Ok, first of all, thanks to all of you who e-mailed me after last month’s news, asking what the result of my blood test had indicated. Your concern was touching. Though contrary to what most of you were expecting, I haven’t developed cirrhosis of the liver due to my frequent libations. I had been thinking, as obviously most of you were, that it was my fondness for Single Malts, fine wines,  good beers, or, at a push, turps or floor polish,  which would get me. (Although the good doctor did say my liver was; “showing signs of strain.”)

Nope it’s my cholesterol levels that gave the doctor an excuse to chide me, it’s through the roof apparently. Discussing this with her, and the best ways of dealing with it, we found that I was already doing the best things. Healthy eating, with low animal fat intake, regular exercise, etc etc were already in place. This is not as encouraging as you may think, as if I’m already doing everything right, why is my level so high? “Do you have a family history of high cholesterol?”, asked the quack, “I don’t know, I’ve never met them,” was my honest reply.

But after discussions with Lee-Anne we nailed the problems, (good guess Chaz, but it’s not pasties!) It’s  my fondness for cheese is putting my cholesterol levels into the danger zone. But how can you live without cheese? I mean, Lee-Anne pointed out to me that my meals for one day recently had been;

Cheese on toast for breakfast,

Cheese roll for lunch

Cauliflower cheese for dinner

Cheese and biscuits for supper.

I have, and will  drive many miles to sample the wares of a small cheese producer, and will normally end up buying several tonnes of the stuff while there. The fucking quack even had the gall to say I should try “low fat cheese” if I felt like some! Low fat cheese?!?  I’d rather eat plasticine.

Oh and butter is out too! No more thick wodges of white bread, lightly toasted, with half a pound of butter and a scrape of marmite on each, one of the greatest gastronomic feasts ever?!?  Thank Christ I’m not still living in Cornwall, as pasties would be a complete no-no. Fortunately Aussie pasties are generally so small, and filed with gunk, and rubbish, to be any problem to give up. Except for the ones in Berima, which are hugely wonderful.

Lee-Anne of course, being an absolute darling, as soon as she heard the news decided we would be going on a cholesterol free diet. One which is low in fats, and high in healthy stuff, or in other words; boring as all buggery. I’ve been virtually vegan for weeks now. And although it may be bringing my cholesterol down, it’s putting my blood pressure though the roof, as I’m constantly craving a cheese fix.

Solution; go back to eating fish.
Problem; I just cannot bring myself to do it!

After 30 years of being a vegetarian, no meat or fish in my diet, I just cannot conceive of eating fish again. I know I probably should, in fact probably will. Eventually. It’ll give me a whole range of new flavours and textures to play with,  without pushing my cholesterol up, (in fact, maybe even reducing it.) But the thought of eating flesh is still so abhorrent I cannot yet bring myself to take the plunge.

I mustard mitt I nearly fell for it the other day when we were at the Indian restaurant. It was Bethy’s 15 th birthday meal. Lee-Anne ordered the Goan fish curry. Oh my fucking god, did it look and smell delicious? Ah well, I’ll struggle with this one I think, any thoughts?

Hah, remember the problems  which we had had with that hotel booking? The one where they tried to sting us for $295 for a booking which lasted 3 seconds? After my internet barrage of them, and them sending me a couple of e-mails rejecting my claims, (addressed to Dear Thomas Taff!) Well, they blinked first, and refunded all the charges including the booking fees, which was nice.

We eventually found, or rather Lee-Anne eventually found a place to stay, the “Waldorf Serviced Apartments” . This was surprising as, as I said, Sydney was full for Chinese New years. So on the allocated day we drove up to Sydney, and found our hotel. Well it was more like a block of seedy council flats. Seedy, but with what we assumed would have been great views over Bondi. We assumed, as the whole time we were there, rain of biblical proportions was falling

The room, on the eighth floor, despite the place being  less than salubrious looking, was clean and well fitted. We also had a balcony if we wanted to go outside and get wet. “Dusty” our concierge was a friendly bloke, with the look of an ex-junkie about him. He got us free parking ,and was a mine of information on the best places to eat and drink locally.

