Viking life

This is the reason I haven't posted for a while:


A couple of months ago, I agreed to set up and take a warp-weighted loom to the biennial Easter gathering hosted by the New England Medieval Arts Society (NEMAS), which is held in a wonderful pine forest setting about 10kms from Armidale. Several huundred reenactors come from all over Australia (and some from New Zealand) and camp out in an authentic setting for 4 days. I didn't camp out, but I was there all day Saturday and Sunday, setting up and demonstrating the loom, and also showing and teaching spinning on a drop spindle.

Preparing for the event took a lot of time. A friend and I built the loom, and then had to work out how to use it. I also had to make a costume for me, and adapt one for my niece, who came with her family from Canberra so that she could come to the event with me. (My costume is a rush job; one day I'll make a better, better fitting one!)

This weekend NEMAS had an open day for members of the public to come and see the long house and various demonstrations, so I took the loom out there again. As our first warp - which took us 3 hours to wind - didn't work too well at Easter, I wound another one with less hairy yarn during the week, and then my friend and I had to get that warp onto the loom this morning.

The whole experience was fun, although quite tiring; at least we have two years to recover and prepare for the next one!

I'll post some photos on my photoblog in the next day or so.

Geoffrey Chaucer

I love the blogosphere. There are so many interesting, imaginative, talented people out there.

And now, Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog. Yes, it's in Middle English (of sorts!) but it is well worth it - an absolute hoot!

Fyghten togeder we dide, this valet and ich, in Rethel-toune whanne the Frensshe layde waste to yt to letten the Prince Noir from crossinge, and in the melee we were scatterede from the hoste, and we two dide runne like eye makeupe on a televangelistes wyf.

Mariner's tales

I spent a couple of hours yesterday dallying at the website Mariners and Ships in Australian Waters. This site includes transcripts of crew and passenger lists of ships arriving in Sydney in the latter half of the 19th century. With more than 700 ships a year arriving - from all over the world, including other Australian colonies - it was a busy, bustling port.

The historian in me loves these old records - and so does the novelist! The historian wants to pull the records into a database, so they can be sorted, analysed in an effective way. How often did individual ships make the journey to Sydney? Were crews relatively stable, the same men with the same masters?

The writer in me is constantly inspired - in this case, especially by the glimpses of women. Mrs James, wife of the Oliver Cromwell's captain, Donald James, made two voyages from the UK to Sydney on her husband's ship. James captained the ship for a number of years - are these two journeys that Mrs James made indicative of the early years of a marriage? Did she accompany her husband until she was pregnant with their first child, and afterwards stay at home, only seeing him in the short spaces between long voyages?

A captain's wife is one thing; but I'm also fascinated by mentions of women in the crew lists. They're not common, but they're not as rare as one might expect. Take, for example, Emma Lindsay. She was a crew member of the Salsette, which voyaged from Suez to Sydney three times in 1860. She was 33 years old, and listed as a stewardess - the only female crew member. The Salsette was a steamship of 965 tons, with a large crew - about 60 named crew on each trip, plus 100 or more merely listed as 'Asian'. In 1860, the Salsette docked at Sydney in January, July and October - and Emma is listed as crew each time. Passenger numbers ranged from 16 in January, to 31 in July, to '106 Asians' in October. In Aug 1861, the steamer arrived again, this time from Point de Galle, rather than Suez, and this time Emma is not listed; but there is a new stewardess, J.A. Corbett, aged 23.

What must it have been like, being the only woman in such a masculine environment? How did a youngish woman become a stewardess, and why? I did wonder if it was a euphemism for 'Captain's mistress', but given the way it's listed, in amongst the other crew, I doubt it. I also doubt the position translated to 'ship's whore'; if this was acceptable practice, then I'd expect more than one woman on the occasional ship.

Steam ships were a more luxurious way for passengers to travel, and presumably having a stewardess to assist the female passengers would have made the journey more tolerable for the ladies. In that circumstance, I'd guess that there would need to be at least some degree of propriety around the position in order for it to be acceptable.

I confess I'm fascinated by Emma and others; and yes, I can see a story line or 3! However, I can also see the need for more research - as always!

Update: I spent an hour in the uni library at lunchtime, reading microfilmed old newspapers, and I noticed on several adverts for ships travelling to London from Melbourne that 'a stewardess is on board for attendance on ladies'.

The Four things meme

Yes, yes, it's been deathly quiet in here. Work and general life have been way too busy, and the brain cell fused way back a week or two ago.

