Birthday Boy

It was Robert's 9th Birthday on 11th October.

No, I know it doesn't seem 9 years ago he was born, but 9 he is.

I was on a trade union course at MANCAT. We'd just started the afternoon session when the pager I'd borrowed off Sara Barker went off. "they are injuicing me, come now" it said, the BT operator who sent the message clearly not having the best grasp of spelling. I got up and announced to the class, 'Sorry I've got to go, my wife's in labour'. I got lots of best wishes, a few pats on the back and several predictions that ' that's it now, life will never be the same again'. I got in a taxi outside and I think made the drivers day by giving him an excuse to drive significantly faster than he should have done to St Mary's, via some city centre back streets I never knew existed.

Robert was 4lb 14oz when he was born. You can see from the photo he's had a bit of a growing spurt since being here, and we're always trying to get him to eat more, as he's pretty skinny. He's developed a strong Australian Questioning Inflection, and calls water 'warder' and butter 'Budder'. This is as opposed to Owen, who seems to be more Manc (specifically, Levenshulme) than ever.

They've both settled really well here. They miss people of course, and talk nostalgically about St Andrews, but they enjoy their schools and have made loads of friends, both at school and church. It was them settling in here I was most worried about before we left, so it's been great to watch them get stuck into it, sometimes better than us.

Wish you were here

 I came across this postcard when thinking about Bobby Dazzlers for my last post, on a Levenshulme blog site. It made me chuckle, but also strangely nostalgic for these highlights of the 197 route. Not so nostalgic I'm in a rush to catch it again, you understand.  You'll never see a pet shop with a better name, though.

Sparrow Wars

A great added bonus of our house here is the pergola on the side of the house. It can be closed off each end with transparent cafe blinds which, when it's warmer, makes it like another room.

However, plans to use it as such were threatened by the arrival of sparrows who built 3 nests in the very top of the pergola. I didn't mind that so much as the detritus they littered all over the place, along with the gallons of droppings.

I thought I didn't have the heart to remove them, bless the little creatures. Actually, it turns out I just didn't have the stepladders to remove them. As soon as I'd bought some ($39 from Bunnings), down they came. Thankfully, they were empty.

The sparrows returned the following day looking most put out and with that urgent look you have when you need a really big poo but can't get to the loo. Sure enough, one laid an egg on the beam where the nest used to be, and this just rolled off and smashed.

I felt a little bit bad about that, so when they returned and began rebuilding their nest, I didn't remove it. In the meantime, Sharon had purchased from Cheap as Chips (like Poundstretcher but with less style - if Bobby Dazzler was a chain store, this'd be it) a pair of large plastic crows. We had heard fake snakes might scare the sparrows off, but the crows looked really menacing.

I was dismayed the next morning to find the sparrows mockingly plopping away on our plastic pals.

Harmony broke out when I took the decision to let them be and simply catch their poo and nesting materials with shade cloth draped over the beams of the pergola, which has done the trick.

Sharon persevered however, moving the plastic crows of death to the outside bathroom and toilet windowsills. This certainly had the effect of scaring the life out of me, faced with a scene from Omen II or The Birds when I go for my morning tinkle. Time will tell, but I haven't seen the loose bottomed sparrows lately, so the crows might just be earning their keep.

In any case, bird muck has ceased enough to allow me to put up a hammock ($20 from Bunnings), with which I'm rather chuffed.

Lah de Dah

Jo Hardy (see Jo Hardy's African Adventure link on the right of this page) has something in common with us in that she has left Shawbrook Road to live in a far flung corner of the globe, and is writing a blog about it. She has fantastic tales of building schools and improving communities' self sufficiency in Zambia.

I'm afraid all I have to tell you is about how we went touring wineries in the Barossa Valley. It's Australia's most famous wine region, about an hour and half drive out of Adelaide. It's the home of Jacob's Creek (that's actually a place, as well as a brand), Wolf Bass and Penfolds, along with a few hundred others. There's also a pretty good German pie shop in Tanunda, if you get hungry.

The region is spectacularly beautiful, and worth driving around even if the wineries weren't there. But there they are, and most of them have a cellar door where you can taste their wares, usually for free, and usually along with a minibus load of women on Hen weekends in matching T-shirts (I could swear I saw the Rotund Pink Ladies from my City to Bay Run). This will help inform your decision as to what to buy next time you are in Thirsty Camel, Liquor Land, Booze Brothers or whatever other Bottlo you end up in. Don't buy them at the cellar door, because they'll be $5 extra.

Ben and Sarah from church took us in their big car, with the boys happily tucked away in the back watching DVDs. Sharon and Sarah would do the tasting, mostly of port, whilst the rest of us explored the grounds of wherever we were. Most of the ones we visited had beautiful grounds with Barbecues and picnic areas. There are fields full of purple wildflowers at the moment, and these next to row after row of vines was amazing to see. Seppeltsfields was particularly impressive, with avenues lined with 2000 palm trees. We also had a brief visit to the Whispering Wall, which really is impressive when you stand 100m away at the other end and can still hear Robert whispering, "Dad smells of trumps". Civil engineers may be interested to know that it was the first concrete arc dam, built in 1901. Or something.

I'm no connoisseur of wine, and would rather go on pub crawl for beer, but I can see how you'd easily get into it, and Sharon and Sarah certainly had a good go at improving their knowledge of fortified wines. This was because Sarah had bought a barrell in which to age her port, and was trying to decide who's 15 litres to buy.

