I am back from the land of my icon!

We returned from Australia yesterday. I am still full to the gills of our month-long holiday. It was more than a holiday, it was an epic experience and adventure. My heart glows with it.

I'm not even going to attempt reading any past posts lest I go insane. I don't think I've ever been off LJ this long! If there is anything truly important that I've missed, I trust you to point me to it! :-)

I'm not sure I can attempt a summary of my holiday -- not today, at any rate. Suffice it to say that:

• I have a wonderfully wobbly belly and (for the first time in my life), sidehandles on my waist! Whoa. This is because I gorged myself on: sticky date pudding, friands, fat pancakes with maple pancakes (as opposed to European thin pancakes) and all manner of other gorgeous foods wot i discovered down under.

• I slept under the stars in a swag in the desert in Australia's Red Centre. It was beautiful and amazing. A swag is a canvas pouch-thing that is filled with a mattress and, if desired, extra blankets and zips up around one's sleeping bag to keep one snug and warm on the red desert sand.

• We went camel-chasing with our naughty guides on our safari adventure tour in the Red Centre. It was phenomenally absurd fun!

• I learned what a tequila bodyshot is and I took a dare and did a tequila bodyshot to a random (and no more than 20 years old) male stranger in a backtrackers' bar in Alice Springs. The children were shocked and are now possibly traumatised for life. T'h was amazed! So was I.

• Perth I found to be a dump. Alas and apologies to all Western Australian Freinds. No doubt it was because I didn't have any of youse to show me around... Fremantle is like Perth without tall buildings. In fact, Fremantle is like Royston with sunshine.

• Places wot i loved:
- Darlinghurst in Sydney and Bar Coluzzi, Victoria Street
- Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains near Sydney
- Rottnest Island, off the coast of Fremantle in Western Australia
- Alice Springs
- the Red Centre, Uluru, King's Canyon; I LOVE it so much; I love deserts
- Alice and Gertrude cafe-bookstore, Hall Street, near Bondi Beach, Sydney

• Memory lane:
- the leafy North Shore suburbs
- the leafy Eastern suburbs
- Woollahra and Oxford Street in Paddington
- Glebe Point Road

• Odd places that intrigued me:
- Ardlethan and the Riverina, six hours to the west of Sydney
- Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, wot we flew over on the way back and saw its lights like jewels in the night and they were spread in a very odd way, and now t'h and I are planning a holiday in Samarkand

• Whoa.
- T'h was offered a professorship in Sydney. Do we stay or do we go? Argh.
- T'h was offered a visiting professorship in Stanford, and this may possibly turn into a permanent post. Do we stay or do we go? Argh.
- The agent of my friend who is writing the thriller said that he liked my sample chapters so we are getting the go-ahead and omg, I may be a published novelist soon. T'friend supplies t'plot; I supply t'prose and t'characterisation (and t'humour).

• I bought the poster of the Ned Kelly picture that my icon is taken from!

• The kittens are CUTE!!!

• I bought a digital camera one day before we left for Australia so you may actually get pics uploaded soon. ;-)