Tea and scones with Miss Marple

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Day 377 (7.04.08) to Day 383 (13.04.08)

It wasn’t easy to build up the motivation to go to work. By now I’m nearly certain we have lost intelligence by working here, but as we’re still getting along well with the team we are sticking with it for now.

Tuesday brought about the next of our swing dancing lessons. Still opting to go for both classes we had a solid two hours of dancing - tiring stuff. We started off the first hour with tandem Charlston which was a lot of fun and as we were dancing one in front of the other stepping on toes was a real possibility.

Ready for a sit down but not having time for one we went straight into our second 8 beat Lindyhop class. It was great to take what we had learned the week before and take it to the next stage. At the end of the lesson we were told of a swing ball at the town hall in May where we could test out our new found skills, I’m sure you’ll hear about that in the coming entries as we're both excited about giving it a proper go on the social dance floor!

The week ended in its usual fashion with us settling in for our usual drink or two at the Curve bar before we made our way over to our colleague Humbug's house with several other workmates for a few drinks sitting out in the garden.

On Saturday morning Tiana and Ash had returned from their holdiay to NZ and came over to collect Taiga and tell us about their trip - it was good to catch up with them but we'll certainly miss having the cat about! Mark also went out to meet a couple who were interested in buying Nora. We wanted to sell her whilst someone could still make use of the remaining rego period on the van and had just started getting some calls from the many adverts we'd dotted about in backpackers and on the net. The first people to see the van, Sarah and Duan, decided that Nora was for them and we all jumped into the van to sign her over at the Vic Roads office - which turned out to be closed! Oh dear! This would only be the first in a long line of issues we would have over the sale of our beloved van, watch this space for further details! We planned to take and hour or so off work on monday morning and drive up to sort things out.

On Sunday we decided to make the most of our last day with Nora and spend the afternoon in the Dandenongs. The day was pretty dull and getting a bit chilly so we opted to head to Sassafras to pick up some new tea leaves in our favourite little tea shop. Another Sassafras institution is Miss Marples' Tearoom and we huddled into the chintz with a newspaper for some tea and scones with a huge amount of cream and homemade raspberry jam - a great way to pass an afternoon.

Feeling suitably stuffed we journeyed a little further up the road to the village of Olinda mesmerised by the stunning colours of the trees now that Autumn is quickly approaching. We passed a couple of hours in Olinda being entertained by the many cockatoos making the most of the fruiting chestnut trees and poking our way around the charming little shops there.

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