Awaydays Blog Post X: A Wall of Thanks

We're back in Preuilly sur Claise after just over five weeks in Australia. As ever there are a long list of people to thank: JB and Rosy for hospitality, friendship, and loans of all sorts of stuff, Kathy and John for hospitality and for reorganising themselves so generously around us, my Dad for the use of his car, Rick and Helen for hospitality, Kippa for last minute taxi service, Geoff and Christine for a last minute bed and excellent roast lamb, and a host of other people who went out of their way to be helpful and provide meals.

It wasn't a trip long on planning: we had been talking about visiting for the past 5 years or so, but medical things (including a world wide pandemic, don't forget) were always getting in our way. Then Susan emailed my oncologist, asking if we could, at some stage, consider visiting Australia, and he replied "certainly, I've rearranged your appointments".

This forced our hand. I had a week to plan and buy tickets and get my head around the reality of going. In some ways I never really got my head around either going to Australia or being in Australia. Things I would normally just cruise through I found thoroughly stressful, and I made some beginner's errors - luckily not really financially disastrous.

But I'm glad we went. We saw our dads, which was the main purpose of the exercise. There are many people we didn't see due to the time constraints, and only a couple of days felt like a proper holiday. But it was nice (if slightly too noisy and frantic for my tastes) seeing family.