No, unfortunately, I’ve haven’t set off yet.
Just thought I would give you a brief account of a week of Australian political intrigue. I have to confess that I am also killing time before the England/Germany game kicks off. You’ll be disappointed to hear that I am confidently predicting an England victory. Anyway, back to the politics. We woke up on Thursday morning to discover that we had lost our Prime Minister... well I know he was there when I went to bed, is he with your car keys? Maybe he’s in your other trousers (that, doesn’t sound right does it? And surprisingly, for a politician, he wasn’t actually ousted for sexual improprieties, misappropriation of funds or drug/alcohol issues... but more of that later). In fact, he wasn’t lost at all (unlike Harold Holt*), Mr Rudd was in fact ousted in a bloodless coup. Spookily I used that phrase in my last blog, for no apparent reason, and then on Friday the entire Aussie media is using it ad nauseam. This week I am going to drop in the phrase ‘the hottest thing since Kajagoogoo’ and I’ll be greatly surprised if it’s not being universally used by this time next week.
*Harold Holt was the 17th Prime Minister of Australia who disappeared after going swimming in the sea in December 1967 and has never been found.
Kevin Rudd was, in fact, dethroned because the opinion polls had shown him slump in popularity from being the greatest thing since sliced bread (or ‘the hottest thing since Kajagoogoo’) 18 months ago (when he gave most of us $900 dollars to go and spend willy nilly) to now being as popular as the person who invented the vuvazaela. One of his biggest mistakes was to put ex-Midnight Oil front man, Peter Garrett (Minister for the Environment) in charge of a scheme to supply roof insulation to hundreds of thousands of homes across the country, thus reducing energy consumption. There were over $2 billion of funds sloshing around in the system for this scheme which succeeded in attracting all sorts of cowboys and ‘shonky’ builders. The upshot was that some of the builders, who were untrained in the correct installation methods, erroneously used metal fasteners to hold the insulation in place, which made the roofs ‘live’, killing four installers and causing more than 90 house fires. Mr Garrett subsequently lost his job and was demoted to become Minister for the Arts.
Most recently the former Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, has had the temerity to try and impose a tax on the fat cat mining companies who then threatened to go elsewhere. And so it was that, with his popularity waning, and an election just around the corner, Kevin was advised to fall on his sword. And so we have a new PM (albeit temporarily), who just happens to be female, ranga (that’s Australian for ginger) and from South Wales (which to the majority of the country is somewhat preferable to being from New South Wales).
The other major political story of the week was that George was duly elected student leader for Wattle (his faction). In the end he settled on the ‘I shall be your spokesman’ speech (he rejected ‘the ‘rivers of blood’, ‘ich ein Berliner’ and ‘Gwyneth Paltrows Oscar acceptance’ speeches). He is already practicing his ‘unfortunately we were unable to deliver on our promises because of the infrastructure that we inherited from the previous administration’ excuses. As a student leader he will get to captain his faction (Wattle) at the Winter Carnival (which is school sports day to you and me). They have the sports day in winter because that way they have to deal with far fewer cases of sun stroke.
We also heard last week that George has been accepted into the specialist music programme at Ocean Reef High School. He had to pass two tests to obtain a place in the programme. The first test was an audition where he had to play his guitar and then sing to a panel of judges (George never said whether any of the judges wore trousers that came up to his chest or not). George chose as his song the Australian national anthem (no, not beds are burning). The second part of the audition was a written test.
I’ve got to go now, they are playing the English National Anthem (no, not ‘too shy’) but when I get back from the UK trip I promise to bring you up-to-date with all of Wendy and Harriet’s news. I can tell you that Harriet recently found her Nintendo DS charger that had been missing for 18 months (you never know, perhaps she’ll find Harold Holt next). And Wendy has been promoted at work and is now Manager of Business Services.
See you soon.
