Big responsibility...

Lovely positive news from Spain - I´ve been asked to be Charlotte´s Godmother and co-legal guardian should anything happen to Jen and Ruick (morbid maybe, but after the fortnight we´ve just had its good to plan ahead...)
I am thrilled and very honoured.
Jen and Charlotte are back in Spain to help Dad and I sort through Mum´s belongings etc. My Aunt from Palermo (Dad´s sister) is arriving on Sunday for a few days so that will be a happy distraction for us all.
We´re all doing OK. The funeral went well and we´re still being inundated with flowers.
I´ve a couple of more weeks here in Spain, and then I´m pretty much homeward bound. Bo, Elvis and I are heading straight to Red Rock at Callala Bay for a few days, then I´ll have to step back into the swing of things again.
I am looking forward to coming home.
xxxx

Sad news

My Mum lost her health battle this morning, August 17. She was 58. Funeral to be held in Spain on Monday August 21st.

Tralala

Despite the medical dramas I´ve been having a great holiday.
Highlights so far include:

Meeting Princess Charlotte of Devon

Catching up with family and friends

A glorious dinner with fantastic company at Alistair Little, Soho

Bo´s and my first full day in London... we did EVERYTHING

Jugs of Pimms by the Thames at Ravenscourt Park

Pizza Express... even if a cyclist was killed by a truck while Em and I were having our olives and semi-sun dried toms

The Novotel, Euston

Being REFUSED ENTRY to a gay club in Soho and being told there was a ´..normal´ bar down the street (more to do with the company I keep rather than my own image, I suspect)

PRIMARK and the M&S foodhall in Barnstaple

Taking pictures of Ribena Light cartons the morning after we arrives, because we were so excited...

Pret a Manger LOVE BARS (just like flapjack but with pumpkin seeds and caramel...)

ummmmm... amd sure there are more but they escape me at the moment. I will keep adding to them as and when they pop into my brain, and of course there will be loads more. I´m not back in Sydney until Sept 21st.

I´m back in the UK, all being well, on Sept 14th for a few days, but my main task will be to complete the ever-increasing shopping list Bo keeps emailing me. If the terror regulations about no handluggage on flights from the UK aren´t lifted before I leave for HK, I will be screwed...

L-plates for wheelchairs...

I´m back in sweltering Spain now, and Mum is looking great.
She´s still supposed to have her feet up for 22 hours a day, but for those other two hours she´s whizzing around in her wheelchair, and I´m doing the pushing.

It makes you painfully aware just how inadequate pavements are for disabled people, but how kind people are to you if they see you in a wheelchair. Mum has had all kinds of sympathetic looks (mainly when I park her outside a shop and forget to put the breaks on...) and people clearing the way for her. It´s quite heartening to see.

My only other experience with wheelchairs was when I was ten and my Dad had a botched vasectomy that left him wheelchair-bound for a couple of weeks. We were on holiday in Blackpool and at night, while he was watching TV or playing bingo, Mum would take the three of us out for a walk, with the wheelchair. We would all take turns at sitting in it, and incredibly people felt that sorry for Mum having three kids under ten with one in a wheelchair, they used to hand us pound notes. We totally cleaned up that holiday.

Perhaps I should take Mum´s chair out for a spin later on...