Muddling along...

Howdy. It's all a bit of a f**'n shambles, as my friend Wilf the old fart across the hospital hallway used to say..

The lovely old 1940's flat had major rising damp (carefully hidden behind furniture, which I moved; I was MOST unimpressed) so I left a week after I moved in. Dreadful waste of energy and hope.. I retreated to the dear old Lodge, and tried their patience with the large amount of stuff I put into their very little bit of storage space.

My M has moved too, from ICU to the rehabilitation ward. Initially he only lasted 5 days there before having a major setback, but after 3 weeks of careful extra monitoring and masses and masses of chest physio (he has continuing lung/breathing problems) he returned to rehab and hasn't looked back. Recently he's had a problem with a haemotoma on one calf, but was only stuck back in bed for a few days until he was able to start getting out again for a few hours each day. He's tried about six different manual and electric wheelchairs so far, as the OTs gradually work through their differences and sort out what will be best for him long-term. He'll have one of each, eventually. As he says, Manuel in the morning when he's fresh, and Electra in the afternoon.

He is now spending 5-6 hours a day in active rehabilitation - physio, gym, OT, wheelchair training, body movement strengthening, fine motor and strength skills, etc. We are all tremendously grateful that his hands and arms have regained far more dexterity and mobility than is generally found with his level of injury. He's able to use a mobile phone and laptop, and is feeling more connected to the world after so many months of four grey walls and not a lot to feel good about.

I am currently house-sitting for a family friend, in an old house extremely close to the hospital. This house-sit also comes with resident burmese, Sir Fritz to you. He has taken to me as if we've been together for years. He has a loving purrsonality and a strong prefurence for laps and beds. The loud yowling that comes with a failure of service and comforts is most entertaining! There was, briefly, a chance I could stay on here indefinitely, living with the owner, but sadly that is not to be. I was about to begin searching for a chic little studio apartment with water views, when my dear friends (of my first, long house-sit) announced another overseas trip and it seems I am to have the privilege of another stay in their sunny haven. The three flights of stairs will be very good for me, won't they?? I think this means I'm not homeless again until at least halfway through November. What a very strange life.. we won't be home for quite a few more months. As I thought from fairly on, we'll be here all year and then some.

I've gone through the process of gathering quite a bit of household stuff, using it, not using it, storing it without a backward glance, and lugging it all back home. Now I'm in pared-down mode, having got well and truly over the sore back that comes with every load of woollies bags that has to be shoved into the car. Oh, about the car! A couple of months ago my brother visited me to help me buy a car. We had a couple of very entertaining days toying with car salesmen, until I settled on a small wagon, and bargained for as much extra as I could. I did very well! My new Hyundai Tucson and I fit very well together and importantly is very easy to drive the longer trips home and back. I've loaded up the cd player with lots of rock n roll, and some exquisite classical pieces, for private car karaoke on the highway.

Our house will have to be extensively modified to make it wheelchair-accessible. By a stroke of fortune, the existing back yard pathways and garden beds are pretty much ok, just need a solid surface rather than the scoria we have. The deck will be extended and I think will become a sunroom/garden room. Nice. NOT so nice is the major re-fit including widening the hallway, demolishing an existing bathroom, moving the front wall, and door.. and, sob, the end of my existing kitchen, which was renovated with great love and care only 6 years ago. I am fighting a rearguard action against the insurance company's project manager, who is blithely walling-in doors, demolishing cupboards, and announcing that we won't have a kitchen table any more. Oh yeah??

Unfortunately this planning process means I must go home nearly every week, for I think at least the next six weeks, which is terribly tiring and a great strain on us both. For various good reasons, family members and friends are not so able to spend time here supporting us, and I find myself thinking that round about now would be a good time for me to be cloned. M needs me; I need to be with him; I also need to be at home being business-like and purrfessional and making the right decisions. Without my M to add a note of reality to my wilder fantasies (height-adjustable benches come in marble don't they?); talk over colour and texture and generally be a delight to have around, I'm stuck with my demons and my somewhat over-organised inner self. I've been looking at home gorgeous magazines, and most of the 'simplified' modern kitchens come in under $90,000 . Surely we don't need all that??

Somehow or other, through all of this; with exhaustion, heds of deth, M's fragile return to better health and mobility; with responsibilities unwanted and many; homesickness and cat-withdrawal and being lost most of the time if I go further than one kilometre from wherever I'm living; purrfume has stayed on the agenda. I gave myself a very VERY fabulous Jo Malone 'Wild Fig and Cassis' candle for my birthday recently. Bliss. And the discount chemist on the corner has some quite desirable purrfumes on special, so I've lashed out and tried two new scents - HER, by fcuk (that's french connection united kingdom to you, thanks), an interesting sort of dry floral which has oomph without sweetness; and a new unisex Bvlgari which treads a very fine (and successful) line between a powdery citrus after shave and a fairly intense acid/floral freshness. I like this one particularly, as it tends to draw comments when I wear it, which suggests it isn't nasty, and probably that it suits me. I have no statistics from the general public to confirm or deny, but it feels good!

Keep thingers and fumbs crossed for us please.

Movement on the photo phront...

We've just returned from our holiday, in about four hundred safe little pieces. Three warm-blooded pieces and many, many bags, boxes, piles, hangers and bits. Including the fabulous, unleavable-behind many-coloured chandelier which will, I hope, be the star of the first photo I manage to post to this site.

I took many photos of my sewing projects of the past.. visits to the coast house began from very early days (it's been more than 10 years of visits now) to mean sewing time for me. I started small; recovering torn or worn cushion covers. I began to try to make patchwork again; having almost forgotten how to put it together. This led me to take classes in beginners techniques, highlighting the biiig difference in technique and equipment from my early attempts nearly 30 years ago. [30 years ago! Yikes!... but I distract myself..] I photographed every little project I've made there, as it forms an important beginning chapter. Soon I will amalgamate photos of more recent - more sophisticated - projects, many of which have gone to live with other people.

I don't have 'in the making' snaps for many as I didn't think of it until a couple of years ago, and it hasn't been a regular process. This very much reflects the fact that I tend to make things up as I go along, so there's no point making draft patterns or sketching designs. It will be what it is when it's finished. And usually, it will find a home when someone sees me working on it and goes 'Ooooh..'. This is very useful when you find yourself somewhat buried in oh, for example, far too many shawl/lap rug/cuddly blankie pieces of knitting. I may not be slender but I don't need THAT many acres of mohair fabulousness to wrap around me...

We had a nice time coasting. We did very little beaching, except the whale variety on beds and couches. Many books were read; many hours of music enjoyed; our cat behaved most eccentrically (it being only her second trip away with us, and clearly somewhat confusing - what had we done with HER backyard???); calories were consumed with an intensity only matched by our attempts to get into the cirrhosis danger zone. It were all very good.

The unguent collection was barely boosted, mostly because I now leave so much stuff there! But there was a small lapse into the sensitive skin face-cream department (thank goodness you can get L'Oreal products at Woollies); and I enjoyed finishing off a bottle of Dolce and Gabbana purrfume. No name, just D and G. Lovely.

I attended a one-day sewing class at Moruya, with a crafty-minded friend to share the fun (I mean craft, not wiley!). I was the slowest sewer I think, but I learnt a lot (it was a tote-bag making project) and the finished product is pretty spiffy. I was humbly but happily delighted when we visited two artist friends who both admired and made what I thought were very trenchant comments about my chosen colour palette.

Ahem. Pulls ego back... today brought to you by FAR TOO MUCH packing, cleaning, driving, unpacking and sorting out of a huge water leak, thanks to a split in the grey water hose. I didn't really want to use up NINE TOWELS sopping up the water which was intended for my tomatoes! Now I have to use more water to wash the towels which are full of soapy water from the grey water hose I use to try to save water. Irony is a force!

's good to be 'ome.

Checking in..

We've just returned from our travels. TnS collected anecdotes, experiences and some photos of textile projects now belonging to dear ones interstate. Also a commission and a very beautiful project to finish for my dorter in Perth.

There were adventures, sightings, meals, a fairly major set-back, and much time spent with very good people. Watch this space for details soon.

In the meantime, I am somewhat shocked to report that I acquired NO new textiles of any description during this trip. I even failed to pick up my purrfume samples, waiting in Adelaide for me. No time! However all is not lost, in a short but extremely satisfying trip to the Rockingham Shopping Mall (I think that was the one) I bought two perfumes. And in Adelaide my niece and I managed a most satisfactory birthday perfume shopping expedition for her. We blandished the Myers ladies into freebies for both of us!

All in all a very interesting three weeks. See you again soon!.

Temporary outage.

T n S is going on the road for three weeks. To visit fambly in SA, and to tour some of the area north of Perth and walk some wildflower trails.

On my return I will begin the history of a textile wrangler and how I trod the rocky road to quilting in straight lines.

Meantime these divine spring days are brought to you by coral-coloured Californian poppies, swathes of forget-me-nots, and a triumphant return to purrfume. Gucci is my destiny!

More farewells...

I upped stumps and ran off to Adelaide last week, for a family funeral. Goodbye Pip, you were a one-off, an amazing woman and someone I found comfort with at a very dire time. I'm sorry your end was so awful, and I'm glad you are now truly at peace. It's impossible to write about death without using cliches I think. That may well be because the cliches are in fact useful and exact and say what needs to be said the right way.

There was a strong 'clan gathering' element at this funeral - brothers, sisters, extended family and many close friends. Family friends. Memories of shared events and situations. The funeral service was elegant, dignified, and not a mawkish moment to be endured. A simple, heartfelt ceremony of a life and a fond farewell. I held my brother's hand all the way through. He is tall and very useful for being a big comforting bloke at moments like these. I'm not sure who was helping who not to cry!

