Amusing gym story

We've just been for a swim / run in the pool / gym.

It was the first time that I've been swimming in the evening and also the first time that I've worn goggles. I have decided not to wear them previously as they never seem to keep enough water out. It seems that keeping some water out is better than none though so the goggles stay.

The pool is all lit up in the evening at the moment (it gets dark about 5pm) and that combined with the goggles made everything seem a bit eerie. I could imagine I was in a Hitchcock film and about to get drowned by my husband.

Sean had a good run, but unfortunately left his keys (the only pair we had with us) in the gym, which you can get to through the pool but has another lock on the door.

There was still a chap cycling in there, but Sean didn't want to disturb him, I think as this would break his exercise pattern. I don't really understand these things, possibly because I don't swim fast enough.

Instead we tried waiting outside the pool for someone to come past. This was pretty unsuccessful. After we got bored of this (it didn't take that long), I went to go and ask the cycling guy for Sean's keys back.

Last weekend when we went to get some post from the mailroom, Sean managed to walk straight into the door (all the doors are glass here). I did try very hard not to laugh but didn't quite manage it. However I am pretty sure that completely see-though doors would be illegal in the UK on health and safety grounds.

So, anyway, I strode into the pool to go and knock on the gym door. Only I didn't exactly stride into the pool, more into a glass pane that was where the door wasn't. I am quite pleased that I didn't walk into the gym door - heavens only knows what the cyclist would have though then. Sean tried very hard not to laugh etc. etc.

I was consequently a bit disoriented when I finally disturbed the cyclist but he was very nice about the whole thing and I retrieved Sean's keys.

One good thing though: at least we are in a country where it is warm enough that you can stand outside in a wet swimming costume in the evening when it's nearly winter and not feel the cold.

Backgammon: Sean is back on form

We won't be playing backgammon this evening as everyone has wimped out since it is a bank holiday. However we made up for this by going to an all day tournament last Sunday.

The tournament was held at George's by the water, a restaurant in King Street Wharf. This is on the left hand side of Sydney, directly opposite where we live. The quickest way for us to get there would be to swim across, but it's not much longer (and a bit drier) if we walk down and cross at the bridge.



King Street Wharf as seen from our flat

The tournament runs every 6 Sundays or so and starts at 12:30pm. We very foolishly decided to have a nap on the sofa (too much swimming and running - see previous post) at about 10:30am and had to rush around in a panic when we woke up at 12:20am. Luckily we were still in plenty of time; the tournament didn't start until about 1pm.

We played 9 point matches in a 24 player field with buy backs. In order that the buy backs didn't hold up the rest of the tournament, these matches were only played to 7 points. Sean and I both went out in the first round (no change for me there then), but after having some tasty meze for lunch (Sean had fish, squid and lamb and I had the same but with Spinach pastries - spankopitta - instead of squid) we both bought back in.

The tournaments here are much more friendly and we were put on opposing sides of the draw both in the original 16 and the final 8 buy backs. I won a match! In only one game - I threw the cube back to 8 in a position something like this:



Black cubes to 8

I can't remember the exact position - it is a drop with black's checkers like this or better, but a take if they are a little worse. I have no idea what it was.

My next match went on a little longer, but I managed to roll my way through it. Sean started hovering nearby towards the end so I correctly surmised that he had won two matches too and was waiting for the winner.

For a long while it appeared to be the case that I always won when Sean and I met in a tournament but that seems to have fallen by the wayside. We played to 5 and Sean came up trumps.

To be fair I was not too upset about losing as the final was in a very complicated chouette format. As there had been 24 players, Jay the tournament director had decided to try and make a chouette format to determine the winner from the final 3. In the end Sean, Jim and Ian played a chouette, scoring wins and losses separately with the first to lose 13 losing and going out and the first to win 13 coming first. I'm sure Sean will have a lot more to say about this, but it looked unnecessarily complicated to me. Sean was looking to come joint 1st in his final game as captain but his opponent managed to swing the game around and so Sean came 2nd (his team mate went to -13).

