We had a lovely time Down Under, now we’re back to the short days and looooong nights (which jetlag is letting us really appreciate) of Europe. If you were thinking about robbing our apartment: missed your chance.

As I said, we had a lovely time. We caught up with friends with babies (thanks Tim & Sharon and Ian & Katie for letting us get clucky with your wee ones); we caught up with family (hordes of Pembertons, my sister and her new husband back from Mongolia); we ran a rembetiko workshop, played at the Takaka market and gave a house concert (huge thanks to Hennie, Pat, and Joachim for the music and the encouragement and for letting us in on the market gig, to the workshop folks for your enthusiasm, and to Jessica for the opportunity and the marvelous venue for our wee concert); Olga made flax weavings and I made a mess of some gorse with the scrubcutter; we met Paul and Jenny’s pet pukeko and I helped put a roof on Paul’s chookshed-to-be; I got a scenic flight over Golden Bay and bits of Kahurangi National Park and even took control of the plane for what felt a very long five minutes (thanks Ian!).

There is documentary evidence of lots of this, which will probably trickle online at some point (Olga has an album up already). Especially we have promises to keep regarding the rembetiko: original recordings to send to people and videos of the workshop and concert to tidy up and put somewhere visible. Luckily, we’re waking up at between 2 and 4 every morning, so we have lots of extra hours in the day to do it. Yay?