I spent most of the four days I was away with family members, one after another. And EATING. And DRINKING. My god! so many meals... but when clan gathers, it gathers around tables, and patios, and restaurants. I had one very fine dining experience in a top-end restaurant, where I managed not only to tip over my champagne, but break the glass. I wasn't offered a free refill so I gathered I was paying.. the meals were fabulous but sadly we didn't get to try dessert, because this evening meal was on top of a substantial clan gathering lunch. All I've eaten since my return is a little soup, and a little toast. A few cuppa teas and that's it. Even the fancy cheese I brought home from McClaren Vale (Edith's Cheese, from Woodside, a wonderful creamy/sharp goat's cheese) is on hold for a few days. My trip to this winery region was only short, but very successful. My cuz and I tracked down some rose we wanted, and filled up a few boxes with other things while we were at it. Yesterday M was told by his cardiologist that good quality white wine is the best thing to drink if you have a fluttery heart, so just as well I lashed out on the good stuff for him!

This afternoon I ought to be designing and making borders for my Ramallah quilt. I am so brain-dead I'll be lucky if I can find a pencil and use it the right way up. Class tonight might just be ideas-collecting. I hope for a renaissance but don't expect it ...

Today brought to you by Clarins 'Eau Dynamisante' and not much else.

Long time ago...

.. in a little town called... hang on, that was in December. And now it's, oh gosh, it's practically the end of February and here I am still mulling over the difficulties of making a commitment to even one New Year's rez. Even half a one... dammit, maybe like Cath (hi) I'll just declare that the new year hasn't started yet, not til I'm ready. She only delayed hers by one month; hell, watch me top that!

I've been to the coast and back, and missed the heat in Canberra. Then just a few days here, and we jumped on planes to go to Adelaide for my next visit to the uberdoc. Adelaide had the Most Amazing Heatwave recently, and I was fervently hoping it would be over and nice and cool for me. I got a happy compromise - the first few days were pleasant, only late 20s, but by Tuesday this week it was heating up again. Wednesday was hot enough that at 6pm we sought shade for an evening picnic at the beach. We used the aircon in the motel and the hire car lavishly, and I field-tested a number of iced coffees. The best one was made with cold espresso, ice cubes and milk shaken together, then poured into a chilled glass and topped with genuine coffee gelato and just a little cream. It was FABULOUS. Cool, slightly sweet, and the gelato meant the drink had that icecream feel without any extra richness. I loved it. But the other, more usual iced coffees were all pretty good. I don't really like icecream, but a scoop of vanilla diluted by espresso and milk isn't exactly a problem.

The news from the uberdoc is that my poor old sinuses are 'odoematous' and I need lots of topical steroid to help fix that. You don't want to know how I'm going to achieve this. All I'm prepared to say is to quote some of the paperwork accompanying the meds: 'adopt the Mecca position'; 'remain kneeling for at least 10 minutes'; and 'lie down immediately afterwards' ... preferably 'on retiring for the day'. This means, loosely, that I have to go to bed after I 'do' my nose every evening. M is delighted cos it means I can't go on faffing around after I 'do' the 'doing'. I can fix that. I'll just delay the 'doing' til I've finished faffing.

A good consequence, afaic, would be the return of my sense of smell and taste, which are both quite compromised atm. Can't smell my new gorjussness from the Jo Malone shop on King William Road (Hyde Park darling, only rich useless types shop there). Can't taste the iced coffees properly, or the ro-zay, or the fennel-smoked black pig charcuterie. Couldn't tell if I needed extra showers. Also didn't realise for several hours that the large and expensive bottle of cold-pressed extra virgin McLaren Vale boutique gourmet oil that I knocked onto the concrete floor of a wine cellar-tasting room, was lemon myrtle flavoured. Later in the day I was wondering what the lemon smell was and where it was coming from (I was in a non-lemon-laden car at the time) and eventually realised it was my oil-soaked right canvas shoe. I washed it and washed it, and when dry it was still oily. Now the inner fabric sole has come away. But the colours on the canvas are notably brighter than the left shoe, so I expect I'll have to mix up a cup of good olive oil, seep a packet of dried lemon myrtle in it, and then pour it over the shoe somewhere. Purrhaps I'll do it on the bit of front path which is about to be dug up and removed forever. It could be a sort of farewell anointing of the path for all the years of good use it's had and given as a means of getting to our front door without having to negotiate mud, crud and cats.

I enjoyed spending time with quite large bits of my family - I do appreciate Gerald Durrell's incisive titling of one of his 'remembered youth' books - the 'Other Animals' concept applies most aptly! There are inter-brotherly grouches, partner-pickling, view of the offspring from afar ruminations, and some feedback about and to me, about and to me. All very entertaining and mostly not a worry. My fave three things were: dinner with bro #3 and his sweetie. They're on a diet. He cheats. She scolds which makes him smile a lot. Heh. Next? - dinner with bro #2 and his family. Sitting on their new couches after dinner fixing the world while youngest dorter made a play for a late night while falling asleep on my feet. And finally: speaking to my mother about a problem and hearing her response - "I'm gonna come over there and beat them up. How DARE they say that to my favourite dorter???'. She's only GOT one. Bro #3 complained that it's not fair and he wants to be a favourite dorter too. Oh sigh...!

Other good Adelaide things were the funny little car we hired - a Renault Megane. You use a sort of credit card thingie instead of a key, to open/shut things, and turn on/off the engine. A bit tricky til you get used to it. And it's another small black thing to easily lose amongst books and papers. How do I know that??? And driving in a very very right-angled city. All NSEW easily identified, not to mention being able to SEE where you are - between the hills and the sea, duh.

The regional gourmet/specialty shopping of edibles and drinkables. We sent home two boxes of wine, and collected another of other things like oil (yes, see above for why we guiltily bought so much of this!), vinegars, chutneys and sauces. We had an excellent picnic of cheeses, dried meats, amazing dried fruit (pears par-dried with vanilla beans, YUM). A soft cheese, very sheepy, wrapped in prosciutto - we ate it cold but this can be put in a hot oven for 7 minutes to crisp the meat and soften the cheese. I imagine it would be damn luscious spread on some springy bread. Barossa grapes all over the shops, and small dark figs. Really excellent tomatoes even from supermarkets. And plenty of splendid plonk. I found a great bottle for bro #2 - he has a frog 'theme' (no I can't explain why, any more than I can explain why *I* have a watermelon theme) - 'Arrogant Frog' Merlot named 'Ribet Red'. Heheheheheheh...

I almost had a swim twice, but both times refrained because it was SO hot that the amount of Factor 30 needed was just too hard. I survived discovering (on the day) that the appt. with the uberdoc was indeed for 11.30 on the 18th - of MARCH. A booking mix-up which we didn't identify cos of course February has a Wednesday 18th as well. But no drama, we got in anyway. They wouldn't turn us away once we said, lip a'tremble, but but we came over from Canberra. Ahem. Not sure I can blame myself entirely for this one, but I do wonder..

Little cat here in the window says 'let me outoutoutOUT!!!l' there is buffaloes to biff and heffalumps to hunt and sweet night air to whisk my whiskers'. Natch. She can swish her tail all she likes, cats are IN at night and that's that. Oh god, now she's attempting to claw down the fly screen. I shall depart.

... leaving a trail, I hope, of Jo Malone 'Dark Amber and Ginger'. Sounds like dessert! Try it and see. Do you find yourself reaching for a spoon and some cream to schloop it all over your chest? Then maybe it's not for you.. unless you start wearing chocolate t-shirts, anyway.

Adelaide: the story

I spent a lot of time with friends and relatives. All of them so delighted to meet my darling dorter, who has never been to Adelaide before. One aunt who was even slightly teary! And darling dorter had a good time meeting people, playing with the kids, having excellent champagnes and wines and of course lovely tucker... on Saturday was a picnic for the extended family, to celebrate a visit from my brother's daughter, who lives in Germany. She was the life of the party, with her sparky smile and her glowing auburn hair. My DD a close second with her voluptuously-red lipstick, her black hair flowing down to her hips, and a fabulous 50s dress with a cowl collar framing her sweet face. Okay, so I'm biased about how beautiful they both are. But they are!

My time with family was more complicated, with various challenges and woes in the families needing discussion. Families are indeed complex beasts. This being a public document, I won't go into details, but suffice it to say that these problems arise from people who love each other trying very hard to deal with complex and delicate emotional issues about their dear ones. I came home feeling rather shocked by the amount of unhappiness and worry I'd seen... but also glad that in some cases I'd been able to help a bit, perhaps, by listening and trying to understand. Even my DD is going through a challenging period of self-questioning and feeling very unsettled. My main hope for all of them/us is that the huge amounts of love and caring will overtake the unhappiness and life will look rosier for everyone very soon.

Somehow in all of this my visit to the uberdoc, the main purpose of my visit, seemed very trivial! But it is wonderful to have such good news from him, that my sinuses are healing and being healthy and looking like they might now start being 'normal' for longer periods. It's been a worry to me that I've had to take a lot of courses of oral steroids this year - I don't really want to end up with osteoporosis all through my body. Enough with limitations I say. I have a dodgy nose, a dodgy back, and a general lack of fitness which slows me down too much. I can work around the dodgy back more easily than the nose stuff, but I am too young to fall into a wheelchair of sloth and turpitude just yet. Most days...

And now it is more than a week since I got home, and somehow time is on high-warp speed towards the dreaded Festive Event, and although I have done lots of things I feel late for everything. But underneath this is a constant, happy little voice going 'wow, my sinuses are ok!'. That's a DAMN fine feeling.

The last five days brought to you, in this order: Trussardi 'Inside', lots and lots of Chopard's 'Wish' (cos my darling dorter needs extra wishes right now), Gucci 'Gucci', Chanel No.5 'Huile Sensual', and for a Tiki party last night, Christian Dior's 'Diorissimo', cos it is a classic 50s scent. For the record, the rest of my outfit was beehive hair , turquoise eyeshadow (shudder), a very VERY loud Hawaiian shirt and capri pants. I nearly wore kitten heels but at the last minute I defaulted to thongs and a very daggy old straw hat. Everyone else looked far more elegant, especially the real women in 50s shirwaist dresses and heels. What do I mean by a real woman? Well, a real one. Not a skinny, spray-tanned bottle blonde with Botox for a face. Curves, undulations and no bones at all. REAL!!

Calming down, sorting out, digging deep...