As requested by Debs, our host for the evening,  we got togged up in semi-fancy dress, me in my safari suit and cravat, and Lee-Anne in her sexy tiger dress. Debs is the daughter of our good mate Howard, and actually emigrated out here before I’d even thought of it, clever bugger. We took a cab to the Bondi surf rescue club. Amazing place, right on Bondi beach. I bet the views would have been worth millions, not that we could see through the rain. Debs was there to greet us and welcome us to the party. We gave her her gift of an mounted illustrated text purchased from our favourite book binder. (On the journey up, I knew as soon as we left the house that there was something I should have remembered!) The illustrated text was of some prose ; a verse from the Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam, which read : “A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of  wine, a Loaf of Bread, and Thou”. So, to compliment this, we also gave her a bottle of nice wine, a loaf of artisan bread. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to get a book of verse, so I gave her my copy of “Prog Rock” magazine instead. Fuck knows what we were on that night.

Debs was dressed in a brief, furry, lion outfit, and with her face made up as a lion. She looked fantastic, dead sexy in fact, definitely the belle of the ball. As we were reasonably early we got stuck into the booze (free bar!!) and got to know people. We met Deb’s mother and her partner, and spent some time chatting with them. The other guests arrived , most of them had made an effort to dress up, and most of them looked brilliant.  The girl dressed as a flamingo was a bit dubious, but the guys dressed as African warriors were a hoot. They were a very warm and welcoming crowd, we got to spend time with some lovely people. As I had predicted the place was full of life saver types, huge, fit, Amazonian, women, and muscly suntanned surfer dude types. And yes, as predicted, an old fat ugly Welshman did provide a neat contrast. My god some of the women there were tall, my god some of the bloke there were good looking. Only once, I must say in my defense,  was I once requested to; “Pick your jaw up off the floor and put your fucking tongue back in your head,” by her loveliness. But Debs out shone the lot of them, fair play to her.

The next day we went to see “Avatar” at the Imax. As a spectacle on a screen that huge and in 3D it was worth every one of the many pennies we paid. As a film it was absolute arse, a sort of “Heart Of Darkness/Apocalypse Now” in space, with added saccharine, melodrama,  and trendy lefty green moralising. The sort of stuff which Hollywood does so well, or so badly, depending on your taste.

Talking of which I was looking up some information on the classic movie “Straw dogs,” as it happens to be set in the village I lived in in the UK, Sennen. I did a search on IMDB, and I notice they’re doing a remake…“Pound to a penny,” I think to myself… “that they…SET IT IN THE FUCKING USA!!!!”

Christ on a fucking bike, what is fucking wrong with these people? If it was good enough for Sam Pekinpah to set the story, as it is in the book, in Cornwall, why not the new version? Does Hollywood  think so little of American people that it thinks them incapable of dealing with things, other than wars and sci fi,  set outside the USA?

After the movie we found a quiet bar on Darling Harbour, (one which had the additional blessing of  showing the latest slaughtering of Pakistan by the Aussies on a big TV,)  and had a bite to eat,  and a few beers, and watched the world go by draped in all  its Sunday night finery.

On the way back home from Sydney we stopped off at the lovely village of Berima, where we picked up a crate of wine, and, unbeknown to me, I had  my last pasty ever.

Bethy’s had an eventful month. She’s started her last year of high school, her LAST YEAR! She started early in fact, she was invited to go in a day early to help with induction the of the new kids. Christ on a bike, it seems like only last year she was the new kid!

She’s also been on a two day camping trip with the new intake, as part of her  role as a mentor. As part of her own “Outdoor education” course, she’s been on a two day caving and canyoning trip too. Nothing like that when I was at school, the most we could hope for was a day trip to Tenby out of season.

Bethy also turned 15 this month, and a fine, intelligent, beautiful young woman she is too.

As I type this Lee-Anne is picking Beth and her dad up from the airport, they’ve just had a weekend down in Tasmania, where Glenn is from. I really must visit Tassy, it looks like an incredible place. (That little island down on the bottom left hand edge of the map of Australia, it’s …errmmm… twice the size of Wales..)

Ok, Mary the mother-in-law is a bit of an animal nut, so every morning she has to feed the birds in the garden. One morning she noticed that a magpie which had turned up to be fed, had somehow got both legs entangled in string and was hobbled. !!Major panic time!!

