Letter: New Ribbon

Letter 26 / 2 / 84

Kids permitting, I thought I'd type my letter this week, and try out our new ribbon. We had to type a report for our administration in Darwin, and they wanted to then be able to photo-copy it ... so they sent us a new ribbon! (no doubt we'll get the bill!) But, this is amazing, you can actually see it. The other one was faint right from the time we bought it. Now all I need to do is work out how to stop the 'a' from jumping ...

Talking of 'jumping', number 3 is busy jumping these days, all very encouraging. A young lady doctor came out this week for a holiday plus clinic (to make up for the missed clinic last week) and she insists that I'm 18 weeks or more. But I feel well. My weight is beginning to creep up, and she has promised to get me a spring-loaded finger-pricker so I can test my blood sugar without doing major surgery on my fingers.

Peter is well, though rather tired these days, its very hard for him to get going.

Alison is full of bounce. Still prefers to crawl (its faster and safer than walking) - but gets around a fair bit with the little wooden trolley.

James has his usual round of problems - a runny nose and cough again. He is going through a little rebellious patch too, feeling insecure again, I guess. Its 'in the wind' that we are going again sometime and he also hears talk of a new baby - we are pretty careful, but he's always quick to pick these things up, and its always hard to discuss things with him and get him all excited when its such a long time away yet. He's got his English talking and Creole all mixed up. We try to insist on good English at home to help him keep it straight. He's just so over-sensitive to everything. He still enjoys kindy, and after kindy likes to go and play with Marissa and Danielle. I don't mind him going, but it means unless I go with him for a chat with Sue, Alison really misses him, and we hardly see him either.

I have a feeling that last week's mail didn't go, so you may not have received our last letter. I may even ring you before you get this, but I'll write it anyway. Our May 5 flight is not definite, but we have to leave it partly up to Ron Kusch (who will be flying us down to Cairns). He usually flies on a Saturday, and he will be influenced by any possibility of other passengers and/or cargo.

We have just discovered (quite by accident) that we can now dial direct to Cairns and its a local call - 20c, talk as long as you like, instead of "3 minutes, are you extending?" every 30seconds - 20minutes (depending on how busy they are at the exchange)! The change was not announced, we are not even sure if it was supposed to happen, but it means we can talk to our friends in Cairns quite readily, as long as it lasts. Unfortunately we have not had any success with dialling direct any further south than Cairns, the phone chokes as soon as you mention an area code. So I will have to reverse charges for now - trying to get hold of enough 20c coins otherwise is nearly impossible, this island always has a cash flow problem.

Its been a good week for fishing, after all the bad weather. The other day Peter caught a 26lb travally! He said his hands and arms were a bit numb and shaky after pulling that one in by himself. That wasn't to mention the three 6lb coral trout he caught as well. And there have been a few sizeable ones since then.

We picnicked over at Dawar Island yesterday, came back all sunburnt. Peter saw some large trevally in a feeding frenzy, several of them being left high and dry flapping on the reef every time the wave went out ... but he couldn't get to his fish spear in time. He threw a line in and caught a nice one for our tea.

I was talking informally to the young lady doctor this morning and she says the head doctor wants to have me in hospital for the last few weeks on insulin - not keen on that! It won't be up to him in the end because we'll be in Darwin, and we hope they can be persuaded to let me come in for a daily test and/or injection rather than languish in hospital for weeks while the family goes up the wall.

Alison is in James's room, up to I don't know what. Soon it'll be time to get James from kindy. Its very sticky today, the ocean has that 'doldrums' look about it. We have reasoned that maybe the best way to catch some language is to spend most of the day sitting in or near the store ... but when Peter got there this morning everyone seemed to get up and gradually dribbled off home. We have some spare mangoes which he offered to someone and they said they would come and get them, but of course they didn't. We keep getting these bright ideas - "Right, today I'll try this..." and we head off all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and come home all disappointed again. And after a few days we don't feel like getting up in the mornings (but we always do, with a little help from the kids!)

Oh dear. Alison has found the box of tissues. They make such a lovely "phut! phut!" noise as you pull them out of the box ...