How's It Going?

This is just a quick update - trying to keep to my "little and often" pledge.

Thanks to all of those who expressed concern over the Victorian bushfires. We are nowhere near the affected areas of Victoria or NSW, but we did have a couple of days of light fog which was caused by the smoke from bushfires drifting hundreds of kilometres in our direction. You may have gathered that the public response over here has been quite amazing.

Things are well with us. We're still waiting for the final few things to come together before we can submit our visa application, but these are all things that are in hands other than ours so there's nothing that we can do about it at the moment. That's fine by me, as it allows me to develop my skills in laziness. I'm not getting much chance to do that at the moment.

When I've been disciplined enough to put aside a little time for reflection and reading I've been thinking a bit more about the idea of stories and their role in God's purposes. It's a subject that interests me considerably, and I like to think of the way that our lives unfold as part of God's bigger story. One of the things that I came across that I really enjoyed was a quote by G.K. Chesterton. Apparently, he said "You cannot finish a sum how you like, but you can finish a story how you like." That's pretty good.

Now I just need to make the time to start reading my new book - Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories by Algernon Blackwood.

Hottest Place on Earth

We hear that the UK is currently covered in snow drifts that have run the country to a standstill. The irony is that New South Wales was, apparently, officially the hottest place on the planet yesterday with temperatures of 47 degrees recorded in some parts of the state. It didn't get quite that hot here in Canowindra, but it was 40 degrees and that's still pretty hot. Hot enough to make picking watermelons a little bit harder than it might be.

The first few weeks with the new students have gone well so far. They're a good bunch and I'm looking forward to seeing how this year pans out. Calvin's been back at school for a couple of weeks now, and he's really enjoying that too. It's going well for us. We're hoping to get the final stages of our visa application sorted out in the next week or so too. I suppose that this is the final calm before the storm really, or at least that's how it feels.

Of course, the baby's birth is getting nearer and nearer and we're still not sure about names. We've polled the children and the depths of our own imaginations and we're currently looking at one of the following names - "England", "Bon Bon", "Action Man", "A Little Boy" and "Will". Obviously the children all think that it's going to be a boy. How interesting.

You might want to get your votes in before it's too late.