Melbourne!

We are having Christmas and New Year in Melbourne. I haven't been able to blog for ages, it's taken the longest time for internet to be sorted out here. Thanks darling for persevering with the Telstra IT crowd! Here's the catch-up, in installments.

David's neurologist reported his MRI showed nothing (no brain at all?) so the message is, keep taking the drugs and maybe it will go away. So David soldiering on with neuropathic pain and numbness in R arm and various other symptoms. We have a theory it's all connected to low thyroid levels - well, Dr Google supports this theory anyway.

So we loaded up the car and headed off down the Hume, pointed in the general direction of Melbourne.
Its a long way, but Rover is a great touring vehicle, so easy to drive. In fact, I drove the bigger part of it.

The landscape of the limestone plains, Rosalie Gascoigne country. Spare, brown, sparsely treed, it has a beauty of its own. Familiar, but not fond nostalgia inducing. Yet. (Still enjoying the green vigour of the mid north coast too much to feel nostalgic for this)

Almost the first day in Melbourne we were treated to a gypsy jazz lunch at Tre Espresso in Brunswick, where Wim has a regular gig.  He gathers other musicians to play with him, as available.  The soprano sax had not played with them before and was peering at the charts, chasing the charts when they blew away...
but the overall sound was a delight.  I like gypsy jazz more and more.

Marjory came too.

Serious shopping was on the agenda. So easy in Melbourne, the CBD is easy walking distance from our apartment. This is the Royal Arcade.

 Here is David Jones in Bourke Street, all dressed for Christmas

Myers from the fifth floor - the urge to hurl myself over into this void had to be considered. I could abseil down on those decorations, surely.

 A chalk artist in Bourke Street.  The subject matter?  The Raft of the Medusa.  A statement about asylum seekers perhaps? I put that to the artist. "Yeah, too right"

This takes me back to the days of Woden Valley Youth Choir.  How many shopping centre carols did Mae and Lian do in their teens?  Many. Never in a setting like this, though. This is the Block Arcade, and those mechanical green and red trumpeting heralds move back and forward.  Quite impressive.

A few days before Christmas, Lian's wedding dress was finished and she picked it up! My mother-of-the-bride dress was made to measure by the same couturier.  Note to self.  Do not put on weight. All very exciting.

 I got my hands on a cat, Lian's Suki is just a delight. But she doesn't seem to recognise me as furnanna and mostly ignores me. I must seem too desperate for a go of her.

Here it is, the message du jour. No missing it on Flinders Street Station!