Davies Family Website

Festivities and festivals

2012-01-15T14:42:00.002Z

Hey, Happy New Year everyone (okay, both of you).
We brought in the New Year in the same old run-of-the-mill way—fireworks, champagne, a request played on (Albany) local radio, and harness racing (a.k.a. trotting). For those of you who know little or nothing about harness racing (which, I admit, was a category to which I belonged up until the last few hours of 2011—now, though, I am an expert on the subject) I can tell you that it is a bit like chariot racing but without the spikes in the wheels, or the armour, or Charlton Heston… there was however a Mr Whippy ice cream van. Basically a (not necessarily healthy looking) horse pulls a lightweight buggy which is occupied by a (not necessarily lightweight) driver. Indeed, the drivers come in all shapes, sizes, genders and ages. One of my big gambling successes (I recouped $2.20 from a $2.00 bet) came when an octogenarian skilfully steered an unlikely looking equine specimen from last to (short) second in the finishing straight. It was a really fun night but I decided against standing everyone in the bar a drink with my winnings from the last race of the evening… $1.90.
I should have pointed out (probably several paragraphs ago) that we were on our summer holidays over the New Year period—spending the best part of a week with our friends, Chris and Jackie, in Albany. I would like to say a big thank you to them for being fantastic hosts and excellent tour guides. They know where all the best beaches, walks, fish and chip shops and wineries are. There were a couple of things that we saw (which I don’t think they prearranged) that were of extra interest (and I’m not talking about the topless lady at Elephant rocks)… the most remarkable of which was seeing a man manoeuvre his seven foot pole through the Porongorup region. Truly, there was a bloke carrying the afore-mentioned accessory up a very steep incline to the top of Castle rock and believe me that is no mean feat. It has to be said that Castle rock looks even less like a Castle than Elephant rocks look like elephants, just in case you were wondering—I have to admit though that Dog Rock does indeed bare a passing resemblance to a dog’s head), I personally failed to make it to the wind ravaged summit of (not very) Castle(like) rock due to my lack of a backbone or fear of heights… whichever you prefer. I got most of the way up but failed to reach the top, as you will be able to see when you get the next set of photos (Wendy is editing them as we speak… you ought to see how good the 600 pics she has thrown away are). I should point out that, despite looks to the contrary, I’m not clinging desperately to the rock afraid to move. In fact what I was doing was bravely making sure that the 100 ton rock that has stood there for millennia didn’t fall on passers by. Wendy, the kids, the bloke with his enormous pole, and a couple of three year-olds all managed to squeeze past me in order to make their ascent.
George continued his climbing feats, later in the holiday, when he scaled the 60m tall (196.850 393 7 feet) Gloucester tree. By that time we were in Pemberton, which used to be a logging town, and still boasts some very tall trees, but these days relies more on tourism. We stayed in the, fantastic, Old Picture Theatre—the only surviving purpose built wooden cinema in WA, it has been converted into holiday flats… we weren’t kipping in the aisles or anything like that. It did still have a couple of the original wooden flip-up seats though—complete with the obligatory piece of chewing stuck to the underside. Whilst in Pemberton, we also turned our hand to trout fishing. I prepared for the activity by reading ‘Fly fishing’ by J.R.Hartley, watching ‘The Best of Fishomania’, readying my rod, and playing with my flies. All this preparation was unnecessary though because this was a trout farm where the pampered fish had spent their whole life being fed pellets, that bear more than just a passing resemblance to the substance we were supplied with as bait. You would expect that this would tilt the odds heavily in favour of the angler but there weren’t many fish being caught the morning we were there. That was until George discovered the ‘golden peg’, the spot by the inlet… he pulled three out in quick succession. Luckily, I managed to bag one (the biggest of the four… it was huge) with the last cast of the day otherwise we would never have heard the last of it from George.
We ended our holiday at the Southbound festival in Busselton. For those of you who know little or nothing about Southbound, I can tell you that it’s absolutely nothing like chariot racing. It is, in fact, a two day festival featuring music luminaries such as Arts Martial, Papa vs Pretty and Split Seconds. It was an over 18s event—so we took George and Harriet. It’s okay, don’t panic, your memory isn’t playing tricks on you the kids are still only 11 and 13 (although there are scary moments when they both seem a lot older—especially when Hattie gets dressed up to go somewhere). We were allowed to take them as long as we filled in a family registration form in which we agreed that they wouldn’t drink alcohol (which was a no-brainer… at those prices), wouldn’t take drugs (especially not the brown acid*) and that we would keep them with us at all times. This last point meant that when I went to the kebab van, they had to go to the kebab van, when I gawped at the ubiquitous ‘festival lesbians’ they had to gawp at the ubiquitous ‘festival lesbians’, and when I watched (Crowded House’s) Tim Finn they had to… ask if they could go to the other stage with their mother.
The only real restriction on us, because of the kids being under age, was that we weren’t allowed to camp… bummer. Instead we stayed at a Comfort Inn (ten minutes walk away from the festival site) and had to be content with a toilet that didn’t overflow, comfortable beds, an air conditioned room, and a shower with hot water (and a frog—but that’s a story for another day).
The musical highlights of the two days were: Beirut—complete with trumpets, accordion, trombone, French horn and Sousaphone; Arctic Monkeys—with Alex Turner trying to look like Elvis, but bearing a greater resemblance to Frankie Dettori; and Fleet Foxes—sublime. But the stand-out act, as voted for by 75% of the audience (okay, 75% of our household) was Aloe Blacc—beyond cool. Fantastic voice, brilliant band (more brass) and the backdrop of a beautiful sunset… magical.
Non-musical highlights included: Harriet discovering the beardy weirdie, trippy hippy section of the site… and getting hair braids as a result; George being afforded legendary status by many a festival goer; the exploding condom (don’t worry I’m not about to make an announcement); and a demonstration of ‘Festival Rule’ no. 35. For those of you who know little or nothing about ‘Festival Rule’ no. 35, I can tell you it states that: a woman is allowed to sit on someone’s shoulders (for one song only) but a man sat on someone’s shoulders is a legitimate target and is to be bombarded with bottles, cans, shoes and small people (it happened, believe me). Obviously, as this is a festival it is unlikely that the bottles (full as they are) still contain their original contents. I should point out that rule 35c (iii) states that a woman at the top of a triple decker is a fair-dinkum target. We saw one such woman, who was on her mobile phone at the time—George pointed out that it was probably the best way of getting a phone signal.
Before I go I should tell you that, during our holiday, we saw an advert announcing that all 234 episodes of ‘Flying Doctors’ are now available on DVD for the very first time. Strewth! I wonder how many episodes there are where the potentially disastrous situation is further complicated by ‘the water being up at Coopers Creek’. At least half, I reckon.
Your essential 5 tracks for this week are: The Trout (Die Forelle) by Franz Schubert; Cornerstone by Arctic Monkeys; Oh Well, That’s What You Get Falling In Love With A Cowboy by Lanie Lane; Hanging In The Wire by PJ Harvey; Green Lights by Aloe Blacc.

*Always good to get in a Woodstock reference—I never claimed that the blog was topical.

Kiss and Drop

2011-11-27T13:25:00.003Z

Whilst on my run this morning I passed a school (actually I should probably have re-worded that a bit so it didn’t sound quite so much like I was having very unusual bowel movements). Most schools over here are designed to have what’s called a ‘Kiss and Drive’ area—basically it’s a series of bays where you can park, temporarily, just long enough to give your offspring a peck on the cheek, bundle them out of the car, and then drive on. Well, the school I ran passed today had a ‘Kiss and Drop’ area. I am guessing that this is just another name for the same thing, but I can’t say for certain. It’s just that the school I attended (way back when) had a “Kiss and Drop’ area, but it was a totally different set up. It was alleged (In fact I’m pretty sure it was proved, but we’ll stay with alleged to be on the safe side) that some of the female pupils were performing certain acts of a lude nature in return for the handing over of dinner money. Unfortunately I only ever had packed lunches… and there wasn’t much they’d do in return for a cheese and pickle sandwich.
I believe I covered a distance of 21.41592653589793km on the run, but it’s only a guesstimate because I don’t have a fancy-pants phone with an app that tells you:
how far you ran;
how fast you ran,
how fast you completed each km;
how many calories you burnt;
that it saw you looking at that lady jogger’s ‘south facing aspect; and
don’t think I don’t know that, between the 13 and 21 km marks, you went by bus.
For those of you who still work in old money 21km is a bloody long way, or 13 miles… whichever you prefer. I’m quite in to this running lark now—it’s all Wendy’s fault, she started running about 18 months ago and for reasons that I can’t quite remember now, I started on Christmas Eve last year. Well, it's not her fault entirely—Michael Palin has to take some of the blame as well (I realise I should probably explain that one but I’m not going to). We (including Hattie and George) all participated in the ‘City to Surf’ at the end of August. Wendy and George did the 12km run… George was horrified to be beaten by his mum, but as Wendy trained for it and George didn’t it was no great surprise. Hattie and her friend did the 4km ‘chat’, and I did the half marathon (which, as I’m sure you will have figured out by now, is 21km). I am planning on doing one of them there full marathon thingys next year (that’s 42km for all of the accountants reading this).
I should point out that the large gap between blogs was partly down to the running, partly down to the fact that I’m now coaching George’s cricket team (I think it’s fair to say that if the future of Australian cricket is in my hands then the Ashes could be staying in England for some time to come), and partly due to the fact that I’ve been dabbling in the dark arts… yes I am now on Facebook.

Any Road Up

2011-07-24T07:28:00.003+01:00

We are just back from our hols - a road trip up north - a journey of more than 2000kms all told. I know some of you will be struggling to convert that to miles so I’ve done some calculations on your behalf. It comes out at 238,857 miles which is basically the distance from the earth to the moon. Actually that doesn’t sound quite right, just bear with me a sec whilst I double check my sums. You may want to hold your nose because I’ve run out of fingers to count on so the shoes and socks are going to have to come off for this one. Okay, that looks a bit more realistic it’s approximately 1250 miles which is the equivalent of Land’s End to John O’ Groats and back again and then back up to Penzance again just for good measure. Its also the same as driving from Maltby to Rotherham and back 99 times and then back to Brinsworth again for good measure. Hope that helps everyone to visualise it.
As we were only away for 6 days in total you may be forgiven for thinking that we must have spent the entire time sat in the car. You can also be forgiven you for wondering why we would want to travel so far. And you can also be forgiven for thinking that it would be madness to have your main family holiday in the middle of winter. However, you can’t be forgiven for wearing polka dots with stripes.. what were you thinking?
So, where did we go on this here road trip and was it worth it all that driving?’ Well, we went oop north. We started in a place called Kalbarri, whose Town motto is ‘You’ll love it’ (which I took to be more of an order), and boasts of some amazing scenery. I’m always cautious when I’m told that famous landmarks have to be seen to be believed even especially if it means adding unnecessary mileage onto the trip. I can pinpoint, exactly, when this ‘tourist’ scepticism began (Warning, I’m about to go off on a different tack here… no wonder we ended up doing more than 2000 kms with my inability to stay on course). Did I ever tell you the, cautionary, tale of our canal boat trip to Llangollen and the legendary Horseshoe falls? No, well… back in the days B.C. (before children), Wendy and I (it was before marriage as well), along with Bob n’ Caz, Pete n’ Hayley, Chas n’ Dave, Pepsi n’ Shirley, and Roy Rogers n’ Trigger (despite there being a strictly no pets policy on the vessel) took a boating holiday around the canal systems of Cheshire and that there North Wales. If I recall rightly we picked up the ubiquitous Una Stubbs somewhere around Nantwich. Anyway, as you can imagine, we spent the first half of the week toiling through locks, tunnels, other boats (they really should have had the good sense to get out of the way) and canal-side pubs. It was at this point that we chanced upon the picturesque town of Llangollen (I say chanced upon, but as it’s name would suggest the ‘Llangollen canal’ does in fact only go to Llangollen). Several hundred other folk, with 70ft long boats, had all chanced upon it as well which meant we were forced to park-up (I’ve a vague notion that the proper term may by ‘moor’) about a mile, or-so, outside town (having failed to find the local NCP for narrow boats). So we trekked into Llangollen, passing several signs on the way informing us that we were just a short walk from the mighty Horseshoe Falls. The group wasn’t of one mind as to whether we should make this additional journey to view this wonder of nature, but eventually we decided (having counselled a passer-by for his opinion) that we should make the de-tour. As this was B.C., the task of moaning continuously and asking whether it was much further was divided equally between us. Eventually, shortly before nightfall, we arrived at the ‘Horsehoe Falls’! Disappointing doesn’t really describe it. It was indeed in the shape of a horseshoe but it was more of a ‘stumble’ than a ‘fall’. It was generally felt that a more accurate name for the site would be ‘Horseshoe please mind your step’. The only way it could be described as breathtaking would be to take into account the 2 mile walk that we had just undertaken to get there.
There was none of that this time… the scenery is indeed amazing. The gorges along the Murchison river are 150ft deep (high?) in places and we enjoyed a fantastic walk over/through/around them. It was so interesting, in fact, that the kids forgot about their duties of moaning continuously and asking whether it was much further… despite the fact that we may have got slightly lost at one point and Harriet sustained a mild ankle strain along the way. She may, however, have mentioned the pain and agony, she was enduring, a couple of times en route.
So we did indeed love Kalbarri despite the fact that Monday was a bit of a wash out. Some heavy afternoon showers meant that we were forced to have indoor playtime. We ended up playing charades - based on the contents of our ipod. I can’t see the concept making it on to TV (unless we can somehow build in a house makeover/cooking/talent contest element into it) but it passed an hour or so. George’s mime for ‘Echo and the Bunnymen’ was inspired but his effort to do (the rather straightforward) ‘10 Global Deejays Ft Technotronic’ was poor to say the least. I called a premature end to the proceedings when faced with trying to convey the song ‘Monster Pussy’ by the Vaselines using only the medium of mime.
I know you’ve probably only just finished laughing at the last lot of photos we sent out (I refer mainly to the 70s disco)* but by the time you read this blog we will have also sent out the holiday snaps. You may well notice that the photos all have a similar theme. The vast majority of them are either of: incredible scenery, Harriet (who is by far the most photogenic of us all), or dolphins… in fact some of the pics are a combination of all three. The only slight disappointment on the trip was the fact that we went all the way to Shark Bay and we didn’t see a single shark…hundreds of bloody Dolphins and a Dugong (sea cow to you. Apparently sailors used to mistake them for mermaids… can’t see it myself, even accounting for the wearing of full-strength beer goggles.) but not a shark… not so much as a dorsal fin, or even scary music. There are sharks in Shark Bay… it’s not just a clever bit of marketing. In fact, there are several species (more than 30) in the bay including Tiger Sharks (which as you have probably guessed from the name don’t make great pets). But as the most common species in the area is the Nervous Shark (Carcharhinus cautus) it may explain why they didn’t make an appearance. It’s not that we didn’t try to attract them - we went on a trip on a Catamaran where they encourage the kids to sit in the boom net at the back of the boat… if that’s not shark bait I don’t know what is!
Actually, now I come to think of it, we did come into contact with sharks… namely the petrol stations that charge 40 cents a litre more than normal simply because they can. There isn’t a lot of room for manoeuvre when there’s the best part of 100 km between petrol stations.
Anyway, next winter we are planning on driving even further up the coast… to Coral Bay. Not sure what’s there, I really hope they’ve got a small water feature in the shape of a horseshoe.

* I should point out that it is totally accidental that there are two painted ladies on one of the Australia Day photos of Harriet. I hadn’t actually intended to get Hattie in there at all.

Wet and Wild

2011-06-26T16:05:00.002+01:00

There is a local saying that goes ‘you know you’ve become an Aussie the first time you see a kangaroo attempt to car-jack a moving vehicle’. Okay, I may have paraphrased the saying slightly, either that or completely made it up (I always get those two mixed up).
Anyway I think I must be an Aussie now because I believe I witnessed just such an incident last weekend... and no I hadn’t been going hard at the amber nectar prior to the event (though I may have had a few after the incident just to steady my nerves). Right, it’s going to be hard to explain the exact scenario without the use of diagrams, mathematical formulae, molecular models, and/or Swedish models (they are an optional extra), but I’ll give it a go. At approximately 4.37 pm, I was travelling south along Joondalup Drive towards the Hodges Drive intersection at 67.3333* (recurring) kph. I was proceeding with extra caution due to the fact that this event took place in a torrential downpour (we’ve had several of late - more of which later). I then slowed down further at the traffic lights and, because I intended to turn right, I positioned myself in the right-hand filter lane as per the correct road-using protocol. Bored yet? Oh you will be, I haven’t even started to describe what the other 9 lanes of traffic were doing. Okay, I’ll skip that and get straight on to Skippy who emerged, stage left, from a small section of bush and proceeded to hop across two lanes of fast moving traffic. Having somehow negotiated this hazard he continued on across the median strip and into the next set of vehicles which were slowing up because they were approaching a red light (you will note that, this too, is the correct procedure according to the Highway Code). Right, now this is where interpretations of the incident start to differ. I, personally, saw a very large kangaroo attempt to car-jack a vehicle by trying to force entry via the rear door. Harriet and Lucy, who were passengers in my car at the time, saw a not particularly bright marsupial being unable to understand that this traffic wasn’t travelling as quickly as the previous two lanes that he had encountered and as a result careered into the back of the car. And clearly our interpretation would have been completely different to that of the (unfortunate) driver of the car that received the untimely redesign of its rear end. After taking a moment to collect his thoughts the driver got out of his car to get the details of the occupant in the vehicle immediately behind him - let’s face it he was going to need all the help he could get persuading the insurance company that he needed a whole new back panel and rear light configuration because a rogue Kangaroo had run amuck in the middle of Joondalup. After taking a moment to collect his thoughts, and the makers badge off the boot, the Kangaroo dusted himself down, successfully negotiated the last two lanes of traffic and sought shelter in a small section of bushland on the other side of the road (which was presumably greener than the bush that he had just left behind).
At this point the lights turned green, and after checking my rear-view mirror and disengaging the handbrake I moved away and headed along Hodges as far as St Michaels Drive.
The Kangaroo may well be an Aussie icon but they don’t half cause a dent when they decide to have an argument with your car. My car is equipped with ‘roo’ bars on the front - I’m thinking of having them fitted at the rear, and the sides as well just for good measure.
Talking of Aussie icons, Wendy and Harriet went to see pint-sized Kylie last week. Apparently she puts on a half-decent show. She did well to even get here because flights all over Australia have been disrupted, for the last couple of weeks, by a volcanic ash cloud being created by a Chilean volcano (funnily enough). The support band failed to make it to the show due to their flight being cancelled. So, I’m guessing that Ms Minogue must have overcome the problem by coming on the bus. Wendy said there was a very good light show and lots, and lots of water... cascades, fountains etc. She said that the word that best summed up the whole night was... gay! There were definitely more homosexual men there than pre-teen girls. Hattie loved it - for Kylie and the songs though, not for the gay guys.
A couple of nights later me and George headed into the city to watch a NRL (rugby league) match between South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Brisbane Broncos. Just in case you were wondering, the Rabbitohs were the home side, by virtue of the fact that they are only a four hour flight from Perth as opposed to the four and-a-half-hour journey to Brisbane (that’s when there are actually flights available). We got to the ground a good hour before kick-off, and were just tucking into our healthy salad (with a small garnish of kebab meat and pita bread) when the heavens opened. We received 30mm of rain in just half-an-hour - most of it went straight down my shirt collar. Unfortunately, stadiums in WA have been built with the idea that you don’t need protection from the elements. There are no roofs on the stands, so in summer you fry in direct sunlight and in winter you get wet. And, as I may have mentioned previously, umbrellas (along with bottled water, Christopher Biggins, and hand guns) are banned from all Aussie stadiums. By the time the game kicked off, the rate of the rain had eased so that it was only coming down like stair-rods. We reached saturation point somewhere around the eight minute mark but managed to tough it out to half-time. When we were treated to another deluge shortly into the second half we decided to swim for home. Clearly, if the administrators had taken into account the best interests of the fee-paying public then the game would never have gone ahead. But as the game was being televised, the lowly, slightly bedraggled spectator was never really going to be given much consideration.
Back-tracking a little, the same evening as the kangaroo incident in fact, Wendy and I had an enjoyable evening at the 70’s Disco. Well, I say 70’s but it actually turned out to be 70s and 80s. I think they had deliberately not told us the 80s bit because they didn’t want to see me dressed up as Adam Ant, Boy George or Madonna. The event took place in the Joondalup Reception Centre and there was a strict no-kangaroo policy. It was very much in the style of a ‘School Disco’ but with slightly less booze and drugs. The highlight of the evening (apart from Princess Leah and Catwoman) was seeing Gandhi carrying three bottles of beer. That, and watching Wendy persuade the (youngish, Aussie) DJ that if he played ‘Oops up side yer head’ the dance floor wouldn’t clear but would indeed be full of people sitting on it pretending to row a boat. ‘Bewildered’ best described the look on the DJ’s face when that was indeed what happened. The same DJ did incredibly well to give the impression that there had been a difficult decision to be made before handing the ‘Best Women’s Costume’ prize to Catwoman. His decision to give the Men’s prize to the ‘Incredible Hulk’ was slightly more controversial, mainly because most people thought he was meant to be a ninja turtle. Gandhi was robbed.
Surprisingly, in this age of the proliferation of mobile recording devices, there are absolutely no photos available of me dressed as a punk - complete with nose ring. I am told that I got the look right but I just couldn’t ‘do’ the attitude. When I bumped into people I would immediately apologise. Maybe I should take lessons from the car-jacking kangaroos.
Until next time,
H

*as you will no doubt be aware the speed limit on this part of Joondalup Drive is 70kph.

Groovy

2011-05-20T14:55:00.003+01:00

My wife and I, and young Master George went to one of those ‘pop’ festivals, for young people, last Saturday. The weirdest thing happened (actually the whole experience was both odd, enjoyable and more than just a little bit of an eye opener)... I was asked to show some photo ID!? I was slightly taken aback at first and could only think that they must have had a rule of not letting people over 45 years of age in (I was clearly a borderline case). If they did have such a policy it proved very successful because there were absolutely no ‘upper middle-aged’ people on the entire site... apart from maybe a couple of members of ‘House of Pain’.

For reasons that never really became clear the festival was called ‘Groovin’ the Moo’. It was actually an all-ages event – so we didn’t have to cobble together a fake ID card in order to get George in (although he appeared to have one of his own already... which is just a little bit worrying). The ID was, in fact, needed to get a wrist band that allowed access to the special bar area – which is just a fancy pants term for a piece of grass, behind a fence, with a beer tent... not special at all really. The only conceivable reason I can see for the inclusion of these areas at festivals is to create dangerous bottlenecks that wouldn’t otherwise be there - and it that respect they work a treat.

It’s certainly interesting being at a festival with your 13-year-old son. We soon discovered that we both had something that the other one wanted. George wanted to be six feet two in order to see more of the performances, and I just wanted some of the attractive women (actually just one would have done) that stopped to chat to George to talk to me instead. Alas we were both left frustrated, however George will grow taller whereas I...

Obviously there were some signs of immaturity; for instance, when we passed the stand where they were handing out condoms there was embarrassed sniggering and blushes. But then George told me to pull myself together... yes I know you could see that one coming a mile off (thinking about it, that might not be the best phrase to use in this context). They were also using a prop (which seemed slightly oversized to me) to demonstrate how to put on the product they were distributing. We didn’t see it but they must also have been demonstrating the proper use of them because all of the bands had masses of ‘condom balloons’ floating passed them during their performance.

And another thing I noticed was that, like the last festival I went to, there were an awful lot of people on crutches there. At first this prompted in me a feeling of sympathy towards these poor unfortunates whose enjoyment of the festivities was being marred by their inability to manoeuvre freely around the site. And then, the ‘cynic synapse’ inside my brain kicked in and I suddenly thought ‘if you wanted to get a sizeable quantity of drugs into an event, wouldn’t the best thing to use be an innocent looking hollow tube of some sort?’ Look, I’m not saying that they were all dealing amphetamines but I just think that it’s unlikely that that morning all the invalids in the area got up and thought ‘you know what? I reckon I’ll head down and check out the Go! Team at ‘the Moo’ this arvo’. Next time you are at a festival make sure you look out for all the people on crutches and then report back to me.

So, (6 paragraphs in) was the music any good? Well some of it was, some of it was a tad disappointing (the Drums, and the ‘drug dealers’ favourites the Go! Team) some of it I just didn’t get – but ‘the kids’ loved it. The highlight of the day (according to the review in this week’s Music Paper) was a couple of DJ’s who were doing unspeakable things, involving rapping and sampling, to a Beatles track (I think it was ‘Come Together’ but it was so mashed up it was nigh on impossible to properly identify it). Call me a bluff old traditionalist if you like but I still prefer my music to be performed by ‘4 skinny indie kids’ - on guitars.

It was at this point, towards the end of the evening, that I was reminded of a lyric penned by the great Jarvis Cocker, namely: ‘Is this the way they say the futures meant to feel or just 20,000 people standing in a field?’ I came to the conclusion that it’s probably the case that once your kids start going to festivals then you should stop attending.

The Social Service candidates amongst you will have been thinking,’ hang on a minute, if the three of you were stood in the middle of a football oval down in Bunbury where was young Harriet? Well – you nanny state do-gooder you – she was staying with one of her friends from dancing. Although to be honest we could just have left her in bed and she would have slept all day. On Friday afternoon she came back from School Camp and looked like she hadn’t slept at all in the three days she had been away.

By all accounts she had a great time, although wasn’t altogether keen on the part where they dissected a fish. You see, it’s a long time ago, but when I went on my School Camp to Malham Dale I don’t remember once having to perform surgery on a Sturgeon. I was however forced to eat Kendall mint cake, which in my opinion is far more horrible and stomach churning than chopping up a Chubb. Actually I don’t see how she can have had a better time than I had in Malham. as I recall we had thick fog and cowpats, she just seems to have had zip wires, sea life centres and sherbet pips.

Her flute playing is going from strength-to-strength. The school band is now practicing ‘Supercalifragalrock’ (no, that’s not right), SuperCallygoballisticCelticareatrocius, (no, that’s not right either), SouporCauli.... oh, you know, that song from Mary Poppins.

Do you remember how some time ago (about three paragraphs), I said that when your kids start going to festivals then its time, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera (I sound like Yul Brynner)... well. Me and George are planning on going to another festival in July – Jarvis Cocker’s Pulp are coming all the way from Sheffield for ‘On the Bright Side’ so it seems rude not to go after they’ve made all that effort.

To mark this occasion I’ll leave you with 5 essential tunes from Steel City artists.
1: 59 Lyndhurst Grove – Pulp, 2: I Remember Moonlight – The Crookes, 3: The Look of Love – ABC, 4: Mardy Bum – Arctic Monkeys; 5: She Said – Longpigs.
Wot no Def Leppard

There is a light that never goes out

2011-05-12T15:53:00.000+01:00

My wife and I have been invited to a '70s' party. I'm seriously hoping that '70s' is the theme of the evening and not the average age of the attendees. I'm yet to see an official invite but am led to believe that we are expected to dress-up (or down)in appropriate garb. As you are all aware the 1970s (as opposed to the 1870s... which funnily enough, my wardrobe is more suited to) is the decade that taste forgot.The way I see it is that the choices regarding dressing up are:
1) Glam Rock Platform heels, gold lame cat suits, glitter, long hair, flares.
2) Disco Saturday Night Fever style white suits, flares.
3) Bay City Rollers Tartan, denim, more long hair, more flares.
4) Punk* Nuf said
Personally I'm favouring the latter choice. Apart from anything else it's the lazy option - all I need is some skinny fit jeans, a bin liner and several gallons of hair gel.. oh yeah, and some hair, My biggest quandary is whether to dye my hair blue or red for the occasion.
My only reservation, with going to the party as a punk, is that I did it once before, albeit 30 years ago, and it had the effect of making me irresistible to women (no, honestly, no don't laugh). On that occasion it was a general fancy dress party. As I recall, amongst the revellers, there was a French onion seller, an Andy Pandy, and a Wee Willy Winky (well it was a very cold night). On the bus ride home I had my first proper snog... with Aunt Sally (it was a girl dressed as the character from Wurzel Gummidge, I hasten to add, and not a member of my own family). I think it's safe to assume that I'll be able to avoid such incidents this time around - for a start we are walking to the event so I won't have to come home by bus.
Talking of punk - the Royal Wedding achieved phenomenal viewing figures over hers - over a quarter of the population watched it by all accounts. We had the pictures on TV but with the volume turned down and a soundtrack provided by my iPod. This meant that at one stage there were a couple of nuns in Westminster Abbey who appeared to be lip-sinking to 'Anarchy in the UK' by the Pistols... a nice touch I thought. (Coming up later - find out how my iPod caused me earache of a different kind.)
As you know, by now, I don't like to conform to popular opinion so I won't pass comment on the major talking points of the Wedding - apart from to say... Pippa - yes, the Ferguson girls - no (not with a barge pole, not even when wearing my best full-strength beer goggles). Just one thing though, Kate's (gawd bless 'er) dress was described in some quarters as being Grace Kellyesque. I would have to say that it was more Lorraine Kellyesque (I was going to say Matthew Kellyesque, but that might be a bit harsh). Oh, and one more thing, the BBC Sport website described the Wedding as a 'dry run' for next summer's Olympics... how so? Has the sport of man-handling the aging Duke of Edinburgh into a coach been added to the itinerary for the London Games? If so, is it too late to get tickets?
WARNING: IPods can seriously damage your ears as well as your hearing. Let me elaborate. I was returning home from work, walking back from the railway station (I'm good like that... combining first-class exercise with saving the planet) and it was a Tuesday - it's not important to the story but is true none-the-less. Anyway, I was just crossing the footbridge listening to my iPod (I was listening to my iPod, not the footbridge) when I was set upon by a bee (that may, or may not, have been called Eric). Without a by or leave the bee stung me on the right ear lobe and then flew off - which was quite a feat seeing as it left half of its body attached to the sting, which was in turn attached to my ear. I can only think that the buzz and pitch of the music I was listening to had created a frequency that unsettled the bee, either that or he'd had a particularly bad day at the office. The song that it had objected to so violently was (ironically) 'Heather' by the Wedding Present... again, a nice touch. For a week afterwards my already sizable ear swelled to double its normal girth and for several days I was able to pick up up satellite TV channels on my lugs.
Later that same evening I managed to smash the glass in one of paintings by walking it into a door frame. I would like to blame the sting and subsequent swelling for effecting my balance and causing the accident but I think it's fair to say that my innate clumsiness and general lack of coordination were more likely to have been the overriding contributing factors. You may be asking yourself why was he walking his paintings anyway, do paintings really need to be taken down for regular exercise, aren't they just supposed to sit on walls looking pretty? All good points, to which I have no suitable reply.
Sadly, it now falls upon me to report the tragic, untimely death of my Habitat bendy lamp (Ralph). He passed away after a short illness (and a very loud bang) at the tender age of 27. Ralph was a constant companion and a reliable servant over many years having cast his radiant beam over 104 paintings, countless University projects (all of which were running behind schedule, and several of which were worked upon throughout the night), and a few nocturnal activities that shouldn't be elaborated on here (I'm sorry but if I choose to do a bit of brass rubbing of an evening then that's my business).
All of these duties were carried out despite the fact that Ralph was a very unfashionable olive green colour and had a propensity to release an acrid smell of burning if you kept him turned on for more than five minutes (what do you mean he sounds just like his owner?). Despite the severity of his initial demise, I did manage to get Ralph working again. The problem was that once I got him turned on I couldn't turn him off again (what do you mean he sounds just like his owner?). It was therefore my onerous task to make the decision to turn off his life support machine. Luckily Ralph left a Donor card so his plug and bulb will be used to help prolong the life of the toaster and the fridge. In the tradition of the old Soviet Union I have been playing sombre music constantly for 36 hours as a mark of respect (come to think of it, I have been playing sombre music constantly for 36 years). RIP Ralph 1984-2011. Irreplaceable.
By the way is Habitat still going? Do they still do bendy lamps?
H

* Even allowing for the 10,000 mile journey and the strict quarantine restrictions, punk must have arrived on these shores before the decade was out.

