Its been a quiet few weeks really, its almost Winter and dark just after 5 now so people are just settling in for the dark nights. We have had a few warm days, it was 19 deg over the weekend which was lovely, but back down to 15 again now. I have to remember that it  is our shortest day on June 21st and will get better after that, mind you July & Aug are cooler so we have a way to go yet! Thank god we have Hawaii to look forward to. Unlike the UK, the TV doesn’t get better in the Winter, there really is some rubbish on but we do get UK TV, ‘An idiot abroad’ has just started but we have watched it already, Sam brought it over on DVD at Christmas.

Sam has recovered well from his surgery and is almost back to normal now, but no football yet. He has secured a new 2 bed  flat and his girlfriend Amelia will be moving in with him mid June. He has made a room for Tom who will also be living with them over Summer until Oct as he is working in Reading with the computer company he worked for last year, so we wont be seeing them both until Christmas now.

Steve’s job seems OK after his first week, got a lot of work to do though I think, always harder when working on government contracts and all the bureaucracy that goes with them. Ellie has exams in 2 weeks and so is working hard, she  has just received her school photos and everyone keeps telling her how much she looks like Kate Middleton! She won the best speaker award out of all the teams at a debating competition last week and her Geordie English teacher at school thinks she has lost her accent already and acquired an ‘international accent’. Ellie has a week of work experience in June, she will be working at AVG – the computer antivirus company, we were surprised to find that she will be paid $25 a day for this. Xena is fine, just walk and feed fer and she is happy! We have just got home from a lovely walk through Yarra Bend park, a huge park just outside the city. We were there for about 3 hours and it was so beautiful and Autumnal, the leaves were falling from the trees onto our table like snow as we were having a lovely latte. You can hire canoes and kayaks and row on the Yarra river so we will definitely be returning in summer (See pics on Flicrkr).

I have been offered another job! I decided to contact a hospice in Prahran (near to the city), its a 22 bedded unit for stays of up to 12 days for symptom control, they also have a hospice at home team. I just requested  an informal chat and find out a little more about palliative care in Melbourne, the unit manager brought in the home team manager and they both offered me a job! Between us we agreed that I will work initially in the unit to familiarise myself with the way things work, but will also go out with the home team for a day to see what they do. They would also like me to act as a wound care resource when needed and will pay me extra on these days, with a view to doing this role for the home team also. I am working three days per week through June for the Practice and 1 day for district nurses, so will start this role on 18th July when back from Hawaii. I hope to find a job that I can settle into and really enjoy, and not have to do different jobs, but will keep on the practice role as as we all know some jobs never work out as imagined! It really is unreal the amount of nursing vacancies out there.

Hope you all enjoy the holiday weekend, we don’t get May bank holiday but get the queens birthday on 13th June.