Down south - immigrating to Australia

The silence is shattered - and so am I

2009-11-26T20:55:00.001-08:00

I’ve recently been a bit absent from the blog on account of the fact that I had a baby seven weeks ago. Firstly, I can’t believe that nobody ever told me they’re not actually delivered by storks. Secondly, I can’t believe that nobody ever told me how much they actually seem to enjoy crying. I mean I can see the attraction – sometimes I like nothing more than to sit down with a huge box of tissues, an even bigger box of chocolates and watch Terms of Endearment (Leigh also sometimes likes to sit down with a huge box of tissues, but that’s another story ...) but at least when I cry I don’t also crap myself at the same time. Well, not usually.

Anyway, it feels quite odd having produced a creature which has acquired Australian citizenship before us. There’s no multiple choice test for her, only the requirement to learn Waltzing Matilda and Redback on the Toilet Seat before her fourth birthday (or, in our case, Redback Nest in the Electric Box Outside Our House). Yes, Leigh recently informed me, three months after the event, that when he went out to spider-spray, he found a Redback and her nest inside the metre box. Being a mother now myself, I should probably be overcome by remorse that he sprayed that box full of spiderlings to kingdom come. But I’m not. Ironically, Tivvy's full name (Tivona) means 'lover of nature' in Hebrew - and I honestly do hope that she grows up to love and respects all of God's creatures. Except for spiders.

Since having Tivvy, there are certain things I’ve learned. Not about babies – I still don’t understand them. No, I’ve learned that the healthcare system here is very good (if you’re giving birth). Labour might not be the most fun anyone can have in a day (or, sometimes, if you’re very unlucky, two days) but, boy, did I have a great view from the hospital window. It was like a hotel suite and, as I wallowed in a bath, like a human hippo, I was able to enjoy uninterrupted views of the Adelaide Hills, along with the midwife’s head, as she kept bothering me by trying to monitor the baby. Yup, it sure was a great experience – they even offered me ice lollies but I declined. I’d have preferred candyfloss, but you can’t have it all, and it’s the thought that counts. I don’t recall the name of the midwife who delivered the baby, despite the fact I spent about 12 hours in her company. I do think she introduced herself at the start but – and here’s a tip – if you ever want someone to remember your name, don’t do the intro mid contraction. It was so good though that I managed to do the whole thing without even a whiff of gas and air and I'm thinking about going back next week to have pins stuck all over my body.

Having the baby has also opened up a whole new world to me – it has drawn me closer to wonders I could never have previously imagined; namely the joy of late night talkback radio. Wow! I never thought people were capable of speaking so much shite at five in the morning (well, not unless they’d just left the Ministry of Sound). It seems that there is an element of blandness and inanity running through certain factions of the Adelaide population that can’t be found in any other city. It’s a small town mentality that makes someone believe it’s hugely important to speak at length (40 mins in total – and 10 mins without drawing breath) about the ins and outs of town crying. And all this at five of the morning clock. As I sat there feeding the baby, listening to the Salisbury town crier talk about polishing his bell end, I suddenly realised why they were called town criers, as I for one was brought to the edge of tears through sheer boredom. It was clear to see that he could easily make a whole town weep profusely and beg for mercy. Not so much ‘oyez’ as ‘oy vey’. Did the man have no self-editing capabilities? And suddenly I realised, as the baby let forth another wail, that if I had to choose between his crying and her crying, I’d opt for Tivvy’s every time. At least she’s too young to know any better.

So that’s it for this time – something is stirring in the pram and about to test how loud and how long it can shout for. It’s either the baby or the Salisbury town crier ...

Cross dresser on a cross trainer ...

2009-09-12T07:26:00.000-07:00

Yet another wonderfully confusing Aussie advert, this one from Contours Gym. I simply had to write to them to thank them.

'Thank you Contours! I can't tell you how delighted I was to see your ad for 'Secret Women's Fitness'. I've been a transvestite for five years now and have always struggled when it comes to gym membership. I don't really feel comfortable exercising with the men, but I also feel that women look at me strangely when I use the female changing rooms. I also feel under scrutiny when I get onto a running machine next to them wearing my spandex leopard print leotard (especially since the tight fit makes it clear that I'm not exactly like the other gals). So you can imagine how over the moon I was to see that you’re now running fitness sessions for ‘secret’ women. If only more gyms were as open minded as you, it would make it so much easier for people like me to concentrate on toning our legs and bottoms into a shapely curve, rather than feeling ostracised because we’re not pumping iron and tripling the size of our pecs. Well done Contours!

Robert (Roberta)'

The marsupial of madness

2009-08-08T22:59:00.000-07:00

Often one of the first things a psychiatrist will ask, immediately after the strait jacket restraints have been tightened a notch and a second layer of padding has been added to a cell, is, “What sort of a childhood did you have?” Most of the time, the person being asked this question can’t answer, due to having a gag shoved into their mouth and being pumped full of sedative. If they could answer, they’d probably say, “Well it was quite good really, but there is one thing that’s always troubled me ... even now, it still comes back to me in the middle of the night. I was four and my mum took me to Central Market in Adelaide and sat me on this mechanical koala bear that looked like the Devil...”

It’s a fact that there are a lot of mad people in South Australia – so much so, that Leigh’s taken to calling it Madelaide. This is not a glib statement – it is perfectly true. Mental health problems abound (especially in the area Leigh polices – it was like that even before he arrived. Honest). One could simply put this down to a rather enthusiastic attitude towards drugs – it’s not just meth labs that are popular here; marijuana is a firm favourite too. Cannabis pot plants jostle for space on people’s kitchen windowsills next to tubs of coriander and thyme. Scratch the surface, however, and it’s plain to see that the true cause of this endemic paranoia and general doolally-ness is the quality of kiddie rides on offer in shopping centres.

Adelaide isn’t a big city and it’s not difficult to imagine that at one time or another most of the juvenile population has crouched upon the back of Central Market’s satanic koala. If it appears sinister when it’s static, you should see it once it’s in motion; it sports the kind of look Tim Curry’s makeup artist was going for when she did him up as Pennywise for IT. Credit to the mechanical marsupial’s creator though, it’s quite an achievement to take a much-loved and unarguably adorable Aussie icon and turn it into something truly terrifying. Having therefore conducted a brief survey with myself, I have managed to conclude that roughly 45% of children who’ve experienced the dubious pleasure of clinging onto that koala for five minutes have been disturbed – probably for life. The remaining 55% will simply display an ongoing abhorrence for koalas, even the fluffy baby ones.

But the fun doesn’t stop there for the kiddies of Adelaide. About thirty-five minutes north lies the salubrious shopping plaza of Elizabeth. Okay, it’s not really salubrious at all – it’s an area so full of dedicated criminals that Leigh recently arrested one for shoplifting, only to find him breaching his bail conditions ten minutes after release, having returned there to pilfer a bit more. As with Central Market, it’s home to one of the most confounding kiddie rides I’ve ever seen – what I’ve dubbed ‘the speed-camera car’. Yes, that’s right – you put your tot in the driver’s seat and the car does its thing, much like any other toy car ride. Except this one comes equipped with a smiling speed camera that flashes, taking a photo of the tiny speed-loving culprit before spewing out a passport photo/mug shot. I have briefly touched on the problem of hoon drivers before, so without going into too much detail, let’s just say that your average SA driver has scant regard for road rules, and a fair proportion still enjoy doing burnouts and doughnuts well into their adult years. It’s not uncommon to read about yet another car that’s wrapped itself around a stobie pole, thanks to a driver who assumed that calculating stopping distance was the responsibility of the pole. For months, Leigh and I were perplexed, often wondering what influences might be causing this hoonish mentality. Now we know. If you put a three year old in a toy car that’s set up in front of a jolly-looking speed camera which is giving him a thumbs-up, then you’re asking for trouble down the track (and, by that, I mean both the metaphorical and the literal track. You’ll spot the literal track because it’ll have rubber burn marks running all the way along it).

