Leaving Home

Hi there dear reader. Another travelogue. "Good grief", I hear you say. There is nothing more tiresomely tedious as reading about someone else's travel adventures. Yawn. Well, allow me to let you off the hook.

This little adventure of ours, my dear husby and me, is only for those so inclined. And you may only be inlcined on certain days and not on others. It's okay. Truly it is. If you do want to dip in from time to time, or even follow along, please feel free. There is no quiz at the end.

Ultimately, these jottings are my memories and will serve me well when I reach my dotage and look over to Chris and say, "didn't we once go through Westminster Abbey"? And he'll pull up this very Find Penguins and respond lovingly, "here read this, now eat your soup".

In truth, today and this evening, we are in Sydney, the day before we fly out to go back to the UK. Ever since we left, it has been beckoning us. So after a stressful year that I'd rather forget, we decided to bring this trip forward and go again this September.

Just getting to Sydney has been a feat in itself. I have been so busy at work with one new thing coming after another in waves, along with a full caseload. Leaving for abroad for five weeks takes a lot of logistical thinking, but I think I've managed it. My thanks go out to my wonderful admin staff and my Psychs working alongside me.

Both Chris and I are a bit frazzled. We need this break. After a number of stressful events over the ocurse of 2023, we are a bit tired, a bit vulnerable, a bit raw. We typically do not turn on each other when things are like this, thank God, and we try to be a strong support for one another. So we are now. We are ready to breathe some different air and to see some different sights.

Our train trip down to Sydney felt mercifully quick. The carriage was quiet and we both fell off to sleep for a short while. Arriving at Rydges Central Hotel, we checked in and headed straight to the bar. The Sydney Brewery is on the same premises and its beers are very familiar to us as we drink them at the Rydges on Newcastle Harbour regularly. Some dipping breads and some chips along with the beers helped a lot. Chips always help.

Tonight, we attended the final of four concerts that we have subscribed to, the Brandenburg Orchestra, a baroque ensemble that we have fallen in love with. Tonight they had a gorgeous young French violin virtuoso who played mostly early English music. The concert was themed the Lover and performed by, wait for it, Théotime Langlois de Swarte. We figured he was in his late twenties.

It was a bravura performance and the crowd cheered uproariously at the end of some of the pieces. As an encore, he played the third movement of Vivaldi's Summer (you'd all recognise it immediately) from the Four Seasons. The performance wasn't only music. It brought in theatre as well, as our hero played the role of a lover left alone after a party of some sort. It was captivating.

Tomorrow, we are going to head to the shops to do a bit of last minute shopping, then we'll head out to the airport, have some dinner at Rydges at the International Terminal (lots of Rydges in our lives), fly out at 9.05pm to do the thirteen hour leg first, to Dubai, five and half hour pause there where we've booked a day room so we can shower and sleep, then do the final seven hours to London, arriving around 4ish in the afternoon. So many hours ahead of us.

We are already feeling the energy and vitality beginning to return and even dare I say it, some joie de vivre.Read more