Before we start, a big shout out to Charlie and Babara, who are giving up sex  getting married at the end of the month. Congratulations to them both.

Ok, here’s something that will take a bit of patience/understanding on your part, but bear with me as it’s a doozy. This is the verbatim(ish) transcript of a debate I was involved in on an online forum

 

Lemming: What is worse than 8 out of 10 cats?

Thundercat;  Off the top of my head: Burglars who steal your stuff then shit on your floor. Standing on an upturned plug in your bare feet. Seeing blood on the toilet paper after you’ve wiped your arse. Chest pains, and a tightness down your left arm.

Me; “Seeing blood on the toilet paper after you’ve wiped your arse.” I see that most mornings. Emma’s.

 

At which point “Thundercat” went ballistic and sent me a series of threatening e-mails. It took a while to calm him down, but, to be fair to the geezer, once he realised the cause of the misunderstanding, he admitted to being responsible for the farrago.

Here’s his email to me in apology;

“Emma’s” haha. Seriously thought – spent a few minutes thinking “who the f**k is this, and how does he know me / the missus” See, my wife is called Emma. For a second I thought you had found out some personal information and were being a bit offensive. What’s the chances of that, eh? Then I worked out the piles references*. haha. Later potater.

 

*Emma’s = Emma Freud’s = Hemorrhoids

 

Matt Abbott, who some of you may know and are probably owed money by, wrote a comment on the last blog entry; “Concerned Adult said; Why do you write so much?” To which I had to reply; “Just to fucking annoy you. It’ll be easier for you to understand if you get someone to help you with the long words. ”

The idea of Matt being “concerned?” Little chance. The idea of him acting like an “adult?” Fuck all.

But seriously, why? Well partially  in the hope that somebody will read it and gain a little light humour from it. Also partially so that people back in Blighty will remember I exist and keep in touch. A good sound reason though is, when you drink as much as I do, the old memory gets a regular washing, and facts don’t tend to stick very well. With the help of this blog though I can now recall what I was up to in, for example, September 2007.  Not much, is the only honest answer.

So, that’s why I write it, why do you read it? Answers please via the comments box below.

So we went up to Sydney again, no great tales from this, but a classic example of how we have a “role reversed” family.  We’d booked into our favourite cheap apartment block in Newtown. I drove us up in Brandon’s car, as it’s better than mine. (Our Subaru aka “Old Greg” is on its last legs, and may have to be replaced soon.) We got there around threeish and checked in.

After resting and a cuppa, we decided to split up into couples and go our own ways,  shopping in the funky shops of Newtown.  I did argue that me and Brandon should go off shopping in the many record shops there, leaving Bethy and Lee-Anne to go clothes hunting, but the girls wouldn’t have it. Which probably saved us a whole bunch of cash. Bethy and Brandon (B1 & B2) went one way, us two the other.

I bought a couple of books off a tramp stall, and then said to Lee-Anne; “fancy a beer?” So we hit the bars. We texted B1 & B2 to let them know which bar we were in, so as to meet up for tea. To be honest we were already a bit pissed by the time they caught up with us, as we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. We cruised a few more bars, and found Zanzibar. They did half decent pub grub, so we pitched in, fish and chips, lovely. Having laid a base down, me and Lee-Anne carried on drinking while B1 & B2 went off shopping again. We met up for the gig later at the Enmore.

Russell Howard was very very funny, far more near the knuckle than his TV persona, and quite physical. He did quite a bit of topical Aussie stuff too, which endeared him to the audience, (not that he needed endearing to Lee-Anne and Bethy, they were …smitten… by his boyish good looks.) His support act Harley Breen not only held his own, but would be well worth seeing should he tour headlining.

Oh, here’s a tip, when taking “selfies” at gigs, make sure your t-shirt displays the whole logo, not just a bit of it.

So after the show, B1 & B2 headed back to the digs, (probably for the boning,) and me and Lee-Anne hit the bars again. We were happy to be out in such a young and vibrant place, and a bit sad that Canberra has no equivalent, (which is probably why we never go out these days.)  After midnight we found ourselves, utterly shitfaced, stuffing ourselves with the sort of  Turkish café grub, which is only eaten, and definitely only enjoyed, after liberal refreshment. We back got to our accommodation very, very late We thought at the time that this was not bad for two people who are normally in bed by 9.30 pm most nights.