Next week we’re planning a trip to Snowtown – home of the infamous Bodies in the Barrels murders. We hear the local supermarket has a carousel featuring a deranged kangaroo, a malevolent galah and a rabid wombat.

The Meth Man Prophecies

2009-05-16T09:04:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you that butter-fingers and chemicals do not go well together – a fact we discovered two weeks ago when we returned home to be greeted by an unholy stench. My parents were staying with us at the time, so we retired inside to allow my mother to make a spaghetti bolognaise (after all, it’s important to get your priorities straight). Two hours later, however, the remaining hint of oregano and garlic was doing little to conceal the increasingly pungent smell that seemed to be seeping into our house.

Long story short, but no sooner had we ventured out to try and locate someone from Realize Properties - our conveniently low-profile managing agency on Mawson Lakes - than Leigh espied some plain clothes guys (he’s good at spotting that sort of thing). He pulled over and, lo and behold, hadn’t a SWAT team just raided the adjoining house and discovered a clandestine methamphetamine lab. The smell, it turns out, was because the clumsy chemist inside had allegedly dropped some pungent and toxic substances. Ooops. Luckily, they managed to get in there before he decided to light a match, as it would have probably taken out our whole row of houses. Double oops.

As the four of us booked into a hotel that evening, it occurred to me that Meth Man wasn’t a neighbour cut from the same cloth as Harold Bishop or Jim Robinson, and that Neighbours is actually a gross misrepresentation of life Down Under. Mind you, it’s years since I’ve tune into what’s going on in Erinsborough – so for all I know, Harold has finally given up the trombone and taken to cooking up.

You’d think things couldn’t get worse. Wrong. They can get much worse when you have a managing agent who decides to ignore calls and emails and is happy to allow you to remain in a property that smells like Amy Winehouse’s bedroom after she’s spent a weekend locked in there with Blake Fielder-Civil. Eventually we were forced to
resort to the Residential Tenancies Tribunal. Sensing that living next door to a chemical spill probably wasn’t the best healthy lifestyle option, they set about arranging a super-quick hearing date. Realize Properties’ rotund owner, Tony Panetta, turned up looking like a man who has spent his whole life trying to avoid bad smells, but is constantly dismayed to find that they followed him anyway. In his wake followed Karen Ilett, a woman who looked like she's had a bad smell under her nose her whole life (yet who, ironically, later went on to deny she could smell anything in Meth House). At one point I clicked my heels and muttered, 'There's no place like home' - and there certainly wasn't at that time, since most people's houses don't smell like a cross between a laboratory and a council flat elevator. Both Panetta and Ilett took an oath on the Bible. Cruella then went on to claim that there was no smell emanating from the house next door; I’m guessing she couldn’t smell it over the bullshit that poured forth from her own mouth (and that’s probably why she was desperately trying to air the property after her visit. Not because it reeked of chemicals or anything). That, or she has a severe sinus problem. I'll let people draw their own conclusions as to where the truth sits, but Leigh later went on to suggest to me that they might like to ditch the name Realize Properties and rename themselves Real Lies Properties.

Fortunately, the tribunal found in our favour. We have now been awarded compensation and allowed to break our lease, so we'll be joyfully parting ways with Realize Properties and moving into a lovely new house next week. And as far as I know, Harold Bishop has never so much as set foot in the turning, far less dabbled with his toy chemistry set there – so thank goodness for that.

As for Realize Properties, their strapline remains 'bringing great people and great properties together' - although I'm sure, in this instance, that the landlord of Meth Man's house will be having a quiet word in Tony Panetta's shell-like.

An icy reception

2009-03-18T06:27:00.000-07:00

The other day I heard an odd ringing coming from the street – it was a cross between the sound a rusty school bell might make and the sort of noise that would undoubtedly have precede the cry, ‘Bring out your dead’ in 17^th century London. I have only heard a noise like that once before, back in 1982, shortly before the last-remaining local rag and bone man collapsed of a coronary mid-ring. I had noted that immediately prior to this, his ringing had taken on a somewhat discordant and frenzied tone. I’d simply assumed his wrist was beginning to ache or he was trying out a new and unsuccessful clangour technique, but I now think it was his way of trying to draw attention to the fact he needed an ambulance.

Running to the window to try and spot the source of the commotion, however, I was greeted by neither an expiring rag and bone man nor a pustule-riddled corpse. No, it was far worse. What I actually saw was an ungainly looking truck that was trying to pass for an ice cream van. I know it was trying to pass for an ice cream van because it had a painted sign on the side saying ‘ice cream van’, along with some pictures of ice cream. The window, which was shuttered tightly closed, was akin to a serving hatch you might see in a prison dining room after everyone’s finished smashing food trays over their dining companions’ heads and have retreated to their cells for the night.

Clutching my heart in anguish at the absence of Greensleeves, I watched as the driver of the truck executed an illegal u-turn in the road before making off in a manner that didn’t so much say ‘Mind that child’ as ‘Kiddies beware’. It was an ice cream van you could easily see Garry Glitter driving and couldn’t have been less child-friendly if it had tried. Was this it? Was this what the youth of South Australia had been forced to grow up with for generations – some unsightly, untuneful gas-guzzler that was trying to pass as the answer to all their roadside ice cream needs? No wonder the Australians are so athletic – it would have taken a child capable of running a four minute mile to catch that gelato-touting truck. I strongly suspect that the very young or very feeble spend much of their time looking at the retreating back of Adelaide’s ice cream vans. I actually quite fancied an ice cream myself but knew, just from the manic u-turn and erratic motions of that wheeled sorbet emporium, that I didn’t stand a chance. For a moment I felt a pang of homesickness. We might have very short summers in England but we have ice cream vans that will park up and wait patiently while you try to decide between the 99 and the Screwball, before settling on both. Long though the Aussie summers are, you could go for months without managing to catch a mobile sorbet vendor and place an order.

Luckily for me, there’s a Baskin Robbins in Tea Tree Plaza. They have a roof and foundations and will even mix Gummy Bears and other e-numbers into your frozen confection of choice. Better yet, they don’t try to run you over as you’re walking away.

Another day, another spider

2009-03-06T00:46:00.000-08:00

I have just finished watching a programme entitled Tarantula: Australia’s King of Spiders. This was so full of repulsive images and even more repulsive facts that I had to have a little lie down in the ad break. Coincidentally, this programme was aired on the very same day that I saw my friend Ross’s Facebook photo of a multi-legged giant that he’d encountered while camping in the outback. Odd though it may sound, I hadn’t realised before today that Australia actually has Tarantulas. Redbacks, yes. Funnel –webs, for sure. White-tips and Huntsmen – virtually ten a penny. But Tarantulas ... no, it hadn’t even crossed my mind. Sure, I know there are some large, hairy spiders out here – it is a big country after all – but I honestly thought that Tarantulas mainly backpacked through Central America, South America and SE Asia, with a few hitting the United States. How wrong I was. So along with all the other spiders I have to worry about, now there’s another species in the mix.

Happily for me, this news reached me on the very same day that All State Pest Control came in and sprayed our house. Yup, I finally brought in the big guns to spread around their particularly noxious form of poison. According to the Tarantula documentary, these spiders have been around for 300 million years, surviving ice ages, meteor showers, re-runs of Friends and big-booted explorers. Good for them – what they won’t survive is setting foot (feet?) inside my house.

