Moving On.

Yep, we're moving. Again. On 13th or 14th August. Nine and a half months after we got here. Oh dear.

I can't say I'm looking forward to the process, either, but we're completely fed up with our managing agent and - apart from the views - we have concluded that this place just isn't worth the money we're paying for it. I found a new place for us to live while our house is being built, about 5 kms north up the road - in the opposite direction to where we're building, but it's still manageable.

For slightly more money we get a tennis court, a swimming pool, a nice-enough house, a garden, a vegetable patch and 10 acres (with mowing and grounds maintenance included in the rent), and enough room in the 'office' annex for me to move my studio in there too, thus saving the money I'm currently paying in rent on a place in Gallery 37, although I won't be moving the studio straight away...

Hopefully we'll be taking our phone number with us, so no changes there, and of course our email and Skype contact details will remain the same. I'll advise the actual address and confirm details a bit closer to the time.

Hooray for dentists

I spent an hour and a half in the dentist's chair this morning, and I have to say that it didn't hurt a bit and, what's more, the technology was really interesting - it appears that one dose of gum anaesthetic and I'm turning into a nerd...

I had to have a molar reconstructed, and it was frightening to see how little real tooth was left! Note to me: stand over Ella while she cleans her teeth, so that she doesn't have to endure needles the size of cricket bats and lots of fillings. Anyway, instead of the usual crown/root canal, I was offered the opportunity to try a 'Cerec' porcelain reconstruction. Once the original filling had been drilled out a photograph was taken of the tooth and fed into a machine. I could see a contour map of my molar in glorious technicolour on a computer screen; my dentist then used various 'tools' to draw around its edges to show where she wanted the porcelain reconstruction to end, and the programme then calculated how to build the reconstructed tooth. Once it had finished thinking about it, it took 17 minutes and a lot of whirring for it to build (using some kind of laser technology, I guess) a perfectly-fitting replacement tooth. A few edges had to be filed down, and the 'bite' had to be adjusted, but after a bit of gluing and a bit of fiddling around I had a nice new tooth - perfectly matched to the colour of my existing teeth. Hopefully it should last at least 15 years - hooray!

Bye bye Patrick

The Brisbane skyline as seen from the Arts complex just across the river from the city centre


Well we spent a lovely weekend in Brisbane - sort of - taking Patrick back up to uni for the start of term. It was my first visit as I was coming back from the UK in February when Patrick started the year up there, and it was left to Michael and Ella to do the honours driving him up with his stuff.

I'm glad I suggested leaving here on the Friday and staying for two nights instead of one, because it's a long way! It was an 850 kilometer round trip i.e. over 10 hours of driving given a) the speed limits and b) the state of the roads... There are a number of choices about how to get up there: you can just take the Pacific Highway (route 1) all the way there, more or less along the coast the whole way, via Grafton (you have to go through Grafton whichever route you choose), or you can head due north from Grafton via Casino and at some point you have to cut across country. Now the Pacific Highway is full of big trucks with big trailers, speeding and sitting on your tail in a dangerous fashion, so we all agreed that once we were through Grafton we'd go via Casino and avoid the worst of the trucks. On the way up on Friday we cut north through the Border Ranges up past Casino, crossing the Queensland Border on the flanks of Mount Lindesay, with the mistaken impression that we were heading for a major freeway in the form of the Lindesay Highway. Ha, ha! As we twisted our way for 70 kms across the mountains on a basic road that wouldn't have been out of place in the Alps (although if the Swiss and/or French were maintaining it I venture that it would have been straighter, wider and in better condition...) we gradually realised that we were on the Lindesay "Highway". Bloody hell. It took over an hour to get across the mountains, at the end of which we'd lost a lot of time and not travelled very far. As Michael says, 'they do things differently in Queensland'. In Brisbane I saw a poster which referred to the 'Department of Main Roads' - maybe it's one person with a desk, slowly overheating in the Queensland summer...?

