Navmen and other delights

I think it is important to log how much in love I am with my Navman...okay okay Bel...OUR Navman.

Bel and I went halve-zees in a Navman a month or so ago and I'm just beginning to use it and discover its delights.....

I love that it can re-direct you in the event of road closures et al....I love that it can tell you where the nearest petrol station is....we laugh at how it pronounces names - the woman says Caloundra like Maroubra***.....which won't mean much to people who aren't from Australia but I'm sure you have equivalents wherever you live....it tells me when I am speeding...it tells me where there are speed/red-light cameras.  If you've ever wondered if it was an extravagance, I say to you...go and get one now....they are a godsend for those over 40 who find street directories hard to read at night or parents of kids who have to go to soccer-fields in godforsaken suburbs they've never heard of.....


It's very rainy here....I spent the day browsing in shops mostly...it's my last day of holidays before I go back to the proverbial salt-mine.  I got caught in a downpour in the city.  My shoes were soaked.  My jeans were soaked.  Luckily I could go to my father's unit and put my togs in the dryer, have a cup of coffee and borrow his shoes to drive home.  Here's the view from the unit.  You can't really see much from a mobile phone photo but I assure you that the river has broken its banks and is very brown with lots of interesting driftwood.  The City Botanic Gardens are absolutely soaked.

I was grateful to find bandaids in the unit as well...It's the little things that make a difference isn't it?...a blister on the back of your heel can be hell....

God bless the person that invented Navman and God bless the person that invented Bandaids.

And a big PS - God Bless friends who share their very special champagne with you and teach you how to do Fair Isle and take you to Noosa so you can browse in fabulous shops to your heart's content. Love you heaps girlfriend!!!

***in case you are slightly interested ....in Australia we pronounce Caloundra as in Cal - ow - ndruh......and Maroubra as Ma- roo - bruh (the "a"s on the end of both names are short as in "up")....so you can understand why we giggle when the lady says Ca - loon - druh.

Wild Weekend

In my wild youth I had a wild friend.  Her name was Loani.  People stumbled and bumbled around her name like a rock in the shallows.  "Leonie?" they would hopefully mumble.  "Loo-ah-knee?" they would stutter.  "Leilani?" they would squeak....We used to titter about it behind the ABC Shop counter as we relieved Joan for her lunch/potty breaks back in the last century...nay the last millenium....Names are very important things....People get a bit "thing" about their names if you don't get them quite right....I made a point of remembering how to say Loani's name and practised it furiously when I first met her.  If I got it wrong...well, she called me Olix....and that's how she inscribed my very own copy of her latest book last weekend.  "Look !" said Cas..."She must be a bit tired from signing all those books...she's spelt your name Olix rather than Alex...." ...so I told him the story....


And so here we are....so many years later...and as she said to me....in our wild youth...if someone had come and tapped us on the arm down at the RE and said "She'll be famous for her tea cosies one day...." well, we would have howled with laughter.....shrieked like hyenas....we still do come to think of it.....

How many glasses of wine, cups of tea, bowls of lentils, pints of stout have we consumed together dear friend as we shared the stories of our day?  Each tried to outdo the other in embellishing...."Wait til I tell you about the one I had today.....she rings me and she says.....can you tell me what happened in Blake's Seven last night?  I missed it......"    "No, no, no...." she'd shriek "I can do better than that....wait til you hear about this one......she wanted to let me know that she's just past Uranus and on her way to Pluto....and she wants to know what's the weather forecast for Pluto"  We'd get licorice all-sorts in our days at the ABC on the phones.

Well now we are here in the more settled time...we're more matronly...more sober....more domesticated....less licentious....we've got to let the young uns have their time in the limelight....and be a bit respectable...but .....in case anyone cares to know.....or ponders on the stray potty word that escapes our lips or wonders if the wild laughter could possibly have come from our table....well ...they only have to look at the teapot and its fabulous cosy to know......tea hee!