Epilogue

Sitting in my study at home in Langwarrin can I draw all the last few weeks together.

Interviewer: So what was the best food?
Neil: Well, it was all good. I don’t remember eating anything I didn’t like, though a lot of the coffee was lame. Nice to have English sausages again, and eat lots of foie gras. The prawn croquettes in stock I had in Sheung Wan were good, as was the chicken liver in Lin Heung. The jamon iberico and Malloran sausage in Elciego were fantastic. But I believe the joy of surprise. It is difficult to explain how good the pain aux raisens (Aus speak: escargot) I bought from some random backstreet bakery in a Bayonne were. So the laurels go to the escargot.

Interviewer: So what was the best wine?
Neil: On purely emotional grounds it was the Faustino Gran Reserva Rioja 1995. If I was a bit more unemotional about it then maybe the Vega Sicilia that I bought a glass of from a tapas bar in Logrono. The St. Joseph I bought in Paris and drank in Biarritz was good too.

Inteviewer: And how about the rankings of hotels you and Pat keep
Neil: Well, we’ve been debating this as the hotel in Elciego was that good. I can’t decide whether to put it on an equal footing as Cape Lodge in Margaret River, Australia as the single best hotel I’ve ever been in.

Inteviewer: Anything Else?
Neil: Yes. However great the holiday certainly was, and however great it was to enjoy the regionality of France and Spain, the crazy roads in Hong Kong, Never Never Land in the UK, & all that food and all that wine, the best thing was simply to be with all my family, and be with friends, some of whom I’ve not seen in years. That statement might read a bit crap, and I’m open to a cynic’s accusation of my writing something to keep a friend or family member reading this happy. But it is true. How often do I have the opportunity to sit with my family that live so far away and simply enjoyed sharing time with them as the nice people they actually are? How wonderful is it to catch up with friends after so long and see that in the intervening five years they’ve built something wonderful, like Adeline & Ben’s family, or have a wonderful horizon such as Ollie and Lucy with the daughter they are expecting, or can face an uncertain future having built a core of stability in the face of economic adversity such as Martyn and all my friends from Direct Line?

And I thought of Indigo. Are we depriving Indigo of something by living away from all this? Living in dynamic Hong Kong as we briefly pondered years ago, or missing something by not living in some outer-suburb or other in London?

In a sense the answer is obviously yes. But, I wouldn’t bring up a kid in a mono-cultural regional town in Spain, or in the schizophrenic Basque Region, or in Paris, which once out of the jewellery box centre is one tough city indeed. Nor would I bring one up in any suburb of London that I would be able to afford in a lifetime (and neither would most Londoners). Brett, the Brisbane-ite we met in Paris earlier in the holiday noted that during the British portion of his holiday he saw the British youth out on the streets ‘looking bored’. Hong Kong people given a choice often send their kids overseas to be educated….often to Australia.

And so sitting here I feel pretty darn good. We had a wonderful holiday, mostly because of the people we shared time with. On leaving Melbourne Airport I sat in the car driving down freeway at 100 in the Green Goddess….so easy due to the lack of congestion, and had a nice Melburnian coffee to my side….proper coffee. The sun was shining, and the air was nice and dry.

It felt good.

Tuesday 29 September 2990 Onwards: Homeward Bound O

For no particularly good reason it felt like we were on the homeward leg of the holiday to Melbourne even before we got to England. Maybe it was the thought of there only being one week left of the entire holiday, maybe the thought of two long haul flights coming up within days of now.

The 200km drive down the A1 to London Heathrow was uneventful, as was customs, as was duty free (albeit my buying five bottles of Grand Reserve Rioja), and onwards to Hong Kong.

At Hong Kong we popped up to Mong Kok for an enjoyable tour of the flower, bird and goldfish markets before being taken to another traditional Cantonese restaurant in Sheung Wan.


Indigo, pictures standing in-front of the flowers giving her Chinese name, Dzi-lan

It was very busy as today was the 60th anniversary of communist rule in China. So the harbour had a massive fireworks show. The TV coverage showed a military parade of the type I’d last seen in the 80’s Soviet era. The locals showed no apparent emotion or opinion either way, though I did note that the editor of the South China Morning Post that day did note the need to cleanse the Party of corruption. The next day I picked up the bottle of Sean Thackrey Orion 1994 that I’d ordered two weeks beforehand, the culmination of three years of searching for his wine. Patrick had helped me get to the vendor’s office by hailing a taxi for me. The journey through Mid-Levels, Sheung Wan the opened out to the vistas of Central yet again reinforcing the dynamism of Hong Kong. It really is a special place. After picking up new glasses for Pat we went back to the MIL’s and then by bus to the airport. Wing Hei cried as we walked to the departure gate checkpoint.