Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts

Thursday, July 20, 2023

Holiday reading...by Sheila Claydon



Find my books here


I will be on holiday in Singapore when this is published and although it is a family visit, which I know will include more card and board games than I actually want but, as a good grandmother, I will play, my mind has already turned to holiday reading.


Some of the books I've most enjoyed I've discovered on holiday, not because I've chosen and taken them with me but because I've found them on the pre-loved shelf in a hotel or on a cruise ship, visited a secondhand bookshop in a newly discovered town or village, or, on one occasion, bought in a sale in a National Trust stately home. 


When I'm at home my book choices are mostly governed by conversations with friends, titles I've read about, what is on the suggestion table at the library or a book giftedly by someone. On holiday it is different. I go with the flow, open to anything that looks interesting, and over the years this has introduced me to authors I'd never heard of whose books have given me immense pleasure.  Whether such a laissez-faire attitude will be possible in Singapore I don't know, but I hope so. 


Often the books I write are set in places where I've been on vacation because my other holiday activity is taking in the atmosphere, the scenery and the people, learning about the culture and enjoying the food. So much so that the tagline on my website is a ticket to romance!


While nearly every one of my novels is linked to somewhere I have visited, the two that offer the reader the best means of holiday escape are Cabin Fever and Reluctant Date. I visited and enjoyed the places featured in the books so much that I just had to write about them. 


Cabin Fever takes the reader from London to New Zealand and then on a cruise to Australia and back again, while Reluctant Date is set on the North West coast of the UK and an idyllic Florida key, with a trip to the Swanee River thrown in. Sometimes I take these, and others, down from the shelf in my study and re-read them to remind myself of past times and why I had to write the story. I hope that while I am in Singapore I will be equally inspired...and maybe I'll find another of those serendipitous books as well.

Saturday, February 25, 2023

Six weeks in Australia







 https://bookswelove.net/martin-paula/ 


Six weeks in Australia

My apologies for not posting anything last month. I had just returned from my six weeks in Australia and suffered from brain fog after the long journey coupled with the inevitable jet lag. Adjusting to the cold weather in England after six weeks in sunshine and temperatures in the upper 70s and lower 80s was a shock too – we even had snow two days after I arrived home.

But anyway – Australia! Where to begin? People have asked me what was the highlight of my trip, and honestly, there were so many that it is impossible to pick out the top ten, let alone just one. Of course, it was wonderful to see my daughter and her partner again. They emigrated in 2019, with every intention of returning to visit the following year, but then Covid struck and Australia closed its borders, only opening them again to non-essential travellers at the beginning of 2022.


I had seen photos of their new home, but of course it was far better to see the ‘real’ thing, and also the surrounding neighbourhood – and I was very excited to see my first kangaroo at the side of a road nearby!

My daughter is a teacher, and her ‘summer holidays’ occur in December/January. I confess it seemed somewhat strange to see Christmas trees and other seasonal decorations in hot, sunny weather – and I did feel sorry for my UK friends who were in the midst of a cold snap with below freezing temperatures.


One highlight of my stay was a short cruise from Brisbane to Sydney with two days in Sydney itself. The first view of the famous Opera House and the bridge was unforgettable. It is such an iconic view and I must have taken dozens of photos from different angles, by day and also at night.


We visited several beaches and bays on the Gold Coast, south of Brisbane. Some, inevitably, were crowded and ‘touristy’, but others were beautifully quiet, with pale sand, turquoise sea, and white surf. I loved the mountain areas too, with lush rainforests and some amazing views.






The koalas at a wildlife sanctuary were a delight – they seem to be able to sleep anywhere in their favourite gum trees but the one I held for a few minutes was very cuddly! 


We also fed some very tame kangaroos, saw babies peeking out of their mothers pouches, and loved the way they bounced along on their very long back legs. At the same sanctuary, we saw other examples of Australian wildlife – a duckbilled platypus, Tasmanian devil, emu, kookaburra and dingoes. At another place, we fed the llamas, and also fed the beautiful rainbow lorikeets – who responded by pooping all over my top and pants!

I was sad when my visit eventually came to an end, but the memories will stay with me forever.

Find me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paulamartinromances

Link to my Amazon author page:  author.to/PMamazon  

 

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Butterflies from my window by Priscilla Brown

 

  
 

 The window next to my desk overlooks a veronica (hebe) bush in the garden border. This flowers almost year-round, and is popular with bees. However, today there are no bees, but there is a pretty butterfly I haven't seen before hovering around the blossom. Interested in the newcomer, I switch from the document I'm working on, and check the internet hoping to discover its name.

