Somewhat surprisingly, it's the last day of a tumultuous year. It's sneaked up on us a little and rushed into fast forward for the last couple of months yet here, indeed, we are. What a year it's been for the entire world, yet in our little snow globe there have been many numerous flurries and storms. Luckily for us, all the maelstroms have bothered and flung and the snow has settled in the bottom of the dome: I suspect, however, that it is waiting for the tiniest eddy to stir it into action yet again!

This time last year we were tripping gaily through the great galleries of Munich and Frankfurt, basking in Salzburg's musical history and cruising down the Rhine sipping Riesling and spotting castles. No sooner had we arrived home in Taipei than quiet rumblings of viruses from Wuhan were being investigated by the formidable and fast acting Taiwanese CDC. Taiwan dodged a bullet by their swift and decisive action, but it did mean disrupted times for our final ever year of teaching, including learning lots of skills for online learning and teaching and masking up for months of face-to-face teaching to round out our careers. Who said old dogs can't learn new tricks!

We faced the trauma of packing up our house of two decades in the shadow of cancelled flights and dire warnings of being unable to leave the country. We belatedly became Taiwanese citizens, braving the red tape and forms and calling in our credit as long time residents, just in case we were stranded on-island for an extended time when our working visas expired. In the middle of all this, our beloved last surviving cat, Mary, stopped eating and drinking and succumbed to her long standing kidney problems. It wasn't a happy time, and the heartache of leaving our home and colleagues and friends was raw, palpable and long-lasting.

I've documented what happened since that date quite adequately here on these pages I believe, so I'll fast-forward to the last month when we've had much chirpier times!

It's all relative of course. We're very well aware of how incredibly fortunate we are to have our family and friends healthy and safe and to be living in a well managed country. This month we've managed to get out and about a bit more as virus concerns have lessened and Chris and Val have had the big move and are starting to get settled in their new apartment. The seemingly endless cleaning and clearing is drawing to a close and they are very relieved to be over the worst of the moving and are already really enjoying their new city apartment.

We went to The Civic Theatre to see Tom Gleeson live, and in his words, "he didn't disappoint"! He worked a lot of material in his show around a quote by one of his neighbours in rural Victoria, " Just been choppin' up a bit of road-kill to feed me dogs"...he was hilarious! Cass and I ventured down to the hallowed SCG for a T20 between India and Australia. It was great fun and we enjoyed being the rare Aussie supporters among a passionate but respectful Indian cheer squad! The Hughenden Hotel provided Cass with a trip down memory lane (almost literally, as we were in Queen St. Woollahra, her old stomping ground) and we strolled the old neighbourhood before visiting the incandescent shock of the Streeton exhibition at the AGNSW, along with a flash through the Wynne, Sulman and Archibald prize exhibitions. It was truly a treat for the senses!

Jen and Vince hosted a double Christmas, firstly on the day itself featuring the Drinkwaters and the Braggetts, including Sue and Duncan and Mum. It was a beautiful day and full of fine food and good cheer. We all supplied various components of the feast, yet the hosts did the bulk of the hard lifting of course. Not content with one exhausting day, the Drinkwater clan hosted a bigger gathering just two days later when the original gang, with the addition of all the Almonds along with respective girlfriends and boyfriends, attended. All 14 of us had a delicious BBQ lunch and had a rare chance to catch up as a large group.

Our hosting of Boxing Day lunch for the Williamsons was postponed due to Chris being admitted to hospital with shocking pain on Christmas Eve: he's back home now, but slowly rehabilitating from a crack in his back. We're going to join them for a New Year's Eve dinner at their new apartment tonight.

So, we're tentatively optimistic about the coming year and looking forward to doing a few more selfish, retirement style things: it's been pretty hard work at times this year! Cass has finished her "trilogy de Mantel" and is picking up Snow by Banville as a welcome antidote to the heavy pall of Henry's shocking treatment of Cromwell and others! I finished Scrubland by Chris Hammer (I thought it needed a good edit, despite being very well written and entertaining) and I'm now immersed in the ever-consistent Nazi novelist Robert Harris and the new "V2".

 

It's been a delight to be teased away from our reclusive existence a few times recently by my older sister, Jennifer and her husband, Vince. We've strangely retreated into a quiet insular state a lot of the time and days fly by, as do weeks, and good intentions of contacting people have been put on the back-burner or procrastinated upon for so long that they've been almost forgotten: we've become anchorites worshipping the seaside!

Jen has sensed our mood quite intuitively, and invited us out to a few social outings: once for a relaxed lunch and then for a similarly enjoyable dinner just recently. It's been good to catch up and have a chat about life and times, and start to feel a little more integrated into our family and community.

