little villages

father had to give a speech at a little sleepy country town called Cowra a few weeks ago so we packed our bags with woolly things and paperbacks aplenty (and textbooks too in my case) and made the most perfect long weekend of it... friends of the family came down with their little baby and we stayed in some lovely old cottages right in the middle of town.

Cowra is a few hours west of the Blue Mountains (at the back of Sydney, New South Wales) and about half an hour from Bathurst. the countryside is so beautiful. all the little Blue Mountains towns are sweetly old-fashioned. we stopped to look over the valleys and mother told us about her grandmother Lurlene who grew up there... in her village there is a street called Lurlene street.

her last name was Nightingale; so was my grandmother's until she got married. isn't that such a beautiful last name? you'd have to love someone an awful lot to give it up. i'd almost like to add nightingale to the end of my name... mother thinks i should use it as a nom de plume.

Cowra is known as one of the few places in Australia housing a PoW camp. On my birthday back in WWII there was a mass breakout (the Cowra Breakout if you'd like to search it) and we visited the site as well as the war cemetry. They also have the most beautiful Japanese Gardens there now too, put there after the war as a symbol of peace. they're beautiful. we saw some little just-not-ducklings ducks and ate tempura.

we got lost on our way back and found a tiny little village straight from the tailor of gloucester... it's streets were deserted and it had two churches side by side on a hill. i fell in love a little with this little store with all sorts of old bits and bobs jumbled in glass cases. it had no heater and was cold, but the sort of cold that makes you pensive and a little cosy.

as promised it's been getting colder. i had exams and caught up with friends, old friends and newer friends who feel old. i would like to thank you so so much for your comments on my last post, more than i can express. you're all so wonderful. it's been sad and i do feel very awful about it sometimes. it's been more than a month now. i'll always be sad about it but i must be happy that i've known such amazing people at all. and i'd rather be sad than forget. in any case, i hope my last post didn't get you all down too much. i'll be okay, i really will. again, thank you all so much.

♥