The next morning we woke with stinking hangovers, suffering badly. We dressed and showered, and headed to our favourite breakfast café, “Café C”. There I stuffed myself on smoked salmon, asparagus hollandaise with toast and hash browns, and drank gallons of tea in the vain hope of stopping the jackhammers in my head. Despite this gluttony Bethy wouldn’t let me drive back, mainly due to my unshiftable, profound and enduring hangover being rather evident to all, and she insisted that she drove us home from Sydney to Canberra.

Parents go out, get on the booze late afternoon, go to comedy gig, get even more pissed after,  stay up late, and end up eating Turkish at midnight, thus earning killer hangovers the next day.

Kids go shopping, go to gig, then go home early. The next day they wake up bright and breezy and in a fit state to drive 177 miles / 285 km home.

Now, is that role reversal or what?

One thing nice which did happen while we were in Sydney, was that Bethy spotted a leaflet for a theatre performance. As you will know from your regular devouring of my monthly missive, (that sounds pervy, ) Bethy is a big fan of David Suchet’s “Poirot” series, and owns them all on DVD. David Suchet is touring the world with his “Last Confessions” play, which unfortunately is not a “Poirot” play, but fortunately is coming to Sydney. We’ve got tickets of course, and  bless,  Bethy still gets all squirmy at the thought of seeing the great man in the flesh. (She has strange taste.)

 

So our new sofas arrived, and very nice they are too.

We were out at the place we bought them from, “Plush Sofas,” hoping to arrange a suitable delivery time, when I noticed something that made me hit the roof.  Since we had ordered and paid for ours, only then had they decided to have a “Two for the price of one,” sale! The BASTARDS!!!

I was hunting for some matches and petrol, just for a mild case of arsonism you understand, when her indoors pointed something out to me. The sofas we had bought for $1100 each, were now retailing at $2300 each, with another coming “gratis”. Or in other words, by buying before the “2 4 1” sales, we had saved $100. How the fuckers get away with it I don’t know.

Our biggest dilemma came when it was the first time to leave our boys, Digby and Ginger, alone at home with the new sofas. They had already eaten our last sofa, but as that had been made of leather, they thought it was the world’s biggest chew toy.  In their defense, “they are older and more mature now” said Lee-Anne. Hmmmm…

Meet “Enbury” (geddit Jamesy? Neil? Mark?) Enbury is a brand new doggie chew toy, not a cheap one, and one guaranteed to give your doggy lots of fun play times.

Meet Enbury 2  minutes after Digby and Ginger got hold of it.

Enbury is made of cloth, just like our new sofas.

So far, we’ve taken teh precaution of covering the new sofas in protective throws, each and every time we go out leaving the dogs home alone.  Using these throws sort of negates the reasons for buying bloody expensive new furniture in the first place, so; “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” as Johnny Frog would have it. (That’ll annoy Clarkie, hopefully.)

I bought a head torch. (BFD I hear you say.) Ok, the reason I bought a head torch is that sunset is now at 5.00 pm, and if I’m working a day shift I don’t walk the dogs until 5.45 pm, ( i.e. in the pitch black.) So I bought one of these. It’s kicks out 200 lumens which is 4 x more than most head-torches, and thus I’m able to walk the dogs on their normal walks in the bush, with less chance of breaking an ankle, or being devoured by Yowies.

The first time I used it, we were walking at the Pinnacle nature reserve. I was able to track the dogs by the reflections off their eyes, which was quite handy. Then I noticed Digby was 30 foot up in a  tree. “Fuck me that’s clever, how did he get up there?” It didn’t take long for me to notice, (I’m not totally stupid, ) that it wasn’t Digby, but a rather startled possum.  We saw about a dozen possums by the light of the torch that nigh, lovely, I luv possums. So the next night I took my camera along as well. Obviously possums are smarter than the average Welshman, so that night I didn’t see any. Obviously they’d all sodded off to other parts of the bushland, in order to avoid being blinded again by the daft Welshman with the searchlight on his head. Nor were there any about the next night. Nor the next. Eventually I managed to snap this slow bugger by torchlight, (this the real reason for this ramble

.

 

While I’m jabbering on about matters photographic, we were supposed to be experiencing a blood moon here in Canberra, something thrilling at last!  I’d seen one before, but this one was happening on my day off, so I was in the hope of getting a photo of it, just another one  to bore you with you understand. So on the night in question, I made my way up to the viewing platform on Telstra Tower. I was not alone, the platform was crowded with photo-geeks, half of whom were freezing to death as their mothers hadn’t dressed them warmly enough for the night.

(My camera is the one on it’s own on the tripod.)

I nearly gave one Asian kid my jacket, he was so cold he was turning blue, and as he was Asian he was currently going through several shades of  green. (Is that racist?)