Upon some reflection, we've realized we've changed in the past couple of decades away in Asia, and our family and friends are probably unaware of this change. Gaining a whole new professional and social group wasn't easy, and the transient nature of these groups didn't help us establish long ties during our time in Taiwan. Many, many of our preciously won close friends moved away for other jobs in other countries and gradually, we cloistered ourselves in an ever-shrinking circle of confidants, or increasingly, relied on each other. Our introverted tendencies have been highlighted and strengthened by this over the years, along with cultural and language barriers preventing us from forming many meaningful relationships with citizens of our host country at this time.

I suppose the upshot of all these events has meant we have become very self-reliant and almost fearful of large events (we certainly don't regard them as enjoyable) and we've also become overly sensitive to "interrupting" people's lives. We're not working now, and we don't know or understand the particular day-to-day travails of our friends and family, so we tend to avoid "inviting" ourselves into their realms. Silly? Perhaps, but it has felt the right and comfortable thing to do up till now. 

Our daily routine is amazingly relaxing and enjoyable in every way, however. We walk up the coastal paths and hills and walkways at a great clip for an hour, and I am swimming/body-surfing every day as well. We're feeling fit and healthy and finally, also starting to feel very relaxed, and not experiencing little pangs of guilt that we're not working! My frozen shoulders are looser and pain free, and as the smaller swells of summer approach, I'm increasingly looking forward to experimenting with some short forays into the surf with my board.

As the holiday season approaches rapidly (everything seems to happen "rapidly" these days: the weeks just flash by!) we are looking forward to re-connecting with some teacher friends as their long, stressful year winds to a close and they get some summer respite with easing of Covid and travel restrictions. Chris and Val are nearing the end of their packing and sorting and selling and moving and both settlement and moving days are looming large. Cass is going to visit them today, but has no prospects for "helping" as all the work has been done. By early December, they'll be ensconced in their new home just down the road...

We're slowly getting a renewed appreciation for everything on offer in the city and it's wonderful. We've visited just a few restaurants and we're eager to visit more, we 've visited some of the new attractions and of course, we can't get enough of our azure coastline, one which we immerse ourselves in each day.

Cass is nearing the end of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy: it's been a gargantuan read, and one which she's just about "over"! I've read the very latest instalment of the always entertaining Reacher series by Lee (and now Andrew) Child, "The Sentinel" and am currently reading "Snow" by John Banville: I squirm with envy at his effortless prose and vivid description...how does he do it?!

Nineteen years of neglect, procrastination or good old "head in sand" mentality has come home to roost in the last couple of months. While we were furiously spinning the hamster wheel in our jobs in Taipei, we tended to give scant regard to our humble little apartment back in Merewether. After all, wasn't that why we'd bought it in the first place? Easy care, modern block of units, brand new: it will take care of itself, right? Right it was, but nearly two decades later, a few issues we haven't dealt with are needing our attention!

Hot water systems are supposed to last between 10 and 15 years. Afraid that ours would burst and cause flooding in our place and below (as happened when the system in the floor above gave way a few years back), plus a suspiciously leaking overflow pipe and gasping noises emanating from the tank (!) we decided to get it replaced. Cass did some research, contacted a likely looking firm and they dispatched someone without delay. The plumber was great and got to work. Win, win, win!

Only trouble was the spectre of dodgy builders past came back to haunt us yet again! The morons who originally installed the gigantic water system did so in a cupboard, then built the door frame around it, meaning it was never going to come out without obliterating the door frame! After hours of me and the plumber chiselling, sawing and hefting, we gave up and he tore the side of the door frame off with a flurry of chips and wood splinters jettisoning out before finally the HWS was free from its bondage! What a saga. To add insult to injury, we were billed an extra three hours of labour costs! Now of course, I'm desperately seeking a carpenter who can replace the ruined door frame...wish me luck!

The other ongoing dodgy building fault is the leak in our main bedroom that has been "fixed" dozens of times over about 7 years! Now that we're finally here, we're persisting with different groups of roofers and plumbers, and various fixes have been attempted in the last months. Yet another is planned for a date as yet to be determined. The quote is in, but our frustrations continue as the plumber has to quote, the strata committee has to approve, it goes back to the plumbers, they have to schedule, then they come and "fix", finally they have to come back later and "pressure test". All this takes endless days and weeks and still the water flows in every time we have a storm, sponges and dams built from towels having to be changed and replaced as long as the rain endures.

We have wardrobes and cupboards quoted and waiting for a confirmation date, but we can't proceed as the leak must be fixed first, then the carpet replaced, or at least, re-attached. As the delays continue, the time frame balloons: even if we committed now, the date for commencement is mid January. Even a screen door we ordered won't come for a month! All these delays and impediments are not encouraging us to go ahead with any major renovations to kitchen and bathrooms....we can hardly imagine the trauma that would induce!

