Hello, Starfish readers:
Pete and I haven’t blogged out to you for ages. Just as Corona was causing us all to stay home, our website blew up! It seemed we had used so much memory, that our host provider wasn’t even able to salvage The Starfish and eight years of stories disappeared into cyberspace, just like that!
But in the overall scheme of things, who really cares? Â So much has happened to the world in the past few weeks.
Like you, our thoughts have been with friends and family all over the planet, and thinking how lucky we are, relatively speaking, to live in a country with great health care and less people with the virus.
We asked some of our friends in other places to write about how the past few weeks have been for them during these extraordinary times of lockdown.
So West Australian scientist Mike Edel and his wife Belen Alvarez, also a scientist, and their two teenage kids based in Barcelona talk about how it’s been for their family.
Bali-based English journalist Rachel Lovelock talks about her decision to remain in Indonesia throughout the pandemic.
London-based West Australian, Susan Downie, tells us how it is for her.
And Perth-raised, Italy-based Pia Marazzi gives us a taste of how it is for her in Milan at the moment.
Here in Cottesloe, life hasn’t been too bad at all. Of course we miss seeing friends and family and going to the movies, plays, art galleries, cafes and the gym. But how lucky we are to live near the beach, where we can carefully keep at a respectful distance from others and leap under the waves!
We’ve also discovered some enthralling shows on Netflix. My favourite find of late is German extravaganza Babylon Berlin. We spent much of our Easter bingeing away on the show.
I’m also enjoying an inspirational little book about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the remarkable associate justice of the US Supreme Court. It’s from the I Know This To Be True series on noteworthy people.
In this issue of The Starfish, we bring you a recipe Beef Tataki from new cookbook Japanese Made Easy. We have a copy of the book to give away to our subscribers. Just drop us a line telling us what’s keeping you occupied during these unusual times. (If you haven’t subscribed, do so on the site.)
Peter and I were to have married recently; those plans of course, were put on hold. In this issue, Pete writes about our Lake Como trip late last year where he surprised me by popping the question.
Again, we were lucky we did a lot of travelling overseas last year. This year we’d planned to stay local; our honeymoon was to have been at Rotto. When the lockdown here finally ends, we’ll be looking forward to spending more time visiting country towns right here on ‘Sandgroper’ turf.
Until next time,
Jacqui and Pete
I missed you! It’s important to have something good to read during ISO so glad you are back. Congrats on the currently postponed nuptials
Thanks Margot. It’s good to be back!
Congratulations on a terrific Starfish. So interesting to hear from so many places about life in lockdown.
Thanks Maree! Good to be back!
Glad you are both back