Overall we had a lovely day and will definitely be going to the next tournament at the end of May.

Exercise!

I hadn't expected to be going swimming again after last Monday as it makes Sean feel dizzy. However, while we were there, he investigated the gym and when we woke up early on Friday morning, Sean bounced out of bed and declared that he wanted to go running.

As the gym is by the pool, this works out very well as I am as disinclined to run as Sean is to swim. We went swimming / running on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and then Sean thought he had better have yesterday off for his muscles to recuperate. We went again today (we are off work to celebrate the Australian dead).

In general as we get up unpleasantly early anyway we are going to try swimming / running before Sean leaves for Mount Druitt. We'll let you know how this goes...

In addition to all this swimming, last week I rearranged my working week so that I could take 2 hours out to go dancing on Thursday. There is a dance company near the theatre where we went to see the History Boys (up by the harbour bridge). They run about 5 classes every day including jazz, hip-hop, ballet, tap and various other modern dance. I went to a beginners jazz class. I did a bit of dancing when I was at school and was taken aback by how hard this class was. I will not be attempting an intermediate one. The class was really good fun and I'm definitely going to go back next week.

Last Saturday we walked over to Kings Cross to visit a Sydney farmers market. In particular we thought we might buy some pork sausages: they are considered a "speciality" sausage here, the sausages you find in a supermarket are all beef. Excluding some exciting looking Turkish pancakes, the market was small and a big disappointment. Still we then went and had lunch (mixed barbecued seafood) overlooking the river at The Rocks.

The other thing I have been doing in addition to exercise is eating. Inspired by this fantastic cake blog by Chockylit I have started a smoothie blog. I had originally thought I might try and follow some recipes and make some cakes but I don't really have time. Smoothies are very easy to make and form the basis of my diet while Sean is at work. If you want to have a look, you can find my blog here http://milkshakesandsmoothies.blogspot.com/.

Long weekend

As Sean said in his last post, we started the long weekend with a visit to the Fish Market and the cooking of a crab.

After our large lunch we were falling asleep by 6pm so we went for a walk by Darling Harbour. We were just going to have a quick walk up the other side of the harbour where we haven't been yet but when we got there we noticed that Sydney Aquarium was open until 10pm so we went to have a look round. We saw loads of cool things, including a duck-billed platypus, a cool multi-coloured sea dragon type thing and lots of eels, fish and sharks. It also kept us awake until a sensible hour to go to sleep!

On Saturday, despite vowing we wouldn't, we had another big lunch (Cod from the Fish Market) followed by an afternoon of inactivity.

We both got two easter eggs for Easter, Sean got a Kinder surprise giant egg from me and a Lindt egg from work. I got a Lindt egg and a My Little Pont easter bucket from Sean.



My Little Pony Easter Bucket

We had to swap eggs early as Sean had no chance to hide his, but I lasted until Saturday evening before scoffing the Lindt egg. Pretty good huh?

On Sunday we decided to do some more touristy things so we went to Taronga Zoo. You get to the zoo by taking a ferry from Circular Quay (the main ferry hub) and we had discovered on Friday that you can take a ferry from where we live to Circular Quay. What could be easier? We also found that if we bought day passes (£6 each) we also got £2 off the Zoo entry.

The first thing you do on arrival is to take a sky lift up to the Zoo.



The "Sky Safari"

We saw a lot of exciting animals in the zoo, including visiting the penguins at least twice, seeing them fed and also seeing a really cool bird show.

Here are some animals we saw:



Camel



Giraffe and Zebras



Bear Cat. Is it a bear? Is it a cat?



Rhinocerous

There aren't any photos of penguins, despite the number of times we went to see them, as the camera ran out of battery.

The zoo is situated just over the river from the city, so it is still very much in the centre of Sydney. Here is a picture of some mountain goats set against a backdrop of the harbour bridge. Don't spend too long looking for the mountain goats - they don't seem to have come out too well.



Mountain goats?

