A Burns Supper

A slightly late but never-the-less enjoyable Burns Supper is the highlight of this posting. There were twelve of us round the table - most of whom originally hailed from Scotland - and it was interesting to note the Australian-ised accents starting to slip away as the evening progressed and stories of "back home" emerged.

The Selkirk Grace was followed by an enthusiastic address to the haggis where various people took a verse each with the "coup de grace" being left to me as I managed a vigorous thrust into the entrails of the beast. A range of Burns poetry was recited with iPads providing an endless source of material - although I thought my rendition of Burns' little known verse "Tae a Penis" did not go down as well as usual!

"An cut you up with ready slight - warm-reekin,rich!"

 

 

Long term readers of this blog will, I hope, appreciate that I try to amuse as well as to inform, and, whilst a small element of exaggeration may occasionally creep into the story, what you read is nothing but the truth. However tonight I am struggling with this post to find anything amusing to report as the last few days, apart from the Burns Supper, have been an endless round of IKEA, DIY Superstores and decorating. One bedroom of Steven's house is now completed and the action has moved on to the master bedroom where Ana, my daughter-in-law, has started the unenviable task of sanding the floorboards whilst I put endless amounts of filler into cracks in the plaster.

In between DIY tasks I have booked the Honda into Opposite Lock, a company specialising in preparing vehicles for off road trips - although with the Honda being a bit lightweight in the 4WD department I'm not anticipating anything too demanding. None-the-less I thought it prudent to totally replace the suspension system as well as a full service and brake check. We are also equipping it with  large fridge (mainly for beer but Sandra will probably think of other uses) up-grading the electrics with an auxiliary battery, an 80w solar panel and inverter for re-charging our host of electronic gadgets. With limited space inside the car, a large rack to hold bulky but light items on the roof will complete the upgrade.  The car will be ready by the end of the month and then we should be on our way - although where that will be we as yet have no idea.

Sydney has been hot and dry over the past week or so and all the parks are starting to look rather brown and desiccated -  however, as I type, thunder is rolling over the city and rain is falling.

A Holiday of a Lifetime

Just a short one today - I'm knackered!

Apparently the weather has taken a turn for the better - it appears the rain has stopped, the sun is shining, the skies are blue and it is pleasantly warm. However, as I have spent much of the last 48 hours either in IKEA or up a ladder stripping, filling and painting - the improvement in the weather has rather gone over my head.

IKEA is tiring at the best of times, but when your wife moans about her ankle still being sore after breaking a couple of bones in it a few weeks ago and how life would be better - at least for her - if we borrowed a wheel chair, it was more tiring than usual. Unfortunately the latest Sydney branch of IKEA is particularly enormous.



"Where is my IKEA Family Card - I'm sure I brought it with me?"

Tomorrow should be fun - final coats of paint on ceiling, walls and skirting - off to IKEA to pick up three double wardrobes for the girl's bedroom - lots of swearing as Steven and I argue about how they should be put together and cursing the pictogram type instructions. Then off to our Burns Supper - it's all go when you holiday in Australia!





"Of course I'm having a good time!"

Grandad's little helper

Haggis - and a Highland Haar

Once again "Cattle Class" with Emirates proved to be quite acceptable. I was rather worried as my friend Douglas recently returned from a trip to Australia with Emirates and informed me that, although drinks were served with meals, that was it. I'm glad to report that this was totally wrong and he should have just asked - a wide range of alcoholic drinks were available free of charge throughout the flight. In fact I had to forego my final meal otherwise I wouldn't have managed the last few beers.

Due to the Dubai rainstorm my flight from Glasgow was late and I only just managed to make the transfer between terminals to catch my flight to Sydney - on the plus side there were no queues and I just managed to squeeze onto the flight with minutes to spare before take off. The only other event of note was a passenger a couple of seats behind started to choke thus causing some consternation amongst the Emirates staff. However a woman in the seat behind me obviously had some medical training and managed to sort things out with out any fatalities.

Sandra and her sister Johann were there at the airport to greet me and by around midnight we were opening a bottle of champagne that had been kept for me since Christmas.



A Highland Haar descending upon a deserted Coogee Beach

Have you noticed that weather forecasts are becoming more accurate. Sandra had already advised me that, after weeks of fabulous weather, rain was forecast for my arrival - and sure enough .......by the time we had driven to Coogee Beach for a walk on Tuesday morning the rain had arrived. Grey skies and a heavy drizzle - a real Scottish haar - was keeping people away from the beach in their droves - and remember this is high summer. As the rain got heavier we made a beeline for the car getting drookit in the process.

