Taff Down Under 9

Lot's to tell….

Well "Under Milk Wood" was fucking magic. Performed by a bunch of teenagers, in broad Ozzie accents, they did the play proud. No set to speak of, just good use of lighting, and clever acting. I was truly impressed.

Heh, I nearly got into a scrap before the play started! Some pissed, or personality disordered, fart was giving the producer grief about not being let in when he wanted to be. Seeing as he was a fair size, and she was tiny, I decided to go and smile at him. Just smile. It works wonders when I look more psychopathic than they do, not a hard trick for me.

Oh and LeeAnne really enjoyed "Barnum" too. I'll take her word for it.

 

Strange but true, I spent my last working fortnight sat in a park, making pretty paper flowers with kids. I kid you not. We had a stall at Floriade, Canberra's celebration of spring, we were doing health promotion there.

Here you go:

 

Now a few, probably more than a few of you are pissing yourself with laughter at this point. "That daft Welsh twat, sat in a park, making paper flower with kids! Has he lost the plot?" But ask yourself this; where would you have rather spent your last couple of working weeks, at your place of work, or sat in the sun in a park having a lark and a joke with some kids and adults? Hmmmm….

Anyway, it was great fun, and meant I got to skive even more than usual.

 

 

Couple of thoughts from those weeks.

Aren't old people rude? Fucking crumblies have no manners at all!

We were there doing our bit, while these people were doing their bit on the stage in front of us:

Beijing Culture Festival"A special presentation from the Chinese capital of Beijing in honour of the sister city relationship with Australia's capital Canberra. The Festival will bring some very special events to Floriade including a display of traditional handicrafts from Sunday 15 to Wednesday 18 September and the Performing Arts Spectacular on Monday 16 and Wednesday 18 September."

Fucking amazing they were too, acrobats, jugglers, traditional musicians, Opera singers, and martial artists. The problem was, these old twats kept coming up and nicking the seats from our activity area. One old fart even had the cheek to try and get a kid to give up the seat she was sat working on. Strong words were said.

Then one old guy came up with his granddaughter. We were sat having our lunch, and had put up signs saying "next workshop at 1.00pm" everywhere. But this old sod just sat down and decided that he didn't need to wait for the next one, or be shown how to do it, or get involved in any workshop, or ask permission to use our equipment, he just went right ahead and showed her. And a right fuck up he made of it too. Boy did we smirk.

Then there were the "flower hats" as my mate Pexxa in Finland would call them. A bunch of women from a "Wimmins group" turned up, all full fuss about "Now we want to make these flowers, and we want to make one for ourselves, and one to take to a charity. We want special treatment as we're from a disadvantaged group."

They actually said that! "We want special treatment as we're from a disadvantaged group." (The terminally ugly group, perchance?) Now why would you do that? Anyway, we tried explaining to them that they could do that, as we were asking every body to make two, one to keep, and one to be donated to a local kids hospital. (We took 15 displays of hand made paper flowers to the kids in hospital in the end, fucking lovely they were too.) So we set aside the two o'clock workshop for them, turned away many many people as the "wimmin" fully filled our workshop, and got everything set up for them.

And the cunts never came back.

 

 

 

 

Aren't some parents awful? We had both extremes in our workshops:

From

"That's a rubbish paper flower that is, it's crap."

To

"Oh my god, that is so beautiful! My god that's the best paper flower that has ever ever been made! You are so talented and creative!"

I don't know which parent I despised most, wanted to slap both types badly though.

 

 

These geezers were singing at Floriade

South Wales Male Choir/Cor Meibion De Cymru.

Easily the largest male voice choir in Wales. The choristers come from every valley and coastal area of South, East and West Wales plus a contingent of exiles from Wantage"

So I had a chat with a few of them, and one of them even knew my dad. Ok it's not very surprising as they are from my neck of the woods, and the old man was quite famous locally, as he had played in goals for Wales as a youth. Still it was nice to hear people with accents as strong as mine. "Praise the lord we are a musical nation!"

 

Oh and while I was at Floriade I bought a hat! That's the nice thing about Oz, you can wear a silly hat, or even a ZZ Top style beard (strangely popular here) and no-one laughs at you. Anyway after getting sunburned one day at Floriade, I bought a hat, one of these. And very dapper I look in it to; believe it or not it suits me.

Been getting some good flying in! Meeting at the hill, getting a 4 wheel drive to the top, take off soar around for an hour or so, watching the wild Roo's and goats galloping below, being joined in flight by an eagle, land at the bottom, mug of tea, lift back to the top, take off again. Heaven!

Peter, the guy that runs the Australian Paragliding center, has been giving me some tuition in thermalling, as most of the flying here is in thermic conditions.

"The second type of lift is flying in thermals. A thermal is a pocket of hot air heated by the ground and rising quickly into the air. The trick here is to fly into this rising air, which will then carry your glider with it upwards to great heights. Flying in thermals allows you to start flying cross-country. Using thermals, paragliders have flown more than 300km, climbed higher than 4km above the ground and been in the air for more than 11 hours."

And very strange it is too, like hitching a lift on an invisible escalator. The thermal season in the UK is very short, from August the 23rd to the 26th this year I believe, but here you can fly in thermals most of the year. (Smug grin)

Peter says he'll soon have me flying cross-country, and traveling fair distances too. I can only think he wants to get rid of me?

