Muddling through

I had a lie in this morning until 6.25am but then was woken from a deep sleep by my eldest requesting her stinky overnight nappy be changed. I'm used now to performing tasks while sleepwalking, including occasionally writing. It's worth it of course just to hear the words "I luz you, Daddy".

Since then we have had a two year old tantrum (nobody knows what about), some time-out in Mummy's yoga room, we've both adorned a Sylvester colouring-in book, Mila has shown promise as a dot painter and it's not even breakfast yet. Oh and I just got interrupted writing this by a tearful "I want my cup with the flowers on it".

Last night we managed a TV marathon - ninety uninterrupted minutes - during which the ABC dished up programmes on fathers experiencing all the symptoms of pregnancy (I've still got backache, maybe I'm ...); a paraglider who got sucked into a storm cloud and hurtled to the edge of the earth's atmosphere (you're supposed to die at 7000 metres and she went nearly 10,000 and survived) and finally a show about Addiction. All of the programmes spoke to me in some way, especially the last one, as I poured myself a third glass of Daddy's Little Helper, Pinot Grigio.

We're off to Port Macquarie, on the New South Wales mid-north coast, this weekend on assignment for the Sydney Morning Herald, writing about a family eco-friendly break. I don't know the town but its positives are that it reputedly has the best climate in Australia (raining and 8 degrees there at the moment) and it has the best charity shops around, partly because it is also known as "God's Waiting Room" and there are regular house clearances!

As a bachelor, travelling used to be so easy. Throw some things in a bag half an hour before I left. Now it is a full-scale military operation to go anywhere, even half-way up the road. We've been preparing for this three day trip for a week now and still feel unprepared.

I'd love to say that I'll be getting up to watch the World Cup quarter-finals which show here at unhealthy times like midnight and 4.30am but this is my first tournament with babes and I fear I'm becoming a lightweight. Thanks for your time, more from God's Waiting Room later.

A new dawn, every day

Well hello and welcome to my new blog, it's the beginning of a new financial year here in Australia and so, as usual, I'm doing something for nothing rather than working hard bringing home the bacon. It's also bloody cold - midwinter and looking like snow in my area for the first time in living memory. Where I come from, originally - Wimbledon - they seem to be going through a heatwave, so I am feeling a little homesick.

Anyhow, my blog is about being a professional travel writer while trying to manage a young family which includes my two daughters, Mila (2) and Freya (8 months). Today everybody except me is getting over winter flu but I have a backache and the lingering possibility of man flu.

I am just back from the Red Centre where I camped out in a swag at the Oak Valley Aboriginal community. Fantastic experience but now back to the reality of trying to write while two little people climb all over me. Tricky but rewarding you could say.

I love being a Dad just about as much as I love travel but being a Dad has very much changed my passion for upping sticks and throwing myself out of planes, off mountains and into the arms of the nearest available woman.

Plus I am not getting any younger. Ow, my back...