We ate at the zoo, Sean had a pizza but I tried some traditional Aussie tucker: one of Mrs Mac's famous pies. It was pretty good.

Today we went swimming in the pool that is part of the complex. We hadn't even been to see it before today. It's a giant pool and best of all there was no one else there!



Pool

Back to work tomorrow.

It's been a while since I last posted. Still, Zoe has been keeping you all entertained with ripping tales of clothes shopping and what fruit she had for breakfast.

We have had a busy week.

On Monday we went to see Keb Mo at the Enmore Theatre.

Keb was fantastic but the evening was slightly marred by Twat Man.

Twat Man was sitting on the row in front of us about 4 seats to the right.

Whilst everybody else in the Theatre had paid to listen to Keb Mo he had paid to spend the evening alternating between two activities:

1. talking very loudly to his girlfriend;
2. shouting inanities over quiet sections of the set such as 'Go Kebby', 'Wooah' and 'Yeah Yeah Yeehaaa'.

He did this through every single song.

About three songs in the person to our left told him to shut-up.

Two songs later the person sitting behind him threatened to kill him.

This worked for a short period of time before Twat Man, obviously overcome with pent-up emotion exclaimed 'Feel The Blues' and started singing his own harmony line.

None-the-less Keb was excellent.

On Tuesday we went to see the Rolling Stones on their 'A Bigger Bang' Tour at the Telstra Stadium.

The Set List was:

Jumping Jack Flash; Let's Spend The Night Together; You Got Me Rocking; Oh No Not You Again; Dead Flowers; Angie; It's Only Rock And Roll; Tumblin' Dice; Night Time Is The Right Time; The Place Is Empty; Happy; Miss You; Rough Justice; Get Off My Cloud; Honky Tonk Women; Paint It Black; Sympathy for the Devil; Start Me Up; Brown Sugar; Can't Always Get What You Want; Satisfaction.

More than enough classics there to make the evening a huge success. My favourite was 'Honky Tonk Women' but then it was always going to be.

Keef is till the coolest man ever. His face is certainly a testament to the effects of a career in the rock 'n' roll fast lane.

'Its good to be here Sydney. But then it's good to be anywhere'

There were 60,000 people watching the Stones on Tuesday. You can see us all below...

On Wednesday we were going to go to a meeting of the Australian Skeptics but it had been brought forward to the week before so we'd missed it. This was probably a good thing as we were absolutely exhausted after two nights out. We will go next time. One of the best parts of the Australian Skeptics website is Dr Bob's Quiz. I guarantee that it will challenge even the most knowledgable pub quizer. It will also greatly increase your Google skills.

Warning: This next section recounts crustacean boling and is probably not suitable for anthropomorphising, malnutritioned carrot-huggers. Cat - you have been warned. Just skip the next couple of paragraphs and think about kittens.

Yesterday we decided to have a big seafood lunch outside on our balcony. To this end we went to Sydney Fish Market (which was very, very busy) and bought some prawns, some rocket and a crab. I was a little nervous as to how we would get the crab home but the assistant just picks your chosen crab out of the box and puts it upside down in a carrier bag which seems to quieten it down a bit.

Here is a photo of our crab.

It got a bit more lively when we got it home so we put it in the freezer to stun it.

There is nothing a crab likes more after being stunned than being boiled. This is a scientific fact.

I had to buy this pot specially on Thursday. It was the largest one they had and was still only just big enough. You can see the crab having a whale of a time at the bottom of the pan.

After boiling you pull off the claws and legs, chop the body in half, remove the lungs and other nasty crab entrails and voila...

It was extremely tasty and well worth the effort. I think we shall have crab again next week.

On the backgammon front I have been trying to do some work on Blitz Doubles. I had half a notion that I would come up with the Sean Formula that would accurately predict early blitz cube decisions. I would become world famous and backgammon players would talk about me in revered tones. Sadly the area is very complicated - still the research I have done has made me understand far more than I did. I also understand the relative importance of various factors in the blitz better - particularly the importance of the quantity of ammunition available to the attacker (Bagai notes both the importance and general neglect of this topic in Classic Backgammon Revisited).

