Daylesford Dispatch - Sunday 28th April 2013

Dear Friends, I ran out of space last Sunday to talk a little about some of the authors we picked up at Hay-on-Wye. I had hoped to get lots of second-hand Scandinavian crime writers, but I could only buy new copies, so didn’t bother as I can easily get them new here or second-hand online. For 50p each (approx. 75c) we found 4 Henry James novels that were part of a deceased estate; Wes discovered the 3 missing volumes of Dirk Bogarde’s autobiography – at one stage, we had all six, and now we do again; I picked up a few of the authors I liked in the female detective genre that I had been reading for U3A, and for $2.50 I chanced upon a new copy of the latest Mark Haddon book (he of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time fame) and lo & behold it is set just outside of, and refers to bookshops in, Hay.

Black Caviar’s retirement was the first thing I saw when we landed in Singapore as it had just been announced and Facebook was full of it. We are very sorry not to have seen her race live, but we both think the owners & trainer made the right decision – what more did she have to do to prove her might? I have held off buying Gerard Whateley’s biography until she retired and I understand he is madly completing the amended edition and it will hit the bookstands soon

We have returned home to the happy news that Annie Smith has a new friend – Rosie, a rescue Golden Retriever. We have yet to meet her, but it sounds like a marriage made in heaven, especially as Annie had been so lonely since her Irish Water Spaniel, Misu, developed cancer & died before turning 2 years old, earlier in the year.

Wes and I have continued to struggle with our jetlag, but after surviving the 3am wide awake, need a pot of tea feeling on Monday night, for the first time, I am quite confident I am over it. Wes has been taking longer, and when he discovered he had a completely free day on Tuesday (Barbara had a morning activity in Ballarat so there was no hydro) he spent the day resting & sleeping & getting back into the groove. It was a shame that our return home was so close to very busy Sunday of Rotary activities, and I did drag him to the MCG on the Saturday for the footy.

 

Me in bed at Hay-on-Wye with the last G&T of the trip – as you can see, just a bit squashy!

 

We have brought lots of rain with our return, which is very welcome, as our plants suffered while we were away. I had asked Judi to water the tomatoes & herbs, but didn't think about our lemon & lime trees. They are now looking good again, although their leaves had started curling through lack of water. We are especially excited about the lime tree, which was a gift from Sherryn when we moved into our house about 8 years ago, and this year is the first time we have produce. Not that I have picked any yet, but there are lots of immature fruit and we are most optimistic. Wes is taking all the credit, as he should, for moving the tree and then for sheltering it during Winter.

Looking down on Hay-on-Wye from the Castle

 

It has been too wet for golf, so we will have to try and play this coming week instead. Wes and Barbara held a meeting of Hepburn Voices on Monday afternoon, where they planned a morning of interviews on 11^th May to celebrate the 150^th Anniversary of the Wombat Botanical Gardens. There has been no gym for me as Barry is in Adelaide for a wedding this week, I will be more than ready to return on Tuesday.

It is amazing how many things there are to do after only a short trip away –dry-cleaning to put in, cars to wash, gardens to weed, friends to ring or bump into in the street, presents to deliver and photos to fix, compress & file!

On Wednesday we drove to Melbourne to attend a Guide Dogs luncheon. We had been invited because we gave them a donation last Christmas in lieu of gifts to friends & family, and as Anzac Day was the next day, Wes suggested I stay overnight in Melbourne until Friday. What a schmozzle – we parked at Rydges in Exhibition Street and walked to the Sofitel caught the lift to the 35^th floor and discovered we were in the wrong spot. We were supposed to be on level 35 at the Rialto at the other end of town (my fault), so caught a cab and, after a couple of false alarms & absolutely no signage to help us, made lunch with one minute to spare. We are so pleased we went and reconnected with a charity that has always been foremost in our hearts & minds. One of the lunch guests, Betty Amsden, is a well-known philanthropist, and during her short speech, she decided to donate another $13,000 which will enable Guide Dogs to bring a German instructor here to retrain their trainers in halving the dog training time from 20 to 10 weeks.

Betty Amsden at a young 86 years old

 

After Wes drove back home, I went to the Kino to see Rust & Bone, a little-known French-Belgian romantic drama, which I really enjoyed.