Hello blog,

Somehow since last week and the depths of abstract anxiety-coping mechanisms, I have found the middle ... sort of. I blame Cath, she made me get up on Saturday and go to Bungendore for a cooking class with native limes. It's hard to be deep when you're whisking lime sabayon and making your first successful shortcrust pastry for 12 years. I won, I won the whisking! Everyone else had to swap with other ppl, but I being ambidextrous as to whisks, was able to make it all the way through about 15 minutes of sabayon creation without a pause. Even Mr Cook was impressed. AND the lime tart was delicious. I enjoyed the vinaigrette in that the ingredients were quite fancy, but I can't say I'll use it again - I don't really like salad dressing. And the third option - native lime and gin icecream - moves me not at all. I can't taste icecream, for one, because it's too cold. It seemed a waste of lime, cream and gin to me. I thought, as I watched the icecream machine whirring, that it would be much nicer if it was all being whirred in a blender with a bit of sugar syrup and turned into a cocktail. But that's my sad preference!

Then, abuzz with achievement, I reviewed myself. After the cooking class (and the rather fine lunch it led to), Cath and I took to wandering the other shops. We passed by the Woodworks, because of serial cafe offences earlier in the year. I went straight to the Secondhand and Antique Emporium on the corner ... where ... I ... bought a hall stand. You know how you do? I HAVE been looking for some time for such a thing, finding it difficult to locate a stand which was narrow in width and depth, for a particular not very spacious place in my house. And there it was - on sale! You just can't argue with the gods when they provide so spectacularly as this. I will need to work out how to get it back here, but I think my sainted father (hi dad!) will lend a hand with a trailer and some lifting muscles.

My next satisfaction is to announce that all the mats have been hosed. What with contributions from cats, winter feet, and less-frequent cleaner activity, they were kind of furry. So I've been giving the geraniums under the washing line a real bonanza of furry water - they seem to like it, and the mats are immatulate!

Sorry.

All this led to a determination to finish unpacking the posted boxes of stuff from Over There. It took ages to get into the extremely well-packed breakable items - clearly I have no faith whatsoever in post-handlers, because some of my things had three layers of bubblewrap, over tissue, then bound all about with wide sticky tape, and then stuffed into socks, jumpers, hats and the like. Then again, this obsessive packing meant that nothing got broken, cracked, chipped, not a skerrick. Wonderful!

This (are you still with me?) meant that I could then make up the spare bed, cos it wasn't loaded with boxes any more. THIS means that if a marital partner needs to bail in the middle of the night cos the cat is snoring too loudly, there's somewhere else to sleep. Cos, like, the arse fell out of the sofa while we were away...

To complete this list of virtuosities, I have made a huge leap forward in study (the room, not the process) management. I have seen the top of my desk, and it is dusty. I have inspected the contents of storage tubs, shuddered, hastily closed them again, and put labels on them. I have established that my mobile phone is far too missing to expect it to ever be seen again. I even found the Lego (WHAT was it doing in my study? The last time an offspring of mine used it was about 15 years ago!). Oh well. I guess if I get really bored when I'm losing my Curse of the Pharaohs game, I can build another squared-off dinosaur or something.

Today I did even more useful things. Tomorrow I will be mobile-phone enabled at last. All I'll have to do is re-establish my address book, which is a pain. I bet, I just bet, that after the last 9 digit number of the eleventy-three ppl I know is entered, my old mobile leaps up from its hiding place and gives me back my old SIM card.

Life, always, is like that.

I have to go to Adelaide on Thursday to see the uber-doc. Again. He will inspectigate me, sigh, and write me prescriptions for uber-drugs which will have to be applied in unladylike ways to work properly. They will only be available from special compounding chemists, and it will be a PAIN. He will tell me that ... I have a tricky problem. Yeah? BUT in breaking and super-wonderful news, my darling dorter is coming with me. She's never been to Adelaide before, so the rellos are lined up ready to meet the princess-goddess-wondergirl. I've given them the protocol, signed off on the security system, and ordered the caviar. I just hope my brothers remember the colour-coordinated Holdens...

Today brought to you with optimism, a cat full of bloody burrs, and a good dose of Toni. You should all try this, except she's my special mate and I don't know if I'm generous enough to share her with everyone. But you can try the Trussardi "Inside" perfume, that's open slather. It's potent, smooth and long-lasting. Hmm... sounds like a good drink. I'm off, then!

E-purr-phany...

The last two days have been a physical marvel - a palpable lifting of the weight from my shoulders and spirit.

I think, since we crossed the border into Russia, I've been under a dark cloud. The reckoning for this I shall examine more closely when I have more time (having spent 2 hours sorting things to post this afternoon, and 2 more hours re-packing this evening, I'm not inclined to natter just now). But the feeling is strong and quite clear to me. The last five weeks at least have been a big struggle.

For now, we are quite delighted to have taken umpteen more kilos of stuff to the extremely excellent and efficient and orderly and friendly Saturday Helsinki post office. All kinds of amazing things can be found - packing boxes which don't require a degree in spatial-development-architectural-witticism to assemble; staff who point out cheaper options!!!!; tables for packing which are equipped with scissors, that wide strong sticky tape, string (yes dad, we finally found some!); labels, instructions and plenty of ROOM!!!. We happily filled two boxes with papers, souvenirs, unguents, a few spare clothes (I still don't really need my fiord-wear heavy-duty wool jumper) and suchlike.. the only thing I didn't find room for was a 1 kg tin of excellent Freiburg 'BIO BIO' coffee. Natch. It's in with me smalls now; I can go anywhere at this point and as long as my luggage goes with me I'll be orright for clean undies and nice coffee..

We repaired to the nice cafe of our Helsinki previous visit - Leonardo's. We ate the whole cafe. I had a small meltdown during the meal (tears are not far from the surface, the last few days) but pink fizz and grilled ching and some cheesecake to share fixed me well enough. Since then, as I said, I've been packingsortingfiddling with all me stuff and thinking exclusively of HOME. As of tomorrow evening, it is a mere week until we feel Australian soil (tarmac) under our footsore tootsies. I may not kiss it but I'll be bloody glad to consider a little tap of the toes, or maybe dripping a tear or two onto it. If I drink enough on the last leg, I might even vaporise Sydney airport, which would be a very community-minded action!

Our flight to Seoul leaves at about 5pm tomorrow; we'll be off to the airport about 2pm to ensure I have time to claim my tax duty back (from previous Helsinki purrchases) (but not all of them; I mistakenly sent the paperwork home to Oz a while back. Bugger.). We need time to get some wons, too. That's Korean currency, and it runs at something like 96.4 won to one Ozzie dollar. My maths won't be up to it I assure you!

As for recent Visa action, the nice lady at the Sokos shopping centre, where I went today to purchase the amazing luxury of a whole box of Kleenex tissues - not the endless little packets, which drive me nuts - FORCED me, I tell you, to try several new purrfumes.

You know purrfectly well what happened next. Mmmm.... Escada, Dior, Gaultier... how to choose??? I found a way, of course I did!

I gots to go now and order my bedtime hot chocolate from the bar before it closes - Satdy night in Helsinki and come 9.30pm it's doornail dead. Don't ask me why. As long as noone keeps ME awake I don't care.

And, btw, there should be time tomorrow morning before we nick off, for me to do some uploading and thought-and-snorting. I feel bad I've been neglecting ze blog, but just wait patiently and you'll read allaboudit. Guten nacht and sleepen tacht, for now!

Today brought to you by layers of 'Magnifique'; Gaultier 'Classique'; Chanel No. 5's 'Huile Sensual', and a spot of some new Escada called something like 'MY PURRFECT PONGO'.'

Snort.

Bear with me...

Berlin, Monday Sept 15 (I think)

My nose has dominion over the holiday, again. I beens to the doktor and I gots aunty-biotix.

We travel to Freiburg tomorrow, to spend time with my Curly-Girls and their mother. There will be PROPER blog entries from there, pwomise. I tried to post a lolcat here for you to be going on with, but I no not how to html such things.

Sorry...

Here are two words to keep you interested in coming back to read more: Barenboim and Rattle. Oh, and a third word: WOWEE!!!!

NOT A BIRTHDAY DAY REALLY...

Wednesday 27th August, putatively a birthday..

... but it bears NO resemblance to any birthday I’ve ever had. I think my idea to postpone it until the festive mood strikes is a good one.

M is out of hospital, laden with medical documents, advice and consolation. Unfortunately our bus to Tallinn IS the 4.45pm, so we spent the day at the dear old Hotel Sonata, resting and packing and preparing to leave. This didn’t include lunch, because we were sleeping, and that was a mistake. We got to the bus station in plenty of time, shoved our bags into the bus, fell into our seats, and set off on time. I had just enough time to nip over to a kiosk to get a couple of bottles of cold drink, no food.

The road from the outskirts of St Petersburg to the Estonian border is a bastard. It’s been mangled by trucks and half-heartedly repaired so often it is a mass of patches, potholes and crumbling edges. We jolt along for a couple of hours and I feel my back beginning to give... there are a few 5 minute stops along the way, we gather from the evidence that these are mainly to allow the driver to have a smoke! I ran into a cafe at one stop and bought two little Russian pastries, rather like pasties actually - a folded pastry cover with meat and onions inside. I *think* the driver told me I wasn’t allowed to eat them on the bus, as I climbed back on, but me no speaka de Russky, so I just smiled angelically at him and marched back to my seat. We devoured them, following them with ‘dessert’ which was a few sweet biccies M had souvenired from his hospital meals. A bottle of cold drink each and that was it for the supplies.

It took about an hour to get through the border: it goes like this:

Bus pulls up; Russian announcement. Our new friend Dmitri Nikolai, in the seat in front of us, turns to explain that we have to get off, collect all our luggage from the bus, and get in the border security queue. Okay. We do this, trying our best to look like overladen but harmless Aussies lost in a vast land. M goes through before me, and I am relieved to hear the double thump of the stamps which means he’s got through. Then it’s my turn, I do my best to look exactly like my dire passport photo - stern, tired and jowly. No problem, the way I feel... the security guard, a woman, gives me several fierce, piercing looks, then thumbs through my passport as she subjects it to x-ray, ultraviolet light, foreign germ de-bugger, suspicious woman in fake-o Georgio Armani t-shirt dag-alert detektor, ... but she’s unable to find anything to object to and I get the double-thump stamps too and I’m through. We load all our stuff back onto the bus, ourselves into the bus, and we drive 50 metres.... and repeat, at the Estonian border security. Dang.