H
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Jiggery pokery, Aussie skulduggery
As you will have gathered from the Socceroos’ opening game of the World Cup, we in Australia are also very grateful to the Germans for their role in bailing out the ‘Euro’. We were so grateful in fact that we handed them a comfortable 4-0 victory to start their campaign (it doesn’t appear to have done them much good subsequently though). Not that England has started much better than ‘us’ Aussies. After their first two performances there is a very good chance that, by the time I touch down on British soil, the nation’s World Cup fever may be little more than a slight temperature and a tummy ache. How’s it go? There are no easy games in International football these days, it was too windy/not windy enough/the wrong type of wind, the opposition had been eating yogurt (it’s always good to get a chess reference in I find*).
Obviously, I could spend the entire blog talking balls (what’s new there then?), horns, tattoos and shirt designs but I shall try my best to refrain from doing so.
I believe I can shed some light on a strange phenomenon that has been occurring recently. You may have been awoken by the sound of a very loud siren at around midnight (BST) over the last couple of nights, You thought that it was the car alarm of the spotty chav kid over the road with the Honda Civic (complete with body kit and go faster stripes – that’s the Civic not the Chav). Well, for once, the Chavs aren’t to blame (not even the Bogans – a sort of Aussie equivalent) ... I can now reveal that it was the sound of George’s alarm. In an attempt to wangle himself an extra half-an hour in bed on these cold, dark wintry mornings he asked for an alarm clock. We had initially tried a Heath Robinson type device (think, classic Honda ‘It just works’ advert from about 5 years ago and it will give you some idea of the contraption we devised). But the mouse didn’t always eat the bacon rind at the same speed, so some mornings George was getting up at 3.53am and the next day it would be noon before the candle burnt through the copy of ‘Railway Modeller Monthly’ thus sounding the gong and awakening him from his slumbers. And so we invested in an alarm clock, that wasn’t the end of the experimentation however. On the first morning, we tried using the radio alarm to rouse him from his nocturnal dreaming... but to no avail. Me and Harriet witnessed him sleep right through an entire song with the volume cranked up to 11 (ironically the song was ‘We close our eyes’ by Go West). So, we have changed to ‘buzzer’ mode with some considerable success but with unforeseen side effects – the RAAF have been scrambled twice in response to the alarm going off. Unfortunately my tactic of telling Wendy that it was an alarm to signify the onset of a nuclear attack and therefore we should ‘make the most’ (nudge nudge, wink, wink) of the time we had left didn’t have the effect I had hoped for... she went to the fridge to get some chocolate to eat whilst watching Two and a Half Men (it’s on TV 24 hours-a-day here... even more than that on a Monday).
George (if he gets out of bed) is attempting to become a student leader in the forthcoming school elections. It’s his second try at running for Office; his first attempt floundered when his policies of zero-homework, half-day closing on Fridays and the wearing of i-pods at all-times to be compulsory were deemed inadmissible. I’m not sure what manifesto he is running on this time but he may be forced to form a coalition (the first since the Tim-Tam pact back in 1974) in order to seize power. Failing that he may have to fall back on the bloodless coup.
In another coup (not heard reports of any bloodshed yet) Wendy was able to successfully hi-jack her firm’s ‘end of tax year’ event and turn it into ‘Wendy’s end of 39 years’ party. Clearly such blatant manipulation of other people’s parties should not be condoned in any way, indeed I frown upon such actions.
Just as an aside to the England vs Algeria match, would I be alone in agreeing whole-heartedly with poor Mr Rooney that the fans who had travelled a measly few thousand miles and spent a miserly few thousand quid have absolutely no right to boo an England team who had clearly put up a manful performance against a brilliant outfit, clearly destined to be the next World Champions. I can’t really comment on the performance – I recorded it but now have no intention of wasting the 90 minutes it would take to watch it – I’m going outside to watch the washing dry instead (luckily, today we’ve got the right kind of ‘drying’ wind). Talking of Rooney, we are off to see Shrek (forever after) shortly as part of Wendy’s birthday treat (okay, so she doesn’t like animated films but I never claimed to have put much thought into it).
