Happy Birthday...

hello again,

apologies for the delay between blogs - no real excuse, apart from moving several thousand miles, a few time zones and into a different hemisphere - apart from that it's the same old same old.

For those of you that are contemplating flying out to visit us at some point in the future the journey was a piece of cake. For those of you who have no intention of ever travelling any further east than Skegness then the journey did get a bit gruelling towards the end. I think that was mainly due to the in flight entertainment - after rom-coms and a couple of 'big gay movies' even the most hardened traveller is going to start feeling a bit queasy.

Of the flight, George had been hoping to carry out a scientific experiment whereby he flushed the toilet either side of the equator to see which way the water went down. Unfortunately the part of the flight when we crossed the equator was the only time that George went to sleep so we never got to execute the experiment. I don't think we would have been able to do it anyway because the queues for the toilets were massive, not sure whether they were taking comfort breaks whilst going for David Boon's record or they were planning on joining 'the club'.

On arriving in Perth we were very kindly met at the airport by Wendy's new boss and a work colleague who gave us a tour of the area and a lift to the apartment.

When we got to the apartment it was a very weird sensation, the only thing I can compare it to was coming home from the hospital with George when he was a baby. It was the feeling of being very tired with the knowledge that you've done something really special, that you are very very fortunate and that you don't have the first clue what to do next. Lets hope that's where the analogy ends because George cried solidly for six months and we didn't get any sleep until somebody told us we were supposed to feed him.

The first few days here have been great fun - we've been to a barbie and seen kangaroos, yutes, parrots and members of the indigenous population but no clouds. We joined in the Australia Day celebrations on Saturday by sinking a few tinnies by the Swan River whilst watching the fireworks. It was still about 30 degrees when we walked back to the car at 10 o'clock in the evening.

We went into Perth city centre on Friday to sort out our bank details and have a look around the shops. We went into a store to look for a book on Australian birds (Kylie, Natalie, Nicole, etc) and found the Australian edition of 'The Dangerous Book For Boys'. In this case it is definitely correctly named, it tells you how to deal with all sorts of dangerous creatures such as crocs, snakes, spiders and the scariest of the lot... girls. It still tells you how to build a go-cart though.

Today (Monday) has been declared a Public Holiday due to it being my 40th birthday - very kind of them don't you think. Spent most of the morning on the beach - I can't remember having spent my birthday on the beach before. Mind you there are several days around the time of my 20th birthday that I can't account for, which might have involved a beach - but as I say I can't remember. We have invested in a body board to take down to the beach - I'm considering investing in a body for the same reason.

Right, we are just about up to date with the news now - not sure when we will get chance to update the blog again because getting an internet contract requires having a permanent address - but its quite tricky finding a place to rent without internet access.... catch 22.

Most of you appear to have worked out how to post comments on the blog, well done (hope that sounds condescending enough). Obviously, the ones that don't say how brilliant my blogs are are not going to get published.

Finally, I would like to apologise to all those people I sent texts to at 3am (GMT) last Thursday - it was totally intentional. By the way I turn my phone off at night and the number is about to be defunct.