I just posted the blog report in which I encouraged you all to update so guess I had better do so too. I went out to my son in Broken Hill and spent two weeks there. It was hot but not humid, sunny apart from a couple of days of high cloud. There was sometimes a hot dusty wind blowing but all in all it was a great break away for me. I got to spend Christmas with Trevor and his small daughter Alice and then New Year's Eve too. Unfortunately we saw the New Year in in hospital as she had a virus which shot her temperature up and that can be dangerous in small children so we had her checked out. All was well by the end of the following day though.

I love the semi-desert country, the bold reds of soil and hills, the low scrub, the distant glimpses of kangaroos and emus. I can see there is a problem with feral goats as I saw hundreds of them from my window on the train journey up there. It takes 14 hours by train from Sydney to Broken Hill but the countryside is interesting, changing as it does from the green coastal plains, to the mountains to the pastoral lands out to the semi-desert country. Australia is a wide land and we have every kind of scenery you can imagine. It is great to see so much of it on the one trip.

I used my caravan as a bedroom most of the time and it was good to have that hidey-hole to escape to when Miss Alice threw one of her tantrums, she is three and a half, sleeps too little, eats and drinks too little and gets real tired so off she blew! Time for Granny Sue to tiptoe off and leave her to Daddy and a nice nap. Trevor had her six out of the 14 days I was here so we enjoyed a lot of good times and fun together. Those little ones are beguiling and she has Daddy and Granny Sue at her beck and call most of the time. It was good too to see her happy smiles, her attempts at humour, hear her stories and join in her laughter.

Between her visits Trevor and I did some housework, had some chats, watched television, played games on his computer and took a couple of trips out of town. I loved the day in Silverton where the first two Mad Max movies were made. It is a small village, a lot of derelict buildings but still hanging in there. We had Gem Scones and coffee in one of the small stone houses that have been converted into cafes and galleries, saw some art work and collections of old glass, enjoyed chatting with some of the locals. Of course some live in Broken Hill and commute out there as no services are supplied in those almost ghost towns now and as you age health care is so important and school for the young families. There is School of the Air though so it is possible for some families to live therewith small children.

Trevor works as a commercial cleaner and had little work over the Christmas New Year period so had a lot of time to spend with me so it was an ideal time to have a holiday there. The others, Shirley and Steven, rang over Christmas and sent messages so we didn't feel neglected. I had taken presents from my daughter out with me too so Alice had plenty under the tree. She is still into colouring and drawing, playing with blocks, using her imagination so fairly easy to entertain. It was good to be around her for those extra days as it has been only a couple of days during my visit previously and she hadn't really bonded with me until this visit.

I came back to rain, rain and more rain. Low lying areas are flooding now and we are all singing "Rain, rain go away". Such a contrast, they need some rain so badly out at Broken Hill as the Lakes at Menindee, their main water supply are empty and the farm dams are low, here the rain pours down the gutters and eventually out to sea. Wish I was a rain dancer or I would have tried to dance them up a storm while I was out there. We did have ten minutes of rain the first week and about ten seconds of rain the second so the low cloud cover didn't produce what it seemed to promise and the country remains tinder dry.

I came back to a sad situation, my dear old friend who I had been visiting in her assisted living apartment and then nursing home for many years had had a fall, broken her hip on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) then died the day before I got home. The family wanted me to do her funeral, something I have not done for ten years so I have been busy preparing for that. It is at a crematorium so that will be a new experience for me too. I've attended a lot of funerals in the last ten years but doing one myself will be a bit scary. And being asked to do so by a family I have known since I was seventeen makes it very special.

And so my friends it is life in all it's variations, some good, some not so good. As usual we here at Strokenet will share the ups and downs together. I went to the Lions dinner last night, it was an informal night so some had wives or partners with them and I still felt that tug on my heart when I saw them sitting with an arm around each other. That tug takes me back to thoughts of Ray again. You never get over losing the love of a lifetime. Just go on a day at a time and ENJOY (my new word for 2016) life as much as I am able.