Spider supporters would accuse me of being unfeeling and ignorant – a number of these many-eyed, many-legged creatures are now under threat of extinction due to human exploitation. Some are being sent to work in factories in South East Asia, others are being forced into the sex trade, while others still are being cooked and eaten in places like Cambodia. I have to say, as I watched a batch of live Tarantulas being lightly salted and fried, I didn’t think to myself, ‘Sod it, I’ve made the wrong choice defrosting chicken for tonight’s dinner’. Yes, I know, each to their own – if there are people in the world who choose to pull a garlic marinated leg off a spider and suck on it with relish, then who am I to deny them one of life’s small, hairy pleasures? I’m sure my bar of Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut is equally repellent to some – although my Cadbury’s has never walked over someone’s face in the middle of the night or given birth to 700 live young (if only – it would save me constant trips to the supermarket). To make matters worse, they keep discovering new species – most recently the helpfully named Coremiocnemis tropix .sp. nov which they ran into up in Queensland. People have got quite excited about this – if you go online you can find comments like, ‘Totally beautiful – great legs’ and, ‘Great colouring. Really expensive I presume?’ Anyone would be forgiven for thinking they were talking about Elle MacPherson, a leggy Australian who’s not at all repulsive to look at.

I am afraid, however, that I will never understand this spider excitement – whether it’s discovering a new species, frying them in batter or trying to smuggle one through customs as a pet. I don't even like Spider Man - there's nothing sexy about Toby Maguire at the best of times, even less so when he starts shooting spider web out of his arse. So, do I really want whole species to die out? Actually, yes I do. There, I’ve said it. I will enrage environmentalists, Buddhists and spider-lovers everywhere. No doubt our eco system is held together by a delicate balance and, in all probability, the end of spider-hood will also mark the beginning of the end for mankind too. Sadly, though, I am simply too stubbornly repulsed by spiders to ever agree that it’s okay to share the planet with them. That’s right – I would rather opt for oblivion than allow a spider to get one up on me and crawl into my shoe/bed/ear one dark night. Fortunately for spiders – and humanity – I can only carry 10 large containers of Mortein back from Bunnings at a time so, for now, the planet is safe.

Oven baked Brits

2009-01-30T06:01:00.000-08:00

Here are ten ways you know it’s hot:

1) The public transport system buckles, quite literally (unlike the London public transport system which is just buckling metaphorically).

2) You hang your sheets out and they dry in 10 minutes.

3) The lights keep going off in shops and offices because someone’s cranked the air con up too high, and it still feels like a sweatbox inside.

4) Everyone keeps saying, “Oooh, isn’t it hot.”

5) If youv'e got a koala you'll need to hose him down.

6) You go into public toilets and wonder why the Vent Axia’s blowing out hot air all by itself before you realise it’s coming from an open window.

7) English people suddenly realise the ‘icy pole’ everyone keeps going on about isn’t a freezing bloke from Dolsk but is actually a nice fruity ice lolly.

8) Kangaroos and koalas are lining up to book flights to cooler countries, like Dubai.

9) Your steering wheel gives you third degree burns.

10) You go outside, then you promptly go back in again.

Yes, it’s officially hot here. In fact, it’s the hottest it’s been since Captain Cook got off the boat and said, “Can you get me the maintenance guy, we need to get the air conditioning up and running.” Well, okay, it’s the hottest it’s been in 100 years, with the met office forecasting a six day run of 40 degree plus heat. The only time it’s been hotter was in 1799 when Satan accidentally mistook South Australia for his sitting room and set about making up a nice log fire. Despite this oppressive, eyeball-baking heat, Leigh and I still managed to get through lunch in a cafe whose air conditioning had broken down. We’d been there before, so we knew the lack of customers wasn’t down to lousy food. We soon realised why there was nobody else in the place (apart from a table of four elderly women who were still wearing 12 layers of clothing) – it’s because no idiot eats pasta in 45 degree heat without a bit of a breeze playing around their parmesan. They didn't have to put our meals in the microwave - they just stood them on the counter for ten minutes.

Leigh has now started a week of nights and should consider himself lucky – it’s only 33 degrees at the moment. If he was on days he’d be needing Factor 150 and the constitution of a camel. Still, I’m guessing that the criminals might be a bit more slothful on account of the soaring temperatures – they’ll probably only beat their wives for fifteen minutes, as opposed to the usual half hour.

That said, if it’s a choice between this and sitting on the buckled UK underground in the depths of an English winter, I’ll stick with this, thanks, and just turn the air con to a setting guaranteed to make a Pole icy.

Its and outrage ... It’s an outrage ... It is an outrage ...

2009-01-28T04:39:00.000-08:00

... Whatever it is, it’s clear any or all will do for the Bio Channel on Foxtel. Why, I almost lost my HobNob mid tea-dunk the other night when the shock of seeing the phrase, ‘Story telling at it’s life changing best’ caused me to leave the biscuit submerged for too long. There I was, innocently watching a TV trailer for some documentary about people who have survived against all odds – you know the sort of thing ... mad axe murderers, terrible plane crashes, vigorous shark attacks. You name it, they’d survived it. What they hadn’t managed to survive, though, was the shame of the Bio Channel’s grammatically incompetent trailer.

It doesn't stop there, though. The Commonwealth Bank recently displayed a bus shelter ad urging students to ‘get $20 of your favourite music downloads’. Was this a typo and did they really mean students would get $20 off music downloads, or were they trying to say students could get $20’s worth of music downloads? I spent just enough time in deep confusion for the Haigh’s chocolate frog I was holding to melt.

Then there’s a company called Dyslexia & Reading Solutions that threw together this gem of a sentence: ‘If children are falling further and further behind their age peers in it is more likely to be due to underlying neurological causes.’ No, it’s more likely to be due to the fact that the person who wrote the advert also taught those children how to read and write. As for the term ‘age peers’, I pondered this so thoroughly that my overly-hot McDonald’s apple pie actually grew cold. I mean come on guys, at least show a bit of effort. Without sounding picky, if there’s ever a time to write a lucid ad, it’s when you’re trying to convince people that you’re the solution to their children’s reading comprehension woes.

You'd expect better of the advertising industry - sadly, however, more and more ads seem to display sloppy mistakes. Some are simply annoying, some are confusing, while others are plain embarrassing – like one company misspelling ‘Tuesday’ on a TV commercial. I spent weeks wondering if the Tusday they referred to fell between Munday and Wensday. It might be forgivable if these were small, local advertisers peppering their copy with errors – but they’re not. Woolworths is currently displaying an advert featuring the Sedgwick family and telling us that we too can collect points like ‘the Sedgwick’s’. Mistaking the plural form for the possessive form is possibly alright if you’re doing it quietly among friends, but it’s not okay when you’re a multinational company like Woolworths. Or is that Woolworth’s – or maybe even Woolworths’? That said, they are just a big greengrocer’s shop at the end of the day, so perhaps we should let them have their greengrocer’s apostrophe and enjoy it.

Now why do I care about all of this? Well, it’s my view that if someone’s going to tell me what I ought to buy, then the least they can do is take the trouble to put a bit of TLC into it. I don’t expect to visit my GP and discover that he doesn’t know his arse from his elbow (or, worse still, my arse from my elbow) – in the same way, I don’t expect to be given the hard sell by advertisers who don’t know their it’s from their its. I’ve seen so much bad stuff recently (the sort of bad stuff you can never forget) that I now actually think it’s pretty impressive when Rugs-a-Million boast that they have ‘thousands of rugs’. Maybe this is where it will all end – maybe I’ll wake up one day humming a bad jingle, eager to run down to Howards Storage World where, according to them, there’s a place for everything. Everything, that is, except for an apostrophe. I did wonder what Les and Edda Howard, who opened the store back in the seventies, would make of it all - and then I realised they probably wouldn't care as they've now gone to that big storage unit in the sky, along with all the apostrophes.