Oh well. Once we'd got there and overcome our disappointment about the hotel we were staying in (yes, I did book it, but it was cheap...), we enjoyed ourselves. Everyone was very indulgent of me on Saturday, allowing me to spend most of the day in the arts/culture complex across the river that houses the Queensland Centre for Performing Arts (abbreviated to QPAC, apparently), the Queensland State Library (which I shall have to come back and visit again; AMAZING piece of architecture and a fascinating collection!), the Queensland Museum of Art, and the new Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. Sadly I'd missed the Asia-Pacific Triennale which finished at the end of May, but even so the exhibitions were exciting. See my other blog at http://doubleelephant.blogspot.com/ for images! Mind you, it might take me a while to put the pictures up there given how long it takes to upload things here... be patient!




Mad installation art by Katharina Gross!

We had dinner at Gambaro's seafood restaurant on Saturday night, and then finished things off with a dim sum breakfast in the city centre on Sunday morning before dropping Patrick off and starting the long trek home again.

It was strange seeing Patrick in a college environment. I can't say being amongst a bunch of 18/19/20 year olds is an exciting experience: lots of strange clothes, facial hair and non-commital grunts going on - not my cup of tea! When I was at college the men and women on my (mixed) corridor were a fairly sanitary bunch; if they had nasty personal habits I didn't trip over them, and rooms were reasonably tidy and didn't smell... I think a male-only college, certainly in this day and age, is somewhat different. Just goes to show how old I am! Patrick is enjoying it, although he's now decided that he'd like to move out into a shared house next academic year.




Patrick's room at St Leo's College - small but functional!










We'd had a bit of a grumpy week of him being at home. We were all tired after coming back from the UK, and we were getting on each others' nerves quite a lot, so leaving Patrick at St Leo's was a mixture of sadness and relief, I think, for all of us.

Isn't it funny how life changes? For a long time Patrick felt as if he was banging his head against a brick wall living at home, partly because it's hard to see, as a growing adolescent, that anything around you is changing. Perhaps one changes so quickly that everything else seems slow even it life around you is changing too. At least at college, however squalid I might find it, he's free to create his own life - new tattoo and all! I can remember how difficult the moving-away-from-family phase was for me, for different reasons, and I can see how difficult it is for Patrick too. Doubtless we'll all be getting on each others' nerves some more over the coming months... I think it's true to say that Patrick and Michael and I are achieving a new appreciation of each others' good points - from a distance! Being away from home allows you to get rid of the niggles and enjoy the fun bits of weekly telephone calls and tales of your latest exploits, without your parents nagging you about the state of your room/what time you came in last night/how much money you've still got etc.

We'll wait and see what happens next. Patrick needs a job so that he's got some more money and some more independence, and he needs a driving licence too. Quite how he's going to get either of those things will, I guess, become apparent over time - all part of the saga! - but it's exciting for him to think about being in his first shared house! I don't think he realises how much time will be taken up with things he doesn't have to cope with now, such as shopping, cooking and (presumably) cycling into uni for lectures and stuff. Nor does he realise how much money it's going to cost in terms of a larger food bill, internet and phone charges, gas and electricity and rates bills, rent and transport costs. But I guess he'll work it all out, much as we have all had to do. Michael and I had a bit of a flip out about his announcement that he'd like to live out of college next year, partly because it's the exact opposite of what he'd previously said, and partly because we'll now be having nightmares about giving a parental guarantee for the rent on a house full of his ne'er-do-well mates and having to carry the can for them when they're irresponsible with the landlord's things! Maybe it will all be different: it's Patrick's job to find some housemates and organise things, and our job to sign on the dotted line and hand over the cash... with the proviso that he'll be paying us back if it all goes bottom-up!

The person it will affect most, I think, is Ella. If Patrick rents in Brisbane it's inevitable he'll come home less frequently, and so Ella will see even less of him. Despite the fact that they fight and nag each other, they love each other very much and Ella was desolate about having to say goodbye to Patrick yesterday. But what can you do?




Patrick and Ella hamming it up in the cafe at one of the galleries...