This is likely to be the last blog before my UK trip. I am looking forward to seeing a select few of you in a couple of weeks at the ‘Great to see Harry again Party’. Some of you may know it by its previous title of ‘Bob’s 40th birthday party’ – but it has subsequently been re-prioritised (to use the modern lingo) – not sure whether my demands for a bouncy castle, a marching band and the Krankies will have been adhered to, but I’m sure it will be good fun anyway.
See you soon,
H
Refers to the infamous Karpov v Korchnoi match of 1974... noted for controversies involving yogurts, swivel chairs and sunglasses. I don’t recall who won.
Obviously, I could spend the entire blog talking balls (what’s new there then?), horns, tattoos and shirt designs but I shall try my best to refrain from doing so.
I believe I can shed some light on a strange phenomenon that has been occurring recently. You may have been awoken by the sound of a very loud siren at around midnight (BST) over the last couple of nights, You thought that it was the car alarm of the spotty chav kid over the road with the Honda Civic (complete with body kit and go faster stripes – that’s the Civic not the Chav). Well, for once, the Chavs aren’t to blame (not even the Bogans – a sort of Aussie equivalent) ... I can now reveal that it was the sound of George’s alarm. In an attempt to wangle himself an extra half-an hour in bed on these cold, dark wintry mornings he asked for an alarm clock. We had initially tried a Heath Robinson type device (think, classic Honda ‘It just works’ advert from about 5 years ago and it will give you some idea of the contraption we devised). But the mouse didn’t always eat the bacon rind at the same speed, so some mornings George was getting up at 3.53am and the next day it would be noon before the candle burnt through the copy of ‘Railway Modeller Monthly’ thus sounding the gong and awakening him from his slumbers. And so we invested in an alarm clock, that wasn’t the end of the experimentation however. On the first morning, we tried using the radio alarm to rouse him from his nocturnal dreaming... but to no avail. Me and Harriet witnessed him sleep right through an entire song with the volume cranked up to 11 (ironically the song was ‘We close our eyes’ by Go West). So, we have changed to ‘buzzer’ mode with some considerable success but with unforeseen side effects – the RAAF have been scrambled twice in response to the alarm going off. Unfortunately my tactic of telling Wendy that it was an alarm to signify the onset of a nuclear attack and therefore we should ‘make the most’ (nudge nudge, wink, wink) of the time we had left didn’t have the effect I had hoped for... she went to the fridge to get some chocolate to eat whilst watching Two and a Half Men (it’s on TV 24 hours-a-day here... even more than that on a Monday).
George (if he gets out of bed) is attempting to become a student leader in the forthcoming school elections. It’s his second try at running for Office; his first attempt floundered when his policies of zero-homework, half-day closing on Fridays and the wearing of i-pods at all-times to be compulsory were deemed inadmissible. I’m not sure what manifesto he is running on this time but he may be forced to form a coalition (the first since the Tim-Tam pact back in 1974) in order to seize power. Failing that he may have to fall back on the bloodless coup.
In another coup (not heard reports of any bloodshed yet) Wendy was able to successfully hi-jack her firm’s ‘end of tax year’ event and turn it into ‘Wendy’s end of 39 years’ party. Clearly such blatant manipulation of other people’s parties should not be condoned in any way, indeed I frown upon such actions.
Just as an aside to the England vs Algeria match, would I be alone in agreeing whole-heartedly with poor Mr Rooney that the fans who had travelled a measly few thousand miles and spent a miserly few thousand quid have absolutely no right to boo an England team who had clearly put up a manful performance against a brilliant outfit, clearly destined to be the next World Champions. I can’t really comment on the performance – I recorded it but now have no intention of wasting the 90 minutes it would take to watch it – I’m going outside to watch the washing dry instead (luckily, today we’ve got the right kind of ‘drying’ wind). Talking of Rooney, we are off to see Shrek (forever after) shortly as part of Wendy’s birthday treat (okay, so she doesn’t like animated films but I never claimed to have put much thought into it).
