For the rest of the month’s news, read on McDuff!!
It was a Sunday, and, for a change, not only was it my day off, but it was also a weekend we had Bethy with us. So then, a trip out!
Unfortunately we weren’t able to take Bethy to see “The Big Hole” and “Marble Arch”, which we would have liked to have done. She’d taken a big fall in Basketball on Friday night, and her knee not only was all the colours of the rainbow but had a “goose egg” lump on it. The walk into these quite remarkable geological features is quite tough. Shame, but at least her team had won the match. Bethy had carried on playing after her fall, fair play to her. She also scored the best basket of her playing career to date, a running steal and throw taking on three opposition players and getting through.
Anyway, saving Marble Arch and the Big Hole for another day, we settled on a trip to see another geological phenomena instead. We decided to head off to “Wee Jasper”, the hamlet which I’d visited the previous month, to see the show caves there.
So we set off.
Just down the road from us, the way down to the “Wee Jasper” road was blocked off by a cycle race. Sodding cycle Nazi’s. Anyway, we knew a detour and by going the L-O-N-G way round, found the only other way we knew to Wee Jasper was blocked off by the other end of the cycle Nazi’s fun day. By now I was furious. I was even more furious when Lee-Anne informed me that she had no recollection of her minister authorising a road closure for the race, and it was quite possibly illegal. Cursing and swearing at these selfish buggers for blocking the road, we decided to call off our trip to the caves, and to head off to Corin forest reserve for some snow fun. I was not best pleased.
Twenty kilometres further down the road we found a sign for a back road to Wee Jasper, we deliberated a while, then decided to risk it. We drove for ages, and then came a cross a sign warning us that the bloody road would be blocked for a cycle race! Fortunately for my sanity, there was yet another cut through to the main Wee Jasper route, one which avoided the cycle race. If there hadn’t have been one I wouldn’t have cared for the chances of any cyclist I came across.
The countryside on route to Wee Jasper is quite wonderful, it looks like England did before the industrial revolution. Only with gum trees instead of oaks. And sunshine. We passed many homesteads, small holdings, and farms to where, given half a chance we would move into in a flash. However with the limitations of us both having to work, and Bethy having to get to school, this is not yet possible. Also my plan is still to end up within pissing distance, (ok 10 minutes drive max,) of the sea when we settle down for early retirement.
We didn’t dally on our way, we even passed the little store in Wee Jasper despite us being quite peckish, and drove on the extra six K to the caves.
On our approach we almost ran down a flock of sheep, which Bethy and Lee-Anne claim were goats. They can’t tell me I don’t know the difference between sheep and goats. I’m Welsh, and we know our sheep. Intimately…
We got to the caves at 12.45 and found there was a tour going around at 1.30. Neat. There we a few others lined up and waiting, so we waited.
..and waited…
…and waited…
At nearly two o’clock a party emerged, blinking in the light, from the caves . The first people of this party were a Middle Eastern group, amongst whom was a kid who was howling his head off. The tour guide, a “Jolly Jack Tar” looking guy, who seemed to be auditioning for the role of Captain Birdseye, came over, and, sotto voce said; “That bloody kid didn’t stop crying from start to finish!” Scared of the dark perhaps?
The guy took our money, and we had a look around the small, quaint, exhibitions in his shop. Amongst the leaflets for the caves and other local attractions were lots, and I mean LOTS, of leaflets for the “Beyond Blue” depression service. Going underground with a depressive? That should be a bundle of laughs.
But he rounded us up, and we set off. Not very far in in fact, as he sat down outside the caves, and launched into what was the first of many lengthy explanations on the local geological phenomena, lengthy and detailed, very lengthy, very, very, lengthy and detailed, and detailed, and lengthy. Do you get my drift here?
The funny thing was that Lee-Anne had mentioned I was Welsh, so he kept making “jokes” about my Welshness, and asking “I’m not talking too fast for you am I?” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that, as I had forgotten to bring my hearing aids with me, I could hardly hear a bloody thing he was saying in any case.
But we eventually got into the caves, and despite his lectures, the tour was surprisingly wonderful, the features far grander than I had expected for a small local cave, and the whole thing was well worth the wait. See the gallery.
I did wonder if the rest of the group found our whispered; “They were sheep!” “They were goats!” “They were sheep!!” debate, which continued and echoed the whole way round the tour, a bit odd.
The funniest thing was that Captain Pugwash had to nip out half way through our tour, as he was now behind time for the three o’clock tour. He found some people outside waiting for it, so he brought them in to join us!!
