A boat for my pot plants

When the sun shine's in England, its the best place in the world. I may be biased but I've done plenty of research. Luckily the sun was shining in Wivenhoe, Essex, when dear E's big brother and fellow blogger, a boat for my pot plants, moved his boat to its new mooring, almost opposite the Rose and Crown.

He's been refurbing the boat which he was given in a rather sorry state and although it can't yet move, it will give him and his wife a lovely spot to sit out with their G&Ts on a sunny evening.

The move was dependant on the tide and the boat was pulled from its previous spot, further down the river, by his stepfather's boat, who in strong winds, tried to look calm. E and I had lots of fun ourselves, borrowing a little rubber dinghy with an outboard from Mike, pretending we had a big role but in reality, providing entertainment with our lack of control, until the boat appeared in the distance.

Perfect fish and chips ended the day, eaten whilst sitting at the end of the jetty.

I do like to be beside the seaside

In England still which has been a delicious summer of running around between the homes of my friends and family. Exhausting at times but I wasn't quite ready to go back to Sydney just yet, and with the impending delivery of my sister's baby, I've got a good excuse.

My dear friend G has not had a holiday in so long, mainly because he has been working hard on his fabulous business. We have had a long standing tradition of good weekends away, whenever we can. My trip back this time gave us a good excuse and joined by our lovely friend K, we escaped from London St Pancras on the new fast train to Broadstairs. We stayed at Belvedere Place, a fabulous B&B run by an ex-photographer who has seen sense and moved to the seaside. Her creative talents have not gone to waste - the house is comfortable and stylish and her breakfasts are the best I've ever had. Haddock and samphire with a yummy poached egg and tiny tomatoes pan fried with seaweed. All eaten around a communal table covered in the newspapers, where we could happily have sat all day.

Far too much to do however and we had a fantastic weekend, with early morning dips, brick a brac markets, pearly kings and queens and punch and judy. The weekend was polished off at the Oscar Road cafe, just off the seafront, where we polished off almond cake and tea before taking a short cut back to the station.

Having a little holiday in the UK - thoughts of London in 30 degree sunshine was too much to miss and its certainly worth the 24 hour long-haul. Running around like a mad thing to see everybody and make the most of my time here. Lovely!

Brrr!

Its bleedin' freezing in Sydney in winter! When the English arrived, they brought with them the artesan terraces which are typical of British cities and areas like Fulham and Hackney, where there are rows and rows of them. Unlike the British ones, they made the windows small, presumably to keep out the heat in the summer, but they did bring with them the fireplaces and grates, perfect little fireplaces for coal.

Those days are long gone, coal is no more in cities such as these and those little fireplaces have been left to crumble so are nothing but outlets for warm air. We have no heating, nothing dries and I feel like a student again.

Thank god then for Delia! When merging our stuff, I was told that there was to be no Nigella, no Jamie (except when my dad took us to Jamie's uncle's pub on our first meeting and he had to be polite, whilst sitting under a Jamie shrine!) I ignored those but I felt the need to sneak in the Delia winter cookbook and hide it under the bed. It reminds me of the late '80s and I haven't used it in years. However, leafing through the pages made me warm again and lusting after 'luxury fish pie'.

I scored 10 out of 10 without announcing the author. It was then demoted to an 8 but I think that was mostly because M is bitter and twisted... and probably a bit cold.

Next stop - Surry Hills

So with the boat on a mooring, we've moved into the centre of town which is the complete opposite of where we were before. Surry Hills which is an up and come area just south of the CBD with rows of terrace houses, shops and cafes.

We' ve rented a terraced house with the luxury of a roof terrace on one of the main streets. Bizarrely, it feels all very normal. Inner city living again, and car noises and people and very few animals. Its an old area and feels like there is a bit of history in the walls - all bent and crooked in our place anyway. My dear friend Clare sent me a book which was set in the area in the 1930's called 'The Harp in the South' by Ruth Park, which has given me an insight into what came before. I also went to see a great exhibition called 'Skint - making do in the great depression' , which rather frighteningly gives an insight to what it was like back then, with no money and furniture and clothing made from whatever could be found - mostly tea chests from the docks and sacks.

The Movers

At 8am, a wide barge appeared at the mouth of our bay, and chugged up the channel to our deck. On board were four men and a dog. The barge moored up at the end of our jetty and the boys loaded on our possessions in a matter of minutes, before they lost the tide - a window of some 20 minutes.

Once loaded, it moved out of the bay as fast as it came, on its way to cargo jetty, at Church Point where it was to meet a truck. I watched my possessions piled high, hoping that the wind wouldn't pick up as the boat went around the corner, which is often the case.

Possibly the most bizarre move I've ever done, but certainly the easiest and a lot easier on my knees than carrying up boxes 127 steps through brush turkey decorated steps.

Our last guest

This little fella was on a rug that we had stored during our rental and uncurled on our last night. On first poke, we thought he had suffered a similar to fate to the funnel web spiders we had found in the house, and died. But as it turned out, I think we had just woken him up and he wasn't too happy.

Despite the bad photo, his curled-up tail makes it obvious that he is a scorpion of about 3cm in size. Apparently he is a marbled scorpion and his sting would be painful, but not fatal. Lucky really as we were padding about in bare feet when we found him. There are apparently hundreds of different types of scorpion in Australia, yet very few people see them and very little is known about them. This type however are occasionally found in homes, hiding behind furniture.

What I did find out however is that scorpions fluoresce brightly under UV light and this is a good way to find them at night, when they are at their most active. They are also arachnids like spiders.

I've become slightly obsessed with spiders and other creepy crawlies since being in Sydney. I have always been scared of them but realised that this was futile in an environment where they are everywhere. My dear sister bought me a book for Christmas and I have been avidly studying and identifying the different types as I find them, boring the pants off anybody who will listen as I rave on about their green and yellow colours and strange behaviour. I am surprised how few Sydneysiders have actually seen or know anything but the huntsmen - stuff of nightmares who are actually like baby giraffes, all legs and no idea what to do with them. This was our last guest in our Pittwater pad so perhaps this is a sign that we will be seeing less of his type in our new Surry Hills place. I almost feel sad. M, on the other hand, is delighted.