Living the Dream.

It finally struck me today that we've done it. Ten years of hoping that one day, maybe, we'd have a hope of spending a year in Australia, though I don't think I ever really believed it would come off. When I started university at eighteen, the hall of residence was full of people who'd had a gap year, been round the world on the back of their parents' credit card and arrived on freshers' week sporting a suntan and their boarding school trunk, the one they used to take on the train at the beginning of term.

And it wasn't just about spending a year here, it was about seeing more of the continent and spending time reading and finding out about it in the museums, things you don't feel like doing when you're on holiday and you just want to get over the jet lag and soak in the rays.

"We're here" I said to Darren as I lay on the sofa looking up into the sky. "This is it, we're doing it, we're here". It struck me like a thunderbolt.

So today, in honour of our incredible good fortune, I'm wearing this tee-shirt that I bought at Bondi Junction. We're living the dream, and if you ever get the chance to live yours, I recommend you snatch it with both hands because life's short. Our dream might have seemed nothing to people who have the means to live their dream every day of the year, people with money, but to us it's been everything.

We've not done bad for a pair of scrotes from Warrington and of course, Ella gets her gap year into the bargain, so now the credit card's out of the question.....