TheWitchofThornbury

I got one supposedly from my son, asking for $100 taxi fare home. He was in San Francisco at the time. That's a very cheap flight I reckon.

Now 35 to 200 mm. Break out the wellies.

Kangaroo meatballs from (shudder!) colesworth. Very high in digestible iron. Don't fry them! Brown lightly and stew with vegies. If you can get hold of horsemeat, that's very high in iron too.
Also, once the weather gets a bit wetter/colder, look around for stinging nettles. The young tops are one of the highest sources of vegetable based iron. Wear rubber gloves to harvest, wash well and steam/microwave lightly until just wilted (which destroys the sting), chop, drain and use in any cooked spinach recipie. One of my fab faves as I love the nutty flavour. The iron content is a bonus. Easily grown in damp shade too.

Maybe it's time for them to do the cooking/marketing/meal planning. To a strict budget of course. This has an AMAZING effect on the level of food critiques received.

It was. There was still a cattle/sheep/horse/pig market in Croydon, the Ringwood one had closed recently for large animals but you could still get goats and chickens there. Actually, we pre-dated moving the clock tower - which was opened by my granddad and there's still a plaque on it with his name. We even pre-dated Eastland! The first version of that was built while I was in secondary school. My grandparents moved there in the early 1950s after my grandad left the army, and bought a large house on Warrandyte Road which is still there. The house was built in the 1910s for the manager of the antimony mine in Burnt Bridge, and it had a circular carriage drive, carriage house and stables, a hutch in the whacking great kitchen for bread and milk & meat deliveries, a huuuuge bath with a mahogany surround - and outside toilets. One for the gentry, and another one for the servants. And I think from memory about 6 bedrooms, though some of those had been re-purposed as the library etc. Great place for a family to grow up, but suburbia covers all eventually.

One of the Boyds? Or maybe one of the Lindsays?

Closer to home - O'Brien's Crossing.

They're smart people.

Too much has happened recently to give a comprehensive thumbnail sketch, but basically the USA is imploding. I'd continue to avoid the news if possible, unless you have friends/family over there.

He describes the situation as a powderkeg. He's pretty good at reading the room too. So is his wife, who is a very sharp observer indeed.

Counting the days.

Just got off the phone with my younger son (the one in Florida). He's given in his notice effective immediately, and his wife starts her new job in Germany in April, so they're getting out as soon as they can. They expect to fly out at the end of this coming week, leaving all accumulated stuff behind bar photos and important documents. I wasn't expecting them to go for another month or so, but he reckons the USA is turning extremely nasty on the street so the sooner the better. They're going straight to Germany but plan on coming home for a visit over next Xmas or so. I'm more than a little relieved that they're leaving the USA.