To make people happy, I’ll start off with the tale of the sort of event which happens all to frequently in my life, the type of tale which inspires most of you read this rubbish; a tale of one of my cock-ups.
Driving off from work at 9.00 pm the other night, I glanced into my wing mirror before pulling out. Or to be more precise, I would have glanced into my wing mirror, if it hadn’t been hanging off the door by the wiring at the time. I park on-street due to it being free, and due to me being a parsimonious bugger. I prefer to take a ten minute walk into the office rather than paying out $6.00 a day parking fee. While I had been at work someone in driving past had, obviously, driven too close to my car, and our wing mirrors had “clapped hands”. I only hope his mirror was as damaged as mine was. But, and for a change, it wasn’t my fault at least. The next day I rang the boys at the garage that we use, they sourced a second hand mirror for me, at $450.00. I told them I’d make do with the gaffa tape repair I had done, just for a while longer. A month later it’s still gaffered on.
(You only need two tools in my world; gaffa tape and a hammer. If it moves and it shouldn’t, gaffa tape it. If it doesn’t move and it should, hit it with a hammer. All else is just needless farting about.)
Then the other day I was mowing the lawn, (bear with me, the relevance comes clear later.) I managed to clip a paving edge, and one of the mower’s cutting blades sheared off. Amazingly this didn’t skim through the air and take out my windscreen/our dog/a neighbour. “Bugger, we’ll have to get it down to Dusty to get it fixed,” I informed Lee-Anne. So bleary eyed, very early one Sunday morning, we set off to the local “Trash and Treasure”, where Dusty has his lawn mower repair stall. We heaved the mower into the back of the car, jumped in and set off. We then hit the first bend in the road.
Guess what happened next?
Of course we hadn’t thought there would be enough room in the boot for the bastard thing to roll. But roll it did, and one of the arms of the mower just happened to be conveniently placed to smash out the rear window. Arse! We got the mower down to Dusty in any case. He repaired it and didn’t charge us, which was nice. We then spent a couple of weeks driving around with a rear window which was artfully gaffa taped up.
It cost a grand to replace. Fortunately we remembered that we have fully comp insurance on the car, and the kind glass people did all the work on the claim for us. Then the not so nice people at our insurers reminded us we have a $600 excess. Bollocks. Just what you don’t need before going on holiday, a $600 bill.
Now onto things more pleasant.
Aussie magpies, as I have blathered on about many times, are friendly and clever little buggers. We always make a point of taking some bread out to the garden give to them, as they are enjoyable to feed, and they reward us by shitting all over our washing. It’s got so that it’s hardly worth stepping into the garden without being armed with half a loaf. Here’s a video clip of one chap who is virtually living on our porch, complete with Welsh idiot commentary.
Cocky little bugger isn’t he?
For some unknown reason Canberra’s raptor population has exploded of late, hence the gallery is full of photos of eagles, hawks and Kites. I love raptors, but they are big scardy cats despite their fearsome looks, and fly off at the least provocation. This means that my sneaking up on them to get photos has led to many bruises and wasted hours. Here’s some of the better photos of raptors I’ve taken of late. The middle one, of the “black shoulder kite”, was featured on a local website, drawing many plaudits. (He boasted.) Even Charlie said he liked it!
(Click on image to go to the gallery/larger images.)
Funnily enough it would seem that the smaller the Aussie bird the more belligerent the buggers are. (Anyone mentioning Lee-Anne at this point is just asking for a world of pain.) Here’s images of a couple of Eastern Rosella scraping, and a tiny wagtail attacking a huge rook.
(Click on image to go to the gallery/larger images.)
News from the front line of the psychiatric wars.
Nice African mother of one of our clients; “You know my son is in the country (from Zimbabwe,) on a student visa, and that he needs to show attendance at college so that he can stay here?” Me; “Yes.”Her: “Well he’s been missing college. He’s been telling me he has been going, he gets dressed every morning, and goes out and catches the bus, but he’s missed some college days.” Me: “How many days?” Her: “Three months.” Me: “Three months!?!?!” Her: “Do you think that if you tell the visa people he is mad, he may be allowed to stay?” Me; “Errrmmm. No.”
