Letter
No. 239
Dear all,
JANUARY On Friday 20 January we set off to
the airport early Friday morning. Katie gave me a Mystery Weekend away for my 50th Birthday with two days
of entertainment and I had no idea where we were going. Matthew dropped us off
and I was pleasantly surprised to discover we were going to Melbourne for a
long weekend. Our plane was a little late and due to the time difference we
arrived around lunch time. We had been planning to go to our hotel just off
Bourke Street and then wander around and look for something to eat but as it
was a bit later than planned we decided to grab a bite at the airport instead.
We then caught a taxi into the city. As we were coming in we saw a police
helicopter hovering over the city and police cars going crazy everywhere. We
checked into our hotel and switched on the TV to see the coverage of the idiot
who had just driven down Bourke Street killing eight people with his car. It
was quite shocking. If we had not stopped for lunch at the airport we could
have easily been walking down Bourke Street at that time.
We went for a walk in the afternoon along the
river and wandered around the bars and sights. Katie said we had an appointment
at 5:45pm and had to be there on time. It was hard to get across the city with
all the police barricades. We had to cross Bourke Street and it was barricaded
for the whole length (1.6km) about four blocks wide. I have never seen so many police cars. At one
intersection I counted 30 police cars blocking all directions, and there were
dozens of intersections!
Katie was wandering around a small alleyway
trying to find the place we were going when we ran into Liz Redfern in the
street. She is a great friend of ours who had just moved from Hong Kong to
Melbourne. I was thinking to myself what a shame it was to run into her just when
we were late for an appointment as it would have been nice to catch up when the
penny finally dropped... Doh! She was coming with us. So we went on to a hidden
speakeasy bar for drinks, which was very hard to find with no sign and behind a
nondescript brown door. Inside it was heaving with people queuing for a table.
Our table came with its own waiter in 1920s period costume. Ian Whitton arrived
a short time later and we had a lovely time catching up. The table was only
booked for 1½ hours so we had to leave at the end of our time – weird for a
bar. We then went onto a fabulous French restaurant for dinner. It was a lovely
evening catching up with Liz & Ian
and finding out all the gossip from Hong Kong.
Next morning we caught the tram down to the
Melbourne Tennis Centre for the Australian
Tennis Open. Katie had booked seats on the Rod Laver Arena where we saw three terrific matches including Rafal
Nadal in a very long match and Serena Williams in a very short one. We had
great seats and it was a fantastic day. We had been planning to go out for
dinner that evening, but the tennis went on so late we just grabbed a bite on
the way home. The daytime session was meant to finish at 6pm but we were still
there at 8.30pm. We were glad we didn’t have tickets for the evening session as
it didn’t start until after 9pm and went on until nearly 2am.
We were back nice and early the next day with
our tickets for the Margaret Court Arena.
We saw some fantastic doubles and women’s tennis and also spent a bit of time
wandering around the other courts and food venues. There were some great eating
zones based on all the other tennis grand slam cities – London, Paris & New
York. Naturally we spent some time in the Wimbledon section having champagne and
strawberries. The tennis went on until after 8pm again. It was a lovely two
days.
The next day we caught the tram down to the Melbourne Star, a large observation
wheel in the docklands to look at the view of the city. We then caught the tram
back to Bourke Street and went to view the floral tributes for the people who
had been killed on Friday. It was very sad. We had lunch and a little mooch
around the shops before flying back to Brisbane.
While we were flying to Melbourne Matthew had a
car accident on his way home from
the airport. It was actually down the end of our street. He had just turned
into Mortlake Road and found there was a stationery Ute in front of him. The Ute
driver then tried to reverse into a driveway, without seeing Matt who had
turned into the road behind him, and slammed straight into the front of
Matthew’s car. Matt’s car was stationery at the time and he said he tried to
beep the horn but it all happened very quickly. He couldn’t have backed up
anyway, as that would have put the car on the main road! We could tell that it
was going to be awkward as the Ute driver had refused to give Matt his
insurance details (possibly because he had noticed Matt’s P plates). I asked
Matthew to door knock the nearby houses in case someone had witnessed the
accident. Luckily a neighbour a few doors up was standing on their footpath at
the time and corroborated Matthew’s story that he had been stationery and the Ute
driver had reversed into him. I tried to resolve it with the other driver on
the phone, but he still refused to give us his insurance details so we assumed
he must be uninsured so we put it in the hands of our insurance company. They
fixed up Matt’s car almost immediately and I understand they are now taking the
other driver to court as he still is refusing to pay. No doubt Matthew will
have to go and testify eventually, which will be good practice for his legal
training.
