ink marks on a blank page Tues Nov 3rd

This has been a lively few weeks for me myself and I. Driving a thousand kms to visit my daughter isn't such a big deal, that is the part I enjoy. Much as we love our daughter, son-in-law and grandchild there really is no place like ones own bed. Oft I ask myself is it my age? am I so set in my curmudgeonally ways that having to be in someone elses house makes my good nature suddenly evaporate.Their house is vast, so we don't trip over each other, but they don't watch our TV shows, and once the babe goes to bed at 8pm the TV gets turned down to whisper, so if the phone rings or he wants to read the paper and pass comments on the days politics to her, the TV watchers have to lip read.
Then of course having a very lively 2yr old all day does get a little tiring, plus getting up to go for a walk is an exercise in logistics. Two dogs,one grandaughter,a pram with assorted toys that she cannot do without, then the last minute drama because she really wanted Mr Squeaky to come too. She is rather a darling though, no tantrums, just a plaintive cry or three. There were plenty of times when I wondered just how we did all that with our own, and managed careers and a house/garden. Both us us worked in a field where we did shift work, so the children, who were 7yrs apart in age always had a parent about.

Those were of course simpler times ,less pressure and seemed so much friendlier, so we just sailed through regardless.

People have ,it seems to me, higher expectations in this era. We built our first house just after getting married, couldn't afford a bedroom setting except for the frame and mattress, so for the first couple of years the bed was resting on bricks instead of a proper base. Curtains for the kitchen and dining room were actually left over check material from making her uniforms.That house did us for just on ten years, then we moved up to the farm.
By that time we had become much more finacially stable, had no mortgage, thus were able to indulge ourselves in a style that was more suited to my pretensions of grandeur. I think that when we started to travel widely, our expectations of wanting to live in a certain way, just for ourselves, instead of how convention would have us live, began to take hold. Each time we went away I would say on return, I want to live there, we never did though. But we did change the farm-house completely three times in the 24 years we lived there. The time( year of '97) we spent in that apartment in Paris was perhaps the turning point and on returning from there we decided to sell the farm sooner than later and build a new house from scratch. The house that we built in the little country village was perched high on a hill and had a panoramic view over hills studded with cows and sheep.Because it was on a hill I built a sunken garden along one side, glass walls gave an uninterrupted view over the tops of trees into a valley.Why did we leave there after only 3yrs?. The drive into the city each day was getting monotonous, dangerous as the village got bigger which made for more cars on the road. The village school went from 46 students when we moved there to 132 within three yrs, and no, we didn't cause the exposion of little folk.
Funny how the best laid plans of mice and men 'gang awa', when we made plans to sell that house we had another property in a nice suburb that was rented out, the property here(where we now live) had a rather dated late 60's house. So, we would knock the house down which stood on this block and build new,sell the new house that we now lived in and the rented place. Of course the moment all that was decided the bottom dropped out of the housing market. There was no trouble getting finance for the new build so throwing caution to the winds and blowing what cash we had, full speed ahead,damn the consequences. All worked out in the end, somehow.

So here we are Hortense, and have been this 8 almost 9 yrs too, in the normality of life that is Adelaide 2009 ( and prior), a place that we don't like leaving but do so every chance we can. If that leaves anyone confused it does I as well,but that is the short of ,the essence of how we are as folk.did I hear someone say odd? you could be correct, but we love travel, not the going but the being .Perhaps what I love the most Horty old girl is the coming home bit,then the bragging to all and sundry about the sights we have seen. I still say from each place we go,"gee I want to live there". Hortense perhaps I shall post up some pics of that garden I made in the house on the hill, funny I should hark back to that, although it was pretty special were it not? Our son, who is 43, often drives past the old place where he grew up, our first home, and always refers to it as "the best place". Must be some truth in the old saying then about heart and hearth. Also there are some pictures of the great ocean road from the trip back last week,that I took with my all singing all dancing new camera, but none of the most delightful Cocolat experience we had Friday, YUMMO!!