How was your Xmas, Taff? Asked no one, probably in expectation that I’d only go and answer.
Well in the run up to Xmas we, (me, L~A, and Mary,) went to see the only one-dayer cricket match we’d see this season, (Day/Night, played under lights.) Though it turned out to be a pretty good match, played between Aus and New Zealand.
Owwzaaaat! My best photo from the match
Nothing much to tell you about it, except that the sunset we saw from the ground that night was so good that even the BBC reported on it.
Australia may have beaten New Zealand to claim a one-day cricket series victory on Tuesday night, but many spectators were more interested in the sunset at the ground.
Great images on this BBC page,
and here’s one of mine of the sunset as well. (Click on images to go to the match gallery.)
We also saw good old Bill Bailey, always worth the price. He seems to like Canberra, probably as nothing ever bloody happens here, so therefore he’s always guaranteed to get a full house. As per norm I’ll not try to relate any of his set, as that’s a bit pointless. But, he did paste an amazing little video clip on facebook, as his digs for the weekend he played here, were rather classy. There’s not many places you can stay where you get a free bear with your room.
Here’s the clip, enjoy!
During his stay in Canberra for his recent gig at the Royal Theatre, Bailey was put up at the Jamala Wildlife Lodge at Canberra’s National Zoo and Aquarium, which, famously, allows its guests to share their accommodation with some of the world’s most dangerous and endangered animals. Which are behind glass, of course.
In terms of entertainment, in the coming months we’re seeing the PM’s XI against Sri Lanka, a T20 match, “The Damned” up in Sydney’s Metro Theatre, and Dara O’Briain at Sydney Opera House.
Then Xmas itself came around. Here’s L~A’s lot from work trying, and failing, not to go totally bloody hatstand mental, while waiting for Xmas to arrive.
Can’t say I’m a big fan of Xmas in Aus, too bloody hot for a start, but we make the best of it, and for-a-bloody-change I wasn’t working on Xmas day. Me and L~A had reached an agreement about our present buying for each other this year. L~A had found a store which sold nice dresses, and I wanted new headphones for making my bloody awful music. We agreed that she could buy three or four dresses, as “they’re only $40.00 each”, and I could spend a similar amount, say $120.00, on new headphones. “Deal! So we’re not to buy each other anything else, ok!!!”. We shook on it.
Hmmmm… I was in JB HI FI, when I saw a food smoking gun, which was going cheap. Knowing that I couldn’t pass this bargain up, but that I’d get my nuts cut off if I bought it, I decided that the prospect getting regular home-smoked cheese/fish/everybloodything was worth the swap. Then, in the local shops, I saw a bottle of the highly recommended “Lady Lola” Pino Grigo, and as Pinot Grigio is L~A’s current tipple of choice, I had to buy it. Then I saw... fucking loads of stuff…..
Seeing as my nuts were already guaranteed to be removed just for buying the smoker, I was free to go mad.
Funnily enough on Xmas eve we were watching ”River Cottage at Xmas”, and Hugh F-W, (our new fave chef,) was smoking some mussels; “We should get a smoker,” said her indoors, much to my delight.
There’s something incredibly masochistic about watching a program like “River Cottage at Xmas” when it’s 38 in the shade outside, it’s actually mid bloody summer, and thus you feel as Xmassy as Ebenezer Scrooge when he’s having a very bad day, don’t you think? For fuck’s sake, this is our Xmas morning dog walk!!
Xmassy? Bah, fucking humbug!!
Xmas day itself was great fun. We had B1 and B2 stay over with us, and so had a proper family Xmas. I got lots of great presents, including a bottle of “Distillers Limited Edition Lagavulin” from B1and B2. Lagavulin somehow overtook Laphrohaig as my favourite scotch last year. There’s an almost medicinal iodine(y) flavour to it. Bloody love it.
L~A had, as tradition demands, sourced me a fab Xmas jumper to wear on the big day. This one;
Everybody seemed more than happy with their presents and L~A didn’t beast me (too much) for buying her more that I should have.
Our Xmas lunch was gorgeous, if a little non-traditional.
Starters
Starters of scallops in the shell, prawns, salt and pepper squid, and oysters.
mains
Baked mackerel, or slow cooked lamb with Asian marinade, roast tatties, all green veg was from L~A’s veg patch, Dijon sauce. There was also a vege loaf, (recipe here,) made by yours truly, my only contribution. But it was fucking lush I tell you.
For dessert L~A made Heston’s Exploding Gateaux and a cherry pie.
