Get Blogged @ Cybergate9.Net

Another year, another partially cold day in Norfolk - a long way away from my desert roots in the South of Australia - a dry barren, and beautiful, landscape at this time of year.

Summertime in South Australia is pretty special - the Galahs and Sulpher Crested cockatoos en-masse looking for water, creating one hell of a ‘din, and doing their level best to re-arrange the gums trees into configurations that more suit their purposes…. Looking forward to 40 degree days when you can definitely drink as much as you like and pretty much sweat it out simultaneously as you put it in…

I broke my glasses this morning. What luck to do it on the 24th of December when you and I know there is very little chance of getting anything done… :)  I wear glasses always and the world goes into a vaguely impressionist state of ill-focus when I don’t have them on…

Strangely enough those glasses mean’t something to me too. I’ve had them since 2001 when my girlfriend at the time, quite helpfully, but unplanned, happened to be an an Optometrist.

In the Christmas spirit Eric’s local Optometrist’s were fantastically helpful and after the initial - ’sheesh! what can we do today?’ moment - they managed to find a pair of lenses matching my prescription which could be cut into a new pair of frames. So I am the proud new owner of a goovy pair of black framed ’secretaries glasses’ but without the body bumps in the right places to match :)

The Christmas spirit…

I’ve spent Christmas in some lovely and weird places, with some lovely and/or weird people :) Latterly its been quite family focussed. I actually spent Christmas with my parents in 2006 for the first time in I don’t know how long…

I also have memories of Christmas on the balcony in Canberra cooking prawns on the BBQ, a Christmas day spent literally on a Boeing 747 flying England to Australia, and a Christmas in Darwin a seemingly very long time ago…

A friend down the street dropped in a little package of goodies for Eric today - Apple juice, shortbread… And the nice man who cleans Eric’s windows and has been his ‘partner in crime’ on the Downham Market town sign for the last decade dropped a great ‘bell ringers’ Christmas card this afternoon.

It’s difficult to avoid memories at this time of year… how lucky we all are as human beings… the longer on the planet the more experience has passed…

Oh Ye, on Christmas Eve, synapses fire…

Merry Christmas!

and just in case you need to Track Santa on Google Earth :) (via Nigel)