Hi de ho chums, acquaintances, mates, friends, relatives, and well, any bugger daft enough to open this site. Spring has sprung, the wattle is in bloom, I’m full of the joys of the season, and so here we go again with another bunch of arse from me.

(As usual, clicking on an image will take you to this months gallery of average images.)

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Before we get into the normal shenanigans, here’s a big “Congratulations”, to my niece Jemma, and her husband Ashley, on their recent wedding. Yet another wedding I couldn’t attend unfortunately, but hell, would they really want a “Drunkle” spoiling it all for them? I think not.

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When collecting my winnings on the Ashes result, I decided to be a little bit more patriotic, and stick a tenner of it on Wales to win the world cup. Very pleased with the odds, but then the news of the injuries started coming in…

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Now onto the usual chaos and calamity

We turned up at our gym one morning, at 5.50 am in the frigging morning, having got up at the unearthly hour of 5 .20 am to be there, only to find our swipe dongles didn’t unlock the doors any more. The machine reader just gave a shrug, and “Membership Lapsed” came up on the screen.

Oh deep joy, a morning off! Back home we went for tea and toast.

The funny thing was that we’d been anticipating our membership running out, and us getting the usual reminder email, (which basically reads; “give us a load of money peasant”,) for some time. But to not get a warning, and hence to rock up at the gym, begrudgingly, at six in the morning to be told to sod off home again, was just the icing on the cake.

We’d been falling out of love with Club Lime for a while. The equipment there was always breaking, and was all a bit shabby, the staff couldn’t give a toss about anything, and there was a growing number of meatheads using the place. These meatheads are great at stacking the machines with a couple of tons of plates, but always seem to run out of strength before it’s time to unload them. This meant that most of my sessions consisted of unloading the plates they left on the machines, which always seemed to be on the one I had planned to use that morning, and then my having to have a sit down for a little rest.

But, even though Lee-Anne had been a member of Club Lime for nearly 20 years, and me for 12, we weren’t disheartened. Why? Well “Anytime Fitness” had just opened a brand spanking new gym less than 2 minutes walk from our house. Obviously we’re too tight to join a new gym while we still had time owing at Club Lime, but here was our chance.
We went, had a look, and signed up on the spot. We got discounted membership too!

This produced  VERY mixed emotions for me. Why? My membership discount was for being a senior. Talk about swings and roundabouts?!?! Getting a discount? Yay!!! Getting a discount because you’re considered old and knackered?!? Boo!!! Lee-Anne got a “corporate discount” as she’s a pube, (pube = public servant.)

But the new place is just fine and dandy, all the gear is new, and the franchises have to replace the ALL equipment every five years. They have a few machines I’ve not used before there, and I’m now hurting new bits of me each week. Obviously “Anytime Fitness” is a 24/7 gym, so we can keep our early morning session going, with the added bonus of a 2 minute walk there as a  “warm up / cool off”  thrown in gratis.

I was so keen, I went 8 times in our first week. And that’s how I put my hip out.

Honestly, I don’t even know how I did it. I suspect the oddball X-trainers they got there, (this type,) were to blame, as I’m not used to using them, I do very little (i.e. none,) aerobics normally. The trouble is that these machines have TV screens on them, and, with the right channel on, you can have pumping rave music to jog along to, (oh and a screen full of gorgeous dancing totty, ) which distracts you from the pain.

So I buggered my hip. As a consequence of this my ankle also gave out.

I spent a week hobbling, I still went to the gym, but only did upper body exercises. This pain did give me a reasonable excuse to book into “Foot and Thai “ in order to have a massage and sauna, not that I really need an excuse. So I had an hours “sports massage”, and the lovely Thai lady used her hands, then her elbows, then her knees, and finally her whole body weight, through her feet, on my buggered hip and ankle. It hurt like hell. It didn’t totally cure it, but relieved a great deal of the hip pain, and, as ever it was a very nice experience, (or so it seemed once it stopped.)

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The night after I had had this, I was taking Digby and Ginger for their evening walk at the Pinnacle Nature Reserve. It takes more than a bit of hip and ankle pain to stop me going out walking. Mind you, it also didn’t take much walking to have me whinging on and on about how much pain I was in. I wanted to get some sunset shots, and fortunately I got a few nice ones.

