like time – only more so …
Archive for August, 2008
Bruised plums …
Aug 27th
As you may recall – I recently started going to the gym again. It’s going well too – I have managed to stick to my three sessions of spin cycling a week, without copping out. However I have a question for any blokes that might be reading this, that regularly ride a bike. How the fuck do you stop your bollocks getting banged around like a couple of plums in a blender? Is there some equipment, like a cricketer’s box, that I can stick down my shorts to protect my family jewels? Because at the moment, when it’s time to do a downhill sprint, my balls are getting flipped from left to right like the numbers in a bingo-callers drum.
By the time the 50 minute class is over, I’m walking like John Wayne and experiencing a singularly unpleasant throbbing sensation in the old ball bag that takes a bit of the shine off what is otherwise a great fitness class. Also Liz doesn’t take too kindly to my requests for a bit of therapeutic massage in said region.
Garden of Earthly Delights …
Well, the magnificent Ron has finished giving our back garden its one-day makeover – and a bloody good job he’s done too. The Lancaster bomber didn’t turn up, but he did discover 7 tennis balls, the dog’s chewing rope, an irrigation system we never even knew we had and enough ‘fishbone’ fern to fill an entire trailer. He also found time to cut the hedges which is great because that’s a job I enjoy marginally less than filling out my tax forms. Looking at the garden now, it just doesn’t feel like ours anymore. When I look out the window I expect to see Borneo and I instead there’s Kew (ermm, sort of).
In the face. With a hoover.
Aug 26th
It’s the weekend and Liz is ‘on’ one. She’s decrying the state of the house, the mess, the dirty carpets and the dust and as always I’m the punching bag that stands between her and nuclear fission. Admittedly the house is in a bit of a state, but it’s hardly in ‘How clean is my house’ territory. I don’t feel that we’re in danger of Aggy and the other one marching up the garden path in their starched white overalls, bog brush in hand, ready to check the downstairs bog for u-bend skids. But when my lovely wife is one of these particular moods, you’d have more luck arguing the toss with a strung-out crystal-meth hungry crack head.
I’m talking to her over the stairs when she finds she can’t remove the carpet attachment from the vacuum cleaner’s nozzle. In order to prevent a complete meltdown I step in and offer to remove said attachment. It’s well and truly wedged on there and it takes a lot of grunting to get it shifting. Unfortunately, at the moment when the attachment was freed of its superglue-like bonds, my head was in the way. Consequently, I twat myself in the face (the nose to be precise) with the heavy carpet attachment.
Liz laughs. I can hear her laughing, but I’m concentrating on the searing pain in my face and the blood that’s running down my hands. She stops laughing and asks me to let her see. After the traditional man-thing when you decline such offers a few times, I open my hands. She tries not to laugh again. “I’ve broken it again,” I say to her. “How do you know?” she asks. “Because I’ve busted it five times before and I know how it feels. Look …” I say and I wiggle it the way noses aren’t supposed to be wiggled.
Still – on the bright side – Liz’s mood lightened considerably.
Birthday boy …
The Jackster’s 7th birthday is this weekend and Liz has been going all out on preparations for his party. An obscene number of pizza bases have been purchased ready for the homemade pizzas we’ll feed the little darlings on and the goodie bags full of cheap Chinese shit have, in time honoured Aussie fashion, been prepared. The forecast for the weekend is looking okay too – bit of wind, but no rain forecast – that bodes well for keeping ‘em occupied in the garden.
Garden of Weeden …
We haven’t got any overly complicated back garden. It has a bit of lawn, a couple of hedges, one large flowerbed and a pool. However neither Liz nor I have even the slightest interest in gardening and so it tends to get a bit, ermm, unkempt. So we employed the services of a customer of mine – Ron – who will attempt to bring some order to the chaos. I’m willing to bet he discovers a lost Inca temple in that flowerbed or at the very least, the rusting remains of a Lancaster bomber.
