So then what has happened since we last chatted? (He said to himself)

Bethy  had an interview for the local college to do the “International Baccalaureate” course.

We had never heard of it until Bethy brought it to our attention. She wanted to apply  as she wants to go to Oxford University. Apparently an IB Diploma score gets upgraded in conversions, and so she achieves a higher entrance score. Some Universities apparently give preference to IB Diplomas.

At this point I must say how grateful we all are to my teacher and ex-teacher mates, Harness, Clarkie and Chaz, for the advice, information and support they gave us, stuff like this. It was  very much appreciated, and all of it was taken into consideration.

Bethy had some hard choices to make, most of her friends,  including her boyfriend,  were planning on going to another college, Hawker, rather than Melba.  But the IB cert is very much respected, and as she’s wanting to get on in life, she was determined to get on the IB.

Of course she got in. 🙂

She will be studying the following courses to achieve her IB Diploma:

At  “higher level”.

World Literature
Japanese
Biology

At  “standard level”.

She will also be studying:

Psychology
Chemistry

Mathematics

On top of that she will be required to put in a minimum of 100 hours on; “The Theory of Knowledge,” and will be required to submit a 4,000 word essay on a topic of her choice.

As the IB Program requires her to develop as a well rounded person, she will also be required to show an aptitude for something creative, something sporting and something in the field of charity work. During the interview she as asked about these aspects, and the fact that she had been a scout, plays for a local basketball team, and won the cooking comp, were big plusses. The fact that her school reports were fantastic also helped a great deal!

Bethy also got her tickets for winning the cooking competition, and her picture on the school Website.

Between the four of them in the team they had fifty tickets to distribute, and boy did that make them popular. On the appointed evening they all went back into school, and were ferried off in buses to a private screening of “Eclipse”.

This had lots of hot boys and snogging in it, so they were all happy.

Barnum however continues to fare not so well. The lump we had biopsied at the recent vets visit, turned out to be non cancerous, but kept growing. Our vet informed us it was best to have an operation and get it removed. So, breaking the bank again, we coughed up for it. He’s now got a scar running from under his jaw to his sternum. We had to have another bloody biopsy taken as well, as the vet who did the operation declared; “I haven’t a clue what that stuff is.”

He seems to be on the mend now, but still has a three legged gait.

So we went on holiday. I was going to write this up as one of my “Misadventures”, but as nothing much happened it really wasn’t worth boring you with a separate tale. Not that we had a bad  time, far from it, it’s just this holiday was not enlivened by any of my characteristic balls ups.

A couple of events did add to the interest of it all though.

Firstly, the week before we were due to leave, I got a letter from the immigration people, inviting me to become an Australian Citizen. I had been looking forward to this for some time, and was very excited by the prospect. The date? The last but one day of the holiday we had just booked and paid for. Not the last day, oh no, the last but one day. Bollocks.

Ok, so we could,  theoretically, have driven back to Canberra, gone to the ceremony, and then driven back to the coast for the last evening and morning of the trip. But as it’s a 270 kilometer / 3 hour drive, that was beyond even my levels of stupidity to attempt.

So we thought about giving up a few days of our break, and taking the costs of the accommodation on the chin. Then I got a bright idea, for once. “Can you take next Friday off?” I asked Lee-Anne. By calling on her manager’s sense of responsibility to her most respected member of  staff etc, she got it off. As it was Bethy’s last day of school, we didn’t mind her missing that, and I already had the Friday off.

Ok, only the people owning the accommodation to talk round now. To be fair, they were great. They let us have the place from Friday to Thursday, rather than Saturday to Saturday, so we only lost one morning there. This also meant we had a nights kip in  our own beds before the kick off of the Citizenship ceremony at 9.30 am.

Then the mother in law decided that she would come down and grace us with her presence for some of our stay. Swings and roundabouts then.

Now one of the things we had been most looking forward to, after seeing the  images of the accommodation on the website, was the fact that as it was perched on top of the cliff overlooking the Tathra bay, then winter storms would be howling up to us. We were  anticipating we’d have a full and panoramic view of nature in it’s most blustery. This was our winter break, don’t forget!

So what did we get? A week of t-shirt weather, and dips in the sea each day, with not a spot of bloody rain in sight. It did rain once, for half an hour at about 2.00 am in the morning, so we missed it.

The days were spent in a nice routine;

Wake up about 7.30 am.

Brekky/cuppa.