Farewell to a friend

2009-01-27T04:39:00.000-08:00

Sadly, we finally had to have our cat, Sammi, put to sleep last week and, for this blog, I hand over to my husband who has put into words what that little critter meant to us ...

Gitta Nashooma. No, it’s not an Asian grocery on the corner of Stepney Road in London’s East End, it’s a Yiddish expression that my dearly departed grandmother used to use to describe a ‘a good soul’. Gitta Nashoomas – we’ve all come across them in the course of our lives. Those people who are gentle, sweet, caring and just don’t appear to have a bad bone in their body. In truth there aren’t enough in the world to go round. I myself cannot claim to be one before you ask, and if someone were to claim Gitta Nashooma status, then it would be a sure bet that they aren’t. Frankly, to claim it would be akin to riding down Oxford Street on a pink papier mache float wearing a rhinestone bomber jacket emblazoned with ‘Gitta Nashooma 1’ embroidered on the back . It is a status bestowed upon you, not claimed, is my point. I’m kind of going round the houses now and need to cut to the chase. Namely that the other day, the world lost a Gitta Nashooma – Sammi our cat. And, yes, pets can be Gitta Nashooma too.

Many of you already know the details of our all too brief ownership of Sammi but, silly as it might sound, I feel the need to put pen to paper, so to speak, to honour our dear friend. For the all too brief two weeks prior to her illness, Sammi displayed some truly adorable traits. From day one she sat between Dena and I on the couch all night, looking right at home. No stroke of our tiny friend would go without a reciprocal grooming, as Sammi would lick your hand and gently nibble away at it. Sammi would also greet you with a little chirrup when you approached her and rub herself on you playfully. I don’t know much about cats, but this very much appeared to be a feline greeting. The fact that she never failed to chirrup on seeing you was a constant source of both amusement and joy, and we’d often say it sounded like she was saying ‘yarp’. She was a real sweet soul.

Sadly things changed and one day Sammi stopped eating, literally. Things deteriorated after she failed to eat for almost two weeks and despite many distressing visits to the vet with no answers, and bouts of force feeding, there seemed no solution. Despite our traumatic enforced manhandling of Sammi, throwing pills down her throat and placing her unceremoniously into a cat cage for her numerous visits to the vet, Sammi never once displayed an ounce of aggression. Not to Dena, me or any of the many vets she saw. She never failed to amaze in that respect. A true Gitta Nashooma.

Sammi appeared to pull out of it for a week, eating fairly well and exhibiting some of her old traits, but in truth she was never the same and, sadly, her recovery was a false dawn. For the last five days she stopped eating and visibly dwindled in both stature and personality. I can’t vouch for Dena, but I did what I usually do in these situations – lived in hope, praying that tomorrow she’d eat. Sadly, that tomorrow came and went.

A few morning ago we awoke to a soiled bed and a distressed cat. A visit to the vet was paid first thing in order to avoid further distress to Sammi. It was a heartbreaking, but our heads were finally forced to make the difficult decision that our hearts had struggled so hard to do. The two of us were there for her final moments, stroking her bony body as the injection was administered. I don’t know why, but as the vet held the stethoscope to her chest and said ‘’Her heart has stopped beating now’’, I stroked her head, put my face to hers and simply said ‘’I’ll see you on the other side sometime little one’’ and burst in to tears. We both did.

I know we’ll see her again though in another life, and I’m pretty sure there’ll be a ‘yarp’ and grooming awaiting us.

The Lav of my Life

2009-01-09T04:02:00.001-08:00

The other week, a friend asked me how I was settling in. I told her that, so far, it was all great. Every weekend’s like a mini-holiday, we’ve wonderful beaches on our doorstep, fantastic restaurants to choose from, beautiful parks ... and then it ground to a screeching halt because I had to admit that, deep down, it was no good; that despite all these wonderful things, I didn’t think I’d be able to hack it here because there were no singing toilets, and how can anyone possibly live in a country without a singing toilet? But just when it looked like Leigh and I might have to pack up our bags and return home, we took a trip to Brighton and discovered a positively tuneful latrine.

Brighton is a stunning beach area (possibly even more stunning than Brighton beach in the UK) and we’d gone there to meet friends for breakfast. After a stroll along the sand and a dip in the sea (they dipped, I paddled – I’ve seen Jaws and I wasn’t taking any risks), we headed for a beach-side cafe. Eventually, full to the brim with coffee, I headed for the public toilets. These weren’t any old toilets though, these were state of the art, touch-button toilets and, once I was inside, a mechanical American chap warned me that if after 10 minutes I hadn’t finished, woe betide because the doors would jolly well open anyway. Luckily I’m a quick widdler, but I hadn’t counted on the upbeat rendition of Burt Bacharac’s ‘What the World Needs Now is Love’ being piped through the toilet’s speakers. When old Burt sat down and penned that ditty, I’m sure it would have warmed his heart to known that, one day, it would be heard by people relieving themselves inside an automated public toilet. I should imagine it was the promise of this type of fame which drove the singer/songwriter on. I have to say that the acoustics were great – they really did it justice, and I wondered if I would be able to stay and hear the third verse before the doors opened. The toilet had a beautiful (if slightly tinny) voice and I sensed it had so much more to offer; possibly even a bit of Sinatra if it managed to hurry up and finish with Burt. It’s the only time in my life that I’ve dropped my knickers and had a man sing to me, and I was determined to make the most of every second - yet, at the same time, I was in a quandry. There was a mechanical Burt coming out of the speakers but, inside my head, the Countdown tune was also playing and all I could hear was the robotic warning to hurry it along before the doors opened, so I decided to finish up. But wait ... there were more treats in store. As soon as I flushed, the water automatically came out of the taps. This was less a toilet and more of a butler and I simply had to share the news, so I ran out to tell Leigh that he had to use the Gents’ right away, whether he needed to or not. For good measure, I also went in for a second go.

As the door slid shut, I was beside myself with glee – what tune would the talented carsey sing me next? A little bit of Motown, an Abba medley, a bit of Bing? Nope, the one-trick-pony of a lavatory did ‘What the World Needs Now' again. Worse still, when Leigh emerged, he’d been played the same song too. The toilet was a one-hit wonder, the mechanical equivalent of Chesney Hawkes or Lou Bega – my disappointment was intense; even an elevator manages to do a set. All’s not lost though – I’ve now got the toilet an agent and a few more band members, and it’s going to be playing its first gig in March.

The cat turns diva

2009-01-06T06:27:00.000-08:00

For those who have been following the cat saga, we’re pleased to report that she’s finally handed in her Slim-Fast membership and has let food pass her lips. Just when we thought all hope was lost (along with all of our money), she finally succumbed to the lure of kangaroo meat. We’d taken her to the vet on Friday morning where he’d extracted more blood from the cat (and more from us in the form of another $278), but still he remained perplexed as to what ailed her. Apart from the raised temperature and food-shy behaviour, nothing else appeared to be wrong. In the afternoon we went round to friends who told us that cats find roo meat irresistible and sent us home with some to try out. Later that night, she sniffed it with great interest before walking away (the same ploy I use when passing a Haigh’s chocolate shop. Okay then, I admit it – I don’t walk past, I go on in and clear them out). The next morning she stunned us by eating everything on the plate and licking it clean (yup, I succumbed in the end and have started serving food up on bone china, just in case that thing’s true about them not liking the feel of a bowl against their whiskers). Now the cat’s refusing anything but roo meat served up on Wedgewood. We bought her a roast chicken on Monday but that wasn’t good enough. Tonight she turned her nose up at the chicken necks I’d boiled especially for her. Every other cat I’ve had has eaten tinned cat food and been grateful for it – Sammi, on the other hand, has virtually starved herself into oblivion and is now trying to order off menu every night. I wouldn’t mind, except a diet which consists solely of kangaroo will present its own set of health problems down the line so the vet tells me (something about bouncing vigorously and uncontrollably). For now, though, we’re just happy that she’s behaving like a normal cat – i.e. ignoring us for 95% of the day then flirting outrageously at mealtimes while staring pointedly at the marsupial in the fridge.

