Smiley face...

I don't know if you got this in the UK, but this evening we witnessed the conjunction of the moon, Venus, and Jupiter to produce this 'smiley face': [you'll probably see it better if you click on it]



Apparently, in the US the face wasn't smiling but sad, which could be taken as some kind of omen I guess, and given that many of the country's people are superstitious, probably will be by more than a few. Here, the economic news is not much to write home about [sic] either. We are looking at a strong likelihood of recession, perhaps not as fulsome as the UK and the US, but not brilliant non-the-less. Even having a budget surplus can't help if no one else in the world wants to do business eh! Not a good time to be having a job hunt thrust upon me either.

Earlier in the evening, Matilda pleaded with Nana for some fabric because she wanted to make a surprise for Phoebe. Eventually, she wore down the poor woman who hadn't wanted to give her anything, since she's only got sheets and the like, and no other materials around. Matilda manage to purloin a pillowcase, and inside about 20 mins, emerged from behind a locked door with this....



Feeb is delighted with it, and only took it off briefly to have her bath, after which she donned it again to sleep in. Interesting pics though eh? They are very 'primitive' I think. The one below reminds me of that famous picture of the Asian man squatting in a tree with a pistol that 'appears' to be pointing at his wife's head. In reality, it was just that he was proud of the fact that he had a pistol.

Weird

Daile and I just went out to a end of term party for the Kindy parents. Nice do with some nice people and a bit of a shame to be leaving that lot...although we would be either way since Phoebe would be going to reception even if we weren't moving. But the reason i'm relating this was that its SO warm here tonight that we had condensation on the OUTSIDE of the windscreen on the way home. Now that was a first!

Moving arse...

As I may have mentioned in an earlier blog, the school system here starts much later than in the UK. Kids here don't start school at 5, they start 'reception' during the year that they are 5, and school proper at 6. Phoebe is about to start reception in January (the school year starts in January) and we felt that it was pretty important that she didn't start at Collingwood Park (where Tilda has been this year) but at the school that they will be at when we've built the house. Matilda unfortunately will have to start again, having just made freinds with a bunch of kids at the school, but better now than after another year, during which they will become closer.

So to that end, we have been looking at houses to rent that are near to the school and of course near to the land. We looked at several houses in the end, and put in an expression of interest on one (the one I mentioned in the last entry). However, partially because we had reservations about the agents and partially because we had cold feet about the layout which has really poor access to an otherwise good garden (or yard as they call it here), we decided to pull out. We didn't do it blind however, because we had also seen another house that is layed out a whole lot better.... and we got it!



It's a four bedroom house, one of which is going to be our study/spare bedroom, and the girls will have a room each. They need to have a space each, and this will be their first taste of it. Currently there is an imaginary line that runs down the centre of their bedroom, and when one or the other of them is feeling anti-social, the line becomes highly visible to them... and the patrolling of it becomes highly vocal - which is a pain in the bum for everyone else that has to live here.



Needless to say, Daile and I are looking forward to getting unpacked, and we're going to empty out the rest of the container and sell it. Since all our stuff arrived here last year, the container has been at a local house that has a lotta space around the back, and we've been paying them $25 a week to keep it there - so far about $1,500 - which isn't bad, but will be good to have for something else now. I don't expect we'll get as much for the container as we paid, but we should cover the rent on the land it's been sitting on. We don't have anywhere else that we can keep it, as putting it on our own land would require both planning permission, and some reshaping of the land to make a level bit.

Whilst I was in the UK, Mum gave me a little book for Matilda about surviving on a desert island, and making stuff like a hat from reeds, and a fishing rod from found objects. It was a good choice of books for her and she has really been caught by the idea. So it was not a surprise to find that she'd fashioned this fishing rod out of stuff that she found in the back garden. She took this to school and was suitably congratulated for her innovation by her teacher.... which is always a great motivator for her. Zoom in to see what she did.



Workwise, I've been in touch with a couple of people and been to see a company that were impressed but don't have anything as yet. I'm not working through the recruitment companies because they just don't know what to do with me. I do have one agency looking for work for me, because the guy is a mate, and understands better than most what I can do and can't do. In the meantime, my options are begining to crystalise a bit, and i'm realising that if I can, I should be doing something that has at least SOME creative outlet in the role. Whatever it is, it's probably going to take a while. Most companies are shutting down for Christmas, and are not looking at taking people on untill AT LEAST mid Jan. We'll see.

Back in Oz...