One of our clients not only has schizophrenia, but also Asbegrers syndrome. To top it all off he also has what in clinical terms is known as a; “personality disorder,” ( or in layman’s terms; “he’s a complete twat.”) He has an obsession, and a delusion, that he has a bowel blockage. In order to pacify him, his doctor ordered a complete set of scans, MRI, endoscopy, colonoscopy, etc. They found, as we predicted, nothing. He has a healthy bowel, colon and abdominal cavity.
So, having been told by numerous specialists that he has nothing wrong with his bowel, he decided to prove them all wrong. By operating on himself. Fortunately he didn’t get too far, for obvious reasons. Mainly pain.
Me and Gary rushed him up to the hospital, as the ambulance service had had a gutful (scuse pun,) of him phoning them up about his bowel problems many times a day, and there was a warning against his name. I got to have a look inside his wound while the surgeon was poking about to see how much damage he has done, it was all very interesting. Fortunately he hadn’t compromised his bladder, but came damn close. He’s now back in the fun factory (loony bin.)
We think long term residential rehab may be his only way forward. Or the loan of a decent anatomy book and a set of scalpels.
I took a trip up to the local dam construction on one of my days off.
(Click on image to go to the gallery/larger images.)
It’s an amazing bit of work, they are raising the dam walls to three times their present hight.
An enlarged Cotter Dam is being built downstream of the existing one to increase the Cotter Reservoir’s capacity from the current 4 gigalitres (GL) to around 78 GL – almost 20 times its current size. The onsite crushing plant has crushed the 920,000 tonnes (t) of rock that is required for the new 80m high wall. Twin concrete batch plant will combine the rock with other components to make the RCC. This concrete mix will be transported via a specialised conveyor system to place each RCC layer for the main dam 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The ice plant connected to the batch plant was commissioned last month to control concrete placement temperature.
As per norm these days, there’s a “heritage trail” and a guided walk up to a viewing platform, all of which we very nicely done. But the most amazing sight of the day was in the river below the dam, which was teeming with fish, an anglers paradise. I saw many Murray Cod there, a native fish, much sought after by fishermen. However many of the fish there are actually domesticated or ornamental carp, which have been released into the wild, and they are now a pest species. Here’s some piccies.
(Click on image to go to the gallery/larger images.)
We went up to Sydney recently to see Alan Davies, one of Bethy’s (many) heartthrobs, who was here on his “Life is Pain” tour. I cannot see their attraction to him myself; he’s got a wonky chin for starters. But both the girls have a major crush on him, so why not? I took a day off work, so did Lee-Anne. The drive up was uneventful, despite all my recent car modifications. Fortunately the local supermarket had had one of those “spend $30+ and get 10c a litre off petrol” offers on, we had done our shopping the day before, and I had a voucher. Cheap gas, brilliant! So I filled my tank. The gloss was somewhat taken off of this saving when I filled up to come back, only to find that the petrol in Sydney is cheaper than Canberra’s prices, even with 10 c a litre off the Canberra gas! Bastards are conning us.
We found our Motel thanks to Sean, our trusty GPS. The place, the Garden Lodge was quite pleasant. We’d booked a triple room, which in fact turned out to be a suite which slept five. This would have been excellent for a night of bedroom gymnastics, but having Bethy share our room curtailed what would otherwise be the normal events totally. m sure sharing a room with the crumblies wasn’t pleasant at all for her either. After a quick SSS (shit shave and shampoo) we headed off into Sydney central on a train. I do like Sydney’s public transport system it’s great for getting around, what is, after all, a huge city.
We found the state theatre, and were blown away by its baroque interior. It looked like something from renaissance Italy had been plonked in central Sydney, but in a nice way. I noticed they were flogging Alan Davies’s book; “Teenage revolution”. We had a copy already, bought second hand for $5.00, and I wasn’t really that taken by it. BUT! They stated on the posters behind the stall, that the lad himself would be signing copies afterwards. So I forked out $25.00 for another copy.