 I am disappointed to learn that it is a common brown. Apparently it is 'common'  in south-east Australia, which is roughly where I live, though my area might be too far north for its usual habitat.. Perhaps it is looking for new digs. I do feel that whoever names these attractive creatures might show more imagination.

 For a couple of my contemporary romance novels, I needed to research butterflies. I always enjoy research, but sometimes I have to make myself stop. There's a need to compromise, perhaps to be less precise, making sure the information I'm using is essential to the narrative.  In Where the Heart is, Cristina describes the butterflies in Cameron’s sub-tropical Caribbean garden as ‘neon-clothed’. For Silver Linings,  I found out far more than the story needed about butterflies in the Amazon area, fascinating but I am not writing a guidebook!

And now, my garden butterfly has moved on, two bees are circling the veronica bush, and I  must temporarily give up watching nature and get some work done!

Enjoy your reading, and best wishes from contemporary romance author Priscilla.


https://bwlpublishing.ca

https://priscillabrownauthor.com


Sunday, December 25, 2022

Season's Greetings

 


 https://bookswelove.net/martin-paula/ 

Season’s Greetings

Greetings to all who celebrate Christmas. I hope you have a wonderful time, and enjoy meeting up with family and friends during the festive season.

By the time you read this, I will be about 10,000 miles away from my home in the UK, and enjoying Christmas and the New Year in Australia with my daughter and her partner who live near Brisbane. They emigrated in the summer of 2019 with every hope that they could return to visit us the following year. Then, as we all know, Covid struck in early 2020. Flights were restricted and Australia closed its borders until earlier this year. To begin with, Australia was not as badly affected as the UK, but my daughter worried as she watched the news from the UK, with several lockdowns and tragically huge statistics of infections and deaths. Although Covid did eventually reach Australia, they seem to have been more prepared to deal with it quickly and decisively.

Hopefully, we are now over the worst. Even though Covid is still around, we now have the benefit of vaccinations and boosters to protect us. So, in September, I took a deep breath and booked my flights to Australia.

As I have severe mobility problems due to arthritis in both hips, I’ve requested ‘meet and greet’ and wheelchair assistance at airports. I’m also flying business class – admittedly the cost is eye-watering, but at least it means I will have a seat that converts into a bed for the 13-hour flight to Singapore, followed by the 8-hour flight from there to Brisbane.

I can’t say I am looking forward to such long flights, but I have been sorting out my Kindle and now have 36 books in my ‘to be read’ folder – more than enough to keep me occupied, I think!

My daughter has also booked us on a 5-day cruise from Brisbane to Sydney which will be my first experience of ‘large ship’ cruising. She is hiring a wheelchair for me which will make getting around the ship easier. I am looking forward to my first view of the famous Harbour Bridge and the Opera House.

I’m also looking forward to seeing kangaroos jumping along the road and koalas hugging trees, but hopefully no large spiders or snakes!

Next month I’ll tell you some of the highlights of my visit, but meanwhile my very best wishes to you all during the festive season.


Find me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paulamartinromances

Link to my Amazon author page:  author.to/PMamazon  

Monday, January 31, 2022

This Pruning Business by Priscilla Brown

 

 

www.books2read.com/Where-the-Heart-Is

A contemporary romance set mostly on a Caribbean island.

The subtropical plants in Cameron's small Caribbean garden are threatening to take over the house. While he has neither the time nor the interest to bother pruning, Cristina's hands are itching to sort it out. Back home in temperate country Victoria, Australia, she loves to spend time tending her large garden with its flowers, bushes and trees. He might have to learn how to help with the pruning...


Yesterday I spent the day pruning. In the morning,  I cut off dead twigs and overlong branches from the two bottlebrush trees to keep them from hijacking the garden path, and trimmed the geraniums who believe it's their right to take over the border. While I was working in the garden and filling the council's green organics recyclable waste bin, I kept in mind the pruning I planned to do at my desk in the afternoon.

Editing my work-in-progress, I am looking for 'dead wood' -- twigs and whole branches. If I 'prune' a scene out, I need to be sure its removal will make a significant difference to the story. The scene where the two main characters, by now well-known to each other and to the reader, are having a nice time at a lakeside picnic reveals itself as a branch. I admit I rather liked this scene, but neither their dialogue nor actions moved the story on, so into the recycle bin. Twigs such as starting paragraphs or adjacent sentences with the same words unless included for emphasis need trimming.

