I suspected as much.

Well, considering my eternal love for nonsense, I was delighted yesterday to hear from my aunt, that Celje, the town my father's family hails from is sometimes pronounced as SILLY.

SILLY!

Hello, my name's Simone. I'm from Silly.

So, on a serious note, the bones of my ancestors rest in Silly. Many of my family were been born and married in Silly. They laughed, loved, cried, ate, baked and sewed in Silly.

Hell, my kin roam free through the very streets of Silly as we speak.

Of course they do. Of course they do.

And I have now made the final decision that the destination that for my 40th birthday celebration, as well as the celebration of Jeff and my 20th anniversary as a couple wll indeed be in Silly.

Except, my birthday cake will be found in that scrumptious little Konditerei in Salzburg, where we shall certainly make our way to, either before we go (to) Silly, or after.

Poppyseed strudel. Yes indeed.

Most importantly, we stand a pretty fair chance of co-ordinating our trip with Dad & Viv's, so that Dad may be able to show me the house he was born in, where the Tischler factories were, the route he took to school, the church and even the Tischler bridge.

And perhaps via Singapore this time instead of Hong Kong... although...hmmm

And a slight side trip to visit Tone and Lina again, but this time in Berlin.
And perhaps a cruise down the Rhein so that Jeff can visit the hamlet of Bacharach, which enchanted him so on our last journey.

OK, got to go, I have a date with TripAdvisor.com.

Dragging the bubblegum chain.

Even though it may seem that way, I'm not dragging the chain at all.

I have been working quite hard on Jeff and Greg's bubblegum stories, and I had originally planned to post them as blogs, but now my ambition is to write them into a book instead.

So, I plan on just rabbiting on (no problem there) for another couple of chapters, and then if it's still flowing easily and I'm still enjoying the task and assuming the boys have no dramas with the way I'm representing them, I'll investigate how to go about it.

Unfortunately, I'm not willing to trade off sexual favours with publishers, so that means I'll have to borrow a bulldozer from somewhere and just show them what's what. Simple.

In the mean time, I may have to bug a few of you to read portions as a reality check. So consider yourselves warned.

In other news: Up the Rabbitohs!

6 foot 9 inch kaa-niggit

At the Tower of London, there is a museum of nasty war stuff which upset me.
Jeff liked it though.
Looking at axes, guns, swords, spears and numerous other things whose use I simply couldn't imagine, except that they were all for killing, isn't my cup of tea. And I don't care how old they are or who they belonged to.
But you will see my cup of tea shortly, so fear not.
Our Jeffrey was particularly taken by a suit of armour from some German knight circa 1470- 1500.
Now, considering the average height back then may have been around 5 foot, I suppose that a 6' 9" knight would have probably been enough to put the fear of sauerkraut into most folk from merry old England at that time.

But then, you do have to ask yourself how the Brits came to possess it if he was so damn scary.

Perhaps he didn't know what his favourite colour was.

Mine's green.