We drove home, only stopping at the Wee Jasper shop to buy a bag of crisps each off the surly looking bint behind the counter. (Here’s a hint love, if you find serving customers a chore, try taking up designing cathedrals or writing violin concertos for a living instead.) Fortunately, by the time we reached the outskirts of Canberra the cycle race had finished. Even more fortunately there were no cyclists around for me to run off the road.
Oh dear, it’s school holidays here, and further sign that our little girl is growing up, and I’m growing old, is that we’re leaving her “home alone” for the first time. She’s a responsible kid, and due to my shifts, she’s only alone from 12.00 noon til her mother gets home at about 5.30-6.00 pm. I phone her a couple of time’s each day (normally to be told “Sod off I’m trying to watch “Lord of the rings” and you’re spoling it”.) She’s on e-mail too. Her grandmother is the one suffering most, as normally Bethy would be with her for these holiday days. But she’s been phoning Bethy with offers (bribes) of lunch out, movies, and shopping trips, and Bethy’s succumbed on occasion (out of a sense of duty one suspects).
The weather has been cold, very bloody cold, which is quite nice. The mornings are chilly and we’ve had the first snows of the season. The other day I was due to present a client for reallocation to another team. I went in nice and early, and, probably just to get shot of me, they allowed me to be the first to present at the meeting. So I sodded off early too. As it was a bright crisp morning, with some lovely cloud about I decided to drive to my office the “scenic” route. Fortunately I had my camera in my “manbag”. The further down the scenic route I got, the more spectacular the sky got. So I high tailed it up to Mt. Stromlo observatory, the rebuilt observatory which was a victim of the Canberra bushfires. The views from the top, (I hope you’ll agree,) were well worth my missing a half hour of work for. I’ll make it up to them sometime.
Hang about, as I’m writing this, I’m at work on the seventh day of an “eight days without a break”, stretch of shifts. Sod them then, I think they can eat that “lost” half hour.
I’m doing such a long stint of shifts as Debs, my colleague, has a “old school chums reunion” this weekend. Basically it’s her and her mates getting together at someones house and getting pissed. The nice thing about me swapping shifts with her is that next week I get six days on the trot off, without using any of my holiday allowance, so we’re off down the coast for a break. Not that I need to save my holiday allowance, I’m owed 396 hours (roughly 9 ½ weeks) annual leave, and I’ve still got access to 468 hrs (roughly 12 weeks) personal leave.
This weekend, what a laugh. (Probably not for you)
Lee-Anne accompanied me to work, this being a Saturday, as she was having our car for the day. Not far out from the house we noticed a rumble form the back wheels. “Bloody wheel bearing on it’s way out, just what we need before a trip to the coast. Lucky the old beast is booked in for a service on Tuesday in any case”, says I. “How much extra will that set us back?” “About another $250 or so,” I guestimated.
We stop outside my office, and I stroll around the car, Just to check. Rear nearside tyre is as flat as a pancake, not a bloody shot wheel bearing at all then. So we pull over to a quiet spot and I grunt and groan, and swear and sweat, and get black stuff all over me, and get the awful thing changed. In my work clothes. Anyway, at least we had the tools to do the job, oh, and a fully inflated spare. Quite a novelty for me that. So I go up to the office, and am cursing, swearing, generally being an arse and being my usual hyperbolic self about cars, fate, bills, bloody life, etc, when I notice my colleague de jour, Kris, is looking rather bemused at me. “I had a bit of a problem with my car last night,” she relates, “as I was leaving work at ten past nine I saw someone driving off in it!”
Puts my problems squarely in place, doesn’t it?
She then had to call the cops, the insurers. Not only that but she had to call our Glorious Team Leader, to get authorisation for her to take the works car home, cross the border into NSW. Kris also tells me: she tells me; “I had only just put 75 dollars worth of petrol in the bloody thing!” (Thus doubling the value of her car!!) Talk about adding insult to injury! J
Poor old Kris.
Oh, this week we had bills for heating gas ($550), electricity ($320), internet ($110), accommodation down the coast ($550), car service and new tyre ($300), credit card ($1300) which took a bit of the gloss off the $4000 tax rebate I got.
Sometimes I doubt my sanity. Well in fact most of the time, truth be told. I’m on an evening shift here, and I’ve just popped over to the local supermarket to pick up some bits and bobs for home. While there I felt a bit peckish, so I was checking out what was in the “reduced” bin. “Whistlers Snacks” took my fancy; “full of crunchy rye, wheat and corn goodness, a wholegrain food”, sounds fine. I was half way to the till before I realised I was buying myself budgie treats for supper.