This pruning business, in the garden and on a developing story, is for me satisfying and enjoyable. 

Best wishes, Priscilla


https://bwlpublishing.ca

https://priscillabrownauthor.com 

 


Sunday, October 31, 2021

Garden watching by Priscilla Brown

 

 
Cristina intends her working holiday at a luxury Caribbean resort to be a much-needed man-free zone. Why won't this zany charmer of a pilot get the message? And is he more than he seems? 


Find this contemporary romance at https://books2read.com/Where-the-Heart-is

 
Here in the cool-temperate high country of inland New South Wales, Australia, it's early summer, a period of busy activity in gardens; grass is growing doubly fast, flowers are flourishing. My desk is by a window looking onto the garden. I've considered moving it as at the moment my writing momentum is being hindered by bird-watching. But instead, conveniently disregarding the fact that the lawn needs a haircut, I took my laptop and garden chair outside.

In my garden, one bottlebrush (Callistemon) tree is loaded with vivid  scarlet 'brushes'. and my other bottlebrush shows off those of a deep pink. Apparently these Australian natives were originally named bottlebrush because way back someone rather unimaginatively thought their long conspicuous stamen spikes were shaped like an implement for cleaning a large bottle. These trees in my garden are hosting honeyeating birds, thrusting their long beaks into the blooms to find the nectar. My favourites are the tiny eastern-spinebills smartly dressed with a grey-brown back, cinnamon collar and white bib. Noisy middle-sized wattle birds, striped brown and white with red ear wattles, are sometimes not so favourite as they like to dine on camellia blossoms as well as the bottlebrush.These are only two members of the large  honeyeater avian family. Even the usually seed-eating crimson rosellas (small parrots) enjoy a taste of the bottlebrush.

So much for writing outside!  How lucky I am to have such lovelies sharing my space.

 Enjoy your reading, best wishes from  Priscilla, contemporary romance author 


https://bwlpublishing.ca

 

https://priscillabrownauthor.com 










Saturday, December 14, 2019

Christmases Past by Sheila Claydon



Click here for my books and author page

Everyone is writing about Christmas so I will too but not about this one. Instead I'm remembering Christmases past.

There was the one in Denmark where we drank Julebryg, a special Christmas beer for the festive season. It is released at exactly 8.59 pm on the first Friday of November by the 140 Tuborg Brewery and it fuels most holiday festivities for the next six weeks. And then it's gone. It's a strong, dark pilsner (5.6 percent alcohol by volume which takes the unwary foreigner by surprise)  and J-Day, as it is known, is far and away the biggest day of the year for Tuborg. Danes  pack the bars and spill into the streets where they  sing and dance and wear silly hats provided free by the brewery, all for the chance to get a first taste and welcome the start of the festive season by raising their glasses with a hearty 'Skål!'

And Skål was indeed our most used word that Christmas. Although our hosts were family friends, not all of them spoke much English, so because our Danish is very limited, everyone shouted Skål and  raised a glass whenever they ran out of words. It wasn't just beer either. There was plenty of wine later in the day,  and schnapps was always available, even at breakfast, because this was a farming family, used to coming in cold from tending the animals and drinking a warming shot of schnapps while they refuelled. The breakfast food was very different from what we were used to, too.  Curried herrings  on  dark rye bread, or thick slices of sausage and meatballs, all served as a smørrebrød (open sandwich). Then there was Christmas lunch. This was goose with creamed cabbage and potatoes followed by  risalamande, which is a rice pudding with vanilla, almonds and whipped cream served with warm cherry sauce. The risalamande contained a lucky silver charm so we all had to be very careful about what we swallowed and bit into until someone found it. Gifts were exchanged on Christmas Eve, just before a midnight service at the local Lutheran church where the priest, in his starched white ruff and 3-peaked hat was just a little scary, although not as scary as the real candles that burned all night on the real Christmas tree in a farmhouse with a thatched straw roof. I don't think my husband, who is a health and safety expert, slept a wink. It was, however, a wonderful Christmas.