On Australia Day, 26th January Katie had her Citizenship Ceremony. We had been hoping it would be at City Hall as Jessica often sings in the ceremonies with the Australian Girls’ Choir. However Katie was assigned the Oxley Bowls Club – how very Australian! It was a baking hot day and there was no air conditioning, just a few slow-moving fans. We had tea and lamingtons and waited for the local politician to show up, who was 15 minutes late. The ceremony finally got underway when we were all a lather of sweat. Of the 58 people getting citizenship, there was one other from the UK, a few eastern Europeans and the rest were from India, Africa and the Middle East. Katie was definitely in the minority. Our friends Tony and Wings had come as well and Tony said it was tradition to go to a dingy pub and have a pot of XXXX after your citizenship ceremony so that is what we did. Afterwards we went to an Australia Day party with our friends Helen and Gary, played cricket on the river bank and then raced home to host our own Barbie with another six couples. It was a lovely if exhausting day and it was good to get back to work the next day for a rest.
FEBRUARY On Friday 3 February Katie was
organising the Welcome to STAGE Evening
to kick off another year of Jessie’s dance troupe STAGE. Katie is the president
of the Support Group now so we are more involved than ever before. There is a
new coach/coordinator this year Chelsea who is a terrific teacher and so
everyone is quite positive about the exciting year ahead for STAGE. As usual I
ran the bar and packed it up afterwards while everyone was having the meeting.
Katie tells me everything three or four times so I didn’t bother going for the
briefing – I could have given it myself!
On 7th February I went to see Guns N’ Roses, supported by Rose Tattoo with my mate John. It was a
great concert but I had to fly to Darwin the next morning very early and hadn’t
packed so it was a bit of a scramble in the morning. I had two days of meetings
with Defence in Darwin before coming back on the Friday. The following Sunday,
Katie and I went with John and Karen to A
Day on the Green at Sirromet Winery to see Simple Minds, B52s, Models and Machinations. John managed to wing some corporate tent tickets so
we sat in the tent eating free food until the sun went down. It was still very
hot in mid-February as you would expect, so the shade in the tent was a huge
bonus. We went down to our seats near the front to watch B52s and then Simple
Minds. It was a really fantastic night!
Jessica received an Honours award at school on Weds
15 February. It is for all girls with a GPA over a certain value. It is about 5-10% of each year level that
receives an academic award. They had a special assembly and the girls were
allowed to wear the formal white dress for the day to make them stand out. Jess
was very pleased to get the award and she strives for it every year.
Two days later we went to dinner with some
friends at the Stokehouse Restaurant
in Southbank. It is quite upmarket and has a fabulous view of the city. The
friends we went with, Nathan and Sigrid had been burgled two nights before and
had lost all their credit cards, which made paying a little difficult. Thieves
had come in through an unlocked back door while they were home, grabbed their
purse and wallet off the dining table and spent hundreds of dollars via paywave
within an hour. A little scary that they had been in the house at the time.
They were going to Melbourne for the weekend leaving the next day, which made
things a little inconvenient. It was a big drinking evening however and we had
a very slow start the next day!
The next weekend we went to our friends the
Suggs on Saturday night for Lisa’s birthday. They had drinks and nibbles on the
lawn. They did a lovely pulled pork dinner. It was a very late night. The next
day Katie and I went to IKEA to buy 12 chairs as props for STAGE to use in one
of their dance routines. Unfortunately the chairs needed to be assembled and
that took most of the rest of the day unwrapping and putting them together. STAGE
is already taking over our lives.
MARCH It was the St Aidan’s Open Day on 4th March. Naturally
Katie was at school very early setting up the display table for STAGE and was
there until midday. Jessica had volunteered to give school tours to prospective
parents and STAGE also did a dance performance to entertain the crowds. That
afternoon Katie and Jessie headed off to the Gabba to see Adele who was in Brisbane for two nights on her “Hello” tour. The
Gabba is not easy to get to as there isn’t a nearby train station, and there
were 60,000 people attending the concert. The city council had closed roads and
laid on hundreds of extra buses but this just created massive traffic jams. The
concert start was delayed but it was all worth the wait as Adele was fabulous
by all accounts and they had a great time. Not everyone was happy though;
apparently the cricket pitch had to be re-laid afterwards and the greens master
at the Gabba was reported in the media saying that it would be 15 years before
the pitch would be the same again.
