The Birthday Party

We had such a lovely time at the birthday party.

But before we could go, we had a task to perform.

It was our duty to supervise the baking of the birthday cake.  The small birthday cake.  The small birthday cake, duplicated 80 times.  We had our Human actually do the baking, closely instructed and supervised by us.  And she did a not too bad job.  Grandfather Tony seemed pleased, anyway.

We went to visit him on his actual birthday, taking with us an appropriate present.  We all went out for dinner and then came back for celebratory port and cheese.  Then we repaired to our beds for a good long rest, before the actual party itself.

The party was a great success. Lots of people came.  The sun shone.  There was lots of lovely food.  There was wine and beer.  There were lots and lots and lots of balloons.  And, of course, the cakes.  Which were much admired by everyone.  And Grandfather Tony had a really lovely time and smiled a lot.  And wore his birthday hat which we had carefully brought with us from England, just for the occasion.  

It was a lovely day and well worth the trip.  I wonder if he could be persuaded to have another party next year ...  You'll find more of our photos on our album here

Sydney

We've been having a lovely time in Sydney.  We've stayed in the most beautiful apartment overlooking Circular Quay, where we could see ferries and little boats and things.  And we could see this too:

Sleepy thought we should move out of the apartment immediately, and go and get a cabin on the very classy ship.  Alas, we didn't have a ticket.  And we did have the apartment.  So it wasn't really practical.

So we went out and about on the ferries instead.  We went to Manly to play on the beach and eat chips.  We went to Darling Harbour to eat more chips.  We wandered through the Botanic Gardens and found another beautiful boat

Unfortunately, we didn't have tickets for this one either!

So we walked a lot and admired a lot and played a lot.  And then we went to watch the Queen Mary sail out of the harbour.  We waited and we waited and we waited and we waited.  The ship didn't move.  So we waited and we waited and we waited some more.  And still it didn't move.  We wondered if someone should go and show them where the reverse lever was!!

Then it started to move.  Slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly.  It backed around out of the bay it was in.  It backed slowly into the harbout.  It backed and it backed and it backed and it backed.  It was heading, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly - straight towards the harbour bridge!!!!!!!  If it didn't stop soon, it was going to take out the harbour bridge.

Wait.  Where's Sleepy?  Has anyone seen him?  He was the one who said they needed to be shown where the reverse lever was.  SLEEPY!!!!!  Let go of the reverse lever RIGHT NOW THIS VERY MINUTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Phew. The ship has stopped.  The bridge is safe.  Sleepy says it wasn't him.  He was having a nice, quiet sleep in the bottom of the Big Red Bag.  Hmmmmmmm.  We're not so sure about that.  We think we had better take him back to Melbourne forthwith, before he gets up to any more mischief.

Visiting Victoria

We have come to Melbourne for a birthday party at the end of the month.  but it seemed a very long ay to come just for a birthday party, keen though we are on partying, so we decided to extend the party season and come a little earlier.

And we've been having a lovely time.  We've been to the Melbourne Zoo to admire the new seal pool and to greet the baby elephants and juvenile tigers.  We would have called on our relatives the pygmy hippos, but they seem to have gone on holiday somewhere.  In any event, their pool is being pool-sat by some rather large fishies.  So we greeted them and wandered on.

We have been eating remarkably well.  We've had food and wine in streetside cafes, in pubs and in coffee shops (coffee, rather than wine in the coffee shops, of course).  We've stayed in a penthouse flat in East Melbourne and are now in a beach house on the Mornington Peninsula. We've been on trams and walked lots and lots (although to be fair, we've had the humans doing the walking and we've hitched along in our travel bag).  And the weather has been lovely.  No need at all to wear the new jumper that Grandmother Stella has knitted for Bernard (although I think that she might have really knitted it for an orphaned penguin; she seems to be knitting lots of jumpers for orphaned penguins on Phillip Island).

And there has been lots of time to play.  There is still another week before the party, so even more time to play is in prospect.

Click here to see our photo album

Christchurch

We were all snuggled up in our lovely new blanket that Santa brought us for Christmas, on a warm snuggly bed at The Swan in Stoford.  All ready for a nice day spent snoozing.  So you can imagine that we were a little bit surprised when our GrandHumans started talking about the possibility of heading to Christchurch for a quick look around and perhaps a bite for lunch. Not that we had any objection to going to Christchurch.  We have heard people speak very well of it.  Though we have also heard that there have been earthquakes and ongoing earth tremors which don't sound ideal for a relaxed day's outing.  We also thought that was perhaps just a tiny bit far, given that we all had a dinner engagement in the evening.  But we're up for most things so said we'd go along for the ride.

We were a bit disconcerted to find we were going by car.  Not sure that you can actually get from Wiltshire to New Zealand by car.  And then it turned out that we weren't going to New Zealand!  (Probably just as well for we didn't have our passports with us!!!).  It seems there is another Christchurch, in Dorset, near Bournemouth.

