Basil and Bonkers

We have our BBQ this weekend with the neighbours....thanks England....which we're really looking forward to. Our homestay students are driving us Bonkers, so it will be nice to get away from them. Got to just keep grinning and bearing it, and think about the extra cash.

Had my birthday, turned 34, now feeling old, well oldish. Next year I'll be half-way to 70. Nice. Megan took Basil and me up to Peregian Beach on the Sunshine coast for a nice weekend away. We all loved it and had a wonderful relaxing time, except maybe the time I had to chase Basil down the beach with a small jellyfish in his mouth. Needless to say he's starting to get very quick - not as quick as Usain Bolt mind you, but I give him another couple of weeks until he's making me look like a 90 year old marathon runner. Oh, and also got some lovely cards and pressies from everyone, so thank you, and even managed to get a light tan.

Megan's conviced we should both chuck in our jobs and open up a cafe somewhere up the sunshine coast to escape from the endless grind and monotony of slaving away all day every day to line someone else's pockets; am tempted to agree but somehow feel that this would be swapping one type of grind for another that comes in a mug. Decisions decisions.

Off to Byron Bay with Basil and MC and possibly also Carls and Matt at the start of October. Really looking forward to that. In the meantime we'll just be getting on with things, trying to plan our return to the UK and generally just enjoying the great weather we've been having.

Basil & The Ashes

Since I last wrote, apologies for any keen readers out there (though I do get the feeling I am mostly writing for myself), Basil has arrived, August has come and gone, and almost most importantly England have won the Ashes. What fun I've had consoling my Strayian work colleagues. At least they're still good at the pole vault, or one of them is anyway.

Naturally England's win meant i won my bet with the neighbour, so thay are very kindly hosting a huge slap-up bbq for us in a couple of weeks. So jolly kind of them!

Basil....hmmm....Basil is a little monkey with piranha-sharp teeth. He is unbelievably cute and good-natured, when he's not trying to chew the backs of your legs. We've now had him for just over 5 weeks and he has doubled in size, eats like a horse, and craps like an elephant. but he's still cute. The picture is of him on his first visit to the beach down the Gold Coast. He loved it. Since then he tries to go swimming at every opportunity, which includes in his water bowl and under the garden hose. More of Basil later.

Having had a 3 week break from the homestay students we're now back up to full capacity with two swiss girls staying with us. It turns out that one is a sous-chef in real life so we're looking forward to some tasty meals in the next few weeks. In fact, we've got a pretty full-house at the moment with a couple of Megan's friends from the UK also staying, as they journey round the world.

Sadly megan and I have had to forego our honeymoon plans for October, owing to my work. We've been informed that we all 'have' to take 3 weeks off over xmas which basically means we can't take time off at any other time. So it looks like we may well be coming back to the UK and Hungary for xmas and New Year, and then will try to fit in our honeymoon on the way back out to Oz. Looks like we'll try to go to Thailand or somewhere similar. We shall see.

Thought I'd start putting in an Albertism every time I blog - in essence, a comment/deed/action or lack thereof, made by the father-in-law which should never have been made or contemplated in the first instance. At his daughter's graduation (yes the other one!), he was somewhat taken aback by the number of people of Asian extraction going up to collect their degrees and queried rather too loudly whether in fact they were getting their degrees in English.