Meet the Duchess & the Duke.

“The Duchess! The Duchess! Oh my dear paws! Oh my fur and whiskers!” Lewis Carroll.

My sis in law keeps a blog over at Duchess & the Duke & because I am a dork & can't tell one car from another [big blue car/little red car, you know], let alone one bike from another, I assumed that the duke in question was her son & my nephew. I was wrong. Apparently there are bikes called ducaties [which I don't think I can spell either] & nicknamed *dukes*. In my world the Duchess remains herself but there are no bikes so the duke is my nephew who has grown into a tall gangly young man who sometimes looks quite frighteningly like his father.

The Duchess lives in an even smaller community than I do, out west in a different state where the land is flat & the skies are big. It is a difficult trip to fit into my time deprived schedule so we invariably catch up when we do at my mother's & they are short catch~ups in order to try & minimise the amount of havoc we wreck in my mother's quiet & ordered life.

The Duchess is an incredibly strong woman. When my brother died she had half Sydney arrive & camp out in her backyard. I know the locals brought more food than we could possibly eat but the Duchess still had to feed & accommodate us all, make the arrangements, talk to people & she did an amazing job. If it had been me I'd have been out there with a shot gun picking them off as they arrived [joke!]

Liddy, who got to spend a week with Mark & the Duchess the year before Mark died got to know the Duchess quite well & although my kids still refer to her as *scary Aunt Duchess*, it is now an ingrained family joke [sorry Duchess] because they are over the scary part. Visit her blog sometime. She is an amazing photographer & has some wonderful pics up that she's taken herself. She did a calendar for mum of her own shots for Christmas & a small book of photographs of Mark ~ a very talented woman! Her blog has never crashed. She is far more techno savvy than I am. She knows more about cars & bikes than I would ever want to know & keeps quarter horses for fun.

The Duke did quite well. He is an only child & although he has been at boarding school for some time he still gets a bemused look on his face on occasions as we invariably operate in *large, noisy household* mode. Besides I brought girls with me & left my boys behind [they were working] though Liddy is pretty good. She enjoys most of the same activities as most boys. Ditz is another story but then she was enchanted with the wii & has hopes of wheedling her brother's off them...which is why I have all this junk in my house no~one admits to owning.

And talking of the boys: Dino was here when we arrived home, strapped & bandaged & looking very sorry for himself. He dislocated his shoulder yet again hopping into his boat. Ouch. I guess that means he'll be cluttering up my couch this week. The cat is pleased to have us home too. Poor Dearest isn't game to go out in the car while we are gone as he gets these sulky cat looks when he goes out & then returns without us.