It's now Friday morning (still trying to get used to the fact that everyone back at home is 11 hours behind us so it's still Thursday for you at the moment...) and we have some rain which is welcome as it's been really hot for the past couple of days. We've been hearing all about the snow in the UK and even looked at the weather forecast on the BBC website (BBC has adverts over here which is really weird); hoping you all manage to have a White Christmas and that the snow doesn't cause too many disruptions for everyone.

We've had a really lazy week this week and it's been lovely - just what we needed. Sunday was spent having a leisurely lunch and stroll through the market at Manly and then afternoon drinks and dinner with Murf's brother Charlie's family and friends; we spent a while chatting to a guy who had spent 4 years in the UK back in the nineties (he lived in Ealing!) and discovered that people over here are nuts about Top Gear amongst other things.

On Monday we went for a walk across the harbour bridge into Sydney and had a bite to eat, had a look around and then took a ferry across the harbour to McMahon Point, through Luna Park (a version of Coney Island) where we had candy floss, and then walked back home. Tuesday was slightly less energetic - we found the local supermarket (which is called Woolworths but is no relation to our Woolies in England) and did some shopping, and Wednesday and Thursday were even less energetic because it was too hot to do much... We are planning to do a bit more exploring next week but the nice thing about spending a few weeks here is that we don't have to try to cram everything in. We are really keen to do a tour backstage at the Opera House which Murf and Vix also want to do so we'll do that together some time before we go.

We are all going shopping tomorrow to Warringah Mall to get some bits for Christmas, then a small party in the evening.

We've discovered that it is really awkward to upload photos onto this blog so apologies to those of you who aren't on Facebook and therefore haven't seen any of our pics - we're working on it, we promise!

Hope you are all well and feeling festive,

Simon and Jane xx