Infamy, infamy, they've all got it infamy …
Aug 19th
So I’m sat there – minding my own business, checking my email, when this loud howl comes from downstairs, “Oh my god!” It says. Repeatedly. I run downstairs expecting to find the aftermath of a murder. Or at least a serious assault. Instead there’s my wife, staring at the shelves of our walk in ‘robe. “What’s up?” I cry, breathless from sprinting down the stairs to the aid of my obviously distressed wife. “Would. You. Look. At. The. State …. of these t-shirts.” “What?” I say. “What have you done? It looks like a wild animal ran amok in here.”
I stare at her in disbelief. “That’s it? That’s what the cry of pain was about?” She looks at me. “Well look at it,” she says. “You messed up my lovely bedroom.” I catch my breath. “I thought,” I say, “that some foul crime had been committed. That maybe last night I got really drunk and daubed shit all over the walls and then forgot about it. But no. I displaced a couple of t-shirts.” I fix her with my one good eye, “You are, I say, a complete fucking nutter.”
Swimming with the fishies…
Liz and Jack went to Surftown at the weekend on a little expedition and returned with a couple of freshwater snails for our fishtank. The idea being that the snails do laps around the tank and eat the crud (fish shit?) that accumulates on the sides. On their return they did a ceremonial plopping-in of the snails. Only their excitement was cut short when one of the goldfish swam up to one of the snails, clamped on to it – and bits its head off. The second snail made it to the bottom of the tank intact, but no doubt looking over its shell.
So when I took Jack to his breakdancing class tonight, Liz asked me to pick up a couple more snails. I dropped into a newly opened fish shop and purchased four more snails. Only mine cost $2.75 each and Liz’s were $0.25c. Either these are superior snails, or the bloke in the fish shop stitched me up. So anyway – we get back from breakdancing and there’s another ceremonial plopping-in. Jack goes to check on them an hour later – and we discover the four new snails lunching on the survivor from yesterday! What the hell is up with these bloody things – do they not realise that we’ll feed them and they don’t have to go lunching on their tank-mates?
Acreage …
Got a call from a new customer when I was the gym with Jack. Lady had a couple of badly virus infested PCs that needed looking after. So I arranged to go and pick them up after Jack’s class had finished. Only when I looked for the address in TomTom it didn’t show up and it took a call to Liz and access to Google Maps to discover that the TomTom placed her house outside Swindon. Anyway.
Her house is right off the beaten track – down a dirt road west of the Broughton River. I pull up outside the main house (there appeared to be three of them) and the customer came out to meet me on her decking. “I bet the noise of the traffic drives you nuts,” I say to her. She laughs. She leads me to a large building with triple garage in it and a games room that, when complete, will be completely superb. But as we’re approaching I notice the view, which had previously been obscured by the house. She has a deck (complete with pool) which looks down towards the Broughton River, the main bridge in the middle foreground and Coolangatta in the distance, with the sea beyond. “And there was me thinking you bought the place for the woodland,” I say to the lady.
They don’t just kill people …
I had a quick job today which required me to remove the hard drive form a knackered old HP PC and stick it in an external drive enclosure. When I popped the lid on the PC I soon discovered why it had croaked – it was choked with stinking fetid cigarette tar, dust and fluff. I haven’t turned into an anti-smoking nazi, but I couldn’t leave the side of the case off, the smell of cigarettes was so strong. The fan on the CPU looked like it had been getting through 40 full strength Marlboro a day for 40 years. What with the highly corrosive sea air round these parts, your average PC really takes a beating round here.
Warming up …
Aug 18th
The weather’s definitely on the turn. We’ve had a couple of chilly nights this winter and one day a few weeks ago when the daytime temperature didn’t get above 10c but on the whole it hasn’t been too bad. The bureau of meteorology predicted that this would be a warmer winter than usual and either I’m used to it – or they’re right. Last year I can remember having the reverse cycle or the little portable oil fired heaters on most nights. This year I’d say we’ve only had to resort to their use every other day. Today it’s a very pleasant 18c here, the sun’s shining and the sky is blue.
