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