Hobbling back, just as it was getting dark, the lads shot off into the bush. I wasn’t concerned, they often do that, chasing kangaroos, rabbits, rocks, or more usually, sod all. So I let them run, and hobbled on a bit further. After a while I got concerned as they hadn’t reappeared. So I hobbled back a few hundred yards, yelling for them. They didn’t come back to me. Cursing loudly at the pain and the stupid dogs I hobbled back to the top of the pinnacle itself. The view from up there is great, but unfortunately didn’t include two small stupid dogs. I yelled and called and cursed there for some time, then hobbled all the way back to the car. The last time Ginger got himself lost, he managed to make his way back to the car before I did, so I was in hope that they were there.

They weren’t.

I got my head-torch out of the car, I also phoned Lee-Anne, who volunteered to borrow her mother’s car and a torch, and to come and help me look. I asked her to bring me a walking stick too. I made my way back to the pinnacle, by now all the good the massage had done me was long gone, gone, gone. Oh, and I was again in pigging agony. Only the thought of how much more and varied pain Lee-Anne would inflict on me if I didn’t find her beloved “poopys” kept me from having a quick lie down.

Half way back to the pinnacle, Digsy came rushing out of the bush, stopped, looked at me , and rushed back into the bush. I followed him as best I could, yelling loudly for the little sod to come back. By the light of the head-torch I could see the pair of them ahead, very excited at something. I got there to find they’d been excavating a wombat hole, Ginger was so covered in dirt and mud he could have been renamed “Blackie”. I shouted at them, called them all the sons of bitches under the sun, and bollocked them for a good ten minutes. Digsy looked a little contrite, Ginger went back into the hole. I phoned Lee-Anne just in time to stop her leaving home. I walked off calling them as I went. They stayed put, barking at the hole and fighting to get back in. I applied a little tough love, or to put it more accurately, gave them a damn good kick each. They followed me after that, but Ginger had a pissed off look on his face, which read; “You do realise there was a wombat down that hole didn’t you? I could have had a wombat supper there!”

I still don’t think they’ve quite forgiven me.

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Still, revenge is sweet, and not fattening. But it can be expensive. If you have been reading this blog for a some time, you may remember our old dog, Barnum, had a nifty trick. Just before we were due to go on any holiday, or right in the middle of a holiday if he was coming with us, he’d either injure himself or get ill, requiring us to part with $$$ in vets fees.

It seems Digby as taken up his mantle.

One morning, I couldn’t help but notice that Digby’s face was twice its normal size.

Lee-Anne said we should get him in to see Rob our regular vet, but I applied my normal healing technique, and ignored it. Then it burst, pus everywhere, quite put me off my porridge.

The next day I took him into see Rob, who diagnosed an abscess or infected tooth, gave me a week’s worth of anti-biotics for him, charged me $100, and we were good to go. We gave him these, and after a week it had subsided. Then two days later it was up again, and weeping. Icky. Back to Rob, another $hundred on meds, and back home again

Rob retired after this week, I don’t think it was cause and effect. (Best of luck Rob mate, thanks for looking after our dogs.)

Same thing happened again though, a couple of days after the anti-biotics had stopped, the face was up and looking like it was going to blow again. The new vet, who’d bought out Robs business, had a look at it, tutted, prodded, and said; “I’m going to need him to have x-rays, and it looks he’s going to have to have an extraction I’m afraid.”

Poor Digby had to have a night at the vets and a back tooth out, after it had been impacted and infected. Poor Taff had to give the nice new vet the grand sum of $600 on top of the $200 Rob had relieved us of, and just a couple of month’s out from our big trip.

Coincidence? I think not! Barnum is back in spirit.

Rather a relief after paying out for Digby’s face repairs, was my visit to Matt, our little gothic accountant. He did his usual magic, shuffled papers from one pile to another, typed loads of arcane stuff onto the Tax department’s website, sacrificed a goat or two, and made me sign a couple of forms in blood. He then relieved me of $250.00. Modesty prevents me for saying how much rebate was returned to us, (by a carrier raven, the next full moon,) but it was enough to cover all our accommodation, and car hire, for our Blighty trip! Well done that dark man.

