I am now twenty-four hours away from departing the Southern Hemisphere, and am still sick! Not as bad as I was in the last week in Tasmania, thank goodness, but still with lingering cough and terribly tired. I managed to get myself to New Zealand and my mother's house in one piece, but I hadn't been across the threshold more than five minutes when she asked me if I had made a will - which was enough to make me have a relapse, of course. It turns out she had been thinking about wills for some other reason, not my pale, scary face........... but even so, it was a bit off-putting.

Yesterday I flew back to Sydney, and am now here until tomorrow afternoon, when I fly down to Melbourne to get the plane back to Paris. I haven't really done any of the things I planned to in Sydney, apart from calling various family members ( I have an aunt who is over 90 years old, who lives here, and of course I can't visit her with a cold, but she loves to talk). I also did manage to get myself on a bus to Mosman Needlecraft, where I bought the latest SANQ, also charts from Blackbird Designs, Goode Huswife and CHS. I've never seen a Goode Huswife chart in a store before, and there was only the one, it's called Eliza Parry 1898, and it's a sampler with spot motifs, I like these.

While I was at my mother's, I finished the stitching for my LHN Stitcher's Pocket, also made some progress on "Of Female Arts" by Primitive Needle, which I am doing in Vicki Clayton premium silk, much nicer to use than the non-premium, in my view. This is coming on the plane with me, although I hope I can get some sleep, primarily. I'm not allowed to sleep all the way, though, as my doctor insists I get up and move periodically. Melbourne to Abu Dhabi is fourteen hours, or something ridiculous like that, so I hope the movies are good as well.

I'm now about to go and try to make sense of my packing, and weed out the things that I don't want to take back, like stockings with holes in them, etc, etc. Everything is so exhausting when you're feeling below par - I'm hoping my lovely doctor will decide I need more vitamins or something to hasten my recovery. My plans for the return are first, to survive it, then to go to bed for at least twenty-four hours (having first bought food and collected anything from the post office), and only then to go out, to the doctor and to take my expenses to the office.