Diverting a touch. L~A’s veg patch has been a revelation, all summer all the veg and herbs, and some strawberries and chillies, we have eaten have all been home grown and organic. It’s certainly given L~A a great hobby, and one that is very therapeutic. Part of the therapy is her venting frustrations by spending most mornings out in the garden threatening her plants. It seems to work..
My headphones? Well, seeing as L~A confessed that the dresses she’d eventually bought came in a “little over”* the $120 forecast, I was given a bit more leeway on my headphone spending. Which was dead handy as I’d set my heart on a pair of AKG K702 PRO.
I decided to wait until after New Year, in the hope of getting them at sale prices. New year came and went, and they didn’t drop a penny, so much for that cunning plan. I bought them in any case.
New Year’s itself? The usual story. I was working NY day, so our “celebration” was a couple of glasses of of Lagavulin, a quick bunk up, and in bed by 10.00 pm. I’m itching to get back to spending NYE examining the underside of UK pub tables.
*double it, then add some more.
And so that was our Xmas
My birthday came around once more. I do wish it would stop doing that, I’ve had enough of getting older thanks. L~A got me a Calvin Klein dressing gown, utter luxury, and another pair of repro Sherlock Holmes posters, which I love. (Though I’ve not yet got around to having them framed, let alone put up.)
For a treat L~A found a restaurant which we hadn’t visited, Seasalt, in Bruce, which is dead local to us. Here’s my review, just to annoy Charlie.
As I always say, you’re not going to get a great view dining in Canberra, nor eat a building of any distinction, Seasalt does not buck this trend. However, they make the most of the functional aesthetic, and the layout is appropriate, the furnishings comfortable.
Fashionably late
There were five of us, with about another half a dozen or so dinners. For a post-New Year, middle of the week, dining session this was a fair indication that the place is liked/respected.
I like the menu, it’s not one that swamps you with choice, but delivers some interesting and reasonably novel plates. I had the Fresh Vegetable & Herb Salad to start and was very impressed. (I made this myself the following week, L~A said mine was best.)
My bloody mother in law had the lambs brains, (I nearly wrote HAS lambs brains, but thought better of it). I’m sure she only has it to annoy me, revolting stuff.
The mother-in-law’s brains
For mains I had the Whole Baby Barramundi, which was a real treat, but far too much to eat.
I hate it when my dinner stares at me.
So why I had the cheese plate for dessert I do not know. The food was well cooked, the serves were exceedingly generous. Bethy kept trying to stop me taking foody photos, for some reason.
it didn’t work
So why no 5 stars? OK. The service was good, pleasant, affable and knowledgeable, but needed a bit more attention paid to empty plates and empty glasses, we had to ask on more than one occasion for drinks etc to be renewed. The cheese board, although generous, was uninspired, nothing “wow” about the selection. There were no good single malts on offer, and I love a good, and hopefully new and challenging, Scotch with my cheese when I dine out.
So, 4/5, would highly recommend, and will return
You may or may not remember, that when I was back in the UK, the mother-in-law’s dog, Meech, was bitten by a brown snake and died. Mary toughed it out, all alone and lonely, until a week or so ago, then dragged L~A to the local pound with her. There, surprisingly she made a reasonable choice of a new companion. We had tried to get her to take Millie, our elderly, senile, little Shitzu, seeing as they have so much in common. But she was adamant she wanted her own dog. (“I don’t want a lapdog, only old people have lapdogs!”) We were expecting her to get a deerhound, rotty or wolf or something daft, but at the pound they met this little chap.
Sweet natured, very timid, small sized, and ideal. The next problem was always going to be a name for him. Mary has “a way” with dog naming, her last dogs have been named
Cue L~A:
Her first dog was called Boo. then her second was “Meeyan”. “Meeyan” was named because … Me an’ you and a dog named “Boo”. “Chibber” was so named as she had a white spot on her chin and mum’s grandad used to call the chin a chibber. “Meech”, was so named as it was “Meeyan” and “Chibber” squashed together in a revolting mess. I despair of my mother’s abilities to name animals.
Which is all very well and amusing, unless you’re the poor bastard (me) who has to walk them and shout those names out in public. But, as they were walking in to do the adoption paperwork, Mary turned to him and said; “Come on mate, let’s go,” and the dog responded. Dogs listening to her is a new experience for Mary, her dogs are not known for their obedience, (the fuckers listen to me though, they know it’s obey my voice or my boot.) So that was it, the dog’s name is now “Mate”, I can live with that. She gets all huffy if you call her dog “Matey”, so I do, constantly.