It's a cat-astrophe

2008-12-28T17:35:00.000-08:00

I am feeling quite down today – the cat is rather ill. It all started around the time she had her second flu jab at the vet on 12 December (although it doesn’t seem to be related to this). She was delighted to be back when we brought her home – as you would if a strange man had just shoved a needle in your neck and a thermometer up your jacksey – but soon after she really did turn into Victoria Beckham and has pretty much refused to eat since the 17th. We’ve tried everything – tinned sardines, tinned salmon, roast chicken, Hills Science Diet and, finally, a sachet of cheap Whiskas (after all, there’s no accounting for taste and I know someone who once willingly ate a tin of corned beef followed by some Frey Bentos). None of it has worked, though. She’s now been to the vet four times and they can’t see anything wrong, apart from a raised temperature and the sort of food avoidance that would put a supermodel to shame. We are wondering if it’s our fault – we frequently refer to her as Tony Harrison and Samuel instead of Sammie and, sometimes, simply for our own cruel amusement, we call her ‘him’ and tell her that she’s a ‘good boy’. Maybe we’ve simply confused the cat into not eating.

He – I mean she – is at the vet’s now and is staying there overnight. It’s unthinkable that we might eventually have to have her put to sleep if she doesn’t get better; they can’t find anything specifically wrong, but she needs to start eating soon. We are at our wits’ end – the vet even force fed her last week (it was like watching Carol Thatcher on I’m a Celebrity; I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cat send food back to the kitchen before). For one mad moment we almost bought new bowls, having heard rumour that some cats can’t abide the feeling of a dish against their whiskers, but this would be taking fussy to the extreme - I mean I don't especially like those long spoons they give you with ice cream, but it's never stopped me eating it. We are thinking maybe we should give Gordon Ramsay a call, he makes very good food and if he doesn’t swear in her presence he could turn this terrible starvation diet around. She is such a dear little cat with a sweet disposition and a lovely singing voice – we’d be heartbroken if she continues to go all Emmeline Pankhurst on us and starves herself to the brink of death. After all, cats secured the right to vote years ago and she’s not proving anything to anyone by snubbing the delightful tinned cuisine on offer here.

On the buses

2008-12-19T02:50:00.001-08:00

The words, “Excuse me but would it bother you if I opened the window?” aren’t fascinating per se, but they can suddenly become fascinating under certain circumstances. For example – you’re sitting up in bed reading, and a man wearing a balaclava and a stripey top knocks on the window and utters them. Or you’re 32,000 feet in the air and the person next to you on the plane asks you that question – it would probably provoke a momentary pause between wrestling open the peanuts and slipping into your flight socks. Or if you’re sitting on the Number 41 bus travelling from Tottenham Hale to Wood Green in London.

In fact, if you’re on a bus in any part of London and somebody says to you, “Excuse me but would it bother you if I opened the window?” you’re likely to fall over in a dead faint brought on by shock. You’re also likely to fall over because all the seats are taken by 17 year old chavs and their offspring and someone’s just shoved you hard in the back while attempting to pilfer your wallet. So when I heard those words today on the T501 from Mawson Lakes to the CBD, I thought I’d imagined them. But no – the person sitting directly behind me had actually enquired as to whether it would bother me if he cracked open the window a little! I doubt whether he had any idea what effect those words had on me, or how they warmed my heart – but that’s because he was Australian and, over here, people still have manners. They use words like ‘excuse me’ to catch your attention before going on to thoughtfully enquire as to whether their act of opening a bus window would have an adverse effect on you. In London – and many other parts of the UK – the window-opening scenario on a bus would go as follows:
Person 1 opens window loudly.
Person 2 glares at them.
Person 1 says, “You got a problem?”
Person 2 says, “Yeah, I effing have. It’s effing freezing in here.”
Person 1 responds thusly, “Well eff off then and effing well sit somewhere else you effing …”
At which point their conversation is interrupted by a man and his dog clambering onto the bus and launching into a rendition of ‘Knees Up Mother Brown” played at full pitch with the aid of a ‘one man band’ getup. Well, the dog’s not playing an instrument – he’s just sitting there quietly spreading fleas and licking his balls.

Then there are the bus drivers. When you get on the bus over here they say hello to you. If you ask them which stop you need to get off at they actually tell you – they’ll even remind you when you get there. And if they see a person running to catch the bus they don’t slam the doors shut and move off from the kerb at a speed which would make a James Bond getaway look lax – no, they actually patiently wait for that person and then politely greet them. Oh, and when passengers disembark from the bus, they say goodbye to the driver or thank him for conveying them from A to B in such a willing and cheery manner. Compare this to London, where most bus drivers look like extras from Dawn of the Dead and have all the charm of Sweeney Todd on an off day, and you’ll begin to understand why I find Adelaide bus travel fascinating.

It’s not just on public transport where manners prevail, though – in fact, the Aussie attitude towards other people who inhabit their space often extends beyond mere manners and edges towards that rare commodity that’s infrequently displayed in London: empathy. On the same day that somebody asked if an open window would bother me, I saw another man pursue a couple down the street to return a dropped map. In London the only reason someone would pursue you down the street would be to a) filch your handbag, b) close the gap between you in order to better shout abuse or c) chloroform you. A dropped street map wouldn’t even register as something worth expending time or energy on. The Aussie attitude is one of openness, frankness and friendliness with a good dash of old fashioned manners thrown in. Of course not every Australian is polite or friendly (they are human after all) – but you are far more likely to encounter civility and warmth over here on a short bus journey than you are in a whole day spent roaming around London.

And just in case you were wondering; when the nice man behind me asked if I’d be bothered if he opened the window, I carefully replied, “Of course I effing would you effing idiot – what’s effing wrong with you! Now eff off and leave me alone.”

Internet ... more like Internot

2008-12-08T23:22:00.000-08:00

As you can probably tell, I currently have unfettered internet access in Australia – but it hasn’t always been that way. There was a painful period of around four weeks when we were returned to the Dark Ages – I actually had to use an antiquated object called a telephone to keep in touch and, at one low point, I got ink stains along four of my fingers when I resorted to using a pen. Having discovered that the internet in Australia is powered solely by a room of fat kids on exercise bikes peddling for all they’re worth, we now know three things about t’internet Down Under: 1) it costs about $328149 to have internet access; 2) you only get a certain amount of downloads/uploads, so your favourite YouTube clip of that pasty American youth sticking a firework up his jacksey has to be saved for special occasions 3) Vodafone in Rundle Mall is like the seventh level of Hell.

Let me explain … Over here, you pay for how many Gigabytes you use. I was utterly confused – initially I thought a Gigabyte was a breakfast cereal and, after spending ten hours shoving cornflakes into my USB port, it seemed I would never get online again. Once I realised what it actually was, I then had to try and work out whether I needed 2, 5, 6 or 7 Gigs. Frighteningly, I simply had no idea how many firework-up-jacksey clips 5 Gigabytes would get me.