As when any bunch of photographers gather, “lens envy” was very much in evidence. I was doing quite well with my 70-300 mm Canon, until someone came along with a Tokina 500 mm, a lens so big it needed it’s own tripod mount. The wanker. I damn nearly put my 2 x tele-converter on, to take me up to 600 mm, but it doesn’t make the lens any physically bigger, so I just wept quietly. For the uninitiated into photography geek stuff, lenses to photographers are, think of it this way; they are seen in the same way your cock is seen at a swingers party. It’s not what you can do with it that counts, it’s how big and impressive it looks to the rest of those present.

So, do I need to tell you what happened? Of course, the sky to the south remained under 100% cloud cover all evening, while the rest of the sky was azure. I took this nice snap of the city by night, tried to prize the Asian guy’s camera from his icy fingers, and left.

There’s another one coming up in August. Though as I’d need to be up early Monday morning at 4:09 am,  just  to say I have photographed a ‘Super Moon’,  I’ll not bother trying for a snap that one then.

BTW this is what you can end up with if your hat blows off while you are firing off a  snap of the the autumn colour. Rather nice I thought.

 

Pondicherry mackerel is now my new specialty on the home cooking front. I got Rick Stein’s “India” book out of the library, in the hope that Lee-Anne would make me loads of nice spicy things from it. On my day off though I decided to have a crack myself, and the results were so good I made it two days on the trot. Here’s the recipe, it’s dead simple, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to cook it.

 

On the subject of food, here’s an email I got from Lee-Anne one day;

Lol. Brandon isn’t eating with us tonight. I told him there was a “shank here with his name on it.”  Meaning … “I have extra lamb shank, one is yours.” Beth thought it was ‘threatening’ , as in a prison shank.

Bethy too has been pushing the boat out in the kitchen, though far more spectacularly than I can. Here’s what she did for Lee-Anne for mother’s day
(All “finger food”)

– Gyoza (prawn and tofu) and (pork amd ginger)
– Sushi (salmon, avocado and lettuce)
– Miso
– Agedashi (lightly fried tofu)
– Tempura prawns and veg.
– Scallop ceviche
– Noodle salad.
And Tiramasu for desert

 

 

 

Our landlord, Vinod, has lost the plot. Remember this debacle?

The windows in our living room had been loose in the frame for some time, and were only held in by gaffa tape. I was going to fix them myself, but had a look, and seeing that they were only held in by prayer and good luck, decided that it was a job for a professional. It was almost half way through winter, and we were bloody freezing before we (I) actually got around to doing anything about it. I emailed our landlord, and he said that I should get some quotes and he’d pay for the repairs. It was only after a few weeks that anyone was prepared to give us a quote, as most people were only interested in replacing the windows, not just resealing them.

 

Well again we found ourselves heading into the rainy/thunderstorm season, and now all six of the windows on the front of the house were hanging out off their frames. All of them, every bloody window. Rather than contract people in to do the job, I wrote to Vinod offering him the chance to pay a mint to get them fixed, or to sub me to do the work.

Amazingly, he chose the cheap option, (me!) Probably not remembering that doing so  would probably be more expensive in the long run.

Well I actually managed to do all of them, that’s half a dozen big windows, for less than $120,00, and without falling off a ladder and breaking a leg, or even smashing any of the panes. I sent him some photos of them, he replied; “Thanks. Please feel free to get any other material required for the repairs. Also please perform other repairs around the house as you see fit. I would be very happy to reimburse you for the expenses.”

Ha! Carte blanche to do any repairs I like. That could get painful and expensive!!

 

Bethy asked me the other day; “Taff can you cast an eye over my first psychology essay before I hand it in?” Of course, what with me having nearly thirty years of clinical experience in mental health, and being something of a renaissance man of the dark arts of psychology, I was only too glad to share my expertise with Bethy. In fact I was very touched that she had asked me too.

So I read it. The title;  “Lateralisation of Language Processing in Lexical Decision Tasks”.

It flew straight over my head like a 747 at full bore, I couldn’t understand a bloody word of it. I made some minor grammatical corrections, and slunk away with my tail between my legs.

 

Remember I was bumping my gums about this;

While Bethy was away, Brandon came home from work one evening and said; “I’ve been asked to go do some contract work by my boss, so I’ll be away for a week or so.“ “Where is it?” asked Lee-Anne  “South Australia”. Ok, so the poor lad, at four hours notice was being told he had to pack up and piss off to do a contract a couple of thousand kilometers away.