I will happily admit that his stand up show was absolutely bloody hysterical. I had gone into it with no great expectations, but was in stitches the whole way though. His routine was very close to the knuckle, and was explicit and very rude at times. Funnily enough one riffs that he ran was about modern porn, and; “Who is supposed to be getting the pleasure in what is being shown? Some guy beating two women over the head with his massive cock, who’s enjoying that, him or them?”, something I have pondered myself of late, (which, of course, has never stopped me watching the stuff on suitable occasions though.) At this point I was betting there were a few adults in the audience who regretted bringing their young kids along for; “Nice Mr Davies’s funny show”, mainly because they all seemed to get far too many of the references for comfort. After the show I went for a pee, and returned to find Bethy and Lee-Anne had somehow swung it so as to get near the front of the queue for the book signing. So I joined them.
In a short while we to to the table and met the man himself. He was very nice, very much as you imagine him to be, if you’ve ever seen him on the box. He exchanged a few words with everyone, chatted briefly with both Bethy and Lee-Anne, and signed the book; “To Bethany, love Alan Davies”. Fortunately Bethy didn’t swoon, and Lee-Anne held herself in check, (that is to say; fortunately for Alan Davies Lee-Anne held herself in check.) On the way out Lee-Anne came out with the quote of the weekend;
Me: “What a nice bloke, great to be able to meet him, and get so close wasn’t it?” Lee-Anne: “Not close enough! There were a couple of feet and far too many clothes in between us for my taste.” Bethany: “ MOTHER!!!!!!” 
Bethy and Lee-Anne meet their hero.
(Image taken on my crappy phone.)
The next day we found that the trains into Sydney weren’t running, due to track repairs, so my admiration for the public transport system there faded somewhat. But a short ride on a bus saw us in Newtown, Sydney’s most bohemian/student/trendy shopping area. We first discovered Newtown when we came up to see the Psychedelic Furs play here, and it’s been the “must visit” area of Sydney for us since. We all exercised our credit cards on our favourite purchases, Bethy on shoes and dresses, me on books and DVD’s, and Lee-Anne on food for us all. Bethy was very lucky, getting some marvellous retro, 1950’s style, dresses which show off her figure, and are dead suited to her image. She also got, in a closing down sale, two pairs of high heeled shoes to match her dresses; at $15 a pair! I was so amazed at how cheap they were I paid for them myself. We also found the “Braintree Hemp Clothing” shop, a shop at which I’d bought a whole batch of new trousers and shirts at the last time we were in Sydney. So I bought exactly the same things all over again, if they fit and are comfortable, why not? I’m just hoping that all my hemp based clothes don’t give Moscow’s sniffer dogs a field day!
(On the subject of clothing; as most of you know to your dismay, I hardly ever wear shoes these days, in fact I’ve worn nothing but sandals for the last 20+ years. When I arrived in Aus, I found the wonderful “Keen’s Newport” hiking sandals; I now wear them for just about everything. (I even wear socks with them for formal wear, much to Bethy’s disgust.) The best price I can get them for in Aus is $170.00 Au + postage. BUT! I recently found out that from the US via e-bay I’m looking at $100 Au including postage, bargain city!!)
After eating (twice) at our favourite cafe, we then settled down in the cinema to watch “The Inbetweeners Movie”. If you’ve ever been a teenager, this is a must see, though knowing a bit about the boys, gleaned from the TV series it’s based on, is helpful.
That evening we ate at The Muse, a tapas restaurant near our hotel in Summerhill, not bad grub at all. I loved the deep fried haloumi, though this was probably due to it being the only fat I’ve consumed in two months. I introduced Lee-Anne to the joys of Sangria. Though Bethy stayed true to herself and her moral code and again refused alcohol.
The journey back was uneventful, though we did stop at the multi-award winning Gumnut Patisserie in Berrima to buy some of their scrummy pies for us, and some mince pies for the mother-in-law as a “thank you” for dog sitting for us.