This is slightly different - we are herded into a shed, which includes a huge jack for lifting up a car to inspekt its underneaths. Once we’re all in, a guard hits a button and a huge automatic garage door arrangement squeaks its way down, preventing us from leaving (running screaming back into the demarcation zone, over a cold river full of anglers ready to cast flies into your ankles...). We both have to have our bags inspekted - the guard looking through my backpack has quite good English, and she smiles as I ‘demonstrate’ my knitting! She asked me what was in my cases, I told her the harmless truth - purrsonal possessions. I had the nous to tell her that we were on a long trip; that’s why we have so much luggage. That was all she needed to hear. But M had to open both his cases, and there seemed to be some bother over his mobile phone (purrhaps the guard thought they were Duty Free, although what difference that would have made, since we weren’t trying to claim anything...). I told the guard I’d bought them for A$100 each, which I think is a big lie, but it was enough for him to nod and allow us through.

The bus was full, so there were perhaps 50 people who had to go through this process. It was pretty slick, for those numbers. But what a drag.. twice... oh well. This don’t feel very birthday-like to me. The ONLY positive thing I can think of (apart from being allowed to LEAVE RUSSIA, which means our extended visas were ok, thank all de lawds and gods) is that I didn’t have to open my cases and have someone ferreting through me smalls, like happened to me in the Beijing Customs Hall with quantities of your average Chinese citizen watching in fascination as my gooby old knickers went on display... geez I blushed that day..well, says she defensively, if YOU had been hand-washing yer smalls in Beijing tap water for three months, yours would be grey, tattered and ratty as well! Beijing tap water has to be approached with extreme caution, a small whip, and a strong arm.

So, we take off again, onto a smooth young well-made highway. The lack of bumps is a mercy. M is bothering me a bit with some marital faffing.. suddenly, I think “In 10 years I’ll be 60”. I go all speechless and have to shut my eyes for a bit. This doesn’t feel very celebratory either... I give up and go to sleep. Some people have left the bus now, so there’s room for M to take over a pair of seats across the aisle, giving us a lot more space. And getting him out of range of any loose lips or wifely biffo of any kind, ahem...

Dmitri helped us retrieve our bags at the Tallinn bus station (he’s a Russian Estonian), find a taxi, and ended up sharing the taxi with us cos his home is further along the same way, sort of, as our hotel. So we have a purrsonal escort to the L’Hermitage Hotel. He’s a charming fellow and we’re very grateful for his help, especially at the Russian border, when he stood by in case there were kvestions from the security people. A very nice bloke. He had started a conversation with us when we were loading our umpteen backpacks etc into the bus, because he recognised our Aussie accents. Turns out he’d been a merchant seaman and had lived in 3 different Aussie cities for 10 months in all, before turning into some kind of electrician who helps set up server rooms and suchlike.

Checking in is easy; they recognise us as ‘the Aussies who were delayed by misfortune’. But the bloody hotel restaurant has just closed (at 11pm Tallinn time; 12 in St P time). The local cafe which used to stay open til 12 is shut. DAMN. I’d kill for a bowl of soup or pasta. The receptionist tells us we can walk up the hill (up???? I don’t think so) to the Old City, where we can find plenty of cafes. We just can’t manage it, M is dropping.. he only got out of hospital this morning,after all. My back is aching, my will is weak, and I’m dying equally badly for a shower. I just want a hot drink. No kettle in ze room, and no chance of me getting into the kitchen a la Sonata (which was just a kitchen in a corner of the reception/breakfast room, just like a normal home kitchen).

I have to take our substantial pile of laundry down to reception so we can get it back tomorrow afternoon. And I spy, with my little tired old eye, a coffee machine. And lo, it came to pass that the darling receptionist, a Sonata-strength dear slip of a girl, one Johanna Lind, made me a latte. Sigggggghhhhhh. I drink it with alternate sips of a gin and tonic, my one concession to a celebratory birdy gesture. [Michael is off the turps until 11 September, as part of ze post-hospital treatment. Today is the 6th day of this abstentive oeriod only 15 days to go - but who’s counting!!..2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8!!!!...

[And I should tell you, the girls at the Hotel Sonata were in a lather as we were leaving, wanting us to wait 5 more minutes. Turns out they’d been plotting - they’d seen it was my birdy and had sent a deputation out to find me a gift! I’m so touched; this is on a par with Kirsi and her hand-picked cloudberries. Wow. I feel very special. When I opened the parcel later, on the bus, there was a card telling me I was a ‘perfect guest’ (I was??? I thought I’d been quite demanding. Interesting.); and two gifts. One is a little replica statue of (we think) the Freedom and Democracy Angel; the other is a very beautiful black with 24 carat gold trim and print mug, which has a little infusion-bowl inset, and a lid. All my trips out to the kitchen to make coffee in our plunger has clearly impressed them with my burning need! It’s a very kind gesture, and we all exchange Russian hugs and kisses (one on each cheek) and M enthusiastically joins in, heh. I feel quite teary as we leave; these women have made my time alone SO much easier.

Peoples is good. Look at what Dmitri did for us today, unstintingly.

Today brought to you by early blasts of Chanel No. 5; rather a lot of eau de fairly old Russian bus; and my mercy-latte.

Tomorrow we have only one plan - sleep; get up for breakfast; sleep again. I hope by Friday we are ert enough to actually do and see a few things. On Saturday, at 10 am, we get on another bus (I hope slightly less aged) to Riga.

One last thing: as I was charging off at 8am to meet M at the hospital, I saw my third Russian cat. It was a beautiful grey tabby with white whiskers, completely sacked out on the steps of a local cafe. I mean TOTALLY sacked out, no blandishments or hopeful conversation from me was gonna wake dat cat up. I can only assume that brekkie via the cafe kitchen had been a highly successful arrangement. Trust a cat to achieve that!bp

Birthday? I don't think so... 27th August

Wednesday 27th August, putatively a birthday..

... but it bears NO resemblance to any birthday I’ve ever had. I think my idea to postpone it until the festive mood strikes is a good one.

M is out of hospital, laden with medical documents, advice and consolation. Unfortunately our bus to Tallinn IS the 4.45pm, so we spent the day at the dear old Hotel Sonata, resting and packing and preparing to leave. This didn’t include lunch, because we were sleeping, and that was a mistake. We got to the bus station in plenty of time, shoved our bags into the bus, fell into our seats, and set off on time. I had just enough time to nip over to a kiosk to get a couple of bottles of cold drink, no food.

The road from the outskirts of St Petersburg to the Estonian border is a bastard. It’s been mangled by trucks and half-heartedly repaired so often it is a mass of patches, potholes and crumbling edges. We jolt along for a couple of hours and I feel my back beginning to give... there are a few 5 minute stops along the way, we gather from the evidence that these are mainly to allow the driver to have a smoke! I ran into a cafe at one stop and bought two little Russian pastries, rather like pasties actually - a folded pastry cover with meat and onions inside. I *think* the driver told me I wasn’t allowed to eat them on the bus, as I climbed back on, but me no speaka de Russky, so I just smiled angelically at him and marched back to my seat. We devoured them, following them with ‘dessert’ which was a few sweet biccies M had souvenired from his hospital meals. A bottle of cold drink each and that was it for the supplies.

It took about an hour to get through the border: it goes like this:

Bus pulls up; Russian announcement. Our new friend Dmitri Nikolai, in the seat in front of us, turns to explain that we have to get off, collect all our luggage from the bus, and get in the border security queue. Okay. We do this, trying our best to look like overladen but harmless Aussies lost in a vast land. M goes through before me, and I am relieved to hear the double thump of the stamps which means he’s got through. Then it’s my turn, I do my best to look exactly like my dire passport photo - stern, tired and jowly. No problem, the way I feel... the security guard, a woman, gives me several fierce, piercing looks, then thumbs through my passport as she subjects it to x-ray, ultraviolet light, foreign germ de-bugger, suspicious woman in fake-o Georgio Armani t-shirt dag-alert detektor, ... but she’s unable to find anything to object to and I get the double-thump stamps too and I’m through. We load all our stuff back onto the bus, ourselves into the bus, and we drive 50 metres.... and repeat, at the Estonian border security. Dang.

This is slightly different - we are herded into a shed, which includes a huge jack for lifting up a car to inspekt its underneaths. Once we’re all in, a guard hits a button and a huge automatic garage door arrangement squeaks its way down, preventing us from leaving (running screaming back into the demarcation zone, over a cold river full of anglers ready to cast flies into your ankles...). We both have to have our bags inspekted - the guard looking through my backpack has quite good English, and she smiles as I ‘demonstrate’ my knitting! She asked me what was in my cases, I told her the harmless truth - purrsonal possessions. I had the nous to tell her that we were on a long trip; that’s why we have so much luggage. That was all she needed to hear. But M had to open both his cases, and there seemed to be some bother over his mobile phone (purrhaps the guard thought they were Duty Free, although what difference that would have made, since we weren’t trying to claim anything...). I told the guard I’d bought them for A$100 each, which I think is a big lie, but it was enough for him to nod and allow us through.

The bus was full, so there were perhaps 50 people who had to go through this process. It was pretty slick, for those numbers. But what a drag.. twice... oh well. This don’t feel very birthday-like to me. The ONLY positive thing I can think of (apart from being allowed to LEAVE RUSSIA, which means our extended visas were ok, thank all de lawds and gods) is that I didn’t have to open my cases and have someone ferreting through me smalls, like happened to me in the Beijing Customs Hall with quantities of your average Chinese citizen watching in fascination as my gooby old knickers went on display... geez I blushed that day..well, says she defensively, if YOU had been hand-washing yer smalls in Beijing tap water for three months, yours would be grey, tattered and ratty as well! Beijing tap water has to be approached with extreme caution, a small whip, and a strong arm.