Walk the dogs on the beach, take Barney in the sea for his hydrotherapy (he didn’t like this much.)

Lunch.

Read books/watch DVDs.

Walk the dogs on the beach.

Dinner.

Read books/watch DVDs/drink wine.

Bed at about 9.00 pm.

Sounds boring doesn’t it? But it wasn’t; it was bliss in fact.I got through five books in the week, and developed a taste for the “Johnathan Creek” TV series. (Bethy has the complete set on DVD, as she’s a bit sweet on Alan Davies)

I’m definitely moving to Tathra as soon as I can, and doing lots more of nothing.

Tathra has an old Pier, where supply ships and the whaling fleet used to dock, and, coincidentally, we saw whales blowing out in the bay one morning. (Though we couldn’t see who they were blowing.) These days it’s mainly used  for fishing off. I went down on a couple of occasions to watch. I’m still considering eating fish, but wasn’t inspired by what I saw there. However the fishermen had attracted some seals, which came to feast on any of the fish thrown back, I got a lovely couple of shots of them.

One guy arrived with two tuna carcasses, to use as “chum,” for the fishing. These brought in the seals from all around. The other thing that the chum brought in was three huge stingrays, the size of dinner table tops. (Insert Steve Irwin joke here.).

The last evening there we ate at a local restaurant; “Fat Tony’s”. This proved a great place to spend an evening, though mainly for the atmosphere. (The vege grub wasn’t that great unfortunately.)

But soon, all too soon,  the week was over, and after a long walk on the beach for old times sake, (during which Barnum dropped one of the biggest turds I have ever seen,) we packed up and pissed off.

Waiting for us on our return was a grand’s worth of gas and electricity bills $$$, and a bust oven. Back to earth with a bang then.

The next day was the Citizenship ceremony. We got  to the National Museum of Australia a bit too early, and so went for a coffee. This left me busting for a piss the whole time. I got chatting to the nice Yank girl sat next to me, we were sat separate to the non-celebrants, and found out that she was another “internet romance with an Aussie” victim. Then I was tapped on the shoulder by a young woman attendant; “Mr Thomas? Would you mind doing an interview for the local news?” Who me? A chance to show off and embarrass myself? Lead the way love!

I asked her why me; “We found your tale of internet romance very lovely, and the news people want some human interest for the clip.” Fairy nuff,  I told her the object of my affection was sat over in the audience, and  I called Lee-Anne over to share this fun. Lee-Anne as you can imagine was not exactly over the moon at the idea, but to be fair she didn’t run away screaming. (On our way back to our seats she smiled sweetly at me and said: “I’ll just kill you when we get home then, shall I?”)

So the TV bunny interviewed us, and I gave them the whole tale about our; “souls that pass in the night, made for each other, married after 8 weeks together,” romance and she asked me lots about it and the whole interview lasted  about four minutes. Towards the end she asked me what; “we intended to do to celebrate,” I damn near choked. I didn’t tell her, I don’t think local news is ready for that stuff yet, even if porn is legal here. We made up some guff about “having a nice meal”  😉

As an afterthought she asked me how I felt the ceremony happening on “Constitution day” was significant to me. I made up some on the spot bullshit about; “a sense of history”.

That was the only bit of the interview they used. The twats.

Here’s the video, I’m on right at the end. (The lack of synchronicity between sound and image is all youtube’s fault.)

[youtube yTiYO44NLq4]

Actually I appear three times if you look carefully.

The ceremony itself was very moving, it was all rather well done. I was close to tears at one point, but don’t tell anyone, right?  The speeches were all meaningful, and spoken with honesty. The Aboriginal elder who welcomed us to Ngunnawal country (the local Aboriginal tribe’s name for the Canberra region, and his tribes homeland,) was obviously crapping himself at public speaking, but was an important contribution. The singer who sang the introductory welcome song, and the national anthem, was fantastic. For once I didn’t change the second line of the anthem from; “for we are young and free” to my usual “and have a cup of tea.”

I think it should be adopted though, isn’t ;

“Australians all let us rejoice,
And have a cup of tea.”

much better than;

Australians all let us rejoice,
For we are young and free;

The American girl next to me obviously loved my singing, she was open mouthed in admiration all the way throughmy rendition of the anthem.

On the way out I was stopped by another bit of totty; “Mr Thomas, would you mind doing an interview for the Canberra times?’ They didn’t use much of that either…

Pete’s wedding in Canberra plans are coming on a treat.

So back to the grind tomorrow then, ho hum