 

The other day he came home and informed us he’d was being sent away on yet another contract. This time to Alice Springs! That’s 1,662 miles / 2,675 km away from us, literally more than the distance from London to Moscow.  Christ alive, he’s only a couple of years into his apprenticeship, and their trusting him with the whole troubleshooting department of CSIRO’s Alice Springs research department’s network!  Not only that, but they were putting him up at the Alice Springs Hilton. Jammy bugger.

 

For Mary’s recent 80th birthday we treated her to a meal at “Courgette”. This was our second visit to Courgette ,and it’s changed a bit since we were there last.

On the plus side they have great decor, with a nice ambiance. Like it’s sister restaurant “Water’s Edge’ which we adore, it now has “Price fixe” menu with a good range of choices, including a vegetarian choice for each of the four courses, (wonders never cease!) The bloody food was sublime, with great detail to presentation, well worth their “one hat” status, possibly worth two.

Here’s what I had (look away now Nicol and Jen,)

1. Snowy river rainbow trout, tempura scampi, tomato and basil, olive oil, wasabi, ocean trout pearls.

2. Roasted beetroot, English stilton, witlof and pear salad, salted walnut, caramelised onions with toasted brioche.

3. Pan seared baby snapper, prawn raviolo, smoked salmon, avruga caviar sauce crème.

Sides; Paris mash & Asparagus with eschalot and ginger.

4. Cheese and bickies ($4 supplement!) Buche D’affinois, Mauri gorgonzola, Pont-l’Évêque, Cabots Trail (this was, beautifully presented, a bit OTT if anything!)

 

Oh heaven, they had a SUPERB whisky choice, including numbered, limited edition, cask strengths. (Canberra restaurants are normally a let down in this respect.) I sampled some of these, natch, despite the cost. Brandon, tried one.  I should have explained to him what “cask strength” means before he took a gulp. He may have tried more if I had.

The only downside of the place was the seats were uncomfortable. Seeing as sitting is a main part of any meal, this was (literally) a pain in the arse,.

Well worth the reasonable prices, (5 covers, $650.00 inc drinks.) I still prefer their sister restaurant, “Water’s Edge,” if only for the lakeside setting, but for a city block restaurant Courgette make the best of it

 

Mary’s birthday gift also came to give us one of the sort of headaches only we can acquire. On the birthday itself Lee-Anne gave her a Celtic broach, one we had bought in Ireland last year,  and she seemed quite pleased with it, wearing it everywhere for days. It was as a surprise during her birthday meal that we gave her her real present, an ipad 4.

Why an ipad 4? Well for weeks prior to her birthday she had been wittering on, and dropping unsubtle hints about her intent to buy one, as; “Betty’s got one, and she’s stupid. So if she can have one and use it I want one.”  (Yes, she really does have a friend called Betty!)

Questions about why she wanted one were met firstly with blank incomprehension, and then with; ”Oh you know, for internet stuff and that.” That would be the same “for  internet stuff and that”,  reason that you insisted on buying a top of the range laptop computer. The one you never use?  The one now known as the “desk warmer”? We decided we’d buy her one as a present, otherwise she’d only buy one herself, and  taking into account her ability to buy things of the lowest quality for the highest prices, we’d feel far better for making the saving.

So a week later, Lee-Anne gets a phone call, (at work natch,) here’s a verbatim transcription.
Lee-Anne: “Hi mum, what’s up?”
Mary: “It’s not working.”
Lee-Anne; (guessing what it referred to) “What’s wrong.?”
Mary: “The screen’s all black.”
Lee-Anne: “Have you tried pressing the white button?”
Mary: “There is no white button, the screen’s all black.”
Lee-Anne: “The white button on the case.”
Mary:  “Oh, that one …” (long silence, sounds of furious jabbing,) … “No! That does nothing.”
Lee-Anne: “Have you got it turned on?”
Mary: “How do you do that?”
Lee-Anne: “The small switch on the side.”
Mary: “I don’t like using that, it wears the battery down.”
(Does anyone remember Mrs Richards and her hearing aids on Fawlty Towers?)

Talking of Fawlty Towers, I saw this advertised the other day, and got us five tickets for it!

A 2 hour interactive production set in a restaurant where the audience are the diners who enjoy a 3 course lunch or dinner.  Faulty Towers The Dining Experience debuted in Brisbane on April 24 1997.  Since then thousands of people have enjoyed the antics of Basil, Sybil and Manuel.  This is the 5-star critically acclaimed production constantly in demand throughout the Australia, Europe, United Kingdom, Ireland, Scandinavia …

Sounds a hoot, we cannot wait!