In the end, we opted for ADSL via our Foxtel package. We then waited two week before they decided to tell us that all the exchanges where we live were taken. This might not have hurt quite so much had we not lived in a place that’s also known as Technology Park. Down but not defeated, we decided to get what’s known in the UK as Mobile Broadband. The end seemed in sight as we sat in the Vodafone shop in Rundle Mall. Just a credit check on Leigh (pictured above, during happier times when the internet worked). He had to prove he was employed as a police officer by SAPOL. The shop assistant called the credit checker and, between them, they set about trying to find the phone number of SAPOL (even though Leigh had just given it to them). That wasn’t good enough though – he might’ve had a friend planted at the other end. You’d have thought the fact the shop assistant and the credit checker both had SAPOL’s official website up in front of them might have also given them a clue about the number – but, again, this wasn’t good enough. Leigh could have started developing that detailed website (complete with the Police Commissioner’s photo) three years before on the off chance that he might one day move to Australia and want to buy some internet thingumy from Vodafone. No, they needed the number from White Pages (a source so reliable it beats SAPOL’s own website). Alas, between them, they couldn’t get the White Pages up (perhaps they’d run out of gigabytes by that point). You honestly don’t know what pain is until you’ve experienced two people who are totally devoid of initiative, common sense or problem-solving skills imply that a government organisation’s website might actually be part of a conspiracy to relieve them of a dongle. So we left them to it and went to a 3Store instead.

As it is, it’s all worked out very well. I’ve watched numerous firework-up-jacksey clips since we’ve been online – I’ve even managed to watch 89 clips of kittens sleeping and 40 clips of people falling off skateboards – and I still have lots of Gigabytes left to eat.

Technorati Profile

Bear with me

2008-12-03T22:14:00.000-08:00

Koalas don’t like being called koala bears – that’s because they’re not bears (which are mammals) but are marsupials and come with one of those pouch things to carry stuff around in – like their lipstick, a hairbrush and spare pair of knickers.

These fluffy eucalyptus eaters can be found mainly in Australia’s eastern and southern costal areas, ranging from Adelaide (where we are) to Cape York Peninsula. It’s amazing to think that we actually live in koala country since we’ve barely seen any since we’ve been here – and we’ve already been to the cinema five times and do a big shop on a weekly basis. It seems the koalas of South Australia were all but exterminated in the early 20th century – oops. The good news is that the SA government managed to order some more from Victoria – I’m guessing they mean the state of Victoria, not some mad old woman who had 245 cats and 750 koalas knocking around the place.

Koala fact: they’re one of the few animals (other than primates) who have fingerprints. This proved to be incredibly fortuitous after the Great Koala Bank Heist of 1962. If it weren’t for modern fingerprinting methods, the gang of looting koalas would
have got clean away with it. Thankfully, they were tracked down to a big tree just outside Mount Lofty where they'd spent all the money from the heist on eucalyptus leaves. Koalas also have five fingers with an opposable thumb (you need the opposable thumb to grip). This will be great news for male koalas once they catch up with their human male counterparts and work out the main use for an opposable thumb. For the moment, though, they’re just happy that they can keep a firm hold on their eucalyptus leaves.

Did I mention that koalas eat eucalyptus leaves? It's true, they do - they seem to really like them. In fact that’s pretty much all they eat. This means if I were to ever open a koala restaurant, I don't think I could go far wrong.

Other than eating, they don’t do much. Apparently they have a walnut sized brain and spend 16-18 hours a day sleeping or just hanging out. For many centuries it was believed this behaviour was exclusive to koalas, that’s until the Chav species was discovered somewhere south of London in April 2005.

Feline the love

2008-12-01T20:59:00.000-08:00

When you’re far from home and starting out in a new country, what you need more than anything is something that’s going to turn up its nose at whatever you feed it, actively ignore you, grow its nails too long and regurgitate on a daily basis. Sadly we couldn’t afford to move Victoria Beckham in, so we got a cat instead.

Sammi is four years old and was surrendered to the RSPCA because her owners couldn’t afford to keep her. I’m not surprised – the cat litter and food alone came to $40, and that’s not counting the $45 cozee bed (which she’s totally ignored), the brush, the toys, the DVDs, the work outfits, the eveningwear, the face packs and, finally, the state-of-the-art litter tray (I’d argued that we should simply use a cork. After all, we’ve got enough following our recent visit to Barossa).

The cat has adapted well – who wouldn’t; she’s got the run of the house and sliding glass doors to look out of at either end; admittedly one looks out onto a car port, but she did a mechanical engineering degree at Flinders University and has a keen interest in motors. Leigh has commented that she’s a very ladylike cat – well he wasn’t the one sitting in the back of the car with her when she shat herself on the journey home. She followed this by punching her way out of the cardboard box she was in using her teeth and claws, along with a small stanley knife she’d smuggled out of the RSPCA. Then, as an encore, she forced out one more poop which nestled gently against my leg for the rest of the journey. Now I’ve never read Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette but I’m guessing she doesn’t advise young ladies to crap themselves on their host immediately prior to entering the host’s household. So while Leigh might call her a little lady, I call her ‘the cat who shat herself’.

At the moment she is upstairs in my bed waiting for my husband to come home. This is the new order of things in our house. I make her food, clean her litter tray, and wash her bowls, and she sits on my husband’s lap trying to lick his face. If this is how it’s going to be, she’s going to have to learn to cook and iron.

She is incredibly sweet though; a very gentle, friendly cat who loves nothing more than to curl up with a good book. In fact I can highly recommend a pet to people who make a move abroad as they suddenly make a house feel like a home and really ground you – after all, what else would be willing to crap on you and still expect you to pay for its dinner every night?

Bogans, Emos and a Mapatasi

2008-11-30T21:18:00.000-08:00

For a while last week, Leigh and I thought we’d accidentally landed on Middle Earth rather than Australia. Suddenly we heard some odd new expressions being bandied about, like Emos and Bogans. We wondered if they were casting for a prequel to the Lord of the Rings or something, but then someone explained that these weren’t yet another product of Tolkien's imagination after a night on the piss – no, they are actually people. Australian people. Bogans are exclusive to Australia and, according to what we’ve been told, the Duelling Banjos tune from Deliverance will always precede the appearance of a Bogan. It’s not a flattering label – unless you enjoy being alluded to as a sister-loving, flannel-shirt-wearing, sheep-shagging, banjo-playing hillbilly (and some people might. After all, the banjo isn’t an easy instrument to master, flannel shirts can be very practical and sheep are said to be extremely loyal). It would appear, however, that nowadays the term’s been watered down a bit to mean someone who’s simply a tad nerdy, unfashionable and uncouth - what their attitude is towards sheep remains their own private affair!

Emos, it seems, aren’t exclusive to Aus, although they use the term here a lot; possibly because they have more Emos than we do in the UK. In a nutshell, Emos are sort of watered down Goths. Goths who can’t quite be arsed if you like. If you spend hours writing down lines of poetry in a notebook, listening to underground indie music and getting close to your inner Emo-tional self then not only are you annoying, but the chances are you’re probably also an Emo. Tight jeans, grubby sneakers, black rubber wrist bands, lank black hair and an introspective demeanour complete the look. Think Freddie Kruger on a sensitive day, before he got the bad manicure. It is probably impossible to be an Emo if you’re over the age of 30 because, let’s face it, everyone over 30 should know that, yes, life is depressing, futile and hopeless but writing poetry and wearing too much eyeliner isn’t going to help.

Mapatasi is Aussie slang for a fanny (what else could it be) – but not any old fanny, oh no. It refers to the fannies of Ron Jeremy’s day, when women thought a Brazilian was, er, someone from Brazil. The reason it’s called a Mapatasi is because, quite clearly, a woman’s nether parts look like a map of Tasmania. Yeah, really. I mean I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve had to tell men to concentrate more on my Bothwell.

So, all in all, I can’t tell you how much more at home I feel now that I know my Bogans from my Emos and can locate my Mapatasi. And, with that, I’m off to learn how to play the banjo. Ding a ling ling ling ling ling ling-a-ling.