I went to
A Day on the Green again on Sunday 12th March with John,
this time to see Don Henley. He was supported by Melody Pool, Richard Clapton
and Jewel. The last time we went there we got passes to a VIP tent with food
and private bar. Luckily we had kept the
access passes and were quite pleased to discover that they worked again! We sat
in the shade until the sun went down and then went down to our seats near the
front again. Don Henley was awesome. I really should have made an effort to see
The Eagles at some time in the past.
We went to see Hidden Figures on 19th March. It was a really
fascinating movie. It was about a group of black women who were brilliant
mathematicians and were working on the NASA space program in the 1960s
computing the trajectories of the spacecraft. The ladies were called
“computers” and the racial segregation and discrimination at the time was
fascinating.
It was the St
Aidan’s Trivia Night on 25th March. As usual we made a bit of an
effort. The theme was Rock of Ages
and our table went as “Spice Girls & Friends”. Katie went as Ginger Spice
and had recruited a few girlfriends as Posh, Sporty, Scary and Baby. The
“Friends” included David Beckham, a few roadies dressed as stage crew and I
went as Elton John who I discovered had sung with the Spice Girls at least
once. I was also the Table Captain. We had a great night, and came 5th
out of 14 in the Trivia. Katie came second in the women’s fancy dress
competition. It was universally acknowledged that she was robbed. Fortunately I
came first in the men’s fancy dress contest and won a $50 David Jones voucher!
I took the day off on 29th March to attend
Jessica’s School Gymnastics competition.
Katie had to work so I went by myself after dropping Jess at school to catch
the school bus there. I felt a bit out of place as there were only two men in
the whole audience but it was nice to see her compete.
The next day ex-Tropical Cyclone Debbie swept through Brisbane. I had a 7am
meeting in the city and the rain was horizontal as I caught a cab into the
city. When my meeting finished at 9am I could not get a cab for love or money
and the weather had worsened. I ended up catching the train / walking in the
rain back to the office. I was talking to someone in the lift up that I bet our
office would get closed as our company is so risk adverse. He didn’t believe
me. About an hour later we got a message we could all go home due to the
“weather event”. All managers were then expected to check that all their staff
got home safely. As I had taken the previous day off, I stayed back working
after everyone else had left. I ended up getting told off for not going home
despite the fact that the rain was no worse than dozens of thunderstorms
through the summer. Talk about a nanny state.
On 31st March Matthew, Katie and I
went to Siobhan Brodie’s 18th
birthday party. It was an outdoor party on the cliffs of the river
overlooking the CBD at Kangaroo Point. They were really lucky with the weather.
It had been bucketing down rain all week as the rain depression from Cyclone
Debbie swept through South East Queensland, but fortunately this was a lovely
evening. There were about 50 teenagers and 10 parents there. We left about 11pm
as the teenagers went off clubbing in the Valley.
APRIL Our friends Mo & Dave Lawson and their girls Cat and Maggie came to visit us
on Sunday 9th April. They were in a campervan stopping with us for a
night on their way north to the Great Barrier Reef. We knew Mo and Dave in Hong
Kong when Mo and Katie worked at Macmillan together over 20 years ago. They
left in the 1990s and have lived variously in Australia, New Zealand,
Bangladesh and now Scotland. Over the years we have caught up with them in various
locations including Sydney and Glasgow. We had a seafood BBQ dinner and the
girls spent almost the whole time in the pool. Cat loved playing with Molly
too. Jessie was away on week-long choir camp in Sydney which was a pity, but it
was really lovely to catch up and didn’t seem like it had been several years
since we’d last seen them all.
Mo and Dave and the girls had a few hours back in
Brisbane on Saturday 15th April before their flight home, so we met
them for an afternoon at Southbank. We went for a nice wander around the
markets while they bought souvenir Tim Tams and Australian flag bikinis, so
that the girls could swim at City Beach. It was a lovely afternoon. Afterwards
there was just time for hot chocolates at Max Brenner before they were off to
the airport for a long trip home. We do
love catching up with old friends and our studio is always ready for visitors…
a hint for those of you who haven’t made it to Brisbane yet.
Love Molly Katie, Derek, Jessica and Matthew
A new Australian!
With her proud family.
Jessica's academic award ceremony
Liz and Katie - cocktails again.
Australian Open
Elton and Ginger Spice
