Journalling in July – Week 3

My bloggy buddy Sue from Sizzling Towards 60 is on a mission this month to get more people journaling. I journal daily – mostly in bullet points – but Sue’s come up with a great list of prompts if you’ve always thought that you might like to journal but don’t really know where to start.

Each Saturday in July Sue and another bloggy buddy, Deb from Deb’s World are hosting a journaling linky showcasing the week’s prompts. Here goes for this week’s prompts…

Day 14 – Best Holiday

I almost wrote “the last one” or “the next one” in answer to this prompt but decided I probably should put some more thought into it. 

After much deliberation – it’s come down to a close result between two fantabulous holidays:

• A 7-week road trip through Britain in November/December 2015 or
• A 3-week road trip through France in April 2018

We do like a good road trip.

While France in Spring was incredibly memorable, our British road trip takes the honours because all three of us were involved. We’ll be repeating it in December this year but on a much smaller scale.

I’m in the process of transferring across my France posts from my author site but you can find all my British road trip posts here.

Day 15 – View from my window

As I write this, I’m where I spend most of my waking hours – sat in my office chair in my home office. Adventure Spaniel is usually snoring loudly – although today she’s on her mat downstairs supervising Grant in the kitchen chopping up soup vegetables.

The Swiss ball isn’t there for me to use for exercise purposes – although that’s what it was originally purchased for. Instead, it’s my office visitor’s chair for if Grant or Sarah want to come in and talk to me. Adventure Spaniel does guard my domain closely though and doesn’t let anyone in without an appointment.

I love the view from my office, down to our pool and across to our covered outdoor eating area. There are, however, times when it’s a reminder that I’d prefer to be outside. 

Day 16 – My family

Okay, this is a toughie as I don’t tend to talk a lot about my family on my blog. The four of us (including the dog, @adventurespaniel) are super close. I’m also fortunate to have a large extended family in and around Sydney (I’m the eldest of four kids and we all have children of our own) and a super large extended extended family.

The dog has her own Instagram account and can often be found doing very good impressions of a dog that sleeps a lot which, to be honest, she does.

Day 17 – What makes me laugh

So much. 

I laugh easily and often – at memes, passages in books, scenes on telly, things people say. I love really corny “dad-type” jokes and the ones that you find on the inside of penguin wrappers – like this one.

Derry Girls (on Netflix) had me in stitches and I tend to prefer British comedy to American sitcoms or “comedy” movies. Having said that I loved the American version of The Office in much the same way as I enjoyed the British version.

Day 18 – My favourite way to relax

That’s easy: with a book.

One of my favourite things about this house is that for the first time ever our bedroom is large enough for a reading chair. The first thing we bought when we moved in was this red chair. The second thing was the little table that sits beside it for my “to be read” pile and my wine glass.

I like to spend about half an hour after I log off the day job to sit here with my book, my dog and a glass of wine and unwind.

Since I started this Excess Baggage malarkey I’m not having wine during the week and I’m taking another walk instead of reading after work. Sure, the walking helps me unwind and it gets my steps up, but it doesn’t do the unwinding job as effectively or as pleasurably as my book and wine do.

Day 19 – My home

This is where I live on the Sunshine Coast in South East Queensland. We’re about 15 minutes drive from what I happen to think is the best beach in the world, Mooloolaba. We drive to the beach for a walk and coffee most mornings at stupid o’clock before I start work.

It’s fair to say that Mooloolaba is my happy place and I haven’t felt more settled than since we moved up here from Sydney. 

Before we moved up we’d been holidaying up here for about eighteen years. We always said we’d come up here when the time was right and 2 ½ years ago it was. 

Everything is so close – the beach is 15 minutes away (if the traffic is bad) in one direction and the hinterland is only about 15 minutes drive in the other. It takes about 20 minutes to get to the airport and Brisbane is an hour (or so) down the highway if we need some city time or if we absolutely can’t avoid it if dumplings are to be had – although I hate the Bruce Highway and catch the train if I’m going to Brisbane on my own.

The suburb that we live in sits on a mountain that was originally rainforest – we’re not quite at the bottom of that mountain but from the top, there are views in one direction down to Caloundra, across the Hinterland and up to Mt Coolum. Originally it was a logging community, but then agriculture took over and pretty much everything was grown here – although coffee and ginger took over in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was the ginger that made my town famous and today I also grow it in pots in the backyard.

Day 20 – My ancestry

I was born in Australia, my parents were born here in Australia, my grandparents were born here in Australia, and I’m pretty sure that all my great grandparents were too – although I think I recall my mother saying that my maternal grandfather’s father was born in Scotland. (And yes, Mum, I know that I should know but my brain is drawing a blank.) We have to go back another generation to find anything else – and then it’s pretty much English and Scottish. I keep thinking that I’d like to do one of those ancestry.com DNA kits to see what else is in there – or, indeed, if that matches what I know of my family history.

My mother was born in Sydney and my father comes from a small town in the south of NSW, Tumbarumba. Not only was he born there, but so were his parents. My great grandparents weren’t born there but all arrived in Tumba sometime in the 1860’s and 1870’s. Given that the Post Office opened in 1860, that means that there have been members of my family in Tumba almost from the start, so the story of my family and the story of the town are interwoven.

My mother has done a lot of work on the family history but I’d love to write the story of my family some time; not just the family tree and who married who and when, but the story. Someone from my paternal grandmother’s side has already written the family history of that part of the family, the Doughty’s – they arrived in Tumba in 1866 – but I’d also like to write the Lyons side. Maybe one day…