Here I am in England after a nine year gap. Having only landed yesterday, jetlagged to the max, I have nothing to report on the place yet, except to say that my friend Diana has made me very welcome and I've been shopping in Sloane Street:-) Oh, and they don't sell Psyllium husks here, dammit. I had a feeling that I should have brought some from Oz, but as so often happens I let my thinking override my intuition. You can buy Psyllium husks and seeds packaged up all fancy -like for medicinal purposes, but the asking price is outrageous. I think I'll just let the cholesterol go up for now!

In Perth, I caught up with a dozen or more friends, including Helen, who had just finished the amazing Clarion South writers workshop. (What, envious? Me?) Helen is one of several good friends I met at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre in Greenmount. KSP runs wonderful workshops and classes for would-be writers and they have some fun activities too. On 10 March they have an open day - if you live in Perth and are interested in writing, get yourself up there and find out about the place and what you can do there. Several really fine writers are on the KSP literary board. I have learnt so much from people such as Lee Battersby, Stephen Dedman, Dave Luckett and Juliet Marillier that I'll be eternally grateful to KSP for sponsoring their workshops. And the workshops are never very expensive, either!

I am back in Perth for a week, having a wonderful time catching up with friends and family. I'm staying with different people almost every night and all are being incredibly hospitable. Thanks to you all - I won't embarrass you by naming you publicly, but you know who you are:-)

I'm at my son Bruce's place at the moment. We had a family dinner last night with several branches and twigs represented, which was great. Earlier in the day, I went to a meeting of the WA Shakespeare Club, one of the groups I've been missing terribly since I moved to Mount Gambier. During the coming days I'll be able to spend time with friends from the genealogy and SF communities, too, then on Friday night it's off to England via Dubai.

I'm reading all my friends' blogs but hardly doing any posting. Please forgive me for that - it's just because I'm using other people's computers and don't like to hog them for too long:-)

I've been in Adelaide since Friday night, staying with my daughter Billy Jo and her partner Fab. Eldest son Allen came to visit with Ben, his firstborn, on Saturday and it was lovely to have a family meal. Yesterday we celebrated step-grandson Daniel's fifteenth birthday and tomorrow I move on to Perth, where, until recently, I'd been living for 20 years. I am looking forward, very much, to seeing friends and family members who live there. I think part of me will always call Perth home.

I'm busy editing a thesis for one client and have an astrology report to finish for another. I can see that writing and editing will be well-nigh impossible while I'm travelling - right now I'm using Billy Jo's very slow computer with only dial up. The first morning it took me three hours just to clear my e-mails!:-( Funny how we get used to new innovations so quickly, and how quickly activities catch up. Blogging, which has become very popular since the advent of broadband, is so-oo slow on dial-up I would never have bothered before.

I hope I can get a bit of writing done as I was just getting back into it after my move from Perth to Mount Gambier. I've drafted seven chapters of the new novel and passed them on to my Face2Face group, with whom I will meet on Thursday to hear their verdicts. It will be great to see them again and go to the local coffee shop for lunch, too! I've had some very useful feedback recently from that group and from KSP buddies including Carol Ryles and Helen Venn as well on a couple of short stories I'd like to polish up and send out soon. I hope I can find a good internet café everywhere I go so I can carry on exchanging crits!

Two more days before I leave. Two days to do three days' work. Everything takes longer than I expect and every job reveals two more.

But ready or not, as of Friday afternoon, I'm on the road again. I will see some of you in Adelaide, some in Perth, others in the UK and Germany. Sadly, there are some of you I won't see at all but it's a small world and who knows? You might get to my neck of the woods at some stage:-) And those of you I'm leaving behind, why, I shall look forward to seeing you when I get back!

While I'm away I will have access to e-mail but I'd appreciate it if we could keep traffic to a minimum. Please, no jokes or forwards! It would be cool if you would visit my blog now and then and leave the odd message. I'll update it as often as I can with news of my travels and meetings with old and new friends. I decided on this means of staying in touch rather than round robin e-mails because I know not everyone really wants them. On a blog you don't have to feel obliged to answer or even to look at the darned thing in the first place:-) However, it will be great to get your messages, if you feel like stopping by. If you've never left a message on a blog before, don't be scared - just click at the bottom of the post where it says "comments". That will take you to a new page where you can leave a message. You will have to copy down a set of letters to prove you're human, too. That's to prevent access by crawl bots - software set up to scour the web looking for e-mail addresses for their unscrupulous creators to spam or unprotected blogs where they can leave advertising.

It's my son Kurt's birthday tomorrow. And it was niece Frances's yesterday. Happy birthday, guys - and happy birthday to all the Aquarians reading this, too!

Next time I blog I'll probably be in Adelaide or even Perth. I hope you'll visit again late next week. Be well and happy meantime!

Seven days dropped off the calendar while I wasn't looking.

In my countdown towards The Big Trip I somehow miscalculated by a week. I thought I was leaving here in a fortnight. Hah! It's only half that, isn't it. I leave precisely a week tomorrow at 2.00pm.

Oh dear.

I've spent today making lists of various kinds:
- A list of people to contact re business and housekeeping matters.
- A list of people to contact re The Trip. (I have been lucky enough to have been offered beds, gratis, for almost every night I'm away - all four months! - but that means careful planning so I can see people in different places in some kind of logical order. There's little point in zig-zagging the UK to take up offers of accommodation if it means spending a fortune on coach fares and knocking myself about in the process.)
- A list of family history research I hope to do in England. (This will involve at least half a day in the local library here, peering at microfiche, before I can even make said list.)
- A list of editing jobs to be completed before I go.

And so on. Boring old lists.

But then there's the exciting stuff. Planning to meet up with friends and rellies is exciting. Knowing that I'm going to see places where my ancestors lived is exciting. Going to the continent - now that's exciting, let me tell you! I've never been to Germany and some distant rellies have not only invited me to stay but have insisted on paying for my flight from London to Frankfurt. Truly, I am blessed, if not downright spoilt.

So -
9 February - Adelaide
St Valentine's Day - Perth
23 February - Dubai and thence Heathrow
29 March - Frankfurt
22 May - Back to Perth
10 June (or thereabouts) - back to Adelaide, thence home to the South East.

This is almost certainly my last overseas trip, and thanks to the generosity of friends and rellies it's going to cost me practically nothing. In fact, without that generosity I wouldn't be going at all.

Rejoice with me, friends, and wish me happy trails!