Papa Ted (David’s father) has a love for Jersey Boys, the UK smash hit musical that has been running for two years at The Prince Edward Theatre, in fact he’s seen it live six times now so I wasn’t surprised when he bought tickets for the five of us to go. I was impressed though that he had paid for us to have a private suite with our own host, drinks and hors d’oeuvres, signed programmes by the whole cast and backstage treatment! I was in two minds about Jersey Boys as I didn’t really know much about the Four Seasons or Frankie...

I’ve been seeing a lot of similarities and somewhat strange things whilst I’ve been in the UK although I have visited here a few times in my life, I seem to be noticing the more trivial things, like Penguins. Penguin biscuits are milk chocolate-covered biscuit bars filled with chocolate cream identical to our much loved Tim Tams. Each wrapper has a joke or “funny fact” printed on it and imaginative, often humorous designs featuring penguins that often pastiche famous works of art.  There seems to be a lot of discussion around which...

Well Friday (2nd July) saw “me” packing frantically as most of it was left till the last minute and not because I was being lazy or putting it off, it’s because the week turned out to be more frantic than usual. Typically when you want an easy week, it generally ends up in the opposite direction! To my credit, I did pretty well considering it pretty much was a ‘grab and dash’ situation. We managed to arrive at Sydney Airport on time, check in and have some time to catch up with family before our 8.00 pm flight to Melbourne. My...

Typically my father-in-law who lives in England visits us on the Central Coast each year for Christmas but this year, he threw us a curve ball and invited us to come over to England … for free! Of course we had to accept. It was a very generous offer and one that made me slightly nauseous intermittently while I thought of travelling that far with 5.0 (Lily) and 7.0 (Oliver) and to some extent the 42.0 (David). David’s Nan is too old to travel now and had last met Lily when she was six months old so it was a great opportunity on many levels. We...