Overworked

After almost six months of stretching my workdays out at times, things just got interesting. I've been co-opted onto a suite of projects for the Victorian Air Ambulance wing which we also manage. My contract has been extended for a year, and I shall henceforth by known as Project Manager - Major Projects (there's posh). So I've experienced a few weeks of 10-hour days and frantic deadlines, plus got to work with a few great new people. It's all good.

Orlando meanwhile spends most of his time interstate, leaving me alone in a huge bed at night listening to our wooden house rattling and creaking. I am pretty used to it now but it's weird to be separated so much. We will take the opportunity of his full three weeks in Brisbane in August, and I will fly up to join him for the weekend.

We had a night at the opera last weekend: Don Giovanni in the wonderfully old-fashioned venerable Athenaeum Theatre in the city. There was everything from tuxedos and cocktail dresses to people in tracksuit bottoms, but the interval sparkling wine was chilled and you could take your drink back to your seat. Marvellous.

Meanwhile most of you will know by now that the flights are booked and I shall be back in the northern hemisphere in October. I am looking forward to a couple of weeks with the family, my mum's 80th birthday, and a couple of days catching up with the London crowd. Then it's off to the Whitsundays, Australia's answer to the Greek Islands: an archipelago of white-sand beaches in the tropics off Queensland, right beside the Great Barrier Reef. The plan is to celebrate my 40th birthday with some scuba diving and magnificent sunsets. What's not to like?