Dear Friends, we are home safe & sound
and have been reunited with our lovely boys. Breakfast this morning was a
chance to give gifts (books specially chosen by Wes from Hay-on-Wye), tell a
few tales and catch up on everyone else’s news. Bilbo & Frodo had forgotten
it was Sunday and they were so thrilled when I took them to the Market, and
then when we put them back in the car to go to breakfast. They have feasted on
cabbage leaves at the former & toast & vegemite at the latter.
Wes has a big day ahead of him – he has
just gone to meet up with Rotary President, Jan Pengilley, to be briefed about
the free Peace Concert this afternoon, as he is the MC. Before the concert,
there will be a special walk around Lake Daylesford Peace Mile, and as he had
the idea that Rotary take on the Peace Mile as a project, he has to be there as
well. I’m probably a non-starter for both activities as my asthma is bad for
some reason today.
I left those of you following our holiday
with one day left in Wales before we came home, and a very good day it was
indeed. We drove through Oxfordshire to visit 3 small villages and one large
town where relatives of Wes had lived. We found some Kings in the first graveyard
we visited, but we really hit pay dirt in the graveyard at Thames with Pearces,
and he was quite emotional to see graves of forbears he had found on
Ancestry.com. We ended up having a yummy late lunch at the local pub – scampi
& red wine for me & sausages & mash with a Guinness for him.
Fortunately we had checked our flights on my
phone that morning & discovered that we were flying British Airways from
Terminal 5, not Qantas from Terminal 3 as we thought. Our experience with BA
was not good and they all seem quite cross that Qantas has chosen to partner
Emirates after 16 years. Checking in was a nightmare and it took three requests
for help to finally get a person to look after us. We had to rearrange our luggage
as BA has a limit of 32 kgs, whereas Qantas allows 40 kg, but we solved that by
taking the laptop from Wes’s heavy case & putting it in my lighter one. We
then sat on the tarmac for 2 hours before taking off, which messed up the
travel plans of many of our fellow flyers. We were in a configuration we had
not experienced before where Wes and I were facing each other with a dividing
panel in between. He flew the whole journey facing backwards and found it an
unpleasant experience.
The food on board was unappetising so I
decided to sleep instead, which Wes tells me was a very good idea. When we
arrived at Singapore we had to find a transfer desk to get our boarding passes
for our flight to Melbourne as BA couldn’t give them to us. Once that was done,
it was into the Qantas lounge and straight to the showers. Wes put on his
Carlton 2013 polo shirt and it attracted quite a few comments in the lounge
from homesick Aussies.
We boarded our plane and were immediately
engulfed by Aussie good humour. Nigel, our delightfully gay steward, was a
Carlton supporter & offered to move Wes to first class (if only there was
one on the plane), but I would be put in Economy where I belonged. He made sure
we were well fed and watered, sympathised with our bad experience with BA, and
confessed to dreaming of Eddie Betts (exciting Carlton player) during his
break!
We landed at Melbourne Airport, picked up
our pre-ordered duty free, breezed through immigration, picked up our bags
after no wait at all, straight through customs and Andrews Parking were by our
side in a minute to take us to Mickleham Road to collect our car.
What a delight to be back in a comfortable
Mazda with cruise control and to be driving against the traffic which was
bumper to bumper in the rain, as people drove to work. We were home quickly and
delighted to see that everything looked the same, except that Daylesford was
now covered in Autumn colours and looking superb. After unpacking and putting
on washing etc, we hopped into bed with the
Age and pots of tea. Wes slept most of the day, but I found it difficult to
sleep, so got up every hour to put on more washing etc. Judi had left us yummy
bread, cheese and tomatoes, so we fed ourselves a couple of times with that
meal over the next 24 hours.
Wes collected a pair of very clean, very
thrilled Labradors from the kennels on Friday morning – they had been perfectly
behaved until the night before when they had dug little holes into their
bedding, which means they are now one mattress short! I did some shopping to
tide us over until today, and we tried to get up-to-date with Reckon &
paperwork, until we were too tired to think.
Jeff, Leigh & Karen at the wedding
Yesterday we decided to go to the MCG to
see our first game of footy for the season – would the vastly improved Richmond
Tigers be too good for the Pies who were still undermanned and with less
confidence after the beating by the Hawks? I had bought Wes a guest pass into
the MCC and we hoped to catch up with Loud Gayle, but although I visited all
her favourite haunts, we were out of luck. Amazingly the Pies put on a superb 3rd
quarter and won a game where they were definitely the underdogs. We drove back
home and had fish & chips in bed watching Carlton, who were also undermanned
& underdogs, beat West Coast in Perth, which isn’t an easy task. Daylesford
has started its season well with two good wins and yesterday they unfurled
their Premiership Flag, which was our second choice of activity if we weren’t
up to the trip to Melbourne.
Thanks again to everyone for your messages
while we were away – much appreciated. I’ll be in touch again next Sunday.
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