Arrived home forty minutes before midnight the night before my birthday, which was my intention. Left London at 2pm on Thursday and flew via Dubai and Singapore to end up in Melbourne 12.30am on Friday night. Slept for the next 11 hours at my sisters place, having been thoughtfully collected by my dad, who deposited me back at the airport at 2.30pm the same day to get a flight to Brisbane. From there I got a five hour train to Maryborough. Am more than glad to be home! M met me at the station, and I prattled at him for the entire 36km home and then an hour or so until I realised he looked more dead than alive. Sleep is good, though still erratic.

Our house is painted! Huzzah! My dad came up to visit M in my absence and despite my belief that they had done little but consume vast amounts of beer and mudcrabs (from the mangroves at the end of the street) they actually painted the whole house twice. A beautiful deep Brunswick Green, the guttering is Indian Red and the windows will be that Regency Cream colour. Not amazingly adventurous, but it looks amazing and very buyer-friendly *sob*

My birthday was low-key, but I was so happy to be home that I wouldn’t have minded if all I’d done was drink stubbies of VB on the couch all day. M gave me a v.cool vintage make-up case with a bottle of gin in it, a new Reg Hill book, and some cool Italian sunglasses. Naturally I’d presented him the previous night with a different bottle of gin and a different book from my travels, but that just made it better. (When I was little my grandma used to give the kids whose birthday it wasn’t a present as well - something that I’m sure my mother thought ridiculous, but we appreciated it - so M got some faux-birthday joy of his own.)

Unfortunately M’s oldest brother is very ill, so that impacted on the day a little, as we had to help out M’s mother by going over and taking all the fruit and veg that she couldn’t bear leaving to rot. She had to leave yesterday evening with no warning to head down to NSW to see him, so today M and I will be helping out at his sister’s business because she’s gone down as well. I suspect I will be resurrecting my long buried skill at the cash register and cappuchino machine. Bizarre.

So, what with my birthday being conducted in a haze of jetlag, gin and homecoming happiness, it feels like I never went anywhere at all! I am going to get all my photos done this week so I don’t get slack and let them moulder, unseen, on my hard drive. Will also have to write an overview of my whirlwind tour of London, courtesy of my brother, after I have cleaned all the house sanding dust from my desk. Thanks to those people who called and/or sms-ed me. The rest of you can kiss my thirty-one year old butt.