Then there were the two we spent in Australia, where, after a token Christmas lunch at the request of our son who misses his English Christmases, it was beach trips and B-B-Q's all the way with huge, succulent prawns, whole salmon and thick wagu steak, washed down with some of the fine wines from Australia's famous Hunter Valley and of course the inevitable stubbie (bottle of beer) or tinny (can of beer). Australians are amongst the friendliest people in the world when they've had a drink or two so there were many parties as well, but whenever glasses were raised it was still with  a very English 'Cheers' despite the many language differences between our nations. The difference is that Australians also use 'Cheers' for a great many other things, often with the word mate added. It's used as a 'thank you', or a 'well done' or maybe just 'I heard you' or 'I agree with you'.  Of course after a week of sun, sea and surf and a lot of celebrating the climax to an Australian Christmas is always the firework display on Sydney Harbour Bridge, and we are lucky enough to have friends who live directly opposite...so what's not to like.

Our strangest Christmas by far was in China though. In a country where the 4000 year old tradition of the Chinese New Year (otherwise known as the Spring Festival) is by far the most important calendar event, as well as being the longest holiday of the year, Christmas is nevertheless celebrated by its more cosmopolitan inhabitants. While it is not a religious festival nor a public holiday many Chinese  still consider it a time for celebration when, particularly the younger generation, shop, party and feast. In the cities many of the shops are decorated and there are Christmas grottos where Shen Dan Lao Ren (Santa Claus) greets the children and hands out gifts. The food is very different of course and rarely served at home. Instead, most Chinese people who celebrate Christmas see it as a happy occasion for get-togethers of friends and relatives. Christmas parties might be  at a friend's house, but equally they might be at a McDonald's, a karaoke cafe, a restaurant, or a bar. There is a festive atmosphere, and people enjoy the decorations and the Christmas music. Having said that, with a son who craves a traditional Christmas meal if at all possible, I did receive my biggest challenge in China as you can see from the photo below! I got there though despite being used to a ready prepared turkey, and we then ate out for the rest of the holiday. These celebratory meals took place mostly at huge round tables where we were surrounded by smiling Chinese friends whose own version of Cheers is 干杯 Gānbēi, a word they used a great deal as wine and spirits flowed copiously, and we ate an amazing variety of food, none of which we could name as our Mandarin is next to non existent so we had to rely on our Chinese host to order for us.
So thanks to a globe trotting son, my husband and I can celebrate Christmas in several languages even if our only skill is to say the equivalent of Cheers as we raise a festive glass.


Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Priscilla Brown writes about love tokens


For details on this and my other contemporary romance novels, check my Books We Love author page:


On a recent visit to the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, I spent some time studying the exhibition of  convict love tokens. Created between 1762 and 1856 by convicts in England around the time of their sentencing to transportation to Australia, the tokens were given to family and friends as remembrances of their loved ones so far away. On the whole, the tokens in the exhibition remain in reasonable condition. 

Using both sides of ordinary coins, the convicts prepared the surfaces for engraving by beating them flat and smooth, then used pinpricks to stipple the text and often decoration. A large copper coin known as the 'cartwheel penny' first minted in 1797 was a popular choice. The tokens display various lettering styles from simple and rough to elaborate and elegant; some messages are printed in lower case, some in upper, and others written in cursive script. The name of the convict, his or her date (most tokens were formed by men, with some by women), and the name of the loved one appear together with a few words; embellishment is often incredibly detailed on such a small surface. Hearts are frequently portrayed, while many creators, clearly artistic, depicted people and their clothing, flowers, birds, animals, ships and other objects possibly important or relevant to both convict and recipient. Defacing coins of the realm was a crime; to replace the image of King George III with their own work perhaps gave the already sentenced offenders a surreptitious pleasure.

As a romance writer, I like my characters to give each other small 'tokens' as reminders of their love when they have to part, either temporarily as in the recently released Silver Linings, or as in Hot Ticket when they believe the parting must be for ever. In Silver Linings, jewellery designer Cassandra fashions a stylish silver pendant for 
Alistair, while he makes an intricate wooden jewellery box for her. Hot Ticket's Callum collects owl images and 
small sculptures. and he knits (no, he is not the nerd Olivia originally suspects); he gives her a top he's designed and knitted. She finds for him a life-size owl.


 



A major part of my story creation is developing personalities. Among several aspects, I like working out the characters' interests and, in their backstories, how they came to have these. This can  involve a lot of research (for the above stories, the only interest I knew anything about was knitting); this for me is an enjoyable though often time-consuming part of being a writer.