Anyway, we didn't buy anything (except pies) and so, whilst Jo can share heroic tales of Majority World development, all we contributed to this already rich area was fuel emmisions and a pile of pine cones at Seppeltsfields winery from playing throwing them at a tree.

Now we've been, we can add the Barossa to our list of places to take people when they visit.

For truly impressive stories, see Jo's Blog.

City to Bay

On 21st September I took part in the City to Bay Fun Run. The title refers to the route: we started in Adelaide City centre, and ran 12km to Glenelg, which overlooks Holdfast Bay, i.e. the seaside. As for the 'Fun' bit...well ok, I did enjoy it, in a coping with pain kind of way.

28,000 people either ran or walked it. For us runners, it was a bit crowded all the way along, and I thought they should have split us in to waves like they had done in Manchester. Also, with there being the option of doing the event as a walk, I really couldn't see why 20 metres into the start of the run everyones way was blocked by 5 rotund ladies in pink t-shirts ALREADY WALKING.

I ran it in 1 hour 6 minutes and 28 seconds.

I was a bit dissapointed that I had to stop and walk a couple of times, really because I was getting too hot. I felt a bit nauseous and started getting goose pimples, which made me worry my heat regulation was going up the swanny. I didn't want to embarrass myself by collapsing and pooing all over the place, as the patient from a half marathon who came in for a ct scan a few weeks ago had done.

Still, I was rather pleased that I managed to beat Dan from work, who is 12 years my junior, about twice as tall, and had tried, in true Aussie fashion, to transform a low key 'let's have a bit of fun' event into some sort of olympic trial.

Another glorious victory for Team GB

Geocaching

During our weekend away, whilst Sharon was discovering tea shops, Robert, Owen and I joined about 10 others for the modern equivalent of a treasure hunt. It's best described by the website:

"Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by
adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden
containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online.
Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of
community and support for the environment"

A couple of the blokes from church had GPS devices, and a list of co-ordinates from around the area we were staying, so off we set, nerdalator in hand. The locations took us too a place near the beach (we couldn't find that one), a cemetery, the bluff and a surfing beach. Apart from the first one, at each we found a little plastic container with a log book and little trinkets - McDonald's Happy Meal Toy level of value. Apparently you can track your trinkets as people remove and swap them around, logging the movements on line.
It was a really good thing to do, taking us to places we wouldn't have normally gone to (who goes tramping around an abandoned cemetery on a church weekend away?). It was actually quite exciting, giving each bit of walking an adventurous purpose. The GPS get you to with 5m, and then you have to find it. Robert was really chuffed when he found the last one.

If you've got a GPS device, I'd thoroughly recommend it

Weekend Away

A few weeks ago we went on a weekend away with our church, Trinity Bay, to Encounter Bay, about 45 minutes drive from where we are, and where my Mum's cousin Sue lives.

We weren't quite sure what to expect. St Margaret's weekends away back in England were always a rather laid back affair, with the emphasis very much on the fellowship side of things, which was great. The blokes would cook breakfast and there was a bit of a walk on the Saturday, with plenty of time for tea shops, laughing and joking and a few drinks. Sometimes more than a few. The only planned formal time of fellowship was on the Sunday morning.

So it was with some trepidation that I read on the program for Trinity Bay's weekend that there would be 4, yes, 4 talks/times of worship through the weekend. When would we have time for Singstar? And what's more, as the weekend would be held in a Salvation Army conference centre, there'd be no alcohol allowed. On the plus side, it was to be fully catered, Scripture Union were going to look after the children during the adults sessions and, as far as we knew, all water supplies, toilets and showers were fully functional, so there'd be no repeat of St Margaret's dirty weekend. I felt like I'd overdosed on Christian books and talks during my commuting leading up to the weekend, and honestly didn't feel like listening to another 4 talks, but, go with the flow I thought, and tried to go into the weekend deciding to enjoy it.
I didn't have to try very hard. The dorm we were given had the nostalgic smell, look and poor thermoregulation of a Butlins Spring Harvest chalet circa 1988, which with the spring air, made me feel like I was back in Skegness. The food was great, with Tea and Coffee (or 'Christian crack' as Dave from church called it) on tap. The boys had an ace time in their sessions, even if I did manage to spill their crystal making solution they'd made. The worship group (or 'Musos', as John, our Minister, refers to them) were really good. And those talks I'd been dreading were exactly the breath of fresh air I needed - really good, back to the heart of things stuff.

It was really nice just to hang out with people from church, too. In these post Madeline McCann days, I went to bed when the boys did, but Sharon stayed up late, teaching anyone who would listen how to cheat at cards. The boys played an awful lot of table tennis and could generally just run about the venue. I did a 6:30am run down to the bluff (not in the buff, to the bluff, a rocky prominence on the coastline) with one of the men in preparation for the city to bay 12km race I was doing the following weekend. I'd intended to do 1okm, but had to give up after 8km, unable to keep up with Paul's 1hour/12km pace. We saw a baby whale in the bay whilst we were out, this being a prime nursery site for whales coming up from the south pole. On the Saturday afternoon we did the modern form of treasure hunting: geocaching. More of that later.

All in all, we had a fantastic time that really boosted us all. Well done to the Young Adults Group who organised it all for us.