A drowned rat - but still smiling

Our trip to Coogee was not only to take in the fresh air - we were also on the lookout for haggis for a rather belated Burns Supper Johann is hosting on Saturday for a group of mainly ex-pat Scots. A small butchers shop, run by a Fifer who had left home 32 years ago but still had a Methil accent you could cut with a knife, was doing a roaring trade turning out haggis for discerning Sydneysiders. Two large examples were duly bought but we managed to resist the range of other Scottish "delicacies" on display such as Irn-Bru and bars of Highland Toffee. As I posed for the haggis photo a comment was made that suggested I was holding a pair of very substantial breast implants!

A lovely pair

Wednesday - enough of recuperating from jetlag, it's time to go to work. Steven our son is in the process of buying a house and there is a big renovation and decorating job about to get underway. Trips to Bunnings (the Australian version of B & Q) and IKEA are going to loom large over the next few days - I can't wait, it will be just like being at home.

Blog readers, new and old, will probably have picked up by now that Sandra and I were stalked by the rain gods on our previous trip to Australia. You may even remember the totally true story of people writing to the National Press - The Sydney Morning Herald - asking for us to go home so that there could be some respite from the rain. To be on the safe side, this time I have packed TWO waterproofs just in case.

Before I left Glasgow it was bucketing rain. Sandra has checked the weather forecast for Sydney and the fine weather is about to break - and rain is expected just after I arrive.

As I type this I am aboard a Boeing 777 making its descent into Dubai. As most people probably know Dubai is one of the driest places on earth where rain is as rare as a female Pope. However the captain of the plane has just made an announcement - it's chucking it down in Dubai!!

I do not believe it - I knew I should have packed wellies and an umbrella.

Will try to get this posted when we splash down in Dubai - if I can get Internet access.

PS Just had another announcement from the captain - the weather is so bad there will be a delay getting landed - we are having to circle around - presumably to use up fuel to minimise fire if we crash. Shouldn't be a problem, the rain will douse the flames. Hope the delay doesn't mean I miss my connecting flight to Sydney.

Never a dull moment!

Sent from my iPad

Just a brief post and no photos whilst in transit. Currently sitting in Glasgow airport using my 30 minutes of free WiFi generously provided by the airport. Have just ordered breakfast when one of the 4 people working behind the counter eventually condescended to serve me, it's bucketing rain, it has just been announced that the flight has been delayed and Sandra has let me know that the beautiful Sydney weather is expected to break on Tuesday - I get there late on Monday night! Apart from all that things are fine and I am  glad to finally be on the move.

Mind you moving is difficult with the weight of my luggage - I managed the full 30k - including a range of extra requests from Sandra e.g. piles of material for her to make clothes, a TENS machine to help with her broken ankle pain management, snorkelling equipment and, a nice one this, a paint scraper and a pack of Stanley knife blades.

Next post should be from Sydney unless I get an opportunity during my 80 minute stopover in Dubai.

2014 ..... and we are off again

In 2010 my wife Sandra and I embarked on a 50,000 kilometre, year long trip around Australia. Travelling in a Nissan Patrol, living in a tent and carrying all our goods and chattels with us, we endured unbelievable hardships – tales of which have achieved mythical status and become more harrowing with each telling. Bogged down to the axles in a remote, crocodile infested swamp in the Northern Territory : Stuck on a New South Wales beach with a rapidly incoming tide : The muddy hell of the Oodnadatta Track in South Australia : The now famous incident when my ear was torn off miles from any medical help and Sandra had to sew it back on with only gin as an anaesthetic and tea-tree oil as an antiseptic. We camped throughout what turned out to be Australia's wettest year for over half a century. All this, and more, was documented in grim detail in previous entries to this blog.

Any sane persons would have said “Enough is enough – we've done that – let's move on to something else”. However, I suspect a touch of something close to insanity runs deep in our part of the Douglas clan and, as I type these words, I am just a few days away from getting on a plane to start doing the whole thing over again. As before I intend to keep a blog and part of me wishes it to be a boring account of an uneventful trip with no disasters to record. On the other hand, I have come to realise that people are not really interested in peaceful, uneventful trips. As Sandra's sister Gill commented on the blog during the last trip “I only followed it for the disasters.” Here's hoping the 2014 trip is interesting but without too many disasters (although they have started already!)