Happy reading! Priscilla




Source: National Museum of Australia
 

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Culture or is it just thinking differently? by Sheila Claydon


I have just returned from a trip to Australia via Hong Kong. During my visit I met with people born and raised in Australia and Hong Kong of course, but I also met people from Canada, Tasmania, Holland, Thailand, China, the Philippines, Greece, Indonesia, America, the Shetland Isles and various parts of the UK. Sometimes it was a one to one conversation but often there were 3 or 4 nationalities in one room, all using English as a common language. As a poor linguist but a UK born native English speaker, I consider myself very lucky to be able to use my own language to communicate with so many people from different places and cultures. It is the gift that allows an insight into worlds that would otherwise be hidden from me.

Did you know for example that in China a pregnant woman is treated like a fragile flower. Her pregnancy is considered a “hot” condition, so to balance the scale between “hot and cold” or “ying and yang”, she must eat so called “cold foods” throughout her pregnancy. From a Western perspective it gets worse. Eating food that is not properly cut or mashed will result in the child having a careless disposition. Eating chocolate will result in your baby having dark skin whereas eating light coloured foods will result in the baby having fair skin, something which is considered a big positive in China. Drinking coconut milk will ensure that the baby has good skin while eating pineapple may cause miscarriage. 

A pregnant woman is not allowed to exert herself by carrying heavy things or doing physical work. Even old people will offer their seats on a bus. She is discouraged from attending weddings or funerals to prevent her emotions being affected in ways which will adversely harm the baby. Nor should she handle any household detergents or chemicals during pregnancy without the protection of rubber gloves.


After the birth this careful approach continues with the female family members maintaining a 24 hour support service in the early months to ensure that the mother gets enough sleep. The father is often relegated to the spare room or even the couch, and once the mother is deemed strong enough she will co-sleep with the baby, often until it is 5 years old.



I could go on and on with the 'do and don't rules' for Chinese pregnancy, each one seemingly more bizarre than the last to Western eyes, but are they really? Many relate to nutrition, a wish to avoid miscarriage, the benefits of enough rest and sleep, and the joy a new baby brings to the whole family in a country that still conducts a mainly one child policy. 



Of course many of the modern Chinese mothers eschew these rules, laughing at centuries of superstition, working up until the last minute and refusing to conform to the old tradition of being confined to their room for a month after the baby is born. They do, however, still rely on their extended family for care and nurture but for a very different reason. Not because they feel fragile but because they want to get back to work, and to do this they need the help that has so willingly been given by the older generation for centuries. 


Then there's Australia where the people are almost all informal and friendly, and this is despite the fact that more than 25% of all Australians were born in another country. What is is about Australia that has persuaded all these different nationalities to adopt the same laid back attitude? Is it the weather, or the culture? Also, before my trip I didn't know that the largest Greek population in the world beside Athens in Greece can be found in Melbourne Australia, which accounts for the fact that I met so many Greek people while I was there.

Then take Holland. There adults put chocolate sprinkles on their toast, as well as eating an average of 2 kilograms of salty-sweet liquorice a year from a choice of over 80 different kinds of liquorice. Also, despite the rainy weather, they use raincoats and rain "suits" instead of umbrellas because the wind is too strong, and anyway it is almost impossible to hold an umbrella and cycle at the same time, and with more than 18 million bicycles in the country that's an awful lot of cycling.

I could carry on and talk about the things I learned about the other countries if there was the time and space but nowadays many of these facts are available at the click of a mouse. How much more interesting they are when they are part of a conversation, however, sometimes to be wondered at, but more often part of an interested and animated discussion. And of course we British are far from exempt when it comes to strange habits. Is there another country in the world where the population's accent changes noticeably every 40 kilometres? Living where I do, in the northwest of England, I can easily recognise at least half a dozen different accents from places less than an hour's journey away. And why do we enjoy meeting up in English pubs to watch a football game, play pool or just drink a beer.

The more I meet people from other countries and other cultures, the more I learn and the more I understand. How much more sensible it would be for us British, in our often rain-sodden country, to adopt the rain 'suits' of the Dutch instead of constantly fighting the wind with our umbrellas, and is chocolate on toast really less healthy than our sugar coated breakfast cereals? And maybe we would benefit from being just a little more laid back like the Australians.

No country or culture is right, everyone is just different, but it takes time to realise that, and to see that in the end it's the differences that make every single one of us interesting, not the similarities.

