Will the last Englishman out of the country turn the lights out please ? | |
Load of old shit …I downloaded a couple of shows recently that jogged the old memory banks. They were both about the south west of England and Cornwall in particular. In one, Richard Wilson takes a road trip down the A30 coast road and in the other historian David Heathcote explores Cornwall with one of the old Shell Guides. I thought David Heathcote’s was the more entertaining of the two, particulary as he covered parts of Cornwall we know very well. He was particularly scathing of Padstow (or Padstein as it’s more commonly known) and the fact that you stand more chance of winning the lottery than finding a car park space there. Was nice seeing the Camel Estuary and Rock, because we went on a sailing course there once - learning to drive those little Mirror dinghies you always see. One moment did tickle me though. Heathcote drove down to Polzeath beach, a place he hadn’t visited in more than 20 years, to see if it had changed. The general upshot was that it hadn’t really changed much in that time, but what made me giggle was all the surfers, in full steamer wetsuits, hats and gloves, wandering down to the water with their surfboards. I love Cornwall, but that side of surfing in the UK truly sucks. I suddenly remembered those winter surfs off Fistral or Crantock when your head gets ice-cream freeze and pissing in your wetsuit to warm up is a necessity. Don’t get me wrong, it cools off here too, but never *that* cold. This blog entry continues here .... Messing about in boats …One of the problems with our little surf club is that too few people put their hand up to volunteer for stuff. As a result you get the same faces doing all the donkey work. One job that’s been unfilled for some time is chief instructor - as a result of which many of us have had to go to other surf clubs to do awards. Anyway - a member of the club who has been out of the whole surf lifesaving movement for 12 years recently rejoined and the great news is that he’s an IRB specialist. The upshot of all this was that starting today, regular IRB training began. You honestly couldn’t have asked for a nicer day than today. It was in the high 20s, the ocean’s as warm as it’s going to get and the surf was perfect - nice glassy waves and no shitty dumping shorebreak. I got down to the beach a bit past the 10:00am start time on account of going to bed at 3am the night before after an evening of boozing with good friends. This blog entry continues here .... Money for old rope …And in other news, the next of the governments big anti-recession ‘incentives’ has hit our bank account. While I’m not complaining about the sudden appearance of an extra $1000 in the bank, particularly since it’s exactly half our next mortgage payment, and since it’s far preferable to being poked in the eye with a short stick - I still don’t understand what Kevin’s hoping to achieve. There again, what do I know - couple of people on the expat forums have commented that the car parks at the big shopping malls were absolutely heaving today as people rushed off to K-Mart, Target and Harvey Norman in their pursuit of Tivos, Tents and Mobile Telephones. Maybe it will stave off a recession. Unlike a lot of people, Liz and I work for ourselves, so in some ways we miss the worst effects of any economic downturn. Short of firing ourselves, our jobs are fairly safe. If anything, my work (fixing PCs) has actually picked up because ($1000 gift vouchers aside) people are deciding to patch our their old PCs rather than splurge on a new one. They’re also rapidly discovering just how reliant they’ve become on their PCs. Without even noticing, they’ve started banking on ‘em, doing the household and business accounts, storing all their photos, bargain hunting on eBay, using Skype, playing games, listenign to the radio, watching movies … they’ve become as essential to the household as the family car. This blog entry continues here .... The catalogue that time forgot …So the other day we were on our way back from Shellharbour having done a bit of shopping and the missus starts reading the magazine she bought at the checkout in Woolies. The magazine is pretty dreadful but nothing could prepare either of us for the horrors that lurked inside - stapled to the centre spread. For it was there that we discovered the catalogue that time forgot - a pamphlett of products so heinous that they should have come with some sort of government advisory. I have selected some of the choicer products from this catalogue and I present them here for your viewing pleasure. Yes, the colour changing angel - a lump of plastic 10cm high that 'spreads peace and joy' through your home. Like all angels, it changes colour from neon blue through to neon green. In the event of a home invasion it also doubles as a personal defence tool - just jab the angel into the face of your assailant and not only will you blind him, but the good lord will banish his wretched soul to hell for all eternity. This blog entry continues here ...