And it's beautiful, even in the fog.  There is an amazing priory, and some beautiful old buildings.  There are many pretty bridges. There was a river, and a quayside, although we couldn't see much of the quay because of the fog. We had a lovely wander around, and met some nice French people who wanted us to take their photo - we got one of the GrandHumans to do that. She's better with the camera than we are. We went shopping and had chocolate and really enjoyed ourselves.

Then we headed off for lunch.

And were easily back in time for our dinner engagement.

But we're quite keen now on the idea of collecting the Christchurch in New Zealand as well.  Who's heading to the antipodes in the near future?

We met lots of furry friends in the pub in which we lunched.
Our Human would have love it

Our winter holiday in Norfolk

Here is our holiday cottage

Holiday Supplies

We had a lovely winter holiday in Norfolk at the beginning of December.  We went to Hoveton near Wroxham with Frannie, The Builder and Lindsey, together with our new friend Rupert Hippo.  We had a bit of snow and a lot of sunshine and even more lots of food and wine and many fun things to do.
There were lots of excitements, like when the canopy of our boat collapsed under the weight of the snow.  Fortunately, we weren't in it at the time!

We had some nice walks in the snow, although the snow never got very deep.  It was very deep indeed when we got back to Tupton. We saw lots of birds and some beautiful country scenes. And now, refreshed and invigorated, we are getting ready for Christmas.  Here are some more of our pictures:

Shall we eat them on our holiday patio?

Maybe it would be better to eat them inside!

The view looks like a Christmas card :-)

Is this our boat?

Fortunately this was our boat

Warming jugs of hot chocolate after our snowy boat ride

Engaged in traditional winter holiday pursuits

It was quite a difficult puzzle - but we did it in the end

Off for a walk

This is where we went, looking for lunch

We've found a lunch venue :-)

Our humans are hopeless

They really are.

They're excellent at organising fun, adventurous and interesting things for us to do.  Generally things run to plan.  The occasional hiccup, yes, but mostly their organisational skills are fine.

We head off and have a super time somewhere, come home, dictate our adventures to them and ....

As amanuensises - erm, amanuenses - ummmm amanuens...  -- As scribes they are HOPELESS!!!!!

Days and days and days ago we went with the Senior Humans and with Taffa and Gaz to Matlock to look at the pretty lights.  And there were pretty lights.  Lots of them.  There were lots and lots of people milling about in the shops, particularly around the fish and chip shops and burger bars.  There were lots and lots of cars on the roads.  This meant that we got to drive nice and slowly up through town and back through town, giving us plenty of time to admire the pretty lights.

It appears that they were looking for somewhere to park the car so we could go and admire the lights more closely and, indeed, see some fireworks.  But parking spots there were none, so we admired what we could see from the road and went to Bakewell for a small spot of dinner.

It was quite a cold night, but we were well rugged up in our lovely new winter coats.

On the Sunday we accompanied the Senior Humans to the Norfolk coast for the serious and sombre task of helping to place their Uncle's ashes into the sea.  But it was also a merry day.  There were lots of cousins there.  We played with the children and snuggled the adults.  And we saw lots and lots of seals.  We dispatched the uncle with all due ceremony ...

... and then repaired to another pub for a magnificent feast :-)

And now we are preparing for a visit to Valencia.  We believe it has been quite warm in Valencia.  We are not sure that we need to take our snuggly new winter coats.  Sun hats, maybe?

You will find our photos here:    http://picasaweb.google.com/bernardbusinesshippo/SealsBoatsAndFood#

Our human's brother came for the weekend

He did.  All the way from Melbourne.  Just for the weekend.  It was all very exciting.

So, of course, we had to have a party.  Lots of people came.  Big people and little people.  And we were there, so there were hippos.  Plus various other animal, creatures and beings.

There was lots of food.  Lots and lots of food.

There was wine and fizzy drink and fruit juice.

And the sun shone and shone and shone.

And we played Hungry Hippos.

And we chased the children (well, Sleepy and Bernard did)

And everyone talked to the chickens.

It was a lovely day.

And now the uncle has gone.  He's been to Winchester and the New Forest and London.  And then he went to Prague.  We hope he had fun - we like all those places.  And now he is heading back to Melbourne.

And we are heading into cold, wintry weather.  We are sorting out our wardrobe and getting nice new snuggly clothes.  There will be pictures shortly :-)

In the meantime we are snuggled down in the sunn =y and warm lounge room of our country estate.  But we ought to think about going back to our YOung Human's house soon.  We're supposed to be escorting her to Spain in a couple of weeks.  But her mother keeps enticing us to stay at the country estate with the blandishments of warm and comforting food.  Steamed pudding and custard, anyone?