It will all be OK

Four days ago I moved from Christchurch, New Zealand, to Mandurah, Western Australia with my partner and two children.

Since then life has had rather too much puke (caused by naughty trolleydollies dishing out too much lemonade to tired children), tired children, being frightened by hearing my new home-town described as a "culture-free zone" (nooooo!), temporary accommodation with electricity that kept cutting out and a bung hot water system, feeling like I have my arms in a straightjacket with no phone or internet access, hungry children, a supermarket where most products are cheese, doublecheese or triplecheese flavoured and where when I asked where I might find ready-made felafel was asked "What's felafel darl?", exhausted children and "very, very exhausted" children.  BadSigh.

But enough of all that.  I'm sure you can get that sort of nonsense at home.  So like an enormous PollyAnna I'm not going tell you any more about the pants stuff.  Instead I'm only going to tell you about the great and the good of life in Mandurah because there is nothing so tiresome as a moaninggroaning immigrant. 

So let me assure you that life over the last four days has also consisted of being treated like kings and queens by superb hosts, of viewing the stunning natural beauty of Mandurah, of interesting discussions on the performing and visual arts, of marvelling at the fascinating local flora and fauna, of getting more and more excited about the places nearby to explore, of great service by a property manager working to fix the problems with our temporary accommodation, of some stunning weather, of being in the possession of a flash new car and of finding this.

That gorgeous place is Falcon Library and it is mere hopping distance from our temporary home.  High on the wall is the Groucho Marx quote "outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend, inside a dog it's too dark to read".  The library's design is super-dishy, but more to the point, the service is superb.  Within minutes of entering the building M, H and I were joined up, had used the telephone to sort out our house problems, had reserved books and were happily muckingaround in Interwebland.   GoodSigh.  Is it sad to have a girlcrush on a library?  (The correct answer is no.)

So yes, I am sure it will all be OK.  The point of this blog is to describe the best bits of life in Mandurah in the hope of luring friends and family to visit us here. I dream of finding and telling you about things I love as much as the image at the top of this post: "It will all be OK" was an inspired yarn-bombing installation which I saw some time ago on a fence in Wellington NZ then read about on the OutsideKnit blog here.  VeryVeryGoodSigh.