Many years ago

I have blogged before about the journey our family made in 1967 from up there to down here.
Today is the anniversary of our arriving in Australia. I was 14 and couldn't even imagine being 42, let alone 42 years passing since our arrival.
Life goes on, much has changed. There are of course many cliches that could be hurled around.
My previous blog asserts how profoundly Australian I feel, and how I can see myself living nowhere else. I don't even want to emigrate to Melbourne!
But, lest we forget, emigration is not without significant cost. The loss of a large extended family nearby (hundreds of them within 30 kms) I didn't realise until years later how much a loss this was.
My sister L has moved from the swamp (way on the northern side) to Goodwood (about 10mins away...on a good day) and I have seen her more in the last week than I have in the last three months, and it's nice. Our family here is not quite as large as it was in England, but it has now got very big too. As we get older we realise that this is all a bit more precious than we might have realised.
Incidentally eldest child is in the process of getting a British passport, and will be making the journey the other way in a few months. She will return, we hope. But many don't.

There is no place

I have no idea what is happening in Australia at all!! It is interesting how little Australian news is reported here..Sylvester Stallone's brush with importing steroids was mentioned on the news last night, the first time Australian news had been heard. You may or may not be aware that Britain's PM Blair has resigned and the Labour Party will elect his successor this week. The TV discussion seems as convoluted and meaningless as such things do in Australia. At once all engrossing, yet essentially meaningless to all but those whose lives are affected.
You probably don't hear much either about Maddy McCann a small British child who disappeared whilst on holiday in portugal. It is obsessing the media at the moment, as such things would in Australia. What does it all mean?
We are missing our children, such things are meaningful to us. We have always tended to talk to our children every day...and are increasingly doing so as our holiday goes on....but news and events pass us by.
The London Underground seems almost unreal, there are constant recorded messages delivered in an Orwellian tone.
"Mind the Gap" the traveller is warned..."Do not leave your belongings unattended"...it is a constant drone and I wondered amidst all this if they ever said anything of import.
"Mind the Gap"...it said last night..."There will be no service beyond Finchley Road tonight because of a body on the track"
Had I heard right!!!? yes
And so it continued..."Mind the Gap!"

Decisions, decisions.... I want it all

Necessary preparation for our forthcoming trip is the reading of books and magazines, and the endless delightful conversations with people about things to do.
It is now over twenty years ....well thirty actually...since I was in Europe, and I don't really remember a thing...or the things I do remember are very partial. The Pompidou Pyramid, for example, the London Eye didn't even exist.
And perhaps I am a little more expansive as a person and aware of all sorts of things that I didn't realise I could be aware of when I was in my 20s. Although, par exemple, I saw lots of visiual art my definitive art experience had not yet happened...which happened at a Monet exhbition in Melbourne probably 15 -20 years ago.So I know that one of the things I wan to do is try and see a few more water lilies, whether we get to Giverny remains to be seen.
But S and I also talked about whether or we should walk Scafell Pike...it would be unusual for us to do such a thing, can I still do it? (I have done it a number of times in my teens ...but these days I ache).
Every time we think about England we think of another thing to do. Althorp, Blenheim, The Old Vic. I even told my cousin the other day that we probably weren't going to stay with him..I feel guilty and I have thought of a way that we possibly can.
But we can go no further north than Edinburgh, but I would desperately love to go to Iona and the Hebrides
Then there is "The Unofficial Guide to Paris", and excellent book which we stumbled across which will keep us amused; nibbling cheese and croissants, walking the Left bank, doing little side trips, hunting out those Monets.
The truth is that I want it all, and there is too little: time, money, energy.
Thank goodness I have temporaily lost the Rome book!