Lex - as policeman in school play

Anatalia aka "Talia" - looking cute

Sandra has been in Sydney since November - she went ahead of me in order to do a bit of grandmotherly “bonding” with our three Australian grandchildren Lex, Anatalia and Jasmine. Presumably I was not going to be much good at “bonding” and was left behind to my own devices – which I suspect caused Sandra some worry as I came across an

Jasmine aka Jazzy - looking not so cute

email she sent to a friend saying that she thought that “James has gone a bit mad without my calming influence”. She may have had a point as I went through a dressing up phase when, in a matter of weeks I found myself performing as Maggie Thatcher (Heroes and Villains of the 20^th Century Dinner) – Santa's Big Elf (Rugby Club Santas Christmas Outing) – Santa Claus (Rotary Club Street Collection) and finally, Rab C Nesbitt (New Year's Eve Party)

Santa's Big Elf - looking even less cute !!

Rab C Nesbitt with Buckfast and another reprobate bringing
in the New Year in style

Sandra in the meantime was having no less an eventful time. A rather stunning picture of her at the wheel of a yacht – and looking very much the part – was followed by her expensive camera “jumping out of her bag” and heading for the bottom of Sydney Harbour. This was not an isolated case, experience had already shown that hi-tech cameras, Sandra and salt water are a fatal combination!



Pirates of the Caribbean - "Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon!"

 

 

After Christmas and New Year in Sydney a “break” was required and a beach house a few hours drive south was booked for a week long family holiday – ten people in all. When Sandra last went to Australia just over two years ago for the birth of Jasmine she was pushed onto the plane in a wheel chair as she had just broken her ankle. A day into their holiday I received phone and email messages asking for details of her medical insurance – she had fallen on the stairs in the holiday house and had broken two bones in the same ankle. She has assured me that red wine was not a contributory factor.

Early indications were that she would need surgery when she got back to Sydney to pin the bones together. However, for once luck was on our side, and she has been told that surgery will not be required – just strapping and rest. This was doubly lucky as, when I spoke to the insurance company, they told me that if surgery had been needed she would have been repatriated to the UK. She is now back in Sydney where she somehow sourced a scooter to help her mobility. She found she could really get up to speed in shopping malls - and was thinking of getting a crash helmet just in case !




Sandra on her mobility scooter. Note the two additions attached to the handle bars
now you don't get that on the National Health Service

 

 

Being the advance party Sandra was tasked with not only her “bonding” duties but to start to pull together the kit needed for the trip – vehicle, tent etc. With her broken ankle I suspect things may be a little behind schedule and I doubt if we will be ready to hit the road by the end of February as I had hoped. Particularly as Steven (our son) is in the throes of buying a house and I suspect that Sandra has offered my rudimentary house renovation skills to the project.

Finally, in this the first blog of the 2014 Australian Trip, it is with heavy heart that I have to reveal that Zara, our 11 year old Rhodesian Ridgeback, has had to be put down due to a sudden and very aggressive cancer. For eleven years she was a constant reminder of a trip Sandra and I took to Morocco with a group of friends where we rented a “palace” in Marrakesh which came with a complement of four staff including a delightfully rotund cook called Zara - who would probably have been mortified if she had known a dog had been named after her.

Zara is now at the bottom of a very large hole in the garden. This news will come as a relief to neighbours who, having noticed the appearance of a large hole and the lack of sightings of Sandra, may have put two and two together and made five!

 

Jetlag! Roof Collapse! Garden Devastated! Cold! Isn't it Good to be Back Home?

Our last day in Hong Kong started in some style as a large black Mercedes glided to a halt at the hotel to pick us up for the 40-minute trip to the airport – it certainly beat the shuttle bus. The only small hiccup on a very smooth journey to the airport was my inability to resist playing with the various controls surrounding my seat as I set both the rear headrest and my seat into “yo-yo” mode!

Neither of us were particularly looking forward to the 12 hour flight to Heathrow although the service and facilities provided by Cathay Pacific were excellent with the main problem being, having eventually worked out how to use the personal entertainment controls, which of the 350 movies and TV programmes to watch – never mind the 100’s of music tracks and albums which were also available. A generous supply of red wine also helped to pass the time.