It's also one of the reasons that I write about the places I've visited in many of my books. Miss Locatelli is set in London and Florence, and every blade of grass and delicious mouthful of food is authentic thanks to the wonderful times I've had with Italian friends. Travel truly does free the mind to consider other ways of living.



Sunday, August 14, 2016

Gremlins and the Big Countdown by Sheila Claydon



Eighteen months ago I spent almost half a year in Sydney, Australia. I was there to help care for my youngest granddaughter. She was six months old when we arrived and just a few weeks shy of her first birthday when we left.  During that time she made friends with my friends thanks to her almost daily appearance on my facebook page and then it was all over and, as with any family separated by thousands of miles, we knew it would be a while before we saw her again.

I left with far more than happy memories though, I left with material for the book which eventually became Remembering Rose (Mapleby Memories Book 1), published June 30, 2016. Although the story has absolutely nothing to do with my trip to Australia, some of the characters do. The heroine, Rachel, is a new mother, and at the start of the story, Leah, her little girl, is a few months old. Then there's Daniel, the new Dad.  None of these characters are my family, nor is the story anything like theirs, but watching them learning to become parents and adapt to the changes a baby brings to a partnership helped me to develop the story.

Now, with the book finished and out there, we are all going to meet up again, only this time in the UK. The whole family are coming to England for 9 weeks and we are beyond excited. Unfortunately our excitement has attracted the attention of the gremlins who lurk silently in corners, always on the look out for an opportunity to cause mayhem. With us they hit the jackpot and the past couple of weeks have been a chapter of incidents and accidents. First I cut the sole of my foot sufficiently badly to have to visit the Accident & Emergency Department at our local hospital to be stitched up. Then, while I was recovering, the gremlins moved in.

The first thing they attacked was the cooker. One day it cooked a fine roast dinner for six, the next day nix, nada, not a flicker.  Call out charges and repairs for a 12 year old cooker were deemed not worth it so we ordered a new one. Then they set their sights on the refrigerator, putting it into deep freeze mode so that not only was everything rock solid,  the ice overflowed onto the kitchen floor, so a new fridge it had to be. Finally it was the dishwasher's turn. A gremlin leak did it. Thankfully our local supplier has assured us that all three items will be delivered and fitted on Monday, three days before our visitors arrive.

With this problem solved we turned our attention to the bedrooms because we have to accommodate a cot plus two and occasionally four additional adults as well as sleepovers from older children. That's when we discovered the gremlins had moved upstairs and pushed the bottom out of one of the drawers in the chest-of-drawers. They had also broken the loft ladder and made sure the shower head sprang a leak in solidarity with the solar panels on the roof, so now we have to drain the boiler on Monday so the plumber can repair the roof. The other things we can cope with ourselves even though this now includes the garden pond which, with a little invisible help from our gremlin invaders, has suddenly decided to seep water, exposing a very unattractive plastic liner instead of its usual pretty pebbles and stones. Then, in what I hope was their final act before leaving, they pushed one of the kick boards under the kitchen units adrift and now it needs new fitments.

Everything will be mended or replaced before our visitors arrive but at this rate it would have been cheaper to fly to Australia ourselves! It's not as if we treat our house and belongings harshly either, so, gremlins apart, maybe it's an age thing. Almost all of the broken items were around 12 years old, dating from when we had our kitchen re-fitted. They have all been well cared for and look as good as new. It's just the innards that have perished, so does this mean that 12 is the optimum number of years we can expect from anything nowadays?

I'm not going to tempt providence and say there's nothing else left to go wrong. Instead I am going to sort out all the clothes and baby items my daughter has been storing in her loft for this visit. Already we have a baby seat in the car, a stroller in the porch, a highchair in the kitchen and a full toy box in the conservatory. The bathroom has plastic ducks and frogs again, and there are several drawers of freshly washed hand-me-down clothes waiting for our little granddaughter plus, most important of all for anyone connected with Books We Love, a big basket full of picture books. It's like a leap back in time to when our older granddaughters were babies, and before that to when our own children were young. Now all we need is the energy to run a full household again after years of being on our own.

My next book, a follow up to Remembering Rose, and only started in my head so far, will include young children, so I guess I am already expecting to pick up pointers from my youngest granddaughter for the book I will start in October when she returns to Australia. In the meantime I only have four days left in the big countdown but please don't tell the gremlins or they will find something else to break.

