As I sit nursing a shoulder injury I suffered at the weekend, I have had a lot of time in between hospital and doctor appointments to think about what got me here. The game I was playing when I injured my shoulder was a friendly to signal the start of the 2010 Decoys softball season and I was excited to be using my skills again after a long winter. Softball has been a passion of mine since I was a child, so when I decided to take the sport up again last year I was thrilled to find the Central Coast had its own dedicated club – Decoys. After a few trial...

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...