Oh, I just got a call from a rather pleased with herself Bethany, it would appear she got 100% in her maths test, the only one in the class to get full marks. Well done her!
This morning I was doing the dog walk thing at the pinnacle when something rather marvelous happened. The dogs were off chasing rabbits and stuff, and I was alone. As I stood there five magpies landed in a circle around me and started singing to me. I was enthralled, magpies are the most glorious of singing birds. I could have stayed there all day, but then Barunum came back to me and they flew away. I later worked out why they did it, but that still doesn’t stop it being a magical treat.
Here’s a magpie I filmed singing, from when we were down the coast a while back.
There’s basketball trials coming up, and due to date of birth things our Bethy will now be competing in the under 16’s. At the tender age of thirteen.
Ok, so it’s a frosty morning, and we need to walk the dogs. We decide on the Cork forest walk. We drive down there and the car park, which is normally empty, has a car or two in it. Not only that but it has Lee-Anne’s boss there too. Apparently Lee-Anne’s Minister is unveiling a plaque dedicating this rest area to the people who built the new extension to the bloody road way thing. Or some such nonsense. Anyway we did the dog walk and got back in time to see the grand unveiling. I met “The Min”, as Lee-Anne calls him , and he commiserated with me for being married to her. The sarky git. I also got to meet Lee-Anne’s work collegues who were all there getting brownie points (brown nosing) for good behaviour.
The mother-in-law has gone off to another “Masters Athletics championship” way up north. I keep wanting to kid Lee-Anne that it’s an excusse for a big piss up and orgy, but it’s just too horrible a thought to contemplate. The concequence of this is that we have use of her car. The downside of it is we have to look after her bloody Staffy pup, “Meech”. Meech is a lovely dog, but is full of boundless energy, and just will not stop chasing my poor mutt about the house, no matter how much I belt her. She’s bloody exausting.
Then I get a phone call at work, to tell me that, while we were at work, Meech had tried burrowing her way into Mr Boring’s, (our pain in the arse next door neighbour’s) garden. She had got stuck half way through the fence, and had howled the bloody neighbourhood down. Oh deep joy.
Yesterday we had one of the inevitable “in service training” days, that management in their wisdom have made compulsory*. It was on HoNoS.
Anyway, the guy taking it wasn’t too bad a presenter, even if it was mostly a case of stating the bleeding obvious. It came to the point where we had to do a case study, and mark off a Honos scale against the case presented. The case was of a 18 year old schizophrenic lad in relapse.
So we watched the movie, and marked our scales, and then we had to compare them against the “best practice” marks given for this case by the experts. We were all doing fair to middling until it came to this item;
5: Physical illness or disability problems
0 = no problem within the period rated
1 = sub-threshold problem
2 = mild but definitely present
3 = moderately severe
4 = severe to very severe
Now this lad had, during the period rated, accidentally fallen down some steps, and had fractured his right wrist which was now in plaster and painfull.
“Ok,” says the presenter, “the expert team rates this as 1, do we all agree?”
The inevitable Welsh voice chips in with; “4!”
So he then goes on to say, that even though its painful, it’s not debilitating, and the client had admitted that even though it was his dominant hand, he could cope in most of his activities of daily living, so it should be rated 1.
“No way, it’s a 4!”
So again, he patiently, explains that these experts had rated it 1, so we should really, be looking to that for guidance, unless we have really good reason to think otherwise.
“I do have really good reason to think otherwise. I can still remember what I was like at that age, and losing most of the use of my dominant hand would have been devastating”.
All around the room, most of the blokes, and a good few of the women, start latching onto my drift.
Giggling starts.
So me and him banter a bit more, and one of my mates actually has to leave the room, as he’s spluttering so much.
Then until he the presenter, finally, latches on.
Going a deep red, he states; “I don’t think the panel would have taken your line of thinking into consideration.”
Me; “Well they should be bloody better informed then. If I’d lost the use of me wanking spanner at that age, it would have been devastating!!”
She won’t thank me for this, but many happy returns to our dear friend Janet, who hit the “Big Five Zero” this month.
That’s about it for this month old beans, thanks for reading. And thanks to all my British chums, who took the bloody hint on last month’s front page, and actually got around to replying!
Keep the mails coming! Now go read about our holiday.
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