Anyway, it's lucky we don't have to fit a job in as well. Merrily going about our "real lives" in Taipei was frantic, exhilarating, fulfilling and quite often exhausting, but on our visits here in June and July each year to recuperate and re-charge for another hectic year, perhaps we should have done a modicum of maintenance on our Newcastle abode....it might have alleviated some of the issues we're experiencing now. Suffice to say we're determined to get the backlog of jobs done and we feel we're slowly whittling away at the necessary tasks. 

We continue to do our daily walk and little jobs interspersed with lots of interaction with Chris&Val and trips to the Bay where we're helping their gargantuan task of moving, packing, selling etc. etc. Busy times! I'm re-reading Stephen King's masterful "On Writing" and Cass is wading through a rising tide of violence, deceit and general skulduggery in Hilary Mantel's second  weighty tome of the Wolf Hall trilogy.

Photos: shots from the walks, Chris the Fragile(!), destroyed door frame, and some beautiful new linen bought with gift vouchers from David Jones that were presented to us by our former colleagues when we left in June.

 

The recurrent theme about three weeks after the last post is similar, yet evolving. Our days open with an invigorating adventure into the outdoors from our little beachside abode, an idyll that shows no sign of wear, in fact, with Cassy's new mantra of discovering "tiny spots of beauty" each time we step out, it's become fresh and exciting. She read somewhere that happy people tend to discover beauty in small spots of their usual lives and we realised that we already do this. We've just become a bit more intentional about it. Some of the photos above are a testament to this discovering (clouds, buildings, rocks and even gaily-striped umbrellas!)

Digital marketplaces have been a space for discovery and learning this week. When we left Taipei, in a bit more of a hurry than originally intended due to flight bring-forwards, we didn't negotiate the labyrinth of online classifieds such as Facebook Marketplace, Ebay or others. Language was not an insurmountable barrier, (it would have been challenging), yet the main reason we demurred was one of expediency due to time and the sad fact that most of our goods were not only unworthy of sale, but mostly in such a state of disrepair that they were embarrassingly unfit for donation to charities! The recycling depot received much of our detritus, a saga I've outlined previously on these pages.

A peculiarly Australian iteration of these platforms is "Gumtree", so we thought we'd give that a go for Chris and Val's treasures which won't fit in their new apartment: they were in inverse proportional value to our rags and junk! It's been an eye-opener, to say the least. Chesterfield lounges seem to be back on trend briefly, so these lounges and wing chairs and ottomans were snapped up, but the exquisite cabinetry by famous makers, in perfect condition have been languishing on the platform for days with nary a nibble. A few scammers have leapt on to ply their evil trade, but after getting rid of them, it's been "crickets"!

Even modern, more practical items are left to wither on the online vine ("onvine"?). Brand name sumptuous leather lounges, glass top tables with sets of chairs are yet to be noticed and other more valuable items are similarly ignored (an antique chaise longue and elegant English dinner sets for example) despite a ridiculously low asking price. It seems if it's not on the latest edition of "The Block", it's passé. It's an awful indictment on our modern throw-away society and makes one want to weep in despair! I'll live in hope: I continue to check for messages many times a day, but alas...

We're still negotiating our own slight mess, but are slowly whittling away at the jobs to be done. In fact, as we speak, I'm waiting for the Lifeline truck to pick up some bedside tables (2 sets that we had for renters) and a Chinese rosewood cabinet. Despite the excellent condition of these items, I've been warned that the driver will inspect the items for "saleability" before accepting them. I felt ridiculous, but Cass and I cleaned them all thoroughly and now I've arranged them "showroom" style in our garage (after moving the car), to show them in their best light to influence the driver to take them: seriously?!

On another note, its been exciting to follow the footy finals live and in situ for the first time in a couple of decades. I will miss our annual get-together for the AFL Grand Final, however. By long tradition, we gathered at 11 a.m. on grand final day at the Green Bar, then Patio 84, then The Patio to watch the game and yell at each other. Wal and I have been waiting for 19 years for Richmond (my team) to play Geelong (his team) in the big one, and, of course, it has finally happened this year! Oh well, I'll be there in spirit and I'll be able to revel in the NRL GF in all its glory this year, rather than having it relegated to an afterthought by my Tasmanian and Victorian mates!

Cass is deep into the sequel to Wolf Hall and continues to dissect 16th century English politics and intrigue. I've been reading another Braggett history book by the prolific Eddie Braggett, hot off the press, sent to Mum by Eddie, and in my hands for a quick first read. It's quite fascinating and I've been excited to trace our generation's exact lineage from the present all the way back to and beyond convict William. I've got it now thanks to Eddie! 

Photos: our beautiful moments, plus a BBQ hosted by Wayne, and pancakes with Nutella and strawberries cooked by Cass!