Gosh! Where do I start when I’ve written nothing for so long? My right hand has been so preoccupied with writing endless lists of what needed to be done or be bought, that I had no time to write more creatively. With our lives so full, all hours of every day, my pen travelled with me but remained at the bottom of my bag, never getting a chance to touch my notepad. Occasionally I would look at them both and wish we could spend some time together again, but there were no minutes to spare and all brain cells were otherwise occupied.
We were back in Sydney, but we couldn’t go home. Just like last year, Mark and Fiona were away overseas and kindly loaned us their beautiful Pyrmont apartment until we could get ourselves straight enough to start camping at Garland Road. Victoria returned our car and we spent every day driving over the bridge to our storage unit, or to our house.
The first thing we needed to do was get a sofa ordered, as ours had been thrown out between the two sets of tenants. So, straight off the plane from London, we went to a store selling sofas and tried to remember what colour our two armchairs were; it’s tricky when you haven’t seen them for nearly two years. The salesman lent us a swatch of colours and we went to the storage unit early the next morning to try and get a good match. Unfortunately the chairs were completely buried at the back of the unit and there was no way of even getting a glimpse of them. So we checked the measurements of our lounge wall and went back to the shop to make our order, with fingers firmly crossed that the colour we chose would work. I begged the shop assistant to pull out all stops and get the sofa made and delivered before our first guests arrived on December 17th. He wasn’t sure they could do it “with so many Christmas orders already in” and I left the shop wondering why people order new sofas for Christmas, it seems a strange gift to me and flipping impossible to wrap up and put under a Christmas tree….! Ah well, we knew we had two armchairs, a bean bag, one pouffé, lots of director chairs and four friends arriving to stay with us for two weeks over Christmas, eeks!
We were also going to be one bed short, having sold an old one when we packed up and left. So being an item that we couldn’t go without for our guests ( I couldn’t quite see the six of us squeezing into two beds), we decided Ikea might be the best bet, as we wouldn’t be waiting for it to be made or delivered before Christmas. So we drove across Sydney to pick one up. There was only one we liked and “oh dear, it’s out of stock, but don’t worry we’ll be getting more in next week”…. I can’t remember how many times we drove to both branches of Ikea, or how many times I kept checking the stock list on line. As December 17th loomed closer and closer, we were starting to panic, until late one Friday night, I noticed that there were a few in the Lidcombe store. I spent the night tossing and turning and planned to be at the store, pre-opening, on Saturday morning. I had the store map with the quick access routes to the necessary pick-up bay, but then Rodney decided to go instead and managed to buy the very last one on the shelf, phew…..!
After a week at Mark & Fiona’s, we managed to drag out a mattress and some sheets and towels from the storage unit. We found a saucepan and a box of crockery and with one suitcase full of clothes each, we set up camp in our own home for a week. We scrubbed and cleaned, washed and wiped, polished and swept, fumigated and freshened until our home felt well-groomed again. Rodney fixed broken things, filled holes, repaired skirting boards, painted, and we shopped for missing items that had walked out with the tenants. Our floors downstairs were sanded back, stained and resealed, which prevented us from entering the house for five days, so we scrubbed and de-moulded the laundry, set to on the garden, cutting back the jungle it had become, and replanted the herb garden. Our wonderful friend, Dino came round and helped with so many things, including repainting two rooms. Kind friends fed us dinners and we ate out at local restaurants a fair bit
We’d been back in Sydney exactly two weeks and our feet, hands, backs and brains had not stopped. Every little bit of my fingers ached and I didn’t have a single fingernail left intact. Every room smelled of a delicious combination of paint, floor sealant, bleach and multi-purpose cleaner. I tried to buy mainly lemon-scented products to co-ordinate the smells, but I have to admit I often couldn’t wait to get out of the house and go somewhere to smell some roses.
On November 11th, the wettest day since landing back in Australia, our moving day came around. Rodney met the removalists at our storage unit at 8am and after loading up the big truck, they all reached our house at 11am. Four burly blokes set to, at lightening speed. The security door and the front door were removed; the dining table and the front room wardrobe just wouldn’t squeeze through the gap, despite going out that way two years ago….? They parked the truck as close as they could to the carport, but everything still came in a little damp. My prayers for a dry moving day hadn’t been answered. One burly tried to put a chair through a kitchen wall, thankfully the chair and the wall survived. All in all it was a mightily efficient job with the truck and the gang leaving at 1pm. All done in half a day and amazingly, the removal company refunded us some cash because the job had been easier than they had expected….how kind.
We then stood and stared, crikey it looked like a big job still ahead of us; far bigger then we had imagined. Most of the boxes had ended up in the correct rooms, but there seemed to be so many of them. So, it was on with the radio, scissors grasped and we got started straight away. We kept going until 7pm when Rodney called time out and played hunter gatherer…..at the fish and chip shop. Brilliant ! We re-assembled and made up our bed at some point during the day; oooooh, a real bed at last! Finally, at 8pm, Rodney managed to find the box with the small TV in it and so with no chairs to sit on, we crawled in to our own bed to watch our own TV for the first time in 22 months. It’s the simple things in life……
The study needs unpacking……..
