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Published: February 4th 2010
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Day 280 - Box Hill North
Are we leaving today? Are we heck!! We thought about it, for all of about 5 minutes. We’re pretty sure that we’re not outstaying our welcome although it does seem odd that the caravan is halfway out of the gates now! Only joking!
Anna has a work commitment this morning, I know - on a Sunday! The Reed Gift Fair is on at the convention centre in the city and as a sales agent she feels it beneficial to have a look around. I express some interest in going, I’m a little reluctant because ‘smart’ clothing is not part of my wardrobe this season but a quick rummage around comes up with a pair of half decent shoes, a pair of half decent shorts and a very lovely top that Anna gave me just the other day!
Anna herself looks divine and ready for business so we leave the boys at home and speed off to the city. The gift fair is great, very entertaining from my point of view and thoroughly interesting. There’s hundreds of stands here, all displaying their different wares in the hope of picking up either new agents,
new customers willing to stock their lines or at least hoping for a huge wholesale order before the end of the fair. The products range from toiletries, handbags, jewellery through to all sorts of weird and wonderful giftware.
Photos are a bit of a no, no but I pluck up courage and speak to James Reed from the Twos Company Imports stands to explain why I’d like to take a photo and also to ask a few questions about his products, where they come from and the sort of market he sells into. He was happy to talk and then I took my photo and moved on.
We spent time admiring the authentic and very beautiful Russian nesting dolls at the Russian Treasures stand. These dolls captivate Anna who is into all things cultural so it’s nice to find the dolls are hand painted in Russia and that it’s a family business established in Sydney during ‘93 but came with 15 years experience in Moscow. The owners are of course Russians who emigrated here and saw an opportunity to bring a piece of ‘home’ with them. Mary-Jane, the daughter, is a lovely lady and very passionate about the
dolls. Her parents are in the throws of a new business venture with baby clothing called ‘Little Cherub’ and they approach Anna as they are looking for an agent. It’s outside of Anna’s giftware scope really but she’s very helpful and gives them plenty of pointers of who to approach and how.
The trip to the gift fair has been a good insight into the industry, very interesting and perhaps holds possibilities for the future. We made our way back to Box Hill where we find Grant has taken Charlotte to the birthday party and Darryl is being entertained by Amy with an introduction to the world of DS games!!! He hasn’t been lazing around though, oh no, he’s cut the front and back lawns while Grant went out to get his police uniforms ready for tomorrow. Fair play to Darryl, Anna was most impressed.
It was so hot outside that we decided the best thing for us to do was to get straight in the pool but to make it more interesting Darryl got the snorkel gear out. Amy did really well, starting off with her own goggles plus the snorkel and then moving onto the snorkel
goggles. She was a bit apprehensive about spitting in them to make sure they don’t fog up - just goes to prove what a lady she is so we helped her out with that bit!
It wasn’t long before Charlotte returned home with Puneet and daughter Arshyea. It was lovely to see them and we took a bit of ribbing about dropping out of the 4WD trip last weekend, we’d been scared off by the mention of needing a snorkel on the car for river crossings but it was all in good humour and we’ve been invited along for dinner next weekend so we’re looking forward to that. Will we require snorkels we wonder?!
There was a bit of drama in the pool not long after Puneet and Arshyea had left. While the girls were happily playing and diving about I spotted a Huntsman spider making its way along the pool steps! You can imagine the screams and that was just from Darryl!
On such a hot afternoon we relaxed with the boys down at the ‘manhole’ which Grant just adores. He’s got two TVs, his BBQs and lots of cold beer - what more could a
man wish for other than for his wife and cousin to join him, so we did! It was enough to make us both see the light and shortly after we got ourselves tidied up and off to church! No really, we did! Anna has a strong faith and one of her new year’s resolutions is to attend church on a more regular basis. I love going with her, the church is really vibrant and they love a bit of a sing-a-long which is right up my street. It’s not quite as busy there today as usual but there’s been a retreat over the weekend. The service is great, the preacher tonight is excellent too and very inspiring - Sam Freeman is her name and she talks about your true and shadow self. I assume there are churches like this back home in the UK, I haven’t been except for weddings or since I was a little girl when we used to go to the church in Devizes with my grandparents and I can tell you one thing, this was nothing like the church back then!
Back at home the boys are getting stuck into the tennis final of the
Australian Open which is held in Melbourne. There’s a bleep on our phone and it’s the mad tennis buff Mrs Coulsell asking if we’re watching. I realise then we should have made an effort to at least try to get down there, if only for her sake. We cheer on Murray but at the hands of Federer he’s getting a bit of a pummelling.
The evening passes with the girls packed off to bed, there’s no 15 minute ‘sneak out’ like there was last night as tomorrow they are back to school and Grant & Anna are back to work. The boys finish watching the tennis in the manhole while Anna & I watch ‘Banged up Abroad’ on the TV. This one focuses on a group of young lads who were caught smuggling drugs into South America - not a good move as they ended up in the most notorious and dangerous prison over there and were lucky to get out alive.
I was shattered so went to bed shortly after it had finished. The boys were still in the manhole but it wasn’t long before they packed it in for the night too. The holidays are over,
normal life resumes tomorrow.
Dar and Sar
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