Getting ready for holidays.....

The preparations begin........

As John always laments ..... holidays are such hard work!!

My mum always used to say that actually planning and packing for a trip was half the fun. I can remember lengthy preparations being undertaken with military precision every year before my parents' annual holiday. Whether it was a camping trip with five children in tow or an overseas Rotary organised tour, mum would have preparations well underway months ahead.

It would start with the process of pouring over multiple brochures to select the perfect itinerary, and then move into the research phase. Reading up lots of books about the intended destination:what to see, what to do, what to wear etc.  It has rubbed off.

My bags have been packed, weighed, re-packed and currently lie on the bed in the spare room. I have browsed the internet, John says to the point of obsession (John actually reckons that point is a long, long way behind us), researching information about all the places we'll be going. I'd hate to miss something for lack of preparation.

Packing Lite

 

My father used to leave most of the research and planning to mum. His one bit of advice was "Once you've finished packing your bags for any holiday; open the bag again and take out half the clothes and put in twice the money".  It seems wise advice. I wish I could follow it. I have not yet achieved the travel savviness of my sisters who can undertake a voyage of some weeks duration with one small suitcase (almost handluggage sized). However they'll be impressed by the small size of the bag I'll be taking with me when I join them on the canal boat in the Netherlands. They need never know that there's a much larger bag left at Susan's (John's sister in the UK).

We're down to the final week of countdown to holidays. My state of excitement is rising daily and our dearest friends and family just wish we'd jolly well go already as I'm sure it's become quite tiresome to hear about it incessantly.

We went down to Brisbane for the day last Monday. We hadn't been into the city for a walk around for some months. Although John is there working on the ferries still, he doesn't actually get off the boat and have a wander around town. It was rather pleasant being a tourist in the place that was once home turf. We made a beeline for the Kurilpa bridge.

 

This is a bridge that we had witnessed in construction from the driving of the first pile to it's final emergence as an engineering masterpiece, and we had looked on despairingly seeing it as a pile of dropped fiddlesticks at some earlier points of its construction. But I have to admit the final product is stunning, even if it is somewhat under-utilised.

 

We then walked through Southbank. The tunnel of bouganvillea along the walkways there was further adorned by thousands of red and yellow chinese lanterns from the Buddha Festival held the previous week. There appeared to be a lot of construction underway at the pool area. The perfect time to do it too as winter has suddenly hit, with a chill wind precluding any swimming plans anyway.

We ended up back at Bulimba where the car was parked and had a nostalgic trawl through the shops there before arriving at John's cousin Roger's place for dinner that evening.

 

Dinner chez R & J is always a convivial affair, and our friends Renee and Anton came along too. We exchanged lots of tips about recent books read and enjoyed, so we'll load up the Kindle with these recommendations for the trip. We even remembered to pick up the bag of mail for Jan & Nick to take to the Netherlands with us.

On Tuesday we had my niece Jane and her two year old daughter Zahara and our daughter-in-law Mei with Bronte (also two) around for a play date at our place. The two littlies played very well together apart from one tug-of-war over a Jemima doll where they each took an arm and threatened to pull her assunder. Now that they are both reasonably articulate they co-operated nicely to coerce me into making many balloon animals for them. This is a skill that I have learned in my recent clown workshop, but not quite mastered yet.

 

Zahara and Bronte have a snack

 

The highlight of the morning was when John called me rather stridently to help him remove a bird that had thoughtlessly flown into our bedroom and couldn't find it's way out. I was expecting to see a sparrow and was alarmed to see a large brown spotted bird hurling itself against the picture windows in our bedroom. John and I armed ourselves with umbrellas, and we were using these as shields and trying to guide the poor bird out of the room. This only served to alarm and enrage it further and it emptied its bowels on the windowsill, spreading the contents with scrabbling feet and flapping wings all over the windows and curtains before retreating under our bed. Luckily Janey was there She rapidly identified the bird as a  Coucal pheasant (non-dangerous) and was able to throw a towel over it and carry it outside for us. (John: Janey is my hero for all time. She saved me!)

The cleanup operation pre-holidays has begun with the washing of windows and curtains.