Taff Down Under 4

 

Monday Bethy was “ill” with a “tummy bug.” Our diagnosis was “first Monday back after a holidayitis,” but you can’t argue with them? Still, it was fun being at home with her all day.

I spent the day mailing my resume to all the employment agencies in Canberra, and so far none have sent them back with “very fucking funny, sunshine” on them.

Tuesday I took a drive down to Queanbeyan, ( pronounced “Queen Bean”, weird Ozzies! )

It’s a lovely little town, just over the border in New South Wales, much more “Ozzie” feel to it than Canberra. I was there to visit a job finding agency run by the Sally Army of all people. The Sal Dabs are very big in Oz and do great charitable work, more on this later. The drive there was lovely, through some nice open countryside, only marred by a couple of fresh “roadkill” Roos by the side of the road. Luckily LeeAnne’s car has “Roo bars” on it, so I’m safe.

Only got lost twice on the way there, and then spent a half an hour trying to find the office. Asked a policeman, armed he was too, and he pointed out that I was standing across the road from it. “No worries!”

When I had filled in endless forms the girl behind the counter took one look at them and said, “Oh you’ll need our professional branch, it’s in Canberra.” Ah hum…

Went outside and had a fag and a coffee at a Greek place.

Then I decided to go and have another look round QueenBean, mainly in the hope of finding my car. I passed a Sally Army Clothes shop, so decided to get some new strides ( See I’m learning the lingo! ) Now I know most of you are calling me a cheap fucker at this point, but the Sally A’s shops aint like the ones in the UK. The nice clothes shops and manufacturers in Oz give the Sally’s any clothes they cannot flog. So I got a brand new pair of casual canvas trousers for $3.50 roughly, ooooh, all of a quid. Oh and the correct nickname for the Sally Army over here is “the Salvos” they even have their website on that name!

Anyway, feeling a little guilty at buying myself something, I just happened to find a garden shop with a sale on. So I knew just what to buy the missus.

A lemon tree.

Now lemons grow like; well lemons really, in Canberra, and as no hobby chef would be without a supply of fresh lemons, she has to have one. And apart from that all her mates have them.

So I drove home, navigating by the sun, the wind direction and the dead Roo’s. And got lost again, three times.

 

I sent LeeAnne a mail with the following puzzle on it.

If you combine:

* What a porn star needs to do his job ( Wood )

* Sour/bright/useless ( Lemon )

* And more than Nick Drake had left ( Five leaves )

What do you get? ( Obviously without the bits in brackets you dildo! )

She wrote back saying “A lemon tree, why?”

Fucking clever cow.

 

Thursday I had a job interview with lifeline for a job working with people with gambling addiction. (The clients not the staff.) This is a big problem hereabouts, as Canberra has many licensed casinos. The interview went well, and they will tell me on Monday if I got through to the second part, which will be a fucking “role-play” with a staff member playing a gambling addict.

Just my fucking luck, I fucking loath role-plays as much as I loathe S Club 7.

Friday, LeeAnne skived off work early, so a pleasant afternoon was had at home. Nuff said.

Funny thing about being here, it’s so much like home, apart from the weather that is, that often something will just catch your eye, say for instance a post box or a road sign, and I’ll suddenly end up in a semi-daze thinking; “fuck me, I’m married, living in Oz, with a wife and step daughter. How did that all happen?”

The other side of that coin is when I woke up the other day with a stinker of a hangover, sitting outside with a cuppa and a fag, and a flock of about twenty cockatoos flew over. To see these huge parrots, brilliant white with lemon yellow under wings, against an azure blue sky sends me into raptures usually. This time all I could think was; “will you please just shut the fuck up you noisy cunts!” Maybe I am getting used to it after all?

Oh something interesting, well interesting to me anyway, happened yesterday. We were walking through the mall, getting Bethy new pyjamas for a sleepover party she’s going to tonight, and someone recognised me. First time anyone has said “hi’ to me in the street here. It was the daughter of the girl who’s party we went to last Saturday, I had spent a long time boring her rigid with my pissed ramblings on how wonderful Oz was. No wonder she pissed off sharpish after seeing me.

While at the mall, we visited “cash converters” a glorified second hand shop, and picked up a bread-making machine for $45.00 ( roughly 14 quid! ) Bloody brilliant, we eat so much bread it’s not true, so to make our own will be magic.

Unfortunately when making our first loaf, we were over keen, and just threw all the ingredients without really measuring them too carefully. We must have overdone the yeast; it’s now impossible to get into the kitchen as it’s full of loaf.

Anyone see the Ozzies vs South Africa last night? Great fucking match, with a lovely “one in, all in” scrap in the second half. There is so much sport on TV over here, the Ozzies are sport mad, you could watch sport on TV all day if you were so inclined.

And while I’m on the subject of TV, Ozzie TV ads are fucking hysterical! As they tend to be of a local nature, due to the huge size of OZ, and tend to be a bit on the “happy shopper” side of things, as in;

“Get you meat from Mick’s Meats, great bargains on meat from Mick!” Pure OZ!”

A couple of them really stand out though, notably “Big Kev,” a very fat, “overly enthusiastic about vacuum cleaners,” man, “Godfrey,” of Godfrey’s Electrical who funnily enough sells vacuum cleaners enthusiastically, but also has a wonderful “comb over”

But my fave is “Allens” a local supplier of clothes for the fashion challenged, (think shell suits and you’ll get my drift.) Allan’s adverts always feature grade c models doing catalogue poses, and moving as if they had ice-lollies up their arses. The funniest one is when they are selling “lingerie for the never going to get laid,” and they use some lasses who to be quite frank would be better off toting their wares in top shelf magazines.

The other day there was one of those yank info-mercials; you know they type? The sort of programme based commercials? This one was for a home vacuum packing thing, that was guaranteed to keep your food fresh, well forever basically. Two things put me off getting one, and you know what a gadget freak I am. One was the fact that, no mater how much they tried to disguise it with clever miking, the fucking thing sounded like a jumbo jet taking off. The other was when the guy flogging them said to the pretty, but pretty dim, co-presenter:

“You know what Mary, your kids will always prefer meals that have been pre-made and saved with this useless piece of shite, over shop bought convenience meals, cos these are made with luuuuurve!”

Anyway, did you know that Ozzies call sheets, pillowcase’s “doona” covers, quilts etc…. “Manchester?” So if you want to get what we would call a duvet cover, you go into Grace Brothers, the local supplier of such stuff, and ask; “Can you show me to the Manchester department, I need a new doona cover?” Weird eh?

Nother odd thing about Oz, did you know it’s perfectly legal and acceptable for a shop to mark something up as 88 cents, and then charge you 90 cents for it? That’s because the smallest coin is actually the 5-cent piece, and therefore they round up, round down. Nutty as a fruitcake.

 

Well that’s enough from me, keep your regular and lovely mails coming!