Heart failure

Stressed? Moi? no - I've only got an exhibition opening on Friday, Michael's off to Brisbane today, etc etc etc... Which is why my demeanour apparently became a little frosty when the phone rang at 08:45 this morning and I heard our estate agent telling us we were about to be gazumped on Lot 31 North Boambee Road. It wasn't a message that I particularly wanted to hear, especially since we've done so much work trying to resolve different issues about the property and indeed we have a soil consultant going there later this week.

Blood pressure rising, I managed to ask what we had to do in order to secure the property - having been assured that neither the agent nor our solicitor believed that this was a ruse and that the owners did in fact have a genuine cash buyer waiting in the wings and ready to sign a contract today - and was told that we had the choice of letting it go, or getting down to the solicitor's office, signing the contract, couriering it to the vendor's solicitors in Kempsey (112 kilometers south of here) and forking out a $24,000 deposit. So instead of tootling down to the studio to wrap unframed prints for the exhibition (me) or packing a bag for Brisbane (Michael) we dropped Ella off at school and legged it down to Lee Sames Egan's offices.

Peter Sames, our solicitor, is a lovely fellow: a real country solicitor. He speaks slowly but in a very considered way, and although he runs through all the risks for you, if you look you can see a reassuring twinkle in the back of his eyes. He's a very nice man, and has done a great job for us identifying the risks and the potential pitfalls, but I think he thinks we've been prudent in doing the investigations we've paid for and although he wouldn't be rash enough to say 'go for it' I think he's happy that we've got what we wanted - just. So we've signed the contract, I've written out the biggest cheque I've ever signed, and Peter has arranged a courier to get the documents down to Kempsey this afternoon. He also, while we were there, phoned the vendor's solicitors and confirmed that they will now sell the property to us and that the transaction was accepted. We now have 28 days in which to complete the transfer of title and arrange payment of the balance owing on the property but we are now, technically, landowners! And, because Michael and I haven't owned property before in Australia, we don't have to pay Stamp Duty and once a house is built we'll get a First Time Buyers' grant as well.

We got back to the house at about 11:00 - sadly too early for the stiff drink we both felt we needed, so I've settled for a coffee instead. Michael's got to leave for the airport in a couple of hours, and I've got to go back to the gallery to start putting up my prints.

Breaking news

Yes, it's truly amazing, but I am proud to announce that Ella now likes eating tomatoes! Lettuce! Cabbage! Beetroot! Oriental greens!

All of a sudden she's become much more amenable to the idea of trying new things (goodness, going to school changes life) and she is so enamoured of her new food friends that she's disappointed if we don't have salad with dinner and she's demanding beetroot in her sandwiches at lunchtime. This from a girl who until recently wouldn't look at a tomato without bursting into tears.

Butterflies

Yup, it's coming up on Friday: my first solo exhibition and yes, I am nervous about it. Hopefully all the preparations are in place: a flyer has been mailed and emailed out, all the pictures have been cleaned and framed, I've got the fixings to put in the back of the picture frames so that they can be hung on Wednesday, and apart from mounting the fixings onto the frames and organising some refreshments for the opening on Friday evening, there's not much else I can do except panic that no-one will turn up! And no-one turning up would almost be worse than people turning up and not liking anything!

Student high jinks

Patrick's experiencing the joys of Freshers' Week, Australian style! Highlights so far include being abducted with a bag over his head, forced to drink lots of alcohol, stripped naked, dumped in a lake and forced to swim across it; a toga party in collaboration with the next-door Catholic all-girls college (I understand that Patrick's toga was quite short...); and a trip to the Gold Coast to a Wet and Wild theme park. One can only guess.

I've stopped asking, "How are you?" and started asking, "How is your liver?". It seems more appropriate, somehow. Anyway, I gather Patrick's having lots of fun and hopefully it's putting all thoughts of his stupid ex-girlfriend out of his head. Of course Michael and I thought it would probably end in tears (a fact which Patrick knew and found difficult to take, and it was impossible for us not to make it clear that was how we felt - we're not saints, after all), but we've taken no pleasure in the break-up.

Patrick is very like his father: loyal almost to a fault, and I think his upbringing and experience of life has led him to expect a lack of emotional support for him and a requirement to be the provider of emotional support in his relationships with women. Michael and I have fumed on the sidelines as Patrick's needs and emotional state have basically been ignored while he has been as supportive as he knows how for a partner who doesn't understand that partnership is a two-sided thing... Finally he had enough, which was a difficult thing to face up to, and he decided to end the relationship - only to see the girl who'd basically said she loved him forever and wanted to marry him find someone else within ten days. What an unsympathetic, unfeeling, self-obsessed cow, which is basically what Michael and I thought about her all along: all take and very little give. Poor Patrick. I can't tell you how much I wanted to put a comment about her up on her own blog, but as Michael said, if I'd done so she'd probably have taken it out on Patrick, so I've restrained myself. Just. But I am still fuming, and she's lucky she's back in Manchester, otherwise she might have found herself on receiving end of my sharp tongue.

Oh well. That's all over now, and hopefully Patrick's having fun with the girls as well as the alcohol. It's quite uncomfortable thinking about the fact that your 'child' might be having sex, but it would be good for him to have some (responsible!) fun rather than getting involved in a serious relationship straight away. With that in mind, I found him a great badge (to add to the 'Bastard' enamel lapel badge I bought him at Christmas) with 'I've been bad' written on it. I hope it's true...

