Dear all,
Our Christmas Drinks party last year was on Sat 21st December. It was much smaller than usual, just people in the neighbourhood that we had been seeing anyway, as there were still restrictions on the number of people in your home at indoor events. It was good to have the opportunity to raise a glass with close friends after such a difficult year. Katie went all out with the usual feast of canapes, ham, mince pies, Christmas cake and cheeses.
We had our traditional English family dinner on Christmas Eve with just the four of us. I have finally managed to convince Katie that we don’t need to leave out a glass of port and a carrot for Santa and the reindeers. It was a bit sad for her though! We had Australian Christmas Day with Mum, Dad and Lisa and family at Brookfield which was nice as usual. We didn’t see them enough in 2020!
We had our Christmas holiday at Peregian Beach this year as we were not able to leave Australia and interstate travel is risky now with continual border closures, lockdowns and quarantines. Katie had booked a lovely three-bedroom house a short walk from the beach. The kids came and went intermittently. We had a few beach days and nice dinners in Peregian. On 30th we went to our friend Kylie’s Peregian beach house for a NYE Eve Party. There were a few of our friends from Graceville there so we had a nice evening, concluding with perhaps one too many drinks for the road. It was quite late and we had a slow day the next day.
We hadn’t booked anything for New Year’s Eve, so we decided to stay at the holiday house. We made a trip to the local Seafood Market to buy a feast of fresh lobster and Moreton Bay bugs, and had it with nice pre-dinner drinks, a bottle of wine and some chocolates from Katie’s brother Chris’s fabulous Betty’s Christmas hamper. Everything was delicious. It was only Katie and I that night as Matt was at a party in the Sunshine Coast hinterland and Jessie had driven home to have a party at our house for 40 of her closest friends. We were a bit concerned about Jessica having a party without us being home, but her friends are mostly quite studious and responsible. She had to call a few times for assistance in how to set up for a party! Our good friends Jeremy and Leona live just around the corner and were on notice to pop round and help if there was any trouble on the evening. Luckily for us (and for Jeremy) she didn’t need help and the party went really well (at least that’s what she told us). She was quite shocked though how much effort was required to clean up the next day! Apparently it took her 8 hours!
JANUARY We went to see the movie “The Dry” on New Year’s Day and then on to the beach at Noosa and to the Sunset Bar for cocktails and bar snacks in the evening. A few more days at the beach and we headed back to Brisbane in 3rd January. We stopped at Peregian Markets and Caloundra for lunch and a swim on the way home. It was very hot!
Brisbane went into a very sudden “snap” three-day lockdown on 8th January. Yes – three days – sorry to the rest of the world! We didn’t have any plans so it wasn’t too hard. The worst thing was that the tennis courts were closed. It was my 10-year anniversary at AECOM Brisbane on 10th January – the celebration lunch was postponed. This year also marks my 25th year with AECOM in Hong Kong, UK and Australia.
On 16th January 2021, after 22 years and 37 days, Matthew moved out. He was super excited about the move and we are happy for him but also a little sad as it is quite a milestone. He is sharing a house in Toowong with two of his BBC friends. The house is owned by the mother of one of the boys, so an easy landlord to have. The house has been previously rented and needs a fair bit of work – painting, garden, furniture, air conditioning, wi-fi etc but the boys are calling it a “fixer-upper”. We helped him move his bed in the morning. He didn’t have any other furniture and was living out of a suitcase for a few weeks until he found a chest of drawers and we helped him move that in as well. That evening we went to a tennis party at the Tods but my day was tinged with sadness.
We had an Australia Day BBQ with our friends the Biddles on 23rd January. John had applied for and got a job in Papua New Guinea. The only problem is that he cannot travel there due to all the Covid restrictions. The next day Katie and I took Molly for a walk up Mt Cootha to look at the view. She wasn’t much interested in the view but did have lots of good smells to sniff.
Katie has been accepted to do a Masters program in Writing Publishing and Editing at the University of Queensland. She is very excited about the new challenge and the possible opportunity to move back into publishing after a gap of quite a few years. The course starts at the end of February and will take her two years to complete. Matthew took her for a full tour of the university campus on 3rd February. He showed her all the libraries and buildings and places to park and most importantly where to get good coffee! She also has a student card now with her photo and age on it just in case she gets challenged at the bar.
FEBRUARY We had a nice Thai dinner out with some friends at the local Thai restaurant. It turned out that one of the people we were having dinner with is a good friend of the owner, so our meal ended up being free, which was nice. I felt a bit guilty though because of the rough time the hospitality industry has been having lately. We also had a family game of Putt Putt Golf at Hillstone Golf Club on 7th February. It was quite fun as usual and we had cocktails and pizza afterwards. Jess once again proved that she should not give up Uni and become a golf pro.
Katie hosted a Cocktail Party at our house on 12th February for a group of St Aidan’s mums from Jessie’s school year. I was voluntold that I was the barman. Actually, I don’t mind as it is quite fun. It was a Friday night and I took a day off work to help set up. I have so much unused annual leave now that it was nice to have a day off to potter around the house. There were 20 ladies and we offered three cocktails – a Pina Colada, a Strawberry Daiquiri and a Moscow Mule. It was quite a production line making around 30 of each cocktail (some ladies had seconds or even thirds). Every cocktail required a different type of glass, so it all needed a bit of advance planning and preparation. We had gourmet pizzas delivered mid-evening and then they all finished off sitting around the fire as the evening wound down. I stayed until my bar tending was no longer required.