The flight back to Australia wasn't too bad as I was able to grab seats. This technique involves being the last person onto the plane so that you can see if there are any unfilled seats that are better than yours. I do this as a matter of routine in any case because I can't see the point of queueing for the seat.. I mean you're allocated a seat number and its yours whether you're on first or last. I always sit there in the departure lounge tutting quietly to myself, metaphorically wagging my head as everyone jumps up to queue as soon as the hostesses announce the seat rows that they are boarding. Apart from anything, it pisses me off that the airlines try to create 'value' by loading the business and first class passengers first... I suppose that some of the people that are chaffing to get their bums on those seats might wish that they could be the first on, and may pay for that 'privilege' next time. When Walter the dog was around, I used to giggle at him that when he thought we were going somewhere he'd push his nose at the opening crack in the door, and sort of use his head as a wedge to drive it open. Once outside, he'd have to wait for me to come out and wait for me to lock the door and wait for me to decide which way to go etc etc. All this must have been in slow mo for Walt... and his chaffing was all for nothing since he was constrained my pace not his. So when you're the last on the plane you can saunter past all these 'Walters' that are looking anxious about whether you're going to sit next to them, or about the person that IS sitting next to them, or about the baby in the bassinet just in front of them...
Like everyone else, I like to have as much leg room as possible, even though my legs are shorter. I also prefer it if I don't have a seat in front of me as it almost always pisses me off when the person in front claims some of my tiny space allowance by reclining. I know I'm a grumpy old Fart... Simon told me.

Just before I left the UK I met up with Simon Tayler from Artem (and his daughter Ella) and we went out for an Indian. Later we were nattering and laughing about the reality that we are both what society calls 'grumpy old men'. However Simon reckons that the term is inaccurate. I agree. Neither of us are actually 'grumpy' in the accepted sense of the word. It has become a fashionable put down to those of us who for one reason or another are less than accepting of the status quo. Maybe its something to do with the perspective that one achieves with age that sort of distorts the input into something coloured by years of experience, positive and negative. The information that we are fed is hyped and coloured by the marketing machine that is our industrial society so that it needs to be decoded back to something more akin to our own experience. You can call that grumpy, but Simon and I prefer to call that reality.... and if you don't agree.... well you can stick it where the sun don't shine :-) as long as you're positive about it eh!

Just before I went to Simon's house, I went to see Phil and Frances, our old neighbours. We had about 45 Min's only, but it was really nice to see them and see how much the kids had grown. Phil didn't look like he'd had a hair cut since we last saw him.... but otherwise they were both unworn by the passing of a year. And just before I went there, I'd been to see Connor and Katrina and the kids.

I'd made an arrangement to meet them the week before and dutifully turned up with the ingredients to have tea... pastries, scones, jam and cream. (Actually i may have forgotten the jam but you get the picture). The kids were bigger, but otherwise more like themselves than ever, and it was lovely to see them. Their methods for bringing up their kids are very similar to those that Daile and I seem to use, not that there is a method AS SUCH but more of a tendency to a laid back and tolerant disposition (work with me here!!). So I was surprised that I was surprised, when in response to a request to eat the cream directly from the aerosol (i know i know, but we're not all purists even if we ARE grumpy), Katrina said yes! Fantastic! Here's the evidence. It almost became a cream fest, they all lined up of course. Sadly, the camera I took to the UK is not very quick, so I missed the others.





Here's a couple of pics of Gill (my sister) and my Mum and I at Gill's studio. I'd have put them up when I did that blog, but they were still in the camera.





When I arrived back in Brisbane, it was just after there had been a storm that was so violent that the hail had dented all our cars. The five vehicles outside our house are all covered in little tiny dents that you don't see immediately, but catch with your eye in certain lights. There has been very heavy rainfall and inclement weather this week....



... with widespread flooding, and many homes have been wrecked by flooding that is so bad that cars have been bumping around inside garages and swept down gardens etc... so we consider ourselves very lucky. (Not in the least bit grumpy in fact). The following pictures show the boat ramp that we use in Goodna, and if you compare the pictures of now, with the level of an earlier picture I took, you can see that the level is about 6 to 8 ft higher! (It's a bit difficult to see it in the darker picture, but if you click on them you can see better).







This week I worked on Monday and finished off the filing of mail etc from home on Tuesday, which was my last day. I have retained my original work mobile number so no need to write down a new one chaps... Since then I've been to see a guy about my CV who's going to try to find me some work and I've been in touch with a company that I'm going to see next week on the off chance... I'm not really sure what I'm doing yet.

We've also been and put our names down on a list of people interested in renting a house in Shailer Park. The way it works here is that you register interest and the landlords get to choose who sounds the best on paper... but they don't get to meet you. Bizarre. I'll post pics when I know if we've got it. We had looked at a couple of others which didn't look too bad on the outside but were really grubby or smelly on the inside. We're trying to be economical...

Whilst we were waiting to view the house the Feeb fell over... and now looks like this:



So I've been hanging out a bit with the kiddies. This week we've been swimming twice. Once for their conventional swimming lesson on the Thursday, and again the following night because its so damn hot here right now!!! Outside the swimming pool and right by the river there is a whole load of trees that are absolutely blathered with bats hanging there. About 6pm each day they all suddenly wake up, fly up and down for a few minutes and then swarm off. Its amazing to watch. They don't swarm over to the pool, but the opposite way. Never-the-less, we sat on the bonnet of the car (with the dents) and ate blueberry chew sticks...



At first there's nothing moving... then you see one or two...







... until finally the place is swarming. I didn't have my camera again... so this was the best I could get with the longer shot. You can see that they go nuts though. Its a pretty awesome sight. The kids loved it.

No giggling!

OK, don't larf... this is my attempt at the self portrait. This took a couple of hours. I didn't get it finished, but i'm going to have another go at it tomorrow.