Error of type 0027A//t occurred%... abort_abort

2011-04-22T12:06:00.002+01:00

and then, in walked Kylie wearing only a pair of socks and a ‘kiss me quick’ hat.
Sorry, it would appear that we have been having a few technical issues and all the fantastic blogs that I have been writing and posting since last October haven’t been making it onto the interworldwebwide thingy. I can’t think how that could have happened when I clearly have such a great grasp of this modern technology malarkey.
So, I’ll use this blog to bring you up to speed with what’s being going one. Firstly, I have to inform you that, in the missing missives, I had successfully predicted: England’s Ashes success; the death of Trevor Bannister (Mr Lucas from ‘Are you Being Served’*); Andy Murray would lose the final of the Australian Open (okay, so that foresight doesn’t make me any kind of genius); that a Kenyan would win the London Marathon – Men’s and Women’s (again, probably not a wild stab in the dark) and that the first F1 race of the season would be held in Australia due to civil unrest on a roundabout in Bahrain. I know what you’re thinking (apart from ‘you big fibber, you’), did he put his money where his mouth is and put a wager on these predictions? Well, I tried to but was thwarted by the aforementioned Internet connection problems. No, really.
Right, so what has been going on in Perth these six months past? Well, we have had a very hot and dry summer, and so far an autumn that’s going along very similar lines. We are hoping that the long Public Holiday weekend will bring the traditional ‘Bank Holiday’ rain with it.
We actually have an extra day off, for this long weekend, besides Good Friday and Easter Monday. In fact (and this is official, I haven’t just made it up) Easter Monday has been moved to Tuesday. This is to make way for ANZAC Day (always 25 April) which falls on Monday.
We aren’t getting a day off for ‘the wedding’ though, and I haven’t checked with the neighbours but I’m pretty sure that there aren’t any plans to hold a street party to mark the occasion either. It has to be said though that Will and Kate’s nuptials are getting a fair amount of coverage down here, so if you thought you could come over here to escape the media frenzy then I’m afraid you are sadly mistaken. In fact, I got to the counter at our local supermarket the other evening (I forget exactly what health food products I was purchasing) when I was confronted (in the impulse buy section) by the golden couple’s smiling faces beaming at me from a commemorative tin of shortbread. Call me an old stick-in-the-mud if you like but my impulse buys tend to be for Lion’s confectionery, Blues CD’s on the Hallmark label, and deely boppers, not $25 tins of biscuits.
Who’s doing what/when/how?
Harriet (Hattie, Princess, Treacle, Lulu... she answers to all these and more besides) is learning to torture (did I say torture? I meant play) the flute. It’s funny because the comment we get most in reaction to this news is ‘well, at least it isn’t the violin’. Actually she plays the two notes that she has been taught, so far, very well. She has also been persuaded by her music teacher (not by her pushy parents) to join the school choir. It is my job to tell her that despite all of these talents, and her dancing ability, she is never going to be allowed to audition for ‘Australian Idol’ due to my phobia to reality TV.
Hattie and Wendy have tickets to go and see Kylie in June. On this occasion Ms Minogue may be wearing a little more than socks and a ‘kiss-me-quick’ hat – a little more but probably not much more. How is it I wasn’t invited to go?
George is now a teenager, goes to secondary school, is a Surf Life Saving cadet, spends all of his pocket money on hair product, and has more contacts in his mobile phone than I do (especially the female ones).
Last term, he represented the school at a swimming carnival and finished third in the 50m breaststroke. He probably, needs a bit of improvement if he is going to make it over to London for the Olympics next year as part of the Aussie swimming squad. He’s probably got more chance of coming over as part of the cricket squad for the 2013 Ashes series though.
Wendy is two thirds of the way through her Business Migration university course. The girly swot has passed the first two units with high distinctions and is, at this very moment, reading the learning manual for the third unit which starts next week. It’s a long time since I took an exam but I’m pretty sure that my studying technique was slightly less organised and relied greatly on the right question coming up.
She was unable to get out surfing at all this summer - due to the fact that her hand injury has been slow to heal, and not because of a lack of surf or inclement weather or anything like that (they would have been my excuses).
Clearly, there must have been other things that have happened in the last six months that I have overlooked but I’ll fill in the gaps another time. My next blog may well contain flashback sequences, mindless waffle, and obscure musical references... nothing new there then.
During the writing of this blog I have been mainly listening to The Vaccines, Paul Weller, and the Wonder Stuff (next time I’ll be choosing from the X-Z section of my record collection... might be a very brief blog).
Enjoy the Easter Weekend (that’s an order).

*Is on TV here on a Tuesday night along with (wait for it)... Bargain Hunt, On the Buses, Some Mothers do ‘Ave ‘Em, To the Manor Born, Dad’s Army, and Hale and Pace.

Post mortem

2010-10-31T15:30:00.002Z

Did anyone else, other than Mark, not get their invite to the barbie?
Early indications are that the invitation for the Wilkes family went astray in the postal system somewhere near Godalming - on the eastern end of the Portsmouth Road. Even though Mark didn’t get his invite (which is a shame because I’d even included the timetables of buses that run between Perth and Stratford-Upon-Avon, not for the 197 service though; because that goes via Meadowhall.) which meant he didn’t make it to the party, there was a representative from my Huddersfield Uni* days who did turn up... and I’d not even asked him to come. Actually, that’s not strictly true, I did invite him - I just told him that the party was starting five hours later than it actually did... he didn’t fall for it though. Bartlett, or Simon as I am slowly getting used to calling him, was in fine form on the night regaling everyone with his stories of encounters with kangaroos, two metre-long tiger snakes, and pretty wildflowers. I wouldn’t mind but he’s only been in the country for five minutes and he’s already had adventures that put the rest of us to shame. So, Bartlett (he did have another nickname in College but I can’t really use it in polite company) was in charge of storytelling, and one of our neighbours was on cooking duties (he had quite rightly worked out that the choice was to take charge of the barbie or go hungry). I’d even managed to get out of the car-parking chores, by giving the job to George. I had provided him with all you need to be a car park attendant, namely: a high visibility vest; a limp, a chip on the shoulder; and a hatred of everyone else on the planet. He carried out his task with great gusto, in fact at one stage he tried to park someone on our driveway who was attempting to visit their friends who live three doors up from us. So, with all of my duties delegated elsewhere I was left free to mingle and socialise... okay I was left free to mingle and tut each time someone skipped one of the songs on my carefully crafted playlist. It was a good job that I’d prepared 30 hours worth of top notch music for our entertainment because several hours’ worth of material disappeared in the blink of an eye. Obviously I’m not really up on the rules of social etiquette (having the social skills of a brick), but surely even touching your hosts remote is a definite no, no (as well as being a feed line for a ‘Carry On’ style joke). Personally, I like to give a song more than a bar-and-a-half before deciding that none of the attending guests are going to like it... call me a bluff old traditionalist if you like. I’ll name that tune in... oh, no I can’t because we appear to have gone on to the next one already. (You may want to read this bit in a raised, slightly agitated voice, to get the desired effect).
Deep breaths... I’m calm now.
Next subject.
This weekend we split-up into boys’ and girls’ teams to do male/female bonding type things. I think we may have got the roles a bit mixed up though because Hattie and Wendy went off to tackle the elements and the great outdoors whilst George and I went shopping.
Perhaps it was hearing Simon’s tales of daring-do in the bush (more ‘Carry On’ feed lines anyone?) that spurred Wendy to want to go camping. I’m not sure that they were exactly roughing it in the back of beyond though. In fact they were on a campsite with all available amenities, although, in truth, they might have had to cope without a socket for the hairdryer.
In fact mine and George’s shopping trip should have been a bit more dangerous than that. We braved a CD sale run by RTR FM. Once a year they sell-off all of their promo CDs in order to raise some cash and make a bit of space in the office. The sale takes place in the back room of a pub, with very low lighting levels and all the CDs dumped into boxes, or lined-up in no discernable order. It has to be said that it wasn’t unlike Mark’s music filing system back in our Uni days – although, of course, it was cassettes back then; and at least the CDs at today’s event were in cases. The event was heer heaven; it took me back to the days of rummaging through the Woolies bargain bins. George loved it too. He spent a couple of week’s worth of pocket money but managed to pick-up some real bargains, one of which was by a band that he knows I dislike intensely... which is clearly a bonus.
Whilst driving to the record sale, we passed a sports oval where various teams were playing football. A little further along the road we passed a second sports oval where various teams were playing cricket. Still further along the route we passed another oval where various teams, of mixed gender and age, and bedecked in club colours were playing Frisbee. No, I didn’t believe it either, but they were still playing when we drove back again. I didn’t even know it was competitive, How do you win? I thought that you just threw the Frisbee in such a way that your mate had to go and pick it up from in front of the attractive lady in the bikini sat three doors up the beach from you. And then he would return the favour. But surely that’s a game where everyone wins.
Anyway I’m off. Next time I’ll tell you all about Harriet‘s ballet shoes, and how she took 7 seconds off her 50 metre freestyle PB. I might even to tell you about the Halloween ‘pool’ party that George attended
See you soon.
H

*okay, so technically it was a Polytechnic when I started there

Double decker Elvis

2010-10-17T07:02:00.002+01:00

Hello there.
It’s Saturday night and I’ve got nowhere to go and no one to play with so I thought I’d bore you instead. As Jean Paul Sartre once said (or was it John, Paul and Ringo?) ‘For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it’. So prepare to be recounted to. I should probably explain why I have no-one to play with: Harriet is barricaded in the lounge watching a Garfield movie; George has just left for another sleepover, his last words as he left were ‘we won’t be blowing anything up tonight’, which is reassuring; and Wendy has gone out for the evening – to a 9th birthday party? (That is a genuine question, not just the Aussie inflection infection).
We were in Sydney last weekend – hence the short gap between blogs (what do you mean you should go more often?). We weren’t there for long, but the kids and I managed to get in two days of sightseeing and exploration of the city. We were staying at a beach resort several kilometres (or a few miles - if you prefer imperial measurements) from Sydney itself so we had to catch a train into the centre – which was great because the trains are double-decker (and yes, we did have to sit on the top deck). They’ve also got seats that you can adjust so that you can either face the way you are travelling or, if there’s a group of you (and you’re more sociable than me) you can have facing seats. Clearly this is a health and safety nightmare, having all those moving parts in the control of the general public but they appear to get away with it. Obviously, after such a fun-filled journey in to the city, it was always going to be difficult to maintain such high levels of excitement. I think I managed it though by taking them to a huge record shop. Well, there’s not that much else to see in Sydney–there’s this bridge thingy, and a bit of water, and this strange looking building made up of dairylea slices... I think it’s called the Oprah House - well, I guess it will be when, TV Queen, Ms Winfrey brings 300 of her closest friends over to film some shows here in December. I say here, but obviously she isn’t coming to Perth.
I have to say that my favourite part of Sydney is the bit of water – I love the harbour, even though we only saw a small portion of it. We had a ride on a ferry (George’s sea legs held out for the half-hour journey) which was excellent, a great way to see the World famous landmarks (no, not the filming of Aerobics Oz style). Whilst queuing for the boat we discovered that Elvis is, indeed, alive and well and waiting for a ferry to Parramatta. The refreshing thing was that, unlike your usual ‘King’ look-a-like, this one had gone for the Elvis circa 1959 look as opposed to the bloated, white jump-suited, Vegas years look favoured by most ‘did you know my middle name is Aaron’ wannabes.
Like I said earlier we found a huge record shop (I mean it was a big shop, not that it was selling oversized records). And yes, we may have spent a small amount of time in there but I was quite democratic, the kids got an equal amount of time to peruse the shops of their choice – although I think it’s fair to say that democracy ended when it came to allocating the spending money. George decided to spend his time torturing himself in the Adidas originals shop – his pocket money is hardly a match for the charging power of the German sportswear manufacturing giants. Harriet chose a shop whose walls were bedecked in pink taffeta, and was awash with bedazzling jewellery that sparkled and glittered, and said buy me Hattie, buy me! Harriet is attracted by all things shiny – she is almost magpie like in that respect. Which brings me seamlessly to my next point - we are now at the height of the swooping season. What on earth is the swooping season I hear you ask? Well bimbo, you know how Australia is the land where everything tries to hurt you, well come springtime even the magpies get in on the act. It’s called swooping but in essence it’s out-and-out GBH. For once I’m being serious - the main causes of injuries in spring are snake bites and magpie attacks. I say magpies, but they are a bit chunkier than the UK version - basically they are crows with a white shirt on. Swooping isn’t just confined to magpies however. It won’t surprise you to know that I have been swooped on several occasions, including once by a honey eater–which is a bird that resembles a thrush, but with a bigger nose.
As its spring, George has started playing cricket again. He’s still at the same club but is in a different team, in which all the parents have been allocated match-day roles. For instance next week my role is to nominate the team’s player of the day. As it’s a new team I don’t know who any of the lads are, but what I do know is that there are two Aarons (I blame Elvis), two Sams, two Blakes and a pair of twins. The thing is, now that George no longer wears glasses I can’t even pick him out on the field so I’ve got no chance of working out who’s who. So it’s going to be between the tall lad, the short lad, and the slightly rotund lad.
I’ve solved my sporting activity problem - we have managed to get the beach volleyball team back together. We’ve made a few, shrewd new signings, injected some fresh capital into the team, and changed the team’s name... we are now called ‘may contain nuts’ (yes, it was my idea, and as punishment the rest of the team have nominated me to be the one that has to tell the umpire what we are called each week). All these changes have brought instant results... we are yet to win a game, in fact we are yet to win a set. Despite this minor detail, or maybe because of it, it’s actually much more fun now.
We are having a Barbie next Saturday - invites are in the post. Obviously, if you’ve got a party trick or two you are much more likely to have been selected to attend. For this prestigious occasion, I have been putting together a playlist on i-tunes, so far I’ve got 30 hours of music – do you think that will be enough? (Bearing in mind we’ve invited Lindsay Lohan, Owen Wilson, Paris Hilton, Cliff Richard, and a bunch of accountants).
Anyway, have a great week
This week’s top 5 - The Airborne Toxic Event - Does This Mean You're Moving On?; The Jezabels - Violent Dream; Beck-Loser; Pink Floyd - See Emily Play; Paul Weller - No Tears To Cry.
Wot no Collins?

Contagious?

2010-09-26T15:03:00.001+01:00

George and I were in the car, the other day, listening to the radio (whilst at the same time maintaining 100% concentration on the road – well, George might have been). We were tuned in to, local station, RTR FM at 92.1 on the radio dial (although I don’t think they have dials anymore... it’s all new-fangled digital stuff nowadays). It being a Saturday afternoon, the usual excellent music programming had been replaced with a ‘young persons’ show, tackling ‘yoof’ issues. On this particular occasion we were being treated to a discussion on STI’s or STD’s – whichever you prefer (although I suspect your preference would be to have neither). The young person presenter (of indeterminate sex) was chatting to a (female) expert about prevention, testing, and (where possible) treatment of STI/Ds. Which brings me, eventually, to my point (yeah, there is actually a point to all this). The expert was giving us lots of facts and figures and good advice on all aspects of the subject, but she was doing it in an Aussie accent... which included the inflection at the end of a sentence? Like she’s asking a question? Now the inflection is common practice in oz speak (like starting a sentence with ‘Ah mate, ... ’) but some people use it a lot more than others. In this case our expert was suffering from a very severe case of the inflection infection (although I don’t think it’s an STI/D). This meant that despite the fact that she clearly knew her facts the inflection made it sound that she was unsure of what she was saying. It was very disconcerting, I’m sorry but if someone is talking to me (giving expert advice or otherwise) I need them to at least sound certain of what they are saying, and not... ‘It’s a very straight forward operational procedure Mr Davies with absolutely nothing to worry about?’, or ‘of course I’d like to go on a date with you Harry?’, or ‘Phil Collins is the ninth best drummer of the last 25 years*?’ The inflection has definitely reached our household, the kids have the full blown disease and, despite having the inoculation jab, Wendy occasionally shows the symptoms. I have, to my knowledge, slipped up only a few times but it is becoming a more common occurrence. I have also started to say data with an ‘r’ in it (darta) mainly because if I don’t no-one knows what I’m talking about. Australian people tend to struggle a bit with my accent anyway - although, at work, a couple of the Aussie clients I speak to on the phone have started to talk to me in a very passable Yorkshire accent. I have also learnt that if you want someone to win then you are barracking for them, not rooting for them – because over here rooting means something quite different and more or less takes us right back to the beginning of the blog (and no it hasn’t got anything to do with driving).
Backtracking slightly, I was forced out of a record shop by Phil Collins yesterday. I had just begun my usual Saturday morning pursuit (no, not that one – the other one), perusing the ‘Alternative’ CD section in JB Hi-fi when I realised that my ears were being assaulted by the sounds of Mr Collins torturing songs that had, in a previous incarnation, been sixties Motown classics. Despite the fact that the songs were being marginally improved by constant announcements over the tannoy for ‘a member of hardware/software/ firmware to go to the computer counter please’ I only got two thirds of the way through ‘Jimmy Mac’ before having to escape the premises (it was either that or inserting USB sticks into my ears). Whilst making my exit I noticed that the offending album appeared to be riding very high in the charts over here. Oi, Collins... No!
Spookily, as I sit compiling this work of fiction, I can hear the sounds of someone (who is at least two streets away from us**) practicing the drums... they actually sound quite good but that’s probably because they are at least two streets away from us.
The kids have broken up from school this week having completed term 3. They brought home the results of the Naplan tests that they sat back in term 2 (I was unable to ascertain whether this delay was due to a very slow marking system, or that the results had been sitting in the kids’ school drawer for a term-and-half). They both did very well, with their marks being above the school and National averages in all subjects. Harriet’s best subject was reading but she also did very well in writing, and grammar! and. Punctuation. George did well across the board but his spelling was exscelant and his (creative) writing score was almost off the scale. He can’t remember what subject they were given to write about but he does know that his story centred upon a hitman who was disposing of Russian spies. In an earlier project they were asked to write a story about a hamster (it had a cute name like ‘fluffy’ or ‘hammy’, or ‘brian’). George’s story was about a drug-trafficking cartel who were smuggling their stash across national borders inside hamsters (including fluffy). I’m guessing that it won’t be too long before we get a visit from some Government department or other... social services, special branch, meals on wheels? Do you think we should be worried? He has also developed a habit of being able to name all of the weapons used in film or TV programmes that we watch (there are always weapons involved no matter what we are watching... even Songs of Praise). Not only that, he can also produce reference books with pictures of the weapons involved. Whilst part of me wants to admonish him for knowing too much about guns and weaponry, I have to admit that I also get a warm glow of paternal pride from his love of backing up his facts with reference material (definitely a Davies gene).
It’s a public holiday tomorrow (Monday) for the Queen’s birthday (not sure if we are celebrating Liz’s April or June birthday). I wonder whether we will still have the holiday in September when it’s the King’s Birthday? Anyway, it’s going to be sunny again tomorrow so there is an outside chance of us venturing into the pool for the first time since last summer. Be warned, I think my board shorts are in the huge pile of ironing that seems to have magically appeared in the laundry room so I may be forced to wear my budgie smugglers. (cue the music from jaws).

*As voted by readers of Rhythm magazine (The drummer from Slipknot was at number one)
**The reason I can hear them from that distance is because its 25 degrees today and I’ve got the doors and windows open. That, married to the fact that the CD I was listening to – Not by Collins- has finished and I can’t be bothered to stretch the full 18 inches needed to change it.

This week’s blog was brought to you by Chemical Brothers – Further (Parlaphone 2010), Emiliana Torrini – Fisherman’s Woman (Rough Trade 2004), and In the Night Garden (BBC Audiobooks Ltd 2007)

Extreme ironing and freestyle shopping

2010-09-19T12:27:00.002+01:00

Day three in ‘the house’ (spoken in an exaggerated Geordie accent). This morning, Harriet was called to the Dairy Room (okay it was the office but I was partaking of cheese and crackers, and a glass of milk at the time) to ask her why her bedroom resembled... insert a metaphor for something messy and cluttered here (or let’s just say, Room 101). As you may have gathered, Wendy has now left for her (nigh on) three week trip overseas and the household is now being run as an Orwellian, Totalitarian State. I would like to think that I am the leader of this new regime but I’m not 100% sure that is really the case. Actually, everything is bowling along as normal with just one or two minor alterations to the usual schedule and a bit of re-rostering of chores. The only major upheaval is that I am now on ironing duty.
Did you know that there is actually a sport called extreme ironing, where people jump off tall objects (buildings, rocks, David Prowse) and iron whilst making the descent. The thing is by jumping off something that high in order to do the ironing I would be creating a whole new load of clothes to be washed by the time I landed, especially undergarments. Besides, to me, any form of ironing is extreme – I think I must have had a traumatic experience with an iron as a young child (as I did with pickled herrings, and bread and butter pudding*) because I definitely have a phobia of ironing. Is there a name for a phobia of ironing? Anyway irons, like dogs, can smell fear – which is amazing really because all I can ever smell when I’m doing it is clothes burning. I can just about cope with ironing most clothing but some of Harriet and Wendy’s outfits have been designed to resist all attempts to de-crease them. They are like those dogs that have been bred to extreme to be just one mass of wrinkles and folds – the name of which escapes me for the minute (the name of the breed that is not of the individual dog). You may have noticed that this section has rambled on a bit (and that is different from usual, how?) but at some point I am going to have to stop procrastinating around the bush and tackle the ‘extreme’ pile of clothes that is sat quivering in the basket waiting for me to attack it with an hot iron.
Just before I do that, however, I should also explain the freestyle shopping part of this blog’s title. Wendy’s preferred method of food shopping is to work out exactly what meals we are having for the week and then to buy the ingredients required in the exact quantities needed... without deviating from the list. I am more of a store cupboard person myself and tend towards a much more freestyle approach to the weekly shop. I’m not saying this is the correct method of doing it, indeed it does leave you open to the odd mistake... I never could find a recipe that truly brought out the talents of the tamarillos (formerly known as the tree tomato) that I bought that time. My method is to buy something and then work out a meal around it. For example I will buy gammon steaks, remembering that there is a tin of pineapple rings in the pantry, with the notion of making gammon Hawaii (exotic or what?). It is only when I come to prepare the meal, and have difficulty locating the tin of pineapple that I remember that during a (drunken) game of Trivial Pursuit some of the wedges had gone astray and in a flash of genius, replacements had been fashioned out of pineapple chunks and food colouring. Instead of changing the menu, after this set-back, I simply find a replacement ingredient... perhaps a tin of fruit cocktail (every store cupboard has one) would work. That subtle blend of syrupy liquid, pear (by far the main ingredient), peach, grape (usually just the one) and two halves of a miniscule cherry would fully bring out the flavour of the gammon. On the subject of cherries, I think it is commonly accepted that the ones in Haribo ‘tangfastic’ are indeed sweets of the highest order. I do need to correct an error from the last blog (what do you mean, that would be all of it?) - When I said the other Haribo variety was kiddie mix, I meant of course ‘Starmix’. I can only put this error down to the huge sugar high I was on at the time due to the consumption of several packets of the aforementioned product. Of course the highlights of Starmix would have to be the fried eggs and the love hearts – everybody knows that.
I’m rambling again, aren’t I?
And now... that ironing.
Actually, before I do that, I just want to have a quick word with Stacey, if I may. The rest of you can just chat amongst yourselves for a while (Quietly!). And no she isn’t getting preferential treatment it’s just that she’s the only one to put her hand and answer questions in class. So don’t go calling her a girly swot and teacher’s pet. I should point out that she never hands in her homework assignments on time... or ever for that matter.
Stace, I do actually have the XX CD and I believe (as Gertrude Stein says**) it’s a good album but not a great album. It’s certainly a well crafted work and I reckon it will get better with a few more listens but it’s not yet up there with the likes of ‘For your Pleasure, Rumours, Seamonsters, The Seldom Seen Kid, or Christmas with the Chipmunks (the re-mastered version... obviously). I missed them play live (the XX, not the Chipmunks) at this year’s Laneways festival because they clashed with (the mighty) Echo and the Bunnymen.
Right, back to the class. Barrett, don’t think I didn’t see what you were doing with that protractor, and Hazel, come away from the door dear.
Okay, ironing.
It looks very sunny outside (20 odd degrees), it seems wrong to keep the kids cooped up on a day like this, maybe we should go down to the beach for a couple of hours. Then I’ll do the ironing later.

* I should point out that these were two different incidents and they were not served up together as one meal.

** A spot prize to anyone who can tell me where I ‘borrowed’ that from

Did you mean the XX?

2010-09-12T13:35:00.001+01:00

I’ve just been on to google and typed in Paul Weller + Mercury Music Prize winner and it came back with the above reply. Surely the former Jam front man was robbed. I see that after some late, irregular betting patterns (for once not involving the Pakistan cricket team) the Modfather was a short priced favourite to take off the coveted title. He’s taking defeat very well, by leaving the country and coming over here to entertain the convicts – I shall be passing on my commiserations to him when I go and see him next month. I am hoping that it will be third time lucky and I do get to see him as my two previous attempts to watch him in concert have ended in disaster. I think the first show was cancelled due to illness or bad weather, or both but the second time I was definitely thwarted by a Fire Safety Certificate... or lack of. It wasn’t me; it was actually the venue that was missing the vital paper work. I have all of my up-to-date Fire safety documents having once successfully extinguished a fire in my boxer shorts. I should point out that it wasn’t actually a conflagration in my underwear – it was in fact a house fire, but I was only wearing boxer shorts at the time of successfully tackling the blaze. Luckily there are no photos to go with this story.
As you will have (no doubt) noticed - I have gradually got away from the vague notion that this is actually a blog about ‘the Davies family living in Australia’ and have accepted that I am, in fact, serialising my life story. I warn you now that it’s only a matter of time before we get to anecdotes such as ‘the jelly fight’ that took place at one of my birthday parties. You’re thinking that there is nothing unusual about a jelly fight at a children’s birthday party... I was 24, it took place in the street, and the police files say that the fight took place at some time after midnight. Chances are though that we won’t dwell upon the stories of the ‘bring and buy sale’ cabbage, and the de-handgranadeing of my brother’s airfix soldiers with a pair of scissors (an incident that George finds highly amusing).
Before I descend further into naval gazing, I should give you the latest news of ‘the Davies family living in Australia.’ Since I dissed him (a term that I believe was last used in late March 1990... at about 10.39am) for being a lazy, good-for-nothing couch potato type thing in my last entry, George has: played for the school rugby (league) team in the State competition, accompanied Wendy on the 12km ‘City to Surf’ walk, and won a prize for finishing third in the sprint race at the Sports carnival. Obviously, it is my words of ‘encouragement’ that have spurred him on to these sporting achievements. With this in mind I have no qualms in telling you about his latest step into adulthood – he was turned down by a girl when he asked her to dance at the school disco. But instead of doing what I would do (i.e. keeping it quiet and picking over it for the next 10 maybe 20 years and painting at least 40 pictures on the subject), he happily discussed it with all his mates and decided that next time he would ask a girl ‘early doors’ so that if she turned him down he would still have time to ask someone else. I think it might be time for that DNA test... this is clearly not Davies behaviour.
Another sign of George’s impending maturity is the fact that he has made his first mix tape (this is a move that is much more symptomatic of the Davies gene). I say mix tape, but clearly there was no cassette recorder used in its making and quite frankly the skill levels required for making up a compilation album these days with the help of i-tunes are negligible compared to how we had to do it back when I were a lad. It is only a matter of time before George combines both of the above items i.e. making a mix tape to give to a girl – and then getting rejected. The art of making a mix tape as a token of your affection is a very tricky one. The pitfalls are endless because basically you are looking for the balance between: including music that you know/or think you know she’ll like and including music that you think she should listen to (Beyonce-PJ Harvey); including music that doesn’t make you look too much like a morose, basket case and including music that makes you look like a soppy romantic wimp (Nick Cave - Nik Hayward). Judging by the number of times I got dumped, and the lengthy list of restraining orders I have against me I’m guessing I never did get the balance quite right.
Harriet is now allowed to take her earrings out having done the necessary six week probation thingy, or whatever it is you do when you have new holes put in your ears. This also means that she is allowed to put new earrings in – I’m not sure whether this is something that you are supposed to do on the hour every hour but that is exactly what she is doing at the moment. She is currently in the kitchen rustling up some buns with some sort of apple filling (actually they might be muffins), and apparently in order to do this you have to remove your flower shaped earrings and replace them with ones that are shaped like turtles (or they could be tortoises)... derrr, everyone knows that! . You never see Jamie or Ainsley making apple based bun type, muffiny things without their reptilian earrings in. (short pause) I just got called in to the kitchen to witness a double-yolked egg, I’m not sure that I expressed the sufficient amount of excitement that I was expected of me – they did look like identical twins though.
Hattie is getting over her disappointment of not being able to do her ballet exam this year because of our trip to Sydney. She can still go up to the next level but she won’t get a certificate, although I’m sure I could cobble something together in photoshop if necessary.
Wendy is almost packed ready for her overseas trip of many flights. She’s having one or two problems meeting the weight requirements (there is a lower weight allowance in South Africa than the UK – 20kg) and also the fact that there could be a sizeable difference in the climactic conditions – especially if the weather in the UK turns a bit autumnal. It does mean that when flying back to Perth from the UK she will have an extra 3kg of baggage allowance – I think is planning on using it for chocolate.
Anyway, I’m off to study my ‘Parenting for Dummies’ manual to ensure that everything runs smoothly whilst Wendy is away... I’m guessing I’ll be reverting to bribery before the week is out.
I leave you with the stunning news that Sunday shopping and Haribo sweets (yes that includes tangfastics and kiddie mix) have arrived in WA.
H

You’re an embarrassment

2010-08-22T15:04:00.002+01:00

One of the great perks of parenthood is the opportunity to be a total embarrassment to your children. The great beauty of it is that it’s something that you don’t even have to work hard at to achieve great results.
Once the kids gain a say in what clothes they are allowed to buy/wear, the best remaining opportunity a parent has for causing great embarrassment is the sleepover. As I found, just last weekend, simply walking around the house singing along (with gusto) to your favourite songs can leave your daughter squirming in distress in front of her friends. Obviously, my rendition was note perfect - but as I was singing along to the Wedding Present at the time that doesn’t mean that it was particularly pleasing on the ear.
And George has discovered that just because you are sleeping over at someone else’s house it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are out of reach of parent-caused shame. He spent most of last evening’s sleepover at his friend’s house fending off texts from his mum reminding him to share his sweets, brush his teeth and not to let the bed bugs bite. She forgot to tell him to make sure that his mates didn’t put pink zinc cream on his eyebrows whilst he was asleep - which of course they did. And by passing on that information to you I am able to continue to pile on the embarrassment, especially now that George has taken to reading the blog to find out exactly what I’ve been saying about him. As a result of which, he asked me to point out that his inoculation last week was not for ‘Nintendo thumb’ but was in fact for ‘couch potato bum’. Actually, that’s a bit unfair on George seeing as he recently gained a place on the Connolly team in the Inter-Schools cross-country. In fact, if anyone should have that injection it should be me. Since the premature demise of my volleyball career (thanks Jay) my exercise regime has been reduced to walking to the shop (okay sometimes I drive) to buy fruit and veg (well, fruit pastilles and potatoes, okay... crisps). I’m not even playing snooker any more due to the fact that the club closed down whilst I was on my two-week-tour of the UK. I came back to find an advert in the paper informing me of the fact that everything was for sale: snooker tables, kitchen equipment, furniture, staff... the lot. I put in an offer for the rather attractive brunette with the sarcastic smile (well it was always sarcastic when she aimed it my way) but I think I was outbid by the old bloke, with the limp, who played on table 5. I’m so unfit at the moment that I managed to tweak a hamstring at work the other day... whilst sitting down. I’m currently researching various alternatives for attaining regular exercise (no, not that). I’ve narrowed the choices down to: indoor soccer, squash, or pole vaulting (looks easy to me). Unfortunately, I can’t really do anything until Wendy has completed her tour of the UK and South Africa so I’ve got another month or so of couch potatoing to look forward to.
George’s sporting abilities may be improved by the fact that he is now able to wear contact lenses. He is trialling them at the moment and seems to be able to put them in and take them out without too many difficulties.
We recently enjoyed a very pleasant family outing to see Florence and the Machine (look, I know you are supposed to have family outings to the zoo, or McDonalds, and not to concerts by popular music performers, but we have to try and balance our ability to embarrass the kids with a certain amount of ‘cool’ parenting) . It was a great show, Florence is very theatrical with a decent set of pipes (and pins to match), and ‘And the Machine’ are a very talented bunch of musicians – it’s the only gig I’ve ever been to that has featured a harp solo (or even a harp at all for that matter). Talking of gigs. If you are in the north of England on 1 September you may want to make your way to the Boardwalk in Sheffield where my 14-year-old nephew is performing with his new band Disfunctioned. Billy is the bass guitar player in the group and I’m not sure how they have managed to land such a major venue for their debut outing. I’ve not heard them but I’m assured that they play both kinds of music... heavy, and metal. I have already made my apologies and said that due to a lack of a bus service between Perth and Sheffield I shall be unable to attend. I have however promised to go and support them should they embark on an Australian tour (so long as they come over to the West, as a lot of acts actually by-pass us and Adelaide and just do the big cities over in the east).
Whilst my sporting pastimes have dried-up of late , I am still attending Art Club. I know, it’s amazing that they haven’t kicked me out yet. Not only am I still going, but they do seem genuinely interested in my style of painting. Comments I have received include: ‘I’ve never seen it done like that before’, ‘it’s a bit small isn’t it?’, ‘have you finished?’, and ‘no-one else has got one like that’. I’m pretty sure that they were talking about my artwork. In fact, they are so intrigued (confused) by my dabblings that they have asked me to give a demonstration of my technique and ideas to the group at the November workshop. As nerve wracking as this prospect is I am helped by the fact that I do have some previous experience of presenting my artwork to an audience. Did I ever tell you about my appearance on South Korean TV? Oh yes, back in the late 90’s they couldn’t get enough of me over there - I managed to create an entire generation of Korean couch potatoes (hence the invention of the vaccine)... well, maybe not. What actually happened was that me and Dusty had a very enjoyable art holiday in St Ives (I say art holiday, but there was a fair amount of eating and drinking, okay mainly drinking involved as well). During one of the Art School sessions a TV crew from the South Korean version of ‘Wish You Were Here’ turned up to film the class. The rather gorgeous female host (who bore absolutely resemblance to Judith Chalmers) decided she wanted to interview me – I’m not fluent in the language but I’m pretty sure that what she said was ‘I really want to chat to this bloke because he looks like one hot stud-muffin to me’ (or something along those lines). I have no evidence that the interview actually made it into the final programme but I do have photographs to prove that such an event did occur (in fact I have them about my person at all times).
I will leave you with the news that, just like you in the UK, we in oz now have a hung parliament. In the end the nation was just not able to choose between the Sheilah and the Budgie Smuggler. As I write this they are both desperately trying to get the 5 Independents and 1 Green on board to help form a Government. It could take a while, who knows Harold Holt might even turn up to resume as Prime Minister before they have sorted it out.

