The fires in Victoria proved to be horrific and the loss of life exceeded everyones’ estimates.

Alan and Val continued their trip and followed the fires – however they swear blind they didn’t see any. Last we hear they were in Moe – parking the van on 11 March and heading for Melbourne to fly out to UK next week.

A friend at work had some tickets to see Busting Out so another friend, Bron, and I went – we had a nice meal at a Thai place at Albion which we thoroughly enjoyed and then went on to the Twelfth Night Theatre – up behind the Ecca grounds, sort of. It was a lovely quaint theatre, the sort you would have seen at uni in the 70’s – tacky and old but it was airconditioned – otherwise it would have been totally unbearable. The show started off with a stand up comedian and went downhill from there – the jokes were off colour and the humour was just above the gutter – however the delivery was slick and it somehow came over well – it was so horrifyingly awful that I laughed till I cried for the first hour and a half and then I started cringing and was so glad when it finished – yes it was funny, yes it was awful, yes it was confronting – there was a lot of opportunity for a breast cancer message to justify this disgustingly awful yet funny show – however none came and it was a bit of a let down in the end. My friend Michele who gave me the tickets would not have enjoyed it at all.

Max and Carol asked us to accompany them to Kings Beach for a nite but Max ended up in hospital and so John and I kept Carol company for 2 nites – we had a lovely time – BBQ Saturday nite, trip to Montville on Sunday for lunch and coffee and then BBQ Sunday nite, brekkie at a lovely cafe Monday and the day off to boot. Max’s ex flatmate John came along on Sat nite and Sunday and his mother came on Sunday – it was a really enjoyable break from the mundane and we had an excellent time. Max is out of hospital and should be back at work soon. He is still recovering from his bike accident last July – more and more convinced that he wants to retire.

The next weekend we went to Reedy Creek to visit Robyn and Alan for Robyn’s 50th birthday – had a good nite – as always the last to leave – one day John will be first and I won’t know what to do. We got home about 2am – lucky we both had nanna naps Saturday arvo in anticipation. We knew Robyn would have family stay and so we were prepared for a late drive home.

I had been nagging John for months to get rid of the fence around the patio at home. The concrete was filthy and all the colour was fading – we had to do something so we called in Kleenit who, for half the price of a quote I had to do only the driveway, came and scrubbed clean all the concrete and pavers around the house and resealed all the concrete areas. Everything looks so nice and new and so I was able to finally convince John to demolish the fence – however we have a problem with the fence supports and may have to thing of something quite imaginative to get rid of them. In the meantime the back patio is now very open and useable and far less claustrophobic.

Ruth & Phil had some friends from UK come to stay so on the Tuesday when John was at work I asked them out for tea – Will was dispossessed of his place at the apartment while they were here and was coming to stay with us for a week so Bill & Chris, Ruth, Phil & Will all turned up for tea – each day I would take Will into Chermside with me and he would go to uni or whatever. We had a great night but Will had a bit of a bug that he was struggling to get over – he went to bed. After a week they all went home and Will is now installed back in the apartment in the Aurora Building – Ruth looks like she has found a house at Twin Waters and their house at Stanwell Park may well sell. With the diving property market it appears they are taking far less than they hoped but are paying far less than they expected. Either way our opportunity to stay at Aurora is stymied for the time being as Will is there and we dont want to encrouch on him by staying – not the same feeling of fun when staying with someone. However there is no reason we cant.

On 7 March we had Deb Hong’s wedding party at Patonga Beach. We flew down on Saturday to Newcastle – it took us 3 hours to get to Ettalong where we were staying – twice as long as it should have – then onto the Patonga Beach Hotel for a wonderful evening to celebrate Deb’s wedding. Deb and Jamie had married on 20 February on Newcastle Beach with only Karl as witness then had gone onto a cruise for 7 days – they were exceedingly happy as they partied with all their guests in a very casual atmosphere. Deb positively glowed in her wedding dress which was beautiful. They have a challenge ahead of them managing a marriage where they live 6 hours apart and have some details to work out but they are determined to make it work.

On Sunday we had breakfast with many of the party guests at Ettalong Markets which is quite novel – the accommodation is overhead and the markets are below – the owners appear to be Italian and I think they are trying to emulate an Italian village where people live among the shops and it appears to be quite successful – apart from the awful smoking smell in the rooms and the left over smell from the laundry catching fire we had a nice stay. All the staircases are a bit rickety and they were not very open to allowing me to use the lift so I found it a bit inconvenient – however we weren’t there long – had I been there any longer I would have found the stairs up to the accommodation intolerable and the place was a bit of a maze – however the reason we were there and the company made it quite pleasant and the shortcomings were only minor.

We moved onto Michaels at Lane Cove – starting with meeting mum and Mike at Longueville Hotel for a quick coffee and then onto the Chinese Kitchen in the main street – excellent meal – Ron Rundle and his mate Mac joined us and we had a very nice lunch – we later retired to Mike’s place and had toast and bread rolls for tea – I fell asleep as did John and when we woke Mike and mum were watching a movie – the Water Horse then Die Hard 4 – even mum enjoyed it – then we watched the end of Jurassic Park before hitting the sack again quite late – Mike woke us at 9am so we could head off to the airport, after dropping mum at Central.

A quick flight home, pick up the car at the long term parking. We have found that if 2 of us are going for a couple of days it is cheaper to park the car in the long term carpark at the airport than it is to catch the train to the airport - $20 each both ways - $80 for the train and $65 to park at the airport – cheaper if we have time to go to the one that is off airport.