John has painted some figures for the model railway in Australia. I brought them back from Europe and have added eyes and mouths to the painting.
They look really good, I think, so here they are. There must have been a union meeting to get them all together.
In the Australian school system the end of the final year occurs before the end of the final year …. Let me explain.
Nick takes his final school examinations in late November and early December. However he does not have to go to school between now and then, so the next six weeks are spent on revision, and a small number of ‘extra” tutorials/classes arranged largely through the school.
As a result of this, when school ended for this term at the end of the week, it was the last time that his year group would be together as a body. The exam.s will be attended by different groups of pupils, and the final school events in November/December are not regarded as “compulsory” attendances for students who have finished school in practical terms long ago.
So in the last week we have had Nick’s “last” day of school, and his formal dinner held to celebrate “the end” of schooling.
Here he is on those occasions:
Seen with Emma and Lachlan, with whom he has been going to school since they were all in Primary School together!
This is Nick at his Valedictory Dinner.
After the excitement of the meal at l’Enclume, all the rest of the journey through England Wales and the Netherlands was routine, I suppose.
However it was really nice to see lots of old UK friends. Here are a couple of pictures of those who came to Cark.
This picture was taken in Cartmel village, outside the suberb cheese shop/delicatessen that is there.
From there I travelled by train to Shropshire, to visit Mark, Karen and their two children.
Lovely countriside there, and I went on an excellent bike ride with Jamie, using Laura’s bike, a lovely pink-and-purple number ….
From there it was on to Cardiff, there to visit Joe and Alan, in their lovely Art Deco house, then via Kingham (the Wilkie family) and back to London, to catch up with Tim, who took this photograph:
From there it was on to Amsterdam, and the ostensible reason for the journey to Europe, the European Cardiac Society Meeting.
Actually, despite the appearance of these photographs, I did spend a very useful few days at the conference, which will significantly change several aspects of cardiac care in Penrith, NSW!
This was a much-anticipated event which actually lived up to my expectations.
Cream cheese wafer
The ambience at l’Enclume was good and the organisation superb. They coped amazingly well with our party: the seven guests included a highly-allergic coeliac disease sufferer, someone highly allergic to fish and nuts, two vegetarians/pisctatorians (I think that’s what the head waiter described us as – people who don’t eat meat, but do eat everything else).
Oyster pebbles
There were over twenty courses. The first one (I had to put the third one at the top because it was so spectacular) was oyster pebbles! The oyster pebbles were fish-flavoured marange, which was a light grey colour, with creamed oysters within.
Icicles with shiso vinegar
The “icicles” were little radishes with special sweet vinegar
Dock pudding with nettle, Smoked eel with lovage
These were an example of how they coped with vegetarians, non-fish eaters, etc.
Ragstone cheese, malt and artichoke
Wafers with calamint and dill
Ragstone cheese is a goats cheese. The ingredients are mostly local, or obtained locally.
Pea and calamint crab sack
I asked the waiter what these were, and had to be told that the “sacks” were ceramic, and it would be better if I didn’t try to eat them. I’m not sure what “calamint” is, but the overall taste sensation was, well, sensational.
Cod “yolk” with watercress runner beans, salt and vinegar
Atlas carrots, chicken of the woods truffle and nasturtium
Atlas carrots are a local variety. “Chicken of the woods” is a type of mushroom.
Valley venison, charcoal oil, mustard and fennel
This was one of the dishes that I did not taste, but John told me it was one of the highlights for him.
This was the vegetarian version, with beetroot. It was an excellent substitute.
Grilled scallop and cauliflower
Scallop and grilled cauliflower – who would think of putting these together? It worked well.
Valley offerings
A selection of edible flowers from the area around Cartmel!
Wild bass, sandwort and thyme, grilled courgette with cockle
Blueberry gooseberry and honey wine
Plum, malt and caramel.
Anise hyssop, raspberry, milk skin
Sweet clover, cherries, cider and hazelnut
Sea buckthorn, sweet cheese, woodruff
One of the few things which didn’t work: most of these tiny “ice creams” were fine, but sea buckthorn was not particularly nice. I don’t know what it is. The ice creams were about 3cm long, and mounted in a large pebble with six holes bored in it.
I’m staying in Cark with Mark and John, in their very nice house. See pictures:
We went out yesterday to visit Gleason Mill, an old water mill on the Furness Peninsula. Very interesting.