You may feel a small prick

2010-08-15T13:32:00.000+01:00

If you get quezy at the mere suggestion of Injections, piercings and pricks of any kind then look away now... actually, I’m already starting to feel a little peaky myself. This week we are mainly dealing with sharp pointy needles.
Harriet, George and Wendy have all had injections this week in mouths, arms and hands (are you sure you’re not feeling quezy yet?). The first to get the needle was Hattie, she had to have a filling in one of her milk teeth (she declined the choice of having it forcibly removed). According to Harriet’s description of the incident the needle was at least two feet long. She was very brave and probably benefited from the fact that they just did it there and then and she didn’t get time to worry about it (I find I’m the same when I get my hairs cut... both of them). She had had a similar experience just two days before when she decided that she wanted her ears pierced. She had been toying with the idea for well over a year before suddenly deciding that this was the time (a bit like me when I was contemplating buying the ‘The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’* CD...okay that only took a couple of minutes to decide but it seemed a whole lot longer).
I seem to remember that piercings (ears only) were very popular when I was at secondary school, so much so, in fact that there was at least one person in every year that pierced their own ears with a compass. Actually (as my, then, Maths teacher Mr ‘Richo’ Richardson would have corrected me) that should be ‘pair of compasses’. You know, the things with a point at one end and a pencil on the other that you use for drawing circles - not the thing that you use to find out which way to go (no I don’t mean sat-nav, or a policeman). You couldn’t use a navigation compass to pierce your ears - that would be utter madness – whereas using an un-sterilised, blunt pointed bit of metal on your own ear is an eminently more sensible thing to do. No doubt the majority of these people who liked to inflict pain on themselves went on, in later life, to become live studio audience members for ITV sit-coms, Jim Davidson’s agent or Sheffield Wednesday supporters. Anyway, as far as I’m aware the holes in Harriet’s ears were produced by more conventional and hygienic methods. She is very happy with the piercings and as yet (to my great relief) hasn’t mentioned getting any others done (i.e. nose, eyebrow, tongue or belly button... I know there are other possibilities but I don’t even want to think about those).
After a discussion with Wendy on the subject George has indicated that he is never ever, ever having his ears pierced, either conventionally or DIY... we’ll see whether he still feels the same in four years time. Meanwhile, he had his inoculation jabs last Tuesday - one in each arm. He had the tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough vaccine in one arm, and the hepatitis B and ‘Nintendo thumb’ vaccine in the other. I don’t know which arm got which, or whether that matters... but there were some very definite side-effects, namely nocturnal, projectile vomiting (oh yes, the best kind). George and at least four other of his classmates were violently sick during the night, luckily only one of them was actually sleeping at our house at the time (that’s George, of course). Although, whilst I was cleaning up at 2.30am (Wendy somehow slept through the whole episode) I was struggling to see how this could possibly be the work of just one person. Luckily, he soon recovered ... he was well enough to go to school the next day. Well, we sent him anyway.
The brighter ones amongst you (I’m saying nothing) will have worked out by now that it must be Wendy who had the injection into her hand. You will have also worked out that such a procedure is never going to be anything but painful... not many flabby, fleshy bits to inject into in your hand. Not surprisingly, this wasn’t the first idea they had come up with for fixing up her old surfing injury. She damaged a tendon whilst battling 2 metre waves way back in the summer and despite anti-inflamatories, finger straps and lots of verbal encouragement the injury hasn’t cleared up. So, as a last ditch attempt, before she has to go under the knife, they (those clever medical boffins) decided to try a cortisone shot. Not sure if it’s working yet but it has created some very interesting bruising and her biceps are firming up.
As part of his PEAC course this term George is building a model (00 gauge) of his ‘Dream Home’ (it just looks like a normal home but this one doesn’t appear to have his mum and dad in it). In fact, as I type this (very slowly), he is sat next to me hacking through thick card with a Stanley knife and covering the surface of my desk (quite why he couldn’t use his own desk I’m not sure) in generous layers of rather evil smelling glue . Clearly these are the sort of things that you should do only do under the supervision of a responsible adult ... oh dear.
Wendy is still in the process of booking flights for her South Africa/UK trip, so as yet she has been unable to finalise dates/times/flight numbers/aeroplane meals/where her luggage will end up, yet. It’s taking a bit of working out seeing as she is going to be on about 7 or 8 flights during her 3 week trip. The week she gets back from the UK she is going to have to fly over to Sydney for four days to attend a conference with work. Luckily it just happens to coincide with the second week of the school holidays so me and the kids are going to tag along with her (to Sydney that is, not the conference). We have no plans to climb the harbour bridge, although I am quite keen to find out where they film Aerobics Oz Style. All I know is that the Opera House is always in the background, and there are always some balding, middle aged men milling around as well (a role I was born to play).
Anyway, I’m off to watch a new Aussie TV comedy/drama that looks like it might be half decent... the first one I’ve come across in the two-and-a-half years that we have been here.
Later,
H
* The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are an American indie guitar band that ‘I’ recently discovered. They are excellent, albeit with a terrible name.
Please note how I managed to do a whole section on body piercing without once mentioning Queen Victoria’s husband. I wonder if anyone has done a DIY version of that with a pair of compasses. Oohh no.

Where have you been?

2010-08-01T14:26:00.001+01:00

Just before I start I would like to point out that if you haven’t visited this blog for a while (where the chuff have you been?) you might want to find the last story you read and start from there. I don’t want to teach you how to suck eggs (mainly because I don’t know how to do it myself and would therefore be a lousy teacher*) but the reason I say that you should start from the back and work forward is just because I like to develop a joke and continue the theme into the next message (Okay, I like to use exactly the same joke in the next message but word it slightly differently) and if you just read from the most recent story and head back (chronologically) then that just isn’t going to work. I’m only thinking of you.
Some of the clever, technically gifted, and masochistic of you have the blog on RSS (repeat story signal) which tells you when a new (i.e. re-cycled blog is available to read/ignore). But if you are coming back after a long absence please do as I suggest and find the last story you read and start from there. If however the story was ‘I felt the earth move under my feet’ from February 2008, then you might want to order in a take away and a bottle of red because you’ve got some catching up to do. If, however, you are joining us for the first time (run away now whilst you still can) maybe I should just do a quick re-cap of the story so far.
It goes a bit like this... the decision is made, after considerable consideration and research, to move to the land where there are dangerous snakes, sea creatures, creepy crawlies and trees - hell; even the camp beds will try and maim you in oz. But this is also the place where the sun is often out, narrow pot-hole ridden roads are banned, and (so I’m told) attractive women grow on trees (actually, they are probably the dangerous trees I mentioned earlier). We duly packed up, said an emotional farewell to the old country, and flung ourselves into our new life with a confidence the belied the enormity of the move. And it has continued like that, we’ve never doubted that it was the right thing to do - at exactly the right time, although not everything as run smoothly. So, despite having a great time on my UK trip, there were never any qualms about coming back to the antipodes. My money is on Wendy feeling exactly the same after her trip in September (although, with my gambling record...). And so, to end the re-cap Harold wasn’t really dead after all... he had in fact suffered amnesia and joined the Salvos (which is what the Salvation Army call themselves over here, as I told you everyone has to have a nickname – and it usually ends in o)
Now on with the blog. Wendy enjoyed her trip to Sydney to a tax conference, although whether it was the actual conference side of the proceedings or the ‘heavy night’ on Friday that she enjoyed is open to conjecture. Next year’s conference is scheduled to be in Brisbane.

I know what you are going to ask, what has Harriet been up to recently? Good question. Well, she is still dancing twice a week (jazz, tap and ballet – no zumba or pogo yet as far as I’m aware). Unfortunately, we only ever get to see her perform at the end of year show (which is, spookily, held at the end of the year) so it’s difficult to say how she’s progressing but she loves doing it, which is obviously all that really matters. I have a feeling (it’s only a feeling because I never actually bothered to read the letter she brought home with her about it) that she will be taking her Grade 3 ballet exams in October. This will involve extra rehearsals, a touch of nerves and lots of dancing around the house... and I think Harriet might be doing extra stuff as well. I think it’s fair to say that she gets her dancing genes off her mother, and the same could probably go for her ‘baking’ genes. Every weekend she can be relied upon to rustle up something, last week’s marble cake was scrumptious (truly). She basically flies solo on measuring, mixing, assembling and putting in the oven. The only thing she needs help with is remembering to take things out of the oven again before the smoke alarm goes off (and no she doesn’t get that from me. It’s like her messy gene... we just don’t know where it originates from). This weekend she has mainly been making cheese straws for a school project, she was supposed to have a friend come over to help make them but unfortunately she succumbed to illness so Harriet had to go it alone. The results looked very good but as she needs enough to feed the entire class (and teachers) we weren’t allowed to tuck in.

Me and the kids finally saw an Emu this weekend (or is that Emo? You know, it’s like an ostrich but with a more cheery outlook on life), we had previously seen most of the other uniquely Australian creatures but not an emu.
Anyway, that’s all for now, next time I will catch up on George’s news, there’s quite a lot of it... you might want to consider ordering out again.
H

*the same would also be true of sword swallowing and for that matter fire eating. In fact as a general rule of thumb, if it’s anything to do with putting things in your mouth then I’m probably not the best person in the world to be teaching you. I mean, I will give it a go but the outcome could be very messy indeed.

Back before you know it

2010-07-20T13:59:00.002+01:00

There are several things that I learnt on my recent to visit to the UK:
1- Never play football with a spaniel. They don’t bounce properly, and it’s harder to get swerve on them than with the Jabulani ball, plus when you kick them they make more noise than a vuvuzela, oh and yeah the rspca will be round in a shot. Also, don’t play football against a spaniel because they run rings around you and make you look as slow as John Terry. Whether they nutmeg you or not is an optional extra (it helps if one of you has consumed alcohol). To be fair to me, Larry spaniel is sure to be another big money signing for Man City before the end of the summer.
2- Don’t expect train drivers on the Manchester Victoria line to let you on the train, even if it is 11 o’ clock at night, throwing it down with rain and he’s not leaving the station for another 20 seconds. Still, at least we managed to get back to the pub for another pint before the next (and last) train turned up... it was still raining but I didn’t really notice.
3- There’s a nice part of Goole. I didn’t get any photos of it though – I didn’t believe Stacey when she told me such an area existed so I left my camera behind. Apparently this disbelief has been going on for decades and that’s why there are no decent photos of Goole.
4- The best way to combat jet lag is to spend time in the company of a two-year-old boy.
5- Never change your mind when backing horses, always go with your first choice. Actually, I already knew this one, but for some inexplicable reason chose to ignore it. The more important rule is never telling anyone you changed your mind because they’ll give you hell about it afterwards. My first choice had been Avenues and Alleyways which duly romped home (it had time to stop to wave to the cameras) at 7-1. My second choice didn’t.
6- I should have listened when all the giants of rock - : the likes of the Rolling Stones, Muse, Led Zeppelin and the Nolans said that touring was hard work. It really is. A different bed every night, drunk every night, recreational drugs (okay, Lions Sports mixtures and Haribo mix) every night, a different set of groupies every... hang on a minute what happened to the groupies? I didn’t even get a half-decent Nolan hanging around for me.
7- If people hang out ‘Welcome Home’ signs, when you haven’t been seen for two-and-a-half years, the neighbours will simply assume that you have made parole this time and have been let out of jail. The fact that I was (apparently) pasty faced and looked like I hadn’t seen the sun for a while didn’t help. I did point out that there are several reasons for my pastiness:
a) I was coming from the Oz winter,
b) I’m an Emu (or is that Emo? You know, it’s like a Goth but with a less cheery outlook on life),
c) The sun is a bit powerful over here so you tend not to just sit around in it; we stay active and wear factor 30 sun block (which is basically white paint).
d) Winona Ryder (or maybe that’s the reason that I’m only partially sighted).
8- Being locked in a pub is a good thing. I had never been ‘locked in’ before, so was pleasantly surprised to find that it is actually a pleasant experience – largely down to the fact that I found somebody that I could talk to about sport, music and general bobbins. Bearing in mind the previous point (No.6) I did end up behind bars several times during the evening. The route back from the toilet was very poorly marked and I found myself in the Bet Lynch position on more than one occasion that night. Having discovered the delights of the ‘lock-in’ imagine my joy when two nights later I actually slept in a pub.
9- Trains disappear between Hull and Goole – Lord Lucan is on the train that should have got to Goole at 13:09 (11 July 2010) on its way to Doncaster... more importantly Shergar is driving it.
10- Don’t ever try to smuggle a half-eaten kebab through Australian customs. Not that a kebab should be half-eaten after a 19 hour flight. I had it re-confirmed that the kebab is a unit of measurement i.e. Pete lives two kebabs from the Bradford Road. When were you in Huddersfield? Two kebabs ago.
Of course there are lots of people I must thank for making my holiday such a great success, and good fun despite it being so hectic. But frankly I’m not going to name names. You were all brilliant hosts and pandered to my every whim (I’m sorry but toast simply must be buttered from left to right and a cup of tea has to match the pantone colour 730 (one for all the graphic designers out there) - if you are working on the Dulux colour chart then ‘Cuddlepot’ will suffice). I do however have to say a big thanks to my little brother who very kindly let me hijack his birthday party and then took a week off work to chauffeur me around visiting people he’d never met before. Okay, so all the folks we met up with spent more time chatting to Bob than to me, having discovered that he was the funny man and I was the straight man (ignore all those rumours you heard previously). In fact you could say we were like Little and Large (hold on, surely there wasn’t actually a funny man in that partnership).
There are many other people that I would have liked to have forced myself on but there simply wasn’t time. I did get round West, South, North and East Yorkshire (I may also have ducked into Nottinghamshire at one point but it was under the cover of darkness so I think I got away with it). I apologise to all those people that I did actually see.
I arrived home to find that I hadn’t been missed at all. In fact I’ve been totally phased out. George is doing all the chores that I used to do, and in the bedroom Wendy has replaced me with an electric blanket and a good book (I think she said book). If I hadn’t been laden down with gifts I might never have been allowed back in. Wendy and the kids went down to Albany for their holidays and had a good time by all accounts, although the weather turned a bit nasty towards the end of the week.
Right I’m off now, I’m just about back on the right time zone now and escaped any serious jet lag – I was a bit zombified on Saturday to be frank it was difficult to tell it apart from my usual state. Wendy and George are off to a festival on Saturday and then Wendy nips down the road to Sydney next Wednesday, for a few days.
Back soon,
H

Who’s your money on to win the Mercury Music Prize? I was thinking that Mumford and Sons would get it but now I’ve changed my mind and reckon it will be Paul Weller – Waking the Nation (not heard it but it’s had some rave reviews). I can hear the odds being slashed on the banjo toting, London four-piece as we speak.

Political upheaval

2010-06-27T15:12:00.000+01:00

No, unfortunately, I’ve haven’t set off yet.
Just thought I would give you a brief account of a week of Australian political intrigue. I have to confess that I am also killing time before the England/Germany game kicks off. You’ll be disappointed to hear that I am confidently predicting an England victory. Anyway, back to the politics. We woke up on Thursday morning to discover that we had lost our Prime Minister... well I know he was there when I went to bed, is he with your car keys? Maybe he’s in your other trousers (that, doesn’t sound right does it? And surprisingly, for a politician, he wasn’t actually ousted for sexual improprieties, misappropriation of funds or drug/alcohol issues... but more of that later). In fact, he wasn’t lost at all (unlike Harold Holt*), Mr Rudd was in fact ousted in a bloodless coup. Spookily I used that phrase in my last blog, for no apparent reason, and then on Friday the entire Aussie media is using it ad nauseam. This week I am going to drop in the phrase ‘the hottest thing since Kajagoogoo’ and I’ll be greatly surprised if it’s not being universally used by this time next week.
*Harold Holt was the 17th Prime Minister of Australia who disappeared after going swimming in the sea in December 1967 and has never been found.
Kevin Rudd was, in fact, dethroned because the opinion polls had shown him slump in popularity from being the greatest thing since sliced bread (or ‘the hottest thing since Kajagoogoo’) 18 months ago (when he gave most of us $900 dollars to go and spend willy nilly) to now being as popular as the person who invented the vuvazaela. One of his biggest mistakes was to put ex-Midnight Oil front man, Peter Garrett (Minister for the Environment) in charge of a scheme to supply roof insulation to hundreds of thousands of homes across the country, thus reducing energy consumption. There were over $2 billion of funds sloshing around in the system for this scheme which succeeded in attracting all sorts of cowboys and ‘shonky’ builders. The upshot was that some of the builders, who were untrained in the correct installation methods, erroneously used metal fasteners to hold the insulation in place, which made the roofs ‘live’, killing four installers and causing more than 90 house fires. Mr Garrett subsequently lost his job and was demoted to become Minister for the Arts.
Most recently the former Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, has had the temerity to try and impose a tax on the fat cat mining companies who then threatened to go elsewhere. And so it was that, with his popularity waning, and an election just around the corner, Kevin was advised to fall on his sword. And so we have a new PM (albeit temporarily), who just happens to be female, ranga (that’s Australian for ginger) and from South Wales (which to the majority of the country is somewhat preferable to being from New South Wales).
The other major political story of the week was that George was duly elected student leader for Wattle (his faction). In the end he settled on the ‘I shall be your spokesman’ speech (he rejected ‘the ‘rivers of blood’, ‘ich ein Berliner’ and ‘Gwyneth Paltrows Oscar acceptance’ speeches). He is already practicing his ‘unfortunately we were unable to deliver on our promises because of the infrastructure that we inherited from the previous administration’ excuses. As a student leader he will get to captain his faction (Wattle) at the Winter Carnival (which is school sports day to you and me). They have the sports day in winter because that way they have to deal with far fewer cases of sun stroke.
We also heard last week that George has been accepted into the specialist music programme at Ocean Reef High School. He had to pass two tests to obtain a place in the programme. The first test was an audition where he had to play his guitar and then sing to a panel of judges (George never said whether any of the judges wore trousers that came up to his chest or not). George chose as his song the Australian national anthem (no, not beds are burning). The second part of the audition was a written test.
I’ve got to go now, they are playing the English National Anthem (no, not ‘too shy’) but when I get back from the UK trip I promise to bring you up-to-date with all of Wendy and Harriet’s news. I can tell you that Harriet recently found her Nintendo DS charger that had been missing for 18 months (you never know, perhaps she’ll find Harold Holt next). And Wendy has been promoted at work and is now Manager of Business Services.
See you soon.
H

Jiggery pokery, Aussie skulduggery

2010-06-19T09:07:00.000+01:00

As you will have gathered from the Socceroos’ opening game of the World Cup, we in Australia are also very grateful to the Germans for their role in bailing out the ‘Euro’. We were so grateful in fact that we handed them a comfortable 4-0 victory to start their campaign (it doesn’t appear to have done them much good subsequently though). Not that England has started much better than ‘us’ Aussies. After their first two performances there is a very good chance that, by the time I touch down on British soil, the nation’s World Cup fever may be little more than a slight temperature and a tummy ache. How’s it go? There are no easy games in International football these days, it was too windy/not windy enough/the wrong type of wind, the opposition had been eating yogurt (it’s always good to get a chess reference in I find*).
Obviously, I could spend the entire blog talking balls (what’s new there then?), horns, tattoos and shirt designs but I shall try my best to refrain from doing so.
I believe I can shed some light on a strange phenomenon that has been occurring recently. You may have been awoken by the sound of a very loud siren at around midnight (BST) over the last couple of nights, You thought that it was the car alarm of the spotty chav kid over the road with the Honda Civic (complete with body kit and go faster stripes – that’s the Civic not the Chav). Well, for once, the Chavs aren’t to blame (not even the Bogans – a sort of Aussie equivalent) ... I can now reveal that it was the sound of George’s alarm. In an attempt to wangle himself an extra half-an hour in bed on these cold, dark wintry mornings he asked for an alarm clock. We had initially tried a Heath Robinson type device (think, classic Honda ‘It just works’ advert from about 5 years ago and it will give you some idea of the contraption we devised). But the mouse didn’t always eat the bacon rind at the same speed, so some mornings George was getting up at 3.53am and the next day it would be noon before the candle burnt through the copy of ‘Railway Modeller Monthly’ thus sounding the gong and awakening him from his slumbers. And so we invested in an alarm clock, that wasn’t the end of the experimentation however. On the first morning, we tried using the radio alarm to rouse him from his nocturnal dreaming... but to no avail. Me and Harriet witnessed him sleep right through an entire song with the volume cranked up to 11 (ironically the song was ‘We close our eyes’ by Go West). So, we have changed to ‘buzzer’ mode with some considerable success but with unforeseen side effects – the RAAF have been scrambled twice in response to the alarm going off. Unfortunately my tactic of telling Wendy that it was an alarm to signify the onset of a nuclear attack and therefore we should ‘make the most’ (nudge nudge, wink, wink) of the time we had left didn’t have the effect I had hoped for... she went to the fridge to get some chocolate to eat whilst watching Two and a Half Men (it’s on TV 24 hours-a-day here... even more than that on a Monday).
George (if he gets out of bed) is attempting to become a student leader in the forthcoming school elections. It’s his second try at running for Office; his first attempt floundered when his policies of zero-homework, half-day closing on Fridays and the wearing of i-pods at all-times to be compulsory were deemed inadmissible. I’m not sure what manifesto he is running on this time but he may be forced to form a coalition (the first since the Tim-Tam pact back in 1974) in order to seize power. Failing that he may have to fall back on the bloodless coup.
In another coup (not heard reports of any bloodshed yet) Wendy was able to successfully hi-jack her firm’s ‘end of tax year’ event and turn it into ‘Wendy’s end of 39 years’ party. Clearly such blatant manipulation of other people’s parties should not be condoned in any way, indeed I frown upon such actions.
Just as an aside to the England vs Algeria match, would I be alone in agreeing whole-heartedly with poor Mr Rooney that the fans who had travelled a measly few thousand miles and spent a miserly few thousand quid have absolutely no right to boo an England team who had clearly put up a manful performance against a brilliant outfit, clearly destined to be the next World Champions. I can’t really comment on the performance – I recorded it but now have no intention of wasting the 90 minutes it would take to watch it – I’m going outside to watch the washing dry instead (luckily, today we’ve got the right kind of ‘drying’ wind). Talking of Rooney, we are off to see Shrek (forever after) shortly as part of Wendy’s birthday treat (okay, so she doesn’t like animated films but I never claimed to have put much thought into it).
This is likely to be the last blog before my UK trip. I am looking forward to seeing a select few of you in a couple of weeks at the ‘Great to see Harry again Party’. Some of you may know it by its previous title of ‘Bob’s 40th birthday party’ – but it has subsequently been re-prioritised (to use the modern lingo) – not sure whether my demands for a bouncy castle, a marching band and the Krankies will have been adhered to, but I’m sure it will be good fun anyway.
See you soon,
H
Refers to the infamous Karpov v Korchnoi match of 1974... noted for controversies involving yogurts, swivel chairs and sunglasses. I don’t recall who won.

4-4-2 or the Christmas tree?

