Well how can I put this? The month started off with the sort of cock up that even I find gobsmacking, one which would make my mother despair of me. (Luckily she’s scared of the internet, and is about as likely to take up nude Macarena dancing as to read my shite on here.)

It was a Sunday and Bethy was at her fathers. I managed to persuade Lee-Anne into coming out for a drive in the countryside, so I could practice using my new camera, and she could practice being bored.  Our local shop had had a Canberra wine on offer, it was rather nice. So we decided to take a drive out to the vineyard and to buy a crate of it. “That’ll save us a few bob!”

The day got off to an auspicious start when I got us, as is inevitable, lost. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but I got us lost in the suburb of Gungahlin. Yes, I got us lost without ever leaving the city. Gungahlin is boring enough a place to be a double for hell, trust me on this.

We eventually got to Lake George, so I could take some shots. Lake George is a lovely place. It’s huge (25K by 10k) and surrounded by hills, and has a perfectly flat bottom, with a view that stretches to the horizon. The only thing it doesn’t have is water in it; hence it’s nick-name “Paddock George.” Mind you if it ever did fill up it’ll be like an inland sea.

After getting to the Lake, remarkably, it didn’t take us long to find the vineyard. It wasn’t what I had expected. I had expected a cheery farmer flogging bottles of wine over a farm gate; you know a bucolic alcoholic dispensing vino form a large vat.

What I got was a very posh, high-priced, restaurant, a HUGE vat/fermentation room, and a very well set out commercial venture, run by a smartly dressed man and lots of young waitresses. Oh, and some vines.

We umm’d and ahh’d over which wines to buy, and in the end someone said; “Two of those, two of those, and two of those.” So we got our purchases boxed up, paid by card, and left. When we got to the car I asked Lee-Anne, “Did we save much?”

She looked at the receipt. “Not exactly, no”.

Not exactly…. by quite a long shot actually. We should have asked the prices before making our selection. I hadn’t mentioned we forgot to do that, had I? The total for the half a dozen bottles?

Guess…

Nope, more…

Much more..

In fact we had just purchased $263.00 worth of wine.  ($200 US/£130/$205 CAN) Six bottles. Six fucking bottles.

Seeing as two of the bottles were modestly priced at $30.00 each, you can calculate the cost of the others. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. So I laughed. We contemplated taking them back and saying; “Sorry, we’ve just been bankrupted, can we have our money back?    Please?”

But neither of us had the face to. And both of us, unspokenly, were looking forward to trying a $65.00 bottle of plonk.

You’ll have to wait to find out how good or bad they were as we’ve not had the guts to open one yet.

One day, as I had a spare hour I called into Floriade to take some snaps. Not very impressive this year I’m sad to report. Or maybe I’m just getting used to it?  A mark of how not good it was, is that I only took about 40 photos there.

But whilst there I visited the traders stalls, and found The Chilli Factory. I bought some of this off them. Bloody hell fire! I tried it next morning as I was cooking me and Lee-Anne a “full English”, (as a reward for services rendered.)

It blew my fucking head off. Highly recommended.

While at work the other day I had this brief conversation on the phone..

Her: “I need to come in and talk about American dollar exchange rates”

Me: “Sure, how mad are you?”

Her; “I beg your pardon”

Me: “This is mental health services”.

Her: “You were the Commonwealth Bank five minutes ago.”

Me: “Perhaps you should come in.”

Her: “Are you sure this isn’t the Commonwealth bank”.

Me: “Are you sure you don’t need a mental health assessment?”

Her: click…

Ok, how come when good things come up, they always come up at the same time?

On Saturday September the 13 th. Bethy had her basketball club’s presentation dinner, there was a weekend camping trip with her scout troop on offer, her father’s friend, Sara, was staying at his place, and she’d been invited to a birthday sleep-over at her friend Suzie’s.

Unfortunately it was also the night we had bought tickets for Bill Bailey’s “Tinselworm” show at Canberra centre. Which to choose, which to choose? Well seeing as the tickets for Bill were …not cheap… and Bethy’s his number one fan, there wasn’t much doubt. She also got to see Sara during the day, and agreed to turn up at Suzie’s for the sleep-over after the show.

And how was Bill you may ask? He was excellent, a wonderful evening’s entertainment that had us rolling in the isle with laughter. He spent two and a half hours on stage, including encores, good value.  Here’s a review. His musical interludes and use of screen projection were very clever. Don’t ask me to tell any of his funnies though, it doesn’t work like that, especially as his stuff is “stream of consciousness”, (Rehearsed and scripted I know.)

He threw in some topical stuff, and stuff on Canberra, which was heartening. The nice thing was, as he said himself; “I don’t do swearies, its so self limiting”, so Bethy was “protected” from that. There’s a lesson there for someone.

I put my fucking back out. You know I’m always bladdering on about 5.30 am gym sessions, shifting weights like Arnold, wandering up and down hills with the dogs, keeping fit and all that crap? Well, guess how I put my back out?

Emptying the dishwasher.

I kid you not. One moment I was shifting plates into the cupboard,  then the next two days were spent lying on the living room floor with the dog trying to lick my face.

It was Lee-Anne’s birthday the other day. We had a nice meal in celebration, prepared by Bethy. She made us sushi which is always a favourite, and we drank some nice wine. Though not the bloody expensive wine we had bought the week before. I  phoned up my sister, as it’s her birthday three days before Lee-Anne’s. Although rather it’s not, it’s three days after Lee-Anne’s birthday, as Louise informed me.

One of Lee-Anne’s birthday treats was a trip whale watching, although this was really a treat for us all, and a way of Lee-Anne getting out of having presents.  (Though I did get her the “Catweazle” series on DVD, as a surpise. Remember that show?)

