Finding the Promised Land
My Lord and Master (LAM) and I had our Christmas break last week at the Promised Land, obviously not the one Abraham and Moses gave the Jews, but it does have milk and honey in it as well as George Negus and David Helfgott. David Helfgott once referred to this place during a George Negus TV interview as ‘paradise, paradise, paradise’, and there’s no point arguing with a genius.
We stayed in the property next door to the genius and enjoyed our own brief taste of paradise in a cottage owned by the charming Sophie and Greg who went out of their way to deal with our needs—some of which must have been pretty irritating—such as mobile phone coverage. Our little cottage (‘the romantic retreat’ one) had everything else you could want for a romantic retreat, especially after I’d added a bunch of local roses, and we rapidly fell into the spa-before-dinner routine with a gin and tonic, while a family of butcher birds splashed in their own bird bath a few feet away.
I must admit that when we first arrived I wondered how we could possibly fill in a whole week in a place that had nothing to do but enjoy Paradise On Tap, but this divine little valley is just out of Bellingen so we found ourselves at one of the local fabulous beaches almost every day and suddenly all seven days had gone.
Mimi the Magnificat stayed at home this time and we think we’ve found the perfect solution to cat holidays—she now has a Lady-in-Waiting. A nice lady called Fiona drops in to feed her every day and we pay her to do it, but Mimi doesn’t know about the sordid details and I’d rather no-one tells her.
This started to sound like one of those Herald Weekend Away reviews so I asked my LAM to give Promised Land a rating out of 20 and he said 19. ‘What’s the negative?’ I asked. ‘I couldn’t answer any of the Entertainment Trivial Pursuit questions,’ he said. My own tiny negative was the mugs in the cottage—I missed drinking my tea out of a cup, but we went to an antique shop and I found a darling little Shelley one, so I have a permanent souvenir of paradise.
And the final wonderful find on the property…two donkeys! Paradise indeed!
Olivia
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