Three more sleeps now.....

It’s just been one of those weeks, I suppose. Roller coaster to the extreme. Happy, thrilled and excited one minute... angry, terrified, upset and fearing death the next. I have had relative smooth sailing of late, as far as my family and it's general health goes, but I wasn't expecting the quick storm to blow up so close to us away…. As you may have noticed, I have been reasonably excited about our trip away and have been doing the “how many sleeps” countdown…

Everything was a little derailed this week with news of a freshly discovered tumour in one of my cousins. We had been enjoying a brief reprieve of late from the big ‘C’ word. My mum is on a new drug trial and it seems to be doing truly wonderful things. We were told to prepare for her to be gone by last December and now she seems to be doing nothing but getting stronger and better with this new drug discovery they have made. But my cousin has sideswiped us all with her news and has taken a little of the shine off our European break. Luckily, I suppose, she has able to hold off till we are back before she goes in for a double mastectomy. I need to be around for support duties during this period, so I will do my best to relax and enjoy some level of peace before we arrive back home and launch into this next round of cancer punch-ups.

We’ve had this weekend away, which has been truly lovely, but got back into town early enough this afternoon to catch up with Brenton and Sam for a latte or two and lots of laughs at the Bourke St Bakery. It was freezing, sitting on milk crates in the cold wind, but as Sam pointed out, we were kept warm with the comradery of each others company, which was fairly true!



Sam is pretty excited about the arrival of his fiancé next week from the US, though it has been bought into balance of the news of his next deployment, which I have to say has upset me a bit too. I don’t want any of my friends in harms way unnecessarily, but it is his job and he is very good at it, so I trust that the gods will look after him and bring him back home to us again in one piece. I have to say he looks genuinely relaxed and settled in a way I have not seen before which is really wonderful for him… this girl he has met must be a pretty special person so I look forward to meeting her when we get back.

Brenton was excited about his next project… standing naked in a room with a mask on….. his doodle strategically covered in gold male and a bunch of muscatel grapes...he hoped….. mmmmm … ok……. B was his usual wonderful self…. Men have no idea what they are missing out on. Catch of the century there…. Someone smart will figure it out one day, I am sure and whisk him away from us, to a huge castle somewhere….

I have a new toy to play with as well, in the form of an Olympus E-510 digital SLR camera, which is where are our pics today are from… I have wanted to explore this artistic medium for such a long time and have a short course organised for when we get back to go learn myself some new skills with these uber clever machines. I have bought some filters, extra lens’s and a tricky italian tripod for catching some of the especially brilliant landscapes that the Umbrian countryside purportedly has to offer. India is our next trip planned for March next year, so hopefully, my skill level will have increased by then for me to be able to capture some really cool pix over there. I am expecting very little from this trip, as far as OMG pix go, but you never know, beginners luck may see me catch something wonderful and inspiring this trip away.

Three more sleeps and we’re off, sitting in lovely comfy seats, feeling the awesome power of the shiny new Singapore Airlines A380 pushing us back in our seats as we take off, leaving Sydney behind…. The weather forecast for the UK is not looking so chipper… but fortunately, I adore the rain so bring it on, I say. Just so long as Italy is sun-filled, and Paris is somewhere in between, then I will be the happiest boy in the world.

Just three more sleeps….. three..........

The PM x