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Showing posts from April, 2015

Dawn service

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G'day all! For many years now, I've been saying I will get up early and go to a dawn service on Anzac Day . Well I finally did. I'm only over 13,000 km from home (and that distance makes me feel a bit heartsick to be honest) and there was no eternal flame, no lighthorsemen or soldiers standing guard, but there was a bunch of Aussies and Kiwis (and their American families) and I think maybe a few Turks as well, and we stood in the pre-dawn light, listened to the Last Post, laid wreaths and flowers, listened to a short speech or two, a song sung on such occasions by Maoris ( Maori men fought alongside their European brothers), and promised to remember the fallen and the returned. It is one hundred years on 25th April this year since the storming of what came to be known as Anzac Cove along with other beach fronts on the Gallipoli (Gelibolu) Peninsula in what is now called Turkey.  Australian, New Zealand, English, French, Indians and even some Newfoundland troop

Spring has sprung

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G'day all! I am a very bad blogger, but you know that already... This early Spring has been wonderful.  Some things that have happened have been less wonderful - losing Leonard Nimoy and then Sir Terry and then Malcolm Fraser (ex-Prime Minister of Oz and someone who had stood up for his humanitarian principles for the last 40-odd years) and the Germanwings disaster... Mm, gluten and dairy-free "pizza".  Why yes, there is only half of it left.  The rest was in my belly, and that second half soon joined the first... Green trees!  A miracle! But the flowers and the weather have provided nice little pep-me-ups along the way, even if we got to equinox and the weather got worse not better!  Still we need a bit of rain and a bit of gloom to remind us how glorious it is here. I've been making a bit.  I've been working.  I've been slacking in the garden, then slaving in the garden.  It is starting to come together. These showed up a day a