So, we take off again, onto a smooth young well-made highway. The lack of bumps is a mercy. M is bothering me a bit with some marital faffing.. suddenly, I think “In 10 years I’ll be 60”. I go all speechless and have to shut my eyes for a bit. This doesn’t feel very celebratory either... I give up and go to sleep. Some people have left the bus now, so there’s room for M to take over a pair of seats across the aisle, giving us a lot more space. And getting him out of range of any loose lips or wifely biffo of any kind, ahem...

Dmitri helped us retrieve our bags at the Tallinn bus station (he’s a Russian Estonian), find a taxi, and ended up sharing the taxi with us cos his home is further along the same way, sort of, as our hotel. So we have a purrsonal escort to the L’Hermitage Hotel. He’s a charming fellow and we’re very grateful for his help, especially at the Russian border, when he stood by in case there were kvestions from the security people. A very nice bloke. He had started a conversation with us when we were loading our umpteen backpacks etc into the bus, because he recognised our Aussie accents. Turns out he’d been a merchant seaman and had lived in 3 different Aussie cities for 10 months in all, before turning into some kind of electrician who helps set up server rooms and suchlike.

Checking in is easy; they recognise us as ‘the Aussies who were delayed by misfortune’. But the bloody hotel restaurant has just closed (at 11pm Tallinn time; 12 in St P time). The local cafe which used to stay open til 12 is shut. DAMN. I’d kill for a bowl of soup or pasta. The receptionist tells us we can walk up the hill (up???? I don’t think so) to the Old City, where we can find plenty of cafes. We just can’t manage it, M is dropping.. he only got out of hospital this morning,after all. My back is aching, my will is weak, and I’m dying equally badly for a shower. I just want a hot drink. No kettle in ze room, and no chance of me getting into the kitchen a la Sonata (which was just a kitchen in a corner of the reception/breakfast room, just like a normal home kitchen).

I have to take our substantial pile of laundry down to reception so we can get it back tomorrow afternoon. And I spy, with my little tired old eye, a coffee machine. And lo, it came to pass that the darling receptionist, a Sonata-strength dear slip of a girl, one Johanna Lind, made me a latte. Sigggggghhhhhh. I drink it with alternate sips of a gin and tonic, my one concession to a celebratory birdy gesture. [Michael is off the turps until 11 September, as part of ze post-hospital treatment. Today is the 6th day of this abstentive oeriod only 15 days to go - but who’s counting!!..2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8!!!!...

[And I should tell you, the girls at the Hotel Sonata were in a lather as we were leaving, wanting us to wait 5 more minutes. Turns out they’d been plotting - they’d seen it was my birdy and had sent a deputation out to find me a gift! I’m so touched; this is on a par with Kirsi and her hand-picked cloudberries. Wow. I feel very special. When I opened the parcel later, on the bus, there was a card telling me I was a ‘perfect guest’ (I was??? I thought I’d been quite demanding. Interesting.); and two gifts. One is a little replica statue of (we think) the Freedom and Democracy Angel; the other is a very beautiful black with 24 carat gold trim and print mug, which has a little infusion-bowl inset, and a lid. All my trips out to the kitchen to make coffee in our plunger has clearly impressed them with my burning need! It’s a very kind gesture, and we all exchange Russian hugs and kisses (one on each cheek) and M enthusiastically joins in, heh. I feel quite teary as we leave; these women have made my time alone SO much easier.

Peoples is good. Look at what Dmitri did for us today, unstintingly.

Today brought to you by early blasts of Chanel No. 5; rather a lot of eau de fairly old Russian bus; and my mercy-latte.

Tomorrow we have only one plan - sleep; get up for breakfast; sleep again. I hope by Friday we are ert enough to actually do and see a few things. On Saturday, at 10 am, we get on another bus (I hope slightly less aged) to Riga.

One last thing: as I was charging off at 8am to meet M at the hospital, I saw my third Russian cat. It was a beautiful grey tabby with white whiskers, completely sacked out on the steps of a local cafe. I mean TOTALLY sacked out, no blandishments or hopeful conversation from me was gonna wake dat cat up. I can only assume that brekkie via the cafe kitchen had been a highly successful arrangement. Trust a cat to achieve that!

From Helsinki to St. Petersburg, Sunday August 17th

!!!!!! Acatcan is in Russia!!!!!! ... which looks rather like Finnland, but the difference between the tidiness and upkeep of the buildings and land is quite marked. Finnland, as all of the countryside we’ve seen in Scandinavia, is incredibly orderly, the houses very well-maintained, fresh paint and gardens all clipped and square. Here, the same architecture is peeling and faded, there is junk lying around the edges of the yards, and all the way along the railway line. There is more mud here; more anonymous railway stops (no names that we can see), a lot of logging trains, and also a lot of people moving through the forest foraging for something - perhaps berries, because they are carrying smallish baskets.

The train is Finnish, so it’s a marvel of design, cleanliness and modernity. We’ve been to the dining car twice, through the mobs in 2nd class (which is purrfectly comfortable, we don’t need to be in 1st class really). This trip only takes 5 hours, of which at least one hour has been taken up with two stops at the border - a leaving Finnland border check, a short ‘demarcation’ zone, and then a longer stop at the Russian border where our passports were taken away for a while. That’s a slightly unnerving feeling.. but the guards were purrfectly polite and we have all been successfully stamped, clocked, noted, checked, spotted, listed and given purrmission to proceed. We’ll be in St Petersburg in about half an hour. Travelling companions (Aussies from Perth) have given us some very useful info about taxis - we have a price which is reasonable for the travel from railway station to hotel, and we also know we have to agree it with the driver before we set off. No meters.

The weather is slowly getting warmer, it may be nearly 30 degrees, altho I hope my extremely vague interpretation of the Finnish tv weather last night is wrong and that WAS the weather, and today it’s going to be a nice fresh 18 or something. It’s been rainy and cool in Helsinki, a steady 15 degrees from dawn to dusk.

~~~~~~

Helsinki has been a busy time; M had a contact at the University from his linguistics professor at the ANU. On our first full day in Helsinki (Tuesday) was spent with Terttu ?, the Department Head of a Linguistics Centre of Excellence. She met us at the hotel, took us for a delightful walk through the Botanic Gardens to the cafe for lunch, and then we had the whole afternoon with her colleagues at the centre. We met people specialising in all manner of research and analysis - a very interesting team of three young men, all working on their PhDs, who are interpreting mediaevel texts of cuisine, medicines and ‘spy’ letters (reports from travellers). These blokes are working closely with a team at Oxford University, so their English was very beautifully accented. Nice to hear people speaking ESL that ISN’T American-accented. I get narked by that..

After four hours of high-speed, high-level linguistics, corpora, diachronics [and a sideways leap into pure research (we met Matti ?, who has examined the 12,000 !!!! examples of the word ‘to have’ in the Helsinki corpora and written a dissertation on it. Just before retirement... he is a charming, charming man, a 70 year old bear of a man wearing a t-shirt saying ‘ROCK AND ROLL FOREVER’. How inspiring! He sat us down, picked M’s brains, threw me a few curly questions about language acquisition, and then settled back to discuss Australian and Kiwi wines. Heh. A universal language!] ... we needed to rest our brains. We found a bar/cafe to meet our needs, and then staggered back to the hotel, feeling very welcome and most comfortable to be thrust back into the academic environment.

We found a good Italian restaurant for dinner, where the waitress listened closely to our questions about the wine list, and then proudly listed the three varieties of Freixenet piccolos - dry, sweet or rose. Rose! I love sparkling pink champagne wine grog. We returned to the university on Thursday afternoon, to join the group for their regular fortnightly afternoon tea. Once again we were warmly welcomed, given Finnish delicacies (a mild cheese, lightly grilled - looks a lot like fried havarti - which one eats spread with a dob of cloudberry jam, very nom; and a blueberry and almond tart, ditto). Matti came and practically sat on my lap, he was so keen to talk. We had a rousing discussion about Scandinavian music, during which he admitted to being a singer, and then told me he used to sing with the Finnish National Radio Chorus (I think that’s what it’s called). He must be quite a singer. Made me feel very nostalgic for Cantorion - hi guys!

Our stay in Helsinki wasn’t as cultural as we hoped for - my poor health slowed things down a bit, not to mention a patch of marital crunchiness. M went out one evening to see a concert of organ and bass singer, at a local church. He enjoyed the music very much, and compared the bass’ voice to the famous Finnish singer ‘Martti Talvela’. We heard bits of Sibelius at the Rock Church and I think in the background at an exhibition we saw yesterday - which was a strange but successful day. Finally we have bought mobiles! But still no connection - Finnsk mobile networks don’t extend anywhere else, so we bought the hand sets and will have to investigate SIM cards and prepaid cards here, and in the Baltic states. Then we bought a suitcase, on the less small side, so we could leave our customs-claimable goods and the cold-weather clothing at the hotel. When we return, only for a day, on the way home, we’re staying at a different hotel, so we went up there to check the booking and leave the bag. No worries.


~~~~~~~~

THANK YOU AND WELCOME AGAIN!

ST PETERSBURG!!!!

... sorry for all the cor wow gob-smacking, but, you know, cor, wow!!! I’m in St Petersburg! I’ve been a bit uneasy about coming here, especially since that nice Mr Putin dropped eleventy thousand Russian troops onto Georgia and destabilised things... and I have my reservations about communist regimes, having lived in one before. As we cross the border, which takes about an hour and a half - we stop at the Finnish border for a passport check, then creep through a demarcation zone, then the official uniforms change and the very stern Russian border check mens come aboard. They collect our passports and take them away. None of us like this very much, but one doesn’t argue with Russian officialdom. They are returned in about an hour, happily stamped with entry dates on our visas. We have only about an hour to go now, to get to the city.

