In the busy life of authors living on small remote islands with nothing to do but write, moan about the weather and feed themselves off the land... my older son and his wife have just come home for a visit from the UK. My cold/flu has somewhat receded, but I'd love them to have come next week (and to stay for just as long, or longer. I'm just really tired.)

Anyway, we're not too sure when next we'll get to see them, with Clare not getting much time off in her next few years, and us not having a lot of spare cash for the traveling thing, so it is something to be very grateful for. That and wedding leftovers, which is what they got for supper tonight :-)

James, where's yer trew-sers?

Will someone find that horse and confine it?

I've been slightly sicker than the average horse, which appears to have been sneaking in and kicking me in the ribs in the bits of sleep I have managed to get (it's that or coughing rather a lot). James has managed after an hour and a half on the mobile to get half way with winning with Telstra. (to the extent that my internet is up again, at the price they originally quoted for the extra cap - it turns out the issue with my cap is NOT that I am prodigal and spend my life watching streaming video. It's that we have days when packet loss is 80% - that problem and the telephone which is 'working' but with such crackle you can only hear one in three remain unresolved. Most things in Australia - even including govt. departments, work and seem to do so quite or very well and fast. Telstra are the big stand out). Honesty forces me to admit they're the company I would most like to send to Somalia, for achieving the rare distinction of being less able than a Zimbabwean government department. Somalia would achieve a marginal internet and telephone improvement, and Australia a great one, as something -- almost anything else -- has to be better.

With James's new wife on her way back to Zimbabwe,(the kids are in for a tough few months) he needed a distraction. He has more patience and politeness than I do. They just don't seem to have any technicians available at all.

Anyway, we have a Scottish dancing class (among a weekend of dancing of various sorts - swing? - that I'll pass on) later today. I'm hoping for my wife's sake that I'll be able to manage without coughing too much. I'm going to put up some pics and the story of the wedding (some of which is quite funny given our ability to find disaster in the mundane and overcome it) - probably tomorrow.

We've been through a wedding, reception, a day of power failures, and a great deal of difficulty getting onto the net. I have come down with a cold and a chest infection, and dealing with visitors, which have all left me somewhat battered and tired. Hopefully normal service will resume soon. Alana and her mum fly out today, the new Mr Mrs Freer having had a short but much enjoyed honeymoon.

The Beach Wedding

Let us gather together, here at Trousers point.

The happy couple leaving barefoot prints together on the sand.

May love, happiness, and each other, go with my children.

Letting the cat out of the bag

My son James marries his fiance Alana tomorrow.
:-)

The days have been frantically busy which has made posting tricky. We did a trip with the kids and Alana's mum to Fotheringate, Strezleki, Walker's lookout, later into town, and back to cook muttonbirds and play cranium last night. Not a lot of writing work got done.