Ticket to SydneyFound this video on Google recently and thought it was excellent. It’s the rush hour in Sydney in 1971 and all the different forms of transport that people use to get to work. Judging from the footage of the harbour bridge at 8:45am - nothing much has changed in the last 38 years! Really digging that music too. Make sure you watch it to the end to find out what all the ferry crew, bus drivers, train drivers and toll collectors do from 9:00am onwards.Blog entry continues here ... Interesting facts ...
Happy bloggy birthday ….Just noticed that it’s exactly three years since I started writing this blog (or it was when I started writing this post). When you consider that I have trouble sticking to anything, I reckon that’s something else. When I began this blog I was living in Nailsworth in Gloucestershire and had recently made the decision (along with my missus, natch) to emigrate to Australia. That decision was much easier for us, because I’ve held Australian citizenship since birth on account of having an aussie dad. So the spouse visa was just a case of form filling and an agonising five day wait! My first blog post was made after a day at the Bristol Ice Rink with my wife and son and the sister in law and her daughter. Yes, it’s a pretty bitter post, but I genuinely have a lot of affection for Bristol and the Southwest of England in general. I was brought up in commuterville, 30 miles north of London, but found Bath, Bristol, Cornwall and the Cotswolds far more to my liking and made them my home for all of my adult life post-college. My all-time favourite band - Massive Attack are Bristolians and I love pretty much everything the ‘Bristol Massive’ produced, from Roni Size to Portishead and all stops in between. If our family return to the UK (you never know what’s down the line), we’ll almost certainly head for exactly the same spot we left from. This blog entry cotinues here... The world according to Australia …Thought I’d begin with a few things that are making the news here in Australia-land. Firstly, today was an official national day of mourning for the people lost in the Victorian bushfires. Amazing stories continue to appear regarding the fires - such as one couple who lost mains water and successfully tackled the blaze in their house with a couple of crates of Pepsi. Also in the news, an Australian won this year’s Oakley big wave award. The wave in question, a 40m beast, was at Cow Bombie near Perth. Absolute nutters those big wave surfers. I mean, how in the name of all that’s holy do you survive a wipeout on a wave that big? This blog entry continues here. Back, sack and crack …I was getting ready for bed the other night and I commented to Liz, that my fine masculine leg hair felt really peculiar in two stripes across the rear of my thighs. She looks at me over the top of her book and says, “Oh.” I stare at her with a querulous look on my face and she says, “I might know something about that.” Turns out she’s been getting annoyed by the state of ‘the boys’ toilet upstairs, which is used pretty much exclusively by me and Jack. So one morning she put raw bleach on the toilet seat - and forgot to wash it off. So when I paid that loo a visit for a read of my new copy of Empire, I sat right on the raw bleach, which killed the hair in a bog-seat shaped swathe across the rear of my legs. Blog entry continues here .... The grind …So, the year is starting to settle down to routine again. There was a bit of upheaval at Jack’s school initially because they get more enrollments then they’d planned on (a rare occurrence by all accounts) and so had to create an extra class. Pretty much all of the school’s classes are combined, so you get year 1/year 2 classes, year 3/4 clases and year 5/6 classes. Only this year, because they had so many new kids, they could afford to bring on another teacher and thus create a new year 2/3 class. Anyway - we had a letter home saying that there’d be some upheaval and that there was a possibility that your child would be moving class. They finalised those moves at the start of the week and as far as Jack was concerned (but not us), it was all bad news. Firstly, they moved his main out-of-hours playmate from his class. Secondly they moved his main in-hours playmate from his class. Thirdly, he wasn’t moved into the year 2/3 class. Blog entry continues here ... Lovely day for a swim …As planned, I did a subbed patrol the day before Australia day. Patrol captain was the very capable Michael - also on the beach were two of our best young lifesavers and Greg the club’s chairman. The weather could not have been better. The stifling 40+ heat of the day before had given way to a cooler 26 degrees, blue skies, light winds. Even the surf got in on the act, peeling large 2m waves down the length of Seven Mile Beach. I was initially on duty in the radio room. The shark spotting plane Airpac 2 flew appeared over BlackHead and announced that a shark had been spotted 250m off the beach at Gerroa. I radioed down to the beach to tell Michael and he asked AirPac to do a few circuits to see if they could ascertain which way the shark was headed. After a few circuits they came back on the radio to say that the shark was headed off-shore back out to sea. Phew. I took my trigger finger off the shark alarm button and swapped the radio room for the beach. This blog entry continues here - http://www.thatstheplan.com/?p=355.The August Bank Holiday …Every country seems to have it - that mad time of the year towards the end of the summer holidays when everyone hurtles Lemming-like towards the coast for one last blast of down time before the new working year unfolds. In the UK, of course, it was the August Bank Holiday, when the entire population of the United Kingdom gets into its cars and drives towards Cornwall - though usually only making it as far as the Maccers at the Exeter services, due to weight of traffic. If you’re lucky, you can make it from the Midlands to Cornwall in about five hours - so if you set off at midday you can make it to Newquay just in time to watch the ceremonial knife fights outside the Sailors ‘nightclub’. Over here the equivalent (and it is in every way directly equivalent) of the August Bank Holiday rush is the Australia Day long weekend. Australia Day comes right at the very end of the school summer holidays on the 26th of January - typically only a couple of days before the new school year begins. This year it falls on a Monday - Tuesday is uniform shop day and Wednesday the little darlings return to school. Blog entry continues here. City slickers ...All things considered, it was a very enjoyable break away from home. We’re pretty much broke, but we did a bit of sleight of hand with the plastic in order to give Jack a break in the big city (which he loves). I love cities too, but they’re not Liz’s cup of tea. Indeed, she’d rather spend some time away in the mountains or the countryside or anywhere that there’s cute wildlife. As I mentioned earlier, our digs were most excellent - roomy, very well apointed, amazing views, good hotel staff - a winner all round. If you’re ever in Sydney and are looking for somewhere central to stay, then try the Meriton Appartments in Pitt Street. You’re perfectly situated there for Darling Harbour to the west, Circular Quay to the north, Hyde Park to the east and World Square to the south. The monorail station is about 200m away, taxis roll past the front door day and night, you’ve got some of the best shopping in Sydney on your doorstep (David Jones about 500m down the road, the QVB 200m) and enough eateries to keep you busy for a year, let alone a weekend. The blog entry continues here. Another year over, a new one just begun …One of Jack’s Xmas presents this year was a tent. I pitched it in the garden for him and he quickly roped Liz into camping out with him. We put his inflatable mattress in it and a camp bed for the missus and - wouldn’t you know it - it rained. Not hard enough to ruin things completely, but it still made the experience a little bit damp. Jack enjoyed it so much that he invited his friends Charlie and Chloe over to camp out. We gave them a house phone and showed them how to make an internal call. We checked on them at 10pm and they were spark out. Unfortunately for the neighbours, they were up again at 6am though and charging round the garden with toy guns shooting each other.Blog entry continues here. Jingle Bells, Batman smells …I was casting my mind back to Christmas days of the past, when I was a similar age to the sprog. I can remember well the pre-’santa is actually mummy and daddy’ days - finding it hard to sleep, waking up at the crack of dawn, presents in a pillow case at the end of the bed. So it’s been really funny watching Jack this season. He has his suspicions about the origins of his presents, but he’s not stupid enough to jinx it all by calling fake on the jolly fat man in the red and white suit. The missus and I got to bed at about 2:00am last night and were awoken by a very excited little boy at 6:00am. As excited as Jack was by the stocking in his bedroom, he still dashed off to the bog for his morning piss - if ever there was a boy that liked his routine, it’s Jack. He appeared at the side of our bed holding his stocking saying, “Santa’s been!” And indeed he had. Blog entry continues here. On the 2nd day of Xmas …One of the things that takes some getting used to when you live in Australia, is the topsy-turvey seasons. This is particularly noticeable during the festive holiday season. In the UK, Christmas is a rare high-point in the otherwise bland miasma that is the British winter. In the UK, Xmas and the new year enable you to forget, temporarily, that you have another five months of low grey clouds and drizzle to go before it warms up for just long enough to remind everyone that there’s a yellow heat-giving orb in the sky. In the UK, Xmas is the interlude between acts one and two of the school year. In the UK the stores start their sales the nano-second the last late Xmas shopper is ushered out into the drizzle. Down here though, it’s very different. In Oz, Xmas signifies the end of the year in more ways than one. The start of the Xmas break means the end of the school year and the beginning of the long summer holidays. Xmas is merely an (admittedly welcome) interlude to what, for most people, is at least two full weeks of work. It means six weeks of freedom for the kids and six weeks of keeping ‘em happy for the parents. It means driving south or north with a car stuffed to bursting with gear and a tinnie towed behind. This blog entry continues here. Get fresh at the weekend ...One of our group of friends is moving back to New Zealand soon and her going away party was on Saturday night. Since I had a very early start the next day, we arranged for Liz and Jack to sleep at my parents house. I left the party at 9pm and took Jack round to my folk’s place, tucked him in and then went home. Liz stayed behind and, I later learned, returned to my parents at 2:30am, stopping only briefly to fall over in a flower bed in the school playing field while taking a shortcut back. The summer surf lifesaving season means there’s often a chance for the club to earn a bit of extra cash doing water safety at various public events. The event in question on Sunday was the Callala Triathlon, about 20km down the coast from here. I left the house at 6:00am and, pausing only to buy a couple of sausage and egg muffins and a latte in maccers, drove over to Byron’s house for the drive down with the boat.
Blog entry continues here. New definition of slow ...On my way back from my spin classes, I regularly drive down a stretch of road called the Princes Highway which, whilst it is the main road between Sydney and Melbourne, is often just single lane. This has caused me to learn new coping techniques on account of the fact that you often get learners doing 80kph (50mph) down there - or worse still, some ignorant twat who just loves holding people up for no good reason. The speed limit on that stretch of road is 100kph (60mph) which is the national average speed limit on main roads outside towns. It often feels painfully slow to travel at that speed on roads that are often straighter than anything the Romans made. So when you get some old twat doing 70kph, you either shrug in a Buddha like way or - if you’re like me, you swear a lot and bide your time until there’s an opportunity to overtake - at which point you lower the window and flip the bird as you drive past Miss Daisy. This blog entry continues here. Summer time ....And the living is, ermm, considerably compromised by the credit crunch, thanks for asking. But that's the fringe benefit to living in Oz - you put up with all the same shit you endure in the UK (or indeed any other country) - but at least there's usually a nice warm sunny day round the corner to take the edge of things. Yes, summer's arrived down under, the temperatures are in the mid '20s, the skies are blue and the Pacific ocean is a lovely 19 degrees. Jack has just three weeks left of his second year at Broughton Public, before the long summer holidays unfold and we have the pleasure of his company for six weeks.
Blog entry continues here. Alarming …The teachers at Jack’s school were on strike for two hours this morning and we were instructed not to take the kids in before 11:00am. Liz had a doctor’s appointment and she left the house at nine leaving me to get Jack to school. Mornings are always a rush, but she when returned she was surprised to discover that things were much as she left them. She wondered how it was that Jack was able to go to school two hours later than normal today and I still managed to not have his lunch box ready, to not get him into socks or shoes, to not have his teeth cleaned, to not have this his hat on his heed and to not having packed his bag. Truth is we’d been working on his school project which, for reasons known only to Jack, involved constructing a cuboid from paper, wrapping this cuboid in Xmas paper, tying a ribbon to said wrapped cuboid and sticking a teeny tiny little gift card to it all. I forgot about lunch, hats and teeth in all the excitement. So we left the house, in time honoured fashion, exactly 10 minutes before school was supposed to start, despite having an extra two hours to do it all in. Blog entry continues here. { Last Page } { Page 2 of 4 } { Next Page } |
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