This meme's been going around, so I figured I'd be lazy and use it as a blog entry.

Four jobs you have had in your life:
1. Pay clerk in a hospital
2. Youth refuge coordinator
3. YMCA manager
4. Organisational development manager

Four movies you would watch over and over:
1. Little Women (the Wynona Rider version, directed by Gillian Armstrong)
2. Shadowlands
3.
4.
Hmm, can't think of any others.

Four places you have lived:
1. near the Dandenongs, east of Melbourne
2. Canberra
3. Glebe, inner Sydney
4. assorted rural places around Armidale

Four TV shows you love to watch:
1. Spooks (called MI5 in the US?)
2. Silent Witness
3. Maccallum
4. Dr Who (the new series)

Four places you have been on vacation:
1. the UK
2. New Zealand
3. Jerusalem
4. New York (long time ago....)

Four websites I visit daily:
1. the Bat Cave at eHarlequin.com
2. SmartBitchesTrashyBooks
3. Kate Rothwell's blog
4. my bloglines page

Four of my favorite foods: (in no particular order)
1. chocolate
2. a good steak
3. the seafood charentaise at Jean Pierre's restaurant
4. roast lamb cooked with rosemary and honey and baked vegetables

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. here, but settling down for a day of writing instead of running late for work
2. on holiday in some beautiful place
3. accepting a cheque for winning the lottery
4. sleeping

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree...

Living in the bush, we have a fair few kookaburras around our place. If you've never heard a kookaburra's laugh, there's a recording of a pair here.

There are days when hearing one, or two or more kookaburras bursting into their chortle is a wonderful, life-is-good kind of sound.

Then there are days when hearing a group of birds bursting into their cackling right outside the window reminds me more of MacBeth's mad witches, and I know they're laughing at me, not with me.

Today was one of those mornings. Work's been a shit 'challenging' lately, every step forward seems to be followed by either two steps backwards or a stumble, and I'm going to have to work most of the weekend instead of writing. Bleurgh.

However, on the plus side of life, I booked the DH's and my tickets to Perth to see his family in May yesterday, and plans for our outback trip in August are coming along well. That's two trips away with the DH in the space of a few months. I will miss the RWAus conference in August, unfortunately, but two weeks in the outback with the DH and our friends will be great!

Yes, yes, I'm trying to talk myself into being cheerful. Not sure it's working entirely, but at least I haven't whined for the entire post!

And now the kookaburras have gone, and there's only the sweet, simple whistle of a rosella, and I'd better get some work out of the way.

Living history

People often ask me why, with an Honours degree in history, I'm not writing historicals. Well, I probably will, one day, but in the meantime, I'm not because there's waaayyy to much research to do. My problem is that I'm interested in everyday history, in the practicalities of life for ordinary people in earlier times. I don't want to write about lords and ladies, and I don't want to just go along with the Hollywood notions of historical life.

I'm also a spinner and weaver, and every time I'm reading an historical and a hapless heroine gets stranded in a castle/fort/cottage after being drenched in a thunderstorm, and someone produces a garment, I think - 'oh, yes, and where did that come from, huh?'. While occasionally a book will refer to peasants/villagers/trades people weaving or spinning, I've never yet come across a heroine who picks up a spindle or winds a warp. Nor does anyone much seem to worry about the seasons, the planting, harvesting, grinding, retting, etc, or what produce is available for the table when, or the phases of the moon and whether it's light enough outside at night - all of which were integral to survival in times not so long ago.

Anyway, at Easter I'm going to be getting some real-life practice at medieval life. The local medieval arts society holds a camp every second year at the pine forest outside town, complete with a long house, and people come from all over Australia to camp in authentic Dark Ages/Viking style. I've visited once before to demonstrate spinning with a drop spindle, but this year, a friend and I are making a warp-weighted loom, so I'll be spending a couple of days in the long house weaving on that. Which means I've got only a few weeks to work out how exactly to warp a warp-weighted loom - it's more complicated than the 'modern', 1000 year-old loom types I'm more used to working with.

And I'm sure that spending a couple of days with plenty of young, energetic warriors around will give me a story idea or two... ;-)

Belfry blog day

I blogged over at The Belfry today.

I also put some photos up on my photoblog last night.

At some stage, I may even post something here...