This is likely to be the last blog before my UK trip. I am looking forward to seeing a select few of you in a couple of weeks at the ‘Great to see Harry again Party’. Some of you may know it by its previous title of ‘Bob’s 40th birthday party’ – but it has subsequently been re-prioritised (to use the modern lingo) – not sure whether my demands for a bouncy castle, a marching band and the Krankies will have been adhered to, but I’m sure it will be good fun anyway.
See you soon,
H
Refers to the infamous Karpov v Korchnoi match of 1974... noted for controversies involving yogurts, swivel chairs and sunglasses. I don’t recall who won.
Monday, June 07, 2010
4-4-2 or the Christmas tree?
As I confidently predicted previously, Germany did indeed win Eurovision (okay I might have misspelt it slightly). Clearly this was as a result of a thank-you vote for bailing out the Euro and had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the female singer was a ‘bit fit’ - apparently. Luckily, I have yet to hear any of the 24 entries so I’ve not got a clue if the song was any good. Unlike the UK general election; I don’t actually get a vote in Eurovision. I didn’t cast my vote in the uk election because I was unable to ascertain what the other parties’ position was on the ‘cider’ tax. And it didn’t seem quite right that I should get a vote when I don’t have to face the consequences of my actions.
We went to see our friends’ new baby yesterday which resulted in two major incidents. Firstly, I was almost forcibly removed from the hospital – apparently it’s wrong to shout at a three day-old boy because he has single-handedly ruined your beach volleyball career. Secondly, having seen the helpless, bald, dribbling little fella it dawned on me just how much they rely on us... it was at this pointI realised I was sat in front of a mirror and that little Jay was actually at the other side of the room. Then of course it hits you just how grown-up George and Harriet are now... scarily so. They are pretty much self-sufficient in most things and with just a little gentle persuasion (using electrified cattle-prods) can be really helpful around the house – especially if the remote control has gone missing and I need the channel changing. Obviously this will all change when George enters his teens next year but it’s good while it lasts. Due to an administration error, I fell asleep before she did, Harriet no longer believes in the existence of the tooth fairy – she still accepts the money though (and most credit/debit cards... sorry we don’t accept SOLO). You may want to vet this blog before you let impressionable ‘tooth fairy’ believers read it (Cathy you might want to make sure Dave doesn’t see it). The good thing about Hattie realising that fairies might not exist is that I no longer have to manufacture my own special brand of fairy dust (using a unique blend of pencil shavings, glitter, 11 herbs and spices and dandruff) each time a tooth falls out.
Wendy’s birthday ‘celebrations’ have started in earnest – she has just got back from a 3 day trip to Broome. For those of you whose knowledge of the geography of Western Australia is a little on the thin side (Kate Moss springs to mind) – Broome is a (mainly) tourist destination situated a mere 2000km north of Perth (a two-and-a-half hour flight). Population 14,000; Climate-tropical; It is the gateway to the Kimberley region and boasts the world famous Cable beach and is known for its breathtaking sunsets and camels. Enough of the Tourism Board spiel – more importantly , there appears to be some sort of irregular atmospheric pressure up there because Wendy, Colleen and Jackie all came back with terrible headaches.
To welcome her back from her trip I arranged a mountain of ironing, that we’d saved for her, into the number ‘40’... a nice touch don’t you think? Not that I’m going to let on how old she is going to be or anything.
I am entering my final week of training in preparation for the big kick-off this week, no not Big Brother 10.... the World Cup. My training has mainly involved being able to hold the remote control, a bottle of cider and a packet of porky scratchings all at the same time (who says men can’t multi-task). Obviously, on that diet, I am at the peak of physical fitness but it could all be won and lost on stamina. We are six hours in front of South Africa so there are going to be some late kick-offs (England’s first two games both get under way at 2.30am). With this in mind I have been slowly increasing my caffeine intake. My daily consumption now is 3 red bulls, 5 cokes, 37 cups of tea and a shot of Irn Bru. I’m going to have no problem staying awake to watch the game... but having taken on board that much liquid I may have to set up a TV in the loo. It's actually quite a relief to be in a country where the build up to the World Cup is greeted with realism and not unrealistic expectations. No one talks about the Socceroos (ridiculous name, I know, but all Aussie teams have got to have a nickname, be it the Wallabies, Opals, Kookaburras or the Matildas) winning the Cup, at best they might sneak out of the group. They are, however, expected to win Big Brother 10.