The change in environment is immediate - from the very clean, orderly train trackside, and the houses and gardens in Finnland, which are toy-town tidy and even the felled logs are left in neat little piles, the rubbish and decay and junk on the Russian side are like the dark observe of the Finnish picture - the landscape is the same, the building style and cars and so on are the same, but house need painting, there is a lot of junk in people’s yards (old car parts, broken toys, bits of wood, fallen-down washing lines and old plastic garden furniture). The sense of grace and pride is gone. How glad I am that we are in the nice clean Finnish train, and not the old-style Edwardian Russian carriages!

It’s easy getting into St Petersburg - even though it’s a city of over 4 million people, the train runs straight into one side of the city, with very few suburban stations between the end of the countryside and the terminus. We roll off easily, and are down a side exit and into a taxi in minutes. It’s hot, humid, smoggy and M can’t find his hat. We were told, most timely information, by R and S that one negotiates the taxi fare before getting into the car. They even had information about what a reasonable charge would be from the station to their hotel, and he and M looked up ours on the map and we decided the same amount (700 roubles) would be quite fair. And the taxi driver quoted that to us, so no problems.

He carefully laid all our cases into the boot and the front seat, bowed us into the back seats, and leapt in and put the airconditioning onto UBER. LOVELY. It’s only 10 minutes or so and we’re at the hotel. It’s a boutique hotel, perhaps only about rooms, in what is probably an old apartment block of one large apartment per floor. Our room is about twice the size of the Helsinki room, with high ceilings, parquet floor, and a bathroom big enough for two people very comfortably, bigger than our small Aussie bathroom in fact. The decor is post-bloc dinge, but not dirty. Policestation green walls, tan curtains and bedspreads, a rather grotty marked brown rug, and a sofa in dingy brown with darker dingy brown blobs, which wouldn’t be out of place in an old country motel in Queensland.

The plumbing is somewhat eccentric - every time you turn on the tap, the dunny gurgles. But M says the shower is good, and I am about to test his opinion. Lonely Planet says ‘DO NO ON ANY ACCOUNT DRINK THE TAP WATER’ so we are back to bottled water for everything. I’m glad I’ve done this before, too. It takes a certain discipline to remember to clean yer teeth in a glass of bottled water, rinsing the toothbrush ditto. And I have a special challenge to master - I remember what one does about food (NO salad, fruit or street food, unless it’s a banana; no ice or water from the back room)... but I have (sadly) taken to biting my fingernails again in the last year, and this might be a problem. I have a bottle of Aqium with me, and I will get more, so with luck I’ll be able to keep those tasty little fingers out of my gob and not give myself double-dystentery. Yikes!

We’ll also need mozzie spray, suncream and a bit of fortitude. This is the first smog we’ve encountered, and here’s me at the end of a month-long sinus battle which I thought (and I shall say this VERY quietly) I was getting on top of. So cross your nostrils for me please, that with my armoury of fixatives, squirties, drips, drops and tablets, I can fend off any challenges.

Today brought to you by train coffee, eau de electric trainline, a small blast of Gucci, and borscht for dinner!

... whereas Rovaniemi is a bit ordinaire...

Utterly fascinating Sami culture museum. After that much-anticipated breakfast of fresh coffee with fresh milk, and a bowl of cloudberries, which were indeed luscious, how was Inari? A gem of a place. Can’t wait to go back to Lapland and maybe do some summer hiking and take another zillion photos.

We bought the Sami museum shop, you know. Everything from a fridge magnet to a piece of felt art. The (very young) shop assistant got more and more gob-smacked as I added piece after piece to the pile. But these things were worth getting! Unfortunately she was a) a hopeless packer, and one of my mooses will have to have his horn stuck up again; and b) she was so busy being gobsmacked and gormless, she actually left out an item, and I will have to write to them and see if they can send it on. Silly girl. And why didn’t *I* check? Because my clock-watching husband was in a lather in case we missed the bus to Rovaniemi - not a tour bus but a public one, so no waiting at the door while little B put her face on. And therefore, I didn’t watch closely as she packed up all the stuff.

We had a dreary afternoon on the bus (a coach) driving to Rovaniemi. We had a short lunch stop (coffee with cream and a doughnut, oh bliss, oh FAT). Not long after, the bus filled with French scouts returning to France from their summer holiday trekking. They were kind of noisy but not obnoxious. We had had enough of being squished when we arrived ... a 6 hour trip, counting the few little stops.

Our hotel is standard purrfectly alright hotel. No saunas or value-added stuff this time. And Rovaniemi is a harmless little town, new (rebuilt after WW11 - the Germans kindly reduced it to rubble when retreating), not very exciting, but on a pretty river bend, and clearly growing fast.. we went for a short stroll to find dinner - Subway, I’m afraid. It being Sunday night, everything else was either closed or just a bar, and I draw the line at liquid dinners.

Now we are watching on Finnish TV a very sweaty man conducting Beethoven’s 5th, rather a good way to end the evening.

Tomorrow we have to get up at 6am eeeeeeeek to get on a train at 7.15, which will take us to Helsinki. We have 6 days there, with friends to visit, and a professor of linguistics for M to meet, so I’m looking forward to some easy chat, some kulcha, and to being able to unpack completely as we did on the ship.

It’s going good.

Today brought to you by blasts of Prada from my shirt-front, which got rather hot in its thermal top (so John, I hope Liz can get the purrfume out when I return it, thanks so much for helping to keep me so warm!). That’s it, I can’t smell anything else and I don’t think there was any discernible eau-de-Finnish bus.

Snort.

Temporary outage

We had a very crap day getting to Bergen - an early start, a VERY hot train - the conductor just laughed when a fellow passenger asked about airconditioning, saying 'these trains were built in the 1980s'. Thanks, mate.

The train couldn't go all the way to Oslo cos of work on the line, so we were all offloaded onto buses. This was actually a merciful move, cos the bus had aircon. LOVELY. AND it meant we could move away from two loud, boring, opinionated Amurricans who spent the 5 hours on the train patronising the passengers they were seated with, by knowing more about Wimbledon than anyone else.

At the VERY DANG hot Oslo railway station we had an hour before the next train. I downed a pint of water, a pint of full-strength Pilsener, a pint of lemonade, and a latte. The second train trip was 6 hours, but kind of felt not as long because the northern summer light doesn't fade until after 10pm. We arrived in Bergen at 11pm or so, and had to wait in a line of desperate smokers waiting for a taxi. Our hotel room was up 4 flights of stairs, SO...

... not long after, the asthma stressors listed above (mainly beer, smoke and climbing) hit and I had a violent attack. I'm now full of nice life-saving drugs and feeling much more stable, but of course it is worrying, especially for M who has to keep an eye out for wheezes, research ambulances etc, and generally take over everything including nursing duties until I feel a bit stronger. However the wonders of modern pharmacology are being wondrous, and apart from feeling a bit fragile I am doing well...well,,, a bit teary because we've only been on the road for 9 days. Fark.

Please send me some encouraging thoughts, words, oxygen-loaded crossed-fingers, and anything else you fancy in the way of a miracle cure. Proper touristing should start again tomorrow! When, tank de lawds, it should be cooler. By Saturday it should be only 18 degrees and I CAN'T WAIT.

Today brought to you by eau de latte, courage mon vieux, and a goodly dose of 'Ange ou Demon' cos that is what roid-based mood swings do to the princess. And here are some Norwegian keyboard symbols: å¨^øƤ§¨¨. I have no idea what they mean of course!

Leaving, on a jet train...

Har Har.

The gods have been at it again.

We packed up our bags last night, finding that somehow our possessions had expanded beyond our zippers' capacity to close the cases. Eh? I only bought... well, 3 t-shirts, several small souvenirs, a shawl, several tubes of face cream, an umbrella (a very fetching umbrella with Swedish cats on it, couldn't be left behind!), stationery, postcards, a coffee plunger and a tin of coffee, a teddy bear, several magazines and some coat hangers. Hardly anything.

We ended up with our 4 small cases, a backpack each, my small handbag, and two plastic bags (tied up with my new head-scarf). It was fine getting out of the hotel, just lugged it all into the lift. Fine getting to the station, just shoved it all into a taxi. Fine getting through the station to the information board, just made like pack-horses. But then we discovered that platform 11 was down a level, and the lift was mysteriously hidden in the chaos of shops, seats, info terminals, peoples by the hundred, and lots of shiny lights FAR too early in the morning. Some of the shiny lights were not without charm because they said "coffee", but it was not to be. M walked the station looking for a lift. He said there was one (somewhere) but it didn't go down to the level we wanted. I speculated that if we tried it, we might get half-way and then be able to find another lift going down the extra floor.

Good thinking B! Only trouble was, where WAS the damn lift? We circumnavigated the innards of the station, but couldn't find a "HISS" sign. M found several sets of stairs but my leggies said NOOOOOO. I was lucky to then find a railway staff member who pointed me to the area in the main hall where a lift was to be found. Hurray!

We lugged again, but once in the lift it wouldn't go down to the second level, where we thought we needed to go. Just as we were about to get out anyway, at Level 1, the lift started ascending again. A woman with a mobility 'chair' was waiting to use the lift. M, swearing, got out. I wasn't fast enough and I disappeared down to Level 1 again! Pressing the"2" button and swearing wasn't doing the trick. At level 1 a woman got in, and I asked her why the lift refused to go any further down. She said 'but this is the lowest level you can go' which explained a lot. So up we went to the main hall again, where a red-faced M was waiting with the disabled woman. M leapt on board again (there was no room in the lift for that poor, patient woman and her chair). We chugged out at Level 1 and followed the sign for Platform 11.

Oh Har Har. To get to Platform 11, we had to climb a full flight of stairs. Har Har Har. M started up, managing quite well with his pack plus two cases. He'd only gone about 6 steps up when a gleaming, healthy young Swedish woman offered to help with his cases. Angel number one for the day. Meantime I was lugging, carefully but knowing my back would protest, my two bloody lead-weight pieces of over-laden travel bags. I made it up about 12 steps before our helpful Swedish angel re-appeared to help me. I didn't even manage to make eye contact with her when I said thank you, she was so fast hoicking my case up the rest of the stairs.