Nearing the end of the flight there was a worrying announcement from the Captain as he alerted us that the temperature in London was 6C. Whilst not as cold as it had been a few weeks earlier, to those of use who had been living in temperatures routinely in the 20’s or 30’s, the UK weather was going to be a bit of a shock to the system. However, by the time we arrived, Sandra was so tired I don’t think she really noticed the temperature. In fact, going through Immigration and Passport Control, she was so dozy that she claimed the man in front of her in the queue was her husband and trotted off with him to get her passport checked. This was a problem as I had her passport and she somewhat sheepishly had to leave her new “husband” as I reclaimed her – giving a totally new meaning to the airport term “Baggage Reclaim”

Then came arguably the worst part of the whole journey. A few years ago, when coming back from India, we had booked a connecting flight to Edinburgh leaving London two hours after our India flight arrived. Needless to say the India flight was late, we missed our connection, there were no other planes that day so we had to stay in London overnight and pay extra for a flight the next morning. To ensure this didn’t happen again I had booked a flight to Edinburgh which gave us a six-hour window which I hoped would cover all eventualities.

And it did – except one – our Hong Kong flight arrived early leaving us with over six hours to kill in Heathrow. A visit to British Airways to see if we could get an earlier flight revealed that it would be possible to change flights if we paid a surcharge but it would actually be cheaper just to buy new tickets. When told this would cost £250 EACH we decided to sit it out and fly on our original £50 tickets (£5 fare + £45 taxes!)

The short hop from Heathrow to Edinburgh took little over an hour. Although the snow had all but gone there was plenty of evidence, in terms of melting snow mountains beside the runways and in the car parks, where the snow had been bulldozed in order to keep the airport functioning. As we emerged from Arrivals there was Jon to meet us and give us a lift home however, on the way to the car, the conversation took a familiar twist. It was raining and Jon said that this was the first rain there had been in Edinburgh for weeks – once again, in super quick time, the Rain Gods had tracked us half way across the world!

Back home and the house was in immaculate order however, as we were about to lavish praise upon Jon and Lisa’s house cleaning abilities, Jon confessed that he had engaged the services of a firm of professional cleaners to give the place a good going over before we got home. One place the cleaners were unable to perform any miracles unfortunately was the main bathroom that has now been out of commission since the snowfalls in early December led to the collapse of the ceiling. Blog readers may recall that we only learned of this catastrophe through Jon’s Facebook site where he had posted a photograph. He hadn’t bothered to tell us directly as he hadn’t wanted to worry us! Anyway the hole is still with us and I have started to hassle the insurance company to get a move on with the repairs.

The skylight in the kitchen, which was more or less wiped out when several tons of icy snow plus a caste iron drain pipe plummeted from the roof, has had a temporary repair i.e. the glass has been replaced. However it looks like there has been structural damage and major work is likely to be necessary – another insurance company hassle required.

Arriving home at night and in the dark we were only able to see the internal, weather-related disasters – the external disasters had to wait until the following morning before their full extent would be revealed.

The most immediately impressive disaster was the 100-year-old pear tree, along with its rambling rose companion, that had succumbed to the weight of snow and toppled onto a lawn. A great pity as, although the pears weren’t up to much, the pale pink rose which covered the tree for much of the summer will be sorely missed. However, on the bright side, we will be burning pear wood on the fire for years to come as soon as I get going with the chainsaw.

A fence had come down with the snow as had, and probably the most annoying of all, the fruit cage at the top of the garden where the weight of snow had snapped the wooden uprights and cross pieces as if they were matchsticks. A big rebuilding job for me I’m afraid – I wonder if Jon has this down as an insurance job?

Despite the three-day stopover in Hong Kong, Sandra and I are having difficulty with our body clocks and for the first few days back found ourselves snoozing in the afternoon then waking up at three o’clock in the morning. Mind you this has had some beneficial side effects – for some inexplicable reason, when she gets up at 3am, Sandra has an urge to make soup. Therefore, after three successive very early mornings, we now have a stockpile of Leek and Potato, Bean and Tomato, and Butternut Squash with Orange soups.

Finally, with our return to Scotland following an exciting, eventful, exhausting and thoroughly enjoyable year in Australia, this blog is now coming to a natural end. Despite requests from various people to keep it going I will probably only make a couple more postings in which I will firstly, attempt to summarise our trip to the other side of the world and secondly, thank all those people, many of whom were totally unknown to us before we left Scotland, who threw their doors open to us, made us welcome and went out of their way to help us.