Not what you want to see in your water spout

2008-11-25T06:01:00.000-08:00

All that crap about itsy bitsy spider might sound very twee and cute, but the reality of the situation is a little different in these parts. Yeah, you might momentarily be won over by all that blatant pro-spider propaganda that E.B. White peddled out in Charlotte’s Web. Better still, they even got Julia Roberts to do the voice in the film – so, for a minute, you could almost imagine sitting down and having a nice cup of tea with Charlotte and a good old chinwag about modern farming methods. But I doubt either Julia or old Elwyn ever happened across the monster (pictured above) that Leigh saw the other day. This one was less Charlotte and more Barry Bethel (before the diet). Leigh waited patiently for about ten minutes but at no point did this lazy arachnid get off its weighty arse and bother spinning a gossamer web bearing the slogan, “Some pig” - a missed opportunity if ever there was one, given that it was hanging off a sign at the police academy.

So while Leigh and I had a good old sob into our cushions when Charlotte kicked the bucket (totally without the assistance of any Raid or Mortein), this didn’t stop us heading down to the hardware store and replenishing our arsenal of spider-busting weaponry after his run-in with Barry. As for the person who coined the phrase ‘itsy bitsy spider’, it's unlikely that he’d be so dismissive if he woke up tomorrow with Barry’s arse in his face.

Undertakers and Overtaking

2008-11-22T11:14:00.000-08:00

Last night Leigh and I were driving along when we saw an establishment called Sensible Funerals. Now I can’t tell you how relieved we both were to discover that should the worst happen and either one of us be bitten to death by a particularly fractious spider, the person embalming us will be wearing practical clothing, flat shoes and have eaten a well-balanced breakfast. Up until that point, my worst fear had been that when I trip off this mortal coil I might be attended to by someone wearing an orange wig and a clown’s nose. Rather than just getting on with things, they might spend a bit of time pissing around and jumping out of cupboards with me, to make their workmates think there's a zombie problem. There’s also Simplicity Funerals, My Way Funerals, White Lady Funerals (racist and sexist?) and Dignified Funerals (they’re finding that they’re not losing as much work since they changed their name from Trashy Funerals). Really, the mind boggles. It’s seeing things like this, however, which make us realise we’re not in Kansas (well, London) anymore. For about two years I used to wait at a bus stop in Clapham opposite a funeral home. I wasn't standing there for two years solid, like some human bus shelter - no, I just stood there each morning, waiting long minutes for the 49 bus. Anyway, the undertaker's establishment had a perfectly normal name like J Ernest & Son (so ordinary I can’t even remember it, despite the fact the bus was often late and I used to think they were lucky the bus driver didn’t work for them; after all, death waits for no man, especially not the driver of the number 49). So to arrive here and find that a sensible or dignified funeral is a selling point is somewhat unsettling.

Another unsettling thing is the sheer ineptitude of South Australian drivers. I’m a learner driver, yet I still picked up on a slight problem in driving protocol the other day when I saw a car barrelling towards me on my side of a dual carriageway (fortunately I’d chosen to stay in the left hand lane and he was heading up the right hand lane – well, that’s until he decided to mount the central reservation to get out the way of oncoming traffic). The man was lucky – five more seconds in that lane and he might have been requiring a sensible funeral. Actually, if he were to be buried in the style of his driving, it would be less ‘sensible’ and more ‘my way’.

So now, after a mere two and a bit months out here, I have three (yes THREE) things to worry about – spiders, bad drivers and themed funerals. The funeral part might not seem like something to be concerned about right now – however, when you consider that two of those three things might actually kill you, then it suddenly makes the funeral section of my worrying not so outlandish after all.

But enough of this morbidity. Let me move onto brighter things, like how sunny it is (oh no, that’s dangerous too). Okay, how many beautiful beaches they have here (er, no – sharks, tidal waves, jellyfish). Um … we get lots of UK television programmes out here like Property Ladder and What not to Wear (nope, bored to death). Oh shit. Well we bought a nice rug the other week from Rugs-a-Million. Ironically we had to go back three times because they didn’t have the size rug we wanted – not so much Rugs-a-Million as Rugs-a-Fifty Five And We’ll Have Another Ten In Stock In A Few Weeks. They’ve got a good theme tune though, it goes: ‘Rugs, rugs, rugs a-million’. Quite catchy really. Apparently it’s Australia’s favourite rug store. Yeah, you hear that conversation a lot here, pretty much wherever you go, “So, Bruce, d’y do anything good at the weekend?”
“Yeah, mate, I went to my favourite rug store – Rugs-a-Million.”
“No way! That’s my favourite rug store too!”
“Yup, I’d say it’s gotta be the best rug store in the whole of Australia, even though they’ve only got about fifty-five rugs and they’ll have about ten more in stock in a few weeks.”

Right, I must go now, it’s been two days since I’ve been to my favourite rug store and I’m getting withdrawal symptoms.

Driving on the same side of the road but upside down

2008-11-19T03:03:00.000-08:00

Vrooommm. Vroooommmmm. Vrooooo-ooo-ooo-m. No, it’s not the sound of a pissed person trying to book a room – it’s the sound of me learning to drive.

Yes, the time has finally come for me to get behind the wheel and try and spot the difference between an accelerator and a break. Given that the UK can fit into South Australia four times, it seems prudent to now learn how to get myself around. It’s that or a whole lot of walking. My current modes of transport are the 222 and 224 buses which stop almost directly outside the house – and while they are very capable of travelling in a forward motion, they don’t always stop where I want them to. For example, the other day I had to walk a whole five minutes once I got off the bus. They do say that Adelaide is the 20 minute city (i.e. it takes 20 minutes to cross the city centre), but I’m finding it to be more like 25.4 minutes, and this just won’t do.

Anyhow, I took the theory test the other day (something you have to do before you can even get a learner’s licence). It was quite a smooth process (unlike my acceleration). I went to some big office, took a ticket, went up to the counter, was sat in front of a computer where I had to answer 8 give-way questions correctly before going on to answer 42 multiple choice questions. Some were quite challenging –along the lines of: You are passing a horse and rider. Do you a) roll down your window and shout loudly, “Get out of my way you four-legged fucker.” b) roll down the window and offer the horse a cube of sugar, or c) slow down, giving the horse and rider plenty of space. Then loudly shout, “Your horse has got a big arse.” So now that I have my L Plates, I next need to do 50 hours of driving for not less than 6 months, after which I can get my P Plates and drive by myself. It’s a log book system here, meaning a qualified driver, i.e. my husband, signs off that I’m doing my time (a bit like being in prison). Yes, that’s right, Leigh’s teaching me to drive. I think this is what they mean when they say married life is full of challenges. But so far so good – Leigh has already taught me how to back onto him.

I’m off for now as I need to spider-proof the car. Among the road traffic laws Leigh’s been learning, are: driver being distracted due to using mobile phone; driver being distracted due to reading a map; driver being distracted due to inserting CD, and driver being distracted due to presence of spider. Frankly, I don’t see how losing control as a result of a spider sitting on your indicator can be compared to losing control because you’ve decided you’ve had enough of Oasis, but there you go. So, not wanting to risk such a scenario, I will be spraying the inside of the car. And burning any Oasis CDs I happen to find.

De-spidering our new home

2008-10-01T02:36:00.000-07:00

Leigh and I have now found a more permanent abode. It’s a lovely house in the middle of a swamp. Well, okay, it’s not in a swamp, but it used to a swamp and you can’t shake off a history like that overnight. Anyway, it’s brand new and, better still, it comes with a gym and indoor swimming pool that’s shared with five other houses. This means if we’re ever bored, we can go and watch other people using a treadmill and the like. Naturally I took to spider-proofing the place as soon as I could.

