Europhile

We may be living in Australia, but this weekend had a distinctly european, if slightly untrendy, flavour to it.

On saturday night went to see Bjorn Again, an Abba Tribute band. They say they're the closest thing to being able to see Abba live. That's probably overstating it a bit, but they were pretty good. We went with some couples we know from church (Sharon and I were the youngest, woo hoo!) who could remember Abba first time around. they played all the old favourites with the right mix of parody and affectionate tribute. I've still got the songs jangling in my head. And, rest assured, I memorised their dance moves as much as possible ready for the next wedding disco I go to.

One thing we thought we would miss when we came to Australia was the annual cheese-fest that is the Eurovision Song Contest. We always had a bit of a gathering for it each year, to listen to Terry Wogan's laconic wit and rants about block voting. We needn't have worried as, bizarrely, it's nearly as popular here as it is in the UK, and we had no trouble at all finding 5 people to come over and watch it with us. One of them brought a Ukrainian flag, despite having no connection with that country whatsoever. The show it on SBS (Special Broadcasting Service - it shows foreign language news during the day and the rest of the programming is from the rest of the world, or is about the rest of the world, earning it the nickname 'Sex Before Soccer') one night later than it was on live.

This year of course, Terry has retired. The 2 Aussie comedians SBS sent instead were actually really good. And the show itself didn't dissappoint. In true Eurovision style, the winner (Norway) was truly awful, and there were some genuine 'what were they thinking?' moments. My favourite was Albania's green gimp and midget breakdancers.

Come to Australia

Something from the Australian Tourist Board to convince you to come here...

It's been a while

Ok, so this is going to be a downbeat posting, but it's real and it happened, and I feel like I need to get it out here before I post anything else.


In February, we had a miscarriage.


It was awful. Having hardly had chance to get used to being pregnant, at about 10 weeks in we lost the baby. I don't think we'd realised how much had grown attached to this invisible person until we lost her (all babies start out female). This was hot on the tails of our dear friend Bev back in England dying of Cancer.

The friends we have made here and people in England proved to be of tremendous support. We didn't have to cook for a whole week, with friends from church dropping off meals and offering practical help. We took plenty of time out to mourn. I found I was trying to walk a line between letting it all out, but not wallowing in self pity. Now, we are getting on with life, learning to live with this very sad time. We are ok.

There. This blog isn't usually this miserable, but I didn't want to pretend this didn't happpen, and now I've got it off my chest I think I'll find it easier to write more.

Happy New Ears

Happy new year, and I hope you had a great Christmas.

Ours went really, really well in the end, although of course we missed all our family and friends in the UK and Italy a great deal.  I missed Manchester, the Christmas markets, Christmas parties and meals, and even the weather a bit.

It was undoubtedly very different having Christmas here, but really nice.  It was good to be able to have Gareth (Sharon’s cousin), Wendy, their 3 children and his Mum and Dad around, especially as they so kindly put us up for a few months when we arrived.  We also has our next door neighbours, Helen and Adam around.  They turned up late, and in a 70’s TV sitcom story line kind of way, we strongly suspect they hadn’t realised they’d been invited to eat and had already had a big Christmas dinner. Helen at least had a good go at finishing hers, and it was good fun watching Adam squirm as he politely declined.

Of great concern to me at 7am on Christmas day was the plan to roast the Turkey in the Webber, a sort of barbecue with a lid where the charcoal goes at the sides, so you can use it like an oven.  Several liberal applications of fire lighters and half a bottle of kerosene later and the briquettes and my eyebrows were well ablaze.

In the end, the Turkey was perfect. In fact, thanks to Sharon’s hard work and military planning, it was all perfect. The weather was great - warm, but not to hot, so that t was really nice eating outside.

Boxing day was really hot, so we went to the beach with our friends the Davies, and did a bit of snorkeling.  It was really gorgeous. Sharon discovered that if you leave your alice crocs on the back shelf of the car on a 35 degrees day, they curl up and shrink by about a third.

I was working in the afternoons in between christmas and new year, but in the mornings we did the traditional getting up late and not getting dressed playing with new Lego. Robert and Owen both got huge Star Wars Lego sets off their Grandma and Grandad, so we were all in our element.  They also got scooters of their Taid (welsh for Grandad) which they had a go on the skate park near our house each day.  There’s usually lots of skater dudes there, and I thought they might have been a bit resentful of two young beginners cluttering the place up. As it turned out the other kids were all so nice - showing them tricks, asking about their scooters, saying things like, ‘go ahead, it’s your park as well’.  This is one Australian stereotype - the friendly, helpful strangers - that we have been very pleased to find out is generally true.  The kids all swore like troopers, mind, but they were very good hearted.

I was working until 11:30pm NYE, so Sharon and the boys went to a friend of a friend’s pool party in their back yard. The boys had a great time swimming, their lessons paying off, but Sharon didn’t really know anyone, and isn’t a big NYE fan anyway.  I was on the bus home at midnight, being entertained by dozen or so drunk, but pleasant enough teenagers screeching half-minutely time checks, accompanied by a quiet chap at the back who seemed to smoking South Australia’s biggest and strongest spliff.  All public transport in Adelaide is free from 11:30pm onwards on NYE, with services running all night, which is a great idea.

Now into this new year, we’re starting with getting some key home improvements out of the way - I’ve tidied the shed (moving a few poisonous Red Back Spiders whilst at it) and we have ordered a new solar hot water system and a ducted air conditioning system. Air con will add to the value of the house much like central heating does in England. We are forecast a hotter than average summer. Bring it on!

We still miss you all very much and we think of you often. We hope you have a great 2009.