Ages

Hello and Happy Christmas to all on this the longest day.

It has been a while since we wrote anything and there is plenty to tell you. However, there is a more immediate reason for writing again; we missed the date for sending Christmas cards overseas.

So firstly best wishes for the season and please excuse the impersonal nature of this greeting.

Anyway, eight months of news condensed into thirty minutes writing before I head to the pub for a Christmas drink.

As you can see above Jasmin was born in April and has been growing ever since. She’s a darling little thing, very patient with us and good natured. She seems very relaxed about things and is content to sit in her Jolly Jumper bouncing all day.

Mandy is loving being a mum, it’s all coffee mornings and lie ins from what I can see. She might go back to work for a couple of shifts a week in April. Then again she might not.

I’ve left my job at Adelaide City Council and now run the Australian office of Projects Abroad full time. I was doing it at weekends for a few months but it got quite busy so I thought it was worth a go.

It is quite a change from the council which was a very sociable place. Now I sit all alone in my office making things up as I go along. So not too much has changed and fortunately a lot of my mates from the council are still happy to consort with me.

As for the house, there are still koalas in the garden, and parrots of all types and an eagle that soars over us from time to time. An echidna even wandered across our garden a few nights ago while I was surveying the uncontrolled scrub that is our block.

Someone told me this was a very good sign indeed. I think it’s a sign that we have a lot of ants in the garden.

We also have a family of brown snakes which everyone apart from me has now seen. These are snakes which are brown, very well camouflaged and very venomous. I thought I’d caught one a few weeks ago, but I’ll tell you about that another day.

In September Keith & Helen Mitchell passed through Adelaide and it was great to catch up with them. I thought he was a big hard northern bloke, but he proved to be a big softie when he met a koala.

Shortly afterwards my brother Nick and the lovely Cheles came to visit. I think he enjoyed himself, my highlight was driving to Ayers Rock. It was 1500 miles and took two long days of staring at pretty much nothing out of the window. But it was well worth the trip and good fun.

He also proved to be a big softie when feeding a little wallaby in Alice Springs. Cheles and I were dying of thirst and couldn’t drag him away to join the rest of the town in the pub.

Then in November we came back to England for a few weeks to let Jasmin meet everyone. It was great to be back watching proper football with a proper beer and eating real fish and chips and a decent curry. And lovely to catch up with everyone we did manage to in Manchester, Somerset and other spots.

However, I didn’t plan it very well and missed seeing half the people we wanted to, so my apologies for being so disorganised, it would have been fantastic to see you all but beyond my powers of organisation.

Which brings us up to today. Christmas Day is forecast to be bright and around 28 degrees which is as close to perfect as is possible.

And it’s Jasmin’s first Christmas, which is all the presents that we need and as she is only interested in wrapping paper and gift tags, it will probably be the cheapest one for years to come!

Anyway, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone, we’ll write more soon. Keep in touch and keep well.

Mandy, Jas & Will