House renting blues

I seem to have spent a week cleaning, cleaning and cleaning again... Why? Because we're subject to the tyranny of the Property Management Company Periodic Inspection a.k.a. a Small-minded Person's Chance to be Petty and be Paid for It. Yes, the lovely Ann will be here tomorrow morning. She would rather have been here last week but I put my foot down and said that with 70-odd boxes from our second shipment recently delivered and me only just off the plane from the UK the place would look like a bomb-site and so she'd have to postpone her visit.

Michael sorted out the contents on the boxes, and I spring-cleaned the house. This involved filling and painting the holes in the walls where a certain young man without functioning joints in his knees kept slamming his chair into the wall, cleaning all the disgusting paintwork we inherited when we moved in here, and re-cleaning the windows that the same young man 'cleaned' last week. Among other things. I thank goodness for strong suction on vacuum cleaners as lots of spiders were sucked up, webs and all, thus saving me the trouble of going anywhere near them!

Now all the boxes have been put away, a lot of rationalising of drawers, cupboards, wardrobes, the larder and the linen cupboard has been done, and all surfaces are clean... and Michael and I are knackered. Ella helped too, tidying away in her bedroom and splashing lots of water around while we washed the windows this afternoon.

I can't tell you how much I hate renting... you're so much at the mercy of the agents and your landlords. I suppose we don't have much to complain about in our landlords; they've just finished putting in air-conditioning (and a really good system, at that), and previously they bought us a dishwasher. They're also approachable and friendly which is also worth a lot. However, the flip side of that is that we've had loads of workmen in the house. Just before I went away we had a very hot week during which we couldn't open a window because of the toxic fumes given off by the several coats of paint applied to the verandahs... And the air-conditioning guys left dust and mess everywhere and de-stacked half the boxes in the garage and didn't re-stack them, and they also uncovered a mouse's nest and a wasps' nest. What fun.
I can't wait for us to have our own house again; only a year or so to go...

Talking of which, we're making progress on the obstacles to our purchase of Lot 31 North Boambee Road. While I was in the UK Michael went up to the property with an environmental consultant who said that in his opinion we wouldn't have any problems getting permission to build where we want to build because the vegetation is of a sort that the Council and the Rural Fire Service will want cleared away. He also said that the tree ferns on the property are prickly tree ferns, which grow quickly and can be transplanted - apparently the tree ferns already on the property might only be 15 years old, but anyway, we can move them and grow new ones fairly quickly. Michael's also engaged our solicitor to check out the legal aspects of access along the dirt track, which leaves only the soil testing to sort out and we've got a consultant doing that later this week.

Michael also phoned Jake Maddon, the headmaster of St Augustine's primary school who's building a house on the plot to the west of Lot 31. Mr Maddon said his solicitor had confirmed legality of access up to his property, which is most of the way to our property, and he also said that when he did soil tests on his property - which was part of the same banana plantation as Lot 31 - he found that the banana farmer had been ahead of his time and farmed organically. So we should have no problems at all with the soil tests. So, contrary to earlier suggestions, we may be able to go ahead with the purchase in a couple of weeks' time. Phew.

Water, water everywhere

I just thought I'd put in these photos taken while I was flying over some western part of Queensland on my way to the UK. I was sitting next to a very nice medical physicist called Roger who speculated that we might be travelling over the 'channel country', but whatever the name of the region, you can clearly see that they had some unusual rainfall! I think the peculiar landscape is quite beautiful; see what you think.

Lovely people

I haven't done any posting recently because I'm not in Australia at the moment, I'm in Bristol catching up with my PhD and lots of friends. And what wonderful friends they are too: last night Frances and Ali hosted a great dinner at Bordeaux Quay, down on the harbourside near the @Bristol complex. The restaurant itself was lovely: part of the Quartier Vert business it is apparently trying to be carbon-neutral and organic and absolutely delicious. I don't know what the status is with the carbon-neutral ambition, but the food was delicious. It's not that Coffs Harbour doesn't have any nice restaurants, it's just that they aren't as nice as the ones I have been spoilt with in Bristol over the years!

Sadly I failed in my resolution to stop being camera-shy and take lots of photos during our meal, but it was wonderful to meet up with Gary and Nimmi. Ali and Stu, and Frances and Ian and we had a great evening. I'm only sorry I didn't manage to meet up with more people! This week has been something of a whirlwind, with two trips to UWE for a tutorial and a presentation, plus book group with Miranda and Sophie on Tuesday night, tea with Mike and Rachel, a drink with Mark, lunch with Kate, and dropping in to see David and Valmai and David and Rosemarie and our friends at Sheepdrove Butchers and the fruit and veg shop on Lower Redland Road... and I'm hoping to catch up with Kay, Martyn and Sophie Scott and fit in another tutorial before I leave on Tuesday... Phew! I don't need jetlag as an excuse for feeling exhausted!

It has been absolutely lovely to catch up with so many people, and I know that Michael is looking forward to doing more or less the same thing when he's over in March. We miss you all terribly, and if I could arrange to transport you all to the environs of Coffs Harbour to live near us again (or even afford first class return flights for you all!) we would. Meanwhile you'll have to make do with our intermittent visits back to the UK.