Dear Friends, another Saturday Dispatch, as we will be driving to Melbourne immediately after breakfast tomorrow to visit Viva. We had hoped to see her yesterday, but she was too tired, so we are making a special trip tomorrow instead. She celebrates her birthday on Tuesday and we can’t be there on the day, but a visit two days early will be welcome.
We are loving Autumn here – cool nights and mornings and beautiful days – the roses are flourishing, the fruit has ripened and been eaten by Labradors or birds except for about a dozen pieces that we rescued, the silver beet and basil are prolific and the zucchini are about to take over the garden. The tomatoes are ripening slowly, but the chillies are showing a reluctance to participate in all this activity.
Dinner at the Flower Drum with Ian & Robyn 2006
Since I last wrote we have been busy as usual and sadly spent too much time indoors booking footy tickets, answering emails, paying bills, reconciling bank accounts and backing up data. Wes gets into the garden a little more than I do, and he did tidy up under the house, filling our bin with rubbish and making it much easier to access everything. We discovered that we are completely out of still wine, so we will have to remedy that!
We have been to see ‘The Social Network’, which we loved and were pleased to see that it did well at the Oscars, as well as the play Apologia’, which we did not enjoy, although dinner with Ian & Robyn beforehand in the Curve Bar was lovely and made up for the play’s shortcomings. We had dinner with friends, Al & Elli Barnes, who have taken on parenthood of Bella, who is now 19 months. Her mother is unable to look after her and they are now her guardians and official parents. We shared an interesting evening chatting about all the obstacles they have faced and are overcoming, as well as enjoying some homemade pizzas. Bella, surprisingly, took to me – most young children much prefer Warren, but any thoughts I have of converting her to the Pies would be very misplaced, as the Bombers deserve her support in honour of all Al & Elli are doing for her.
Wes and I have both suffered bad headaches during the week – most unusual for us and took to bed with Panadol and managed to sleep them off. Sadly we missed Rotary, a Strong Class, and U3A Morning Tea. However, Wes was well enough to enjoy the Men’s Lunch at Sailors Falls Estate on Thursday in company with 25 other blokes.
Porcupine Ridge 2003
Yesterday was spent in Melbourne – we met up with Doug Walsh, Joy & Russ Dale, at the Fitzroy Garden Cafe, opposite the Exhibition Buildings, which was hosting the World’s Longest Lunch (try getting a park in Nicholson Street while that is going on). After a good discussion about the 2010 Premiership and the 1990 Premiership (you can imagine how delighted Wes was with this), we settled down to a serious chat about Rotary projects in the Philippines. Doug is now considered the Australian Rotary expert on the Philippines and he is finding that quite a burden, so wants to enlist Wes and Russ to help spread the load.
After lunch, we drove to Ascot Vale, where we spent a lovely afternoon with Robert and Marilyn, catching up with them and some of their news. We love spending time with them, as anyone does with old and true friends. Then home again where the boys were waiting eagerly for dinner. Judi and Michael had been away in Ocean Grove for three days to celebrate Judi’s birthday and it was great to hear from them that they had arrived home safely. As well, an electrician rang Wes to see if he could visit Viva, and she reported afterwards that all her wiring is OK, which should surely mean the air-conditioning can be fixed at last.
This morning we did the early shift on one of the best Farmers’ Markets we can remember – everyone was in good spirits, smiling, greeting friends or making new ones, complimentary of the produce available, understanding that Red Beard Bakery and Meredith cheese couldn’t be in two places at once (they are both in Melbourne for the Food & Wine Festival), reminiscing about yesterday’s Longest Lunch in Musk, which was held in the Musk Schoolhouse Gardens, created and owned by Stuart Rattle. We sold lots of bags, gave away plenty of leaflets on the Market and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Then Barbara, Warren & I went to Gracenotes Café for breakfast, before we headed back here to tackle today’s issues. I managed to delete the back-ups on Quicken, so have had to recreate the last month of transactions – eek!
Anthony, Jessie, Dante & Chiara Mammino at Dante’s 4th birthday
The next Dispatch will come to you from Sri Lanka (I hope) as we are heading off on Friday for a month away. We haven’t been back to Sri Lanka since we were there in 1979 and missed the births of Heath Preston and Matthew Spiteri! We are hooking into the Cricket World Cup, but will spend a week in Sri Lanka ourselves before meeting our co-travellers and seeing Australia play Pakistan on 19th March. Then we have a short break in the Maldives, back to Sri Lanka, then onto Mumbai for the Final and finally a few days at Raffles in Singapore before flying home. Wes is busy checking all our paperwork which arrived yesterday. We will spend the cricket leg of our tour with our dear friend, Norma Hutchins from Freo, and meet up again with John Schibli, the tour organiser, and Murray Holderhead, who we also met on our first tour. Keith Stackpole is the resident celebrity – definitely our vintage and we are looking forward to meeting him. Sadly Jane & David Knox are in Canada on a lovely holiday incorporating snow and New York, and Terry McDonald is off to New Zealand – we will miss all three of them, and hope to make new friends from the small group of cricket lovers we will be joining.
I will try and keep in touch via email and will upload my Dispatch onto the current blog - www.karenmaloney5.blogspot.com –so if you are not hearing from me and would like to know what is happening, please log onto it. We don’t have a camera at present, so unless we purchase one before we go, photos will be from our phones and intermittent in download ability. While we are away and the boys are in Eureka Kennels, Judi will look after our mail, the street bins, and check the house, as well as raid the garden for produce; Barbara will have spare copies of passport information and our ‘What to take in the event of a fire bag’; Ian Tinetti may do a new back fence; Jonno will mow the lawns and tidy the garden, and no doubt all the wineries we support will send us boxes of wine! This week will be spent packing, getting tidied up, visiting Viva and Leanne, sharing a last breakfast at Café 3460, as well as having cuppas with various friends to say goodbye. Enjoy your week and we’ll be in touch again as soon as we can.
Jane, Wes & Judi in Sri Lanka 1979
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