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How to annoy any American chums you may have. Mates of mine in the “Land of the fee”, are never-endingly amazed at the amount of leave we get, as they are lucky to get a couple of weeks a year, and even luckier if they are actually paid for that time. So, just to cheer them up, I posted this on the debate forum we use;

As you probably know, me and her indoors are going back to Blighty in November.
This one of our (in)famous extended breaks, what with us being away from 3rd November to 17 December. Of course we had to take 4 days off to get ready to travel, and a week off after to get over the holiday, so it really extends from 31/10/15 to 23/12/15, a total of 8 weeks. But then Hen (Lee-Anne’s nickname at that site,) decided that, as we’d be starting back on 23/12/15, she may as well take an extra day, and add it into her Xmas period leave.
So she doesn’t go back until 4/1/16. But that’s my B’day, so I’ll get her to take that and the next day off too. So that’s a return for her on 6/1/16 or 9 1/2 weeks, (which is ominous!)
(Poor old me is working through Xmas and new Year!) Fortunately for Hen she’s built up 5 weeks of flex time, so she won’t be taking too big a chunk out of the 3 months leave she’s built up, and will probably take a month of that in cash.

This of course set off a load of comments, mainly of the; “I am totally living in the wrong country,” type. Then I got an email from Lee-Anne with this information on it;

I currently have 26 days flex. This is increasing daily. Our UK trip is going to take 39 days for me.  I have 3 months and 4 days rec. leave. I will take 30 flex, nine days rec and get paid out 6 weeks. Woot!!

I think “Joe Guy” hit the nail on the head with this reply;

“You two better not ever retire. You would never get the amount of time to go on holiday that you get now.”

Talking of retirement, Lee-Anne now calculates she has only 5 years and 20 something days before she can retire on a decent superannuation, there is light at the end of the tunnel at last. 🙂

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Bethy and Brandon are going to be moving into our house while we are away, and looking after the mutts for us. Bethy’s been spending the odd night over with us, and will be with us this weekend, as Brandon’s been shipped off to Melbourne by his company, in order to fix some geek stuff there. God know’s what he does, but he must be good at it to warrant flying him 670 km, and paying for a hotel for three days for him, while he’s there.

Bethy and Brandon are planning a trip to Mollymook for a holiday soon, and the little tinkers went and booked this while they are down there.

She’s a chip off the old block or what? Glad we introduced her to “fine dining” at an early age, she really does appreciate it now, quite the little “bon-vivant”. Me and Lee-Anne want to do “Banisters” at some point, but it won’t be until next year sometime. Beth and Bra are thinking about a Japan trip next year!

Bethy’s also busy planning her 21st. Party. Her, her Partner Brandon, and her mates Patrick, and Savvy, are hiring “Old Parliament House”, and asking for $50 donations in lieu of presents.

We’re going natch!

Bethy is now a fully qualified driver! Yes, I know she passed her driving test some years back, but she’s been a good girl, not got into trouble, and so can now drive without “P Plates” on her car.

I was showing this photo off around the office the other day;

All the girls said; “Ooh, isn’t she beautiful/pretty/glamorous”. Each and every one of them followed that up with; “She must take after her mother.”

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We saw Dylan Moran at the Convention centre recently, bloody hoot he was. I still rate him as second only to Billy Connolly as a live stand up.

 

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On the subject of cultural things, I’ve got me and the mother in law tickets to see the Prime Minister’s XI which has been moved to 23rd. Oct, just before we fly. We’re just waiting to see if the change of PM means any changes in the side, we hope not! Bloody Aussies, they cannot keep the same PM for more than a month, the poor sod only has to drop a ripe fart at the dispatch box and they axe him and get a new one in.

Oh, I got tickets, for all five of us, for the one day test between Australia and India too. (“I must have been keen on her, I took her to see India!!”) Now that will be a match and a half. The Indian fans always turn out “en masse” for these things, and the atmosphere will be great! Last time I saw India play here, (against Bangaladesh,) the Indian Embassy set up three curry stalls at the ground, I REALLY hope they do that again.

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We planted some new roses the other day, just to keep the sunlight off our front windows. (Shading windows is a MUST here in summer, strange but true.) One rose grew for all it was worth ,the other stayed a twig. Then, one day, when I was sat in the living room, I could hear Lee-Anne outside. As she was cursing and swearing, I thought I must have buggered something up again, and was, yet again, in the dog house. When I sidled outside to see what I’d screwed up, I found Lee-Anne loudly threatening the rose with annihilation if it didn’t buck up its ideas and flourish.