Dino came back yet again and helped us unpack and unwrap, hang pictures and generally keep us cheerful with the seemingly endless tasks involved in putting our home back together. The new sofa arrived within three weeks and we thanked our lucky stars for that one. There were other little cheery things along the way, like finding a favourite ornament that you’ve missed looking at, or a nice T shirt you’d forgotten. Being able to hang sheets and towels on a washing line on a sunny day was an unexpected happy moment. Unpacking my sewing machine was a much-anticipated joy, although slogging away at making two sets of new curtains and lining another set wasn’t quite so much fun.
In early December we finally got our bond back to cover the unpaid rent and a tiny bit extra towards the damage and missing items in our home. Then Rodney took a much-needed weekend off to play golf with friends, down in the Southern Highlands. It wasn’t exactly a rest and he came back looking as tired as when he went away, but they do say a change is as good as a rest.
When our four friends, Bill & Ang, Bob & Jean arrived on December 17th, we were finally feeling on top of everything and were ready to relax. They had fresh clean rooms, beds to sleep on and furniture in the lounge to sit on. For seven weeks we had been the busiest of bees and were sick of falling asleep in front of the telly late in the evening, or moaning about aching hands, backs and legs. So we downed tools and got back to thoroughly enjoying being back in our favourite city. Though I wouldn’t say the next three weeks were relaxing, more of a non-stop whirl of sightseeing and partying.
While they were here, we spent three days in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, exploring waterfalls and viewpoints. We did a lot of touring around, visiting our favourite spots and re-acquainting ourselves with our home city, which was really nice for us too, after nearly two years away. We managed to body-board and laze on quite a few beaches We had a party for 44 on Christmas Eve and it was certainly very handy having the extra help from our house guests. The sun shone almost every day, except on Christmas Day when the sky chucked rain down almost non-stop. So we did the English thing of getting up late, watching two movies on the telly and then going up to Rodney’s brother’s for a big traditional turkey dinner until late. Thank you Ivan and Rachel for another delicious Christmas meal for so many of us. I really wanted our guests to be able to say they had spent Christmas Day on the beach, but they had to wait till Boxing Day, when we took a picnic round to Georges Heights to watch the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race whiz past on their way out of Sydney Harbour and then we spent the afternoon snoozing and swimming at Balmoral Beach.
We all had a brilliant time on New Year’s Eve at Mark & Fiona’s harbour view apartment in Pyrmont; our four house guests couldn’t take their eyes off the view and then watching the fireworks show. We ate and drank and we didn’t get home until 3am!!!
For the rest of their stay with us, we went on walks, hunted for wallabies, the girls managed to squeeze in quite a few markets and a bit of shopping therapy, and they all had a day at the cricket, watching England lose again. With such good weather this summer, I’m sure they’ve had a good three weeks with us and they all went home to Watton-At-Stone with suntans and smiles on their faces.
Another friend’s daughter, Alison, also came to stay with us for two nights between Christmas and New Year; unfortunately, with all bedrooms now full, she had to sleep on a mattress on the lounge floor, poor thing. But we gave her an intensive two-day tour of Sydney and I think she enjoyed herself. I have a feeling she will be back again sometime……and I’ve promised her a bed in a bedroom next time!
When all of our visitors left, our house seemed very quiet and empty. We missed the chatter and a full table at mealtimes. We carried on visiting beaches throughout the gorgeous summer in Sydney. Rodney had a wisdom tooth out, but don’t panic he’s still very wise. We carried on fixing things around the house and made a lovely sign to hang on the deck. I got the sewing machine out and went creatively crazy. I made six huge beach bags, three summer dresses, lots of lavender bags, mats for the dining room trolley, a kaftan, a handbag and a fleecy cover-up for wearing to and from my aquarobics classes. The new lounge curtains arrived and we refused to accept them, gosh I wished I had made them myself. The company finally corrected their shoddy work and delivered good curtains late in March; it only took them five months to earn their money and get it right!! We had a lot of fun one afternoon, barefoot bowling with friends at the Balmain Bowling Club. I’m not sure we played to the rules, we had no idea what the rules were, but I don’t think there was any cheating involved, only alcohol. Lots of dinner parties, restaurants, cafes, movies and walks; these are all the things we love about being at home in Sydney.
Our friends Deb and Tom arrived from Los Angeles to stay for a week in early March, so we were out and about again, entertaining and sightseeing. Then Susan Blake arrived from London to stay with us, while she worked in the Sydney office of Moodys for two weeks. That leaves us with only one week to get our act together, say our farewells, pack our bags and have our home ready for our friend Tim to housesit for five months, while we tour around Spain and Portugal in Eileen.
It’s funny, but when Rodney finally got around to booking our flight to England, one little wrinkle in his forehead seemed to disappear. He is definitely a man who needs an airline ticket in his pocket, or he gets a bit gloomy. So our seats were booked on the big bird to Gatwick on April 7th and Mr Gloomy became Mr Re-energised. We’re on our way again…….