I played a great 11 point match against Gnu yesterday. It was one game long with me winning 16-0. Most notably all the cube decisions were correct (at least according to Gnu 2-ply). I am particularly proud of my recube to 16 which I managed to time just right. Admittedly this was mostly luck as I had no idea what was going on but my intuition must be getting better!

I will post the game separately with some analysis. I won't do it here as I know not everyone is quite as obsessed by backgammon as I am.

Work is going OK. It is very busy and we are still nowhere near where we need to be but we are moving in the right direction.

I think that's all for now.

Sean

You learn something new every day

I've just worked out how to change the time zone so you can now see what time I'm actually posting at rather than the time in America.

We finished furnishing our flat last weekend - we made the final (i.e. main bed), decomissioned the old one (we've turned the spare room into a games playing room) and bought some coffee tables and garden furiture.

Our main aim had been to buy a barbeque but were unable to decide on one. The outside gas tap is in a rather unfortunate location on the balcony and apparantly all gas barbeques come with a standard sized (not long enough) lead. Sean thinks we may have to resort to a UK style coal powered barbeque.

We also bought a wine rack to store all the wine we bought and were wondering where to put it. There is a kind of decorative shelf in the hallway (you can imagine a large urn with dried flowers there); I had suggested that maybe we could get a stand and put Sean's guitar there but the wine rack fits well and looks good.



Wine on display

Here are some more photos of the new furniture:



Sofas and coffee tables



The games room



Our new bed



The balcony

The weather's beautiful here (although slightly windy); I've been working outside on the balcony today (on the new garden furniture).

My birthday (2)

As I live a long way away for present sending, I got a lot of vouchers and money for my birthday. These needed spending so I took Friday off and had almost a second birthday. In particular, I thought, I could have my cake that I am owed.

I've been looking forward to going shopping here for ages, I think because I had been telling myself in the UK for a while that I mustn't buy any clothes as it will be summer in Australia and I will want summer clothes. But I haven't really felt I could buy any clothes here as we have been spending so much money on sorting everything else out: furniture, sheets and towels (I am quite amazed by how much sheets and towels cost) and "white goods" (fridge, toaster, kettle, iron etc.). So it was with real joy I set out on Friday to spend money on clothes that was specifically designated for the purpose.

I didn't get out especially promptly yesterday - I felt I ought to make an attempt to blog some of the stuff we have been doing and it took me a long time to upload the winery photos. I found a handy feature whereby you can upload more than one photo at a time - up to 5. So I tried it. It took longer than normal to upload (understandably) but then didn't add the photos to the blog, I tried again in case it was a glitch. No joy. I tried with only two photos and that didn't work either so I then had to upload all 5 separately like I would have had to do to start with. Grrrr.

By this time the post office was open (they don't open until 9am here unlike in the UK where they open extra early but then shut early too) so I went to fetch the wine. As we back onto the casino there is usually a line of taxis outside our back door. I approached one and proposed my plan to him - he drives me to the post office, waits while I get the wine, drives me back and wait while I unload it. I was a bit concerned that I would have to leave him with the wine while I carried it up a case at a time but I thought I would worry about that later.

The taxi driver reluctantly agreed to my plan and off we went. The queue in the post office was not too long (it was about 11:30am - just in time before the lunch break rush) but the two people in front of me both took an age.

I am not sure about the advisability of admitting to breaking the law in a blog. Let's say that suppose Sean had forgotton to sign over the slip from the post office for the one wine delivery that was in his name, I may have had to fake his signtature (not very well either). The lady in the post office didn't seem worried by Sean's signature though, although she was worried that I was collecting it at all. "Who is this?" she demanded, to which I could only reply "Sean" adding "I have his passport here", which seemed to make everything OK in her eyes.

She spent a long time shuffling about in the back room, during which I saw the taxi driver coming up to check whether I was still there, although he just sidled away when he saw I was at the desk. I was asked to explain how I was going to get the wine home and then some more shuffling ensued. Finally I was taken to another door where a hitherto unseen post office employee loaded the wine onto and trolley and took it out for me. It didn't look like the trolley would go down the curb so I ran across the road to the taxi with the crates one at a time.

