DS31

HH31

Got A Drum

G'day chaps. Apologies for the lack of updates on here, work's been requiring me to do actual work and time away from the desk has seen us fighting round Sydney trying to secure somewhere to live. But! We've finally settled on a shabby, bright pink dump in the middle of nowhere! I jest... it's a nice little detached house in Randwick, five minutes from Bronte Beach, five minutes from Coogee, and about ten to Bondi. Work is half an hour on the bus in the morning, which ain't half as nice as getting the ten minute ferry across the harbour, but then living on the north shore brought with it the promise of regular visits from the mother in law so that was ruled out at a very early stage. Whittling down our options from the 300+ Sydney suburbs wasn't easy, and at first I was all about getting a sexy flat on the harbour and being able to walk to work, but we got this gaff in the end because: Sexy flats on the harbour are small, you can get a lot more for your money if you head towards the beaches a bit, and because there's a housing shortage here, it's a bunfight for every one of them. We saw this tiny terrace in Paddington, which is probably one of the best areas to live, but it was tiny, expensive, and had an outside toilet. No joke, the crapper was in a shed in the back yard. It had a bathroom, with a bath and a sink, but if it's three in the morning and you've had a skinful, you were either peeing in the sink or unbolting the back door and walking face first through a load of fresh spider's webs to get to the dunny.

This didn't put many people off. There's so few gaffs to rent here they do it like buying a gaff - they have a fifteen minute 'open inspection' time on a Saturday, when someimtes (again, no joke) there would be thirty couples outside a gaff waiting to get in, and as soon as they were in would start offering up huge budles of cash and start to get into bidding wars with others about how much over the rental price they were willing to pay. You know me, I thrive on that stuff, offering to pay a hundred dollars over the asking price per week for a gaff with an outside shitter is right up my Straße.

Another factor after living below the Thai mail-order bride and her mad family for the last year in Islington was neighbours, so when we saw that we could get a detached house that was near the beaches and centennial park, we were all over it. It's a bit quiet and residential, I dunno where the nearest decent boozer is, but I reckon it'll be a sound. The gmail map is here

Listen Up...

It's still there! This is only going to matter to Mick, Harj and Dan, but I was going down Liverpool Street the other day on my way to the Darlo Bar after the cricket and saw the record shop you chaps used to live next to. Still going in these days of downloads, but it had a sign in it's window that made think: I didn't know if it meant the shop was for sale, or if it was a sign playing on the name of the shop and advertising a record collection for sale - what do you reckon? Oh to run a record shop and just hang out eh! Proper High Fidelity stuff.

Test-y Indians

Went to the SCG at the weekend and saw Australia vs India with my cricket-mad mate Luke. This test got me properly sucked into the cricket, it had the lot: majestic centuries from Tendulkar as he bows out of playing in Australia, Andrew Symonds pulling a Beefy and scoring runs and taking wickets, winning man of the match and copping racist abuse for his trouble, and then Michael Clarke pulling off a pretty unbelievable win with three wickets in five balls to snatch the victory with eight minutes and seven balls left. Thank christ then, that I went on Saturday, the fourth day being easliy the most boring of the whole test. Matthew Hayden got a century by playing some very average cricket, and whilst Harbhajan went potty when he got Ponting out for 1, and Anil Kumble should have had a hat trick, I turned up after the first and was on a piss-and-beer run for the second! Had good seats mind (I took that photo when they were at tea). The Bhaji Army were sitting just below us and to the right, though the majority of their singing was being led by a pissed-up fat white lad with a northern accent who copped plenty of "piss off home pommie" comments. Predictably enough he wasn't really white either, more a deep shade of angry pink. The ticket also gets you in free to see NSW vs Queensland in the Twenty20 tomorrow night at the ANZ Stadium in Homebush (formerly the Telstra Stadium, and the Olympic Stadium before that). Glenn McGrath's playing his last game for the Speedblitz Blues and I've never been to a night game or a Twenty20. Apparently everyone just gets leathered. Brilliant.

A Historic Event

It's the small moments that shape your life innit? The stuff that might bore or surprise strangers when you tell them about it. Marriage, kids and all that stuff are obvious highlights but anyone can do that and all going well, everyone who does do it has exactly the same outcome - a healthy kid, a lovely service etc etc
Try telling someone about playing pool on a knackered table in a garage every year since you were a kid and no matter how well you tell it, folk that haven't done it will never be able to fully grasp it. But move 20,000 kms away and miss it one year, along with all the implications and baggage that goes with it, and you start missing home pretty sharply. Sitting on a little coffee table disguised as a mobile on speaker-phone just ain't the same.

Congratulations Aaron! You deserved one for all the entertainment over the years.

Merry Christmas Lads

...have a good one? Outragously, it wasn't sunny here today. It was scorching on Christmas Eve, I went for a swim down Balmoral Beach after work, but today, whilst still being warm, was overcast and rather uninspiring:

That put paid to my dreams of swimming and frying on the beach on Christmas Day, but fortunately I had a back up Aussie cliche to save the day: Shrimps on the barbie! I was humming Mary Mo to myself whilst I cooked an'all. We had oysters to start, then terrine, then chilli shrimp (technically they were prawns, which are bigger than shrimp, and the reason they're called shrimp in that ad is because of the yanks), then lamb chops. It was a nice, different Christmas dinner, though the telly was still shocking and frankly it was cool enough to have had turkey. Everyone's now gearing up for either the Boxing day sales, the boxing day movie releases (Despite the summer weather Boxing Day's a huge day for new film releases, I'm wanting to see No Country For Old Men), or the boxing day cricket. Hope you all had a cracker! Merry Christmas once again.


PS What's American Gangster like? Despite it being a Crowe film it doesn't come out here until the second week of January.