Dogs! Don’t get me started.
Poor old Barnum, our ageing dog, is getting decrepit. Lee-Anne took him to the vet the other day as his limp is getting worse. Rob, our vet, examined him; “He’s got arthritis, a dodgy ticker with a murmur. And he’s got fluid on the lungs.” Ok, but apart from that, he’s fine I take it? So the mutt is now on diuretics, anti-inflammatory pills, and a reduced diet. Or at least he would be on a reduced diet if he wasn’t spending most of the day at the mother in laws, as she seems to be totally incapable of not giving the dogs ‘treats”, despite our threats of violence. As she’s looking after both our dogs while we’re in the UK, I’m wondering if he’ll survive his stay with her. She has asked us to sort out where she can take him to get him cremated, in case he pops his clogs while we are away. What a nice thought.
While I’m talking about the mother in law; this morning I picked her dog up to come walking with mine, as I do each morning. After walking them I drop them off at her house, and she has them for the day. This is a big help, Barnum isn’t in any shape to be left outside in our garden for the day while we’re at work. BUT! I have big problems with her leaving the house wide open when she goes out for a few hours; “so the dogs can go in and lie on the sofa.” She actually props the back door, which opens into her living room, wide open, so as to give the dogs free reign over the house. Burglar magnet or what? The three dogs between them do not have an ounce of savvy, and would happily hold the gate open for anyone walking off with the TV. This morning she said; “I’m going out, so if I’m not here when I get back, put them in the garden, and do not lock them out of the house again!” I started to remonstrate; “If you get burgled, don’t come crying to me when you no longer feel safe at home. ” She came out with her standard response; “I wont get burgled, I’ve put a pyramid of golden light over the house to protect it!” I’m sure she only says it to annoy me.
Another of Mary’s quirks…
Mary, (while driving Lee-Anne to an appointment) Points right; “Do I turn right here?”
Lee-Anne; “Yes.” (sotto voce) “It’s the same place we’ve been coming since I was 8 years old.”
Mary; Turns left….
Lee-Anne; “???”
Repeat until late for appointment
Mind you, my mother’s just as bad, here’s a regular conversation of ours;
Me; (on the phone from Australia to the UK) “Hi Mam, how are you”
Mother; “Oh it’s getting cold here now boy, I can feel the weather drawing in. I hope we don’t have another winter like last year, I don’t think I could survive it. It’s forecast to be terrible. Freezing. The house is so cold and damp these days, it gets in my bones. Like the Arctic it’s going to be………”
Me; (goes away, make a a pot of tea, drinks pot of tea, watches a rugby match, redecorates the living room, comes back, picks up phone…)
Mother: “Death. Doom. Global cooling. Disaster. Glaciers all over the UK. End of the world….”
Me; “Mam, just whack your central heating up full, and I’ll pay your bills.”
Mother; “Oh no, couldn’t do that boy. No, Not that. No. No way could I …..”
Me; (Goes away, puts kettle back on….)
So it’s spring here, the air is heavy with the aniseed scent of wattle, which is very heady and very lovely. The weather is getting hotter, and we’re in the thunderstorm season. I love the storms we get, sometimes so heavy you have no option but to pull off the road and wait for the rain to slow down sufficiently for you to see out the windscreen.
Here’s some video of a nice storm which passed though Canberra recently, shot from our porch.
Holiday plans.
By luck the two days before we leave are my rostered days off. So I’m booking in for a Thai massage for a treat before we fly. Lee-Anne has also booked me a treat for those days, mowing the lawn and putting the house in order. Fair swap.
Just to show how hard she bloody works, and why she deserves to have every single penny she wants to spend on this trip, Lee-Anne decided to use up the flex time she has built up, rather than use up her holiday days. She’s built up so much flex, that for our five weeks away she is only using ten holidays days, the rest of the time is flex! Which sound great, until you realise to achieve this she is normally in work at 8.15 am, and rarely gets home before 6.30 pm at night.
