It took a pandemic

… to get me to write a blog post after more than 12 months!

Here I am, stuck at home- which is pretty normal since I can’t go on holidays all the time! Last year we didn’t manage any holidays but we managed 2 in 2018 and sneaked one in during the first week of Feb. this year. That was the mini cruise around Southern Tasmania and it was stunning and unique.

The mini cruise took just a week but was on a very small cruise ship owned by Coral Expeditions, with only 40 passengers instead of 72 due to the imminent coronavirus spread. It meant really personal attention, gorgeous food, an assortment of interesting people we could tolerate, breath-taking scenery and wildlife no one else usually sees.

But I’ll leave that to a special trip blog post. There is such a lot that’s happened and not happened in the past year, most of which is dead boring for you guys out there in the virtual world. The good bits have been some repairs and improvements to our little abode and the nasty bits concerning the death of our kitty, Tenzing, 12 months ago. I also managed to damage myself several times and get pneumonia (again).

I have been trying to sort out excess possessions, mainly comprising hobby materials I accumulated over the years when depresson prevented me from doing most activities. Almost all the stuff I needed to get rid of has gone to the local Refugee Resource Centre and I still have some stuff to sort through. However, I feel that I deserve a bit of time DOING the craft activities NOW rather than endlessly getting rid of things because I might drop off the planet and never get the enjoyment I anticipated.

This reminiscence also made me think at the beginning of lockdown here in South Australia, about all the wonderful experiences I have had in the past that I can never have again. There are so many things I enjoyed that I hadn’t appreciated sufficiently at the time and now wish I could remember more of their substance. For instance, when I was a junior lecturer at a local university I drove to Melbourne [726.8 km according to Google Maps] to see a Bruce Springsteen concert at the old MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground), after buying some tickets from a medical student who had to sit an exam or something. It was an amazing concert- just on the flat, no seating and I was small enough that my partner could sit me on his shoulders for short periods so I could see better! There is no way that could happen these days, we are such relative crocks! Naturally enough I had to miss giving a lecture on the Monday as we were still driving back! I had asked a colleague to do his scheduled lecture out of sequence but he ended up with a sore throat and the students couldn’t fathom why they’d been abandoned. Oh well, it was worth it to me, and they got their lecture on Friday instead of Monday. This was the first setlist. And he played about half a dozen encores!

We also had a lot of walking holidays in Europe over the years and I can hardly remember any of the experiences, even when I look at the photographs. There are a few photos that bring back vivid recollections  of goats wearing huge bells on colourful braids or wild bear berries growing on the top of flat rocks in the mountains of Norway, but they are few and far between. I also wanted to return to Venice again to enjoy all the sights with my partner and take more photos to replace the ones that were in my camera when I was mugged in Amsterdam so many years ago. Luckily this one was on a finished roll of film in my luggage.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, we are enjoying our redesigned back garden with its red Japanese-looking arch and lots of hanging baskets with white petunias. The new kitties are enjoying it too, as we had to get a pair to fill the gap left by dear Tenzing. The new kitties are both rescues, found dumped in the bush, recovered from all sorts of maladies and cared for by dedicated human foster-mums.

Here are Fisher and Paykel: