We had a fairly relaxing, yet exciting weekend this week. On Saturday we walked into the city and I did some Xmas shopping in central Sydney.  John came into town to get his bike fixed and had no desire to go shopping so he gave me a time limit of an hour. I was pretty impressed how well I did given I also had to consider size and weight implications of all the presents to ensure that Mum and Dad could take them home with them in their luggage. On Saturday night we went to the Theatre to see Alan Bennet’s Talking Heads with Brenda Blethyn. I thought she was fantastic and the monlogues were brilliantly written – John was less impressed. The theatre was somewhat poorly planned – it was built into the ground, but too close to the underground rail system, so every few minutes you heard the rumble of a distant train.

On Sunday we mainly hung out at the apartment and read our books – I’m currently reading a biography of Michael Schumacher to see if I should like him more than I do. In the evening I played some golf with the girls from my golfing class. This was the first time we’d been out without an instructor and I think we did ok – for beginners. After that I came back and John lit up our bar-b-que  for the first time. I’ve never been a bbq person really but I’ve decided (although John would probably say I had no choice) to embrace the idea as it is such a part of Australian culture.

I’ve booked a return flight for arrival in the UK on 24th May – so stick it in your diaries and don’t plan on going anywhere around that time.

We went with Simon and Iwana to see Crowded House last night at a venue in Darling Harbour – they were fabulous. They played stuff from their new album, but combined it with lots of their older stuff. They did two encores and got the crowd on their feet to sing along to their well known numbers. Absolutely brilliant!

as in moving your hand in the air.

 Everyone is doing it, but they’re not being friendly, they are swatting the zillions of flies around at the moment. They are pretty relentless.

They’re not doing much for my golf swing – all golfers have a routine before hitting a golf ball. Mine is – make sure I’ve got the grip correct, raise the club horizontally in the air to make sure the base of the club is vertical, bring the club down so my arms rest on my chest and then bend my body until the golf club hits the ground, manouvere the golf club behind the golf ball, place my feet the right distance apart from the ball and each other, bend slightly at the knees and place my weight on the balls of my feet. Finally, as I’m about to swing the club in the air and hit the golf ball into oblivion (about 50m actually) a pesky fly flies into my face and hovers around my eyes until I take a hand of the golf club and swat it … and then I have to start again from the beginning of my routine.