Today I turned forty nine which means in twelve months’ time I turn fifty….FIFTY! I can’t believe that and I am so not ready for it. I feel like I’m in my twenties still. Doesn’t this mean I’m supposed to have helped build an orphanage, saved some orang-utans and climbed Everest by now? Well I’ve […]
This week has been one full of mixed emotions; on Tuesday my twenty one year old son attended the funeral of an old school mate who unimaginably took his own life. Such a tragedy that he was unable to seek help from the turmoil he was suffering. A very good friend of mine who is […]
Today would have been your 47th birthday Paul. What a long time you have been gone from our lives; thirty years to be exact and boy oh! boy have their been some changes in the world. Today being your birthday, you would probably be receiving greetings from all your friends on Facebook. You’d have loved […]
This weekend is a long weekend for us here in Australia. As a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, Australia allows its citizens a public holiday to celebrate the Queen’s official birthday even though Her Maj probably blows up a few balloons and serves ice-cream & jelly on her actual birthday, being 21 April. The […]
Autumn in South Australia is different to the ones I remember from my old home in Somerset England. For a start the majority of our trees aren’t deciduous, being mostly gum so we don’t usually see that mass of Autumn colour so prevalent in the northern hemisphere. There are of course areas that do have leaf shedding trees my […]
Last Monday evening I had the pleasure of seeing Irish band the Script in concert. My son had given me the tickets for Christmas and although they are not his thing, he played the dutiful son and kindly accompanied me together with his sister. We were a fairly small audience compared to some of the […]
At the end of last year the family were having a mass clear out in preparation for some renovations and I came across my ‘wafer tin’ which stores all the letters I’ve kept over the years. The letters mainly stem from the late 70’s and right through the 80’s. The day after my thirteenth birthday […]
Finishing off our travels with a photo gallery – I’ll leave the travel writing to the professionals!
Having sat on an elephant for the first time in my life I was feeling stiffness in places I didn’t even think I had muscles so jumping on and off a mini bus the following day was probably not the best recovery plan. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what we did as we joined the tourist trail […]
Today I scrubbed an elephant with a nail brush. It reminded me of that prison punishment when prisoners are made to scrub the toilet with a toothbrush. The difference being I was in seventh heaven! Now in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, it was time for our day at Patara Elephant Farm – […]
Waking the Wombat