Hide behind the sofa

Telly in Australia is absolutely bobbins.

When there is something good on (usually an import from England - Gordon Ramsey, Ladette to Lady) any modicum of drama or suspense the program makers have managed to build is completely dissipated by the 72 adverts, which are inserted liberally throughout the program at precisely the wrong times. Adelaide, it would seem, always has a rug shop which is closing down and has 15% off everything this weekend only, every weekend. They continue here to use the bloke who owns the shop to advertise it, some of them even sing. At least they have some comedy value. We have had to train Robert and Owen to mute the TV during ad breaks. That's because they'll show a rather graphic trailer for Big Brother or CSI in the middle of a morning showing of Pokemon.

So hats off to Keith Chalk, who has rescued us with regular parcels of DVD recordings of Dr Who and Heroes. We've been very self disciplined and watched one Dr Who a week on a Friday or Saturday night. All 4 of us sit on our settee with the lights off, making a big event of the latest screening. It seems to have paid off. Robert and Owen both hold a cushion to hide behind when they watch it. As we started the latest episode, Robert said that he gets butterflies in his stomach when the theme tune comes on. We've just watched the ones with Alex Kingston, and our theory is she'll turn out to be Donna's daughter. Or something.

Now we can look forward to Channel 7's exclusive HD olympics coverage. With hundreds of bloomin adverts.

Get those knees up

I'm the kind of person that needs a deadline.

All through school, college and Uni, my assignments and revision were usually completed in the small hours of the morning.  I remember trying to print an assignment on what seemed to be the world's noisiest dot matrix printer, putting a pillow over it so as not to wake the whole house.

So it is that I've signed up for Adelaide's City to Bay Run. It runs from Adelaide's city centre to the coastal suburb of Glenelg.  And it's 12km long.  Inexplicably, it's described as a 'fun run', not 2 words I'd usually put together.

Still, my belly isn't getting any smaller and, like with the Manchester 10km run, I'd just like to know I can do it.  I'd also like to improve on my pace.  First time I did the Manchester 10k it was in around 53 minutes.  The second time I trailed behind in 55minutes. My time wasn't helped by having to stop for a pee in the bushes 2km in.  I don't think I'll have that luxury in Adelaide, as the course follows the tram route. Also, I've anged to talk the rest of my shift group into doing it. I'll let you know how I get on with my training leading up to 21st September. Don't expect to see me coming 37th like our Richard.

It's really hard to get our heads around the fact that it's the summer holidays in UK now, not least because it continues to be wintery here.  We even bought some electric blankets today.  I put on my Minidisc (old school, I know) of Christmas songs as the weather had me feeling all Christmassy.  We talked to Angela and Alessio, our Italian friends, on Skype last night.  They were so hot, we could see sweat dripping on their foreheads. 

Sharon put a scarf on.

What a clever boy

I made this flyer at work the other day, and was quite pleased with it. Just thought I’d share it. Nerd. We’ve got 20 signed up already

Holidays!

A great thing about my shift system is that when I finish a set of nights on the Wednesday morning, I'm off then until Monday morning.  Woo hoo!  It's even better when you and the other radiographer you're working with coincidently nod off for most of the night on alternating nights.  Nod off on a trolley. With blankets. And the lights off.

And so it was on Wednesday morning, bright as a button, I picked up a hire car from town ready for our epic journey to Melbourne, via some mountains called the Grampians.  We got a nice big Toyota Camry as our little Ford Festiva, whilst I'm sure would have kept working, would've just been tiresome.  It's rattlier than a rattle snake inside a rattle at a rattle convention in a rickety shed during an earthquake.  'Festiva' is of course ancient Navaho Indian for 'noisy slow beast'.  Nor has it got power steering, and most crucially, cruise control.  The decision to live with just one low budget car I've taken with the idea in the back of my mind we'd hire a good one for long trips.  As it was, it was only $33 per day for a full size car, which is significantly cheaper than I recall car hire in Europe being.

You see, it was a very long way.