I managed to get a whole week off work while only using two days leave, which was good. Though what the fuck I’m going to do with all the leave I’ve got saved up is anyone’s guess. I’ve got 49 days leave to use by February, and access to another 56 days “personal leave”. I’ll retire now then shall I?

Oh, on the subject of holidays, we’ve booked our flight tickets and a campervan, for our New Zealand jaunt, I can’t wait.

So we booked some digs at this place, and set off on the Wednesday morning. Actually it was nearly Wednesday afternoon by the time we set off as Suzie, Bethy’s mate, was a little bit late joining us. (Not her fault, her mother’s partner’s cock up.) I’d thrown the first major sulk for the day when they told me I couldn’t fly my welsh flag from my car. But seeing as I was the only one travelling down in our car, they eventually relented. I wangled a great deal for me for the trip, their car had Lee-Anne, Bethy, Mary (mother in law) and Suzie in it. Mine had me and the three dogs. Result!

We found the digs, and a real treat they were too, spacious, well equipped, and got ourselves snuggled in. You can see the sea from the front balcony, it’s over there between the land and the sky. (quoth he)

We took a walk on the beach, got lost, spent an age looking at not much, then found our way home. I rang the whale watching people; “It’s not looking good for tomorrow, give us a bell at 6.30 am”. This was a bit of a bugger, as we were 2 hours drive from the port, and would have to set off at 6.00 am to get there by the required 8.00 am. This means we’d be phoning them after a 5.00 wake up, getting all ready, leaving the house at 6.00 am, and driving for ½ an hour, to potentially be told; “nothing doing today.”

And you know what my luck is like.

We were up at 5.00 am, I walked the dogs and watched the sunrise. We locked the dogs in the yard and drove off at 6.00. At 6.30 Lee-Anne tried ringing them. No signal.

After many more attempts at calling them, at 7.00 am, and many, many, kilometres down the road, she got a reply at last, and for a change our luck was with us.

We arrived and boarded, the sea was looking rough. Despite a very rough start, the sea swell lessened later,  so we had a great day’s watching, seeing many whales. We saw the first mother and calf spotted that season! We also saw humpback whales feeding, which is a very impressive sight to say the least, see the gallery.  Poor old Suzie had a bit of  mixed time, part whale watching, part seagull feeding. Though she wasn’t as badly done in as one young lad, who stuck his head in a sick bag the moment we left the port, and didn’t look up until we docked again.

Suzie approached me, in between her looking at whales, and loosing her breakfast; “I’ve got some great shots of the whales, want to see?” Of course I had to humour her, here was me with a SLR with a bloody long lens, and a her with her neat little compact. Bless! I couldn’t believe my eyes, her shots were first class, with close-ups, supurb detail, wonderful colour, intimate, professional looking, whale snaps. Far better than my shots. She’d even caught one of a whale leaping full length from the water next to the boat! Hang about? We haven’t had any whales leaping out of the water next to the boat! (up to that point we hadn’t, we did later)

The crafty little bugger had taken snaps of the images in the calendar they were hawking on the boat!

I was talking to an elderly Indian gent on the way back; “Nice looking camera you’ve got there,” he said. “They’re great these are aren’t they these digital ones, you don’t have to worry about the cost of developing. I’ve taken 75 shots, how may have you taken?”

Errrmmm… “Nearly 600.”

Well you don’t get to see whales that often, and I have an 8 gig chip in the camera, so why not?

So we got back and chilled out.

The next day we visited Mogo Mining town, which was a bit crap to be honest. But we did some panning for gold, and watched the dragonflies dance on the pond, and looked at the historic exhibits. The girls found out you could have a “WANTED” poster made with you dressed up in period costume. And so that was a must. They got dolled up in the dresses offered, and a little old biddy took some snaps. They had a choice of what they wanted to be “WANTED” for. They chose; “WANTED FOR SOLICITING AND LEWDNESS”. Ok.

On the way back we stopped at a “Traditional Lolly Shop” (Lolly = sweets UK = candy US) Whilst perusing amongst, and despite all the nice, interesting and wonderful lollys there, I was tempted into buying some “Triple Salted Dutch Liquorice”.

Guess what? It tasted like liquorice, but very, very, salty liquorice, in other words, fucking vile. There’s a surprise. Oh I’m still working my way through the bag. It’s not growing on me.

For an idea of what the rest of the week was like, watch this short clip I shot of the weather from Tuross Headland, (the place we were staying at.)

Great in other words. I love walking on the beach in gale force winds and rain, with me waterproofs and dogs. The dogs don’t like it much, but fuck’em. Also it’s not so much fun for the rest of our crew. But they found ways of enjoying themselves, and did come out gale hanging with me to blow the cobwebs away whenever they felt the mood.  We had three days of that.

One of the ways they entertained themselves was playing “Guitar hero” on Suzie’s Wii. Have you seen this game?

It’s played with a guitar shaped controller, with five (why 5?) buttons on the neck, and one (why 1?) “string simulator” to pluck. Nothing like playing a guitar then. Anyway, to “play” this, you mimic the changes of buttons on a “guitar” neck on the screen, in time (but not tune) with a chosen song.

All a bit strange and not a little daft.

Anyway they wouldn’t let me have a go, so no wonder I’m down on it. To get my own back I sung along with the tunes they were playing. That’s very cruel of me I know. “Anarchy in the UK” was the one I sung which resulted in the most violence being unleashed on me.

“I am an anti-ch-r-i-i-i-s-t!!” They really, really, really hated that one.

When we got home it was nice to find the weather was like this (filmed from our front porch.)

Oh god that’s enough of this. Drop me a line and tell me how much you hated it. Or leave a comment below.

Taff