The other day, a bank holiday, although not called that here, we went to the hill, but conditions were blown out. So we decided to take a spin down one of the many gravel roads here. It's magic, sliding the car around on loose gravel, getting into opposite lock on the steering, all accompanied by a rhythmical, 155 bpm thumping on my head from LeeAnne.

Anyway we were zooming down the road, when what I thought was a fallen branch off a tree, got up and walked. I pulled the car over to the side of the road, and we went and had a look. It was a stumpy tailed lizard. Now there's that Ozzie literal mindedness coming into play again…"Say Bruce what should we call this lizard with a big stumpy tail? ? ? ? ?"

Odd looking buggers. They look like they have a head at each end of their body.

Anyway, LeeAnne, being of the "Steve Irwin" or "Crocodile Dundee" breed, decided that there is nothing better for stumpy tailed lizards than poppy seed crackers with hummus on them, which is handy as we'd brought some for lunch.

And boy did it like them! It liked them so much that when LeeAnne moved a piece away from it, the bugger turned and bit her.

While we're on the subject of Ozzie wildlife, I saw my first wild Kookaburra the other day, funny looking birds with a call like a madman’s laugh. Go here for an MP3 of one.

I liked it so much I sampled it into a track I wrote the other day!

 

 

This weekend we treated ourselves, and Bethy to a weekend in Sydney, as she has always wanted to go to "Wonderland." She's also been a bit under the weather. She went on a camping trip with her dad last weekend, and the mozzies had made a plum duff of her face, poor sod.

Anyway, as LeeAnne is a member of a travel club we were able to get a reduced rate here.

"The Carlton Hotel Parramatta is located in Central Parramatta – beside the Parramatta River, opposite Prince Alfred Park and the Parramatta Riverside Theatres. Spectacular views of Parramatta River, Prince Alfred Park and City Skyline can be seen from several rooms of the hotel. The Carlton Parramatta has a wide range of facilities such as 2 restaurants, cocktail bars, 24 hour reception, 24 hour room service, guest laundry, pool, spa and sauna, a fully equipped gymnasium, business services, disabled facilities and non- smoking rooms."

And very nice it was too! We had a pleasant stroll around Parramatta in the evening, and a bite to eat in a café, and went to bed early.

The next day we visited Wonderland.

"Wonderland Sydney is more than a themed amusement park, it is Australia's national entertainment centre. It is built on tradition and inspires the dreams of today's Australian children to become reality."

Yeah fucking yeah. But what of the rides? We made a mistake by taking Bethy a scarey one , she shat herself, and we nearly put her off theme parks for life. Mind you, hanging upside down 120 feet above the ground is enough to put anyone off?

 

The highlight of the day for me was this:

"The Space Probe stands 65 meters tall and each of its cycles accommodates a total of twelve passengers in three carriages. Traveling up to the height of a 27-storey building, the carriages then fall' at the speed of gravity 9.8 meters per second. Passengers will experience a maximum deceleration force of 3gs. Space Probe was the first Giant Drop' in the world to commence full operation and as the prototype the Wonderland/Intamin team introduced many innovations that benefited later purchasers of the attraction. The probe was also the first Giant Drop' to incorporate a fully themed pre show and ride sequence."

Once I had retrieved my bollocks from my armpits it seemed fun anyway. The funniest thing was though, that LeeAnne came on it with me, bless. My ears are still ringing from her screams.

The next day, Bethy had a swim in the hotel pool and I had a sauna, my first since getting here. Then, after first relieving the hotel of a few towels, we set off down the Princess Highway for a long scenic drive back. After negotiating the endless suburbs of Sydney the drive was truly wonderful.

Aren't city suburbs dreadful? Who would want to live in those endless, soulless, lots of doomed and dusty shops, secondhand car dealerships, grotty pubs and vicious looking "dog-on-a string" citizens?

Anyway we visited Stanwell Park, which in Paragliding circles is world famous:

If you're a thrill seeker in search of an adrenaline rush, you can't go past leaping off a cliff and soaring over the ocean as the wind takes you for a bird's-eye view of Stanwell Park's stunning coastal escarpment. Bald Hill at Stanwell Park is about an hour south of Sydney, and the best spot for hang-gliding and paragliding in the region. The top of Bald Hill is your take-off point and you're in the air for an exhilarating 30 to 40 minutes. On a good day some flights can soar as far as 55 km south, to Macquarie Pass, and return, landing back on the hill or gliding gently down to the beach below. Bald Hill has been associated with aerial for a long time. It was here that pioneer aviator Lawrence Hargrave did much of his research into aeronautics in the early 20th century, with box kites, monoplanes and experimental engines.

And very impressive it was too.

Anyway, we trekked down the coast navigating by my usual method: "blue left / green right" And something amazing happened.

I got a speeding ticket!

Any of you who have been in a car with me in the UK will know I lead a charmed life. I never get stopped even though I drive at speeds verging on the insane. 24 years of driving in the UK and I always had a clean license. Three months here and bang!

The buggers here cheat though, all cop cars have radar in them, and they are allowed to clock you even if they are driving towards you. Snot fair!

 

Anyway the cop was decent enough about it, he had to be as they have to tape all their conversations with the public. And he had a gun, so no way was I going to argue with him. He did make us chuckle though. He asked, "Is this your car sir?" and I replied, "no it's my mother-in-laws." His response. "Oh dear…"