Another day in paradise

Went to the new house for the first time in 6 weeks to check everything was okay for our arrival next Tuesday.

I thought it smelt a bit damp when I opened the door – but I put it down to the fact the house hadn’t had the heating on for nearly 2 months.

I wish it had because it might have evaoprated the swimming pool that had gathered in the living and dining room.

Sydney has had the worst storms in about 20 years over the last few weeks and a branch from the gum trees had smashed a hole in the tiled roof about the size of a dinner plate.

(I recall writing about my fear of a tree falling into the house at least it was only a branch.)

So there I am standing looking at the ceiling that was now resembling a burst balloon, as my shoes sunk into the carpet wondering how the hell I was going to fix this before Tuesday when a 40 foot container with all our stuff arrives.

I’m due to fly to Brisbane tomorrow night to stay with the family in a hotel as all our stuff will now be on route before commencing our “Road Trip” – (Grizwalds on Vacation paints a reasonable picture…)

So all in all, I worked out I had about 24 hours to rip up carpets, wallpaper a ceiling and patch a roof.

I decided that even I couldn’t arrange this, and Smiley Carole Smiley wasn’t in the neighbourhood,  so I phoned T to tell her I had found a way of paying for all the redecoration she said she wanted to do.

I might have underplayed the leak a bit.

So I turned the heating up full and took the keys to a local estate agent and told him the insurance comapny will be in touch.

I’m hoping 5 days at a spa will put T in a relaxed frame of mind for Tuesday…..watch this space

I had to fly to Perth in Western Australia on Monday for a meeting.

Imagine having to fly for 6 hours across a huge continent, cross time zones, get off a plane and all to have one meeting.

Granted it was with the WA Government who spend a lot of money, but it still was a shed of a long way! 

The plane was fuilly booked with guys all prepared to do the same thing as if this is normal behaviour!

I found the whole experience bizarre – just flying for hours and not even getting out of a country – this place is bloody huge!

Anyway, thankfully I don’t need to go to all that often, as I even got jet lagged, but the city itself was beautiful. Real picture postcard stuff.

The timing of the visit wasn’t that great though as it meant that T and the kids were in the process of packing up Brisbane for our impending move on Friday.

Yet again, I leave the poor woman to settle our affairs as I galavant around the world, however she was remarkably calm about the whole thing!

Perhaps because I booked us a 5 day break in the Hunter Valley next week to break up our journey South.

We’ve decided to drive from Brisbane to Sydney as an adventure – these things always seem like a good idea at the time but have a tendency to go pear shaped after 6 hours as the kids vomit and scream at the boredom of it all!

Needless to say it is a straight 12 hour drive and would end in divorce and at least one child murder, so we’re stopping at resorts on the way down to ensure I don’t end up in jail.

A dear friend of mine recently sent a photo of some old school mates surfing.

This is in itself isn’t that unique.

However this appears to be taken on a cold and wet winters day in Scotland as none of them live in Australia!

I can only assume that vast amounts of alcohol were consumed or indeed they continue to breed them tough in Wallyford!

Bizarrely enough, not only have they not changed, ( although having attended a school reunion a few years ago - they appear to be in the minority) they seem to have improved with age -the bastards!

Proof of cryogenics in action

Sitting at my desk coughing and spluttering with a winter cold would you believe. I can’t believe how I find it so cold. Last night the temperature dropped to 5 degrees and I could have sworn there were icicles on my nose! Even during the day the temperature doesn’t get above 20 and I’m wearing an overcoat and a scarf – I used to go to the beach in France in 20 degrees!

We’ve had some real bad storms here over the last few days with cyclonic winds and amazing electrical storms – drought my arse. Half of NSW is now under water I only hope our new hoose has survived.

We bought the house about 4 weeks ago and still haven’t moved in as the family don’t arrive until 1st July and I haven’t been back to see it. I only hope that the 40 foot gum trees that were in the garden are not now in my kitchen.

I found out this week that our old dog Guinness, that we left back in Scotland because he would have found the transition too difficult, died on Thursday.

When we left him behind it was one of the hardest thingts to deal with, however we were comforted by the fact that he was staying with friends who would have loved him as much as we did. Unfortunately at 14 he developed breathing problems and they had to put him to sleep.