2010-06-07T13:57:00.002+01:00

As I confidently predicted previously, Germany did indeed win Eurovision (okay I might have misspelt it slightly). Clearly this was as a result of a thank-you vote for bailing out the Euro and had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the female singer was a ‘bit fit’ - apparently. Luckily, I have yet to hear any of the 24 entries so I’ve not got a clue if the song was any good. Unlike the UK general election; I don’t actually get a vote in Eurovision. I didn’t cast my vote in the uk election because I was unable to ascertain what the other parties’ position was on the ‘cider’ tax. And it didn’t seem quite right that I should get a vote when I don’t have to face the consequences of my actions.
We went to see our friends’ new baby yesterday which resulted in two major incidents. Firstly, I was almost forcibly removed from the hospital – apparently it’s wrong to shout at a three day-old boy because he has single-handedly ruined your beach volleyball career. Secondly, having seen the helpless, bald, dribbling little fella it dawned on me just how much they rely on us... it was at this pointI realised I was sat in front of a mirror and that little Jay was actually at the other side of the room. Then of course it hits you just how grown-up George and Harriet are now... scarily so. They are pretty much self-sufficient in most things and with just a little gentle persuasion (using electrified cattle-prods) can be really helpful around the house – especially if the remote control has gone missing and I need the channel changing. Obviously this will all change when George enters his teens next year but it’s good while it lasts. Due to an administration error, I fell asleep before she did, Harriet no longer believes in the existence of the tooth fairy – she still accepts the money though (and most credit/debit cards... sorry we don’t accept SOLO). You may want to vet this blog before you let impressionable ‘tooth fairy’ believers read it (Cathy you might want to make sure Dave doesn’t see it). The good thing about Hattie realising that fairies might not exist is that I no longer have to manufacture my own special brand of fairy dust (using a unique blend of pencil shavings, glitter, 11 herbs and spices and dandruff) each time a tooth falls out.
Wendy’s birthday ‘celebrations’ have started in earnest – she has just got back from a 3 day trip to Broome. For those of you whose knowledge of the geography of Western Australia is a little on the thin side (Kate Moss springs to mind) – Broome is a (mainly) tourist destination situated a mere 2000km north of Perth (a two-and-a-half hour flight). Population 14,000; Climate-tropical; It is the gateway to the Kimberley region and boasts the world famous Cable beach and is known for its breathtaking sunsets and camels. Enough of the Tourism Board spiel – more importantly , there appears to be some sort of irregular atmospheric pressure up there because Wendy, Colleen and Jackie all came back with terrible headaches.
To welcome her back from her trip I arranged a mountain of ironing, that we’d saved for her, into the number ‘40’... a nice touch don’t you think? Not that I’m going to let on how old she is going to be or anything.
I am entering my final week of training in preparation for the big kick-off this week, no not Big Brother 10.... the World Cup. My training has mainly involved being able to hold the remote control, a bottle of cider and a packet of porky scratchings all at the same time (who says men can’t multi-task). Obviously, on that diet, I am at the peak of physical fitness but it could all be won and lost on stamina. We are six hours in front of South Africa so there are going to be some late kick-offs (England’s first two games both get under way at 2.30am). With this in mind I have been slowly increasing my caffeine intake. My daily consumption now is 3 red bulls, 5 cokes, 37 cups of tea and a shot of Irn Bru. I’m going to have no problem staying awake to watch the game... but having taken on board that much liquid I may have to set up a TV in the loo. It's actually quite a relief to be in a country where the build up to the World Cup is greeted with realism and not unrealistic expectations. No one talks about the Socceroos (ridiculous name, I know, but all Aussie teams have got to have a nickname, be it the Wallabies, Opals, Kookaburras or the Matildas) winning the Cup, at best they might sneak out of the group. They are, however, expected to win Big Brother 10.
Right , I’m off to practice my long throw-ins... seeing if I can toss my empty bottles into the recycling bin without leaving the safety of the couch.
I’ll see some of you lucky people very soon,
H

Merit

2010-05-24T15:12:00.001+01:00

Do you remember when you could stay out late on a weekend and it didn’t mean that for the whole of the next week you would have to be tucked up in bed by 7 o’ clock or end up walking around like a zombie during the daytime for the next seven days? No, me neither – both the fatigue and memory loss are signs of something... ageing probably (I’d like to say premature ageing – but I’m not sure that would be accurate. Although, apparently, 40 is the new black). As you may have guessed, I have been doing a passable ‘Shaun of the Dead’ impersonation this last week after staying out beyond the witching hour on Sunday. I was at a gig (Vampire Weekend). Whilst there I got involved in a conversation whereby we tried to determine who would win in a fight between a Moose and a Hippopotamus (just one of each – mainly because we couldn’t agree on what the correct plurals were for them). I pointed out that for this fight to take place one of the creatures would have to travel a very long way and would therefore be at a distinct disadvantage. With this in mind we decided that a neutral venue (roughly half-way) should be selected – we plumped for ‘Stow on the Wold’. I know what you’re thinking, but no, I wasn’t drunk – and for a very good reason (no, don’t be silly, not because I had to be at work the following day)... no, it was because it cost $9 (£6) for one bottle of becks (nothing fancy, just your normal bog standard bottle). That is pretty much the standard price, in bars, over here – not just in the city centre pubs. I just had the one bottle, with a straw, and made it last. The band were very good by the way, I should point out that the conversation took place before they came on... not during their set... that’s just bad form.
As it turned out I didn’t have to sleep-walk my way through the entire week because I managed to wangle Friday off work. We got a text through early in the week to say that ‘your child will be receiving a merit award at this week’s assembly’. There was no indication of which child it was - although, when quizzed George was pretty confident that it wasn’t him (in fact he was a bit too confident for my liking). It was indeed Harriet that received the award for ‘contributing great ideas to class discussions’... I think she must have put forward the moose/hippo/fight question. (Tafka) Hattie’s class also won the ‘Art Award’ for the week and just got pipped into second place for the ‘Sports Award’. George and Hattie’s faction, Wattle (we used to call them houses in my day) also won the faction competition for the week. In fact, I think they must have known I was going because they certainly made it worth my while attending. I even got to see George twiddling his knobs – he has the role of sound engineer/roadie for school Assemblies. The only technical difficulties encountered came at the end of the Assembly – one of the teachers was getting George to crank up the volume of the music, to accompany the kids back to the class, up to 11. The Deputy Head on the other was of the opinion that it should be quieter – as the music was Dancing Queen by Abba I have to admit that I was on the side of the Deputy Head. Talking of Abba, we must be dangerously near to that time of year again... Eurovision (put your money on Greece – it’s nailed on... I should probably have checked to see if they are actually in it before making such a bold prediction, but hey. I just think that in a bid to stabilise their fragile economy they will be given a confidence boosting Eurovision win... totally on merit of course).
George got a new pair of school shoes yesterday (how exciting is this blog getting?). I only mention it because they aren’t actually shoes at all; they are joggers (which translates into English as ‘trainers’). Because the school uniform is basically a polo shirt and tailored shorts they don’t bother getting changed for PE you just do it as you are... so they have joggers as part of the uniform. The really good thing about not having a separate PE kit means that you can’t forget it, and therefore you never have to suffer the indignity of having to do the exercises in your underwear... not that that ever happened to me - well, maybe once (it wouldn’t have been quite so bad if I hadn’t actually decide to ‘go commando’ that day). At least there were no mobile phones in those days (in fact, I think, the phone was still at the prototype stage) so I can safely say that there is no footage of me, on you tube/MySpace. etc., prancing about in my underwear – well, there may be one but that was a totally different incident. Anyway, George got a new pair of school shoes (trainers) yesterday and they are black, red and flouro green but not necessarily in that order. It may be an optical illusion brought on by its vividness but the flouro green seems to be the predominating colour. We were slightly concerned that these day-glo creations may constitute a breach of school regulations, but the only comment George got from his teacher was that they were ‘awesome’ and where did you get them from? If you too, are thinking of getting a pair they are called ‘Asics Gel-Busselton 2’s’ (that doesn’t sound much like the name of a training shoe does it? it’s more like some sort of code). I definitely won’t be getting a pair - there’s not enough beige in the design for my elderly tastes.
Partly as a treat for their good school work, and partly because we are running out of babysitting options, we are taking the kids to see Florence and the Machine. Harriet is currently a big fan, this week – last week it was Taylor Swift (I was going to say Taylor Dayne but that was an entirely different decade). In truth, Wendy, George and Hattie are going to watch ‘Florence’, I’m just going to give my support to ‘and the machine’. The gig isn’t until August and I will have been to the UK and back by then, Wendy will have had another trip to Sydney and the glow from George’s shoes may have diminished a little.
Next week, Wendy is flying, up north, to Broome as part of her birthday celebrations... I’ve got to go now to warn the Broomies of the forthcoming invasion.
By the way, make the most of the good weather, because the first two weeks of July are going to be the wettest on record (put your money on snow – it’s nailed on).

Around the world in a tea daze

2010-05-15T14:31:00.002+01:00

You may have caught something of the story of the sixteen year-old Australian, Jessica Watson, who today completed her single-handed/unassisted journey around the world in a 34foot pink yacht. She is the youngest person to have completed such a journey (not necessarily in a pink boat) but she isn’t an official record-holder because apparently she didn’t sail far enough. Eh? She sailed around the World – how’s that not far enough? The fact that she made it round is a cause for national pride, especially after something of an inauspicious start. She was making her way down from Brisbane to Sydney to start the journey when she bumped into a 60,000 ton Chinese container ship. The ship suffered extensive damage – they’ll never get that scratch out with t-cut. Despite this hiccup she managed to get a new hull and mast in time to set off last October. However, she had no further set-backs on her epic journey, I think the word had got out and all the giant super-tankers were steering well clear of her. Even the Somali pirates left her well alone.
I may sound somewhat disparaging of her incredible journey but that’s only because I completed a much more arduous solo feat when I was a mere boy of sixteen. I once voyaged to the bottom of the road to get a box of teabags (single-handedly, mind – only because on this occasion I had failed to persuade/bribe Bob to go instead of me).
In another feat of human endeavour, George and Harriet have this week gained their 400m gold swimming awards. In order to graduate from this level they had to swim: 400m freestyle, 75m backstroke, 75m breaststroke, 25m butterfly and about 10m doggy paddle. According to the certificate, they achieved all this under ‘Chain swim rules’ – I’ve not got a clue what they are. Do you think it’s where you swim ¾ of a length, then get out and then two minutes later get back in to swim another length? No, maybe not. Interestingly, the breaststroke is considered the lowliest of the strokes over here and you are considered weird if it’s your chosen stroke – on the other hand butterfly is considered normal. Competition breaststrokers (over here) are to swimming what goalkeepers are to football – basket cases.
Wendy had a fun-time with her exam to prove that she’s competent at working in the English language. She passed with flying colours. You couldn’t take the exam without showing your passport first – the ex-pat security guard couldn’t understand why Wendy was doing the test when she had a British passport... her answer contained several expletives. There was an Arab gentleman taking the test (there were about 75 people taking it all told) who was entertaining himself by guessing the nationalities of the people there. He asked Wendy if she was German, he looked a little confused when she said she was English – I think he attributed this answer to being part of the fabled German sense of humour. Still, she passed so that’s over with, well almost. If she doesn’t sit her course within 4 years she would have to sit the test again!
George had his school trip to Rottnest last week, and it passed without incident or sea-sickness (as a result he’s now planning to sail around the world - all the way around, the wrong way). He came back with boatloads of interesting facts about Rottnest, like: why no Aboriginal people ever visit the island, why it was a key strategic position in WWII, the fact that there is no source of fresh water on the island. Water for the inhabitants is produced via a de-salination plant, if this plant was to fail there is a back-up... you get to drink your own urine. Not just yours, that of the other inhabitants as well – it’s been treated and is perfectly safe... apparently. Not surprisingly the Quokkas just stick to drinking the early morning due and skimming the top water of the salt lakes.
Right I’m off to start doing my warm-up exercises before the FA Cup final kicks-off... where’s that bottle opener?

If you don’t want to know the score...

2010-05-01T10:58:00.000+01:00

look away now.
I remember, when Robbie Fowler signed for Leeds United, Daniel Craig (or it might have been Pierce Brosnan) said to me ‘that’s the final piece in the jigsaw’. If he was thinking of a jigsaw depicting catastrophic financial ruin and getting relegated to the third tier of English football then indeed he was right (sounds like my kind of jigsaw). It was with some interest therefore that I followed the story of the aforementioned Mr Fowler signing for local club Perth Glory this week. He has been signed in an attempt to build on the team’s success this season in which they reached the Quarter finals of the A League. At the press conference to mark his arrival there was no mention of jigsaw pieces (final or otherwise) or indeed of board games of any kind. Instead they seem to concentrate on the fact that whilst Robbie had been keen to come to Perth for football reasons, Mrs Robbie had been keen to go to Sydney for shopping reasons (they stay open ‘til after it gets dark you know). At the end of the day, football was the winner, and we in the west are over the moon Brian. The signing of the former Anfield legend is sure to get a few more supporters through the gates – me for starters. Hopefully my patronage won’t do to Perth Glory what it has done to the Melbourne Storm Rugby League team. Less than 24 hours after I had purchased tickets, to watch them play over here in June, they had been stripped of their title and docked all of their points for the present season (including any they accrue for here-on-in). Effectively, their season is over and they have nothing to play for... making the game meaningless (which is not unlike most of the Doncaster Rovers games I watched in the late 1970s). I clearly have an awesome power if I can bring about such a rapid demise simply by buying a ticket to see them... this week I shall be buying tickets to see Justin Beiber, Manchester United and Noel Edmonds.
Not sure if I mentioned it before but my beach volleyball career has been put on hold due to pregnancy. Steven and Vicky, the central core of the team, went on holiday to Europe last year taking in all of the romantic destinations... Vienna, Venice, Paris, and Stoke. And what do you know, when they get back Steven was pregnant, or was it Vicky? (You’ve probably guessed that I listened even less in Biology lessons than I did in Geography). Actually, I’ve remembered now it was definitely Vicky because she was our inspirational leader and as such she was irreplaceable which is why we decided to call it a day. Well, that and the fact that as a ‘mixed’ team we had to have at least two women playing for us and for some inexplicable reason we found it very hard to recruit women. Even when I promised to keep my knees covered up they declined to join. So, no more volleyball, I have taken up another physically demanding sport... snooker. Judging by my efforts last Thursday I don’t think Neil Robertson has to worry about losing his position as the top Australian snooker player for a little while yet. My problem is that I’ve got a left-handed cue, the balls spin the other way in the southern hemisphere, I can’t see anything further than 8 inches in front of me... oh yeah, and I’m rubbish. Aussie Robertson’s path to the semi-final has been met with total indifference by the media over here. Obviously, the papers in the West don’t cover it because he’s from Melbourne but even the national ABC radio and TV channels haven’t bothered reporting on his progress. It took me about an hour to even find the results in the local paper and then they were disguised as a crossword question. It’s weird really because the paper has lots of coverage of US sports and netball (which I don’t mind because there are usually some photos to go with it) and there’s always a page of surfing news. This week the surfing news is that George and Wendy have taken up the sport. Is it a sport do you reckon or is it a pastime like crocheting or doing jigsaw puzzles? Does that sound like sour grapes because I can’t do it? Yes, you are probably right. Not that I’m really tempted to try it, I have enough trouble simply standing up let alone trying to balance on an ironing board whilst perched precariously on top of a 10 foot wave. Plus, I think we are all agreed, the world probably isn’t ready for the sight of me in a wetsuit. Wendy and George have got a seven foot board to share and at the moment they are managing to do so amicably (taking it in turns to use it, not both stood on it at the same time). Hopefully we will be able to get to the beach tomorrow morning to watch them battle the waves of the Indian Ocean (well that’s the plan at the moment... it all depends on how early morning is).
I realise that there has been a heavy sport-bias in this instalment – so, sorry if you don’t like sport (it must be horrible for you).
Right I’m off now to see if I can find out how Robbo is progressing in the semi-final.

A Rose by any other name

2010-04-17T07:43:00.002+01:00

Hello peeps
I can confirm that the holes in the cafe blinds were definitely not the size of snooker balls- they were definitely more like golf balls.I point this out because I suddenly realised that the blinds are actually within a dodgy shots distance of the snooker table (and believe me there are plenty of dodgy shots on our snooker table). I don’t want the insurance assessors (who are regular readers of the blog, along with politicians, netball referees and minor TV personalities) to get the impression that poor ball control, and not hail damage, was responsible for the extensive damage. I still hold that very large moths, with strange dietary needs created the holes. The assessors have already decreed that Wendy’s car can be saved, the garage have decreed that it is likely to be eight weeks before it’s fixed... uthhsssshhhh (that is the sound of a mechanic sucking air in through his, or her, teeth. What do you mean that’s not how it’s spelt, how would you spell it then?)... got to wait for the parts to come from Japan (it would appear from that length of time that they are coming via Weston-Super-Mare). All of the mechanics, windscreen specialists, tree surgeons, builders and piano tuners in the state are doing a roaring trade post-storm (okay, maybe not the piano tuners). In fact, it’s very difficult to get a tradesman even in normal circumstances but it’s nigh on impossible now. It’s okay though because me and George have been watching the entire first series of the A-team and have subsequently built some very handy DIY gadgets using only the entire contents of the garage, an arc welder and the novels of PG Woodhouse. Granted, at this early stage there are a few teething problems and we are creating more damage than we are fixing but I’m sure the plan will come together in the end. Are you all looking forward to the A-team film coming out? We get it at the beginning of June, I’m guessing that it isn’t going to be a ‘chick flick’... in fact I’d be very much surprised if the target audience isn’t 40 (ish) year-old men and 12 year-old boys.

‘Tis the calm before the storm. Later, we will be playing host to Harriet’s birthday party... yes it’s here at last. One of the ‘chosen’ guests couldn’t make it (as we are still in the Easter holidays) so the party bag with her name on it (which has been prepared since Christmas) has been hastily redecorated. I’m sure that Sophie won’t notice that whilst all the letters of her name are there, they aren’t necessarily in the right order.
The two most dangerous jobs to be done before the party have been completed, namely: the camp beds have been assembled without serious injury or the use of a safety net; and a space has been cleared in Harriet’s bedroom (machete’s, industrial jet-cleaners, 16 bin-liners, and a baboon called Nigel* were used in the process). The space is just big enough to fit two camp beds (I was so tempted to do the ‘camp’ joke again).
The more observant amongst you (you know who you are) will have noticed that I keep referring to Hattie as Harriet, there is a very good reason for this. The young lady in question has decreed that henceforth she will be known by her ‘correct’ name. There are several reasons for this, but the main one is the fact that in the local dialect she is known as ‘Haddie’ – which she is understandably not too keen on. So, for the moment she is Harriet or ‘@&’ ... the artist formerly known as’. The main problem with this name change is that it becomes more difficult to let her know she is being told off. In future when we are admonishing her, it will have to be ‘HARRIET ROSE DAVIES’ go and tidy your room (which, I’m sure, will still have absolutely no effect). For those of you who have already sent birthday cards with Hattie on don’t worry... the changeover is a work in progress and as long as you have written it in an English accent it will be perfectly acceptable. I suspect that when we have successfully reverted to calling her Harriet she will decide that she wants to be called Rose, or maybe Thing A, or Chocolate Thunder or Bob.

Wendy’s course at Howling Mad Murdoch and her trip to the UK have been delayed (neither delay was caused by Volcanic eruptions on Islands formerly ruled by Denmark). She may be heading to northern Europe in September/Octoberish and the course has been pencilled in for early next year (incidentally, with my guidance, she used a 2B pencil because it’s easier to rub out... see, my seven years at college wasn’t entirely wasted). She is, however, still having to sit a test next Saturday (which will take all day) to prove she is competent in the English language. This includes listening, reading and writing which she should be fine with. The problem could arise with the speaking interview... Essex accent? (I’m well aware that this is a case of pot/kettle/black and that with my slight northern twang I clearly haven’t got a leg to stand on). Needless to say she’s very happy about having to spend half the weekend sitting the test.
Right, I’ve got to go now to be tested on whether my English skills are up to the task of buying several CD’s, a book and a crate of cider. I’m thinking that I could probably purchase the last item using sign language only (indeed, if I’ve already had a couple of apple based beverages the power of speech probably won’t be available to me anyway). Back soon.
*We have, as yet, been unable to ascertain Nigel’s role in the clear-up process.

As reported on GMTV

2010-03-24T13:31:00.002Z

The shower never did turn up last Tuesday. Instead, nearly a week later, we got the mother and father of all storms. As you know, I’m a man of limited vocabulary (amongst other limitations), so I won’t attempt to describe the rather biblical downpour we received. As reported, on GMTV, we had hailstones as big as tennis balls (6.7cm diameter), other reports said they were the size of golf balls (4.2cm diameter). Why do they only ever use those two as points of reference? I would expect that the correct size is somewhere in between, say perhaps snooker ball sized (5.2cm diameter). Anyway whatever size they were they came down like stair rods, except they were more or less coming down horizontally (so not like stair rods at all). I knew I shouldn’t have tried to describe it. However they came down, whatever size they were, they did some serious damage – especially to Wendy’s car (and several thousand other cars). Her windscreen was shattered, a wing mirror was totally removed and she has got large dents in almost every panel (I was going to say something about her bodywork looking a bit rough but it might be misconstrued). In fact the insurers are probably going to write it off (the car), but it could be several days until she finds out. She’s fairly miffed, apart from anything else she had lovingly cleaned the car inside and out less than 24 hours before the precipitous attack. I knew my policy of not cleaning my car would eventually be vindicated. It’s not like the lack of visibility through my dust laden windscreen is in anyway going to be detrimental to my already shoddy driving ability.
Back to the storm. At home, we got away with a couple of damp patches in the laundry room (and no they weren’t as a result of my reaction to the thunder and lightning that was raging outside) and the destruction of the cafe blinds in the back yard. The plastic blinds are full of snooker ball shaped holes. One tip for you, if you are ever in a storm with hailstones the size of _________ (insert ball of your choice here) don’t give in to the temptation to look up to see where they are coming from (just accept that they are coming from above). One lady ignored this advice and ended up with a rather large gash just above her eyebrow – no, it wasn’t me. I’m not saying I wouldn’t be dim enough to do such a thing but luckily I was stuck in a crowded train, inside a flooded tunnel, at the time so I didn’t get the opportunity.
The weather is back to normal now, although for the last two nights the sky has been lit up by electrical storm activity.
Before the apocalyptic weather events of this week had destroyed her car Wendy had decided to have a roof rack fitted (to the car, not herself). This was proposed in order to be able to transport a surf board that she is intending to purchase. Wendy and George went for a surf lesson on Sunday morning (first I’d heard about it). Interestingly, Wendy normally has something of an aversion to going into the sea but she appears to have conquered the fear. It’s amazing what the lure of muscle-bound, sun-kissed aussie men can do. They both seem to have enjoyed ‘surf school’ and are keen to continue – although they may have to put it on hold until next spring, seeing as we are now at the back end of summer.
Before I go I would like to say a big ‘thank you’ to everyone for acting on my rallying call to save 6 music. I didn’t realise I had 8000 people following the blog but it doesn’t really surprise me. Also, thanks to Amanda for sending me the story which detailed the campaign’s success so far.
Okay, who told Alistair Darling that I'm coming over to the UK in July? Why else would he put the Duty on cider up by 10% above inflation. You've got 'til Sunday to stock up ready for my visit. What next, is he going to tax Lions' confectionary products as well? Oi Darling, NO!
Anyway, got to go now to measure some more balls. Hopefully, if I can avoid any more Xtreme weather I’ll catch up with you again soon.
H

Six Pact

2010-03-11T14:33:00.001Z

I hope I find you in good health and full of the joys. You are looking fairly muscular these days are you still going to the gym, really, even this far into the New Year. I thought I could make out a bit of a six pack... its Stella isn’t it?
Anyway, I think I’ve probably buttered you up enough (just an aside, where does the phrase ‘to butter someone up’ come from? Please let me know, if you know...and yes I will be able to tell if you’ve googled it). Where was I, oh yes, I’d just finished buttering. Right, to the chase – I need you to do me a favour, and only you can help me. As you may be aware, some fool accountant at the BBC has decided that they can save a few quid by axing ‘the mighty’ 6 music. It is, of course, scandalous – no doubt some journalists (the lazy ones) are already calling it 6 MusicGate (it can’t be a scandal if it hasn’t got gate on the end). For those of you who are not familiar with its work – 6 music is a digital radio station whose target audience is 6 feet 2, 42 year old men called Harry. I am a regular listener via the world wide web thingy, and apart from the odd rebuffering issue and the fact that I have to have to wait until 8 in the evening to have lunch whilst listening to the lunchtime show it is very enjoyable. So where do you come in? Well, it’s really rather simple, despite the fact that I am an exact match for the target demographic the bean counters at the Beeb aren’t going to pay any attention to my entreaties to save ‘Radio Davo’. As a non-license payer who lives 10,000 miles away I don’t think that my lobbying of the Director General is going to carry much weight. So here’s my plan. I want you, my devoted fan club, to send letters, texts, mails, tweets, telegrams (if they still exist, Please let me know whether they do or not...and yes I will be able to tell if you’ve googled it) of protest to the big-wigs at Broadcasting House. I’m sure that once they have been inundated with your protests, both of them, they will do an immediate u-turn and this particular treasure will be saved for the nation. If, at this point, you are feeling flushed with benevolence and want to save the Asian network as well then feel free to do so – but I never listen to it so I really don’t care whether you do or don’t.
If you can do this little thing for me I would really appreciate it and if it should ever become necessary for me to lobby the money men at the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) in order to save ABC Jazz on your behalf, then rest assured I’ll be right there in the vanguard of the protests.
Clearly though, the BBC needs to channel all of its resources so that it can continue to make yet more reality TV programmes about minor, minor celebrities who single-handedly save the brass banding World. As a reformed brass-bander myself (it’s 18 years, 227 days and 42 minutes since I last played a Sousa march. You can never really say that you are totally cured of brass banding – you just have to take it one day at a time). I used to play the cornet (please insert your own ice cream jokes here, and rest assured I’ve never heard any of them before). For those of you that were unfortunate enough never to hear me play, I can say that I was a pretty accomplished player. For those of you unfortunate enough to have heard me play, can I ask you to hold your own counsel; I think I might have managed to sell it to them here. Like most things, I was mediocre at best – but I tried hard, especially at the social drinking that took place before, during and after the concerts we played.
I was quite interested in the fly-on-the-wall documentary of Dinnington band because they were our local rivals and arch enemies. The docu-soap has caused something of a furore amongst the brass banding fraternity. The question being asked by most aficionados is how the BBC could be advertising the fact that they would follow Ms Perkins as she took the band to the National finals a full week before they qualified for the aforementioned finals? DinnoGate anyone?
If you have received the latest set of pics, you will have read that Wendy is trying to make me photo-monitor as well as blogmaster. I’m not saying I can’t do both (I will also be juggling machetes and reciting the poetry of Shelley, Colleridge and Hegley whilst doing so) but I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for me to upload the photos – there appears to be more than two steps to the process, therefore the scope for things to go wrong is huge. I thinks it’s fair to say that if I do take charge of loading the photos the vetting system may alter somewhat. The likelihood of seeing pics like the one of me on top of a lighthouse looking like Methuselah’s older brother will be greatly diminished in future .
And finally, there is a chance of a shower next Tuesday (the first in about 4 months). That’s the weather, by the way, not me... I’m not due one for one for another week-and-a-half yet.

let's make some plans... 'cos they can go wrong

2010-03-03T14:56:00.002Z

I realise I probably over did it with the modern music references in the last blog. This may have alienated some of our avid readers, so this time I will be leaving it well alone. Therefore there will be absolutely no mention of Cliff and the Shadows and their particular brand of new fangled popular music.
In fact my last blog effort got me into a bit of strife (primarily with the trouble and strife). Actually, it was the rather feeble ‘Curtin (it is pronounced Curtain, by the way) University gag that landed me in hot water. The last course Wendy did was at Curtin Uni, the course that she is about to do is at Murdoch (you crazy fool) University. This was all information that had apparently been related to me (probably more than once) in the English language, but possibly in words of more than one syllable. To be fair, in order to be able to remember such trivial things as these I would have to make room in my already cluttered brain by removing other information. I would probably have to jettison such vital facts as the 1978 FA Cup winners, the name of the lead singer of the Primitives, and the winner of the 1993 Grand National (the race that never was). Come to think of it I could get away with forgetting all that stuff and then if I need it again I can simply phone my brother and ask him – he knows even more pointless trivia, than I do anyway.

George had an enjoyable birthday despite an inauspicious start to the weekend. I should point out that some of George’s recent birthdays haven’t exactly gone according to plan - there have been tears and tantrums (and George got pretty upset as well). Amongst other incidents there was the episode involving BA Baracus and a plate of tapas (not that it’s important, but the tapas in question was chorizo in red wine... see, why do I need to remember that – which part of the brain is responsible for storing that little gem?). Needless to say BA came off second best (I ain’t getting on no plane). And then last year there was the curious case of the gift voucher that you aren’t allowed to use until you’ve counted to 46,896 (it would take far too long to explain here).
With these mishaps fresh in his memory George decided to combat the possibility of further catastrophes by meticulously planning his birthday down to the most miniscule detail. What could possibly go wrong? Well, for starters, George woke up on Friday morning with a cold – which must be due to the fact that the average daily temperature over the last four months has been 30 degrees. Actually, it might have been brought on by George having had swimming lessons in the sea (with school) everyday for the previous two weeks. I’m not certain, but I think that could also be where he got his jellyfish stings from (obviously he never got them from his guitar lessons... they don’t start ‘til next week). Then, the skate park where he had intended to spend most of Saturday afternoon was closed to the general public so it could be used for some sort of tournament. From what I could work out the tournament was being held to find who had the most unkempt hair, and the most ridiculous trousers (I was placed very highly in both categories). But, thankfully, that was where the misfortune ended. Miraculously, using only the power of retail therapy-fresh orange juice-and half a bottle of Benilyn, by Sunday George’s cold had gone. His birthday meal, in the Korean BBQ restaurant, was a complete success (please note: no dogs were knowingly eaten, and no A Team characters were harmed during this event). All in all, he’s looking forward to his next birthday, we aren’t though... he’ll be 13 (Cue dramatic music).

Hattie has already started working on her birthday celebrations. During an extensive search of her bedroom, in an attempt to locate her ipod, I came across four birthday goodie bags (complete with names) lurking under Hattie’s bed. I’m clinging forlornly to the hope that there aren’t another dozen bags secreted somewhere in the darker recesses of her boudoir. FYI The ipod was eventually found sandwiched between two fairy books.

Wendy told me the other day that she is making enquiries about joining a Smurf school. When she mentioned it again today, I said what do you do there then wear a silly hat and turn blue? And she said no you don’t turn blue because they provide you with a wet suit (??). It’s no use, next time I’m just going to have to listen to what she is saying to me.
I was definitely paying attention last Friday when she told me that her business trip to the UK would be in six days time. It turned out to be a false alarm, and she is likely to be going to South Africa and the UK end of April beginning of May (sounds like it’s going to coincide with the World snooker Championships).

As for my trip. There was some very prompt action after my last blog (and not all of it legal action directed against me for libel), as a result of which I am just about fully booked up. I now only have a small half hour window available on the second Tuesday... we could do lunch. Kebab anyone?

The airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow

2010-02-23T15:18:00.002Z

Just days away from his twelfth birthday and George is now officially grown up. I believe that the generally accepted benchmark for this milestone (for boys at any rate) is going to the cinema with your mates and being able to recite Monty Python ad nauseum. George and a crowd of school chums, including girls, went to the movies on Friday night. From the detailed description of the plotlines, the list of actors and even the name of the ‘second grip boy’ that he gave us, he either: did indeed ignore the girls and watch the film in its entirety; or he invested in a copy of Empire magazine to get the synopsis and then played tonsil tennis for the next 90 minutes. Needless to say he took two wickets at cricket the next morning.
I went to a music festival called Laneways, a couple of weekends ago. It just happened to be on the same day as Cliff and the Shadows were in town. As a result of which, the train on the way home was populated with a mixture of festival goers and Cliff fans. It took me a while to realise that the reason people kept looking at me (apart from the fact that a large dollop of chilli sauce had somehow escaped from my kebab and was now adorning the front of my rather old and battered Billy Bragg T shirt) was because they were trying to work out whether I was coming back from the festival or the Cliff gig. I spent the entire journey tousling my flowing lock of hair thus lifting my arm and exposing the festival wristband on my wrist (it seemed like the best place to put it), and the lack of scar around the hip area... thus proving that I still had all of my own original parts in that region. The festival was very good – although it was a bit loud and too crowded and there was an awful lot of litter. I know I sound like I should have gone to Cliff after all, at least there I would have got a comfy chair and the site logistics might have been a bit better. I think the Laneways organisers were expecting some biblical intervention to take place: For they had managed to assemble a crowd of 5000 and attempted to service it with two catering vans and five toilets. Two of Britain’s biggest exports were playing the festival - Mumford and Sons and Florence and the Machine and both of them were brilliant (although Echo and the Bunnymen were better than either of them). Fortunately the other UK act that is currently flying high in the album charts over here at the moment wasn’t playing.... Susan Boyle. I’m not sure what a train full of Susan Boyle fans would look like but I’m fairly sure that I wouldn’t want to get tangled up with them.

As a public service - Here are the answers to some Frequently Asked Questions;
No; no; is it your birthday?; I said No; No; Oh go on then but can we skip the build up this time.
Okay so they are all the answers to the same FAQ but you can’t blame me for trying.

Wendy is definitely going to do the course that I alluded to in an earlier blog (you can find out which one for yourself, I really can’t be bothered to look it up – I think it was the one where I was hilariously funny - so that should narrow it down a bit). The course is run by Curtin University, she showed me the study schedule and it didn’t look at all pleasant and that was before they dish out any extra homework. If she starts stressing about it I’ll be able to tell her to pull herself together (Curtin University, pull yourself together... Curtin... pull...No? Anyway the course starts in July). The chances are that her solo tour of the UK will take place sometime in May; please check the Press for details nearer the time. My own solo tour has hit some minor difficulties due to a few telecommunication problems. I’ve e-mailed and texted a few people to confirm dates and times to arrive at their house and they appear to be having problems replying to confirm that I will be rapturously received into their abode. One person did manage to reply to tell me that they had recently moved house but couldn’t remember their new address... or even the town it was in. I can see that my tour is going to be as successful as Whiney Houston’s is down here at the moment. She cancelled her Perth gig because they ‘couldn’t find the right kind of trucks to transport her equipment’... apparently it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she had only managed to sell three tickets.
Anyway I’m off to read the latest edition of Empire magazine that I’ve just found stuffed down the side of the sofa... no idea how that got there.

What people said about the last blog_____________________________________
Thanks a bunch everyone. I work my fingers to the bone, slavishly pinching other people’s jokes and does anyone appreciate it?

As you will have no doubt worked out already the FAQ was: can we watch the DVD of the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy Final 2007?