If you’re a bit of a weather obsessive, like most of us Brits – then here are some good websites to check out. The best weather site of them all, as far as I’m concerned, is Weatherzone. You can enter your post on the site and it’ll give you good local weather information. It’s particularly useful for researching particular parts of Australia since you can see full climate information for specific areas. If you want to plan ahead, then the long range rainfall forecast is very useful – this is the forecast for my area.
The government’s weather service is called the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and they’re the direct equivlanet of the Met Office in the UK. I’m not the biggest fan of their website because it’s incredibly confusing to navigate, but there’s some first rate information on the site. It’s at its most useful when the weather turns nasty here. For instance I have just learnt that, “Waves exceeding 5 metres in the surf zone are possible today and could lead to beach erosion on southwestern facing beaches of the Island during high tide this evening.” So I reckon I might head down to Gilmore to take some photos later. The government’s TV station is, of course, the ABC – they have a good round-up of the weather along with the latest news forecast in video format.
One of my favourite weather sites in the UK was Metcheck. They have started expanding worldwide and have started an Australia based site. One of the best features on their site is the 300 day forecast which enables you to peer into the future and see what the weather will be like this coming summer in Australia. If you’re interested in the weather because you’re a surfer, then the site you need is Coastalwatch – they carry all the swell informatin you’ll need, wind strength, projected wave height etc. They also have some great surfcams so you can see for yourself what it’s like.
The British are coming …
And in other news, we continue to make preparations for the arrival of Liz’s parents in September, and her big sister in October. The big argument at the moment is where they’re going to sleep. The problem is that we’ve turned the two spare bedrooms in the house into our own offices. Liz runs her web design business out of one – and I run my little computer repair business out of the other. So we either have to temporarily convert one of those back into a bedroom, or give the outlaws our bedroom and sleep on the sofa-bed ourselves. Liz’s in favour of giving them our bedroom because she has less stuff in her office (making it the front runner for bedroom conversion) but I don’t want to, because I know I’ll need a bolt-hole while they’re here.
Flab fighting …
It’s now a few months since I quit smoking and that, along with the fact that the surf lifesaving season is rapidly approaching, has spurred me on to get in better shape. About 20 months ago, Liz joined a gym down the road from here and, in classic style, went about twice. Only problem being she signed up for a three year (!!!) contract. As with most gyms, the small print is draconian so there’s no getting out of it. So I approached the gym to see if I could get it transfered into my name. And they agreed.
So last Thursday I went along to a spin class – my first proper exercise in some time. It didn’t go too badly all things considered, so I put my name down for the following Monday too. I’m just back from that class and, perhaps because it’s run by the guy who actually owns the gym, it was a lot harder than Thursdays. Still enjoyable mind you – my only chance of gut-busting lies in organised classes like this, since I have no desire whatsoever to plod along on my own jogging. Hopefully I can stick with it.
And finally …
Love this cartoon …
All is right with the world …
Aug 15th
Saw this news story on the BBC and chuckled quietly to myself. The August bank holiday in the UK is, let’s face it, a totally unique celebration of utter despair. If the baggage handlers at the airport hadn’t chosen that weekend to go on strike then you can guarantee that the air traffic controllers would have, or the French fishermen would have blockaded Calais harbour, or the national union of cone installers would have fenced off the M25 with a million witches hats. So to anyone in the UK about to go into battle on the long weekend – chin up – and don’t let the bastards grind you down.
More on the olympics …
So the whole olympics thing rumbles on, but today in a moment of inspiration I suddenly realised that there was one person who could settle this once and for all. My mum. My mother sits on the couch and watches telly all day – in latter years she has turned into a real sofa sports enthusiast and watches all the big sporting events from tennis through to Forumla 1. So I told her about the threads on British Expats about the supposedly biased media in this country and asked her to give me her honest opinion on it. Having spent 10 minutes slagging off the coverage of the Athens olympics which was just dreadful in every regard apparently – she said that 7′s coverage was very fair indeed. She reckoned that whilst they did, of course, concentrate on the homegrown talent there were plenty of events shown that didn’t feature any Australians at all. She also said the commentators were often full of praise for the British athletes. So, as I suspected, the ‘bias’ people see on TV is little more than a reflection of their own attitudes to Australia.