This morning Right Foot and I withdrew all our money from our running away account. We have done quite a bit of running away over the last few years and there was only $164 left but we hope this is enough for a Supreme de Volaille and a Crepe Suzette which we have been hanging for since 1968.
We have also voted in the federal election, packed the vegemite and a selection of native flora which I suspect will not get past the first customs officer who sees it and certainly no where near its intended destination, the Australian memorial at Villers Bretonneux. A lady in the tourist office in Peterborough, South Australia has sent over several Glad resealable sandwich bags containing sprays from indigenous shrubs so Right Foot can leave them in memory of his great uncle, a 19 year-old Peterborough local who was killed at the Somme in 1915. I hope these tributes don't end up in a bin along with a collection of putrid salamis, raw cheeses and ostriche feathers. The kind lady deserves more, so does Right Foot and so, especially, does great uncle David.

Two more sleeps and Right Foot and I are off to Shanghai, France and Beijing in that order. I am very excited, never having been to Continental Europe before. But before we get there I'll see Shanghai in all its Last Emperor glory (I hope). We are flying with Dodgy Air and they are even more obsessive about reconfirming flights than I am. We arrive on National Day, a major public holiday, so are expecting chaos. My Mandarin teacher has written down the address of the hotel in Chinese characters for me so that's gotta help doesn't it?

My last civic duty before I go is attending tonight's graduation ceremony, wearing my highest heels so I don't trip over my trailing gown, and with my mortar board rammed down over my eyebrows to prevent its slipping off. I don't do costuming-up well.

After months of "Yes I will, no I won't" I posted my cheque for Membership of the MCC and am now awaiting the arrival of a shiny medallion or something. I wrote the cheque out weeks ago and twice walked to the postbox and came home with it still in my hand. After 20 years on the waiting list I couldn't decide whether I really wanted to join up but now the deed is done. It was the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony that made me decide.
Soon I can start dining with the nobs and frocking up for the footy. I wonder if I ever will.

Matt is back so Grumpy Girl has moved out leaving a very small footprint and a beautiful box of Belgian chocolates (and I don't mean those overly sweet shell numbers). She was an exemplary guest and we miss her company.

It is only six weeks before we are scheduled to make another attempt to see Shanghai and I am wondering what could go wrong this time. Not 'til I am strolling along the Bund will I really believe I'm going.

Petite Soeur is off to Bora Bora early next week to film a glam advertisement. I never get sent to places like that for work. Only places like Glasgow.

Grumpy Girl has been back from Europe for a week now and is staying with us. She's great company: so interesting to talk to and so helpful too. She cooks for me, vacuum cleans for me, wears my clothes for me.
GG sets a fine example for anyone trying to live a healthy life. She walks to work, St Kilda to Collingwood, every day and never a morceau of unhealthy tucker crosses her lips. Last night she had dinner with a friend so we took the oppportunity to get meated up. Roast beef. Very good. A bod can only take so much tofu.

One of my dad's favourite sayings was, "There's no prizes for second". Only winning was good enough. He was a keen tennis player and when he moved his young family to the outer eastern suburbs in 1953 the first thing he did was establish a tennis club. He was president for eight years and became the club's first life member. In 2003, a year after Dad died, the club celebrated its 50th anniversary. At the anniversary dinner someone suggested selling the naming rights to each of the six courts. Family members were slack and it was an anonymous donor who paid for one of the courts to be named after Dad. We were touched but wondered how he would feel about having his name on court number 2. No prizes for second. But at the ceremony on Sunday the numbers were taken off and the names unveiled. Dad's court is in the middle of the three at the front - Centre Court. He would have loved it.

We got a call from Grumpy Girl in Rome last night - so wonderful to hear her voice. I hope I get to Italy one day - and all the other places. I've bought a French phrase book in preparation for our trip in October and have found it very different form the phrase books I remember. There is nothing at all to help me should my postillion be struck by lightening: instead there are phrases for purchasing le morning-after pill and dealing with other modern dilemmas faced by travellers.

I started Mandarin classes yesterday and hope that I will be able to ask the taxi driver in Shanghai to take me to the Novotel which should impress him mightily.

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After 20 and a half years on the waiting list at the Melbourne Cricket Club I have been offered full membership. But now I am wondering if I will take it up. I am able to take up to four guests along. I always went to sporting events with my dad and my eldest sister but Dad is now dead and Maureen lives in the country.

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Two of the medications I take are not on the PBS so I have to pay heaps for a private prescription. The woman in the pharmacy is always very sympathetic. Her mum had been taking one of them too but she died recently and I inherited them. At the handover the pharmacy assistant and I both got rather teary in the middle of the shop. The next time I saw her she piled me up with another batch of supplements she found at her mum's. We teared up again. Now I am hesitant to go in again - what else will have emerged from mum's effects?