True blue, fair dinkum Aussie

2010-01-23T01:19:00.012Z

Well, we said we would give it two years, and believe it or not we have just completed that milestone - and the decision is...
we've decided to stay and tough it out in the sun, a full five minutes from golden beaches and the clear blue Indian Ocean (so clear in fact that you can see the sharks coming from metres away). I can hear your collective sigh of relief even from this distance - I should point out however that those of you living in the north of England may have breathed too soon. This is because I am embarking on a solo tour (entitled the 'No Sleep 'til The Brooklands Tour') of God's own country (Yorrrrksherrrr) in early July... I'm not going to give you the exact dates because if I do you'll all find you are busy that day rearranging your Corr's CD's into metronomical order. If you haven't heard from me already you may get lucky and not have me turn up on your doorstep in the depths of the night, because my itinerary is already pretty well established. So far I have arranged visits to three art galleries, an opera, two ballets, four museums (of the old fashioned 'glass case' variety) and an abattoir (old habits die hard). I will not be going to: York races, boozy birthday parties, golf courses, watch the World Cup semi-finals on an over sized TV, watch 15 back-to-back episodes of 'In the night garden' whilst drinking several gallons of Magners (with ice... naturally). And I most certainly won't be eating sports mixtures or kebabs. (Wendy reads this blog as well you know - that last bit may have been included for her benefit).
It is worth pointing out that the people who have said nice things about my 'blogs' (mainly my south western brethren) have been rewarded by me staying about 200 miles away from them for the entire visit. I'm expecting a deluge of positive feedback on this blog over the next seven days in a vain attempt to keep me away. The tour stops off at Huddersfield, Maltby, York, Howden, Gilberdyke, Goole and Ilfracombe. Actually scrap that last one I was thinking I was following the route of the old Radio One road show - they always went to Ilfracombe (although they probably spelt it properly), I've just realised that I have absolutely no idea where it is.
Wendy could well beat me over to dear old blighty some time in April, May or June. For once this isn't me being vague... it's actually her boss. This would be a work trip and may even take in South Africa en route. It's all to do with a new role she has been offered at work - which involves handling business migrants (I think I could probably have worded that a bit better - I think I made it sound a bit too hands on). She will also be required to do some more studying as well, which she is hoping to do in the winter. I will be helping her by flying 10,000 miles away.. how considerate.
Dusty and Sheilah have now left us and are now back in the UK. Before
they left we visited the pinnacles, which (despite just being bits of rock, albeit several thousand bits of rock, sticking out of the sand)is still quite magical at sunset, even seeing it for the 3rd time. Once again, I went mad and took lots and lots of photos... be warned.
We also had a weekend down in Margaret River where we managed to get up close (some times a little too close) and personal with possums, very persistent flies, sting rays and very, very persistent bottles of alcoholic ginger beer (they are the most dangerous ones, I was very persistent for most of the weekend).

The kids are back at school this week after the long holidays. George has started his final year of primary school. He has a school trip in May over to Rottnest Island, twelve miles off the WA coast over some very choppy water. George certainly hasn't got his sea legs, so we have started him on a course of 'Quells' 3 times a day for the next 20 weeks in a bid to help him and his breakfast get across together. Rottnest is so named because the early dutch settlers mistook the Quokkas that live there (and practically nowhere else) for large rats. They are in fact very small kangaroos (hope you took all that in, there will be a test later. You can rest assured that there won't be a question on the location of Ilfracombe-I've got a sneaking suspicion that it might be somewhere in my native west country. You see, if I'd spent more time listening to Mrs Aldridge in my Geography lessons and less time wondering if I should ask her out on a date and whether she'd say yes, I might not have these geographic shortcomings.
Now I think about it, I think you can all breath a bit easier because the chances of me successfully navigating my way across the globe single-handedly (well, actually I'll be travelling by Emirates)are fairly slim.
I'm going out now, I may be quite some time.
H

What people said about the last blog: 'Harry does make me laugh' (CF).
'I have just managed to stop giggling to myself' (someone whose initials are S & M - it clearly takes a certain amount of masochism to be able to read this bobbins).

A bit crook

2009-12-30T09:10:00.014Z

Hello everyone and a Happy New Year to you all. Here's hoping 2010 brings you prosperity and good fortune... and that you avoid the mishaps that we have encountered over the New Year period.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. Once upon a time, in a land far far away, where the sun always shines, and the sea is made of liquid emeralds, and Donner kebabs graze the rich green pastures, and CDs (made by 1990's pop/indie bands) grow on trees, there lived a handsome, well hung (I will get to this part of the story later), mature (okay balding... just leave it will you) man named Davo (also to be explained later - yes, I'm afraid it's going to be a long one... you might want to go and grab a coffee, or something stronger).
WARNING: The following part of this story involves scenes of extreme gore and are only suitable for a mature audience.
Twas the last day of the year, and the clock had only recently passed the hour of six in the evening, meaning that absolutely no alcohol had been consumed at the time of the incident (not even a small sherry). So, the story is that I had a fight with a camp bed (it wasn't even a macho bed... camp bed, 'camp' - oh forget it) and the camp bed won. Using the element of surprise, the bed cunningly pretended that it's spring loaded leg was in place and then just when my guard was down hurled it at my head - opening up a sizable wound just above my right eyebrow. As most of you know, Wendy doesn't do blood - indeed, the mere fact that I told her not to come into the laundry room (where the incident took place), but instead should get her dad to come and help, caused her to feel faint and have to sit with her head between her knees).
Needless to say, 'Dusty' took things in hand and had me and the laundry room (it previously resembled the shower scene in psycho) cleaned up in no-time.
Part Two:
Twas the first day of the year, and the clock had only recently passed the hour of six in the evening, meaning that absolutely no alcohol... etc.
George and his friends (the hoody gang) were out on their scooters scouring the neighbourhood for 'go-cart' wheels when George failed to properly negotiate a tight bend, at speed and came a cropper. The outcome was, extensive grazing and bruising (and that was just to his ego). Luckily I was on the phone to my mother at the time (she got a running commentary of the incident), and as you all know by now... Wendy doesn't do blood so once again 'Dusty' stepped in to administer the first aid.
Today, the second day of the New Year, we are all confined to our rooms, and at six o'clock we are all going to drink plenty of alcohol.
As you may well know (no, this isn't the Wendy/blood thing) all Australians have to have a nickname. The creation of a nickname tends to be quite an easy process, in fact it's very easy for women - they are all called Sheilah. With blokes, it tends to be truncating the surname and sticking an 'o' on the end. In my case it's Davo - which, with amazing hindsight, is what my former work colleagues used to call me at the mighty Press Association (the World's leading news agency). They did have other nicknames for me as well but they really aren't worth repeating. Of course, my nickname may well change now that I have a Harry Potter scar on my forehead. I'm not sure how boys get theirs but George's is 'little tuna'. As Wendy's mum and dad are over here for a month and a half it was compulsory for us to create a nickname for John. Tuffo didn't really work, so I employed the other method for creating a nickname - waited until after 6pm then drank several sherrys, ciders, lagers and another sherry and came up with 'Dusty'. Now all I have to do is have a few more beers and then tell John what his new name is.
I mentioned last time (or maybe the time before last) that I was applying for membership to the art club. Well, not only did they let me in, they also asked me to contribute a painting to an exhibition they are staging at the Mindarie Marina Hotel. If I'm honest I think it had more to do with the fact that they were short of exhibits than that they thought my painting was any good. So I am now hanging in the foyer of the aforementioned hotel... and indeed I am very well hung (although when we all went to inspect it yesterday I was hanging slightly to the left). My painting is an old one (but let's face it no one over here has seen it before) and it's a bit surreal... but it has got boats in it - I thought it might go down well with the marina crowd. The themes explored are: the existence of a supreme being, love - unrequited and otherwise, the power of nature, and whether there is any place for the referral system in Test cricket. The exhibition is on for a month, so if you are planning on attending you may need to book in advance to avoid disappointment.
I am now off out to drink copious amounts of alcohol. Quick, call me an ambulance (Davo you're an ambulance).
Nee nah, Nee nah, Nee nah.
Please note: no camp beds were injured during the making of this blog.

memory like a... it's round and got holes in it,

2009-12-10T15:53:00.011Z

ahh yeah, that's it, a colander.
For those of you who bothered to read the last blog (according to our web-counter it's in the hundreds of thousands - aren't they brightly coloured, sugary things that you sprinkle on cakes?) you may have wondered why the title bore even less resemblance to the contents of the blog than usual. There is a very simple explanation... I forgot what I had set out to write about in the first place. In fact, scrap that, I didn't forget I simply got carried away on the flow of my excellent prose and wandered off on an entirely different track.
What I had intended to touch upon was the 'dullsville' tag that Perth has and almost revels in. As I hinted at in the last blog (the one that 'Time' magazine voted as no. 57 in the 'best reads' of the century) everything closes at 5.30pm. The State Government was recently defeated in it's attempt to extend retail opening hours until 9pm on weeknights. However, through stealth and the exploitation of a loophole, they have managed to wangle it so that some of the larger shopping malls can class themselves as tourist destinations allowing them to not only extend their opening hours in the week but also open on Sundays.
It's an odd one really, I would definitely welcome shops staying open a bit later in the week (especially specialist record shops and sports shops) but I don't miss being able to shop on a Sunday at all. It's not like the Sundays over here are akin to the ones I remember (vaguely) as a child growing up in the UK in the 1970's. They had the potential (which they often fulfilled) to be the dullest day of the week. You weren't allowed to play outside, or if you did it had to be quietly (I didn't do quiet very well as a child - unless someone asked me a direct question and then I would definitely become very reticent). I now appreciate that there was a very valid reason for this need for peace and quiet on the Sabbath... and unfortunately I don't think it came about as a mark of respect for the Lord's day, instead I suspect that it was because everyone in the neighbourhood was nursing a stinking great hangover (well all except perhaps Miss North who lived two doors up from us).
Over here there is lots to do because the weather allows you to go to the beach, the park, play in the pool (quietly)and generally live outdoors. Our house is already listed as a tourist destination so we are allowed to stay up late on weeknights, just in case anyone is interested in visiting us.

At this point I feel I should draw your attention to the fact that I have recently received some correspondence to the effect that I have some 'blogfans' in the South West of England. I'm putting this down to the fact that I spent a couple of years living in Swindon and ended up with a bit of a West Country accent. It's worn off a bit now, all the people in the UK who I have spoken to recently have all commented on my strong Aussie twang... indeed, there's not a single trace of my broad South Yorkshire accent remaining. I have to admit that it was the positive feedback that I received regarding my 'blogging' that has led to the spike in my blog missives. I know what you're thinking, who are these irresponsible people that have inadvertently inflicted more inarticulate drivel onto the world wide web. Well I'm not telling you. Les and Pat can rest assured that their secret is safe with me.
(There now follows a break of two days. Somewhere nearby the crickets fill the hot, dry night with a rhythmical chorus of chirrups. A handsome, middle aged, distinguished looking [okay balding] man enters stage left).
Talking of cricket (tenuous, I know) the match that George bowled so well in last week concluded today (most of their matches are played over two weeks). Before today, his batting stats for the season read 0,0, 0, and 0* (can anyone spot a pattern forming). However, thanks to the Ian Botham school of cricket, today he set a new PB (personal best) of 8 - he hit two fours (ala Beefy). You really don't want to know what he got up to last night... but it involved vampires. When his side bowled again they took four wickets - George got two of them. George's upturn in form has been duly noted by his team mates and coaches, one of whom asked me today if I had any theories on why George's form had improved so markedly, I said... no. Unfortunately the season now takes a break until February so John and Jenny won't get to see him play whilst they are here. They will get to see lots of the other things that we get up to though. There is an end of year assembly at school on Wednesday, Hatties dance show is next weekend (she is in rehearsal overtime at the moment), they will be able to see where Wendy works and go jogging with her, and I will be giving them a tour of the top 3 kebab shops in Perth's northern suburbs (in no particular order).
I've got to go now, I've got a date with the BBC World Service - I have a need to be welcomed (by John Murray) to a chilly ________ (fill in venue here... probably Stamford bridge). Yeovil have just scored against Norwich. I have a sneaky suspicion that all of my west country brethren will be hoping that my team (Doncaster Rovers) will be able to make it three wins in a row and overcome Bristol City this afternoon (at a chilly Keepmoat stadium).
I seem to have caught the bug again, so I might be back before Christmas. If not, have a good one and when you think of us be assured we are thinking of you (did that sound a bit trite?, I really must work on my sincere face)

You may be surprised to discover that i was listening to the Sex Pistols whilst writing (the second part of) this blog.
H

Welcome to Dullsville

2009-12-09T12:31:00.009Z

Hello. good evening and welcome.
I have to admit that my David Frost impersonation works a whole lot better on paper (or as pixels) than in real life.
First of all let me say how wonderful you are looking today - have you done something different with your hair... yeah, it really suits you... it detracts attention from your baggy eyes and slightly green complexion... I never did learn how to pay compliments properly. It's definitely one of my biggest failings (along with my sardonic wit and being just too darn handsome).
Other things I have never quite learnt to do properly are: singing in tune, dance without giving the impression that I have just stepped in something unpleasant, work out why all the shops close at 5.30pm in Western Australia, remember all the words to the national anthem, be it the UK or Oz version. In fact I've taken to combining the two - lyrics and tune... fortunately, with national anthems singing in tune doesn't seem to be a prerequisite.
We have a fair amount of news to bring you up-to-date with.
Hattie passed her ballet exam with distinction and is busy with rehearsals for her dance show that takes place in a weeks time.
She continues to create things at an alarming rate: paintings, clothes, jewellery, something resembling a disaster zone on the floor of her bedroom. I say floor, but I've got no real evidence that there is a floor there, I just know that that was approximately where it was last time I saw it, about 3 months ago. This evening, she made a kimono (for something she is doing at the end of year assembly) using a little red riding hood cape, 4 safety pins and a pair of Val's old knickers (hey, you've got to admit that was a pretty good John Noakes impression).
George didn't make it into the elite state school but did pass some other exams that ensured he got onto the SEAC program when he goes to secondary school. If you aren't sure what SEAC is, it's similar to the PEAC course that he has been doing, only this one starts with an 'S' not a 'P' - hope that has made things a lot clearer for you. Actually, I think P stood for Primary and therefore I'm pretty sure that S stands for Secondary. I know for definite that 'EAC' stands for Egg And Cress.
He is playing crcket again this season. I have a feeling that he may be from the Ian Botham school of cricketers after last weekend's events. We had a bit of a late night on Friday having gone to see Green Day in concert, so George didn't get to bed until midnight. Then in true 'Beefy' fashion, after a night on the town, George turned in bowling figures of 3 overs, 2 maidens, 3 runs and 1 wicket. He fancies getting a few runs with the bat this weekend so he's asked if we can go to a casino followed by a visit to a go-go bar this Friday.
Wendy abandoned the dancing class half way through the last term, her last week was the one when he cancelled the class because he had to rush home when he remembered that he'd accidentally put a bowl in the plate cupboard... disaster. Subsequently, despite previously having had an aversion to it she took up jogging and now runs between 10 and 15 kms a week. It's not easy to find a time slot in which to go running because it gets pretty hot from as early as 7am and because we no longer have daylight savings (it got voted out in a referendum) it goes dark at 7.30pm (even now - just two weeks out from the longest day of the year). Apparently, the thing that motivates her to run faster is imagining me running behind her - with that certain look in my eye... she overtook Usain Bolt last week. She is taking part in a 4km road race on Sunday, fortunately it's only forecast to get up to 38 degrees so she'll have a nice cool day for it.
And what have I achieved recently. Well I've just managed to carry a cup of tea into the office without spilling any, so well done me.
Actually, I've joined an Art Club. Well I say joined, I've still got to fill out the paperwork and then they would still have to accept me in but surely with my talent (and humility) it would just be a case of rubber stamping the application. On the form it asks me for my preferred medium - I've put Doris Stoakes (okay, I admit that's a very old joke - so much so that I think Doris has been dead for about 20 years). The Art club meets once a month and I've only been to one so far and I lasted the 3 hours without being asked to leave. One lady (they are nearly all ladies of a certain age, I'm not certain but I think the age is 68) told me she'd never seen it done like that before... I believe she was talking about my abstract artwork. It was very interesting, after two hours everyone else had managed to create very recognisable watercolour versions of the photo we were working from and I was still sat sharpening my pencil and adjusting my beret (not that's not a euphemism). This month's theme is bring your own, so I'm taking a kebab and a crate of cider... maybe I should chage my preferred medium to vomit on canvas.
Talking of canvas, we have actually bought a tent and have already ventured into the wilds. Well, it wasn't exactly wild - but there wasn't a mobile phone signal and there isn't a single 'MacDonalds' within a 30km radius.
Right, I've got to go now - I have a list of chores to attend to before Wendy's mum and dad arrive on Monday. The list includes: mowing the lawns; making sure all dead lizards (and for that matter live ones) are removed from the swimming pool; all windows, doors and drainpipes are treated with barrier spray to keep the outdoor spiders outdoors; making sure there is a bowl of M&M's in John and Jenny's bedroom(they've insisted that all the red ones are removed - very Mariah Carey), and finally, find which dud fairy light is knocking out the row of 30 others in our outside eating area.
Okay, If I don't get back to you again before Christmas, I hope you have a Peaceful and Joyous festive period.
By the way, have you lost weight? Yeah, you look good - I could tell because you've only got the three chins now. I've done it again haven't I?
And now for my final impression... Jesse Owens.
H

Joy Division Oven Gloves

2009-08-06T13:16:00.004+01:00

Hello... its me again. It's funny but now I know that I have no audience at all (they all got bored with the same inane drivel and having to wait 3 months between servings) I have suddenly re-discovered the inclination to blog. Actually, there is one woman in Bury St Edmunds who is still reading these missives, she is under the impression that this is the BBC news website and as a result believes every word I write to be the truth (oh the mis-guided fool).
This time however, I am being true to my word and will tell you about Melbourne. As you will already know Melbourne was invented in 1921 by Dame Nellie Melba who decreed that all of the buildings should be made out of peaches and ice cream. Unfortunately, all of these buildings were eaten and none of them remain today - believe me we looked for them everywhere. It has actually got quite a lot of old buildings (hundred years plus) that mingle with the modern skyscrapers in an aesthetically pleasing way. It's quite a bustling, cosmopolitan city and is more like a large British city than sleepy Perth is. But, being further south (and closer to the Antarctic) it gets a bit chiller than Perth - it was only about 13 degrees when we were there but mercifully it stayed dry. We were able to get out and about on foot and by tram, in fact we covered most of the city and also went down to the seaside - the suburb of St Kilda. All in all it was a great trip and it was an excellent place to visit but the milder climate over here in the West definitely makes Perth the place to live.
As I mentioned in a previous narrative Hattie (having seen the film Coco Avant Chanel) declared her wish to become a designer and maker of clothes. Well, she has set about her self-imposed task with some gusto, she has already rustled up a jacket (complete with sleeves, buttons, hems, collars, etc.) out of some lacy, net material. It is really quite good, except - unlike my Santa outfit, there isn't much room in there for growth. Not sure whether she will be moving on to other fashion projects or not, because this week she muted the idea that her aim now is to be a professional ballerina. Maybe she can combine the two professions.
George was suitably nervous before his exam on Monday - he was a bit disappointed that there were no sock or video tape related questions at all. He's not sure how he got on and won't find out until Christmas (the real one - not the pretend one). We've told him that there is no pressure, but if he hasn't passed Christmas will be cancelled.
Anyway, he now has the power to redeem himself since he learnt how to make me a bacon sandwich (oh and a cup of tea for good measure). He has already learnt the most important part of cooking - I noticed that he had all the lean, middle bacon on his sandwich and I got the scraggy bits that barely covered the bread. It can only be a matter of weeks now before he's making me Donner kebabs and muttering those immortal words... salad, chili sauce?
Right, I'm off to bed now (too much information? the wrong mental picture?). I'm really tired, I keep being woken up really early by the sun streaming through a jacket-shaped hole in the net curtains.

Christmas in August

2009-07-30T14:16:00.008+01:00

There is an Australian tradition of celebrating Christmas in July, on July 25th in fact. There are several reasons for this, namely that it is the middle of winter, (over in the mountains on the east coast they even get snow), it is nigh on impossible to accurately pinpoint the exact birth date of the little baby Jesus - leaving it open to manipulation by large retail outlets, and lastly the fact that (we) Australians are just plain mad.
In a bid to (not quite) fit in, we will be celebrating Christmas in August, complete with secret Santa, tinsel, turkey (subject to availability), Christmas puddings, advocaat and a stonking hangover. Wendy spent most of last weekend preparing and steaming the puddings.. not sure exactly what went into them but we were left with half a can of Guinness a thimble full of port, some dried fruit and 3 buttons. I refused to drink the leftover Guinness because when Wendy poured it she never put the shamrock pattern in the frothy stuff (probably not the correct technical term) on the top, Hattie had a slurp but was left unimpressed and slightly green.
I have been offered one of two roles in the premature Christmas proceedings: either to be the humbug - a role that I have perfected and made my own over the years, or Santa - which, on the whole, appears to be a role for which I have no real aptitude or calling. I do have the suit - it's the weirdest thing, I was just rearranging my genuine 1980's Ourmani suits one day when I came across the full Santa outfit. No idea how it got there, it must just be a sign that this is a role I was born to play. Unfortunately, I've not continued to pile the weight on at quite the same rate as I did when we first arrived in Oz (I've laid off the pies) so it's not what you might call a snug fit.
It's still a couple of weeks before we celebrate the counterfeit Christmas so I may still have time to grow into it - I will also be using this period to try and wipe all comments about bulging sacks, and filling stockings from my mind. In deference to the memory of the late Molly Sugden it will be a double entendre free event.

I was thinking the other day (5.37pm on Wednesday - I made a record of it in my notebook) that George's old Dringhouses pals will be starting secondary school when they go back after the 'big' holidays. So, good luck to them - and please accept this piece of advise from someone who remembers their first day at secondary school as if it was only... errr, 30 years ago. Namely: 'don't throw sticks up at trees to knock the conkers down when the teachers' cars are parked underneath'. Just that, oh, and don't get a crush on Rina Woodward - it will only lead to pain, heartache, frustration and diminished eyesight (when she slaps your face and blackens your eye.
George will be spared these tribulations for some time yet because he doesn't start secondary school until February 2011 - they do an extra year of primary school over here. However, he is about to take an entrance exam (like the old 11+) to see if he can get into one of the specialist State Schools... he was encouraged to do this by his teachers at school it wasn't just his pushy parents piling pressure on him. He takes the exams next Monday and in preparation he has been doing test papers, the questions are brilliant. I believe I would fail because I would have to point out the shortcomings in the questions. For example: Fiona wants to tape a late night movie. It begins at 23:20 and ends at 01:50. What is the shortest videotape she needs measured in minutes? HELLO, Fiona, uh.. Sky Plus? or a DVD recorder at the very least. There was a second part to the question: should she be using VHS or beta max tapes.
Example number two: Ben has two red socks and two blue socks loose in a drawer. They all feel the same to touch. Suppose the first sock he takes out of the drawer is blue. What is the chance of him pulling out another blue sock? Answer: no chance - the next sock he pulls will be a single grey sock (that he has never seen before in his life and that has no matching partner on the entire planet... it's the sock law) and then he won't be to pull any more socks out because they will be stuck to the sweet wrappers, plasticine and congealed Guinness encrusted on the bottom of the drawer. Simple.
Yeah, well the questions he gets on Monday might not be as easy as those. Not sure when he finds out how he got on.
Keeping with the exam theme, Hattie has been persuaded (by her dance teacher not her pushy parents) to take her ballet exam this year. She has always been a bit reticent to do so in the past but is getting a lot more confident of late. I often find her listening and dancing to all the ballet classics... Coppelia, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and The Legend of Xanadu by Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mitch and (of course) Titch. Her teacher says she has really come on leaps and bounds (as I suppose you should in ballet) this year.
Wendy's dancing has been something of a let-down recently. Sorry, that wasn't a criticism of Wendy's dancing technique - I meant that last term only half the classes actually went ahead, which was disappointing (apart from anything else it meant that I couldn't get hold of the TV remote). Excuses from the instructor for the classes being cancelled included flu, power failure, the dog eating his cassette recorder, back problems and knee problems. If he's not warming up properly how does he expect his class to? Anyway, she is going to give it another try this term. Basically, she just wants to see what excuses he comes up with this time.

I think we are up to date with all our news now.
Next time I will tell you all about particle physics, the Dada movement and our trip to Melbourne. No, honestly I will.
Catch you again soon,
H

Conspiracy Theories

2009-07-20T14:49:00.009+01:00

Were the moon landings fake, was the CIA involved in JFKs assassination, was Michael Jackson really the king of pop (before he died), and is Harry still around?
Oh the rumour mill has already started... there's been no blog for months, he doesn't appear in any of the latest batch of excellently taken photos, he hasn't been pestering mildy attractive young(ish) women with double entendre filled texts of late and if you play the Elbow song, 'One Day Like This' backwards the vocals sound like Guy Garvey is saying 'Harry is no longer around' - I should also point out that it ruins your CD player, so I don't recommend you try it. There are also rumours that I am about to sign for Manchester United on a free transfer... again, not true.
The truth, is of course, a lot less sinister and easily explained. The blogs have dried up because I am lazy, I've used the same jokes 15 times already and there is currently an abundance of sport on free to air TV over here. I would be watching sport right now but it's a rest day in the Tour de France and England have wrapped up an historic victory at Lords before lunch (your time - before bedtime our time). And within seconds of Graeme Swan taking the final wicket at the home of cricket I was receiving text messages and emails along the lines of: Dame Nellie Melba, Bob Hawke, Phar Lapp, Kylie Minogue, Skippy... your boys took one hell of a beating.
And, of course, I don't appear in any of the beautifully composed photos because I took them all - and, surprisingly, I haven't worked out how to use the auto function yet... because that would involve reading the instructions. I should however point out that there were more photos, but the selection committee deemed them unsuitable for publication. Pics of the Human League, the statue of Bonn Scott in Fremantle and a photo of me looking a lot like a young Ewan McGregor all failed to make the final selection. In the light of these omissions you may be wondering how three photos of George with a large purple balloon made the final cut. The balloon was a stage prop for Adam Hills, an Australian comedian, who George and I went to see at the end of May. Mr Hills is currently starring at the Edinburgh fringe, and will embark on a UK tour in the autumn (tickets are available from all good stockists). I feel obliged to plug his shows because George ended up with a starring role in the Perth one, culminating with him going on stage and subsequently walking away with one of the props. He got picked out early in the performance and became the go to man (boy) throughout the evening. In fact he managed to get three pretty substantial laughs from the audience - I myself only managed one... but it was a bigger one, and, I got a round of applause thrown in for good measure. When we were leaving the auditorium after the show loads of people were talking to George and saying 'well done' - he was slightly bemused by it and couldn't work out how they knew who he was... then I pointed out that he was the only boy in the theatre carrying an over sized purple balloon. One woman thought George had been so good that she wouldn't believe he wasn't a plant... more conspiracy theories. Adam Hills is very popular over here, he hosts a game show that is not unlike Never Mind the Buzzcocks, which meant that George was able to gain some credibility points at school... his ego and the balloon are still pretty well inflated, even now.
Meanwhile, Hattie has decided that she is going to be a designer. I took her to see the film Coco Chanel (starring the mildly attractive Audrey Tatou - who may well get pestered with text messages filled with double entendres in the near future) when we were in Melbourne (Wendy and George went to see Harry Potter). She seemed to enjoy the film, I thought she might have been put off by the subtitles but I think she was more perturbed by the kissing. Anyway, She now wants to design and make her own clothes - I fear for the safety of our curtains, bed covers, and pool blanket.
Well that's all for now, I'll be back soon to tell you more about Melbourne, Rugby League and western Australian dance schools. In fact I'll be back before you can work out what Rolf sings if you play the classic 'Jake the Pegg' backwards.
Regards
H
By the way, I was listening to the best of Frank Sinatra whilst writing this. doo be doo be doo.

ipod roulette - no skipping

2009-04-13T06:45:00.015+01:00

I am not to blame for the huge gap between blogs. Besides, we really should try and get away from the blame culture. But if you want to pin it on something then I think it's fair to say that the responsibility falls squarely at the door of... global warming. I was waiting for the weather to turn....I was waiting for a grey day with showers - after all it has been autumn for quite some time now so we should have had some steady drizzle by now, at the very least. In fact, yesterday was a sunny 30+ degrees and very summery. However, bank holiday Monday has done the trick and the black clouds have rolled in. It's still 25 degrees and has only rained for 10 minutes so far but it is enough to drive me indoors. The kids are outside on the street playing with their friends, forming hoody gangs, intimidating the old folks and generally 'hooning' around. Wendy is recovering from 'Trance', a dance music festival that she went to yesterday. I say recovering but it's more a case of having a breather before going out tonight to see 'Keane' (the UK indie band from Battle, Sussex). In fact the space between blogs has largely been taken up with seeing bands... and err motor sport (not my choice obviously). Amongst the bands we've seen are (in no apparent order): Killers, Snow Patrol, Kaiser Chiefs, Elbow, Kings of Leon, Madness, Fratellis, Tame Impala, Human League, Duffy, The Music, Birds of Tokyo, Howling Bells and Sparkadia. I defy anyone to say that they haven't heard of at least one of those... I'm guessing that Tame Impala are being played to death by Terry Wogan and the radio 2 gang.
As you may have guessed we've just had the festival season - when for some reason lots of UK bands decide they want to leave the frozen north and come to tour the antipodes. We saw the V festival* last weekend and there had clearly been a lot of 'male bonding' happening on tour all the bands were dedicating songs to each other, Madness were especially popular, but no one dedicated a song to Duffy. Apart from the fact that she couldn't sing, was wearing hot pants over legs that were as white as lard, and she appeared to be Welsh, Duffy was excellent.... not. (*There are photos of this event in the next batch, coming your way shortly).
Still on the subject of music, Hattie's birthday is but a week away and we are getting her an ipod nano as her main (only) present. To mark this event, whilst writing this blog I am playing ipod roulette. Usually, I would be listening to one of my own (carefully crafted) play lists, but on this occasion I am rather recklessly, with no thought for my own safety, listening to our entire ipod - all 5000 tracks of it (on shuffle). In the interests of science I am making a record of the songs played, which you can view at the bottom of this blog. So far, I have been able to ascertain a direct correlation between the track playing and the quality of the writing. For example, I wrote the funny bit when Muddy Waters was on, there was something of a dip in the quality when Will Young came on and I almost gave up entirely when Bobby Shafto infiltrated the airwaves..but, despite all that I was never tempted to skip.
Because we, (ok, Wendy) were slightly more organised, this year Hattie is able to have a sleepover... it also helps that we have actually got some beds this year. With her birthday falling smack in the middle of the holidays no-one was able to come last year, with this in mind we invited an extra person to be on the safe side. And, of course, this year they can all come so we have 3 nine year olds sleeping over-with all 4 of them sleeping in one room, which just happens to be George's (his bed can sleep 3, fill your own jokes in here..........). Obviously, being 11, George had to be bribed in order to let 3 of Hattie's friends stay the night in his room... so as a result he is going to the cinema to see Fast and Furious 4. At this point, I must say a big thank-you to our friend Steven... for it is he who will be accompanying George to the cinema to view this potentially Oscar-winning film. I grudgingly watched the first film in the series and at that point vowed that I would glue my eyelids together if I ever had to sit through another. Steven plays in the same beach volleyball team as me and I think he was very tempted to see if my game would improve with my eyes glued shut...but in the end he relented and agreed to take George to the movie.
For the last two weeks Wendy has been playing beach volleyball as well - due to one of the regulars sustaining a stress fracture of the foot after a high heel shoe incident (there may have been alcohol involved)...it was a woman by the way just in case you thought that we were a cross-dressing team. Wendy played very well despite the fact that some tall, handsome, muscle-bound bloke kept blasting the ball at her.... listen, I had to do it she was making me look bad (ok, the muscle-bound part was probably pushing it a bit far in that description). The current volleyball season is coming to an end and barring a catastrophic turn of events it looks like we will finish in the top 8 and make the end-of-term finals.... at which point we traditionally lose to a bunch of scousers, amusingly called 'Calm Down' who do a lot of whoopin' and hollerin' and high fiving (and that's just in the warm-up), and it in no way upsets me or winds me up.... I love 'em.
By the time the finals come upon us Wendy will be back dancing again, all be it with a different Dance School. After a 'big money' transfer she has left the 15 year old 'hip hoppers' and has moved to a more sedate Jazz class which starts next term... as yet there has been no mention of 'a show'.
Well, that will do for now. Now that the weather is closing in (it is currently bucketing it down and there is thunder and lightening - maybe I should tell the kids to come in now?) the blogs may become more frequent again. I'll definitely make an effort to be back before our winter holiday to Melbourne in July.