Anzac Day was wonderful – I had hoped to get to the Shrine for the Dawn Service, but slept through the wake-up call after originally waking up far too early first. After breakfast I went for a walk through the Exhibition Gardens, then onto Bell Street, Fitzroy, to see if Gayle & Fraser were around. They weren’t back from the Dawn Service, so I walked to the MCG to find them in the MCC queue, but I was too early.

I then walked back into town and found a spot in Swanston Street, outside Young & Jacksons, to watch the Parade. It was a wonderful experience, being part of all the celebrations and applause. There were young kids holding placards to help the Diggers find their mates, but typically the young kids got bored and were playing with their placards, making identification quite difficult; there were gleaming Mustangs chauffeuring those who couldn’t walk the distance, and umpteen marshals making sure that order appeared from the chaos. It was inspirational to see the Turkish, Maltese, Italian & Indian contingents as they massed near me.

Back to the hotel, and after a quick change into footy clothes, I met Danny at European, where we enjoyed a lovely slow lunch before the game. The crowd of 93,000+ was fantastic, second only to the first ANZAC Day clash in 1995, but the Bombers were far too good for the Pies and ran away with the match in the second half. Sitting between David Lazzaro & Danny Millman was a treat, as both have good senses of humour and did their best to get the Pies over the line.

I was horrified to discover back in my hotel room that I could watch Rugby, Boxing, Golf or Cricket flashbacks, but in the home of AFL footy, I couldn’t watch live the historic game in Wellington between the Saints & the Swans. I’ve made the point forcefully on Trip Advisor. Meanwhile Wes had taken Barbara to the delightful 9am ANZAC Day service at Eganstown, where she was bemused that there was no mention made of Kiwis.

On Friday I decided to walk to Queen Victoria Market, as it is ages since I have been there. I found a chili encrusted salami which claims to be the hottest going around, so bought it for Wes and he assures me it is very strong indeed. I felt quite nostalgic wandering up & down the food aisles as there was a period in our lives when I shopped every Thursday at the Market, with Samuel Snugglepot sitting in the car waiting my return.

Wes picked me up and we drove to Fairfield Station where we met up with Lovely, Malcolm, Greta & Penny. Lunch was at a very child-friendly café called Fifteen Pounds, where we sat for 1.5 hours and enjoyed good food and coffee. 10/10 to the staff, who made us all so very welcome. Greta is a serene & confident mother and Penny seems to be benefitting from this. She is a very content child and slept in Wes’s arms for about 30 minutes until she woke up needing a feed.

 

By the time we got home mid-afternoon, I was exhausted and decided bed was the best spot to be, and I felt much better yesterday for the rest. Later that night we had a very sad phone call from Ian Robinson to say that Oscar, their labradoodle had been put to sleep that morning. In less than a week, Oscar had gone from a happy, seemingly well 14.5 year old dog, to a very sick boy riddled with tumours & cancer. Our hearts go out to Ian & Robyn, the emptiness they are experiencing can only be healed by time.

Yesterday we allocated the morning to gardening, so Wes collected some bags of manure, I bought the soil & top dressing, and redid two of the four front vegetable patches, while he pruned the fruit trees, except for the fig tree, which has some unripe fruit that I keep hoping will mature. Wes assures me that Bilbo keeps an eye on the figs as well and put his mouth around one to check whether it was ripe or not, so I suspect the boys will end up with the figs, not us!

Wes made his third trip to Melbourne in four days when he drove Barbara to the MCG that afternoon to see Carlton play Adelaide. They were in better seats than they have enjoyed for a while and got the Blues comfortably over the line, although it was a long trip home.

They are off again to Williamstown this afternoon to see the play 33 Variations, along with Judi, Michael & Judi’s friend, Carol. I’m hoping to do a little more gardening and make some soups for the coming week, which looms as another busy one.

 

At breakfast this morning we discussed lichen so I have included a photo that we took at the Priory in Wales, where the lichen has taken over the original stone – what beautiful colours! We did range over quite a few topics including grass, junk mail, reunions, footy, books, dogs & Richard III.

Enjoy your week.

Daylesford Peace Dispatch - Sunday, 21st April 2013

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.

English sheep from our Welsh bathroom window

 

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 3^rd 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.