News

There is no easy way to say this and I expect most of you already know. Me and Rachael have split up and she flew home last week. I'm not going to go into any details but it was my decision and wasn't taken at all lightly. While extremely upsetting it was completely amiable and we are still friends but if you feel the need to assign blame and offer sympathy then do the latter for Rachael and the former to me.

I'm staying in Brisbane for the immediate future to figure out what I want to do and save some money. More travel is top of my list right now. I have a yearning to see Russia where my name becomes Adam Alanovich - it has such a nice ring to it!

I'll keep updating the blog periodically although I expect I've now lost over half my audience.

Take her easy....

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS...

After a hard fought season we ended up winning the lot. For winning the league we got 'Premiership' medals and then the top four teams play in the finals (something which they have in every league in Oz) which we won also making us 'Champions' with another medal to boot. Yes, my face is the reddest, but then I ran around more than anyone else.

Everyone from Chadwick library will remember me looking like that after Staff football on a Friday anyway!

Lunch

Pie, chips and a beer.

I wont see the likes of these days again any time soon.

Day Job = Sandwitches

Isn't she a beaut...!?

I have a new project.

As most of you know I'm not really happy unless I have something to do and with this in mind I have undertaken the job of fixing up the bike pictured above. It belongs to my Cousin Scott who has kindly lent it to me while I'm in Brisbane. It wasn't actually in that bad shape and could have been made road worthy with just a couple of new tyres and some oil. However, after taking a few bits off, and noticing a few things that needed fixing I made the plunge and decided to take it apart completely and rebuild it. Rachael is extremely pleased about our lounge being turned into my bike workshop as well!

Don't worry Scott, I promise it'll still work when I'm finished.

Oh, and as of today I'm a quarter of a century old - boo hoo. However, like a fine wine I'm only getting better with age (although I'm having to trim my nose hair with alarming regularity these days)!

Legal again

After putting it off for the last few months and, as we were now driving illegally over here, we took our driving theory test yesterday to convert to Queensland Driving Licences. If you think back to your theory test in the UK where you took the test in silence at your own little desk, that was like doing a school exam. Over here you stand around wherever there's a space at the Queensland department of transport customer service centre with people in and out for all sorts of things. So after confering on a few answers we were both rewarded with a score of 30 out of 30, 100% and our new licences!

I'm quite jealous missing out on all the snow you guys are having at home. Its still quite suprising how few people over here have seen snow, even though they get it in Victoria, NSW and Tassie. My class were awestruck when I showed them photos from Adam's mum and dad. The weather here's been pretty terible for the past week. Its been windy and raining and I even had to wear a jumper to work on Friday! It definitely reminds me of Lancaster. But hopefully it'll get back to blazing sunshine and 30C heat before too long.

Skype

Just thought I'd let everyone know about a great little program called Skype which allows you to make phone calls over the internet. It's free to download from www.skype.com and basically all you need is a microphone and some speakers. It's free to phone other Skype users, anywhere in the world, and you can also make calls to landlines and mobile phones for a cost. It's pretty cheap and costs us just $ 0.021 (or £ 0.012) a minute to phone a U.K. landline.

We're hoping to get our parents onto Skype as well and then we'll be able to ring home for free.

You'll need to have a broadband connection but after that it's all free.

If anyone signs up our username is : saddlesores

Remember, you heard it here first!

Just noticed how many times I've used the word free - apologies!

Nothing to do with Australia but this is a picture from back in the motherland taken out of my old bedroom window of our front garden. Apparently it's the worst snow for this time of year that they've had in over a decade with most of the schools and minor roads shut down.

Back where I belong....

Well, some good news. I went for an interview for a job working in the Serials team at Griffith University Library on Tuesday and got a call today offering me the position. I know they checked my references so many thanks to Anne whom I'm guessing gave me a good one!

I start work in two weeks, full time for two months probably dropping to part time after that..., and the best part is I'm back on flexi time - wuhoo! This means I'll be stopping work at the bar in a couple of weeks and Rachael doesn't have to be a Pub widow anymore, something she was getting quite sick of!

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus

I failed to find a daffodil but I am going to have leek soup for lunch.

Although, St David... wasn't he one of the guys who spread Christianity among the Pagan Celtic tribes throughout western Britain around 500 A.D? I don't know about you but I'd much rather be a Pagan, all that raping and pillaging, eating red meat and drinking mead - now that's how life should be lived!

Nosferatu

Well I returned home the other day to find a parking ticket under my windscreen wiper. As the car was parked on our road which we have a permit for I immediately rang the Council to complain figuring some gung-ho ticket attendant had done it by mistake. Lo and behold I was actually in the wrong, who could have believed it! The ticket was for a 'parallel parking violation'. It's actually illegal to park with the right side of your car nearest the kerb as I had as it means you've crossed a line of traffic. That little piece of information cost me $50 the bastards.

After having talked up our chances and made several bets with my Irish work colleagues I went out to watch the Wales vs Ireland game full of hope only to see a pitiful performance. The only icing on the cake was the fact that Scotland managed to beat England the day before. As Wales are out of the running now I hope Scotland go onto to win it, anything's better than England or France! Anyway, after the match we moved onto the Casino for a few drinks and met a self proclaimed Vampire. By day a slightly geeky looking American, by night a member of the dark brotherhood- who'd have guessed. He even tried to recruit one of the guys I was with to his dark ways saying they should go and 'feed' together and then offered his neck as an appetiser. Although his teeth looked completely normal he assured us that they were actually very sharp and perfect for plunging into the neck of people. Nothing beats a little freak show to liven your night up.
After a further gallon of beer the rugby, and most things barring where the next beer was coming from and if a Kebab shop would still be open, seemed of little importance. I managed to keep going until about 7am at which time my body rebelled and shut itself down for several hours. By the time I got home Rachael had already left for work - oops!