Ruby Grimshaw is getting over Down Under

I was going to Australia for ten days and everyone said I would just be getting over jet lag when it would be time to come home again. I’m back now and need a few days of sleep to recover but it was worth it. My cousin/goddaughter’s wedding in Mt Martha was spread over three days, and friends and relatives – including a NZ contingent – enjoyed celebrating her marriage to her handsome Australian. Luckily he was the strong, handy-man type because on the morning of the wedding he had to nip up onto the roof of the marquee, which was in danger of collapsing with rain which had collected during the night. Luckily I hadn’t gone to Oz for the weather.

I spent a few days in Sydney first, visiting old Hong Kong friends and found that Victoria was having its worst summer for years. On the plane I had worried about forgetting to pack my sarong but I soon found that what I should have brought was my fleece and a brolly. It was more a case of museums and culture than Bondi Beach and sun bathing. I visited the wonderful Terracotta Warriors exhibition at the Art gallery and saw a première of a new musical of Dr Zhivago – a sort of Russian Les Miserables. I might be unqualified to give an opinion because I kept nodding off with jet lag, but every time I woke up nothing seemed to have altered – they were all singing the same marching song and dressed in the same grey military uniforms.

“It was more a case of museums than Bondi Beach”

I should not have made such good use of the in-flight entertainment. Watching six films (including the one where a man chops his arm off to escape) and four documentaries (in one of which two men are afflicted with growths which make their hands and feet resemble tree roots) and all inside two weeks, has resulted in bizarre dreams where I am being eaten by beetles and running away from cabbages. I shall have to avoid my lovely Duke of York’s for a while.

This morning I missed being woken up by the raucous laughter of kookaburras, but was very glad not to have to scrabble out of bed to catch another plane. Then I caught sight of the scaffolding which has appeared on the house during my absence. The builders will soon be arriving to start my loft conversion. I pulled the duvet back over my head and wished I was back Down Under.