Ipod Roulette gave us:
James-Tomorrow; Muddy Waters-Rollin' And Tumblin' Part 1; Ladysmith Black Mambazo-Amabutho (Warriors); Mika-Grace Kelly; The Wedding Present-Don't Talk, Just Kiss; Belle & Sebastian-I Love My Car; Will Young-All Time Love; Clash-Remote Control; Booker T. & The MG's-Hip Hug-Her; Various artists-Bobby Shafto; Geneva-In The Years Remaining; Joe Tex-I Want To Do Everything For You; Elvis Presley-A Big Hunk O' Love; Pixies-Debaser; Clive Peterson-When I See An Elephant Fly; Buddy Holly & The Crickets-Shake Rattle And Roll; Nirvana-Come As You Are and finally ....Super Furry Animals-Something For The Weekend (that would be the Welsh again)

Leonard Cohen, Sydney harbour bridge and an inflatable black sheep

2009-02-12T11:11:00.009Z

As you may have noticed I never did get around to doing a blog on the first anniversary of our discovering Australia. we have been really busy - it must be because it's the summer.
Our second Australia Day (or Invasion Day as the aboriginal people rightly call it) didn't quite live up to the magnificence of the first one... the thing is after being here a year we now have a benchmark to measure everything against. The reason for it not being quite as good was that some friends of our friends (friends of ours twice removed) have moved house... ergo we couldn't park in their drive... ergo we had to go down by train... ergo we had to sit on the opposite river bank (the rowdy one) and the view wasn't quite as spectacular because it didn't have the backdrop of the City Skyline as it did last year... the fireworks were still pretty breathtaking though. Next year I think we'll have a barbie. a couple of beers, watch the cricket and tennis on the telly and maybe light a couple of sparklers... in other words do what the (non ex-pat) aussies do. Bonza.
I know what your thinking... 'what has Harry the old romantic lined up for Wendy on
Valentines Day?'. Well, I didn't think I'd be able to top the fifty red roses, champagne breakfast and five star hotel that I didn't get for her last year so instead I sent her to Sydney for the week. She has actually gone on a 'conference', it's an odd sort of conference because on Wednesday she climbed Sydney harbour bridge (not certain whether it was part of the proceedings or she did it for 'fun'?). From the text messages I received - I get the impression that she enjoyed it... she said she didn't want to come down again, that may be because she didn't want to get back to Perth in time for Valentines Day.
By being in Sydney this week, Wendy managed to miss the second of her 'new' dance classes. She has joined a 'modern jazz and hip-hop class'. I believe my views on white folks doing hip-hop have been well documented previously so I think it's safe to say that she won't be bringing her hobby home with her. Luckily, unlike the norm, there isn't going to be a show for me to endu.. err enjoy. She really enjoyed the first class, even after she had worked out that she was twice the age of the next oldest pupil in the class.
I think Hattie might want to join the circus... she went to see Cirque du soleil with Wendy and loved it. She particularly liked the bit where a (planted) member of the audience got up and joined in with the acrobatics. If she goes again she will definitely try to join in, probably with the trick where one ballet dancer goes up on her points whilst supporting two other people on her shoulders and balancing the complete works of Charles Dickens on her nose. It sounded very good but, unfortunately, I wasn't able to go due to my 'clown allergy', that and the fact that me and George went to watch the cricket. The Aussies were taking on New Zealand in a One Day International at the WACA. As you would expect the day/night was filled with beer, colourful language and some rather dodgy facial hair... and that was just George. And as you know by now a sporting event just isn't a sporting event unless I get sat next to some annoying, loud mouthed, opinionated individual with a prop. In this case the said individual was a New Zealand supporter and the prop was an inflatable black sheep with a rather rude slogan on it... I would need to draw a diagram to explain it properly. To be fair to our antipodean neighbour he wasn't altogether unfunny, in fact some of his observations were really quite amusing the first time he made them... it was when he repeated them for the 43rd time that they started to grate a bit. He did also have the uncanny ability to produce fully inflated beach balls from thin air (maybe he should get a part in Cirque du soleil). In fact the Kiwis' (beach) balls, the sheep and an unfeasibly long beer (glass) snake held the attention of the majority of the 15,000 strong crowd more than the cricket did... even though it was a nail biting finish with the Kiwis scraping to a last ball victory - the bloke next to me didn't actually notice, he was comatose by this point.
The kids are now back at school after the 'big' holidays, they both appear to like their new teachers - especially George whose teacher is originally from Harrogate and has been having long chats with him about York and its history. He's also doing on a project on Normans - which is great because I can help him with it, there isn't much I don't know about messers Wisdom, Collier and Hunter (that was a rubbish pun even by my low standards).
I went to a music festival in the centre of Perth on Friday, the average age of the attendees was 20.543333 recurring (if I hadn't been there it would have been 18). There was plenty of alcohol consumed, there were quite a few herbal cigarettes being puffed on, and there were a lot of (us) youngsters crammed into a confined space... but there was no loutish behaviour (as long as you don't count balding, middle-aged men leering at attractive young ladies as loutish behaviour). I would quite happily go again next year (if they lift the restraining order)
In contrast, on Saturday, me and Wendy went to see Leonard Cohen at Sandalfords Winery, the average age of the attendees was 63.1471 (if we hadn't been there it would have been 101). There was plenty of the local vintage consumed, and then they consumed some more, and then more and then decided to talk all the way through the performance. These winery crowds are all the same. The woman behind me was saying how great it is to hear live music... yes it would have been. Don't get me wrong, Leonard Cohen (and the supporting musicians) were brilliant and there were several warm and fuzzy moments (including when he did a very creditable cover version of that x factor song that was the christmas number one) but without the constant inane observations from the (mainly) women behind us... it would have been up there in my top three gigs of all time (it might even have nudged in front of Michelle Shocked, at Bradford Uni circa 1992 - although Michelle was wearing a particularly fetching black and white cat suit that evening so she probably would have just held onto third spot anyway)
I can confidently predict that unless the Wedding Present, The Pixies or Billy Bragg come to play at Sandalfords I can't see myself going to another winery gig.

That's all from me for now... I will leave you with my recommendations of five great tracks to play as an accompaniment to a romantic valentines evening...
1: Otis Redding - Try a little tenderness, 2: Roxy Music - In every dream home a heartache (but don't listen to the lyrics too closely because its about an inflatable doll), 3: Mazzy Star - give you my lovin', 4: Morrissey - The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get, 5: The Nolans - I'm In The Mood For Dancing (which my ipod claims I have played 5 times, I refute those claims - it's 4 at the most)

Melbourne bush fires

2009-02-12T10:30:00.003Z

Quite clearly there are no jokes to be had from the tragic events that took place in Victoria last weekend but I didn't want to just ignore it as it has had such a massive impact on the country, even over here in the West.
I was talking to a senior manager at FESA (Western Australia Fire and Emergency Service) today who said that there is a fire danger index that runs from 0-200, and he said that this afternoon in Perth (with the temperature at 35 degrees) the index was 37 and the fire risk was very high. Last Saturday in Victoria the index was pushing 300, it totally bust the scale and there was absolutely no way to stop the fires spreading so fast. The tragedy is that the people in the region are used to dealing with bush fires, they get them so often, but this was a firestorm that was moving at about 80km/h. It was on top of people before they even knew it was coming.
The terrain is a bit different over here in the West, it's a lot flatter, and therefore the bush fires move a bit slower but we certainly aren't immune from them.
We had a big fire (or so we thought at the time) a few weeks ago that destroyed 10,000 hectares (football pitches) of Yanchep National Park and a nearby Pine Forest. It took two days to get it under any sort of control and the smoke reached us in the suburbs about 20km away. It is of course no accident that we live in a built up area (like it's no accident that we are 5 minutes from a pub and a Chinese restaurant), neither us fancied the country because of the fire dangers, and the fact that there are even more snakes and creepy crawlies than we get now.
Don't think that we are complaining about the weather, it's very pleasant having a summer where you can plan to go out and the weather lets you. I also appreciate that people in the UK are having a particularly cold winter - I'm thinking of sending a couple of cartons of table salt to Gloucestershire city council to help them clear their roads.
Hope you are all keeping warm and safe.
H

friends, family, snakes, spiders and sharks...

2008-12-16T12:00:00.009Z

... we've had them all in the last month. Scary man eaters and dangerous creatures just waiting to hurt you... plus snakes, spiders and sharks (ha, ha). I am only joking, we had a fantastic time with my mother and our friends Pete and Hayley who came out from the UK to help us celebrate our first Christmas in oz. What made it even more special was the fact that it snowed... okay, so that bit is a lie but I didn't think you'd want to know that it was over 30 degrees C - that we spent the morning on the beach drinking bucks fizz, body boarding in Santa hats, playing cricket and building elaborate sandcastles - then in the afternoon we threw some shrimps on the barbie and went for a dip in the pool. I'm right aren't I - you really didn't want to hear about that.
By the same token you probably won't want to hear about our pool party - complete with diving challenges... I still can't work out how my triple somersault with pike, tuck and a flik flak into a bucket of water was not good enough to beat Pete's running bomb. Mind you, after Pete's effort there was only enough water left in the pool to fill a bucket. I reckon there was some regional bias to the voting... I only got a 5.3 from the Brighouse judge.
There are of course a great many photos of this and many of the other activities we got up to over the festive period and they are all heading your way. You'll gasp at the breathtaking views from the top of the tallest tower of the tallest building in Perth (in truth it's about the fifth tallest), you'll gush at the cute roos, koalas and dolphins (unfortunately there aren't pics of the baby koala falling about 30 feet out of a tree*... it was OK though because he was able to walk away unaided. Neither are there any photos of me dangling by my feet to recover a piece of Hatties jewellery from the self same koala enclosure - in fact, there may be pics but they will be from the CCTV security cameras so I'm hoping they haven't come out too well) that we encountered, you'll wonder why there is a kangaroo fielding at square leg when Hattie is batting during our Christmas eve game of cricket at Yanchep, you'll be totally underwhelmed by my lack of movement and coordination in the photos of our latest beach volleyball match (which we lost narrowly. We tired at the end of the last set due to the fact that we were playing inside a furnace, at the epicentre of the sun which itself had been placed inside a McDonalds apple pie), but mostly you'll be desperately trying to spot clouds in the endless blue skies.
You may be thinking that it doesn't sound very Christmassy and I guess you are right... but we still managed to go to a Christmas Carol concert (they even sang I'm dreaming of a white Christmas... maybe they were thinking more pharmacological than meteorological) and we visited a street (along with hundreds of other people) in which every house was decorated with over the top Christmas lights, Hattie and I watched 'It's a Wonderful Life' and one of us blubbed like a big girl (Uncle Billy the money is in the newspaper and Potter has got it), we even had mince pies (we didn't think there was much call for mulled wine though). But the most Christmassy thing was that we were able to share it with family and friends - so you best start saving up to come and join us next year. The thing is if you are the next people to visit us we will still be up for going to all the tourist attractions, but it's going to get to a point where we have seen them all so many times that when visitors turn up we just throw them a map and the car keys and say 'fill your boots, we'll be by the pool when you get back'. We look forward to seeing you, but please be warned it does get a tad warm (it was 39 degrees on New Years Day - it can feel quite oppressive especially when added to an hangover) and there are a few dangerous creatures around (and I'm not just talking about George and Hattie). We have had a few red back spiders in the back yard, in the more dark, secluded corners (which only I am ever sent into)... they are poisonous but they keep themselves to themselves. It is only the female that is dangerous - both sexes carry venom but only the female has jaws that are strong enough to penetrate human skin - I did have a joke about female jaws being stronger because they get far more exercise than their male counterparts but the fear of feeling the wrath of my female readership means I won't be sharing it with you.
The next door neighbours claim to have seen (and hit with a shovel) a snake... which if it is true means that there is a venomous snake in the neighbourhood with a headache and a score to settle.
You may also have heard about the man who was attacked and killed by a white pointer (great white) shark just south of Perth between Christmas and new year. Scared yet? The thing is of course that it is far more dangerous to travel on the roads (oh yeah, you're going to have to do that as well) ... I only tell you these things so that you don't start complaining when you get here. Look, if it helps, I'll put an extra bottle of wine and some lager in the (outdoor) beer fridge so it's nice and cool ready for when you arrive.
Because of the long gap between blogs there is lots of news that I haven't yet passed on... namely Hattie getting 'an end of year' prize from school, Me and my mum watching George's cricket team winning by two runs (we missed George taking a wicket due to the fact that we'd had to go to a nearby cafe to have a full English breakfast... it's a long story), Hattie performing in a dance show (the show lasted 3 hours... whilst most of it was quite bearable - I have to admit that I do have a problem with watching white kids with even less sense of rhythm than me gyrating awkwardly to hip-hop music... it's just wrong), Wendy is probably off on another trip in February.. this time over to Sydney.
Right, I'm done... I'll be back in a fortnight to tell you what it is like to have lived upside down for an entire year (has David Blaine tried that one?)
What time is it with you?

By the way, I did get socks for Christmas - three lots.

*I wasn't there to see this incident but I had some of my best operatives on the scene

Me nightie's slippin'...So is your accent, Countess

2008-11-11T11:43:00.009Z

...ahh mr Bond we've been expecting you. Of course, I would have made a perfect Bond... handsome, debonair, errr muscular, a hit with the ladies. No? Maybe I would have made a good Bond Villain? Bond Girl? Anyway, as you will have guessed, we are getting excited about the latest instalment of the world's greatest movie franchise.. no, not High School Musical 3... James Bond in a Quarter of Swordfish (I think 'swordfish' must be some kind of old fashioned boiled sweets a bit like Yorkshire Mixture). The film actually arrives here next week and is rated M (for a mature audience - which means that George can go.. though it's a bit iffy over whether I qualify to go or not). We are taking one of George's school friends as well - he's of Scottish extraction so I expect he'll keep chipping in all through the film going 'see yah man Craig... ah, he's nay Connery' (did I say Scottish.. maybe he was Welsh - I can't do impressions). Don't know if I really want to go or not.. whilst I don't understand the film title, I'm guessing that I should be able to follow the plot line okay.. cars, scantily clad women, things exploding, planned world domination, scantily clad women, high speed chases, oh and scantily clad women... maybe I will go after all.

Talking of World domination.. Wendy went to the November meeting of the Connolly Residents Association. The main topics of conversation were dog poo, whether the local Supermarket should have a fish counter or not and how to spend the $10million dollars surplus - that was left in the budget at the completion of the Freeway Extension project. You will have already guessed which topic Wendy was most interested in.. yes, the need for the fish counter - you wouldn't believe how difficult it is to get a decent mullet around here (and were not talking Chris Waddles haircut). Wendy really enjoyed the evening and is looking forward to going to the next meeting - I'm betting that she'll be on at least one committee inside 12 months.

Talking of betting (how contrived is this blog getting?)... it was the 'big' horse race ('big' as in a very popular race - not as in a race for particularly large horses) here last Tuesday - The Melbourne Cup. It is billed as the race that 'stops a nation', which I figured was just media hype.. but not for the first time I was wrong. On my way to work I saw 'ladies' dressed up as if to go to the races.. dresses, hats, errr saddles, even though they were roughly 2500 miles and two time zones from the course. At work, we stopped to watch the race, Wendy's work stopped to watch the race, George's class stopped to watch the race, and while Hattie's class didn't watch the race.. they did have a sweep on it. Now, that is a proper curriculum... today we will be learning about the sport of kings.

Talking of sport, I hope you have noticed that since my arrival in the country the Australian cricket team has gone from a position of 'invincibility' to one of very definite... errr.. vincibilty. I'm not claiming that I'm solely responsible for the decline but it can't be a total coincidence that I start supporting them and their form dips quite markedly. It may only be a temporary blip though because George is making a concerted effort to make the Test team. He got an award for his performance in his first match, the award was a certificate and a voucher for a very healthy meal - cheeseburger, fries and a coke (I wonder why 48% of Australians are overweight? Talking of which I have put on over a stone since I got here... it's got to be middle age spread or the change of climate.. I can't see that it would be the lager, or pies). George continued his good bowling form this week, taking a wicket in his first over again - he clean bowled the opening batsman with the 3rd ball. The former Australian Test cricketer Brad Hogg is going to Connolly School tomorrow.. probably to pick up some bowling tips from George.

Talking of school, Hattie got another merit award last week.. this time it was for her consien.. consciensiou.. contscien... her attentive 'home reading'. At the moment she is mainly reading Roald Dahl and the complete works of the toys 'r' us christmas catalogue.

Talking of christmas... I've got to go now to send my christmas list to Santa (I'm sending it to the south pole because it's closer), I'm mainly asking for socks this year.

What do you reckon my chances are of getting any?

Dear BBC...why, oh why, oh why?

2008-11-01T12:38:00.011Z

I wish to complain... ok I haven't actually heard the offending incident (or even the programmes full of people discussing the incident) but I am still shocked and annoyed and I'm refusing to pay my licence fee as a protest... I've also sent my MBE back to the Queen (not that I've got anything against you ma'am - by the way thanks for the extra day off in September).
Yours Sincerely,
Angry of Tonbridge Wells.

And now for something exactly the same as all the previous blogs....
blah, blah, blah sunny weather... blah, blah, blah... swimming pool... blah, blah, blah... annoying Irish man with a tall tricolour top hat and a drum (okay, so that bit is different).
As you will no doubt be aware yesterday (Friday) was Halloween - yes surprisingly, if the Queen's birthday is anything to go by, we also 'celebrate' it on the 31st of October. It being an American invention, trick or treating is very popular over here so we prepared accordingly... bought loads of confectionery, dressed Hattie up as a witch, and wired the door bell up to the mains (actually I didn't do that on purpose it was just a natural result of my DIY shortcomings). In the end we only got a couple of visits.. it has to be said that the effect of kids dressed in illuminous skeleton suits is considerably less scary when they knock (they had obviously sussed the doorbell) at your door at 7pm and the street is still bathed in brilliant sunshine. It also has to be said that there is something very scary about being able to see their mums dressed up as witches in the same light (I think they were dressed up).
So, we survived Halloween unscathed. I don't think we have mischievous night over here because we don't have bonfire night.. or maybe we do and it's in January and we commemorate it by putting some snaggers on the barbie... I really don't know.
Before I go any further, I must clear up some housekeeping from last time - I forgot to say that Wendy had passed her final exam and is now free to enjoy her summer in peace, and now I've passed on the news (eventually) I am free to enjoy my summer in peace.
Ah summer, the smell of cut grass, strawberries and cream (actually the strawberry season appears to be spring here), the sound of leather on willow and...snakes. We thought we'd actually found one the other week. Luckily it was Hattie that found it when she went in the garage to get her bike... luckily it was Hattie... and not me. It did look like a snake, all be it not very long (I'm trying very hard to avoid any 'Carry On' style jokes here). In the end it just turned out to be a lizard with very short legs. As if there aren't enough creatures to worry about without the need for lizards to start going around impersonating snakes.
The sound of leather on willow brings me neatly onto my weekend activity (no, don't start making up your own 'Carry On' style jokes), namely taking George to his cricket matches. He has joined the Joondalup Kinross Cricket Club (JKCC) under 12's team (red team) and played his first match over the last two Saturday's... yes, each match lasts for two weeks. JKCC fielded in the first week and George managed to take a wicket with the 3rd ball of his first over with a good length ball in the corridoor of uncertainity (about 6 inches outside the leg stump) that the batsman paddled to Sunil at fine leg who took a good catch. This week, I didn't see him bat (I was too nervous) but he managed a very respectable 2 off 15 balls (boycottesque) before playing the ball onto his stumps. I have endeavoured to try to pass my extensive cricket knowledge down to the next generation.. just as I have passed on all of my best dance moves on to Hattie. However, I'm not sure whether she will be able to incorporate them into the dance show that she is in at christmas... apparently she is playing the part of the ballerina in a wind-up musical box.
This weekend we were invited to go with some of our frinds to see Def Leppard & Cheap Trick... and some other friends invited us to go with them to see Tony Hadley & Paul Young... in the end we settled on staying at home to re-arrange my used tea bag collection (I've decided to display my Liptons pyramid bag alongside a vintage Tetley's rectangular bag - very controversial... I'm sure angry of Tonbridge Wells will have something to say about it). Still, I believe we made the right choice.

And finally.... the Irish man and his drum. Remarkably I managed to go to a sporting event without getting sat next to the mad old lady who feels compelled to shout inane observations through the entire proceedings. Remarkably, she was replaced with the aforementioned Irish gentleman who managed to produce a drum from about his person the moment the Irish team stepped onto the pitch. He was very lucky that the drum didn't disappear up another part of his person shortly afterwards... good job I'm a tolerant, well mannered... coward. The game was a strange hybrid of Australian and Gaelic football, the rules of which are far too complicated to understand, never mind try to explain, so I won't even try. Ireland won 45-44 much to the delight of the man (and drum) sat adjacent to me and the other 20,000 Irish supporters in the crowd of 35,000. I'm guessing they must have all made the 19 hour journey for the match, otherwise, if they were living and working over here surely they would have been supporting Australia (I know, I sound like Norman Tebbitt).
Anyway, I personally, must be Australian now because I play beach volleyball. Yes, I've finally got around to telling the tale. In response to the FAQs... (i) no we don't wear uniforms, be it bikinis, mankinis or budgie smugglers, (ii)Yes it is indoors and yes it's real sand - it's a couple of feet deep... I have dug down a bit, but then I remembered that hundreds of pairs of feet have been in that sand over the course of the evening and quickly abandoned the excavation..(iii) no the sand is not very good for building sandcastles with and even worse for making tunnels, (iv) No, I'm not very good - but our team is in the top division, (v) No, the ball is not made of Wensleydale cheese, (vi) Bob Holnes was actually the second person to play the character of James Bond (not sure what that question has got to do with volleyball but people keep asking it anyway).
Enough, I've got to go now... I've been asked to leave a message on Jo Brand's answer machine (surely that should be Russell Brand - whatever) ... here goes... hey Jo

Because I didn't go to see Def Leppard or Tony Hadley I stayed home and listened to: 1: Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye - Leonard Cohen, 2: The Thing I Like Best About Him is His Girlfriend - Wedding Present, 3: Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues - Bryan Ferry, 4: On Tooting Broadway Station - Kitchens of Distinction, 5: The Prince - Madness

Blimey what a north and south

2008-10-19T12:56:00.008+01:00

How long is it now? (ooohhh matron... always good to start with 'Carry on Style' double entendre). The reasons for the gap between blogs are many fold - The main ones being that we have been on a couple of road trips and that I've discovered a You Tube website that has loads of old editions of the Chart Show from 1989 and 1990 (the golden age of 'Indie music').

Firstly, I know you're desperate for a weather update so here goes. It is spring now , I know this because I have seen all the usual spring type things - daffodils, tulips,... err lizards. The fact that it's spring means the weather is pretty changeable, how's the saying go? October showers November flowers... or something like that. Today, for instance, it's been 31 degrees and yesterday it was 32... like I said it's changeable. It's so warm that we jumped straight into the pool when we got back from our road trip up north today and I've had to start putting ice in my cider... it's very nice though (someone should market it, I think it would do quite well).
Our trip this weekend was up to the pinnacles desert which is about three hours north of Perth. We went up on Saturday and got there in time to see the sunset over the Pinnacles, which are hundreds of limestone outcrops spread over about sixty acres that formed underneath the sand over thousands of years and have come to light (possibly as recently as 300 years ago) as the sands that covered them have shifted into other areas. The geologists amongst you will know that limestone is white in colour - but at sunset it reflects the colours in the sky - so the rocks look orange and pink and the colours are changing every moment. This of course means that you end up taking hundreds of photos - in our household this phenomena of taking an unnecessary number of photos of one subject has become known as a 'Pelican moment' due to an incident where Wendy became snap happy when she encountered the aforementioned bird at Yanchep within the first few weeks of our arrival in Western Australia. So be warned October's photos will mainly be of interestingly lit rocks and the four of us messing about in the swimming pool.
September's pics were mainly of our trip down south that we took during the 'long weekend' - that took in the public holiday we had for the Queen's birthday (okay, so the Queen's two birthdays are in April and June but we get a day off in September, it makes no sense but a day off is a day off... so god bless you ma'am).
------
There was a pause there while I got some more ice for my drink... I may have accidentally emptied another bottle of cider into my glass as well.
Anyway, we went south into the Margaret River wine region. For those non wine connoisseurs amongst you - the majority of wines produced in the region are Semmilon Sauvignon blanc. If you were to go to a tasting you would get (in the style of Jilly Goolden) melons, summer meadows, honey, hollyhocks... out of your tree. It was a very good trip.. the coastline is very picturesque but for some reason I can't remember that much about the trip... I knew we shouldn't have taken the cork screw with us.
Other stuff.
This week Hattie has got a ballet assessment, not sure what that means exactly... it's not quite an exam and I don't think it affects what class she is in for her dancing in the future, but she has to leave school early, use hairspray to plaster her hair to her head and wave one of my (clean) hankies in the air... it sounds more like Morris Dancing than ballet.
George has joined a cricket team... he may play his first game this coming Saturday (it may well depend upon whether I can follow the directions to the venue).
Wendy has taken up jogging because there is no dance group that she can join... of course she knew she wouldn't be able to find anything of the calibre of the York School of Dance and Drama... but she has not been able to find anything at all. She even considered ballroom dancing but was put off by a sequin bedecked Wayne Sleep wannabe on the door.
As for me ....Beach Volleyball - I'll tell you next time, I promise .

This blog was brought to you by the letters X and Z and the number 1.333333 recurring.

This week's essential tunes are: 1 - Young Love by The Mystery Jets, 2 - She Understands by The Summer Suns, 3 - Only Tongue Can Tell by The Trashcan Sinatras, 4 - Don't Take Me Home Until I'm Drunk - The Wedding Present, 5 - Nose out of Joint by The Chesterfields.

2008-09-13T03:52:00.002+01:00

I'm trying a new tack for this blog. I'm writing it on a Saturday morning, without the assistance (or reliance) on alcohol. Yes, it's my first sober blog for quite some time, I doubt that it will have a positive effect on the spelling, grammar or general quality of the writing but I'll give it a go anyway.
There are several reasons why I've chosen to shut myself in the office this morning to tap (painfully slowly) away on the computer. The first, and probably most truthful, is that I'm hiding out in an attempt to avoid the housework. Secondly (and our UK readers will be able to relate to this) the weather is a wee bit inclement at the moment. It's a bit breezy, only 18 degrees and there are some threatening looking clouds scudding across.
Fourthly (it would appear that sobriety hasn't done much for my numeracy either) we are going to a party later... I'm guessing that there will be a barbecue, several gallons of lager and a lot of nonsense will be spouted (mainly by me).
This Arvo, me and George are off to a big footy match - the Falcons are playing the Swans in the WAFL (pronounced waffle - as in Birdseye potato waffles.. they're waffly versatile) elimination final. We will be barracking for (Aussie speak for cheering on) the Falcons (West Perth)... so you might want to get some money on Swan Districts.
George is now out of plaster - we are making him wear a tube bandage on his right arm, not to give any support to his wrist, but to remind him that he has to be careful. Little does he know that there is also a small monitoring device implanted in the bandage that triggers an alarm every time he starts to climb trees or participate in contact sports... which in turn activates avoice recording of his mother saying ..George don't do that (ala Joyce Grenfell - one for our older readers)
Wendy's exams are now complete - she thinks she did okay, she said her arm was aching at the end of it - whether this was because she wrote a lot, or because she spent three hours leaning on it whilst looking out of the window (my particular exam technique) is unclear. It will be a few weeks before she finds out the results, but she's not intending to do any more studying... especially not now the temperature of the swimming pool is becoming slightly less akin to that of the arctic ocean.
Hattie got the dubious honour of christening the pool (hopefully not literally). She swam a couple of lengths in a time that Stephanie Rice would have been proud, albeit in the interests of self preservation - if she had gone any slower ice would have started to form on her arms and legs. Despite the fact that she had turned blue, I was persuaded to jump in as well - those of you who've seen the recent batch of photos may be able to see that I've got two lumps in my throat, they have gradually worked there way back to there proper position and I'm no longer talking in a Soprano voice. If you have seen the photos, you will have no doubt thought to yourself - what a fine figure of a man, I wonder why he never took up a career as an International Super model? Well, it just so happens that even at this late stage I may not have been entirely lost to the modelling industry. To see the results of my first modelling assignment go to .. http://www.bassendean.wa.gov.au/library/. If you scroll down the page to the news and events section.. the pictures accompanying the story 'Talking books in a new format' are me. I hear rumours that Kate Moss is getting worried already.. mainly because I'm even skinnier than she is.
We went to see Bill Bailey this week - he was excellent his ad-libbing is just superb. His vision of the Opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics was hilarious.. it involves the Queen on a giant motorised Yorkshire pudding surrounded by hundreds of performers who are portraying mushy peas and gravy through the power of contemporary dance. No mention of Morris Dancers though.
Right, I'm off now for a bit of barracking - not sure whether the tea total blog was a success or not... but I appear to have written twice as much in half the time.... all nonsense of course (nothing new there)
I will leave you with the news that I have finally hung up my football boots and taken up a new sport. The whole thing of there being more than one code of football was just too confusing and I was never comfortable calling it soccer so I've retired. Instead, I've taken up a much more Australian sport...

... Beach Volleyball (but slightly more surreally - it's indoor beach volleyball). I'll elaborate next time.