On the way back I had a brilliant idea - instead of running up to the flat carrying the crates, I could get the taxi driver to drive into the car park to the bottom of the lift. Genius. The plan went off without a hitch, although the taxi was slightly too big for the car park and made a ding-ding-ding sound as it went along by banging the overhead pipes with the TAXI sign.

By the time I got out it was gone 12pm so I knew I had to be efficient in my shopping. I started with Harbourside in Darling Harbour, a slightly touristy shopping centre that I had walked through every day on my way to Starbucks without having time to stop and look at things I noticed. in particular an Aussie discount store (mainly cut price souvenirs and Australia T-shirts) had been offering fake fur stoles for $3 each. I had been debating this for a long time but I succumbed and bought a white one and a black one. Will I ever wear them? Who knows.



Fur Stoles

I did quite well in Darling Harbour and picked up a vest top, a dress made from Hemp (although I am assured by the label that there are no active ingredients and also, which I didn't know, that Hemp is much better for the environment than cotton) and a mini-skirt. Will I ever be brave enough to wear the mini-skirt? We shall see.

I also paid a visit to the British Lolly Shop. Lolly is just the Australian word for sweet. What we would call a lolly is known as a lolly on a stick. I thought I would buy Sean some sugared almonds and did so. I noticed some Bourneville - sadly lacking from Australian supermarkets even though they are choc (literally) full of Cadbury's Dairy Milk - and bought a couple of bars of that too. I noticed some condiments on a shelf: Coleman's mustard and various other English treats. Now Sean has been desparate for some HP sauce since we got here - he's even been in touch with people coming back from the UK and asked them to smuggle some over for him. I asked, hopefully, at the Lolly shop and they do sell it, they are just temporarily out of stock. So Sean may well be sauced up next week.

It was about 2pm when I headed into town. I am not sure why I can cope with Oxford Street and Kensington but not here, but the centre of Sydney seems to me to be absolutely full of clothes shops and so I was already feeling confused in anticipation.

I decided to simplify things by heading towards Ojay, which I had a voucher for. I had still not had my cake but I decided if I had spent my voucher I could pause and feel I had done well.



The belt

I passed a shop called Supre and went in. I had been admiring a belt in the windows as I passed it and decided to go in and get it. The clothing content was very typical school girl fashion (think Top Shop, Miss Selfridge) and contained a vast amount of clothing. I piled up my arms and went to the fitting room. In the end I bought two sensible tops for winter, a black pencil skirt, the belt and a long black strapless dress that was a bargain on the sale. A good result, but I felt I had worked hard for it.



Long black strapless dress

Determined now to reach Ojay, just so I could go home, I headed into Central Plaza. I meandered through some shops and stopped at a shoe shop, remembering that I had vaguely planned to buy some winter boots. Everyone here is already cold, I get kind enquiries after the state of my body temperature when walking around in summer dresses. It is still hotter here than summers in the UK.

All the shoes here are two sizes up so I had to ask for a 10. The only had one of the styles I liked in a 10 and the lady had to go upstairs to get it and gave me a 9 to try. It was slightly uncomfortable but I got the idea. The boots are very nice and the only drawback was that I had just got used to buying cheap clothes and at about £65 they seemed ferociously expensive. The kind sales lady reassured me that I wouldn't find them cheaper somewhere else and that was enough for me. I was now out of birthday money and all that remained was to find Ojay.



Boots

It turned out that I was not in Central Plaza as I thought, I had somehow got into the Queen Victoria building. We were told in a video we were shown on the wine tour that it had won some prize for best looking shopping centre and I can see that they may be right, however it did not contain Ojay. I went back the way I came, worked out where I went wrong, found a handy shopping centre directory for Central Plaza and then stumbled across Ojay almost by accident.