We’ve introduced him to our beasts, and now that the pecking order is established;
Taff/L~A
Ginger
Digby
Matey
Millie
Mary
All is well. Ginger let Matey know who is boss, basically by pissing all over him. There’s a touch of the Germanic to our Ginger.
Mary still won’t let Matey off the lead, and hence won’t let me walk him as she knows I will. This is mainly due to her fear of him running off to play with the snakes. L~A is insisting Mary goes to puppy training classes. I’m insisting the dog goes too.
Joan, our trusty Subaru outback, went in for a service.
I went to pick her up, expecting a huge bill, and the guy there said; “I haven’t done any of the work she needs, just the service”. I thought this may be a good thing, then he showed me the list of work she needed doing to keep her road worthy. This ran to two sides of A4. Oh fucking bollocks.
“Is there anything good at all on her?” I asked, “Well she’s got a new oil filter”, was his honest reply. The new oil filter was part of the service. We had been hoping Joan would see us out until we retire (more on this later, ) but it was not to be.
So on our next day off together, me and L~A headed down to Fyshwick, the local industrial estate, and not to look in the porn shops or brothels for a change. We’re not really car people, so car shopping is always fraught with danger. We’d agreed a top end of $3500 to spend, knowing full well that this meant $5000.
The first sales lot we went to, I was mooching about inside, getting out of the heat, and getting entirely disheartened at what $5000 would buy me. I went outside and L~A said; “Have a look at this.” I looked, nice looking motor, a “Mazda Premacy” asking price $3000.
I told L~A to leave the bargaining to me, as I’m big and mean and drive a hard bargain. I called the guy over; “We’ll have this one,” was my opening gambit. “Sold” was his. That’ll teach him that incompetent Welsh twats are not to be trifled with. We went into the office to sign our lives away.
I asked him if he’d give us anything for Joan, he said to drive her onto the yard and he’d have a look. Now, and this is God’s own truth, hand on heart, I was going to ask him for $150 for her, as I knew the scrapper would only give me $100. He looked at her, sucked his gums, (he had the worse teeth I’d seen outside of Liverpool,) and said; “Ok, your car plus $2000, deal?” I nearly ripped his arm off, we were $850 up!!! I was so shocked I nearly asked him to consider a lower offer.
So the new car, now known as ”Macy”, is turning out to be a real treat. Totally gutless, and slow, compared to old Joan, but it has lots of things that Joan didn’t. Things such as a working radio, a clock, remote central locking, and aircon. Aircon is a real treat in this summer heat, on Joan the only aircon was winding all the windows down and sweating. The rear seats come out and you can use it like a van. The one thing I cannot shake is the feeling I should be flogging ice cream from it.
How are the retirement plans coming on? Well countdown has started in earnest. I’m now, more than ever, committed to leaving Aus in feb 2018. We’re attending a “Superannuation seminar” on the first of March, and hopefully from there we’ll be able to plan with a bit more financial accuracy, if not competence.
I’ve written to HR to find out how much “long service leave” I’ve accrued, and hope to be on full pay for the first 3-4 months or my retirement. L~A also wrote to HR to ask the same question, but they cocked hers up and gave her her current “long service leave” accrual, which was not what she wanted. She was wanting to know how much she’d have as of May 2018. L~A plans to stay in Aus a few months after I leave, mainly so all the house rebuilding can be done without her getting covered in rubble.
One of the sad events that has driven my desire to return immensely, is the sad passing of my “uncle” Terry . Terry, who I mention in my mother’s passing blog post, had been suffering from heart problems, unfortunately in early January he suffered a fatal heart attack. Terry was an immense influence on me. I won’t relate again how and why, suffice to say I would not be who, I am today if not for him and his wife Noreen, they were real inspirations, and showed me that life could be lived.
RIP Terry mate, I’ll miss you.
Also, sadly, I have to say RIP to David, my aunty Anne’s husband.
So, just to end on a more cheerful note, those of you who are Facebook mates/friends, will know I run an occasional cooking thread there “Cooking with Taff”. Just to add some spice to the last one, “Green Tomato, pear and date chutney” I did it entirely nude. There were numerous complaints of “swindle” and “chicken” due to in the images for it I used an apron to cover myself, but hygiene must be considered and observed. Check the gallery for more risque shots, but don’t you dare complain, you go there of your own free will
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