It has been a royal wedding weekend. Two staunch republicans, Right Foot and I, stayed up until 1.00 a.m. to watch Our Mary become a princess. Right Foot hadn't been up so late since he was 19. His main concern was that the Danes would get their carriage etiquette right. They did. Thank God. He goes ballistic in movies if someone is sitting in the wrong seat or the wrong person has his back to the horses.
It was clearly a love match, in contrast to the appalling farce of the Charles and Di fiasco. Good luck Fred and Mary.

Grumpy Girl and Petite Soeur are both overseas, Grumpy in Europe and Petite in Vietnam. It is very strange for us knowing neither of them will suddenly appear at the front door. We are still looking after their Stuff of course so there is no chance of them not being thought of constantly.

The Jazz festival finished yesterday: we went to the Jellyroll Morton concert, all Right Foot's favourites were played and the group finished with the legendary Dr. Jazz. Magnificent.

It is now Week 12 of semester but I am as busy as I was in Week 3. I wonder why? When will it stop?

Dayus Horribulus

At the third attempt to collect my car I succeeded. That was the only thing that went right today. I had to pay the excess of $450 but the mechanic inadvertently charged me $4500. We spent about an hour talking to various people in Mombai but without much luck.

My parking permit has gone west with the old windscreen so now I can't park outside my own appartment. My rego sticker is hanging by a thread.

I had to go to Hawthorn Campus and couldn't find a parking spot this side of Ayer's Rock.

I arrived at Lilydale and couldn't find a parking spot this side of the Great Divide.

My PC was plastered with urgent post-its so I couldn't even play Alchemy over lunch.

I left my banana at home.

I need alcohol - straight into the vein if possible.

It's now a week and I still don't have my car back. The worry is that I am starting to bond with the automatic courtesy car although it broke down on me the other night. It does have drawbacks - no power steering, electronic windows or central locking. Its radio doesn't work and I am driving around with my trannie on the dash like we did in the sixties listening to the Beach Boys or commentator postmortems on the way home from the footy.

Grumpy Girl and Matt finally got away on their several-times-postponed trip and should be in Barcelona by now, keeping out of the way of terroristas I hope.
Now we are concentrating on moving Petite Soeur to her new pad so it's been back to Dan Murphy's for more boxes. Altogether, we must have removed 100 or so plonk cartons from the Prahran store but their supply never seems to diminish. It should give Grump's and Petite's new neighbours a good scare when they see all that stuff being carried in.

Spent Saturday afternoon helping Grumpy Girl shift her stuff into the spare room at an obliging friend's place. he lived in a court where one of the neighbours has made name-boards for everyone. Each house was clearly identified in flowing pastels: Sheridan, Cartwright, Smith etc - very pretty and neighbourly it was.

The Affordable Art Show was a great success. The Exhibition Buildings were crammed with art, "art", artists and buyers scurrying around with their prizes under their arms looking for more. So now Right Foot has enough framing to keep him happy for quite a while. After the Affordable Art we had drinks to farewell Grumpy and Matt. All their twenty- and thirty- something friends were there: so interesting to talk to.

Today the hailstones are finally being beaten out of my car and I am now driving around in an automatic - my first experience of one and right toey I was coming to work today. Still, only four more days to go

Last night I cooked the rest of the fish that had been in the freezer since Good Friday. This was not nearly as pleasant as having a fish dinner served up to me at the Orrong on a Friday night. I kept thinking about witnessing their deaths at the hands of a four-year-old fisherperson and watching them suffocate. Not nice. They were also a gamey, strong-tasting lot. From now on it's fish from the fish shop for me.

I saw four films over Easter: a double bill of Tati films at the Astor (weird but fascinating); Starsky and Hutch at the Jam Factory, sitting on a pile of someone else's popcorn (mildy amusing) and Mystic River at the Como (gor blimey).

Today I am doing a tutorial by telephone from Singapore. Should be interesting.

Good Friday - no loaves but lots of fishes.
After our failed attempt at swimming with the seals in New Zealand we were keen for another try. The other party who had booked the boat with us cancelled and, rather than take out the Maureen M with just Right Flipper and me, the captain called his wife who turned up a few minutes later with the entire extended family. And so we went snorkelling. It was freezing in Port Phillip Bay but this time the seals cooperated, sliding off their new version of Chinamen's Hat and joined us in the water. Fantastic. There was also boomnetting, diving off Maureen M's roof and a sort of keelhauling trick which I decided wasn't for me. Then it was time for some fishing. The fish leapt into the boat on the lines of four-year olds. We were given a huge bag of fish and another of mussels to take home so we abandoned our plan of dining in Queenscliff and drove home for a fish-feast.

