So summer with the in-laws proved to be not so bad. Not so bad after all. In fact, both the Dutchman and I felt it was the best visit we and they have ever shared. After Christmas and the New Year we headed down to Venus Bay, on Victoria’s south Gippsland coast, where we rent a house every summer.

Thankfully we were there for the worst of the heat wave, cooped up in Melbourne for a week of 40+ would have tested even the cosiest of families. Friends also came down and stayed a few days so the Flipster had plenty of boogie-boarding buddies not to mention kids with which to play endless card games. There was also night swimming and of course regular trips to the new ice-cream shop.

Oma and Opa continued their daily mission to keep-Spike-happy with endless walks despite the high temperatures and we even found one day cool enough to take a walk through the tea trees at Point Smythe.

I came up with a recipe for home-made iced coffee from our stovetop that was so delicious we were all in danger of consuming a litre of coffee each per day, and also perfected my negroni recipe. Plus I finally got around to reading Jean Bobet’s Tomorrow We Ride, which had spent a winter languishing on my bedside table. With a list of achievements like that it is no wonder that the only other thing I seemed to manage was hours and hours of swimming and boogie-boarding.