This message was brought to you whilst listening to Talking Heads and then The Housemartins.

throw your skinny body down son

2008-08-13T14:13:00.002+01:00

Well that was an interesting week.
It started with 'number one son' trying to emulate tarzan and ending up more like George of the Jungle. One minute he was swinging through the air with the greatest of ease the next he's dangling by his arm from a rope net.
Apparently it was such a severe break that even people without my vast medical knowledge were able to ascertain that something was amiss... it may well have been because the bones were set at rather a jaunty angle.
The upshot was that we ended up in casualty. The UK tax payers amongst you will be pleased to note that the Australian nursing system is populated almost exclusively by NHS trained nurses... and very good they are too.
You will also be pleased to know that the children in A&E departments here have the same ailments as those in the UK... broken bones, gastric problems, allergic reactions to peanuts, snake bites. It's true, the boy in the next cubicle to George had been bitten by a snake... as it turned out it was non-venomous, but it was still enough to keep me housebound for a week.
I know this blog may be read by some of George's young female admirers, so really it should be my duty as his father to embarrass and belittle him by going on about what a big girls blouse he was after his accident. The truth is however, that he was as hard as nails unlike the rest of us.. Hattie was in a state of hysteria for several hours, Wendy nearly passed out and I spent most of the the evening on 'gas and air'. George on the other hand didn't have any pain killers, instead, he relied on 'mind over matter' techniques... which he apparently learnt by watching James Bond films. I am now concerned that he may have picked up other techniques from his observations of 007. I've got a sneaking suspicion it might well be time for 'that little chat'... at last someone will be able to tell me about the birds and the bees.

George breaking his arm was only part of our 'weekus horribilis'. The following day, the driver of a flat bed lorry thought it would be a good idea to back his vehicle into our car, ripping a big hole in the drivers door. The fact is that driving skills aren't particularly high over here... think Maureen from 'Driving School'... lets face it they even manage to make me look quite proficient behind the wheel.

It's not all gloom and doom. Wendy passed her latest exam (on the exciting subject of company law) with flying colours. The girly swat got 80%, some of which carries forward to the final exam which she sits in a few weeks time. Then she has to decide whether she wants to sit further exams during the summer months or if she wants to sit on the beach... boy, that's a tough one.

Our household is in the grip of Olympic fever at the moment. It helps that we are on the same time zone as Beijing and also the fact that we are having a punt each way... we are supporting the UK and Australia. Thanks to the Aussies' exploits in the pool we now know most of the words to the Aussie National Anthem, no not Especially for you (by Kylie and Jason) ...it's Advance Australia Fair. If we forget the words we just mime like the photogenic Chinese girl did at the opening ceremony. The female swimmers' success may also have been the catalyst to Hattie getting a merit for her freestyle and moving to the next level of her swimming lessons... it was either that or the fact that I told her that I would concrete over our pool if she didn't pass. Carrot and stick.

six months is a long time

2008-07-23T13:01:00.004+01:00

Believe it or not, It's exactly six months since we touched down here in Perth. To commemorate this momentous milestone I thought I'd give you a rundown of what's hot and what's not about this particular part of Western Australia.
Before I even began
The thing is that when we arrived, we did so without any preconceptions....... we knew it was going to be different and hopefully quite sunny but apart from that we were happy to just go with the flow.
What we have found is that Australia really isn't all that different from the UK. That may be due to the fact that wherever you go in the World it's still you and your personal view that is seeing and interpreting the surroundings so we are still seeing everything through 'Brit goggles'. It is true to say that some things aren't the same here but on the whole there is nothing that is overtly foreign.... apart from the blue skies.
Luckily we have got all of the famous UK brands over here, such as: McDonalds, KFC, Ikea and Dominoes Pizza.
I've even managed to infiltrate the local music scene. I've found several bands that are proficient in the art of producing jingly, jangly indie guitar music overlayed with an untuneful singer telling tales of having problems with his girlfriend. Home from home.
All I saw on Channel 4
The TV over here is an odd mixture of UK and US shows with a generous sprinkling of Australian 'car crash TV' programs. We get all the same sort of reality TV bobbins that you do, some of them with celebrities who I don't know (just like the UK). It is actually a feat of endurance to watch a film on the commercial channels here due to the fact that the shear quantity of adverts pushes the duration of most movies to well over three hours. And the closer to the end of the film you are the more adverts they subject you to (because by that point they know they've got you).
Shoplifters of the World
The worst thing about Australia (and I'm sure I will never get used to it) is that they search your bags when you go out of a shop. They've got all the usual security measures: cctv, security guards and the detector things by the door but you are also required to show your receipts to the girl on the checkout and let her rifle through your shopping. The temptation to say 'look you don't have to be a convict to come here any more' is very strong... luckily (for the sake of my boyish good looks), so far I have resisted. The thing is, my pockets are always bulging (it's more of a curse than a blessing) and they never ever ask to have a look at what I've got in my trousers.
The other thing is that the Postal Service appears to lose a lot of mail. Don't get me wrong, all our Australian post gets here and the odd letter from family and friends in the UK gets through. But I never get anything from all the people that had said they would write to me....so it's got to be AusPost losing the letters because all my acquaintances in the UK must be trying to send me stuff, mustn't they? Yeah, of course they are.
now, today tomorrow and always
I think it's fair to say that Wendy and I are loving it here... the work, the outdoor lifestyle, the weather, the house, the fact that we are about a mile from golden beaches and the Indian Ocean. The kids are taking a bit longer to be convinced that it was a good move. They are a lot happier now they have all their belongings around them again but they both miss the friends (school and otherwise) they left behind in the UK. Mind you, at least they are getting letters from their friends, they aren't all being misplaced by the post office.

In conclusion, It's great.. you'd love to live here. Wait a minute though, it is getting a bit crowded, especially out here in the west..........actually you'd hate to live here, stay where you are.

Everywhere you go always take the weather with you

2008-07-16T13:25:00.002+01:00

I thought I'd use lyrics by a good old Aussie band this week. Okay, so Crowded House are actually from New Zealand but we (well I have been here nearly six months) claim them as our own. I've noticed that the Aussies seem to do that quite a bit to our antipodean cousins.
Australia's greatest ever racehorse, Phar Lap, was actually born in New Zealand. It was eventually poisoned by the Americans but I digress.
Let me tell you about the weather just to prove I am still a pom. We have had the same weather pattern repeating itself for the past four weeks. We have rainy days from Tuesday through to Saturday and then sunny days on Sunday and Monday. But the rainy days aren't grey miserable and overcast, instead it buckets it down for anything from five minutes to an hour and then its sunny and pleasantly warm for about an hour. Then it all starts again.
Of course it could be worse, after all this is our winter.
The main topic for discussion this week is haircuts. Following on from my lead, everyone has been to have their hair chopped off. I've not had mine cut for a few weeks because it's decided not to grow back. Wendy has had hers cropped quite short, she was intending it to be a half-way house on the way to having a bob, but she is now going to stick with what shes got. It does look good and really suits her having it straight, although occasionally it does go a bit curly, due to either a) atmospheric conditions, b) eating her crusts, c) some Shirley Temple genes somewhere in her lineage.
Hattie was next in the chair, not sure what happened but she came out looking about 14. I've had to start practicing telling her 'you can't go out dressed like that' and 'I want to have a chat to any prospective boyfriends'.
George settled for a trim.
I think he was getting fed up of me taking photos of him looking like Albert Einstein on a bad hair day.
There will be pics of all the new hairstyles in the July photo album. There may also be snapshots from Wendy's work trips to Rottnest and Melbourne which are coming up shortly. Rottnest, is an island about a mile or two off the coast across a notoriously choppy stretch of water - so that may lead to some very interesting action shots.
After Wendy sent out the photo album for June I had several complimentary messages from people admiring my shiny red helmet that was prominent in several of the pics. The wearing of cycle helmets is in fact compulsory over here, fortunately the wearing of tight lycra shorts isn't... not yet anyway.
The kids are currently on a two week break from school, they are attending holiday club at a place called 'Go bananas'. The good part is that they get to go (indoor) rock climbing, bowling, laser shooting and roller skating, the downside is that they have to get up at 6.30am so we can drop them off before we go to work. If you've seen Shaun of the Dead, that's what breakfast time looks like in our house this week. Again, I suppose its just a taste of the teenage years to come.
I'm going now, I need to empty some water out of the pool after all this rain... I thought it would have an over sized bath plug in the deep end but I can't see it.

two pints of lager and a packet of crisps please

2008-07-01T13:31:00.005+01:00

Now that's what you call a party. I'm told the housewarming/Wendy's birthday party was very good - but, as you would expect, I was unconscious after the second pint so I'm relying on other people's accounts. For the record, the twelve adults attending drank a total of 47 bottles of lager, 3 bottles of fizz, 4 bottles of white wine, 1 bottle of red wine, a bottle of babycham and a small glass of sweet sherry. Just to confirm, if it's needed after such a detailed inventory, the majority of the attendees were accountants.

Anyone who knows Wendy would have guessed, of course, that we were fully unpacked within two days of moving into the new house. It helped that one of the removal men was a man mountain who was able to pick washing machines up with one hand.
In the course of unpacking, I discovered something worse than dismantling flat-pack furniture: Re-assembling flat-pack furniture without the aid of instructions. All I had to help me put Hattie's bedroom furniture back together was a slightly out of focus photo of her old bedroom with the furniture situated somewhere in the far distance. I think I did a good job, considering, I think I might try selling Ikea the design for my three legged wardrobe (called 'Jake').

And no, we haven't been brave enough to venture into the swimming pool yet, the kids managed to dip their toes in but that was as far as they got. It's a bit chilly at the moment, I think we will have to wait until spring (September) before using it. In the meantime I have to vacuum it - I got through three Dysons and got an even spikier new haircut before it was explained to me that you create the vacuum using the pool's filter pump. So much to learn (tenuous link alert).
Talking of learning, George is now doing a PEAC course for gifted and talented children (If it wasn't for the fact that he has got my genetically mutated knees, I'd be asking for a DNA test). Basically, it means that one morning a week he goes to a different school and does lessons on a chosen subject with other show-offs (sorry, gifted kids). George's course is called 'Save the Earth - it's the only planet with chocolate' and over the last four weeks he has gradually turned into an eco-warrior. We have all been forced to cut down on our energy consumption - Hattie only gets out of bed if it's absolutely necessary, George has cut down on his use of soap and shampoo and I am now re-cycling at least 75% of my jokes.

The kids got their school reports this week, Hattie's was very good. She did well across all subjects but particularly excelled in art, getting an A (If it wasn't for the fact that she has my devastating good looks, I'd be asking for a DNA test).

I'm expecting that by the time I get round to writing the next blog we will have been here for six months so it may well take the form of a half-yearly report.

I'm off to fill a hot water bottle now - it's going to be 3 degrees tonight. It just leaves me to say ... when will I see you again? (three degrees, gettit?................bloody sod you then)

Waterloo, couldn't escape if I wanted to

2008-05-28T14:09:00.004+01:00

I'm sure no one has noticed but there has been a bit of a gap between transmissions - I did try to fix up some' hold' music for you to listen to whilst waiting for the next blog to arrive but I appear to have mis-placed my copy of '40 pan-pipe classics'.

Talking of musical nightmares, imagine my horror to discover that moving to a different continent is not enough to escape the horror that is 'The Eurovision Song Contest'. I have to admit that I manged to avoid the semi-finals but got drawn into watching the start of the final but only to see if it would be Sir Terrance of Wogan doing the commentary... and it was. I am considering setting up a version of Eurovision over here - but I'm not sure it would work because no-one would vote for us here in the West and all the Eastern States would just vote for each other... and what would be the point of that. Mind you, I would have an amazing array of pop talent to choose from, namely: Mental As Anything, Angry Anderson, Men at Work and Midnight Oil. The lead singer of Midnight Oil (somebody Garrett) is now the Environment Minister... it's a bit like you in the UK appointing H from Steps as Home Secretary, or something even more bizarre like voting in Boris Johnston to be Lord Mayor of London.

Staying on the theme of dubious music brings us to the Aussie wedding that we gatecra.. sorry, attended recently. The ceremony itself was very entertaining - the priest delivered an excellent stand-up routine - but seemed a bit hazy on the religious stuff, a duo (It may possibly have been Crowded House or perhaps Chaz n' Dave) performed the musical interludes (mercifully there wasn't any community singing at all) and the crowd was very well behaved. In fact it was a very enjoyable day and evening, the reception was at Sandelfords Winery - where the food was excellent, the speeches were palatable and the open bar was totally abused. No, the only problem was the Disco, it was by no means the worst DJ I've encountered (I can think of at least three CGA Christmas Parties where the DJ has made Dazzlin' Darren sound like Paul Oakenfold). But you have to question the credentials of a DJ that plays Jive Bunny - they may well be the biggest act ever to come out of Rotherham, and yes my Spanish teacher did appear in one of their videos (which may explain why I failed my (ye) O (lde) level), but there is no place for them on the dance floor in the 21st Century. I tell you, if they hadn't been serving up the port at the time... I would have left in disgust. As it was we still left before they'd played Come on Eilleen.

When I've finished updating the blog my next task will be to put a play list together for our housewarming party - strictly no Jive Bunny or Black Lace.... I'm thinking Smiths, Cure, Joy Division, Nick Cave, etc - that way everyone will leave early before they can wreck the joint. The party is on the 14th June and you are all invited (bring a plate and some ear plugs).

Awards time:
Wendy finished her Australian Tax course this week (she has been doing it more or less since we arrived). She passed the exam with a ridiculously high mark and now has a short break before embarking on her next lot of studying.
George received a 'highly commended' certificate and prize at the Shaun Tan Young Artists Awards. He also won Best in Show thanks to his shiny coat and wet nose. I was wrong about everyone getting a prize. In fact less than half the finalists got prizes which resulted in one or two very disappointed seven year olds going home with absolutely nothing (apart from the knowledge that they reached the final ten from over 1,200 entries).
Hattie has now moved up a level in jazz and tap (dancing) she now gets to perform to the music of Jive Bunny and Big Fun - I can't wait for the show.

I will try not to leave it as long before the next blog.... in the meantime please enjoy listening to this pan-pipe rendition of C'mon Everybody.

He was trapped in a haircut he no longer believed in

2008-05-02T14:47:00.004+01:00

The fight to keep my fringe somewhere near my eyebrows has finally ended in defeat and I have been forced to move the battle lines considerably higher up the forehead. Which means, of course, that the classic 80s hairstyle that has served me so well for over a quarter of a century has finally gone and been replaced with the ubiquitous shaved sides and short spiky top (or in my case fluffy top) that most 'men of a certain age' sport. My decision to change styles was also assisted by the fact that Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and ABC are all coming to town soon (I think 'The New Romantics' could be the next big thing to break over here along with the rubiks cube). It means that there are already going to be more enough 40 something blokes with floppy fringes in the vicinity without them needing my help. I don't remember much about the operation to give me a 21st century hairstyle because I was heavily sedated throughout the ordeal. At the moment there aren't any pictures of my new look, we have tried but they all come out with a massive glare off my over sized forehead.

Wendy flew out to Brisbane this week for a conference on... she did tell me... I was definitely listening and paying attention... that was it ...little east asians or it could have been litigation. Either way it meant flying to the other side of the country for three days and despite being singled out by security at the airport to be searched for explosives she had a good time. Actually, she may have meant that she had a good time because she was searched - not sure.

George is currently taking the local art world by storm with his avant garde, post-modern, surrealistic, new romantic photography. He's been shortlisted for the prestigious Shaun Tan Award open to all school children in Perth for his thought provoking piece entitled urban beasts. The Award ceremony is being held at Subiaco Library, an indoor venue, so I may be safe from sand blowing into my eyes and making them water when he goes up to get his prize. I'm guessing that all of the finalists will get something, I can't see them dragging kids and their families all that way just to clap when somebody else wins.

Hattie was very happy with the Nintendo DS that she got for her birthday. She's not quite so happy with the fact that I am constantly asking her what DS stands for? She's taken to using it with headphones on so that she can't hear me. We weren't able to arrange for any of her friends to sleepover so she had to settle for a birthday lunch and a trip to the cinema to see 'Horton hears a Who'. She also had an ice cream 'radioactive' birthday cake which had some very unrealistic colouring... she came down off the ceiling by the following Tuesday.

We are in the process of buying a house in Connolly, close to the school, the shops, the golf course and the Kangaroo Arms (a pub)... A coincidence? I think not. If everything goes smoothly we should be moving in around the 5th of June. Photos of us freezing to death trying to get the most out of the solar heated swimming pool in winter will no doubt appear shortly afterwards.

We are going to a bona-fide Australian wedding next Saturday so I shall tell you all about that next time.

I'll get the doctor, to take a picture

2008-04-18T13:05:00.003+01:00

My diagnosis of Hattie's injuries after the tree incident was called into question. As a result she ended up at the hospital on Saturday afternoon to have an x-ray and let someone with slightly more training than myself have a look at it. It turns out I was right all along - minor cuts and bruises, apparently though I should have strapped the little finger of her left hand to the ring finger of her left hand and not the ring finger of her right hand. This may explain why she was struggling to use it properly.

George took part in the Joondalup festival last weekend. His class and a couple of others represented the school in the street parade. The boys were samurai warriors and the girls were geisha's. Wendy, somehow got roped into doing some face painting - everyone ended up with a white face and a droopy black moustache and goatee beard... and that was just the geisha's. The Japanese teacher chose some appropriate music to accompany them on their way round, namely Kungfu Fighting (Craig Douglas) and Turning Japanese by the Vapors. Bearing in mind the true meaning of the Vapors' lyrics the song probably wasn't that suitable after all. I'm sure it would have been more appropriate if all the boys had been teenagers.

This week I have mainly been learning about parrots, two in particular. Firstly, the Galah - this is the grey and pink parrot that appears in the photo gallery on the left of this page. It's a bit clumsy and not too bright and has been known to drop out of trees - hence calling someone a big Galah, especially someone you don't know, is offensive and can lead to a flamin' row. Australians do like a bit of a confrontation, which is why they have 37 different words for 'argue' (like Eskimos with snow). The other parrot I am now an expert on is the one known as the 28. It's very colourful in blues and greens and is so named because when it calls it sounds like it's saying 28. The only time it ever makes the call is when it's going to rain which is why it's also called the rain bird. I can vouch for this, the other day when I walked to the train station they were all calling and sure enough twenty minutes later it was raining. Mind you, there were some pretty dark rain clouds around at the time. In fact, you would have to be a Galah or Michael Fish not to know it was about to chuck it down.

We recently made a bold attempt to buy a house we liked but our less than generous offer was turned down. The system for house sales over here is quite different from the UK. Basically, you put your offer in writing and if the vendor accepts it - that's it, you've bought the house, it's legally binding and there is no way out of it. This, tied to the fact that the market is slowing down and that we aren't in any hurry to move, led us to put in a very cautious offer...one that the vendors were not at all impressed with. They responded by dropping the price by $5,000 which was still $44,999 and 98 cents more than we were offering.

Disaster. Hard Jubes are temporarily out of stock - in the entire State, I think it may be my heavy consumption of them that has caused this inbalance in the demand/supply chain.

Next time: Hatties birthday, George the artist of International renown, new hairstyles administered under general anaethestic, ANZAC Day and Australian weddings (probably).

This weeks essential ipod top 5: (1) The cutter > Echo and the Bunnymen. (2) Keep it clean > Camera Obscura. (3) Rich and strange > Cud. (4) There there my dear > Dexy's Midnight Runners. (5) Twist and shout > Deacon Blue.

I like my football on a Saturday, roast beef on Sunday.. alright

2008-04-04T13:16:00.005+01:00

...yes, it's my autumn almanac. Lyrics courtesy of my uncle Ray and The Kinks - just in case you were struggling with this weeks pop reference. We have now officially changed seasons, although it's not altogether obvious, all the leaves on the trees are still green, it's still sunny for the majority of the time and the TV schedule hasn't improved any.
We have turned the clocks back, officially it's an hour, but for the TV stations it's twenty years - a new series of Gladiators started this week, can't wait for Howard's Way and Triangle to get here.

The coming of autumn means the start of the footy season and as part of our integration into Aussie society, George and I attended a local game last Saturday. Despite the fact that it's a different game, a different country and a different hemisphere I still managed to get sat next to the mouthy old woman who spent the duration of the match (more than two and half hours including the breaks) shouting abuse and encouragement in equal measures at umpires, spectators and players alike. It could have been worse, I could have been sat closer to the bloke who was constantly hitting two metal dustbins with two bits of heavy duty steel pipe and shouting EAT PEARS (well that's what it sounded like to me, George reckons he was shouting East Perth but I'm not convinced). The game itself was very interesting but is clearly a young mans game, none of the players were born before 1978. I think it must be like Logan's Run and they dispose of them when the player reaches 30, I suspect that they send them to Brisbane like they do in Neighbours.

The kids are coming to the end of their first school term and they have both done really well, many of you will have already seen the certificate Hattie received for her Merit Award that Wendy sent out last week. Having got the award for concentrating hard in class last week, this week she wasn't concentrating quite hard enough in PE and managed to run into a tree. Hattie escaped with cuts and bruises, the tree however had to be humanely destroyed and has now been turned into an Ikea storage system probably called something like bjorn.

Now that the long winter nights are upon us (it goes dark at six o 'clock ) we are going to have to make our own entertainment by playing board games. I am however slightly nervous about playing George at chess because a month or so back he picked up some new tactics from an expert who came to the school. He was a grand wizard or a jedi knight or something of that ilk and he's taught George all sorts of weird new moves. I had previously heard of castling although I didn't have a clue what it was, but I'd never come across 'kangarooing' before, where you hop all round the board removing all of your opponenets pieces as you go. The good thing is that the games are mercifully short, George is now talking about playing him at poker... I don't think so.

It's not so much roast beef on Sunday, more like barbecued sausages and burgers in the park, followed by a game of cricket whilst the parrots squawk in the branches of the trees overhead. It's still slightly surreal but very good indeed.
We are definitely now into phase two of our migration, which goes by the codename of Operation Boomerang. We are well and truly out of holiday mode and are settling into the routine of daily life - work, school, footy, fishing (the jury is still out on this one - George loved it, I don't get it), and eating pies.
Pie is the national dish of Australia and very nice they are too, I can highly recomend the beef and bacon pie, the beef stroganoff pie and the beef stake pie, I ate them all in the name of research so you wouldn't have to. There's an advert on TV over here in which Hollywood star Sam Neill explains that white meat isn't good for you and red blooded Australians should only eat red meat. I Can't think why 48% of Australians are overweight.

So, all we need now in order to feel that we are here for good is to buy a Neighbours style house in a cul-de-sac, complete with swimming pool and built in Mrs Mangle. Well........

I'm waiting for my man, 26 dollars in my hand

2008-03-14T13:03:00.002Z

I'm guessing Lou Reed was trying to buy decent quality sweets whilst on a tour of Australia when he wrote those lyrics. Such is the poor quality of the home produced confectionary that I've been forced to find a supplier who can get hold of top quality 'real' Lions Midget Gems and Sports Mixtures, no questions asked. They are the genuine article, so much so that the blacks are licorice, none of this new fangled blackcurrant nonsense. I had to pay way over the odds though, $4 (nearly £2) for 100g, I had to sell two of George's birthday presents to pay for them. It would probably be cheaper to actually do hard drugs. I have since found an Aussie 'lolly' (Australian term for all confectionary) that may just help stop my cravings for classic UK sweets, they are called Hard Jubes (normal Jubes are no good) and they are a bit like American Hard Gums but more so, I've done 3 packets this week but I'm not an addict... I could stop if I wanted to, I've just got a cold today.

George has been coming home with some brilliant numeracy (thats Maths in old money) homework. He had a question the other week that went: George has bought a fishing rod and reel for a total price of $78, the reel cost $14 more than the rod, how much did he pay for each item? Sod that, where did he get $78 from and why couldn't I have it to spend on sweets. [I'm expecting the accountants amongst us to have worked out the answer to the question by now, and no you can't use a calculator].
The thing is they are absolutely mad about fishing here and apparently all the migrants take it up within six months of arriving. George has already said he wants to join our friend and his son on a Sunday morning fishing trip... personally, I'm not that keen. It's not the fact that I've had not had much luck when I've dabbled in the 'sport' previously, it's not even the fact that we would have to be up by 7am on the Sabbath, it's that I've read stuff that really puts you off.
There was one article I read that had a picture of an ugly fish that was all spines and lips and the copy said that you can very often catch this fish if you are trying to catch prawns. If you do accidentally catch this fish - don't handle it, just cut your line and walk away. Then it showed a bigger, uglier, spinier fish that was apparently the other ones cousin, the caption said: don't even look at it.
Obviously, if I do get talked into going fishing I won't be fishing for prawns, I'll be trying for something alot safer like shark for instance.

We have found out this week that the shipping won't arrive in Fremantle until the 27th of March. Apparently the ship has been dogged by bad weather and had to put into port to avoid a storm. It will be at least three weeks after that before our container wiil clear customs so we are going to be without furniture for some time yet. One of Wendy's work colleagues has very kindly lent us a double bed, a collection of barbies and a huge tub of lego. I don't know whether the bed is comfy or not, we've had it three days but I've not been to sleep because I've been too occupied playing with ba.... er..lego.

Due to the fact that I have been offered a 'proper' job the blogs may become a bit more infrequent from now on (stop cheering). I will be working for a small design studio - producing logos, brochures, websites, etc (and most probably making the tea). It's going to be a steep learning curve (I never could make tea) but I'm really looking forward to it.

I'm off down to the 'British Lolly' shop now to work out what I can spend my first weeks wages on.
Sherbert Pips? Rhubarb and Custard? Floral Gums? Wine Gums? Butterscotch Tablets? Rosy Apples? Yorkshire Mixture? Teddy Bears?

Tears of a Clown

2008-03-08T12:38:00.003Z

We went to watch Hattie's class present the school assembly last Friday. They put on a performance all about clowns. It was very entertaining, not a bit like the real thing, which is probably why my Coulrophobia (irrational fear of clowns) never kicked in. Hattie did some tightrope walking at the dizzy height of 3cm off the ground (the thickness of a skipping rope). She was wearing black leggings and her oversized white trainers which made her look like a cross between Max Wall and Ronald McDonald. The Assembly Hall is outside and a gust of wind blew some sand into my eyes and made them water just as she was doing her act, either that or a proud parent gene was activated and I was blubbing like a big girl.

George's birthday party went very smoothly on Saturday and the five hours passed without any major incident. There were a couple of 'interesting' moments involving a man with a tyre, a couple of odd looking ducks and a gang of about 20 female teenage pirates... but it would take far too long to explain, you just had to be there. The boys also had a great time in Sizzlers inventing new recipes for 'spiders' (in the UK they are floats... ice cream with fizzy pop poured over). Personally I wouldn't have drunk the one that mixed coke, cream soda, lemon lime & bitters and a kiwi fruit but they seemed to like it.

On Sunday, we spent the late afternoon on the beach and then when the sun went down we stayed and watched a Japanese animated movie. Despite the fact that the film was very good, without the sickly sweet plot and mind numbingly awful soundtrack of a Disney cartoon, and that it was free, and that there was plenty of room even though there were lots of people watching - we still felt a little cheated. It had been advertised that the screen would be floating in the harbour and in the end it was just sat on the beach, very disappointing, and to make matters worse when the moon came up... it wasn't on a stick.

Wendy has been able to buy and install a skype phone, so now we can have conversations for free and you don't have to look at us... that's got to be a good thing. Now you won't have to wear shades to combat the glare being reflected from my bald patch.

At last, I have been for a few job interviews in the last fortnight but still haven't actually managed to secure gainful employment yet, The interviews have gone really well but just when I think I've landed the job they've said to me "Have you ever thought about writing a book?"
In fact for one of the jobs I even got called back for a second interview, it was between me and a young lady... and I came second (there is definitely a joke in there but it's very rude so I'll leave it to you to find it). I am currently hounding the secretary of the Sports Editor of the major newspaper here in Perth in an attempt to arrange to meet up for an interview. The way things are progressing me and Carol may end up going out on a date before I get in to see the Editor.

And finally...
The quirky news story at the end.
I found this cutting in a (different) local paper:
"The other event was a sandcastle competition to mark the first visit to Australia of Pope Benedict XVI in July"

I really wish I could have been at the meeting when they came up with that one. Right so the Pope's coming over this winter what should we do to mark this historic visit?
Well, I think we should give the church a new coat of paint... yes, good.
Do you think we should brush up on our Latin?... fair point, well put.
How about a sandcastle competition... genius.
More communion wine anyone?

Well thats it for another week, I'm going to log onto the interflora website now to order some flowers for Carol.
Bye

I felt the earth move under my feet

2008-02-28T02:27:00.005Z

Floods, gales and now earthquakes - make sure somebody lets me know when the locusts arrive. I was intending to bang on about the extreme weather we are enduring over here at the moment (the temperatures are in the high 30's) hoping you'd spare me a thought the next time you have the pleasure of scraping the ice off the inside of your car but it all seems a bit tame now.
I hope no-one suffered any structural damage. As I understand it you were all in bed at the time, it was all over inside 5 seconds and it's the first time it's happened for a number of years... add your own punchline.

In a sort of related way - this time ten years ago George was being born, Wendy was going through agony and I was being very supportive whilst at the same time being distracted by the cricket on the TV, not a great deal has changed really. George is having a birthday party on Saturday, for which he's invited 3 of his friends round - there's an English one, a Scottish one and an Australian one - it sounds like the start of a Bernard Manning joke. I've made the arrangements and believe me it took ages trying to find an Australian boy. The friends are coming around at 2.01pm and bringing their own toys with them to play with, Callum (the Australian one) is sleeping over and he's having to bring his own bed and bedding with him - we're hoping he'll forget to take them home when he leaves. After they've played for a bit and got bored, 2.03pm precisely, I'm taking the boys to 'Sizzlers'. I believe it's an all you can eat restaurant although it does sound like an adult theme bar, either way I'm sure it will do us just fine.

Hattie has now started taking dancing lessons, apparently she wants to learn more than just the 'teacher dancing' moves I've taught her - all I've got to say is: they worked on her mum. She's doing tap and jazz (not a clue what that is) and Grade 1 ballet. I'm guessing Grade 1 is a very short version (grade 1, short...get it? no?... forget it). I haven't seen her but I'm presuming that Hatties ballet teacher is in her mid 30's, slim build, moderately attractive with mid length brown hair scraped off her forehead into a pony tail and that she also has a walking stick and a pronounced limp... they are always like that in the movies. And also like the movies, there is going to be a show - I'm sure the authorities will try to suppress it but there is definitely going to be a show and it's on December the 19th (December, you say?). Unfortunately I'll have to miss it. I'm busy that day compiling a list of my top 5 favourite films about basketball playing teenage Werewolves.

Wendy has already got lots of projects on at work and is booked to pop over to Brisbane for a conference at the end of April. That's pop, as in taking a 5 to 6 hour plane journey across two time zones.

And finally... I would like to thank all those people who have very kindly told me that I should write a book. I've only published one of the comments otherwise it would start to look like I'm turning the blog into my own personal fan club. I can't help feeling that the people who are making these suggestions have seen my design work and are trying to drop the hint that maybe I should consider a career move. Also, I can't say I know what a literary agent does exactly but I'm sure they have to do more for their 10% than say I think you should write something. I can imagine a guy in a cafe in Edinburgh going up to Ms Rowling and saying "I tell you what JK, bang us out a story while your sat drinking your coffee. That'll be 10% of a billion pounds please".

With the way things seem to be going, I predict that the whole of Ashby-de-la-Zouch will have been destroyed by a volcanic erruption before I write my next post - so make sure you stock up on crisps (or chips as they call them here -more of that another time)

She's got legs...and she knows how to use them

2008-02-21T02:08:00.003Z

Lucy Bear Operation - Progress Report

We are very pleased to anounce that the operation to mend Lucy Bears leg has been a complete success. It was quite straight forward really, although a couple of the holes weren't quite alligned correctly so we had to drill them out a bit and then bash the screws in with an hammer.... oh no sorry that wasn't Lucy Bear's operation, that was putting the bed together.

