Will the last Englishman out of the country turn the lights out please ?

Small update, and comparison to the UK so far

It's early Saturday morning here. The dogs, having got poor K up at 06:00, and me up at the same time really, although I did manage half an hours extra lay in, have now decided to go back to sleep. I did contemplate licking them to death, so they could not, but I am going to be the bigger person. They are not sleeping too much this avo though, as I am not doing these early mornings for much longer. It was a scrum at 03:30 this morning to get them back in the house, after they decided they both needed toilet time then.

Nothing much happening here at the moment. The container is here, hoorah, customs may or may not pass it next week, hmmmmm, Grace Removals probably wont have a driver before Christmas, F*ck it ! I am doing all I can to get the stuff here, and they already have us top of the pile apparently after our little telephone conversation yesterday. I am also going to be calling Customs for updates, so I know whether Grace are telling me porkies or not.

Weather was crap yesterday, for the first time since we have been here. We've seen showers, but yesterday could have been a day from the UK, other than it was 17 degrees while it rained all day, not 3 degrees or whatever it is in old blighty yesterday.

The good old UK banking systems have been up to their usual tricks, and now all of our cards from the UK have pretty much been stopped, as all the banks think they have been stolen. Countless dollars spent on calls back to the UK to tell them, no, it is us using them, and can we have some money please ? No, does not work. Call centres in India, no idea what is going on, etc, etc. Waste of time. So, we need our Aus cards, and we need them quick. The first lot, thanks to a stupid bank clerk, got sent to the UK. Great. We now get the second ones, and guess what. K and I sign the wrong cards, I sign hers, she signs mine. Arghhh ! We did not check. Anyhow, we can still use them as cash cards, and the new ones will be here early next week, so we are nearly there.

So, are we missing anything ? We miss our friends ofcourse, but a lot of you are scheduled to come and see us, which we are looking forward to. We are making new friends, which is great, we seem to have lovely neighbours. Some things are better over here, and some worse. You have to shop around here more, but if you do, things are really cheap. Then there are things like Coco Pops at $6.00 for a small box ! Basically, Coco Pops are off the menu, there is no point paying $6 for something that was £1.50 odd in the UK. We look to buy Australian where we can anyway, so cereal is now Weet-bix, which is pretty much the same as Weetabix. If it's good enough for the Aussie cricket team, it's good enough for me.

The meat over here is far far better, but you would expect that from the bbq capital of the world. We got 2 of the biggest pork chops you have ever seen in your life, twice the size I have ever seen in the UK, and they were $2.00 each, or 80p in English !

Some things seem backwards, like you cant load your own shopping bags at the supermaket, the checkout girl does it. This obviously slows the whole process down, which at first we thought was silly. But, you have to realise why. Over here, life is slower. There is also a really big push to keep people in jobs, and to keep the whole economy going. It's real refreshing, and once you stop living life at a UK pace, tearing around, stressing, you find yourself settling into a peaceful existence. Walking the dogs at 7:00 am, birds singing, everyone saying hello as they pass, it really is a nice life.

So, overall, in our opinion, once you accept the small things like you cant get Yorkshire tea (K has to use 2 teabags in her tea here now to get it to taste right), and you make the small adjustments needed to fit in here, it's a wonderful place.