Well, here we are back in Sydney, but not back in our home. I thought I might struggle after so long on the road, with most of the time spent living out of a suitcase, but, surprisingly, we’ve both managed very well. It could be because our first residence was at Mark & Fiona’s apartment in Pyrmont which supplied us with wonderful city and harbour views. We couldn’t have asked for a better introduction back to our home town and I couldn’t stop looking at that view.
We had a few dinner parties and managed to catch up with a lot of friends quite quickly, which was great; no-one seemed to have changed or aged while we had been away all year. The weather was extremely hot, but fortunately Sydney managed to avoid any major bushfires, though other areas of eastern Australia have had a terrible time with fires. We spent many days catching up on paperwork, sorting out our tax, making appointments for teeth, eyes, doctors, banks, the car, etc. Every day the beach was calling, but we only managed a few hours there this month. When Mark & Fiona returned from Antarctica (with no luggage) on January 22nd, , we packed up our bags and boxes and left them to settle in to their lovely apartment. Thank you so much, Mark & Fiona for making our return to Sydney so special.
We moved over to North Willoughby to live with our ever-helpful friends, Vanea and Peter, for a week in their spare room, using their dining room as our study and getting in-the-way in their kitchen. For us, it did almost feel like we were back at home as we were living here for a month before we headed overseas last year. The week there went quickly being filled with trips to doctors, optometrist, hairdresser, the storage unit and a service for the car. Plus Rodney managed to squeeze in a lot of TV viewing as the Australian Tennis Open was on. I spent a day at the races with Dino and happily watched his horse come in fourth; well it’s better than fifth, or sixth, or last…..! We caught up with more friends and also bumped into neighbours who cheerily advised us that our previous tenants, had some interesting habits and had upset all the neighbours when the stuff they left behind (after being evicted) spent a week or more on the grass verge outside our house. We will be popping in to our house on February 6th for a ‘landlords inspection’, which I am not really looking forward to. I think we’ll also be popping in to the other neighbours while we are there, to apologise for previously renting the house to a disastrous couple! So far, the current tenants seem to be living ‘in a normal manner’ in our house; thank goodness and fingers crossed.
And now we are living in West Chatswood at Louise and Geoff’s house, while they are holidaying in Tasmania. The fun part here is that we’re not just house-sitting, we’re cat-sitting; Charlie the Burmese cat is enjoying our company too. He’s very old and very talkative, though most of his conversation sounds like a toddler saying “no”. He is also prone to sleeping most of the day and then waking us up at 1:30am and 5:30am. Because he’s so old and thin, we’re a bit adverse to letting him keep bashing himself against the door and crying, so we check his food and coax him back to his chair (complete with tiny electric blanket), we’ve decided that he is the most spoilt cat we know….!
So after a month of eating out at lunchtime, or eating out at night, almost every day, it will be interesting to see what February will bring, probably just more of the same before we leave Sydney at the end of February.
