Christmas greetings to my faithful readers (and also to everyone who doesn’t read my blog – chuckle!).
We’re spending Christmas in the Hunter Valley at Cypress Lakes – it’s an upmarket golf resort, but I think we’ll be relaxing rather than golfing. Viv and Chris are going there as well so we’ll have Christmas dinner together.
In January we’ll be spending a few days in a holiday house at Patonga with friends Pam and Steve. Patonga’s a little settlement just north of Sydney near the mouth of the Hawkesbury River – I’ll break out the bathers and the fishing rods.
I had a lovely Christmas message from the USA from old friend Jane Varda (nee Sturgess). She has a website (janevarda.com) displaying some of her artwork – excellent oil paintings and pastels, well worth a look.
A Jane Varda pastel
I’ve changed cars, so I should be driving to the Hunter Valley in a Subaru Forester XS Premium. I pick it up on Monday, so I hope it’s ready to go. It’s a couple of years old, but with just 12,000 kilometres on the clock. It’s black, with black leather interior.
I bought it mainly because I needed to tow a glider trailer to my gliding club’s annual camp out west at Forbes and I didn’t think the old Mazda 6, being just front-wheel drive would handle towing across paddocks and grass airfields.
When you glide across country, you leave the glider trailer and tow car back at the home airfield. If you can’t make it back and have to land in a field, your mates will drive out and pick you up. You take the wings off the glider and put it in the trailer and take it back to the airfield. You also have to reciprocate, of course, if they land in a paddock somewhere. Fun eh!