Venice

We stayed in the Euganean Hills for 8 days and then spent a couple of nights in Venice before flying to the UK - well, we had to really, it would have been a crime to have flown out of Venice without reacquainting ourselves with La Serenissima.


Michael had a migraine at one point so I took Ella up the Campanile and we looked down over St Mark's






The clock tower restoration has finished! This was the first time I'd seen it out of scaffolding...








As usual we stayed in a little hotel just off St Mark's Square called Antica Casa Coppo, which we found a few years ago when we missed a flight and had to ask at the airport desk if they could find us a hotel... We're obviously creatures of habit because we ate at our favourite restaurants too, Ai Mercanti and Al Conte Pescaor, both of which we've obviously patronised a lot because we were greeted like long-lost family in each place despite the minimum 18-month gap since our last visit!




Ella feeding the pigeons













I can't say that we did anything unusual in Venice; we soaked up the atmosphere and wandered around. This time we went to Burano as well as Murano (where we visited our favourite glass shop, Salviati's, and replaced some of the beautiful cut-glass tumblers that we've broken over the last few years).





The painted houses on Burano





We also took Ella to the Venice Biennale. I was a little anxious about doing this because it isn't always the case that art and 5-year olds mix well, but in fact it was a very successful afternoon. We all enjoyed wandering between the different pavilions, and Ella was entranced by some of the video installations - an art form that usually leaves me cold, so it was interesting to see it through her eyes. I was fascinated to see how she made sense of the images, particularly in installations that didn't include any explanatory sound-track that might give clues to meaning. She sat first with Michael and then with me through a video-loop in the Swiss pavilion, giving a very lucid commentary throughout... I was impressed! You can see what I thought of the art in my other blog, http://doubleelephant.blogspot.com/.





Ella's marble present - a big one - was this mask. I managed to persuade her NOT to go for the pink one!

Terre Bianche and the Euganean Hills

When we were in Italy we stayed in a farmhouse in the countryside, about half an hour outside Padua, west of Venice. Michael found the advert for it on the internet and had great conversation via email with Angela, the owner. We wanted to 'get away', but not so far away that we couldn't go out for day trips, and the location was perfect: Padua is beautiful (more photos later...) and we went in several times. We could also have visited places a bit further afield, such as Verona, Vicenza, Lake Garda etc but I'm afraid we couldn't get round to it! Instead we pottered around the Euganean Hills, looking at fantastic, picturesque, tourist-free Roman villages with lovely churches, little trattorias, amazing villas, thinking, "When we come back we'll do more..."

But mostly what we did was sit back and relax on the patio, underneath the pergola, with bottles of wine, local olives and cheeses and charcuterie and a good book!





Next to house is a 200-year old tree which is great for climbing!










Looking through the pergola to the olive grove and the hills beyond. The table and chairs on the patio comfortably seat 12. I took portrait photos of the olive trees for a future print project...


The inside of the house is lovely too. It opens up in different ways depending on how many people are staying. Each section has a kitchen and bathroom, and it's well-equipped and beautifully done. I could have taken more photos of the lovely antique furniture, or the beautiful embroidered linen window coverings...

We loved staying here: it's really relaxed, a very nice environment, and although it doesn't have a swimming pool and some of the apartments (such as the one we rented) don't have a TV it is nonetheless very good for kids: they have acres to run around in, and plenty of room to make a mess without disturbing their parents. We went equipped with books, puzzles, colouring things, plenty of paper and Ella's Nintendo (for those moments when a girl really needs some technology!), and she was fine - no complaints after a week and more of no TV!

We would like to use Terre Bianche as a base, perhaps in Autumn 2008 or possibly Easter 2009, for us to meet up with friends from the UK and Europe. Although Michael will be around in the UK again before then, I probably won't be over again until October 2008 at the earliest. As Terre Bianche is less than an hour's drive from Venice airport, and Venice serves both London and Bristol, it is an easy place to get to. The farmhouse apartments would accommodate 12+ people all together, so we were thinking of reserving it - if people are interested - maybe next spring, and seeing who would like to book up a long weekend or a week's holiday and come across there to see us. We'd be there for two weeks, probably, but friends could drop in and have independence. Let us know if you'd be interested!