Right , I’m off to practice my long throw-ins... seeing if I can toss my empty bottles into the recycling bin without leaving the safety of the couch.
I’ll see some of you lucky people very soon,
H
We went to see our friends’ new baby yesterday which resulted in two major incidents. Firstly, I was almost forcibly removed from the hospital – apparently it’s wrong to shout at a three day-old boy because he has single-handedly ruined your beach volleyball career. Secondly, having seen the helpless, bald, dribbling little fella it dawned on me just how much they rely on us... it was at this pointI realised I was sat in front of a mirror and that little Jay was actually at the other side of the room. Then of course it hits you just how grown-up George and Harriet are now... scarily so. They are pretty much self-sufficient in most things and with just a little gentle persuasion (using electrified cattle-prods) can be really helpful around the house – especially if the remote control has gone missing and I need the channel changing. Obviously this will all change when George enters his teens next year but it’s good while it lasts. Due to an administration error, I fell asleep before she did, Harriet no longer believes in the existence of the tooth fairy – she still accepts the money though (and most credit/debit cards... sorry we don’t accept SOLO). You may want to vet this blog before you let impressionable ‘tooth fairy’ believers read it (Cathy you might want to make sure Dave doesn’t see it). The good thing about Hattie realising that fairies might not exist is that I no longer have to manufacture my own special brand of fairy dust (using a unique blend of pencil shavings, glitter, 11 herbs and spices and dandruff) each time a tooth falls out.
Wendy’s birthday ‘celebrations’ have started in earnest – she has just got back from a 3 day trip to Broome. For those of you whose knowledge of the geography of Western Australia is a little on the thin side (Kate Moss springs to mind) – Broome is a (mainly) tourist destination situated a mere 2000km north of Perth (a two-and-a-half hour flight). Population 14,000; Climate-tropical; It is the gateway to the Kimberley region and boasts the world famous Cable beach and is known for its breathtaking sunsets and camels. Enough of the Tourism Board spiel – more importantly , there appears to be some sort of irregular atmospheric pressure up there because Wendy, Colleen and Jackie all came back with terrible headaches.
To welcome her back from her trip I arranged a mountain of ironing, that we’d saved for her, into the number ‘40’... a nice touch don’t you think? Not that I’m going to let on how old she is going to be or anything.
I am entering my final week of training in preparation for the big kick-off this week, no not Big Brother 10.... the World Cup. My training has mainly involved being able to hold the remote control, a bottle of cider and a packet of porky scratchings all at the same time (who says men can’t multi-task). Obviously, on that diet, I am at the peak of physical fitness but it could all be won and lost on stamina. We are six hours in front of South Africa so there are going to be some late kick-offs (England’s first two games both get under way at 2.30am). With this in mind I have been slowly increasing my caffeine intake. My daily consumption now is 3 red bulls, 5 cokes, 37 cups of tea and a shot of Irn Bru. I’m going to have no problem staying awake to watch the game... but having taken on board that much liquid I may have to set up a TV in the loo. It's actually quite a relief to be in a country where the build up to the World Cup is greeted with realism and not unrealistic expectations. No one talks about the Socceroos (ridiculous name, I know, but all Aussie teams have got to have a nickname, be it the Wallabies, Opals, Kookaburras or the Matildas) winning the Cup, at best they might sneak out of the group. They are, however, expected to win Big Brother 10.
Right , I’m off to practice my long throw-ins... seeing if I can toss my empty bottles into the recycling bin without leaving the safety of the couch.
I’ll see some of you lucky people very soon,
H
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