A number of Aussies have happily informed me that Huntsmen spiders really like coming in, watching your telly, making themselves a cup of tea and then tucking themselves up in your bed. As you can see, these spiders are quite big and have eight legs. It’s simply not conceivable that we will be sharing our living space with them so we are sending out a message, loud and clear, that they are not welcome. This message comes in the form of a number of noxious substances that are guaranteed to kill off anything with more than four legs. It has been a shock to me to realise that I will probably never become a Buddhist now.

Along with creating a spider-proof force field around the house, we’ve also been having to kit it out. Nobody told us that when you rent out here most places come unfurnished, so we’ve needed to buy everything from scratch. At first I was terribly excited by the blandness of IKEA but after having rolled up there three days on the trot I’m no longer so keen. We bought a table there, got it home and found it only had two out of four legs. On day two we went back and got the remaining legs (I was tired after having to balance half the table on my back all night). When we got the other two legs home and started to put it together, we realised that the legs were wider than a hooker’s hello (so wide in fact that they went beyond the parameters of the table). On day three we took the lot back. By then, IKEA’s Swedish meatballs had lost their shine. ‘It’s shhoo eshy’ they tell us. It’s fucking not. Anyway, we now have a much more expensive table that’s not from IKEA. I never wish to see this Scandanavian DIY place again.

Cars really cost in Aus

2008-09-25T22:39:00.000-07:00

We finally picked up our new car today. When I say ‘new’ I mean the 13 year old Ford Laser with 208,000K on the clock that cost $5,000. Yes, that’s right – 208,000K and $5,000! There are fewer miles on the Tardis, and that travels through time and space. Australians really know how to make their cars last. They are not car snobs either. To me, all cars look the same. Even after writing Nissan copy for years, I still couldn’t tell the difference between a Micra and an X-Trail. They both have windows, wheels and an accelerator – what more does anyone need to know? So, to my eyes, the car we have bought looks a lot like a Mercedes/Tardis ringer. Anyway, this car is the ideal candidate to bring about a ‘Wolf Creek’ scenario. I can just see us venturing into the middle of nowhere and the car deciding, after 208,500K, that it can’t be arsed to go any further. But some nice man with a ute will come to get us just as the last light is fading …

Anyway, as a top tip, if you're moving to Australia, it might be worth considering having your existing car shipped out - after all, a $1,000 shipping fee might not look so expensive if you've got a good car that you're waving farewell to in favour of a 13 year old banger with a gazillion miles on the clock and a price tag of $5,000 (and we bought cheap!).

Aussie TV and Aussie food

2008-09-23T22:26:00.000-07:00

Neighbours, Blue Heelers, Home and Away, Harry’s Practice, Prisoner of Cell Block H, Outback Porn Star … all these are Australian TV programmes – apart from the last one, but it should definitely be made into a programme. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that most Australian TV is also on in England (and, similarly, most English TV is on in Australia) so, since I spend 92.34% of my time in front of the telly, I am getting somewhat confused about what country I’m actually in. The other day I dozed off during an afternoon episode of Neighbours and, having been jumped awake by that honking noise Harold Bishop makes, I was momentarily disorientated. I couldn’t work out whether I was watching an Australian programme in England, an English programme in Australia, an English programme in England or an Australian programme in Australia. To make matters worse, it was an old episode so I couldn’t remember what year I was in either. In the end I had to call the local emergency hotline (also known as the police out here) and ask for their help. They also have American programmes too but I know for sure that I’m not in America because the TV hasn’t asked me to give it a tip yet.

On another note, I have been heartened to see that the Australians have developed two of my food innovations (well, ones I devised inside my own head but was told by others were a bad idea). One is the chocolate pizza. Yes, that’s right – it’s like pizza but has a creamy base (not tomato) and bits of Mars Bar and ice cream on top. When I once suggested this to a waitress at Pizza Express she asked me to leave. Anyhow, if you want to sample this delight, head to Fellini’s on O’Connel Street in north Adelaide. The other innovation is Menz Choccy Snakes – snake-shaped jelly covered in chocolate. Why, only a couple of months ago I tried to show Leigh how to make a Chocolate Button/Gummy Bear sandwich (think gummy bear between two buttons). He also asked me to leave the room. Well, haven’t I just showed them both – that sour-faced, dough-pushing waitress and that tall person with a face.

From Up Over to Down Under, the beginning ...

2008-09-14T21:35:00.000-07:00

Leigh and I started our new life in Aus by doing
the drive from NSW to SA, trying to work off
our leaving cake along the way.

After a week and a bit, we reached Adelaide, our final destination, having driven down a number of different highways, all of which seemed to have turn-offs to places called Four Mile Creek, One Mile Creek, Two Mile Creek, Eight Mile Creek and Creek Creek. We finally reached a place called Shit Creek where we spent an hour trying to buy a paddle but, unfortunately, we couldn’t find one. We also spent a day in Melbourne, but found it a bit too busy and London-like for our delicate sensibilities – however, we did have a nice time catching up with friends, and it’s only a quick 10 hour drive for our next get together. We also spent much of our time there wondering if we were following in the footsteps of the tiny Minigoo sisters, Kyle and Daniel.

Other highlights were Wagga Wagga. Not because there’s anything to see there, but because we liked saying the name. Along the way we stopped in at Glenrowan – famous for being the site of Ned Kelly’s last stand. It has an attraction there which surpasses any other I’ve ever seen; The Ned Kelly Last Stand Animated Theatre Experience. Described by Bill Bryson in Down Under as being ‘so bad it’s good’, we decided to give it a go. It consists of a number of rooms (all of which seat 80) where wax dummies play out this little snippet of history. I have never been so afraid in all my life – especially since the other 78 tourists decided not to show up and Leigh and I were the only two in there watching a number of badly rendered waxworks on pullies move about the room. As Bryson said, he was considering going in a second time, but was afraid it would start to make sense. I take his point – even now, I have no idea what happened during Ned Kelly’s last stand – and had it not been for Mick Jagger’s 1970’s film about Ned, and the printed Ned Kelly tea-towels in the gift shop, I wouldn’t have any idea who Ned was either. If you’re ever in Glenrowan, I can highly recommend it. In fact, pack up what you’re doing and get on a flight right now.

The Great Ocean Road was also stunning. There was a lot of sea.

Throughout our trip we’d seen lots of road signs warning us that koalas or kangaroos might be crossing the road. I don’t think they’re very good at looking both ways because, sadly, we never saw a live marsupial. That’s until the day we began our descent into Adelaide from Mount Lofty. The drive was absolutely stunning – rolling hills, wooded inclines, spider-ridden clearings, snake-addled groves – and then, as we saw the city of Adelaide roll out in front of us, like a basket-full of ironing in a particularly clichéd Persil ad, we glanced up into the trees and saw … nothing at all. Then we looked again. And, again, we saw nothing. Despite the koala warning sign (this one a yellow diamond bearing the silhouette of a fluffy-eared tree-dweller). Anyway, despite all this, not one koala was to be seen. And then we looked again and, midway up a tree, was an especially fat-arsed koala fast asleep. Leigh’s theory is that the animals in Australia were radioing each other through to hide each time we passed, but this one was just too fat and lazy to bother concealing itself. Anyhow, it was a heart warming moment to see such an obese marsupial as we began the final leg into our home city. However, this was quickly ruined by the greeting party of spiders.

So, having finally reached Adelaide, we we’re delighted to see that it’s a truly beautiful city. Even though I was here six years ago, I remember nothing about it. This is probably because, last time, my experience of Adelaide consisted of trying to get a car fixed. Anyway, so far so good. I’ve noticed that there are a lot of medical places here (pathology departments, osteopaths, women’s health, child health, reflexologists). It’s a hypochondriac’s dream. They also have a lot of products in their supermarkets and an outstanding meat and dairy section. Now I know what all the cows we passed were for.