16 days in and... little has changed!

My team of carers are a great, but diverse bunch! All good workers and very caring, but I could easily imagine a TV lifestyle programme - or telemovie - being written around my life with them. One is a single mum with three children under 10, another is on the verge of a marriage break-up, a third is mixing her care duties with being a school teacher and a fourth is such a lover of all creatures great and small, that she will literally pick up a spider and carefully take it outside to continue its life in my garden! Each one has many other stories to tell, but one has to respect their privacy... and confidentiality is the keyword in being a carer.

NYE and I was spot on! I was in bed by 9.30 watching TV, which continued until I turned the sound down at midnight and saw the huge display of fireworks going off in Sydney and Melbourne, while I listened to the five or six being detonated in my street! My sole companion was the spider on my ceiling which was waiting for my carer to put him out the next morning to celebrate the first day of the new year amongst my pot plants.

I am looking forward to this coming Sunday where the remnants of my family... my brother Geoff, daughter Leanne and their respective partners and children... will join me to celebrate "Harrymas". This is our annual get-together in memory of our Dad (Harry), whose birthday was on January 6... we will sing a few of his favourite songs, look at some of his photographs and, in general, reminisce about the times we shared together.

Over the past week I have sent out, by both snail mail and email, over 100 invitations to family and friends for three 'events' I have planned for this year. The first is a backyard barbecue (yes, ANOTHER one!) in February, the second (in April) is the celebration of yet another birthday (I stopped counting them at 45!), with a reunion of some of the musicians and entertainers from the days when I ran a reasonably prominent entertainment Agency known as BAMPA (Bendigo Artists Management & Promotions Agency).

The third of these functions, to be held in July, is the annual reunion of my old band, "Insight", together with a get-together of members from the CJSC (Colin James Social Club) which was very successful in fundraising for local charities in Bendigo from the late 50's to the early 70's.

So, I'm "living in the past"! So, who cares? It was a damn good one, so why not??