Padua is beautiful: an old university town with Gallileo's lecture theatre and an amazing anatomy lecture theatre - although as we were taking things easy and not rushing around all the tourist sites we didn't actually visit either!



The Baptistry of St John. The beautiful frescos all over the walls are by Giusto de' Menabuoi, and were painted in the 1370's



There are two big squares (named the Square of Flowers and the Square of Herbs) where the daily markets are held, and down each side are these arcades of small food shops



A view of the village of Arquà Petrarca, where Petrarch lived and died



The Castello Cini in Monselice, another very picturesque town in the Euganean hills.



A Germanic bierkeller in Monselice! Not what I expected to find...

Ella Bella

This time around I've realised what an enormous upheaval it has been for Ella to be packed up and moved to the other side of the world for a few weeks, and then brought home again, even if it is for the pleasurable experience of enjoying a holiday. When we brought her over to Australia for the first time she was only 9 weeks old, and all she did for the whole flight was sleep and feed! Since then it has been much the same, even if a certain amount of entertainment has been built into recent trips, but this time it was a different, and very dirsuptive, experience. She isn't a parcel any more, that we can just pick up and move at will. She's got routines, she has opinions, she feels wrenched away from one thing and dumped into another.

Travelling over to Europe with her was fine, if tiring on my own. On the way back Michael sat next to her on the plane and I had some peace and quiet. A certain amount of bribery went on: we'd seen how much she enjoyed playing with Mia Jacob's dressing up clothes, and when we were in London we went to Hamley's and bought Ella a beautiful 'princess' dress and some sparkly shoes. The deal was that if she was very good on the way back to Australia we'd 'see about' buying her a princess dress -she obviously didn't know that it was already in our luggage...

We got back on Saturday afternoon and had to try and stay awake for a few hours before crashing into bed. The dress proved a very useful tool in persuading Ella that she had to wake up and eat some dinner after she'd inadvertently fallen asleep on the sofa, and it's a measure of how exhausted she was that although she was able to eat something and look at the dress, she was too tired to try it on until Sunday morning!

Naturally I took some photos, and here they are. Note, please, that my decision to forego the pink frilly number in favour of a beautiful soft yellow paid off! She says that it reminds her of Belle's dress in the Disney animation of Beauty and the Beast

Dawn

As I write, the sun's just coming up over the ocean, red and fiery. I couldn't sleep much after 05:30 and I managed (astonishingly!) to get out of bed without waking up Michael or disturbing Toby, and I've crept downstairs to the other side of the house with a cup of green tea with jasmine, for some quiet time before I have to get everyone up in a while and start the routine of school again.

Where I'm sitting, downstairs in the office at the front of the house, I've got a partial view of the small mountain across the valley, and it's been lovely watching the colours of the mountainside change from dull shadows through to a faint rosy glow and, as now, joyful orangey sunshine. There is something potent about sunshine. I'm not half as ready to jump out of bed on a miserable day as I am when the sun's up and the world seems happy...

The sunshine won't get to this side of the house until the afternoon, so it's cold inside and out down here. My internal/external thermometer tells me that it's 16° C inside the room and only 11° C outside, but my weather station tells me that it's more like 3° C outside with the wind chill factor - so you see, it does get cool, even here!

I suspect that the main reason I've been up so early is that I'm jet-lagged. For the first time I've been taking Melatonin tablets to try and avoid it, but it's only been partially successful. For one thing, we had two different types of tablet and we've learned by experience that one is better than the other. But an additional reason that I've been waking up earlier is that I'm not comfortable in bed, having wrenched my neck really badly in April. Despite chiropractic treatment it seems that I have permanently damaged something in the region of vertebra 2, right under my skull, and while it isn't painful, it can be uncomfortable if I lie in the wrong way... it's very boring.

Doubtless when we're back into our routines here I shall slip back into my usual sleep patterns, but in the meantime it's been fun watching the sun rise on a few consecutive days.