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.

Work, Work, Work

I’m really enjoying work at the moment.  I was thinking about this today, as I sat in a meeting where they were telling us how we’re all (probably) going to get our jobs re-classified.  As far as I can tell, this means we’ll get paid more money for doing the same thing, which is entirely fair enough, as radiographers in this State are currently badly undervalued.  We are the lowest paid radiographers in Australia.  

The usual argument for this is that the cost of living is lower.  It used to be, but has pretty much caught up with the other states.  It’s much the same now as in England, in that newly qualified radiographers can’t afford the mortgage on an averaged priced home.  It’s just that an average home here is much bigger. And only one storey high.  And made of wood, plasterboard, and a bit of superglue.

Anyway, in this meeting, I realised that I haven’t been all that bothered about the fact I’ve been given a role very similar to my Clinical Tutor job back in Manchester, but am being paid 2 grades lower than I was.

I still enjoy radiographing people, and there’s lots of it to do.  The people I work with are, on the whole a great laugh, pleasant and interesting.  I’ve always enjoyed training students, so it’s great to be heading that up again.  I’m also in charge of Continuing Professional Development.  That’s new to me, and a bit scary.  I’ve been given a blank slate really, the role is mine to run with to see what I can squeeze out of it.  It’s all a bit nebulous and airy.  At least when you’ve got an x-ray request card in your hand, you know exactly what is expected of you, and get instant feedback on if you’ve done a good job or not.

We are rostered (on the roster, which I prefer to call a ‘rota’, which is what we called it in Manchester, although I can see the benefit of ‘roster’ when you come to try to make a verb of it in the past tense - it’s easy to say someone was rostered somewhere, but rota-ed? roterd? rota’d?) in shift groups of about 6, who you work with all the time unless you are doing a side job for some of the rota/roster like me.  Mine is a really nice group, all.  We’re making efforts to be more sociable too.  We’ve been 10-pin bowling (I came last. Twice. I think there are different gyroscopic forces in the southern hemisphere), had a Barbie, and have plans for monthly pub visits.

I really like the shift pattern too.  Never a fan of routine, it’s nicely varied in a repeating kind of way.  I do 5 daytime shifts, weekend off, 7 daytime shifts, then Monday - Wednesday off, then 7 PM’s (15:30-23:30), with 4 days off after.  Sometimes the 7 PM’s are replaced by 7 nights, but at only 7 and half hours long, they are a piece of cake compared to the 12 hours I did at MRI.  

It’s still a long way to get there. I currently cycle 9 km to the train station, where I have to buy my bike a childs ticket to cramp up in a corner way to small for me, the bike and the 3 commuters who are worried about me getting oil on their suits to stand in for the 45 minute journey.  I’ve become very adept at sleeping, reading or listening to my ipod in various contorted positions.  Still, I’m glad we live where we do, as it’s near the better beaches, the hills and the wineries.

What's in a name?

Owen has an assembly parents can attend on Monday mornings.  They sing the Australian national anthem (I'm still uncomfortable having to stand up for it) and, much more entertainingly, classic children's Christian songs we used to sing at Pathfinder camps when I was a young teen.  'I am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N', the J-O-Y song, and the arky-arky all get a run out, with actions.  I try not to perform them too enthusiastically, so as not to embarrass Sharon.  And they don't sing the cheeky verse in Arky-Arky about the animals who went in two by twosey-twosey coming out three by threesey-threesey.

Owen's teacher, Miss Cummings, usually does the singing with her huge, tuneful voice. However, when she is off sick, the music teacher takes over. And the name of the music teacher?

Mrs Chorus.

No, I'm not kidding.  That's the best one I've heard since the Chiropodist we used to have in Burnage called Mr Sillitoe.

Whilst we're on the subject, the other day I x-rayed a bloke called Polek Curten.  He pointed out his comedy name when you say his surname first.  

I was caught out hook, line and sinker when I first worked at Manchester Royal by one of the comedy fake request cards we used to make.  I went into the waiting room and shouted full blast for, 'Dan Sinqueen.  Can I have Dan Sinqueen please.'

Our local florist always make me chuckle though.  Austin Flowers. Along with an ace number plate on their car.