Prince Charles she isn’t.

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I did a course the other day, four days of; “Advanced Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Psychosis.” I did the “ordinary” course some time back, and wanted a top up. Things got off to a great start when Hamish McLeod, who was instructing the course, asked what we wanted to get out of the tuition. I replied; “I’m really short of CPD (continuing professional development,”) hours, but four days of this should see me right.” Luckily, he remembered me from the last course, and didn’t take offense. (We have to do 32 hours CPD a year or we lose our professional registration, I’d done six) .

Hamish  Mcleod, as you can imagine for someone with that name, is from New Zealand.

Taking a piss, instead of taking the piss, during a tea break, I couldn’t but help notice this “how to use a shitter” sign up on the bog wall.

Considering this is a University we were at, you have to wonder about the calibre of students today.

During the course Hamish set us the task of developing a strategy for working with a woman with the fixed delusion that she owned Buckingham palace. At the end of it Hamish gave us the run down on he had worked with her. Very clever, and used some sharp cognitive restructuring talk, which focused on the widely known fact that the Queen owns Buck house. He wasn’t best pleased then when, at the very end of his explanation, someone chipped in with; “Let’s hope she never finds out that the Queen doesn’t actually own Buckingham palace, as it’s owned by the crown estates for the nation, then!”

Something that cheered me up no end was at another course though. I had to do my mandatory “Resuscitation and CPR training.” I don’t mind doing that sort of stuff as it may one day come in handy. About 15 minutes after the course had began, the inevitable happened, the late hippies arrived. This is a constant bane on health and social courses, no matter what time the course starts, 15 – 25 minutes late, in will roll a couple of hippies, complete with frizzy hair, laden with bags, and wearing cardi’s.

The two that turned up late this time, even had the gall to be carrying cups of coffee from the cafe downstairs!

The girl taking the course, Jill, an ambulance paramedic, (and also more of a man than I’ll ever be,) turned to them, just as they were making the inevitable fuss (as these fuckers always do,) about where they were to sit, and said; “Out!”.

The look on their faces was a picture! They started to protest, making excuses, and demanding special treatment as they suffered from “hopeless hippy chronological displacement syndrome,” or something. But Jill stood her ground, and slung them out. I stood up and applauded her, just as they were leaving. Jill gave a me little bow, they gave me the evil eye. On the tea break me and Jill had a fucking good laugh at them, she said; “I swore the last time I took this course that I would NOT put up with baggy-titted social workers coming in late again.”

The course was great, I got to play with an auto-defibrillator too. I wanted to try it on my cock to see if it came back to life, but Jill wouldn’t let me.

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Talking of work stuff…

The other day I faced a crisis, I’d run out of teabags. I had to have a cuppa, so I begged around the office for a loan of one. I was offered hundreds, which was kind of people. But not one person owned such a thing as a tea flavoured teabag to offer!

Oh, they had banana and nettle flavour, sage rosemary and thyme flavour, ginger and beetroot flavour, lawn grass and dandelion flavour, prune, senapod and butthole flavour, but not one of them had a single fucking proper tea flavour tea  bag!

Serves my right for working out of an office full of nurses, doctors, psychologists, and social workers I suppose. I weep.

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We had a little trip out ourselves the other day, our mate, Sean’s, band were playing up in Sydney, and I’d long promised to go see them if they were in our area, (3/12 fucking hours away as it may be.) Mind you, as they were flying down from Brisbane for the gig, I couldn’t really complain.

We had thought of hiring a car for the trip, as we’d not done a proper Aussie journey in our new-old car “Joan.” But she’s been fine so far, faultless really, so we decided to risk it. To be fair, she saw us proud. On reaching the outskirts of Canberra I set the cruise control to 115 kmph, (you didn’t think I’ d stay within speed limit did you?,) and I didn’t switch it off until we hit Sydney’s outskirts.

The first place in Sydney which we hit was Llandilo of all places.

Not long after we reached our hotel, which was a fair bit outside of Windsor where the gig was, but was the only half decent place available. Despite being on a racecourse, (fortunately there was no racing on at the time,) near a major military airport, and next to a railway line, we had no noise and slept well.

Pretty good that. Our room was well appointed, spacious and clean, and the staff were friendly and obliging, so we fell on our feet with that booking.