Sheila's books can be found at Books We Love and on Amazon

She also has a website and can be found on facebook





Saturday, September 26, 2015

There’s no place like home—Tricia McGill



Buy Maddie and The Norseman from PayLoadz



Home means different things to different people. Because our news headlines have lately featured countless people fleeing their homeland and searching (currently mostly unsuccessfully) for a peaceful place to live, far away from war and destruction, it got me to imagining what it must be like to be totally homeless and without support of any kind. In fact the thought makes me shudder. I could not imagine life without a permanent home to come back to, without the sense of security that comes from being surrounded by familiar people and possessions.

Love for our homeland is another matter. I’ve had two in my life. My allegiance was to England during my early years, and I wouldn’t have considered back then calling myself anything but British. But ask me now and my immediate response would be “I am Australian”. One of my proudest moments was becoming a citizen of this country and receiving the proof of that citizenship. There are degrees of love for one’s homeland. We are free to criticize and say what we like, but let an outsider caste any sort of criticism on the land that we love, and we are quick to spring to its defense. It saddens me when I hear of people abusing the privileges bestowed on them or their parents who have been allowed to live here as free citizens and then decide, for reasons only logical to them, to go off and fight in far off places for causes against the country that offered them this freedom of choice.

My husband and I migrated to Australia many years ago as what was called back then ‘ten pound Poms’. In case you are too young to know the meaning of this term I will explain. Australia was calling for tradespeople to come here for a better life and to enjoy the prosperity of this land as long as we were willing to work hard and do our best. I already had three sisters living here so the decision was easy for me. Not so easy for my husband who left all his family behind. Our fare out was paid on the understanding that should we decide to return we would take care of the expense. I am pleased to say that once settled here returning to England was out of the question—for me. Not so my husband. He would have gone back at any time (if I agreed) because England was and always remained his homeland. That is not to say he wasn’t happy here and we had a good life. We arrived on a Wednesday, and with a letter of referral from his company in England, he started work the following Monday. I too had a job within a week. As a matter of interest, we arrived in the year Australia changed over to decimal currency and by the time we exchanged our pounds shillings and pence for dollars we had precisely $AU100 to start our lives here. Within five years we owned our own home.

I worked in a clothing manufacturing company and it was what was called back then ‘A league of Nations’. There were people from Italy, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Serbia, South Africa, and countless other countries. All came here with little and most ended up if not wealthy, comfortable, by sheer hard work. One man I worked alongside arrived on a ship with one spare pair of shoes tucked under his arm, and little else but the clothes he wore.

Recently I watched the life story of Peter Allen (one of our better known exports) on my TV. I have to admit to shedding a tear whenever I hear his song ‘I still call Australia Home’. His words bring out every patriotic part of me, and never cease to fill me with renewed pride in this country I call home. It’s hard to put into words the passion we feel for our homeland. Let’s face it, Australia, like many other countries, has been built on immigration. We owe it’s prosperity to our forebears.


Our home while traveling
So, what does home mean to me? In our traveling days, for short periods of time our caravan was home, because that is where we returned to sleep at night, and it was our security. But I have to say that while on the road I was never totally content and always glad to return to my permanent home and my own bed. This is where my personal possessions are all in one place. This is where my memories are stored. I’ve had quite a few moves in my life and each new house has become my home and the center of my world.
 
The dogs always came along on the trips
I recall the first trip we set out on, towing our temporary home behind us. We’d spent about three days on the road heading to Far North Queensland. I awoke in a state of panic. It hit me that I was a long way from ‘home’ here in Victoria, and that should something go wrong then I could not just hop back home in a few hours. Of course there was always the option of flying, but that didn’t occur to me back then. This panic subsided as I got used to traveling, but nonetheless I always did, and still do, experience a feeling of contentment when I near my home.

There was one instance that I was too young to remember, but apparently my eldest sister took me away from war ravaged London to somewhere in the countryside. I did nothing but cry for our mother and home, so much so that she took me back after only a couple of days. I was told years later that our mum took me in her arms and cried, for she was just as happy to have me home as I was to be there. So, my desire to be in a familiar place goes back a long time. I never strayed far from home from then on, and had our mother still been alive I would not have left England when I did.

So, here I sit in my lovely present home, surrounded by my mementos and personal treasures, and thank whatever chance, be it God, or Fate, has allowed me the privilege of always having a place that I can call home. Home is where the heart is, yes?
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