We also went to Furness Abbey. Torn down in Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the monasteries.
Unfortunately it is cracking, and there are huge constructions to hold it up.
Nevertheless an impressive sight, and site.
I (David) am in England at the moment, though the rest of the family are at home. I am visiting my brothers prior to the European Cardiac Society conference in Amsterdam.
We are in the Lake District, and had 
an excellent walk yesterday. John came with me as I climbed Harter Fell from Seathwaite.
It was a hot (!) day for England.
We had 
an excellent walk over to the Esk Valley, where we met Mark, who had driven around.
Beautiful views over the Englis
h lakes from the summit of Harter Fell.
We are soon going to be at the start of the cricket season here in Australia. This means that for me (David) I feel the need to become slightly less useless as a member of the lowest division cricket side for Glenbrook-Blaxland CC in the local league. So I have been having a couple of “net sessions”, facing a bowling machine in some indoor nets in Penrith. The first session wasn’t too bad, although I wasn’t turning in to face the ball enough as I batted, and was hit a couple of times just inside and above of my left knee (I bat left-handedly). When I went back the next week our coach wasn’t there, so Andrew set the machine going for me, and although the speed was about half of what a professional fast bowler would manage, the first ball was WAY too fast for me, and hit exactly where the bruises were just going purple from the previous week.
I hope that Andrew was already familiar with the words that I used ….
Nick, meanwhile, is continuing to enjoy his hockey. His side will be in the “finals” (actually, as four sides progress to the “semi.s” out of a total of six teams in the whole league, this doesn’t mean a lot in itself. However Nick’s side are coming second. As you can see, it takes three people to get the ball from Nick.
I mentioned in my previous post about how Sue and I had to make investments to create a pension. When I realised that our shares-type investments were all doing badly, I decided that the time had come to “diversify” as the jargon goes.
At about the same time, a company sent me an invitation to invest in some established-artist artwork. Now I know nothing about this, and so was extremely cautious about the idea. However it seemed like a good concept, after enquiries into the company (Collins and Kent) and into the whole idea. One of the troubles for someone like me is: how does one know what an item is actually worth? There is no easy way to tell or find out.
To cut a long story short, we bought a short series of signed prints by Joan Miro, the Spanish artist, called the Graveur prints. One is shown above, here are the others:
They are each about 60 x 90cm
What are they worth? No idea. What did we pay for them? Compared to the second question, I have no idea about the first. How will we turn them into tangible assets (ie money) when the time comes? That, I now realise, is the key question to which I have no answer!
It has been a while, so I will put in several items of interest (interesting to me, anyway).
Looking from the War Memorial towards Parliament.
Click to see how tall Andrew is now.
We visited Canberra a couple of weekends ago. It was very cold, but we were able to go to see the visiting Turner exhibition at the National Gallery, and also went to the Australian War Memorial (where this picture was taken). It doesn’t sound very exciting, but the AWM is the equivalent of the Imperial War Museum in London, and was very interesting to visit.
One of the aspects of Australian society which is a bit of a trap for the unwary immigrant is the tedious but important subject of pensions. Basically there are none. If one talks to an Australian about a “pension” they think of a compensation-type pension, a disability pension, or sometning like that. Fundamentally there are no old-age pensions. There is a form of social security for the over-65s with no income and no assets, but that is basically at bad as that sounds. So if you want to have a comfortable life in retirement, it’s up to you ….
Fortunately the situation is not quite as bad as this sounds, in that all employers are obliged to pay 9% (currently, and increasing to 12% over the next few years) into a superannuation fund, which the individual has very little access to until they reach retirement age.
I say all this to explain why Sue and I have had to become property magnates and art collectors! I started off by putting our Super. money (sounds good!) into managed funds, to pay someone else to look after it. The problem with this is that all such Funds are doing very badly over the last few years. So instead we decided to put some savings into property instead. This is the property which we have bought in Sydney:
Double click to see a bit larger ….
Of course this is an investment property, and the fact that it is firstly near Sue’s workplace and secondly somewhere that we would like to have a base in Sydney, has little to do with it. The picture is taken from under Sydney Harbour Bridge, and shows the position of our unit in a 1970s block of flats, just high enough to have a view of the harbour, although the house in front does get in the way a little, as the second picture shows.
View from our unit
Has anyone got a little bit of dynamite?
The view over the Inner harbour is better.
View over in Inner Harbour
View from the unit over Darling harbour