He was our first family pet and was there through all our kids growing up. I still get a lump in my throat when I think of him – I was devasted and more than a little bit guilty of leaving him behind.

I would have loved to have seen him just one more time. 

So gluttons for punishment we bought another black lab 14 weeks ago called Haggis who will no doubt give us the same amount of pleasure and experiences as Guinness.

He’ll eat us out of house and home, be a constant tie and provide us with a constant stream of vet bills and will break our hearts again when he gives up the ghost 14 years later too.

It was T’s birthday at the weekend, so I took the day off on Friday to take her shopping and buy her a pressie. All in all it was quite successful. I thought.

I took her for breakfast, bought her some RM Williams boots, went for lunch and then home to pick up the kids. I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself.

Taking the day off was a big sacrifice. I thought.

Not booking a table the following evening for a romantic dinner, organising a baby sitter, buying her a present on behalf of the kids, organising a family cake out of Safeways for a wee teatime presentation and generally making a fuss of her with the family was probably where I maybe let myself down.

She’s had a pretty tough week, trying to sort out our move, her son going off to boarding school, her grandfather dying and dealing with all the rest of the kids while I’m swanning around Australia does tend to affect her general happiness.

So I think I might have just undercooked the making her feel special bit.

I did take us and the kids to see SHREK 3 on Saturday and bought her peanut M&Ms. Now I now know why she didn’t laugh at the funny bits. Because obviously a women waits a couple of days to tell you why she’s pissed off while you have to try and guess.

So I pretty much got bollocked all weekend and tried to make it up to her by helping pack stuff. Which of course as most blokes know – we can’t even do that right.

So I’m off to Melbourne tomorrow for 3 days for another week and wonder what that was all about.

And because I’m a bloke it’ll take me 3 days to realise it was all my fault for not making a fuss of a woman who’s doing it all on her own, dealing with the death of her grandfather, supporting her mother who’s devasted and 20,00kms away and a husband who couldn’t organise a piss up in brewery. 

This is us trying to look jolly before we drop our son off at boarding school. The other kids are just going internally berserk at the thought of him leaving, his mum is devasted and I’m smiling through gritted teeth at the cost of this.

We’ll miss him really. Infact we must remember to give him our new address when we move. 

Josh started Boarding today. He now lives in a small prison cell with partition walls and thinks he’s in heaven. It makes you wonder why you bother. I could have lived like this for the last 10 years instead of busting my chops to give them a better home! All his room mates come from all over Australia, far outback, over seas – including Ireland, and all seem to be really good guys.

The fact that they have a stricter regime than at home hasn’t seem to have registered with Josh yet and I’m sure he thinks he’s at summer camp.

Wait till he wants to raid the fridge at 9.00pm or download some tunes at 10.00pm or is invited to a party and isn’t allowed to go because he didn’t give a weeks notice – in writing! I can’t even get him to plan an hour ahead never mind a week. And they get detention for forgetting things. I think this is hilarious. But he’s a determined and it’s his choice so I’ll see how it goes.

Had to go up on the roof last week to put a plastic pipe across the wires leading to the street as Possums have now decided that our roof space is cosier than the trees.

We have suffered the noise from a family of possums who party all night and fight for the best bed space for about the last month in the roof right above our bed. Putting a plastic pipe over the wires means that they can’t crawl along the wires as they’ll fall off when the pipe rotates. Great idea. Not so good when you discover that the cables were live after the event and I’ve been standing on a tin roof.

Worse than that, you’re meant to do it after they leave for the evening. Not before. I now have a family of possums stuck in our roof that can’t leave because some idiot has trapped them and now can’t take the pipe off incase he electrocutes himself. So last night after a bottle of wine, I was chasing possums off the roof with a sweeping brush making them jump like lemmings from 25 metres up.

Mind you, not as bad as the month I arrived and called the police at 2.00am because I thought two blokes were trying to break in through the roof and were arguing about who should jump first. The police arrived 2 mins later only to discover the intruders were a couple of possums mating in my kitchen ceiling. They’re probably still laughing about it down the station now.

Not as much as the “Dancing Cadet” on YouTube – Hilarious. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA8u7JpelJM

I think I would have just died off – the guy is now a global phenomenon and a talk show guest! I would have crawled into a hole and never came out again. Ah the power of Youtube.