Eventually the RACV turned nasty. If I didn't get my hailstone damage fixed they would cancel my car insurance policy. But what was I going to do while the car was being repaired? Travel to Lilydale by train? I'd rather have my finger nails pulled out. So I rang auto repairers until I found one that would loan me a courtesy car. Bless you, bless you, John of the Toorak Accident Repair Centre. May every good thing befall you and your heirs even until the 10th generation.

Problem - the car is an automatic and I have never driven an automatic before. I drove around Kuching for three months in an appalling old rattletrap rather than learn how to drive the shiny new automatic they had for me. What to do? I considered going into a dealer and pretending to be a serious buyer and asking for a test drive but then they would have rung em up every day until I did buy one. Right Foot had a better idea. He rang a driving school (not the RACV) and arranged a lesson for me. The lesson was for 45 minutes but after the first 3 the somewhat mystified instructor announced there was nothing more he could teach me. I had it nailed. So we spent the next 40 minutes cruising around St Kilda and South Yarra while he pointed out all the red-light and speed cameras to me. He'd formed the idea that knowing that would be more help to me in the long run. Percipient.

M.R.I.
Friday afternoon I had an M.R.I. X-ray. They roll you into a thing like an iron lung but first you are blindfolded and strapped in. You get to choose a CD to listen to through headphones. There were three lists to choose from: classical, headbanger and daggy old buggers. I selected Van Morrison and heard a few bars of "Have I told you lately that I love you?" before the racket kicked in. MRIs are accompanied by an amazing cachophany of sounds - jackhammers, ghostly rappings and dentists' drills. So for the next 25 minutes what I heard was:
'Fill my heart with gladness'
Jackhammer, jackhammer!
'Ease my troubles' jackhammer, dentist's drill!
'And you fill my life with laughter'
Jackhammer, dentist's drill, ghostly rapping!
'We should give thanks' ghostly rapping!
Dentist's drill, dentist's drill, dentist's drill!

Saturday we re-booked our postponed tripped to Shanghai and Beijing with a side trip to Paris thrown in. This was an act of defiance against gammy legs, vile terrorists and a strange superstitious feeling that I am not meant to see Shanghai. I intend to.

We survived another Grand Prix and the almost as horrendous Moomba celebrations. As I attempted to read in my living room on Saturday afternoon a hornet flew over so low and loud that I ducked. Right Foot was on a tram and said EVERBODY ducked. I took refuge in Stonningtom library, curled up in an armchair reading 'The number 1 ladies detective agency'. Bliss.
On Sunday we escaped to Werribee Park to commune with the lions, hippos etc. - roars of a different kind and much more entertaining. By the time we got home all the parties were in full swing - other apartment dwellers were raging on all sides while we sulked inside watching a man answering questions about penguins on "The Einstein factor". Why didn't they ask us to their parties?
Yesterday was the shabby old Moomba, so tired so sad so pathetic.
Quelle lost weekend. Next year we definitely go away.

I went to the sawbones this morning with my x-ray collection and he tried various means of inflicting pain upon my dodgy knee but the damn thing wouldn't cooperate so I have to have another photo session next week to look for hot spots or cold spots which I have just Googled to find a bit more info on. It appears I will be radioactive for a few days after the procedure. I'm trying to think of a way to turn this to my advantage - there must be SOME extra power attached to being radioactive surely.

I went to a conference yesterday and heard some interesting papers but much of the program was rather dull. The lunch was not up to the usual standards and the trade exhibitions were just plain boring.
The venue is totally a maze and I had to offer Lou a lift home just so that she'd have to help me find my car. This was very a effective strategy and saved me hours of misery.
All day meetings tomorrow and Saturday - busy, busy, busy.

We've had a great day today in Christchurch, riding the city circle tram and seeing all the sights. We found all the arty shops that were conspicuously absent in Nelson. Right Foot has been buying up all the weird and whacky things (as he does) and I have made one or two purchases myself. We've just had a fantastic, and very cheap Chinese dinner preceded buy a rich, bitter local draft beer which pubs sell in takeaway bottles. What an excellent idea. Tomorrow, we have a few more touristy things lined up for our last full day, then home on Friday afternoon. See you!

Spent the morning taking the cure at the thermal pools in Hanmer Springs. Beautiful hot water amid mountain scenery accompanied by a drizzling rain. There were lots of European tourists of stupendous proportions also easing their aching bodies and souls. Right Foot was inspired to break into song,
" I'm a big fat momma with meat shakin' on the bone,
And every time I shakes it Poppa,
A skinny woman leaves her home."
Truly, he has a song for every occasion.
We have now handed the van back to Maui with great relief. Never, ever again.
A taxi to the Centra where we have a large and very comfortable room on the 9th floor - bliss, bliss. Now we're doing our first reccy of Christchurch, scoping out the eateries, shops and a bit of culture as well. This is much more like it.