Mind you, soon it looked like this.

As there was a train station next to the hotel, we decided to take a train to Windsor where the gig was, it was only one stop down the  line after all. But Lee-Anne refused to go on the train without a ticket. Funny how she’s such a law abiding person in most ways, but definitely not in others. (Don’t ask.)

This was a bugger, as the ticket office was shut, and the only ticket machine took coins of which we had none. Lee-Anne went and badgered a restaurant into changing a $20 bill into coins, and we bought a ticket. Inevitably, we were not asked for tickets at any point on the journey, or on arrival.

We found the Fitzroy Hotel and settled in, best seats in the house for the gig. Being sensible we decided to eat and lay down a foundation for the evening’s revelry. My choice of food was fish and chips, there was no other option available. I went to order to be amazed to find the living embodiment of “Tasha Slapper’s mam” serving. I damn near had a coronary fit trying to stop myself from giggling.

The food was not bad for all of that, but no decent beers were on offer, so I settled for a few pints of bow.

 

Soon Sean and his band turned up, and we got a chance to catch up before they played. Great to see the old bugger again, or rather the young bugger, as he’s a fair bit younger than me, (and never misses a chance to remind me of this fact.)

There was a support band, and they weren’t bad, the young female flautist was well good.
Sean’s band were on second, and at last I got to see him play. The “Rogue Scholars” were bloody brilliant. With a line up of bass, guitar, banjo, drums and accordion, they play a rough folk/punk hybrid, mainly original stuff. It was the first time I’d seen Sean play, and I hope he’s not reading this as I have to say he is bloody amazing. (He plays guitar btw.) I am always in awe of people with talent, which is not surprising seeing as the only talent I have is screwing things up and/or annoying people.

I didn’t shoot any video, so here one off youtube of them.

The singer / accordionist who looks like a right feisty hard bastard, is only five foot tall or so, (but he’s a great front man)

Halfway through his set Sean  snapped a string, (“serves me right I normally have three guitars lined up,”) so the guitarist for the next band on “Ivan Drago”, loaned Sean his guitar, and put a new string on Sean’s for him.

Funnily enough, that whole situation was played in reverse when “Ivan Drago’ went on.

Ivan Drago who all looked about ten years old to me, played very tight “The Jam” style punk / pop, not bad at all. I said to Sean; “Thing is, I remember hearing this sort of stuff when it was original back in 1979” Clever bugger replied; “So do I. Mind you, I was only six back then.”

But as it was 11.00 pm, and me and Lee-Anne had had a long day, and lots of booze, we had to take our leave. Ok, truth be told, 11.00 pm is a really late night for us these days, we’re normally in bed by 9.15 pm. I can hear you laughing from here. I did try to keep myself going, I went to the bar and asked for a couple of large Scotches “for the road”. The barmaid replied; “Sorry we don’t sell shorts”. I thought she was taking the piss at first, but she was serious. I pleaded that, as I am a Welsh person, it was my nightly religious duty and sacrament to sacrifice a good measure of whisky to the gods, but she was having none of it. Fuck me, if your clientele are so dodgy you cannot flog a Welshman a couple of Scotch, you really need to think about the sort of pub you’re keeping!!

Before we left I, yet again, promised that we’d go up and stay with Sean, his lovely wife Mel and son Alex (aka “Pud.”) We must do this soon!

On the drive back, we stopped off, as we always do, at the Gumnut Patisserie in Berima. We saw they had a banner out proclaiming they had won the prize for the “Best vanilla slice NSW 2015,” so we bought three. I’m no conesewer of vanilla slices, but they tasted fine.

When we got back I realised I’d lost one of my hearing aids. $3,500.00 down the fucking tubes. To be fair, as I’m an incompetent twat, and I’ve been wearing them for 8 years, I’m surprised this is the first time it has happened. I still have my old ones, so I’m using them until I get back from Blighty.

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We’ve had some great news though, my old mates Harness and Jo coming over to stay with us next year!!

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So that’s another blogsworth done, thanks to anyone who indulged me and read it. There is only one thing left to say, and that is go and read our holiday itinerary*, and then you can guarantee to be spending a month in detox /  out of the country for tax purposes / in jail, when we are in your area.

*What do you mean “where  is it?” it’s on the menu bar at the top, idiot.