Writing space

Ann Wesley Hardin posted about writing space, and the struggle to find the right space. Yep, I can relate to that struggle. When we designed our not-very-large house, I wasn't a writer. We also had to cut back on our plans, due to the high cost of building. The sunroom became my space - for my work materials, weaving, spinning and sewing equipment and stashes, and writing. It's a nice room, but it's crowded (two large looms don't help), and it gets stinking hot in summer during the day, and freezing cold in winter at night. Not to mention that in winter during the day the sun always seems to be shining onto the laptop screen.

The DH installed a wireless network, and I moved to the dining table in our living room. That was better temperature-wise, no matter the season, but the wooden chairs were uncomfortable for long periods, and if the DH wanted to watch TV I had a hard time not being distracted by it.

About this time last year, I moved my small desk from the sun room to the guest room, and bought an inexpensive, cushioned office chair. At first I put the desk into a corner beside the queen bed - but I found myself feeling claustrophic. I finally did a major clean-out, sorting out boxes that had been filling the small alcove which will, one day, house a piano. Now it houses my desk, and we've moved the DH's old bookshelf into the room so I have a place to store books and files. It's still not spacious, but it works much better. The window to my left looks out to bushland, and to my right I look down the passageway and out the french doors in our bedroom; I don't feel as claustrophobic. DH also hooked speakers up to my computer, so I can listen to decent quality music without having to wear headphones.



Here's a close-up: my favourite mug with tea, my knitting, Ann's blog on the screen, a pin-board with photos for my wip, Bats to watch over me, and yes, that's a giraffe riding on the computer ;-)

I don't think I'm going to be one of those writers where readers say all the characters are the same. They're certainly very diverse in my imagining. Occasionally I almost wish that I could write more stereotypical ones - or maybe I should say 'archetypal' - but each one of mine lands in my imagination with a strong and very individual emotional core, and I have to then build on that, keep the character consistent and true to themselves, and work out all the whys and hows of who they are.

I've mentioned before that I've been jotting notes and ideas for the second book after Shadows and Light; I really have to know in my own mind where I'll be going with this linked trilogy before I can proceed much further.

I can already tell that the heroine of this book, Mariane, is going to provide me with some significant writing challenges. She's a quiet, dedicated, academic historian, thrown as soon as the book opens into a world she's totally unequipped for - on the run from the CIA, MI6, and ASIS, not to mention a powerful arms dealer.

My challenge in this will be to keep Mariane real, without slipping into the convenience of traditional characterisations; she's neither a kickbutt heroine, nor a wimpy heroine who has to be rescued. Yet in the first chapter, she will be struggling in a world she doesn't understand enough to deal with - but I have to keep the plot real, too, without building in contrivances to enable her to show her strengths. (Yes, I know being on the run from assoretd intelligences agencies and arms dealers sounds very James Bond fantasy-ish, but that's not the style I write in ;-) )

It's just as well I've got a while to mull this over before I get serioulsy into writing it ;-)

Teeth grinding

A week or so ago, I bought Bronwyn Jameson's book, The Rugged Loner. The Harlequin and Silhouette books aren't published here until several months after the US, and so I'd been eagerly awaiting Bron's book - I don't read many books of that line, but Bron is not only a good writer, she's a wonderfully warm and supportive member of the Romance Writers of Australia and great company at conferences. (Plus she has a really great name ;-) )

So, I went into K-Mart to buy her book. They publish some of the Harl/Sil lines here in Australia as duos, so you get two stories in the same book. And my heart sank. Bron's book was packaged with an author whose stories I really don't like. I bought it anyway, of course, but I confess I did feel cranky with Harlequin.

The other author? Diana Palmer. I know that many people love her, she's a Big Name Author who's sold a gazillion books, and she's probably a wonderful person. But I've tried to read two of her books in the past and have been grinding my teeth by page 2. Those books just didn't mesh with my taste in reading. Obviously, she does appeal to millions of readers, which is fine, and just goes to illustrate that there's no right or wrong, and personal taste is subjective.

Anyway, after I read Bron's fantastic story, (woo-hoo Bron! Can't wait till the next one comes out!), I decided to try Diana's, thinking maybe I just didn't read her best ones previously. Maybe this one I'd enjoy....

I gave up on page 5. I wanted to throttle the heroine for being spineless and TSTL, and knee the hero. Not a great start for relating to characters and believing in the possibility of a HEA. I looked at the copyright page, assuming it was an early 1980s novel re-released. Nope, it was first published in 2005.