Katie went to a Post Graduate Welcome party on 15th February and met a few of her fellow students and lecturers. She says she is the oldest student by a country mile but they all seem very friendly. That Friday I had a Go Karting night with twelve members of my work team. It was an indoor two-level circuit. There were two slots of twenty minutes with a break in between. The whole evening actually took about two hours in all with registration, safety briefing, watching other races etc, etc. The first twenty minutes was a qualifying race and we were ranked in order of who did the fastest lap times. One of the guys in my team is a fairly serious race car driver and of course he came first. I was quite pleased to come fifth in the qualifying race. In the final race, I was even more happy to increase my standing and finish in fourth place. Each lap took 40 to 55 seconds and it was quite intense, and very hot. We were all a lather of sweat by the time we finished. It was a really fun evening.
We decided to take Molly to her favourite dog beach on 21st February, Palm Beach on the Gold Coast. Molly is our only child now! We had the morning on the beach reading the paper and Molly really enjoyed playing in the surf. There is a lovely café there so we always have a nice lunch and an ice cream. The next day I went to Darwin. I have three projects there at the moment, so I flew up in the morning, did a flying visit to two sites, had a night out on the town, visited the last site the next morning and flew back that afternoon. It was really great to actually go somewhere again, even it if was a brief work trip. It is so much harder to plan anything these days though, with the different states snapping the borders shut all the time!
There was a Brisbane Boys’ College Old Boys drinks function on 26th February. I went along with an old school friend, John. There were about 100 old boys there, but only one from our year there, but we had a nice catch up. I had tried to talk Matthew into coming as it was very close to his new house, but he had something else on that night. His house has now been painted and tidied and air-conditioning installed so it is all looking a lot better.
MARCH I went out for a Director’s Dinner on 3rd March to celebrate my 10 years at AECOM Brisbane and 25 years with AECOM. We had a dinner at a fusion Chinese restaurant, Happy Boy, in Fortitude Valley followed by cocktails at the next door wine bar. It was a very nice evening and good to be appreciated.
Matthew and his flatmates have now decided they want a built-in desk in their house. They talked to the landlord (Fergus’ mother) who agreed to pay for materials if they got someone to build it. Guess who got that job? Actually, I didn’t mind as I like building stuff. It took me three Saturdays to measure and plan, buy materials, prep and construct the desk. It was nearly 4m long with an integrated cable tray and invisible legs supported off the wall. I had built one similar at our home several years ago. It is always good to build something two or three times so you can perfect the technique. The boys were delighted with the result and all three of them set up their computers and chairs with a lovely view over the garden. I finished the project on 6th March, just in time for Uni lectures to start again. They were so pleased that they presented me with a bottle of gin as a thank you for my efforts.
I went to a few exhibitions in March. Queensland Museum had a special exhibition of aquatic dinosaurs so Jess and I had a “Day at the Museum”. It was pretty cool. I think I am still a child at heart! A few days later Katie and I went to Curiocity, which is a 6.5km art circuit through the City Botanic Gardens, South Bank, CBD and the Cultural Precinct. Along the way there were interactive and digital installations celebrating art, science and technology. Unfortunately, it was a rainy day and we had to keep ducking inside coffee shops to avoid getting wet.
On Sunday 14 March, I went for a guided hike up Mt Knapp with my friend Derek. It was on private property and we had permission from the farmer to hike. It was about 8km but took us 6 hours as it was totally off track with uneven footing, steep cliff sections and sections of head high grass. Walking on the flat in long grass was the hardest, especially when the top of the seed stalks was at head height and kept on poking you in the eye. I had so many seeds in my socks I almost threw them away at the end of the hike. I have since bought gaiters for next time. It was a very rewarding hike with some spectacular views and interesting rock formations.
On the 28th March we went to the Mould Cheese Festival at the RNA Showgrounds with some friends. We had bought tickets for the March 2020 event but it had been delayed by Covid and reinstated a year later. There were about 40 small booths of boutique cheese producers. We had a nice three hours, tasting cheese, buying cheese and sitting at a picnic table eating our purchases with a glass or two of wine. Very pleasant. We got a lift home with the Tod’s daughter and then decided to kick on, so invited them back to our Studio Bar to try our latest favourite cocktail – a Sgroppino with limoncello, lemon sorbet, and prosecco.
The next day I was flew up to Rockhampton for work. My flight left at 6am and I picked up a car from the Rocky office and drove about 1½ hours to get to the site. On the way I heard that Greater Brisbane was going into another snap lockdown from 6pm that night. They knew all about it on the site but didn’t give it much thought. I spent a few hours at the site out of phone contact and headed back about 3pm. As soon as I got back into phone range, I got heaps of missed calls and phone messages from the Rocky office. It appeared that I had to get on a flight back to Brisbane before 6pm, otherwise I would have to do the three-day lockdown in a hotel room in Rockhampton! I had been planning to stay overnight and do another site visit in Gladstone the next day, but instead I hot-footed it back to the airport and got the last seat on the last plane out! I made it home just in time for the three day lock-down. The annoying thing was that I had to go back to Gladstone the next week as soon as everything opened up again to finish the other site job!
Cheers, from Derek, Katie, Matt, Jessie & Molly