We drove for 1850km. That's 1,150 miles in old money, and certainly the furthest I've ever driven in 2 goes.  We knew it would be along way, but have just accepted that's part of living in Australia.  It's big, so things are far apart.

To break our journey, we stopped the night on the way there and back in Halls Gap, in the Grampians. It's a stunningly beautiful place with mountain ridges, waterfalls and forests. Raw nature - usually with a convenient car park and toilets a short walk from the best bits, which was great for us.  It's a unique time to see the landscape there.  2 years ago, most of it was burned in huge bush fires.  All the forests are recovering now, but nearly every tree trunk is charred black.

We stayed in a cabin in caravan park that a friend had recommended which was next to a lake and surrounded by sandstone cliffs.  I felt like Dr Doolittle or Mary Poppins in the morning when I came out to find wild kangaroos, a kookaburra and cockatoos (no rude gags, please) hanging around our cabin.  Robert and Owen got to feed the Rosellas too, which they loved.

After Halls Gap it was on to Melbourne to stay with my Uncle Charlie and Aunties Linda and Anita, and 3 of my Australian cousins.  It was really good to see this side of our family again.  Last time we saw them was 2 and a half years ago when we came on holiday, so it was good to catch up.  We took the boys to Melbourne Aquarium, which was well worth a visit.  We took Sharon to Pin Oak Court - otherwise known as Ramsey Street! I was too embarrassed to get out of the car - at first. I could hear my Mum's voice in my head, "Ooh, you can't go noseying at peoples houses".  So I let Sharon do the dirty work first, and once I saw her chatting to the security guard and that it was ok, I joined in and got disturbingly excited.  It seemed much, much smaller than on TV, and it was really strange to see a place that's always been there in the televisual background for over 20 years, in real life.

I'd booked the Monday off work too, so we could stop over in Halls Gap again on the Sunday night.

If it makes any of you in England feel better though, a persistent feature of the holiday was the weather.  It was brass monkeys.

Velly Funny

Here's a typical example of the kind of stuff you'll find on Engrish.com, on the link at the right side of this page. We saw similar kinds of stuff when we were in Hong Kong.

Not hilarious, but good for a gentle chortle.

Four goal posts and a funny shaped ball

Ben, after eating too many lollies (sweets)

Always keen to immerse ourselves in the Aussie culture, we were really pleased when Ben and Sarah from church offered to take us to an Australian Rules football game. It's huge here, at least as popular as proper football is in England, which is really annoying when you can't make head nor tail of what on earth is going on. So we were thrilled at the chance to be initiated by our local guides at the AAMI stadium, home of the Adelaide Crows.

For starters, the pitch is oval, and so convex for drainage purposes FIFA football matches can't be played there. I can't begin to explain the rules, but there's a combination of kicking and hand passing, and the obligatory rough tackling. It's an unusual game in that you still get a point if you miss the goal, or hit the post. Bonkers.

Once I'd had enough explained to me, it's actually a really exciting game to watch - fast paced, end-to-end stuff, albeit without the finesse and control of football football (I'm resisting the local habit of calling it 'soccer'). The atmosphere in the 40,000+ crowd was great. Bizarrely, in a country where Gordon Ramsey can be heard saying the 'F' word at 8:30pm on the telly, you can get thrown out of the stadium for swearing at a footy match that goes on til about 10:30pm. There was still plenty of 'barracking' as they call it here, but no rude chants, no song about how the referee might spend his spare time, all very family friendly.

Apparently, the match we saw was a really good example of really good team play - by Geelong, the opposing team, who whooped Adelaide by nearly double their amount of points. They got thrashed, and Ben said he'd never take me to a match again, as I was a jinx. I explained that, as a Man City supporter, this was all very familiar. Both teams are capable of great things, build you up to believing that they can reach the top. And then play like a bunch of amateurs, just when your hopes are up.

Go the Crows!

Adelaide Festival of Arts Northern Lights

In March they turned the old buildings near where i work into works of art every night. It was very, very cool. Somebody tell Manchester to try it.