So, what's my point in relating this? The romance genre is wide, and the readership is not some homogenous lump of all exactly-the-same women. Diana writes, very successfully, books that appeal to some of those women. No writer - not even La Nora, or Jennifer Crusie - appeals to everyone. Some love them, some hate them, some are merely indifferent. That's more than okay - that's the way it should be. Diversity is wonderful! Without that diversity, our genre and our industry would be tiny.

So, with all due respect to Diana Palmer, I'm not going to try and finish her book. I don't wish her ill, or even really begrudge her the $$ I spent, but my reading time is too limited to read books I'm not enjoying.

What I do wish, however, is that Harlequin in Australian gave some more consideration to the whole publishing of two books in one volume thing. I don't know if others found the pairing of Bron's and Diana's books strange, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did - it would seem to me that Bron's gutsy, independent heroines and Diana's more traditional ones would appeal to different readers. Maybe that's Harlequin's ploy - get both readerships to buy the book. That's fine for Bron and Diana - but do you think I can send Harlequin the bill for getting my teeth fixed???

Belfry Blog day

It's my day to post over on the Belfry Collective Blog today.

My (weird) writer's imagination

Are you ready for this train of thought?? Follow closely and hold on tight, because we're going round some bends mighty fast....

Over on the Smart Bitches the other day, there was discussion about pennames and someone also mentioned porn star names - the name of your first pet, plus the name of the street you grew up.

Sugar Tulip. That's my name according to this formula. Yep, it has a certain ring about it - although I'm definitely no porn star... (watch out - first bend coming up) ...but maybe Sugar writes spicy...

The 'Sugar' and the sort-of rhyming with 'Mint Julep'? Southern USA, and I naturally think of New Orleans, (since we've been thinking spicy) and can't you just see a large, older woman with a definite wicked glint in her eye and a whole-hearted appreciation of life? Okay, so she's probably African-American, and I'm definitely not, so the equivalent would be....

The women in Sue Janson's art work, that I saw in a gallery in Bendigo, Victoria a few weeks back, and absolutely loved. Gorgeous colours, large older women full of joie de vivre, a sense of fun and adventure, loving life and not afraid to live it on their own terms, with plenty of humour.

(Go over to her website and take a look - the images are copyright stamped, but you'll get the idea anyway - and you can order prints and cards. The original paintings are large and I'd love to buy a couple, but that will have to wait a while... in the meantime, I think I'll buy a print. Or two.)

So there you go - in just a flash of a train of thought, Sugar Tulip comes to life ;-)

I don't think I'll actually ever write as her, but I could definitely see her as a character in a book ;-)

Catching up (again)

I know, I haven't posted for a while. But I have put some photos up on the other blog - evidence that I've actually been exercising. And I've been to the gym a few times. I'm never going to become a gym freak, but I'm trying to be serious about losing the weight I need to lose. Not manic - I'm sooo not into pain or deprivation - but by upping my exercise and reducing my intake a little, I'm hoping to make a difference over the next few months.

In other news, today I had lunch with the only two other romance writers in my town. Kelly Hunter and I have had lunch a few times before, and Michelle has just moved to town, so it was great to get together and natter about writing. I don't get to talk to real, live romance writers face-to-face very often - one of the few perils of rural living - so it's always enjoyable when I can.

Kelly's first book, Wife for a Week, a Mills and Boon Modern Extra, will be published in the UK in March. I'm not sure when it comes out in Australia, but we're going to try to talk Kelly in to a local booklaunch and celebration ;-)



It's a great cover, and you should read the excerpt on Kelly's website. It's wonderful - and I'm definitely going to buy the book when it comes out here. Not to mention be first in line for an autograph at that booklaunch we're going to have ;-)

Face of a hero (or three)

One of my challenges as a writer is that I'm a kinesthetic person, rather than a visual one. So, while I have a strong sense of my characters, I find it hard to actually get a clear visual picture. But I need an image, so that I can study it and work out how I might describe the person in visual terms if required. And to pin up on my notice board as inspiration (or perspiration, in some cases ;-) )

So, since I don't get to see a heap of TV or movies these days, I gave my batty writing group some brief word pictures and asked for suggestions of faces that might work for two of my characters in books I'll be seriously working on shortly - Cole Tanner in Shadows and Light, and Morgan 'Gil' Gillespie in Dark Legacy.