Once on the platform, we were able to stop and wait to read the notice-board about the imminent arrival of our train. I made a rather large crowd-blocking station, surrounded by all cases and bags while M did a recce up and down the platform trying to find a map of the train so we could see where to wait. Turns out Svensk railways doesn't purrvide such things, but a helpful young gent explained where out first carriage would be and we were able to shove our way through the crowd to about the right place.

M also leapt on board as soon as the train arrived, to find our seats and dump a preliminary bag or two. Then we got those four dang cases on board, and found enough room for one of them in the luggage-shelves near the door. The rest had to be lifted by us up into the luggage racks. I hope they stay put - any one of them falling on a head would do a lot of damage!

I was very sad that there was no time in all this for me to grab a coffee. But as soon as the train got started, M went looking for the dining car. He returned with coffee and lovely fresh prawn, egg and mayonnaise rolls, the only choice! They were cool and delicious. The coffee went down just in time to prevent a wifely loss of intestinal fortitude. We have 6 hours on this trip to Oslo (in a non-airconditioned train), then a wait of about an hour, and another 5 or so hours to Bergen.

I hope the hotel room is cooler than our Stockholm room. We *could* see that our room in Stockholm was on the less sunny side of the building, but even with a fan on and a chair propping the door open, to let some of the cooler passage-way air into our room, we were pretty hot and stuffy. Enough with the heat waves!!

Today brought to you (so far) by Lacoste purrfume, eau de railway station, coffee, and boiled egg with mayo squished lavishly into the prawns on the bun. Nom.

******************

Part two.

An hour into the trip to Oslo, an announcement came of the PA - due to work on the line, the train would be stopping in K..., and we would proceed to Oslo by bus. Consternation. An extra two lots of hoicking our bloody bags around.

But in the end, we were grateful. There was no airconditioning on the train, and only one window per carriage to allow some (hot) air in. I fell asleep but was really only dozing; I was aware that sweat was dripping off my face and running down various bits... uncomfortable. The bus to Oslo was airconditioned; you could hear the sighs of relief from all the passengers when the driver started the engine and immediately overhead air thingies (like on planes) started blasting out cool air. The drive to Oslo took about 2.5 hours, during which I spent about half the time appreciating the beautiful farmland, and about half snoozing. This time I didn't drip, I just bit my tongue.

Oslo railway station gets the thumbs up from us - no steps at any stage. There was a small moment of conniption when we saw an OUT OF ORDER sign on the lift going from the platform to the main station, but there were escalators, which are a fine substitute. And our plan of taking two small cases each, plus backpack, works well in such situations, because no individual piece of luggage is hard to manage. Mine all seem to be bloody heavy though..

We had about an hour before the train for Bergen departed. We spent it doing two useful things - M exchanged some money, and I found a pizza cafe which had beer on tap. Without quite noticing, I drank a pint of cold water, a pint of beer and a pint of lemonade, before downing a huge latte. These fluids were all good, giving me various types of inner strength. And, for once, I think the beer was more necessary than the coffee. Shows you how HOT I am. Yes yes yes, I know it's summer. But don't they have summer every year here? How come no aircon? Hmm?????

M has left me tapping away at this, while he walks up and down the train to cool off. And I don't mean temperature cooling... he asked a helpful Information Desk person about this train, wanting to know which platform and also which end of the platform our carriage would be. Unfortunately the info was correct as to platform number, but wrong as to carriage position - M was told our (first class) carriage would be the first one behind the engine.

LIES.

We had to schlep all the way along in the bloody hot sun and across the unhelpfully textured platform pavers, bout 16 carriages to the other end of the train, to find our comfy spot. There was much husbandly head-shaking, vehement use of good old anglo-saxon language, and quite a bit of arm-waving. When I suggested that it didn't matter cos here we were on the dang train, before it left, et etc, I got TOLD. I expect I deserved it for being Pollyanna-ish. I don't really care. M's first act was to go for a walk to find the dining car, and bring me back another coffee. I KNEW it was a good idea to marry this man.

So, with luck (and I am saying this VERY QUIETLY so any pesky gods with contra-suggestable senses of humour won't hear), we will get to stay on this train all the way to Bergen. We will also be able to easily wheel our stuff out of the station and into a nice cool taxi which will take us extremely quickly and cheaply to a nice cool hotel. Where we will collapse in a heap, needing only to pop out to the smorgasbord pub next door to get dinner, before showering off quite a lot of Svensk and Norsk sweat and then hitting the sack.

This part of today brought to you by Pilsener, double-strength under-arm charm, and the blissful scent of a cup of coffee.....moderated slightly by the taste of Ventolin, because for some reason I can't breathe properly, It's been 3 days since the wheezes started and don't ask ME why. It's certainly not cold, or polluted, or infested with cigarette smoke anywhere near me, and I don't have any infections (it was hard to type that last bit with all my fingers crossed but I find the point of my nose helpful in such situations)... anyway, bugger.

GAWjuss!

I gots me some wonderful new trousers!! Thank you Mr. Tailor. They are worth every kilometre of nerve-endings shredded in the process. Ppls, you will be delighted to know that I can now swan off around the world in colour coordinated, long enough, wide enough, pocketed, placketed and elastic-waisteded daks, fit for a queen, or better still, a woman thrice-crowned. Yippee!

I even got a discount of nearly a fifth of the price cos two things I specifically ordered didn't get done - the wool trousers weren't lined, and the other wool trousers didn't have the silverfish holes in the bum mended. Mr Tailor offered to fix them on the spot for a mere !!!! $35 dollars, but dorter and I exchanged swift glances and I said no. She/I/we can mend them for about 30 cents, if we get to it, or as my ever-practical darling girl said "just wear black undies and no-one will notice". True. Cos they are dark grey daks. So that part of the precision-packing process is in my opinion finito. Phew.

I also decided that trying to find time to go to pick up ultrasound films of both my hips, for future reference, was fairly low in the pecking order. The radiology business which made them neither delivers to my gp, nor agrees to post anything. So they can have the pleasure of being able to look at my ball-joints for the next three months, til I return and make the effort to give a stuff about retrieving them. And, for the record, the jury is still out on the overall effectiveness of the shots of steroid. I am not perhaps as stiff or sore in the hips, but as my daily routine is highly disordered atm, it's not a level data-recording playing field. I think the real test will be how easy it is to walk/manage luggage when we get off the plane in Bangkok after 8 or so hours of high-altitude sardinery.

We had a big family dinner tonight, several branches of us converging on an unsuspecting Italian restaurant. Parents, two sibs plus offspring, plus husband's sis and her husband. It went well in spite of the rather slow production of food from the kitchen. The youngest member of the party was was getting a bit crunchy, but the waitress spotted the restless girl and came over to reassure her that tucker was only minutes away. Unfortunately the gwown-ups had to wait a bit longer.

This makes me wonder (a lot) about rituals - the farewells. It seems to me that we all need to touch base with important people to say our farewells, and the bigger the reason for the absence, and the longer period it covers, the greater the need to invest the farewell with meaning. Meaning which is often (somehow) gathered through sharing a meal, exchanging gifts, pressing messages of goodwill and hope onto the leaver and the leavee, elaborate assurances of the possibility of communication upheld, and a sort of 'final requests' conversation about items, deeds, events and plans. All in all, as if one were about to die.

I'm not very good at farewells, especially when combined with airports. Too many occasions of real wrenchings of the heart, like when my kids were flying off to their interstate home... and once, knifing into my heart, my son point-blank refusing to get on the plane and sobbing as if HE were about to die. Such a dilemma, and going totally against my instinct, which was to say 'of course you can stay with me darling'. I won't forget that. He did agree to fly, but walked down the hallway to the plane with the flight attendant, his little back shuddering with sobs.. no amount of gin and tonics or chocolate fixed me after that experience. Since then I've been even more hopeless at airports. I start getting homesick for myself before I get into the carpark! Meeting ppl at airports is marginally less worrying, altho the mind can always summon up a quick cartwheeling aircraft hitting a cow on the runway, a mis-timed bolt of lightening, or a missing-the-plane disaster at the other end. Sigh. An imagination is a terrible burden sometimes isn't it?

Getting myself onto a plane, with so many good wishes and heartfelt farewells and promises of things to come - it all makes me uneasy. It CAN'T be so simple!!! I don't think I have a death wish, or any kind of determination to be pessimistic about the trip. I just hate all the noting of my departure. The absoluteness of it. Too much like 'here ya go, just wiggle ya hips and the coffin will fit nicely. Now, can I get you a neck pillow or a pre-flight champagne???'. Nup. I want to creep away, waving a very little wave at my cats, and leave my natural orders happily, quietly, naturally ordering themselves around in their informal way without me, so it's all just waiting here for me when I return. So that the BIGNESS of it stops feeling so bloody big! So that rather than carrying the burdensome 'my gosh aren't you lucky WHAT a huge trip how will your health stand up where will you be for your birthday did you have a typhoid shot as well you WILL send photos and cards to us all did you remember the iPod" thoughts of the umpteen ppl I leave behind, I can just sort of be around on email; be just as impossible to ring up before lunchtime; and can ease my way back into physical contact with as little fanfare as possible. Why, ppls go away all the time. They do. And do we spend months worrying about their welfare and being aware of their physical absence and thinking what a hole they leave behind and goodness won't their hair have grown? Well, I hope not. I know that the more you care for the ppls, the more you think of them and want them to be here for hugs and such. And I do like it that ppls care for me, really I do.

I think I just want the uber-crazy fare-thee-well take care HERE I AM HAMMERING IT IN THAT YOU WILL BE GONE stuff to stop. I know I'll be gone. But I has a secret - I know I'll be BACK. I pwomised the cats.

Today brought to you by a strong feeling that the catbox needs changing, a good application of Prada shower gel, and for tonight, a two-generational wrist and cleavage-ful of Enjoy. Yes, dorter and I wearing matching purrfume. Dags R Us!

Gnashwailgrrrrr...

TRAVEL.

People do it for fun I'm told.

Anticipating the break?  Yes.  Being at the destination, yes I can see that.  Having the change of scene, enjoying the local treats and being far away from ordinary life concerns, yep.  Having new untried shoppies to investigate and many nice shiny things to play with?  Also yep.

