Normal service resumed

'Normal service' is resumed, whatever that means. There has actually been a reason for my going one and a half weeks between chapters, over and above laziness: I've been away. I was in Australia for a week, which of course meant being away for 10 days. Being in Australia from Tuesday to Tuesday meant leaving the UK on the Sunday (late) and arriving back in the country on the second Wednesday (ie yesterday). The journeys were long - particularly the return one, with a 7-hour wait in Singapore airport meaning 29 hours between taking off in Melbourne and touching down at Heathrow - but the blissful week in between made them very worthwhile. The reason for the trip was the wedding of Joff Dumas and Wendy Cameron (pictured) in Port Fairy on the coast (pictured) of Victoria's Western District last Saturday. I first met Joff, who hails from Brighton in Melbourne's south-eastern suburbs, when he was travelling in 1989. He spent three months of his travels working for Luca Cumani, and by happy chance I was working in that stable at the time. This fortuitous meeting proved to be a very good one indeed from my point of view as from it has stemmed many of the best friendships and happiest times of my life. One could make similar observations regarding my meeting with Joff's fellow Victorian Richard Sims (pictured last week with his lovely young son Anthony David Sims, aka ADS) who had spent much of the previous year working in the same stable. Between them, Richard and Joff opened up the land down under to me - and if you're a regular reader of this blog, you will understand how massively influential to the course of my life that has been. Neither Richard nor Joff proved to be in a rush to get to the altar. Richard finally shuffled up to it nearly two years ago at the age of 48, while Joff relinquished his 'most eligible bachelor' status last weekend, one day short of his 45th birthday. Richard's wedding in 2010 took place at the end of April, by which time of year our new Flat season is well under way, and on that occasion I rather disloyally decided that I ought to be absent; but Joff's nuptials were at the end of March, in the new season's phoney war stage, so I didn't feel too guilty about deserting my post for 10 days to attend. And I'm so glad that I did. It was a lovely day in a lovely place, as were all the other days of our week in Victoria, during which we covered a lot of ground, saw some lovely countryside and were made very welcome by some lovely people.

Of the seven nights which Emma and I spent in Victoria, we spent three at Delatite, a lovely property (pictured) about 200 km north east of Melbourne where I have been lucky to spend some time on each of the seven visits to the state which I have enjoyed over the past 22 years; two down at Port Fairy; and two with our friends Anita and Peter Temple in Ballarat. All three venues provided smiles galore. We were so lucky that the weather was perfect, with sunshine all or part of every day, and daytime temperatures being mostly in the mid-20s. I'll doubtless ramble on about various aspects of this lovely holiday in future chapters, but this one is just an explanation/excuse for my lack of diarizing in the past fortnight. More immediately, though, I am (understandably) tired, so that'll do for now.