Tuesday 12 March 2013

Wednesday 13th March


Wednesday 13th March

An auspicious day indeed!

My darling daughter Nicky’s fortieth birthday… No I’m not going to gush too much but… I could, because she truly is a wonderful person and I (we all!) are immensely proud of her.  She is about the bravest person I know; she confronts issues and steps up where others are trembling, unable to say what needs to be said, do what needs to be done.  As well as this she is bright, pretty, funny, glamorous, a great teacher, a loving mother and wife and a much-loved sister, daughter and friend.

Not only but also…Nicky was born on my darling sister Monique’s birthday.  So – as I said,  an auspicious day!  Monique, maybe not coincidentally, is also very brave, in a different way.  She is so very hard-working, and faces many challenges and adversities which would make a lesser woman crumble.  She lives and works in Launceston, in a very demanding new job and finds time to be with her Number #1 grandson in Deloraine and her No #1 granddaughter in…Vanuatu!  I am very proud of her too…

And by the way re fish-fingers-poverty… Jeff (No. #2 son-in-law) says, re the above, That’s nothing!!  Apparently his friends at uni in Bendigo were so poor they would go out as dusk scouting for fresh road kill for their dinner… Katy and I scoffed mightily at this – we think Outdoor Ed-ers would scavenge for road kill whether they are poor or not, as a matter of pride and ecological principle!!

Cat Co Ba – Vietnam 2008

After this we got on yet another couple of motorbikes - I did love this form of transport - and were taken to Cat Co Ba, a beautiful little beach where the locals go to swim.  It was very hot and the sea was full of happy people, all with black black hair.  The women all wear very modest swimsuits, with skirts, and nobody can swim very well at all.  A very cheery scene.  I was very pleased to see many black kites wheeling about overhead; birds were an extremely rare sight in Vietnam.

We were meeting Vinh and Mee at the beach.  He popped up from behind a wall - he wasn’t on the beach at all, was using the pool at the hotel.  He had “connections” with the hotel management – and he was sitting happily on a deck chair in the sun, while Mee had a wonderful time in the pool.  I started to droop and fade; it really was much too hot.  By the time Rina and Kerry joined us, we had managed to move the whole arrangement to a more shady part of the grounds, where we devoured beer, and/or mango juice shakes.  Pete and I walked back into Cat Ba, along the cliff track and past another hotel, much bigger, with a huge pool, waterslides, a boardwalk.

After dinner with Kerry and Rina at the Green Mango restaurant in the main street, Pete and I went for a walk to experience the nightlife of Cat Ba.  It was all very subdued…until the electricity came back on!  Then it was all GO.  Neon lights, fairy lights, people eating, drinking, playing.  We nearly bought flashing devils horns in shades of fluorescent pink and purple, but thought maybe as we were travelling LIGHT this wouldn’t be a good idea…

1 comment:

  1. What a lovely message, well I was raised by the best!

    ReplyDelete