Start of a new week, so having run the train back through the stations on Sunday evening it is time to go back through them again but in a forward direction. Some of you will say, what on earth are they talking about. We having fallen for this guy called Stuart McLean who had a show on the CBC in Canada called the Vinyl Café. He had this hypnotic voice that took you into his stories of the fictitious Dave and Morley family. Some of you we have introduced to Stuart McLean and have also come under his spell. His most famous story is Dave Cooks the Turkey. If you want a belly aching laugh for twenty minutes out of your hectic life, this is a great story.
So, how did our week start off?
This should answer your question quite well. Many of you know our great friend Nick who has gone to great lengths over the years to obliterate our bank account and we his. Now that we are much older and with life limiting earning capacity, our antics have slowed down on that front but that doesn’t mean though that we can’t splurge now and then. This morning it was a perfectly satisfactory breakfast of eggs bene at St Kilda beach. It was a trifle warmish but great to sit at such a wonderful location.
Fras popped into the city to assist his parents whilst Di and Nick wandered around St Kilda doing a bit of window shopping and catching up with one another’s news. Talking to many of our friends in Australia, we are all of the same age where our elderly parents are requiring assistance as to their daily needs and long term care. It is good to talk and learn about their different experiences as each one is unique and also at different stages of the process. It is a good lesson for us to know that we need to sort ourselves out earlier than most people as we don’t have children who will be there to assist us.
We all rendezvoused down at the Australian Tennis Centre in the city at 5.00pm where we had tickets for the first evening of the Australian Tennis Open. Wow, quite the set up.
We met with Liz who is from Canberra and a very good friend of Nicks. We had dinner with her husband Ian and her up Lygon Street last week.
This very lucky duck gets paid to work at the Australian Open every year in Player Services and meets all the tennis players. We caught her after work for a short time and had a coffe in the grounds.
Nick is also traveling with a friend Ahmer from London who is on holiday DownUnder. We are hoping we might catch up with him when we are over there in July.
We wandered around the outer courts for about an hour to see who was playing. Didn’t see anyone we knew but it was pretty warm so found this great way to cool off. Typical Aussie version of what you see in Las Vegas on the streets to cool people down. Aussies and Kiwis are well known for using 4×2’s and fencing wire to string things together.
This is one of the outer courts and on the left of the picture you can see the tall buildings of the city skyline giving you an indication as to how close the tennis facility is to the centre of town.
It was then into the Margaret Court Arena where we saw two matches. One was Marvin Cilic (Croatian) against Bernard Tomic (Aussie). There were some good highlights but Cilic was all over Tomic. The women’s match was Ashleigh Barty (up and coming Aussie) and Kumkhum (Thai) girl who Barty just walked all over.
After the match which finished late we wandered across to one of the other main arenas and Andy Murray was playing. They had been at it for four hours and arrived to see him lose his last game. He lost three sets to two. It was obvious that he was in great discomfort from his previous hip issues. He hopes to last to Wimbledon and then bow out there but not sure if his body will last until then.
It was a late night but a lot of fun even though we had to keep poking old man Nick to stay awake🤪
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