Comforts of home

Woke up from a dream yesterday.  Won't bore you with the details but in the dream, Al was telling me we were heading off to London. Now. Two weeks after returning to Melbourne from that other side of the planet.  I quite emphatically told him, in this dream, that I wasn't going with him.  Don't know how it ended and who cares?  Just a dream.  However, it's clear I've been processing the whole travel thing in my subconscious.  If I could blink myself over there for a weekend of cycling along the Loire in good weather, then blink myself back again for my structured three day working week, I'd do it.  But I'm not yet ready for the trauma of packing and travelling.  

I'm relishing the comforts of home, which aren't overrated at all when you feel like being home, although curiously, I'm finding it hard to bond with television, despite my efforts.  With enough couch rolling I'll probably get back into it.  Perhaps wine is the missing link.  I'm on my eighth AFD - alcohol free day- following ten weeks of quite solid quaffing not to mention self-medicating after dad died..

I've just been to Highpoint shopping centre, swanning around.  I overuse that expression but it seems to describe my gait perfectly.

Why write about Highpoint again?  It's still the same place as it was when I wrote about it last year. (Link here, if interested.) One of the things I missed overseas - only a tiny bit and I got over it easily cycling through the French countryside - was the sense of belonging to a community.  At Highpoint today I went to see my niece, Moss, in her little 'kiosk'. Got her a coffee; had a chat because I hadn't seen her since she left home this morning and I needed to catch up.  Moss is living with us for the time being.

I dropped my wedding ring off at a jewellers.  Needs resizing to cope with my arthritic clicky knuckle. (If you have any inclination to take up knitting after a twenty year hiatus, I'd advise against it.  My hands are wrecked!)  Whilst there I was able to ask after a former student of mine who works there part-time; find out what she was doing.

Dawdled a bit further along, gawping at this and that and stopped to chat with a friend who works in a kiosk at the other end of the centre.  Good catch up.

On my return walk I stopped to take advantage of a free power saving plug offer at another kiosk.  The young woman who served me was a former student whose brother I used to teach. Another good catch up.

Yeah, boring blog, I know, but it was really good to speak to people in fluent, idiomatic Australian English.  No searching for the right word.

In France I knew no one.  In eight weeks we only met three Australians.