Oh, before I forget, and while we’re on the subject; the other day Mary was looking for her email program on the ipad, and couldn’t find it. Lee-Anne, again called in, as this was obviously a national fucking emergency again, found it in the recycle bin / trash of the ipad. Mary’s only comment: “I didn’t do that!”

Seeing as she’s the only one using it….

My mother ‘s birthday is three days after Mary’s, which is handy as Lee-Anne can remind me to get organised for it. But oh  Christ I nearly bladdered it on my Mam’s birthday! To be fair, I’d got her her gifts online and arranged for them to be delivered on or near the day.

I woke up on Saturday morning, with a nagging suspicion I’d forgot something. I was ruminating on our forthcoming meal out at Courgette that evening. “Hmmmm  Mary’s birthday meal, nice treat for her.” When; “Oh fuck it was Cynthia’s 80 th. birthday yesterday, and I haven’t rung her!!”  I had completely forgotten to ring her on the day! That is a disinheriting offense, excommunication even.

I checked online, it was  10.50 pm on Friday evening back in the UK, still, (just) her birthday then! I decided to risk it, I know she’s an owl rather than a lark like us,  and rang. Her first word’s to me were; “Ohh I was out having my hair done at the time you normally ring.”

So I left it at that, and didn’t disabuse her of the notion that she’d missed my earlier call her due to having been out.

 

At the office the other day our secretary Charmain was walking past me. Just for a “get out of my way” warning, she gave my stomach a slap. She stopped, looking puzzled, and gave my abs a couple of pokes with her index finger. Surprised and impressed she let out a rather loud girlie squeal; “”OoOooh Taff it’s rock hard!”
I had to remind her; “Charmain, the girls in the other cubicles cannot see which part of me you’re referring to at this point.”

 

Ok,the rest of this missive is just me bragging about my meager achievements, so you can go do something useful now.

Photography wise, it’s been a great month, here’s a couple of photos I’m really proud of; (If you really want to indulge me, click on them to go to the gallery for a full sized view.)

This sunrise one got 38 “retweets” and 62 “favourites” on “Twitter” and has gone around the world

.

This Reflections one is entered in a Canberra photographic competition. (Even Charlie said that it is “Very good!”)

 

Clarkie, bless him, had once said something nice about one of my poems,  this one; “Day’s end”.

I’ll quote him; “But my favourite is “Days End”; you really nailed it. Any climber would relate to that one; touch of “Blue Remembered Hills” in there but much more personal and much less pretentious.“

Now Clarkie, for all his faults, (and there are many,) is possibly the most educated and erudite man I know when it comes to literature and language, so to have him praise it was big kudos for me. Then one day in an online discussion, one at the climbing forums mentioned earlier, a topic on “Climbing mates- are they different to other friendships?” was started.

Plucking up courage, I posted; “More durable in my experience. The degree of trust, and the intense times shared make for powerful bonds. Here’s a poem I wrote a while back on this very subject.”

The response was remarkable.

I like your poem, Taff. I remember once, coming down off the hill on my own, singing “My day in the hills, has come to an end, I know. The stars have come out, to tell me it’s time to go. But deep in the dark green shadows, are voices that urge me to stay. So I pause, and I wait, and I listen, for one more sound, for one more lovely thing that the hills might say.”

Great poem, Taff.

 

Love your poem. A climbing day is not complete without that peaceful walk, be it long or short, and the quiet, usually unspoken, celebration of a day’s trust and companionship

I’d not given a lot of thought to the special nature of descending at the end of the day – very nicely put, I’d always put it down to a a sort of euphoric “OK, I’m not going to have to be frightened/bored/working hard again. Until tomorrow”. But I think you put it better.  It is alarmingly gentle – I’d thought someone had hijacked your computer.

 

Thanks for that,
my sentiments, but so more eloquently put,
Ta
Adrian

I liked your poem too but don’t worry, I still think you’re an arse. ;o) I think friendships are stronger when there are shared adventures, shared adversity.

 

Excellent poem Taff. You can fairly easily find someone to hold your rope for a day at the crag but a true climbing friend is something else.

I liked it too. I can just imagine it that moment of coming down from the hills

Liked the poem – capture the moment very well.

 

good effort. sitting in office in sao paulo, my little brain is now alive with thoughts of an England and adventures I’m soon to return to.

Holy moly, what happened there, Taff showing a sensitive side?! I don’t believe it… Really liked that!

 

 Ok, well that’s enough for me.

Oops nearly forgot, the weather! We’re now into winter, and it’s still very mild. No snow as of yet, and very little rain. It has been cold, but not cold enough to warrant a jumper. 🙂