been doing a lot of philosophising and am going to cut a lot of crap out of my life and concentrate on what matters.  I still need to take sleeping pills, but don't really mind if I just lie awake in bed for hours, relishing  the fact that it is my very own bed!  I used to think my dislike of travelling was neurotic but now I'm coming to the belief that it is a good, normal way to be.  There is no place like home.


Being able to make a cup of tea or coffee when you feel like it, pull out some weeds, paint a picture or play the piano are all impossible when you're not in your own home.  I'm unsubscribing from dozens of email things I never had time to read, anyway, and that gives me time for stuff from friends.  I think I'll limit watching the - always bad - television news to once a week, as what is the point of sitting there absorbing the world's violence and horror when you can't do a thing about it?????????  Instead of listening to talk on the radio I'll stick with ABC Classic FM.  And I never want to help a child learn to read again.


The other night I was curled up with Muffy, watching Kenneth Branagh being Wallander on the telly until I could bear it no longer, so switched it off and went to bed.  Everything is so damned contrived - can't we just have a plain old murder mystery?  Most of the old regulars have become so filled with mangled bodies being examined close-up by forensic doctors it makes me ill.

The trip

I actually look quite cheerful here in the rather quaint hotel in Seoul on the way to London.  I suppose the reality of being so far from home and heading even further away hadn't dawned on me.

I look a bit shell-shocked here at the Seoul airport on the way back.  Mind you, the actual airport is truly wonderful, quite deserving of the No 1 airport in the world award it has won seven years in a row.


I've been home a week and two days and am still like a zombie, with sleep patterns all over the place.  No amount of melatonin tablets, sleeping pills, warm milk or bananas has the least little effect on getting me to sleep at night.  

Home again

Scenes from the 50th wedding anniversary lunch in a French village, the reason for my trip.  Of course, it was wonderful to meet everybody again, but the trip home took 30 hours which was excruciating and not surprisingly I ended up with bed sores - well, seat sores:  one hour from my nephew's Chelsea home to Heathrow; two hours hanging about; 10 hours to Incheon airport in South Korea; five hours waiting for the second leg; another 10 hours in the air; one hour getting through Immigration in Sydney; one hour from the airport home.


And that's not even mentioning the trip to get to London, then by Eurostar to Paris, to the village by train, to Orleans by bus, back to Paris by train, back to London by Eurostar.


No sympathy, I hear you say, as it was all self-inflicted.


But there is a happy ending - when I got home, Muffy came galloping up to me, making the welcoming noise only a cat can make, just about threw herself into my arms and has hardly left my lap since, purring loudly all the time.  And of course, kisses and hugs from the grandchildren.


NEVER, NEVER AGAIN.

This is what I like!

Thanks for sending this pic, Frank, and all the other delightful animal shots.  I've forwarded that mail to just about everybody on my list and we all agree, they are some of the best animal photos we've ever seen.  If only the whole world could be friendly like this.

This frightens me

This is Incheon airport in Seoul, South Korea, which has been named the best airport in the world seven years in a row!  In just a few days, I'll be there!  Looks like something from outer space, doesn't it?  Shudder, shudder - give me green fields and some trees any day.


Temperatures in the northern hemisphere are warming up quickly, so I'll need to repack, but that's OK. I started a week or so ago to put a few things into my bag, realising as I did so I would probably change some of them as departure date draws nearer.

Mother's Day tomorrow

Yesterday I met up with a very old friend for the first time since Philip's wedding!  She chose the venue, a nursery/restaurant/gift shop called Eden Gardens and it reminded me so much of a similar nursery I went to somewhere between your place, Frank, and meeting you, Winifred!  Absolutely stunning!


We had a delicious meal and glass of wine and chatted about our families.  She is off to UK and Greece shortly - oh my goodness me, anther person going to the top of the world!


Almost every time I venture out I run into somebody I know, which seems remarkable for a city the size of Sydney.  It happened again at the nursery - I saw a woman I remembered from somewhere and boldly sat down at her table trying to work out a connection and I got it on the second attempt!  We'd both been at the wonderful New Year's Eve party beside the harbour, given by a mutual friend.  Of course, I'd forgotten her name, and have forgotten it again already!

Fox in Finland

This photo has absolutely nothing to do with the price of tea in China, except to illustrate the point that lately people from all over the world have been connecting with me on the internet, whether by email, Facebook or Linkedin.  Just amazing!  First, the children of my French friends inviting me to France, then a long-lost young friend from Qatar announcing he's now married and has two children, another from Switzerland, and most recently a French penpal from school days! I'll be catching up with her and her husband on my trip, as they're not far from where I'll be staying.

Scott, I think this is a beautiful picture!  It must be wonderful living where you do!  Please email and let me know how Christabel is and what she's studying at uni.

Such a homebody!

You're right, Frank, flying from Australia to the UK and Europe is indeed 'a wee bit trying'.  If it wasn't such a special occasion I wouldn't think of it, but it's too late now - have booked!  While I'm over the moon at seeing everybody in France again, I'm very uptight at the thought of leaving home and the gorgeous Muffy!  Not to mention family, of course!


The other day I came across a brand new pair of summer slacks that I'd bought a while back and forgotten about, as they needed taking up.  This morning while I was digging them and the sewing machine out, I made two more discoveries - a new pair of red shoes I'd completely forgotten I own, and the adaptor for my iPad when I get to France!!!  Sometimes a poor memory is worth having for the surprises it brings!

French countryside

Here's a lovely pic I found on the internet of the very house I'll be staying in!  My friends live in the white single-storey house, and in the background is the big house where they lived when I was there in 1972, and which is now lived in by one of the children and her family.

I'm practising my French and will not allow myself to speak one word of English once I get there!

Autumn

Have calmed down after the initial excitement of being invited to France and am now looking at flights, etc, getting close to booking.  Just yesterday a friend sent me the itinerary of her trip to US and France, celebrating her husband's retirement, and they are leaving in two days; and another lot of friends left yesterday for three months in France!  Golly.  There'll be nobody left in Australia at this rate!

My trip will be short - two to three weeks - as this will kind of lesson the anxiety I always feel when I'm away from home.  I'll simply be staying with my friends in the countryside, not doing lots of sight-seeing.  

Little did I think when I sent you all those lovely pics of Paris that I'd be there again soon!  But, to be honest, I prefer looking at pics on the computer to the hassle of travelling.  Other people seem to think travelling is wonderful but I dread it.