In fact, much to Hattie's relief, Wendy had to be called in at the last minute to place the stictches in Lucy Bear because I was needed elsewhere to perform an emergency 'replacingbuttonsonmyshortsectomy'. There are only a few of us that are skilled enough to perform such ground breaking surgery - it would appear that my first year needlework teacher was wrong in her appraisal of me. The original button was last seen heading south at a blistering rate of knots as just I was finishing the last mouthful of my fourth kebab.

So it looks like Lucy Bear will make a full recovery, unless the ratings go down again, then she will probably suffer a very severe relapse or undergo a head transplant (like the Lucy in neighbours). She is not receiving visitors at the moment and asked that instead of gifts, all well wishers should make a donation to the hospital charity to help other sick and needy cuddly toys. Please make all cheques payable to C.A.S.H (Cuddly Animals Surgical Hospital). Thank You.

In other news

George's bed arrived on time. It was then assembled quickly and efficiently(ish) and is still standing (hooray). George was so excited to get a bunk bed that he volunteered to help put it together. As it was self assembly there was plenty of swearing, misreading of rubbish instruction diagrams and chucking of tools in frustration... but he soon stopped when I told him to calm down.
Wendy has started work this week. So I am now left home alone all day with only a computer, my pet spider(s) and a tin of tomatoes for company. Wendy is also doing some after work courses to help her get up to speed with the Australian accountancy and tax systems... I've re-arranged my pencils into chronological order - the whole HB, B , 2B thing was just too con-formist for me.
The new Ikea opened here last week. Unfortunately, due to it being the only day we could get there and the fact that we needed a large amount of home utensils, Wendy and I went on the day it opened. Pure, unadulterated hell. The car parks and surrounding environs were just full to overflowing - luckily, we've got a big 4wd thingy so we just parked on top of a little Kia. It has to be said that I am a big fan of scandinavian design - the clean lines, the gentle curves, the blonde hair and how can you have anything but affection for the Billy bookcase (unless of course you have to put it together). But the problem was that it's the first real Ikea to open in WA. There was one previously but it was only about as big Milnes' (thats a reference for all our Maltby readers). I just about survived and was allowed Swedish meatballs for being good.
Not my bedroom. The room I thought that I'd been allocated as my bedroom turned out to be a walk in wardrobe.

Any other business - Re: Marks comment. I am pleased to say that I do know the cultural reference which he alluded to. I believe House is the US TV programme for which Hugh Lawrie has won a shed load of awards despite appearing to do to the american accent what Dick van Dyke did to the cockerneeee one. I also have to confess that originally I thought he meant Doogie Howzwer MD but thats not nearly as current.

All done. I'm off to have lunch - probably spider and tomatoe surprise.

Please note that no bears or cuddly toys of any kind were harmed during the making of this blog.

Our house in the middle of our street..

2008-02-15T13:00:00.005Z

...Actually, its more like 7/8ths along - but even Suggs couldn't have made that scan.
Yes, we have now got the keys for the new house and have managed to transfer a few bits across already. Bedrooms have already been allocated (not sure why I've got one to myself ) and we've worked out what furniture is going where - which is pretty easy really seeing as we don't have any at the moment

We've got some coming tomorrow though. We've got a washing machine and a fridge/freezer combo being delivered by the 'Good Guys', thats not my own personal opinion - it's the name of one of the main electrical retailers over here. They have a strange pricing policy whereby the very helpful and friendly staff (especially those who originate from West Yorkshire) are allowed to knock money off the price for no apparent reason. If that sounds mad, what about the fact that they've given us a two hour slot in which they are going to deliver the goods in the morning. Where is the fun in that, whats wrong with saying it will come some time between 8am and 6pm and then phoning at half five to say they won't be delivering today after all because the moon has unexpectedly passed into Saturn (I so wanted to put Uranus but then I thought that that would be childish and immature).

We are also having a bed delivered for George. It's a bunk bed, which is something he's always wanted but he could never have in the UK due to the sloping roof in his room in Tadcaster Road. In fact he wants it so much we are considering telling him that it's his main birthday present and so getting us out of buying him anything off his rather extensive and expensive birthday list. He is already scouring the business sections of the papers hoping for an upsurge in the UK economy by the end of the month so that his birthday money in sterling will be worth more dollars when its converted across. He's really pleased because we've managed to locate a model shop in Perth that sells James Bond cars and other corgi vehichles. I'd like to tell you that we'd found it by using 007 type methods of cunning, bravery, fast cars and fancy gadgets, surveillance and by pumping a bevvy of beautiful women for information... but to be honest we used google like everyone else.

Hattie has had a very good week at school this week. She's already made two new friends but she was even more excited by the fact that she had to take her favourite toy into class to talk about it on Wednesday. She took in Lucy bear which was a leaving present from her best friend from Dringhouses school who was somewhat coincidentally called Lucy. The presentation went very well but it soon became apparent that Lucy bear was carrying a tear in one of her lower limbs or (if its okay to use the technical jargon) legs. Lucy bear does have medicare so she will be able to have a long and painful operation to repair the damage (I think its the left leg, I suppose I should find out before I operate) but for the time being she is making do by wearing a rather elaborate oversized bandage. To make matters worse it was poor Lucy bears birthday this week and we all had to sit and watch as the inanimate object opened it's presents (very much like my birthday a fortnight ago).

Well, got to go now to consult my Frank Spencer book entitled 'Erecting flact pack furniture & carrying out major surgical procedures for beginners', ready for the morning.
Will release a short statement on Lucy bears' and the beds condition at a later date.

I don't want to change the world I'm not looking for a...

2008-02-09T13:13:00.000Z

...New England. As we are still English (and surrounded by British people) I feel compelled to talk about the weather. It's hot again now but on Thursday it had the temerity to rain. And don't be fooled into believing that it's only the UK where the transport system is thrown into chaos by a change in the weather. I travelled into Perth on the train that day and there was an anouncement over the PA that all services were delayed due to the extreme weather conditions... it was raining. Okay we've not had rain here for well over a month but it's still pushing it to describe heavy drizzle as extreme. The roads suffered as well with the main Freeway gridlocked, I think it's done intentionally so the ex pats have something to whinge about, because thats when they are at their happiest.

The kids had a good week at school, well neither of them have been expelled or beaten up so they must have done something right. They've both learnt how to ask to go to the toilet in Japanese, although by the time Hattie has remembered how the entire phrase goes there could well be an embarrassing puddle on the floor. George managed to win a few brownie points with his teacher by being the only one in his class to answer correctly an Australian geography question, to be fair there's probably only two of his classmates that were actually born here.

Today, mindful of the lessons we learnt last weekend, we decided to explore the coastline and headed north. We were rewarded by discovering Yanchep, we were the first people to do so, apart from some Dutch sailors who washed up there back in 1680something. It's got fantastic white sandy beaches and a beautiful lagoon. Later in the day we travelled slightly in land to Yanchep National Park. We took a leisurely root march around Loch McNess (I swear I have not made that up) which reminded me alot of the lake at Roche Abbey... with the bullrushes and dragonflies and the searing heat and parrots and pelicans and wild kangaroos - well maybe not the kangaroos. There were also koalas there that had Wendy going all mushy... I think I need to find a Koala suit before Valentines day.

I managed to get hold of a music mag this week and was devastated to find out that Blly Bragg was in town last weekend to play a festival. It was a strange line-up but it also included Bjork as well as the Bard of Barking and so would definitely have been worth going to. I have vowed to be more vigilant in future and I'm already planning to go and see PJ Harvey, who is here in a couple of weeks, and there's no way I'll miss (Phil) Collins if he vetures this way (please insert your own jokes regarding high powered rifles here).

By this time next week we should be in our new rented accomodation complete with four bedrooms, two bathrooms and no furniture. If it cleared the channel our container should arrive in Fremantle on March 11 and then who knows how long it will take to get through customs. In the meantime we'll be making do with one camp bed and a table that I've managed to create from pure lard.

Well, I'm off now to search for Koala suits on google... (and in the words of the legend that was Nick Ross) please, don't have nightmares, Goodnight

New car!

2008-02-02T13:08:00.001Z

Happy Birthday...

2008-01-28T08:58:00.000Z

hello again,

apologies for the delay between blogs - no real excuse, apart from moving several thousand miles, a few time zones and into a different hemisphere - apart from that it's the same old same old.

For those of you that are contemplating flying out to visit us at some point in the future the journey was a piece of cake. For those of you who have no intention of ever travelling any further east than Skegness then the journey did get a bit gruelling towards the end. I think that was mainly due to the in flight entertainment - after rom-coms and a couple of 'big gay movies' even the most hardened traveller is going to start feeling a bit queasy.

Of the flight, George had been hoping to carry out a scientific experiment whereby he flushed the toilet either side of the equator to see which way the water went down. Unfortunately the part of the flight when we crossed the equator was the only time that George went to sleep so we never got to execute the experiment. I don't think we would have been able to do it anyway because the queues for the toilets were massive, not sure whether they were taking comfort breaks whilst going for David Boon's record or they were planning on joining 'the club'.

On arriving in Perth we were very kindly met at the airport by Wendy's new boss and a work colleague who gave us a tour of the area and a lift to the apartment.

When we got to the apartment it was a very weird sensation, the only thing I can compare it to was coming home from the hospital with George when he was a baby. It was the feeling of being very tired with the knowledge that you've done something really special, that you are very very fortunate and that you don't have the first clue what to do next. Lets hope that's where the analogy ends because George cried solidly for six months and we didn't get any sleep until somebody told us we were supposed to feed him.

The first few days here have been great fun - we've been to a barbie and seen kangaroos, yutes, parrots and members of the indigenous population but no clouds. We joined in the Australia Day celebrations on Saturday by sinking a few tinnies by the Swan River whilst watching the fireworks. It was still about 30 degrees when we walked back to the car at 10 o'clock in the evening.

We went into Perth city centre on Friday to sort out our bank details and have a look around the shops. We went into a store to look for a book on Australian birds (Kylie, Natalie, Nicole, etc) and found the Australian edition of 'The Dangerous Book For Boys'. In this case it is definitely correctly named, it tells you how to deal with all sorts of dangerous creatures such as crocs, snakes, spiders and the scariest of the lot... girls. It still tells you how to build a go-cart though.

Today (Monday) has been declared a Public Holiday due to it being my 40th birthday - very kind of them don't you think. Spent most of the morning on the beach - I can't remember having spent my birthday on the beach before. Mind you there are several days around the time of my 20th birthday that I can't account for, which might have involved a beach - but as I say I can't remember. We have invested in a body board to take down to the beach - I'm considering investing in a body for the same reason.

Right, we are just about up to date with the news now - not sure when we will get chance to update the blog again because getting an internet contract requires having a permanent address - but its quite tricky finding a place to rent without internet access.... catch 22.

Most of you appear to have worked out how to post comments on the blog, well done (hope that sounds condescending enough). Obviously, the ones that don't say how brilliant my blogs are are not going to get published.

Finally, I would like to apologise to all those people I sent texts to at 3am (GMT) last Thursday - it was totally intentional. By the way I turn my phone off at night and the number is about to be defunct.

We now have..

2008-01-19T17:40:00.000Z

... no house, no car and no job - its like being back in the early 1980's (bit of social comment there).

The packers really were efficient but a little over zealous several things that should have gone on the plane with us got packed up and shipped - namely cuddly toys, various household items & Hattie (sure she'll be fine - there were holes in the top of the box). Once the house was empty it reinforced the idea that it really was the right time to leave because it was evident that every room was in need of decorating.

We will be going on line early tomorrow morning to choose our seats on the plane ready for the flight on Tuesday. As we are flying on a Boeing 777 it might be advisable to get a seat near the toilets - especially if the landing is like the one at Heathrow last week. In fact, it is probably the best time to go on a 777 as they will be carrying out pretty extensive safety checks this week - well thats what we are telling the kids anyway.

Luckily, my send off at work was very low key and I managed to get out without anyone noticing me - due in the most part to the fact that I left the building at the same time as Elvis. They very kindly bought me an England cricket shirt and hat as leaving presents - quite whether I'm brave enough to wear them when I go to the WACA ground is debateable. At least the Aussie cricket team have managed to find losing ways to make me feel at home.

As I write this on Saturday evening I am still trying to compehend the fact that Doncaster Rovers have beaten Leeds Utd at Elland Road for the first time ever. Unbelievable.
Next week I might have to stay up until 1am to listen to Sports Report through the internet. Rather disturbingly, Wendy has discovered she can watch Coronation Street on line - apparently there is no escape.

Apparently, we are getting word back that many of you are struggling to work out how to post comments about the blog. We have set our best IT boffins on the case and will look to report back with our initial report within the next 6 months. I should point out however that someone who is old enough to remember Dick Barton has figured out how to do it, so how hard can it be.

Right, not sure if we'll manage to post another message before we go - so the next one could well be from oz. I have decided to take a stab at beating David Boons world record for in flight lager consumption on the journey - something like 52 cans. I either go for that or try to join the mile high club... the lager it is then.

Moving Day...

2008-01-16T14:34:00.000Z

Well, this is it then, the packers are in and are boxing up, bubble wrapping, dismantling everything! On a couple of occasions I've had to rescue some items that aren't being shipped - they're fast workers!! Apparently the container is arriving at 1pm tomorrow.

My job today has been to stand by the kettle (but I don't drink tea or coffee!?!!?). I did sneak out at lunchtime to get something to eat, oh yes and book a facial and massage for tomorrow afternoon - well, there'll be no more cups of tea to make after 1pm tomorrow!!

I have managed to get to the bottom of the 'to do' list now, including making appointments with the bank and school in Oz. Kids will start school on 4th Feb, which is when the new term starts. We've also received an invite to a picnic south of the Swan River on 26th Jan (Australia Day) to watch the fireworks after sunset...

Will squeeze in another post before we fly on Tuesday.

just a quickie

2008-01-14T19:33:00.000Z

Brilliant news - we have exchanged contracts on the house and the flights are booked.
So, we are now officially... very excited and a tad nervous, as well as being run off our feet. There are 1,072 things to do before we fly next Tuesday.

Luckily I have only been allocated two tasks:
Firstly I have to disinfect anything that has ever stepped foot outdoors - its proving to be slightly troublesome because I have to go outdoors to do it thus creating more cleaning, its like painting the fourth bridge.
Secondly I have to clear the rooms of furniture. In doing so I have discovered that there is something in life worse than assembling flat pack furniture, namely dismantling flat pack furniture. It really wasn't created with taking apart in mind.
Obviously, I've chucked a couple of bolts away so that it will be even harder to put together at the other end.

The packers are coming to take over on Wednesday and Thursday so it might calm down again then. Although Wendy is still on the phone cancelling things... insurance, pensions and my subscription to Big Busts (its an art magazine about large sculptures).

We are very grateful to David & Sarah for agreeing to put us all up and put up with all of us, for the best part of a week, once our furniture has been whisked away to litter a beech in Devon.

Hopefully, I will get a chance to blog a bit more later in the week - if I can find a chair to sit on... so if you think your heart can take it join us again for the next exciting episode. (for those of you old enough to remember insert the theme tune for Dick Barton - special agent here).

Very official

2008-01-03T12:14:00.000Z

The passports arrived back from Australia House today, complete with visas!! A little slip of paper stuck in the back of our passports, which allows us to stay as permanent residents in Oz - fantastic!

So, I got straight on the phone to the travel agents and have provisionally booked our flights to Perth - leaving from Manchester airport at 10am on Tuesday 22nd January. The shipping company came round yesterday and we will be filling a 20 ft container, which will be filled w/e 18th January. This is also the day that Harry leaves work and the kids finish school.

Just need to sort out some accomodation in Perth now!!

The tea lady has confirmed it

2007-12-24T14:09:00.000Z

...okay we've had it in writing, now I believe. I've had a small sherry to celebrate - oh and a gallon and a half of a champagne/cider/lager combo... if I ever get the power of speech back I will have to come up with a name for the concoction.

I've handed in my resignation at work and am hoping to finish on the 18th January, we are looking to exchange on the house at the same time. If every thing goes to plan we will be able to fly out some time the week after depending on flight availability, BAA strikes, the weather, the position of the moon in Uranus and whether Doncaster Rovers win away from home.

We are now going to enjoy one last (quiet) christmas in York... Wendy says she can't wait for Santa to turn up with his bulging sack.

The Aussie rules football training has gone into overdrive - me and George have been out on the knavesmire at every opportunity with a rugby ball in our vests and very tight shorts practising all the moves. I'm not sure whether it's the fact that the temperature has dipped below zero or that the shorts have cut off the blood circulation but my legs keep turning blue.

Right, I'm off to the garage to see if I can get Wendy a Christmas present - not sure she liked the engine oil she got for her birthday, might get her some screen wash this time.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

VISA GRANTED!!!

2007-12-20T16:09:00.000Z

WOW! Have just found out our visa has been granted - yesterday!!!

I decided to phone the Australian Embassy to see if our medicals had been cleared and the guy said the visa had been granted yesterday - woohoo! Harry won't be satisfied until we have it in writing - he thinks I could have spoken to the cleaner... bar humbug!!

This is the best feeling ever!!

Now where did I put the champagne...

Any day now...

2007-12-10T09:20:00.000Z

After getting very excited and hoping for some news last week, we have still not heard about our visa - arghhhh!! I am trying really hard to be patient!

It's the same routine each morning - could it be today...? Churning tummy... Check the emails... Looking for the email...

I am still keeping busy clearing out and selling as much stuff as possible. The recycling pile for the bin men is rather large today, as Harry had a great tidy up in the garage.

The kids put the xmas decorations up yesterday and when I got them out of the attic (the decorations, not the kids), I found another suitcase, which I'd forgotten we had! So, I have 3 suitcases lined up in the office and this is the next job - to start packing!

It's great that xmas is just around the corner - couldn't think of a better distraction. We braved the very wet weather on Saturday to see the Festival of Angels in York on Saturday (ice sculptures - see picture). Kids have got lots of christmassy activities at school too, which is nice.

Anyway, fingers crossed that it won't be too long until the next post with the news!

Case Officer at last!

2007-11-28T12:14:00.000Z

Just when I thought it had all gone a bit quiet, we got an email this morning to confirm we have a case officer - woohoo! Even better is that they will be making a decision on our application next week!!

As you can imagine, we are all rather excited at this prospect and my brain has just gone into overdrive - don't know which part of my 'to do' list to do next!!! OK, deep breaths - goodness knows what I'll be like when the visa is granted!

So, watch this space...

All quiet...

2007-11-27T11:24:00.000Z

It's all gone a bit quiet with the visa. The last bit of paperwork (the medicals) were sent off on 15th November, so that's it! Nothing more we can do except ... wait.

We have bought a new laptop and have had fun transferring everything over, but at least it means we will be able to communicate straight away, once we land in Oz. It also means that Harry hasn't figured out how it works yet, so it gives me a chance to update the blog!!

I have now stopped working and have 101 things to fill my time with. The kids think it's a bit of a novelty having a 'proper' mum at home - dropping them off at school and picking them up, cooking tea & baking cakes!! The sorting out is quite good fun and I am glad to have this opportunity to get prepared for the big move - it will be all systems go as soon as the visa is granted!

I have received my new employment contract, which is all very exciting and we have narrowed down the area around Perth we would like to live, together with a school for the kids. Term starts on 5th Feb, so it would be great to be out in time for the kids to start back at school.

In the meantime, we are still out and about at weekends, which has been great, and are now looking forward to our last Christmas at home in the UK - can't believe it's nearly Christmas - that will mean it's been a whole year since we first started to plan our adventure - yikes!

I fought the law

2007-11-05T18:33:00.000Z

We had the results from the police search and they were unable to pin anything on us. Clearly they never checked with the Fashion (Police) branch otherwise they would have uncovered my minor mis-demeanor regarding the wearing of a grey tank-top at the age of 17. There were also two counts of wearing loud shirts in a built up area for which I pleaded guilty on the grounds of diminished responsibility (my mother made me wear them).
So with a successful police check the next hurdle is the medicals. We went through all the tests last Wednesday and we're now waiting for the results - it could be a couple of weeks before the blood tests get back. As it was halloween the nurses taking the blood (phlebotomists?) decided it would be a great laugh to dress as dracula - it didn't do much to settle the nerves though.
The rest of the medical was fairly painless and most importantly didn't involve removing my trousers.
Incidentally, for those of you who have requested that photos of my large snake be posted on the site, I have to inform you that we have employed a team of crack lawyers to advise us on the legality of such a move. I am also doing research into whether the internet, like TV, adds 2 lbs onto you (if so, I might consider it).
I did have to remove my shirt during the medicals and my concave chest caused the medics some concern.. as did the fact that I needed to be physically shown how to complete the 'touch your nose' test. I was none too convincing in the walking in a straight line test as well and 'touching my toes' was abandoned somewhere shortly below the knees. Apart from that I think it went well.

So, if the medicals are okay, we will be a big step closer to going.

The jpeg at the top of this blog is my latest art creation (now the clocks have gone back I need something to do in the evenings - I get that off my mother, she's probably knitting me yet another balaclava at this very moment). It looks a bit odd because its in the wrong format.. and because it was painted by me.

I know lets talk about me a bit more ... next week I promise I'll let Wendy and the kids get a mention.

OK Computer

2007-10-29T17:50:00.000Z

The computer appears to be working ok today - the slowness I encountered previously may have had something to do with the fact that we were trying to load 4,000 tracks off our CD collection onto the ipod at the same time.
It took a while but it was definitely worth doing, unfortunately though the majority of my music collection is on ye olde cassette and vinyl (I've got rid of all my wax cylinders) which is going to need replacing (might not bother replacing the Transvision Vamp Album though - however I may keep the sleeve).

Wendy and I had a great time last Friday - we met up with Pete and Hayley in Huddersfield and took a time machine back to our student days. We even went back to one of the (many) pubs we used to frequent. It had been turned into an Irish theme bar (Scruffy O'Neills or something like that) but has recently been converted back into its former guise - 'The Zetland'. And but for the fact you could see more than a yard in front of you due to the lack of smoke, and that it was largely empty even though it was Friday night, and that there were no last orders, and that the students don't look like students any more(mainly because they were all fat - how can students be fat? they aren't supposed to eat)... apart from that it was exactly the same.

Oz news... Surprisingly, its still destination Perth. And its looking like there's an excellent chance of being there some time in February...we'll have a better idea after the medicals.

Adelaide definitely...maybe?..ok, Perth it is.

2007-10-22T19:12:00.000+01:00

You know how we were keeping hold of the house and moving to Adelaide... well, we appear to have sold the house (in less than a week) and we are now heading for Perth.
Wendy has received a definite job offer from the people that were at the emigration show. Basically, even though the cost of living is more expensive and there are a large number of ex pats there already, its too good an opportunity to miss.

Obviously, the Adelaide Crows cheerleaders are going to be gutted - It's my understanding that two of them have already put in a transfer request in order to move to the West Coast.

Previously, we had come to the conclusion that we needed to sell the house to get a sound financial footing over there and give ourselves the best start possible. In order to get to that point, Wendy calmly went through all the figures with me, explaining everything using spread sheets, diagrams and playdough (she knows the level I work at). And less than a week later I was able to see that her calculations were indeed correct and she was able to admire my very large snake(multi-coloured and made of playdough).

We are now waiting on some advice from the agency on whether we should now go for a employer sponsored visa or wait for the full visa to go through. Which means there may well be a blog update later in the week if the computer is alright... the kids are away so I had to load everything up myself and it seems to be running incredibly slowly - it may have something to do with the fact that I've mislaid a large chunk of the hard drive. Oh no, I've lost the cheerleaders pic.
H

Harry...back by popular demand

2007-10-14T18:09:00.000+01:00

Due to the great response I had for my August blog I have been given the controls once again.
I have picked out a couple of examples of the extremely positive feedback we got after my last effort...
1) "I read your blog" - Jacky in York
2) "My husband laughed so much his head fell off" - Barbara in Tring. Actually, that was a bit unfortunate because his head did literally fall-off, it was made worse by the fact that he was live on his web-cam at the time. I think the events that followed are best described as a media frenzy.
Anyway, the police have decided that I wasn't at fault at all - which is just as well seeing as they are carrying out their checks on us at the moment. Does owning a copy of 'The Anfield Rap' constitute having a criminal record?

As we get closer to going, we have compiled a list of places we want to go before we leave. We have already been to Saltaire and 'The Forbidden Corner' (I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to tell you what that is - I'm not allowed). We had a great time visiting these places, and we were joined by Pete & Hayley for both trips and by Pete's mum and dad for the latter.

We also have a trip lined up with John, Bron and the kids to Blackpool to see the illuminations, eat chips, candy floss, shellfish and sweets and be very ill on the journey home.

So, if you think there's somewhere we should see before we go please let us know. You should bear in mind that we are limited by budget, time constraints and my general lethargic attitude.

You may also wish to consider that if we go somewhere on your recommendation and it turns out to be rubbish then we will track you down and make your life hell - No pressure then.

Seriously, all suggestions welcome - hope to hear from you all soon (well, from at least one of you).
H

Another step closer...

2007-10-09T20:44:00.000+01:00

We have finally received official acknowledgement of our visa application today (this is the bit that was taking 6 weeks, but due to the huge volume of applications, has actually taken 15 weeks!!). Still, it's nice to know it's being dealt with, however there will now be a further delay until we get a case officer - then we're getting much warmer!

We've moved the medicals back to 31st October and the police checks should be through by the beginning of November. So, for now, it's back to the waiting game!

Adelaide it is...

2007-10-01T16:11:00.000+01:00

We went to the Emigration show at the racecourse on Saturday - it was really good and we got loads of information. Our heads were buzzing by the time we got home and we were exhausted! It was well worth the visit though and we have definitely decided to move to Adelaide!! Spookily, one of the stands at the show was the firm of accountants who carried out a telephone interview with me for a job in Perth back in April and the two people on the stand were the very same ones I had spoken to and emailed! I went across & introduced myself and they remembered who I was, which was great! I had a long chat with them & the Partner (Richard) guaranteed me a job if we decided to move to Perth - arghhh! So we started to compare Adelaide and Perth and, having sifted through all the info, decided on Adelaide. It mainly comes down to the cost of living, as the house prices in Perth are now the second most expensive in Australia. It is also the most isolated city and the most popular for Brits to emigrate to. Richard also said that he could put me in touch with his contacts in Adelaide as well, so I shall be following that up over the next few weeks.

We have booked our medicals for 17th October and we went to the Police Station last Wednesday to send off for our police checks, which can take up to 40 days.

So, for now, we will continue with the preparations and wait patiently for news of our visa...

Still waiting...

2007-09-23T10:17:00.000+01:00

It appears the wait is taking longer than anticipated - apparently there is a huge backlog at DIAC due to the large volume of visa applications to process (it appears we're not the only ones emigrating!). It usually takes up to 6 weeks from the point the visa application is received (ours was 27th June), however the latest timescale is 12-16 weeks - arghhhhhh! Still, it means I can fill my time organising and getting everything in place for the big move - great!

We have finally bought an iPod (woo hoo), which is making cataloging our CDs soooo much easier. As I write I am frantically importing CDs (mutli-tasking you see - take note Harrry), didn't realise how many we had and it's taking rather a long time! Still, it will be worth it and at least we'll have something to listen to on the plane!

We are also managing to sell a fair bit on eBay (having started to clear out the kids rooms and attic, it's amazing what you find!). Sorting out the finances is the biggest headache (yes, I know I'm an accountant, but it's different when it's your own money!!) I have opened an Australian bank account at least - it hasn't got anything in it yet! The exchange rate has gone downhill of late, so it's a bit of a worry when you look at how your money just sort of disappears if you transfer it at the wrong time!

Whilst waiting, we have also decided to get on with obtaining our police checks and medicals - the final hurdles really. At least then we can submit the info as soon as requested. I'll be booking them tomorrow.

Still no news on the job front, however there are a couple of Emigration Shows coming up which will have potential employers attending, so fingers crossed. The first one is next Saturday in York at the racecourse. We're hoping to glean lots of info first hand - looking forward to that. The next one is in Manchester in October, which will be more jobs focused.

The kids have been busy making a list of all the places they want to visit before we leave the UK - as have Harry and I. We're off to Saltaire today for a bit of culture!

Aussie Rules?

2007-08-13T18:35:00.000+01:00

Because it's August - Wendy is camped in front of the TV watching 'Big Brother' and the kids are still on a UK tour spending their grandparents' money on sweets, toys and expensive seafood restaurants. It has therefore fallen to me (the handsome one) to post the latest bulletin.

Firstly, we are still waiting on news of the 'oz' move - which is a bit of a pain (but the good news is that I can get away with not writing very much). It means of course that we are still not certain of our final destination but it does look increasingly like being Adelaide.

As you will have already noticed Wendy is totally clued up on annual rainfall levels, house prices and exchange rates - which leaves me with the onerous task of choosing which Aussie Rules football team to support. Naturally, as we are moving 10,000 miles away from Britain my favourite 'soccer' club will now be Manchester United but choosing an AFL team is proving problematic.

The issue is that Adelaide has two teams: Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide and the most vexing problem is that they are actually quite successful - both of them having won the Championship in the last 5 years. As a (soon to be ex) Doncaster Rovers fan, I can't be pledging my support to successful sports clubs.

I feel it would be the start of a slippery slope,I would have to lose my inverted snobbery and start watching popular TV shows like 'Lost' and 'Heroes' and listening to chart bands that sell more than 17 albums.

I was going to make my decision in the true Aussie style - on the toss of a coin (with a small wager on the side)but then I found this picture of the Crows' cheerleaders.

COME ON THE CROWS! Now how do I buy a season ticket?

The waiting game

2007-07-29T15:46:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since the last post, but I was waiting for some 'proper' news to write about, but all we seem to be doing at the moment is waiting!! We've learnt to be patient at least.
No, the house hasn't sold, in fact we've decided to keep it and rent it out instead. Seemed like the sensible thing to do in the end.
Our permanent residency application was lodged at the end of June & we are just waiting for them to request medicals and police checks - as soon as that happens, we know it won't be too much longer to wait. I am also waiting to hear about the possibility of a job, which will determine where we are going to live.
Other than that, there's not much more to report. Harry promises to add a post very soon, which will be a lot more entertaining than mine!!

House for sale!

2007-06-01T19:17:00.000+01:00

The house has gone on the market today - eek! (.... and was taken off on 30th July, as we have decided to keep it & rent it out).

One step closer...

2007-05-29T22:24:00.000+01:00

After 2 months of waiting, we have finally heard that we can apply for permanent residency in Oz, having passed the skills assessment. So, it's all systems go and on with the next pile of paperwork! I'm off to order a digital camera now, so there may be a photo with the next post!!

My Mini adventure has ended...

2007-05-10T19:42:00.000+01:00

It was great while it lasted, just 10 short months with my Mini and what fun I had! So it was a sad farewell today when I sold my Mini. But this also means the start of a very exciting adventure - our move to Australia! Yes, the car was the first thing to be sold... the house is next!!

Welcome

2007-05-03T19:07:00.000+01:00

Well here it is - our very own blog! We will use our blog to keep in touch with everyone and let you know what is happening, as and when it happens!