SHERLEX.COM

We’re heading off to Europe for a few weeks of fun. First stop is a week at a gite in Normandy, followed by a leisurely drive down to Rome via the Alps and the Cinque Terre. Can’t wait to frollick in the forests, eat great pasta and gelato, and generally enjoy a bit of sanity for a few weeks.

As always, Mitchie’s very excited about going on a plane. It’s a shame kids aren’t allowed in the cockpit any more, as I fondly remember trips up to the pointy end when I was a kid and thinking that it all looked pretty easy.

Posts on the website might be a bit less frequent over the next couple of weeks, and we won’t do much monitoring of emails either. Blissful isolation! Just us and everyone else enjoying their summer holidays in Europe!

Well, I think it’s safe to say Mitchell’s no longer a toddler. He is now definitely a boy.

No more dummy. No more nappies (well, pullups at night but that’s only just in case). No more cot.

He can count to twelve - and most of the time gets the numbers in the right order too.

He seems to understand the difference between weekdays, when he goes to school and daddy goes to work, and the weekend when he gets to jump all over daddy and has to make sure daddy wakes up very early for no sensible reason.

He can sing quite a bit of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “If You’re Happy and You Know It”.

He tells daddy to drive faster. But then when we were recently driving along a precarious winding road through the mountains with a sheer drop to one side he intuitively warns from the back seat “careful daddy”.

He loves to jump into the pool and is convinced that his wild flailing of arms and legs (while being supported by one of his parents of course) means he can swim faster than Ian Thorpe.

He loves it when daddy hides from him, but has already learned where all the best hiding places in our apartment are.

And he’s had his first real fight at school. I came home from work and Sheridan said “Mitchell got into a fight today”. So I asked him what happened.

In a little pantomime Mitchell said “Habib smack Mitchie” and then slapped himself on the face, indicating that some kid called Habib had slapped him. Then he said “Mitchie” and thrust out his fist in a vicious punch. I almost wet myself laughing when I learned that my little dude decked some punk who’d tried to take him on.

That kid’s like a bloke from the outback. He can’t play the piano and he doesn’t appreciate the subtlety of sushi. But if you’re stupid enough to bitch slap him, he’s going to smash every tooth out of your mouth with one punch.

That’s my boy.

At last, I’ve got the site back online. Don’t know quite what went wrong there - a major upgrade of the database software underpinning the site went awry. Had to use a bit of scorched earth policy on the server to get this baby going again.

And I am so glad that I didn’t lose all our data. If we’d had to start from scratch it really would have sucked!

Anyways, sherlex.com is back online!

Looks good enough to eat! Soap shavings at Tripoli’s Khan al-Saboun (the soap market - more info can be found here)

Obviously Lebanon hasn’t had enough unplanned national holidays - 13 so far this year - so the government decided last night that today would be a national day of celebration to commemorate Hizballah’s exchange of prisoners with Israel.

In case you haven’t seen it in the media (eg here), Hizballah is returning the bodies of the two soldiers kidnapped in mid-2006 (the kidnapping that prompted the war which killed over 1200 people). In return, Israel has released five Lebanese prisoners, one of whom was sentenced to 542 years in jail for murder back in the 1970s.  Israel has also exhumed the bodies of 199 Lebanese and Palestinians so that they can be reburied in their homelands.

It is quite fascinating, and a bit unnerving, to watch the pride and celebration surrounding the freeing of five convicted killers. Whereas the different factions were shooting the bejesus out of each other two months ago, they’re all completely united on this victory for “the resistance” (ie Hizballah).

Needless to say, Alex’s work didn’t close for the day.

With the lovely summer warmth of the eastern Mediterranean climate it’s now perfect swimming pool weather. Luckily we can access the pool in the residential complex attached to Alex’s work, and unlike all the commercial pools and beaches around Lebanon, this one is wonderfully blissfully quiet. (Beirut is a ghost town on the weekends now as everyone has either gone to the beach or up to the mountains.)

Unfortunately no pics of Mitchell having a splash - as mummy and daddy were in the water with him!

Haagen-Dazs was pretty quick to celebrate the Doha Agreement which ended the 18-month political impasse and protest sit-in in downtown. You can almost taste the goodwill can’t you??

This is our newly enclosed balcony. Mitchell’s become such a climber these days that we can’t leave him unattended on the balcony. The easy solution was to get it enclosed.

Some or all of the glass panels can be retracted and we can easily have the whole balcony open to the elements - great if we’re having a bbq or just want to let the weather in. Even though it’s steaming hot now that it’s summer, we only get morning sun on that side of the apartment so fortunately our new fishbowl isn’t an oven. And I’m sure it’s going to be lovely in winter!

During the Second World War Australian military engineers played a key role in the construction of the main railway line running through Lebanon from Tripoli in the north to Haifa in Israel. This bridge is located just north of Byblos and is one of the few remaining examples of this rail line, most of which has now been built over.

Here you can see the Australian Commonwealth Military Forces insignia.

I recently posted with photos of disused steam trains in Tripoli, here.  I’m not a trainspotter, honest.

Some more info on Lebanon’s old rail network can be found here.