How things have changed. When I arrived in Darwin I was delayed at the airport while they checked a leather belt I bought in Baghdad for anthrax. I offered to have it destroyed if it would get me in but the bloke so āno need mate, wonāt take long, and in any case you will be in because you have a British passport and that means you are an Australian tooā. And in I went, belt and all which was keeping Mathilda (bed roll) tight. 
Has he not qualified for Oz nationality? It sounds like he needs it.
Ghastly wet and cold today 
and Iāve been tasked by neighbours and friends further afieldā¦ to provide enough sprigs of āle buisā for all their family tombs etc.
I have the keys to a domain where le buis grows well and the owner knows
his trees/shrubs will be pruned gently by me with my trusty secateurs this Saturday (itās my annual task)
Anyway, the really Cheerful News is that we have had 15 minutes of sunshine and it was just long enough for me to hack away (swiftly and with style) before rushing back home..
Iāve filled 2 buckets and it should be enough (I hope) otherwise there will be squabbles. 
and the really, really cheerful news is that Iāve managed to avoid the flowering branches,. 'cos those flowers stink terribly.
Hurrah!
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Thatās an impressive odyssey!
Obie Oberholzer, one of my former staff at Rhodes University once used his sabbatical to drive from the Cape to Cairo (via the east coast). He was/is one of S Africaās best known photographers and took along a photographic arsenal of 6x7 Pentaxes, and a battery of flashes and hunting torches. Iāve got a copy of his lush coffee-table book of the journey Beyond Bagamayo.
I wondered if your nephewās planning something similar, he must have a huge amount of material to edit.
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I got curious this morning as my trousers were falling off me and it seems the radiotherapy diet has taken 4kg off of me in about 3 weeks. I guess a combination of very plain food, no alcohol and next to no snacking will do that to you.
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Hmmm - I donāt snack, but the rest of that combination would be difficult
Iām not missing alcohol but I am missing flavorful food, especially with the post-COVID diminution of my senses of taste and smell.
My cheerful news is that the clock in my car is now showing the correct time after months of convincing me that I was an hour late for everything.
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Yes, during covid I got a type of a gastric virus brought in by one of the family and I lost 10kg in a month without trying as food was tasteless and alcohol not fanciable. Shows what we put in our stomachs does to us in terms of obesity etc.
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Didnāt miss an hour of sleep last night because during my traditional small waking interludes which I use to check the clock on my internet radio, I innocently thought it would change itself.
Thus I got up at 10 to 10 blissfully thinking it was 10 to 9.
Only problem is I now have an hour less to turn out for the Sunday veg market.
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Same here. Itās so difficult to change in my car itās not worth it. And why canāt it change twice a year seeing as it has the date and year ? Itās not rocket science. Oh. thatās another thread 
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My Opel Mokka has changed the time automatically, I think itās the first car Iāve had thatās done it.
Ours doesā¦
Iāve just done my car and it has an automatic Summer Time adjustment which I have swtiched back on - previously it didnāt do what it was supposed to do so I had set the time manually.
Will see how it fares in October, if I still have the ancient knackered Honda by thenā¦
The Beemer changed time overnight, possibly because it has a data connection. My 2 previous computerised cars didnāt.
My cheerful news is that Momox are taking 9 of my books for ā¬54.49, interestingly, mostly Russian art and history.
The less cheerful bit is that I have over 100 others Momox doesnāt want, many of which are on Chinese art (in English) that no one in France wants. I hate to think of these being mulched 
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Thatās good! I never got more than ā¬6 or ā¬7 for anything. And many at 0.15c!
The ones they wouldnāt take I donated to the librarie solidaire which is a re-employment project
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When I initially! read this, I thought you were a prolific author who was being ripped off by a publishing house.
A long time ago I had an academic colleague (who had doctorates in both linguistic philosophy and aero engine design - Rolls Royce RB211). When his magnum opus finally appeared, published by the prestigious Cambridge University Press, he was interviewed by a local paper who asked him how many copies he expected to sell.
āNine or tenā, he replied
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Reminds me of the tome on Desktop Publishing that I contributed to in the early eighties. It was published by an academic publishing house in ring-binder format on a subscription basis (the idea being that it would be updated in the future).
I donāt know how many takers they had but we certainly didnāt get any recurring royalties, and I donāt rememeber being asked to provide more than one or two revisions of my bits!
Surely thatās a sign that your ābitsā were OK - hope they still are 