But speak not to me of the airline company and its oxymoronic 'Customer Service'.  Well, we WERE serviced, but it was more of a surprise-from-behind-via-large-horse variety.  I kid you not.

Dear readers, there is a HYOOG difference between 'connecting flights' and 'connecting baggage'.  Trust me on this.  'Flights' means yes you can indeed get off one plane, wander to another departure lounge, and get on another.  Possibly even ending up where you want to be, with your luggage coming out of that weird black hole and going twirlies on the carousel.  'Baggage' means something different entirely.  It means that you can book connecting flights, but if, according to a highly semantic technicality, you have made two separate bookings, or sectors as I now know they are called, your bags will come out of the plane at the connecting airport, where you have to retrieve them and then check back in.  And even though you are promised by a supurrvisor purrson on pain of losing his job (tell someone who cares) that there really IS time to do this in half an hour, this is a LIE.  

What happens is that you retrieve bags, run sweating to the desk with your priority check-in ticket waving from your teeth, see your bags disappear up the treadmill thing, only to have the check-in purrson say 'oh dear the flight's closed'.  Things get farcical after this.

WE are not allowed on the flight.  The friends travelling with us are at the gate, holding up the plane for us, oh noble dear ones, saying 'no no they're on the way, we were promised they'd have time' etc etc, until they were told 'well now YOU have to get on the plane or stay behind'.  Meantime our bags have very efficiently made it onto the plane, thanks to the wonders of baggage handlers.  We otoh are stuck wrangling a customer service purrson who (eventually) has to grovel to us for not checking us in via correct procedure - if she had, the bags would have stayed with us.  She was so mortified when I burst into tears saying 'but my meds are in my bags!' she even said 'Come and stay at my place'.  

V#rg#n REFUSED ALL RESPONSIBILITY for this check-in/luggage shambles, the official word being 'if you check in thru our website it's your responsibility to check these things'.  WHAT???  They set up their check-in system full of bells and advertising whistles encouraging you to make web bookings, oh yes, it's fun, funky, cheaper and foolproof.  BullSHIT.  There is this absolutely fatal flaw in the system, which I might add I wasn't able to avoid even though I also chose to PAY THEM EXTRA by ringing a Customer Service Call Centre (I can think of some other words starting with C I'd like to use here) to ensure all the bookings were streamlined.

The message I get is that it's all my fault for changing my bookings when my travel dates changed.  This world-wide company can't manage streamlining bookings when travel dates change?  Isn't that somewhat equivalent to missing the toilet when you sit down to piddle?

Grrrrrrrr... we were forced to stay the night in a deeply, deeply ordinary and nasty motel, dining on cheapo versions of Lean n Queasy and a small bar of chocolate I happened to have in my bag.  M was so upset he fanged off in a taxi to get booze to help us thru the night. [He was a bit nervous to get a taxi driver in traditional Muslim head-dress, but fortunately no problem.]  We barely slept, I mean, up again at 4.45am to catch two more planes to Canberra, the alternative being to hang around in Brisbane with no motel and no nothing until 3pm.  Not to mention spending large portions of the night composing letters of complaint to Richard the man.

We be grumpy.

SAVE ME!!!!!

We're still working our asses off trying to get ready to go away.  I am still mystified by the amount of things that must be done so that we can 'just walk away'.  Huh.  That's a bloody wrong concept if ever I heard one.

I spose getting ready to travel does tend to focus the mind on 'what will I need to take?'; 'what must be done to leave things in order whilst away?; 'how much of a pain in the arse will it be if I forget x or do/don't do y?'.  But JEEEEEEEZ I seem to be living a very complicated life.

We have a three-person cat-feeding system.  Involving two different types of food (one purr cat), strange maneouvres with a dimplex heater in front of the cat door, also a closed/open door system to allow/deny access (one cat is not allowed out unsupurrvised).  Then there's the basics of leaving the house secure but accessible for all these kind people.  And writing out the details of cat care, including detailed instructions on how to apply harness to cat which needs to be walked.  Yes, I said harness, and walk.  Just don't ask, orright?

Empty the fridge of anything which might go pong by the time we return.  Cancel the papers.  Make sure the right bills are paid so we don't get back to a posse.  Lock up the car.  Put bits of gardening junk away including items which a burguler might handily use to break in.  Then run around inside locking windows and finding the other deck door key and hiding tempting-looking items (at this stage of paranoia that means everything except perhaps the cat box).  Start to think of what to pack and get distracted trying to find the unopened packet of decaf beans.  Then remember the plunger would be good too and look sadly at how big it is.

Think Dark Thoughts about how I have nothing to wear, not even a potato sack.  Wonder for the umpteenth time how come M can travel anywhere, anytime, anyhow, with one pair of shoes and his thongs.  Me no savvy.  What, no pink leopard-patterned courts?  No spare Berkies for those long walks days?  And what about a proper pair of lace-ups in case it rains.  And then, my god, all the matching slippers and tights and sockies and nail polish.  It's madness.

I am I think ready to ditch the idea that if I just take a complete outfit per day, and damn the fact that this means seven suitcases, I will be ok.  I don't have seven outfits.  Unless it's ok to get around in my jarmies or perhaps two carefully pinned sarongs and a fake hibiscus flower.

I'm tired.

I think I shall throw in the red daks, the orange and purple thongs, the lime-green sunhat and 6 bottles of purrfume.  Surely that will cover everything that matters?  Oh alright, I'll stick a cotton top in too.  One of the boring white ones so that everything I drop, dribble, touch, encounter and experience will make its mark.  On the unironed surface, sorry mum.

Seeya.  If I go mad at least I'll smell gorgeous.  The scent trail today was a blend of the Aigner from last post, and some Prada because it always always makes me feel like a princess.  And THAT is such a funny concept now I feel better and I shall go and look at my suitcase with more optimistic eyes.

Happy little Vegemites...

... and whirling dervishes have something in common, they both make me feel like toast.

Orright that's got the bad joke out of the way... sheesh I'm BUSY.  Getting ready for two trips away, one this Saturday, for a week.  To Cairns, with friends.  To be warm and snorkel and see lots of budgies and nature stuff and spend monies and be relaxed and go 'huh??' when the locals say it is too cold to swim when the water is only 25 degrees.  We south coast NSW types are made of sterner stuff when it comes to sea.  If it doesn't burn with cold, freeze our knees into giant goosebumps and make us regret ever getting out of bed, it doesn't count.

I think Cairns is gonna be great.  I went there two years ago, at much this time of Canberra winter, and it was lovely, balmy, so green while we were in severe drought.  Mind you half of Innisfail and the hinterland had just been mown down by a cyclone, so you have to keep your purrspective.  This time, instead of just friend and myself, we are taking her bloke and my M along.  We're staying in an apartment rather than with family, and we'll have our own car.  I think what we finally end up doing, as group decisions and individual choices, will be very interesting.   And maybe this time friend and I won't need to spend the entire trip home in stunned silence after a rather intense and overwhelming amount of the family factor!

My week so far has been spent getting ready for a much longer trip, to Scandinavia, the Baltic States and Korea. We leave for this trip only three weeks after we return from Cairns, so there's a need to get little things done, like passports and visas and accommodation bookings and convincing the specialist tour advisors that when we say 'First Class rail overnight' we don't mean 24 hours on a clapped-out pre-Iron Curtain bus with no seats and a soused driver.  Yeah, yeah, call us picky.  But at my time of life (older than you think) I prefer to know in advance I won't be spending endless hours standing up with nothing but a hat-rack full of chickens to hold onto.  I likes my comforts.  I likes my hotels with lifts, bathrooms on the same floor, doors which stay closed, and beds which don't mysteriously part in the middle in the night, as the bottom sheet loses what ever force it had to keep two single beds on castors together.  Hotels which don't have a corridor full of over-excited Romanian schoolgirls intent on slamming every door seventeen times before 2am.  Hotels where you go and stay and the everyday comforts of western civilisation are yours for the price.

We discovered on our previous long European trip that small things CAN'T be taken for granted, like lifts, or porters in railway stations, or even (once) booked seats in first class on a train.  That train was overfull of people going to the next city for the next World Cup soccer game, and there wasn't no way they was gonna give up a seat booked to a mere Aussie bleeder in sensible shoes and Prada purrfume.  Nup.  We hung on, swaying and cursing, for an hour and a half, until the slimey limeys and wanker yanks got OFF.  I emoted.

But what am I really talking about here?  The power of small things, to make or break a day, or the difference between essentially comfortable and essentially miserable (try no hook for the shower spray, so you can't have a shower without drenching the entire bathroom, soaking the towels, sending floods onto the carpet, and endangering your dicky knee on the slippery floor).  When Il Sardonico, the night manager in our Roman hotel, greeted us by demanding to know how much we'd paid the taxi driver and then laughing at us for getting ripped off (reading my post earlier on said driver, you'll realise we were still astonished we made it to the hotel alive!).  Like, hey dude, a mere hello would do!  Mind you we relented later when we met Ms Charming Roman day-shift manager, who spoke to us about the hotel cats, "Tritticano and-a his wife".  Awww..

Small things have taken up all my brain space, breathing space, and most of my desk (dammit, most of my study) for days.  I have listed, tracked, hunted, deleted, dealt with and despaired of eleventy tiny things.  I feel most achievable, I really do.  I also know that if I don't do this in excruciating detail now, I'll spend  the first three weeks of the trip saying, regularly and triumphantly:" I KNOW WHAT I FORGOT!" and I will drive M mad.  I will also drive myself mad trying to shop for whatever these critical items are, because the law of international shopping in strange cities is that whenever you go to find nail polish remover, it will be hard to find, miles away, unidentifiable in Swedish form, four times the going price for diamond dust, and available about 50 metres away in the other direction with a huge sign on it in English saying ON SALE.

Another small thing is the delight of a Strawberrynet parcel which arrived yesterday containing a new purrfume.  So the scent trail for today is "Aigner Woman" by Etienne Aigner in Leather.  Mmm, leather....