She called the RSPCA and asked advice. Their advice was to capture it and take it to the rescues centre to get it attended to. Ah huh…easy….

Ok, so she borrows a bird catching net off the RSPCA, and spends several mornings outside, getting sunburned to all buggery, waiting for, and trying to capture, this bloody bird. And failing to do so. Lee-Anne refused to let me run my plan by Mary; “I’ll borrow Gary’s son’s air rifle, end of problem.” I mean, magpies are not uncommon here, putting one out of its misery won’t do any harm to the population.

But no, It has to be captured  and treated.  Outside the Mary’s house, at the back, is a big veranda, about 30 foot long, by six foot wide, with a trellis roof about 8 foot up. Mary and Lee-Anne rigged it up with netting, so the whole bloody thing was enclosed, and put a curtain of netting ready to be drawn over. Of course then the bird stopped coming for food. This of course didn’t stop Mary spending her days putting out food for it, and sitting around like a Tibetan monk, waiting for the bloody thing to come back. One morning it did arrive, Mary put some meat down hoping to entice it into the net den. The bird obligingly hopped down onto the floor. Meech, Marys dog, seeing what she thought was a magpie stealing her grub attacked it. The bird being quicker than, (and more intelligent than,) Meech flew away. Fortunately for all concerned it flew straight into the netting and got entangled in it. So the plan sorta worked in a an odd way. Mary took it to the rescue centre, there is was sedated, and the string removed. As the string had cut into it’s legs it was put on anti-biotics.

Down at Nick’s shop we found a bottle of wine with a crow on the label (close e-fucking-nough) so we took that round to Mary as a congratulations on her bird capturing skills.

Lee-Anne would like it noted at this point that the whole event was a “Major Fucking Trauma” for her, trying to keep the mother in law from doing stupid things, and coming up with a way of capturing the damn bird which even the mother in law couldn’t cock up or kill the bird with.

This was two weeks ago. The bloody birds is still at the RSPCA  centre getting treated. The mother in law is still going back and fore to visit it, and we get regular updates on its progress. I still think the air rifle trick would have been a better way of dealing with it.

Never tangle with bureaucracy. Some time ago I put in for my citizenship of Aus. Yep, I’m going to be an Aussie, no more Welsh accent for me! So anyway, I waited for a year or more to be called in for  my citizenship test, nothing happened. So I put in a complaint on the department of immigration website. The next day I got a phone call asking me to come in, in two weeks time, to do my test. Ok, so having studied like all buggery the night before, I turned up on the appointed date at the appointed time, and presented myself for inspection.  Only to be told they had no record of my application. It seems that since I first put in for it, the rules have changed. It used to be that you sat the test then did the “formal” bits. Now it’s all different, and I have to do the formal (read “expensive”) bits first, then do the test. Thanks for telling me.

I have to wait for mid-April to do the test now, wish me luck. I quite fancy holding dual citizenship, just call me “two passports Taff”! If all the reports I hear about the way the UK is being mismanaged at present are correct, Aussie citizenship could be a blessing. Do you know that when Lee-Anne first came to the UK to meet (read “screw the brains out of”) me, $1.00 Au would buy 32p. These days $1.00 Au buys 58p!

Oh it’s the end of summer here, the days have been hot normally in the mid 20’s to mid 30’s, so I’ve caught another cold. Woe is me. Got a few days off work though. Poor old Millie got something worse though. Remember just before Xmas when we had all those problems with dogs getting ill? Millie’s complaint was a fat lump on her abdomen. The thing grew and grew until it was the size of a gobstopper, so it had to be removed. She went under the knife last week, seems to have made a full recovery. However then  stitches on her stomach would indicate the guy who did them was either out of practice, or pissed, when he did it. Huge sodding bill again.

Some of you may have got an email off my hotmail address, which was quite obviously spam and nothing to do with me. My apologies for that. Word on the net is that hotmail is no longer secure, and passwords  should be increased exponentially in complexity, (which I have now done.)

It’s St David’s day today, so I’ll end this missive with a traditional Welsh greeting; “Twll tyn pob sais!”