The compo from my crash hasn’t been settled yet, which is a blow. It’s not that we were relying on the money to fund our trip, that’s all paid for. But I had got an agreement that, as a treat for crashing an injuring myself, not only was I going to get a new (second hand) motorbike when we get back, but, before we left, I was going to upgrade my camera to a Canon 60D, and get a wide angle lens too, off e-bay. I’d seen this chap advertising his; “Landscape Photography Workshop” on Dartmoor, and quite fancied booking up for a day’s tuition. But without the right gear it’s all a bit of a waste. Never mind, next time we go will suit me.
So, apart from that , we’re all fully booked and raring to go. We had a bit of luck as we were going to book into a place in Kensington, the London Guards Hotel, for our last few days in London. This was “okish” but fitted our budget and need to be central to the city. When we tried to book it they had no online booking system, and they insisted we phone the hotel and give my credit card details over the phone to them. Even I was wary of this. Then, while looking up the details on the place to try to find an online booking agent for them, Lee-Anne came across the wonderful “Grand Plaza Serviced Apartments”, which have a great rating on Tripadvisor, and was the same price! (And they had online secure booking thankfully.) So that’s London, and hence all, our digs sorted for the stay.
We were watching Poirot on TV the other night. Bethy’s a big fan of the series, and of David Suchet’s playing of him, she’s an Agatha Christie fan in general. I had a brainwave; “When we’re in London, why don’t we go see “The Mousetrap?” To say they bit my arm off would be an understatement. So for our last full day in the UK, we’ll be at St Martin’s theatre, watching the world’s longest running play. Everyone I’ve told this says the same thing; “is it still going then?” Yes it is, and the statistics are pretty bloody mind-blowing. It opened in 1952, and has been running continuously since then. It has the longest initial run of any play in history, with over 24,500 performances so far. The late Deryk Guyler can still be heard, via a recording, reading the radio news bulletin in the play to this present day. The set has been changed in 1965 and 1999, but one prop survives from the original opening – the clock which sits on the mantelpiece of the fire in the main hall.
Another big event for us, will be our Christmas present to each other. We’ve booked a table for three at “The Fat Duck”, international best restaurant of the year 2005, one of only four in the United Kingdom and Ireland that hold a three-star Michelin Guide rating and which was voted best Restaurant in the UK in 2008, 2009 and 2010, scoring a maximum 10 out of 10 in the Good Food Guide. It’s Heston Blumenthal’s flagship restaurant, and Heston is another one of Lee-Anne and Bethany’s heartthrobs. God they have curious taste in men. (Don’t bother, I’m miles ahead of you.)
Getting a booking is a major event in itself. Lee-Anne started the ball rolling by sending them a Christmas card, with a note to Santa in it telling him that she’d been a good girl all year, (I beg to differ, in a nice way,) and for her Xmas present she’d love the reservation staff to look kindly on her request for a booking. You can only book two months in advance, and so the competition for seats is intense. So exactly two months in advance of the date we wanted, January 10th, Lee-Anne was already to fight her way through the phone wire and get us booked. Then she noted they’d changed the reservation system, and it was all done online. So at seconds after midnight, UK time, and exactly 2 months before we wanted our booking, she was poised to hit “send”. Obviously it worked.
I’ve decided that, seeing we’re paying top dollar for the set menu, I’d break the habits of 30 years and have a “pescatarian” meal there. I couldn’t bring myself to commit to eating meat, that would be a step too far, and it would be bloody silly if my system, or my emotions, got the better of me and I hurled the bloody lot back up. But I’ve been on fish oil for my cholesterol levels for many months now, so fish should be fine. (Though I’m anticipating struggling with the texture of it, if not the taste.) I’m totally unsure what I’ll end up eating, I’m not having the bloody “snail porridge” that’s for sure. I’ve seen the vegetarian version of his tasting menu, so hopefully I’ll get a variation on that.
Here’s his set menu for omnivores, check out the weird and wonderful stuff on it!