For Cole, who can pass as a local in parts of Central Asia (the '-stan' countries), Kris suggested Nicholas Lea:


Hmmm.... Yum. Yep, I could drool look at that face for a while ;-)

But he's a little young for Cole, unfortunately. And, as a friend of mine once said about someone, 'This is his first time around.' Now, I'm not really into reincarnation, but there are some people who seem to have older souls than others, and Nicholas (in this photo anyway) doesn't seem to be one of them - whereas Cole knows life on a deep level. So, Nicholas is going into the resources file - and he may well appear as a hero in another book... yes, there's a definite possibility...

Angie sent me a link to a website with thousands of photos of aspiring actors and models, and I found this guy (a model called Loukas), who isn't right for Cole either, but I'll post him anyway in case it prompts someone to think of other suggestions:



(The face shape, skin, hair is right, but the mouth seems wrong to me - a bit self-indulgent, pouty, soft. Which Cole definitely isn't in the slightest. And the eyes/expression aren't quite right, either. All in all, this guy just isn't deep enough for Cole.)

Now, for 'Gil' Gillespie, last night I rummaged through a few pics I'd saved over the years, and found this one:


Give him black hair and dark eyes, and this particular photo of Clive Owen could well be Gil - tough, hard, and walking sometimes on the edge of the law. Not to mention droolable. Oh, yes....


I didn't ask the Bats about images for another hero, Ronan. Ronan appears as a colleague and friend of Cole in Shadows and Light, and will be the hero in Shadows and Dreams. Ronan gives the impression of a less complex personality than Cole - a fun guy, less serious, taking life lightly, although in reality he is a dedicated and serious professional. He just hides it well ;-). (Of course, in his story, he will be thrown into some extremely heart-wrenching situations....)

I found this image on the model/actor site, and it kinda works. There's a depth of character there, but you can see there's a grin not far below the surface:




But for Ronan, I suspect that I'll come back to Hugh:




Oh, yes, we do men well here in Australia ;-)

This 5 minutes of bliss was brought to you by Bron's usually-Boring Blog.

Your library online

Here's a free, fun and useful tool for romance readers:

LibraryThing

You can quickly build an online catalogue of your books, tag them, rate them, share your list with others, and see what people who have the same books as you are also reading - a great way to find out about new books to read! The service draws on worldwide amazon and library databases, so cataloging books is not a laborious process - simply enter title key words and author's name, and then select the correct book from the listing that comes up.

I haven't had time to enter more than a couple of books yet - just trying out the site - but you can see my very meager listing here to see what a listing looks like.

The free service lets you catalogue up to 200 books; you can sign up for an unlimited catalogue for a small fee.

Have fun!

Everywhere but here..

It was my day to post at The Belfry Collective yesterday - so I did.

And this morning I made a walk into a photo exercise (because I hate any other sort of exercise) and the results are in my photoblog - and also up at Flickr, because I'm exploring it at the moment (as part of research for my day job - I'm supposed to know about these social software sites).

The backup fiend

Today I came across a free site for file storage that allows up to 1GB of space, and enables you to directly upload files and apply tags to them for easy finding. You can also, if you wish, share files from the site, (and there is support for developing and/or running assorted applications to automatically doing things with the files - not that I'm planning on using that, since I don't actually understand that side of it.)

The site is
http://www.openomy.com

What's a tag, you ask? Rather than using a folder structure, you can apply one or more tags (or keywords) to each file. Then, you can easily find it by looking under any one of those tags. You don't have to search through folders to find where the heck you put it ;-)

You can also upload zipped files to openomy, which means you can get a fair amount in that 1GB of space.

I'm a bit manic about back-ups, having seen too many writing friends and others lose significant amounts of work. One back-up isn't enough, because they can and do fail (especially if it's a flash-drive or CD). So, I'll be adding openomy to my back-up system.

Muse music

Like many writers, I often use background music to inspire the Muse. For me, it can't be just anything, and I've put together playlists to evoke the emotional ambience for the various characters and novels. For some, it's easy - Calli and Elliot in Falling into Darkness have a mix of haunting instrumental and folk pieces, and the raw earthiness of The Waterboys is perfect for Gil and Kris in Dark Legacy, especially Gil.

But I'm a bit stuck putting together a play list for Shadows and Light, even though we have over 350 CDs in our ecletic collection, including classical, gregorian chant, medieval, folk and world music, jazz and blues, rock, and alternative, and just about everything in between.