It was very different from the other shops I had been in, but in the same way as all the small clothes shops the assistants took clothes that I was waiting to try on and hung them up ready for me. Now I was laden down with purchases, I appreciated this even more. All the clothes were more expensive than the boots I had just bought but, determined, I tried a whole load of stuff on. I had an attentive assistant who changed sizes and so on for me and I was eventually left with a dress and a pair of trousers. The voucher didn't cover both but - what the hell - it was my birthday.

Fatigued, I made my way home as swiftly as possible. I failed to buy a cupcake yet again. Maybe another day...

My birthday

My birthday started well. I got tea in bed and then lots of presents.

My best present was a playstation, along with an Australian version of Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) - I think it's called something like Dance UK XL Party. Apparently it is not possible to buy the original DDR in Australia - if I miss it too much we will have to get it from eBay.

I also got some shiny new books, including "The Best Australian Essays 2005", "The Communist Manifesto" (I shall read this as a prelude to Das Kapital, which I have coming in the post) and a book called "Great Speeches".

I was very busy during the day working (with a quick half hour out at lunch for DDR). I had been planning on buying a cupcake from the cupcake shop to eat for breakfast but there wasn't time. Still, I thought, I owe myself a cupcake.

We went out for dinner and a play at 6pm - The History Boys by Alan Bennett in Sydney Theatre. Sydney Theatre encompasses a bistro where you can have two courses before dinner and then pudding in the interval (how good is that?). We turned up 15 minutes late (Sean had had trouble getting back from work) but ordered quite promptly.

The starters came very quickly - they were both cold and so had clearly been pratically ready already however they were both really nice. I had King Prawns with noodles and some other chinesey flavours and Sean had Pork Belly.

We had to wait a little longer for our mains (reassuringly) and they were both excellent when they came. Sean had Lamb Cutlets with Lamb Canneloni, which certainly looked interesting and I had sweetcorn and Mascarpone Ravioli with peas, bean and basil. Mine was possibly a little heavy on the sweetcorn flavour, but I don't feel I can really complain about that. Sean ordered some Chats (apparently just potatoes) with Rosemary and they were absolutely gorgeous.

After eating all my pasta and stuffing myself with Sean's potatoes I couldn't face a dessert, not even at the interval. Sean ordered some cheese that said it came with Muscatels. The only disappointment of the whole meal (apart from being too full to eat dessert) was when Sean asked for extra cheddar instead of the blue cheese and they said they couldn't as the cheese was already plated. There was much muttering about how this wouldn't happen in France over the cheese!

The grapes turned out to be semi-dried and absolutely gorgeous so I ate those in lieu of pudding. The service had been so efficient that we still had time for tea before the play.

The play itself was absolutely fantastic. I had wanted to see it in London but not got round to it. When I booked the tickets, they only had C reserve seats left, with a restricted view. Then the lady found me some B reserve tickets (slightly less restricted) so I snapped them up. The only restricted part of the viewing was missing the edge of a video that played intermittently in the background with non essential footage so it was no problem at all. C reserve would have been fine.

It was a very British play, which made it quite strange that we were watching it in Australia. The best scene was one where the teacher let the boys act out a brothel scene in French. (In French: "Where do you want to be today boys?" "In a brothel" "Hmmmm OK then but a brothel where everyone speaks in the conditional".)

If it comes to the UK again, you must go and see it as it is an amazing play. I think they should make a film of it: it will become the new Dead Poets Society.

Backgammon: Sean's in the money

The tournament didn't go too well for either of us this week. We both went out in the first round (I had been 6-0 up in a match to 7 but it all slipped away from me). I entered another tournament of 8 players but Sean had had enough and started playing a chouette.

Charlie came along this evening and gave Sean $150 towards what he owed. Great, thought Sean. If Charlie had not paid, Sean wouldn't have been so keen to play with him in a chouette again but it looked like it was OK.

I won my first match in the second tournament. Woo! I checked with Sean - the chouette wasn't going very well, he was 30 points or so down. I started my second match. It was a very long one. Now the new venue is much nicer than the last one but also stays open until 3am. Good news in some ways.

