Thistle Do!

Caloundra show wrap-up! Doll's next adventure! Touring Vehicle? Lost and Found! Blood Moon! Happy Snaps!

Jun 21, 2025

Long story short - We had a ball!

Folks, this time last week we were in sunny, downtown Caloundra setting up for last Monday’s show.

The RSL venue had sold out and, on the day, in spite of a highway ‘incident’ only a few people were running a little late to come and see Doll strut her stuff.

Happily, the show went off without a hitch.

It wasn’t quite perfect, no show is, but it was about as close as you can get, so Happy Days!

The crowd had a great time, we had a ball and got to catch up with the wonderful staff from last year, and some new faces this year.

The new computer was set up in the wings and our mate John manually ran the slides, because, getting PowerPoint to run it automatically is still beyond my technical skills (hey, I got so desperate I even asked Roger my AI ‘mate’ for some tips, and he replied it would be ‘tricky’. Seriously Microsoft, if a super powerful AI Bot is hesitant to put together a power-point presentation in time with music on a set list, you gotta problem!)

Anyway, ‘Kenny’ gets a break for a while now, but Doll is back on the road next week for a solo gig.

Blood Moon

We were enjoying watching the ocean from our unit last Sunday night and this popped out of the clouds:

For a moment I wondered if it was a cruise ship on fire?

Nope:

T’was a red moon:

Dolly Does Melbourne

Next Saturday night Nell will be entertaining a line dancing club in Melbourne at the Victorian Line Dancing Gala Ball.

‘Kenny’ will stay home to guard the rhinestone high heels she couldn’t jam into the planes’ overhead compartment.

Touring Vehicle

Ok, we’re rapidly reaching a stage where Doll needs to be on the road for longer lengths of time, more often, and that means buying a vehicle, possibly a 4x4, bus, coach, caravan or van for touring, camping or caravanning.

Other options? Move closer to the Qld border so we’re not chewing up a day of driving getting to, or from, NSW? Buy a small plane?

The options are many, the $ few.

Gypsy Caravans « Surrey Springs Gypsy Cobs Australia — *Do they let horses into van parks these days?*

We did the caravan thing last year and it was fun, but I’m not a huge fan of carting a large lump of aluminium around behind me.

Buy or rent a van? I liked the van we used to rally around New Zealand in back in 2023 (boy, time is literally flying by!) It did 110kph with ease, wasn’t too bad on the fuel and had all the comforts of home.

*Although I did have a bit of trouble parking it between lines. May have had something to do with the hair? Nah…*

The only downside was (apart from having a radio that wouldn’t find stations or connect via Bluetooth to our phones (even after I’d read the manual!), once you were camped up, you sort of couldn’t drive anywhere without a lot of re-packing, unplugging and banging of your head on ‘things’ (I hit my head a lot, which may explain why I talk a bit slower and struggle to remember faces and names nowadays).

I Lobster, then I Flounder!

Folks, I’m really good at losing stuff. Really good. I’m talking Olympic level good! Honestly, I could lose stuff for Australia if there was such an event! All I have to do is put something down in a slightly different spot to where it usually goes and ‘Bam!’

Gone!

I mean, seriously, GONE. Never to be seen again… (anyway, you’ve probably got the point by now… )

So, this week, you can imagine my utter astonishment when, in the space of two minutes, I found not one, but two, things I thought had GONE FOREVER.

I won’t go into details, but I was so chuffed I strutted (yep, it’s been ages since I enjoyed a good strut) and proudly announced, “I’m in a zone! If you want something found, then let me know right now while I’m hot!”

That’s when Doll’s son asked, “Can you help me find my wallet?”

Five days later… we still haven’t found it.

This means two things: