Five go to Oz ....

Tiggs - soon to be patented - migrating to Oz diet.

11:59, Saturday 3 May 2008 | Posted in Migration to Oz
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Are you worried about your wasteline?
Are you always trying the latest fad diet but not loosing any weight?

Then you need to try Tiggs' - soon to be patented - migrating to Oz diet.
This is the new easy to follow diet that will have the pounds dropping off you.

No calorie counting!
No points to add up!
No strenuous exercising!

All you need is an Oz PR visa and a one way flight to Oz.!

It also helps to have a family who settle into Oz life very quickly leaving you the only one wondering what you have done (this ensures that you cant cheat on the diet and head 'home')
A farily hefty dose of stress also speeds up the dieting process and if you can include getting over emotional about daft little things and crying for a week when your OH starts their new job because you are now 'on your own' then you will be laughing (metaphorically speaking of course)

For the advanced dieter (including those who need to shift those extra few pounds) you can supplement your diet with the additional Tiggs' house buyers diet PLUS. This is guaranteed to dramatically increase your stress levels, especially during the week when 'the bank tell you they are not going to release the funds in time for the settlement date'.

With proven results you too can drop two (yes that does say TWO) dress sizes in just four months ...

... well it worked for me anyway

The now considerably thinner - Tiggs x

The Axe Man

11:50, Saturday 3 May 2008 | Posted in Living in Oz
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The weather is turning (so they tell us, although today I got sunburnt on the roof clearing more moss off). As a result Tiggs has got organised and ordered in the firewood...and an axe.

Now I have been known to slice my own hand cutting turnip and am banned from using most power tools due to the danger of me, the environment and any wildlife in close proximity to me while attacking something with one of these things...but apparently I can be trusted with an axe..I suppose I have not managed to bludgeon myself with the pickaxe yet and this is the same principle (although she does keep going on about my life insurance

)

Anyway one tonne of red gum wood turned up when I was at work on Friday.

I was presented with my new self maiming device and pointed to the pile of wood. Pure stress relief. Problem is having selected a piece of wood that resembled some granite for my cutting block and hitting half a dozen pieces I realised I had cracked a paving block.

I gave up for the night. Today I got the axe out again but moved my chopping area to the hard standing next to the wood shed and put down a couple of old wardrobe doors to hit onto reasoning that these would disperse some of the shock. This plan did not work.

I have now cracked 4 bricks, the area I was working on this morning is now 2 inches lower than the surrounding area, and due to a richochet from one of the pieces of wood her large pot is now so much mosaic

. On top of that there are already 6 pieces where the axe goes in about 2mm then gets stuck so I have to heave on it and lever the blade back out but the wood is like concrete and refuses to break, split or even chip into smaller pieces. Might have to come back to those. Having done about 1/4 of the pile and giving up due to being absolutley knackered the friendly neighbour over the back started cutting his...with a band saw

.

I am now typing this with my one working arm due to the muscle bruising from chopping the wood but i am lovely and warm :-D

Graz

Up on The Roof...And in it!!

01:10, Monday 28 April 2008 | Posted in Living in Oz
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As we have seen, Tiggs has recountered waking up to a drip (no not me

...water)

I will now recount the story from a blokes point of view.

Friday morning, Dripping sound in the bedroom. Can't blame it on the dog but there is a suspicious mark on the carpet...This gets larger with each drip...We have a leak. Put a tub under it (actually a spare potty) and head back to bed...I am on call and need to be connected to work at 6AM anyway. Days starts with taking the in-laws to the airport for their Melbourne trip and then we went bathroom shopping. The drip was ignored...It had stopped raining and it had stopped dripping.

Saturday I find the old wardrobe that i dismantled when we moved in...brush spiders off a door and take it in and lift it into the loft. Place this along the ceiling beams and I can now slide on my stomach under the aircon and heating vents and get to the leaks. Emerge on the other side of the vents with my plastic tub to find 3 tubs already there...Me thinks this has been a common occurence. Rearrange the tubs under the drips i can see and head downstairs.

I then head back into the loft and send Tiggs out to the roof to determine if we can find the problem. Tiggs locates two cracked tiles and one loose one. These are repaired with margerine tub lids slid under the tiles. While we are up there we realise the roof is greener than the garden and has a healthier plant life. Moss everywhere. I spend Saturday afternoon up on the roof picking 3 bucket fulls of moss from between under and around the tiles.