By the time I finished (lost) my second match it must have been about midnight. I went to check the chouette. Sean's luck had completely reversed, he was sitting tight in the box and considerably up. I then watched a few games.

The most spectacular game was one when Sean was still in the box and the cubes had been shipped across a few times, most were on 8 except for Charlie who had taken an auto and doubled too early - he was on 32. Sean pulled off a gammon and won 120 points in a single game! He was eventually knocked out of the box but played on for a little while longer.

Sean ended up at the end of night (~2am - not such good news the next day) on around +120 or $2400 or ~£1000!!! He collected a bit of cash but also a lot of IOUs, including one from an Australian chess Grandmaster and a large one from Charlie.

He's considering not entering the tournament next week and just playing chouettes.

Wine Tasting

As a joint leaving present and birthday present for Sean, Matt and Emily very kindly bought us some tickets for a trip on a wine tasting tour for when we got here.

We were originally supposed to be doing the tour on Sun 26th February, but this was the day just after we moved and we were very busy sorting stuff out with that so I called the Tour Operator and managed to rearrange for the Sunday after.

The coach left from Star City (a crazy giant casino-hotel complex), which is just out the back of our flat, so it was pretty convenient to get to. We according left 10 minutes to get there for what is a 2 min walk. There were a lot of coaches around (clearly these trips are popular) including a similar tour to ours with a rival company. We had been pointed in the right direction by the rival guide and caught the attention of a chap with a clipboard standing next to a departing coach. We explained who we were and he flagged the coach down quickly - it was our bus and we'd nearly missed it! I'm not sure what would have happened if we had - hopefully they would have let us rebook as the coach left 5 minutes early!

The coach took us up through the North of the city, through some nice looking suburbs such as Chatswood and then onto more remote parts. The landscape changed completely: open land everywhere you can see and signs warning of bushfires! It felt much more like we were in Australia proper rather than a metropolis.

We had a West Country (UK that is) coach driver, who gave us the usual commentry as we went along - explaining the names of towns and pointing out which bits of woods had burnt down recently.

One of the things that the coach driver pointed out as we went through rural Australia was the postal system. The post office refuse to deliver to house in the middle of nowhere, so everyone has to have a postbox at the end of the road they live on. We saw one road with about 30 different boxes at the end.

We made a stop on the way to the Hunter Valley wine region: historic Wollombi. I fully believe that this was a typical Australian town - there was absolutely nothing here - the main town "corner" consisted of a general shop, a cafe, a pub and a sign saying "Historic Wollombi".



Historic Wollombi

Apparently the main attraction was the fact that the pub sold Dr. Jurd's Jungle Juice, which you could try at the bar. We did so. It tasted not unlike port i.e. a sweet fortified wine. We didn't buy any.

We were back on the coach then, but not for so long (it had been 2 hours before Wollombi). Our first stop was at McWilliams Mount Pleasant, where we got a tour of the winery before a wine tasting with lunch.



McWilliams Vines

We learnt all about how the grapes are harvested (by hand or with a shaking machine), squished (a corkscrew and a press), filtered (another machine) and brewed (vats or barrels). Some examples of these are below. I was amazed by how easy it is you basically squash the grapes and stick them in a barrel.



You just tip the grapes into this...



The filter



Oak Barrels

Lunch was OK (but slightly meagre) - fish, potatoes and salad followed by a shared plate of fruit. We sat with the bus driver (from somewhere near Plymouth) and an American engineer and his family. He was working in Adelaide and they were visiting him.

The wines we had were somthing starting with a V (Verdhalo?), which was nice, Chardonnary, Merlot and Shiraz, which was also nice. The Chardonnay was typically Australian (i.e. sweet) and the Merlot was nothing special. We bought a crate each of the other two.

