Okay okay, I’ve been getting a bit lax with this blog – but what can I tell you – we’re living the life now. So what’s been going on in Planet Ted lately? Well you know – mostly – just settling into our lives. I realise we arrived in Australia nearly four months ago, but for the first three months we were boarding with my parents and whilst we still had to work, do the school run, shop etc … it wasn’t totally on our own terms.

The good news is that the house is now pretty much fully equipped. Yes, we did the two big shops – for the furniture and the white goods – but it’s all those myriad other small things that have taken a bit of time to sort. You know, all the inconsequential stuff – like hooks for the toilet door, bottle openers, place matts, garage shelves, hoses, pizza-slices, waste-paper bins etc etc etc. We did a hundred little shops to K-Mart and Bunnings and all stops in-between getting all those things sorted, but the other day we realised it was pretty much there. Sorted.

One thing we didn’t factor into our costs was curtains. The house came fully equipped with venetian blinds, but they’re not the most homely things. The other big problem with blinds is that they’re not that brilliant at keeping the light out. For the first week we were in the house we were all waking up at five in the morning because the morning sun shone straight into the bedroom. I took the somewhat drastic step of staple-gunning duvet covers to the window frames – not terribly aesthetic, but pretty effective! We’ve since bought proper curtains for our bedroom with its 3.5 metre wide window and used some we brought with us from the UK in Jack’s room. Unfortunately ours still let in a fair bit of light, so we’re going to get them backed with some dark material, but Jack’s work brilliantly. We’re all much happier for it.

What else? We’ve had drinks with the neighbours, Derek and Cathy, next door. Very nice couple – he’s a kiwi, she’s an aussie – they have a brood of grown-up kids who visit them of a weekend. Derek commutes from here to Sydney every day (it is possible folks!). Nice couple, but given their ages, not entirely likely to turn into drinking buddies.
Jack is now well settled into his pre-school and has formed some strong friendships. He wants to invite his best mate Charlie round to play, which we’re trying to arrange. Charlie’s mum happens to run the pre-school Jack attends. They’re both down to attend Broughton Public school in the new year.

Kali’s been enjoying her walks on Seven Mile beach. I try and take her out either after dropping Jack off in the morning, or later on in the evening. Speaking of animals – we have a new member of the family – a cat called Mukka. Not a cat fan myself (understatement of the year) but he keeps Liz and Jack happy so hey-ho.

We’ve been enjoying our swimming pool recently. When it gets a bit hot and sticky we go and have a quick dip to cool off and everything’s right with the world. I have to use the pool’s pump to vacuum the detritus from the bottom (I can understand why the automatic Barracuda gizmos are so popular) and keep the pool in good nick. The other day I was vacuuming away and noticed all this sediment on the sill around the pool – so I dived in, pulled the hose off the vacuum head and manually sucked up all the bits and pieces. Probably not what you’re supposed to do, but it got the job done.
The surf’s been friendly to me lately. Had a particularly good boogie-board at ‘Chips’ – the beach break right at the northern end of Seven Mile beach. The water’s lovely and warm and contrary to Liz’s dire warnings, I haven’t been eaten by a shark yet.

In the UK, despite having Sky, I only occasionally actually watched broadcast TV – Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, Q.I. and Spooks being the notable exceptions. And guess what – it hasn’t changed here. I have 40Gb of bandwidth to play with and I’ve been using it all up downloading the same programmes I’ve always enjoyed – The Sopranos, Spooks, Deadwood, 24 etc. We’re pretty much up-to-date with Spooks (really enjoying this new season), Torchwood, Afterlife, Sopranos and NYPD Blue.

I’ve been dabbling with Media PCs lately. We had a spare PC (Liz’s old Dell) and the plasma TV has a special PC mode – so it made sense to marry them up. I am, in fact, writing this on the media PC in the living room via wireless keyboard, feet up on the sofa. Whilst it’s proved to be excellent for surfing and playing back MP3s I haven’t been impressed by the video playback – I’ve reverted to burning downloaded shows onto data DVD and playing them back on the LG DVD Recorder which, with its progressive mode output and signal upscaling, does a superb job of playing back films and shows.

Heard a great story from my friend Mark (the fireman) the other day. He’s on duty and they get this call asking them to respond to a man who’s being attacked by a snake and is cornered in a dam. So he drives over there with the blues and twos flashing and pulls up at the house. Turns out it’s an English family who’ve recently emigrated and are living on acreage. So Mark arrives and this paniced woman shows Mark into the house and out into the back garden. So Mark asks where the dam is and the woman looks at him all puzzled – “I thought your husband was cornered by a snake and was up to his neck in the dam?” The woman says, “No – he’s out there,” and points out towards the back yard. So he goes out into the yard and and find the husband holding a shovel. “I though you were stuck in the dam?” he says to the bloke. “No. But there’s a bloody big snake here – it was on the back fence.” Mark looks over to the right and there’s the eldest son stood there with a stick poised in the air by some tall grass in the general direction of the snake. “It’s gone into that grass now, but we thought we’d better call.” Mark sighs and explains that the snake’s probably long gone … and that anyway snakes are something of a fixture in this part of the country and it’s probably not best to call the emergency services every time you happen to see one on the fence. Didn’t do the reputation of us poms much good I can tell you.

Anyway – my eyes are getting heavy and so that’ll do for now. We’re heading out to Callala Bay tommorow for a bit of a road trip and on Sunday we’re having a family meal at the local winery on account of it being my big sister’s birthday. I have another edition of the Nailsworth News to put online and I have to say that reading about Fireworks night, Chris Kindl evenings and Christmas shopping back in the UK felt very surreal. Night all.