Reunion

29 July - Funerals are never that fun and after meeting a few more family members who have managed to avoid my scope over the past lifetime I found out a few more details of the fueds that have plagued the Proctor/Radford/Robbie clans - seeing Mr Rob Radford for the first time since I was in diapers was interesting - charming bloke, he was uncertain whether he had met me before and I had to catch myself from saying 'Well, i've heard a lot about you' because I didn't want to hear the response of 'All good I hope' because the answer to that would have been 'No, just about everything I've heard about you is terrible' - as it was it was good just to be able to put a face to the name and the history. Always lovely to see that side of the family though and I was completely torn when I was asked if I could stay on to help with the lamb marking (a particularly brutal, but completely necessary, part of a sheep's life when they have their tails cut off to prevent infection later in their lives. Desperately wanted to stay on but there was just too much to do back in Sydney now that i've returned to my home shores.
Saturday was another day of reunions with seeing me old flame Angel and Mr Templeman who has conveniently located his workspace to my utterly transformed local, the Ancient Briton. Me and Angel negotiated the horrific traffic in a taxicab over to Coogee where I was reunited with kate and PJ, Ruthnade (had already seen the latter half of that duo when he picked me up from the airport on my arrival) and Rowan and Emilie (also PJ and Kate's friends, Robin and .. Ooh, i'm so bad with names - where there). Everyone seems to have carried on with their lives in my absence which I suppose is a good thing (can't believe they all went on a wine tour without me though, what were they thinking???). First marijuana consumed since my return to Australia - is it to BC weed standard? Probably not, but the quantities imbibed surely made up for its lack of potency. Had to get used to the old Australian/British etiquette of holding onto the joint for an age before passing it on (Canadian standard is puff-puff-pass). It's a bit amusing to be surrounded by a bunch of professionals rather than my rag tag army but i've missed them so and its time to get back into the swing.