I've so far picked out Jane Sheldon's 'Silencium' (the theme for the British TV series 'Silent Witness'), and Dead Can Dance's 'The Writing on my Father's Hand'; the haunting, ethereal melodies and harmonies of these are right for the heroine, Sonia, for the different paths she's chosen, for the suffering she's seen and survived herself. There's strength and sorrow and grief and hope in those songs, just as there is in Sonia.

However, for the hero, I've so far hit a brick wall. The only thing that's come close so far is Morricone's 'Gabriel's Oboe' (from the film, The Mission.) Cole is a man who's given everything - even his own identity - to serve as only he can. He's isolated, alone, never able to be himself, no longer even sure who he is. 'Gabriel's Oboe' has the sense of isolation, of struggle and exile, that is right for Cole. However, it's only one piece, and I need some more!

I suspect have a few tracks in the LP collection that would be appropriate, but unfortunately I currently don't have a way to transfer vinyl to digital, nor much space left on my computer to download individual tracks. I might just have to clear up some space and do a bit of a hunt on the web, though - because I think that the love theme from Renaissance's 'Scheherazade' will work for them, and there's a beautiful track on Rick Wakeman's soundtrack for the 1976 Winter Olympics film that will probably fit, and I might be able to download both the from the web.

And then the Muse will have no excuse!

New Year

We made it back from our wanderings, and had a good time down south. The last few days the weather has been stinking hot, but we're looking forward to a cooler change today. or tomorrow. Or sometime soon....

So, the New Year has come, and 2006 is happening.

Looking back, 2005 wasn't the best year of my life, but we made it through. Around September, I realised how burnt out I really was; in the previous year or two, I'd had four family members battling life-threatening illnesses, a close friend nearly dying several times, my own major surgery and the consequent painful leg injury that resulted, major projects at work and constant swapping between part-time, full-time, and assorted other job contracts. Being overweight, with high blood-pressure, and suffering from some variety of sleep apnoea wasn't helping much either - although probably isn't surprising!

And in the middle of all of that, I was trying to write very emotional scenes, and feeling like shirt because it just wasn't working. I finally realised that my emotional energy was gone, drained, and that I needed to restore that before I could really, seriously, get back into writing again. I'm not the sort of person who falls apart easily - I'm a 'coper' - but I realised how little was actually holding everything emotionally together, and that underneath the surface coping cheerfulness, I just wanted to crawl into a hole. So, I stopped beating myself about the head for not achieving, and for the last few months I've tried to feed the soul a little more, recharge the creativity, and improve my physical health. I've never been one for drugs and therapy, so I'm doing this my way, with only a little help from blood-presure medication, which is also reducing the migraine frequency.

So, for 2006, I'm looking forward to a better, more productive, more enjoyable year. There's still illness in the family - my parents are ageing, and battling assorted conditions - but my sister and brother-in-law are both doing well at present, and my friend's health is slowly improving. Work will continue to be mad for a while, and I'm not sure yet whether the restructuring about to occur will see me promoted, demoted, or made redundant - but I'll worry about the later two if they happen, not before.

And as for writing, while I haven't been productive, word-count wise, this past year, I have made decisions about direction - what it is I want to write, and where I'm aimining it for - and now I can focus on getting there.

Christmas

In a couple of hours, the DH and I will head off on our Christmas trip. We're taking the travelling fairly easy - we'll stay overnight in Mudgee tonight - about 5 hours drive away - and then go the rest of the way to Canberra (another 5 hours) on Saturday.

Christmas will be with my family. We're staying with my sister and her family, who live on 20 acres or so to the north of Canberra. My parents will come to their place for Christmas Day - the menu includes prawns, ham, turkey, and the Christmas pudding I made - and we'll probably eat outside.

Yes, you read that right. It's summer here, so forget those images of snow and reindeer! Instead, we're looking at very hot weather for the next day or two, and hoping that the very high bushfire danger doesn't eventuate into anything nasty. Hopefully by Christmas Day it will be not stinking hot but just good summer weather, so we can enjoy eating outside.

After our three nights in Canberra, the DH and I are heading further south, for a well-deserved and long-awaited short break away together. We've booked for three nights at what we hope is a nice bed-and-breakfast place in Hepburn Springs, in Victoria. The website makes it look okay!

Then, we'll take a day or two coming home. I'm due back at work on 4th January, the DH has a few more days off.

Best wishes to everyone for a joyous, safe, Christmas, and a New Year rich in love, laughter and friendship.