I then fashion some internal guttering from a cat litter tray found in the loft, an old margerine tub from the garden, and the tube and funnel from the dogs flying crate when she was shipped across. Place this ingenious bit of DIY, blue peter style contraption on top of the wall under the leaks and head downstairs

Sunday morning...
4:00:00
Torrential rain outside and in. Tiggs was getting wet due to a second leak on her side of the bed.
4:00.28
I am dressed and have the ladder, torch, gloves and dust mask and am making my way into the loft.
4:01:00
Locate a leak, about a metre to the left of the one fixed yesterday. on the plus side all my tubs from yesterday are dry, obviously we managed to sort those tiles.
04:15:00
Rearrange tubs under the leak to catch all drips and head into the house. I am starting to resemble an Indiana Jones set with huge spiders webs dragging from my head and jumper. Get some breakfast and determine the plan of action...
Our sunday is then spent up and down ladders, into the loft or out on the roof. Locate out final leak (we hope) above Andrews bedroom and dripping onto the beam that runs over our bed. One problem. There are aircon tubes, heating tubes, hanging insulation and it is all covered in webs...most fresh... I kid you not, Our loft looks like this lives in it

So back for the Morton, A good dousing of all the cobwebs...To be fair in all the time in the loft I only saw one spider. Then into the abyss. I have moved my litter tray gutter and rig this up under the new leak. I then head out on the loft to look for the missing tile that is letting this much water in...Problem is it is dark and raining. This is not the time to be walking around on the roof. i can find nothing, but a lot of moss. Decide that it must be the moss again causing the water to back up so clear another bucket off in the dark. Just as I am coming off the roof the tile I am working on falls a bit and a piece drops out from underneath.

Turns out the cracked tile is under another one. One red plastic binder wedged under the broken tiles later and we seem to have a water tight house again...Problem is it has not rained since.

We are now awaiting more rain so we can run around again .

Right I am off to dry out.

Graz

For those back in England

12:00, Sunday 27 April 2008 | Posted in Living in Oz
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I know I have been giving you a hard time, pointing out the warm weather and lack of rain. Well this has all changed. Our garden has a ditch, the plans call it a creek, but in my book a creek contains water and this never has...until yesterday.

We woke up in the morning to torrential rain...and a drip in the house (see other blog entries) and our creek has water in it...So there...it does rain in Oz

Graz

Drip drip drop little April showers

10:48, Saturday 26 April 2008 | Posted in Living in Oz
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I now live in Australia ... and more to the point i live in Adelaide ... therefore i have accepted the fact that i must view rain as a good thing (which I have to say this seems a bit of an alien concept for a girl from the NE of England who has always viewed rain as a nuisance!)
Anyway here we are in April and hardly a drop of rain has been seen for months so there was general celebration throughout our local aquaintance when the nice weather forcaster on the telly said we should expect showers for the long weekend. (rain on a bank holiday?! ... almost like being back in England

)
Friday evening arrives and lo and behold rain! Of course this is Oz rain so a shower is not just a few spots of water falling from the sky ... if you get caught outside in on Oz shower you are wet to the skin in about 20 seconds - as A found out when he decided to go outside to 'look at the rain' !?! you'd think he would have had enough of it in the UK! go figure!
Anyway my garden gasps a sigh of relief as i still havent managed to work out when i am allowed to water and when i am not so it hasnt been happening much ... plus there is the small point that i am a lazy so and so and generally cant be bothered getting the watering can out! When we head off to bed for the night it is still coming down in short sharp shower bursts.
6 am
... drip ... drip ... drip ...
Me: What is that noise?
G: Is that dog chewing her claws again?
Me: No it is a dripping noise .... oh no ....
We shoot out of bed and hunt around until we find the drip running down one of the beams - place bowl underneath ... and go back to bed!!! Priorities here

Turns out (on closer inspection much later in the morning) that we have one cracked tile and another not sitting flush and the rain is running in between them. A slightly apprehensive inspection of the rest of the loft space turns up no more drips - well that we could find anway! The trouble is that in the UK when buying a house you look for evidence of damp on ceilings and walls - after all it is virtually impossible for a seller to hide the fact that they have a leaking roof. Here in Oz, where it can quite happily not rain for months, these sorts of things are much easier to miss. Another lesson learned!
At least this potential crisis turned out to only be a small repair job - fingers crossed all future surprises our house decides to spring on us will go the same way.

Tiggs x

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