Oh Moscow, now there’s a sod of a thing. We’ve got 14 hours wait in Moscow on the way back. I looked into it, and found we could get a transit visa for that day, and by taking a train from the airport, and then a bus, we could get into into Red Square. That was very appealing! I looked further into it. The visas would cost us $330.00, and at that time of year we could be looking at temperatures anywhere between -5 c and -15 c at best. This would mean taking enough clothes as hand luggage to survive at those temperatures, and there would be no guarantee that the trains and buses would be running, potentially throwing $330 down the pan. So we knocked that idea on the head.
So here’s our itinerary, for those of you determined to avoid us.
Saturday 17/12/11: depart Sydney
Sunday 18/12/11: arrive Moscow
Sunday 18/12/11: arrive London, collect hire car
Sunday 18/12/11: drive to Chipping Norton
Weds 21/12/11: leave Chipping Norton, drive to Llanelli
Saturday 31/12/11: leave Llanelli, drive to Sennen.
Saturday 7/1/12: depart Sennen, drive to Peter Tavy.
Tuesday 10/1/12: drive to Bray, the Fat Duck, eat lots, drive back to Peter Tavy
Weds 18/1/12: depart Peter Tavy, drive to Heathrow, drop off car, train into London.
19/1/12: see “The Mousetrap” St Martin’s Theatre, West End.
Saturday 21/1/12: depart Heathrow.
Sunday 22/1/12: Day in Moscow airport.
Mon 23/1/12: arrive back in Sydney.
We’ll be buying “pay as you go” sim cards for our mobiles when we hit the UK, and will ring around and let you know our numbers. We’re also buying dongles for Lee-Anne’s i-pad, and Bethy’s laptop, which are coming with us. This is due to Bethy needing to do assignment work, (and facebook her boyfriend,) and Lee-Anne’s need to look at funny fail images.
If, though I cannot think of a reason why, you desperately need to get hold of us while we are in the UK, you can e-mail us on fatbeetle#gmail.com (replace the # with an @)
Various people are meeting up with us at various points during the holiday. Clarkie and Catherine are flying over from Ireland to have New Years with us at Sennen, and Jamesy and Rachel are also travelling down to Sennen for New years too!! Abbot is threatening to visit us in Peter Tavy.
The $ Au is holding up well for us, you can now get twice the number of pence for a dollar that you could when Lee-Anne first came over to Blighty. Not good at all for the Aussie tourism industry, but great for Bethy’s clothes buying capacity when she’s in the UK!
Talking of Xmas, spare a thought for those less fortunate. My mate Peter and his wife Lynn, Brits who moved to the US then to Africa (one third world country to another :D) , has set up an orphanage in SA, this is from his newsletter.
Prayers for water seem to have been answered (thank you! Thank God!). A new bore hole was sunk in a far corner within our property line and at the present water is flowing. Perhaps not sufficient but at 500liters/hour (pumping only in alternate hours) it’s possible we may be OK. “We”. Well Lynn and I are not the ones who have to go weeks without water; months without hot water (because the elements burn out when the water suddenly stops running). In recent times even the Army showed up with big pumper trucks to put water in the outside jo-jo tanks for use in washing and laundry (can’t be used to drink because those tanks take run-off from the roof). Lynn has been working hard with the children in small groups at our house to make Christmas gifts for staff and volunteers. We have been tremendously encouraged by donations from friends in America (thank you!) which enabled us to go out and purchase Bible “comic books”, gospel music CDs and some other things for each child – the reason for the season. In turn, they are all excited to perform a nativity play and concert to staff and volunteers on this coming Sunday after church. That’s followed by a Christmas dinner and gift-sharing at the local Lion Farm – Christians and lions? Has a familiar ring to it!
Anyone wishing to send a few bob to help the orphans at Xmas, and assuage their guilt at being a fat, smug, relatively well off, bastard, (as I have done) can send a donation via pay pal to Peter via “pay-pal” at majgenlmeade#aol.com (but obviously replace the # with an @)
That’s all from me then, looking forward to seeing some of you soon. The next episode will be full of tales of woe from the inevitable cock-ups during our holiday. I bet you cannot wait.
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