The second winey was McGuigan's, reputedly responsible for the rise in prestige of the whole of the Hunter Valley region. We undertook a tasting in more efficient surroundings here, sitting at a long table and being poured a new wine every 5 mins or so. We had Sauvignon Blanc (very nice - we bought a crate), Chardonnay again (no need to comment), Gerwurtztraminer (a bit sweet even for me who usually likes it), Merlot (I think), Shiraz (we bought two bottles as we already had a case of Shiraz - however this is the grape the region is best at growing) and Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. The Cabernet Sauvignon was lovely but £20 a bottle so we didn't buy any. We also had a dessert wine (nothing special) and a port (apparently still not up to Sean's standards but better than any others he has had while here). We bought two bottles of port.

We then were back on the coach to a kind of little shopping complex, with a winery, chocolate shop and various what I would term "gift shops". I was feeling a little sick by this point; we had been given chocolate to eat with the port and this may have been responsible but I blame the alcohol. Consequently I couldn't face drinking and more and watched Sean through the last tasting. He bought a crate of the Rose (I can confirm that it smelt nice) so we should now be set up for a little while wine wise.

I had also started to feel slightly lethargic, the way you do in a pub garden in the summer when you just want to sit there all day in the sun and drink wine. This is one of the feelings that I gave up alcohol to avoid and I am surprised that I noticed it after drinking what was at most 2 glasses (I literaly had a sip of each wine and threw the rest away - or donated to Sean if he liked it). In fact I think that alcohol + me = a large deal of lethargy (more than usual) so I don't think I am going to be taking it up again any time soon.

An indication of the fact that all was not right came in the chocolate shop where I looked at the chocolates and declared I wasn't interested. In fact all I wanted was a fruit smoothie, and I duly bought and drank down in one a Nudie smoothie (an Innocent equivalent but decidedly inferior - more on that in another post). I felt instantly better (psychosomatic?) and suddenly desparate for chocolates, particularly as Sean had bought some.

A suspicion voiced by the coach driver on the way out became true on the way home: we fell asleep. I had been despairing of the discomfort involved in coach journeys (it wasn't this bad when I was a child!) but now I remember how to get through them: sleep. you feel awful when you wake up but then you get to go home.

We were dropping 5 mins walk from our flat (slightly irritating as the official drop off point was right by our door), pretty exhausted. A good days work.

A final note: all the wine we bought has completely failed to be delivered (even though I've been in most of the time) so I've got to go and pick up 5 cases from the post office. This is going to be interesting.

Division of labour

We have had a good day today, making drawers. As part of our furniture shop of last week we acquired 6 sets of them: 2 bedsides for our room (black), 2 bedsides for the spare room (beech), 1 bedside to go under my desk as a desk drawer (beech) and 1 tallboy (large set of chest of drawers) to go in our bedroom (black).

As they were all identical, we managed to establish a good factory line assembling them. Adam Smith would have been proud of us. My speciality was hammering: easy, yet rewarding. We now have to wait 24 hours for the glue to dry and when we get home tomorrow we can put things in them. We can't do this during the day as we are going on a wine tour of the Hunter Valley. I am a bit nervous.

Sean has been busy the last few evenings writing backgammon spreadsheets so I have managed to finish my economics book and read a novel. The novel was called "The Oxford Murders" by Guillermo Martinez. I recommend it to murder mystery readers in general and in particular anyone who thinks Maths is cute. In some ways it reminded me of the TV show we watched while we were in serviced accommodation called "Numbers". This is an American murder mystery series, where all the mysteries are solved by using "Math". Genius. I suspect this show will appeal to other fans of Diagnosis Murder.

The TV is gone now that we have our own place and I am much relieved. Sean had taken to watching a rather nasty reality TV show called "The biggest loser" where contestants battled against each other to lose the most weight and not get voted off. Pretty much everyone on there seemed to be continually unhappy. We watched some good things such as Rabbit Proof Fence (appropriate to being in Australia) a few episodes of The Simpsons and of course Numbers but I much prefer having my evenings back.

I'm clearly not going to get round to creating a panorama of the view so here are the photos I was going to use. You will have to either use your imagination or print them out and assemble them with sticky tape. As you go down the list here you are moving from left to right.