Birthday Post

Happy Birthday to me... I got a year older today, to celebrate this my friends came over last night and we ate some food and drank some drinks and were generally amiably silly together. I got some new toys which made me very happy, and some birthday cards and some booze - all very good. This morning I opened the birthday cards that had arrived in the post during the week which made me grin from ear to ear too... It is good to be reminded that you're well loved. emails and texts have been trickling in all day today, and it's not over yet! I'm reliably informed that there are more cards still to come as well as a rogue present that is lost somewhere in the postal system, all of which is very exciting: I like birthdays that get stretched out a bit like this.

As always watching one's odometer tick round to a new whole number (mine clocked up 29 this time, for the benefit of anyone who didn't know) it's hard not to think about where you've been and where you're going... Looking back makes me smile. A lot. I've had a very good bundle of years so far and they've brought me to a place where I'm very happy and surrounded by people I love. Looking forward is pretty exciting, there are a lot of open-ended bits in my life right now and I'm looking forward to exploring new directions for a few of them over the next year... and talking of exploring brings me neatly onto the next bit of this post...

I'm going to Australia!



Anyone who knows me will have heard me throw this idea about in some shape and at some point I suspect. Anyway the end of my third decade sees me with sufficient time and money on my hands to get on and actually do it, so I am. I'm booked on a flight leaving Edinburgh on the 30th of October and I'll be returning on the 11th of January. In the meantime I plan to explore down under, concentrating first on Perth/Western Australia and later Sydney/New South Wales, with a brief cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof-esque visit to Ayer's Rock, and a couple of weeks' rolling gently down the sunny Queensland coast, with the whole adventure bookended by short stops in Singapore and Hong Kong. Neat eh?

Should make for some interesting blog posts as and when I get near a computer, more importantly for me though it feels like it'll be what people call 'the trip of a lifetime'. I'd say I couldn't wait except that next week I'm going on a more local adventure with Liz, Keith, Hamish and Lara (and some of Lara's friends and her husband Tim) which I'm really giddy about too!

Life is really very good indeed.

Thanks to Hamish for the artist's rendition of aussie-me, dubbed "weasaroo", I doubt I'll be donning any kangaroo suits in real life however, especially since circumstances conspire to have me heading to Oz in their high summer! I'm sure I'll cope