False Start

Today was my first day at work.

And, probably, my last.

Things were going swimmingly until just after lunch-time, when the boss rings up and says that the company is folding in two weeks unless someone buys us out.

Great, back to being Mr. Mum for me then.

The Crying Colonel

The word surreal, according to the oracle that is Wikipedia, means bizarre or dreamlike and has, justifiably in my view, been one of the most commonly used adjectives in this blog, certainly over the last three or four months anyway.

Last Friday we had, perhaps, the most surreal experience of them all, as all our worldly possessions arrived on our new doorstep, bright and early on another beautiful Australian/Mexican morn.

As the lorry pulled up outside with the container on the back, I felt a tinge of sadness.

It should have been a jubilant occasion - the wife was doing cartwheels. I can only put my sadness down to the increased sense of permanency about our move that I felt at that moment.

It was supposed to be permanent, I know. But, of late, whenever homesickness strikes, I've eased the pain by telling myself that we could always go back. Now if we go back we've got all our stuff to take back too.

My sadness was short lived, as my old friend surreality returned to it's familiar position as my overriding emotion.

Seeing all these boxes being unloaded and carried into the house in exactly the same state as when we last saw them two months and ten thousand miles ago was, truly, surreal. Each and every box we opened full of near and distant memories. The kids 'old' school dresses from Dewi Sant folded over the dining chair exactly how we'd left them. The kitchen noticeboard with it's calender still on the July 2007 page with pen marks indicating what a frenzied period it was for us. Our big, old furniture, here, in Australia. Surreal.

The boxes piled up. We unpacked as the 'movers' unloaded.

I looked at the boxes as they began to fill the room. I was starkly taken back to the occasion when I had seen them last and thought about home and our dear friend the 'Colonel'.

Aunty Lyndsey, as she is also known, had come to ours to assist in anyway she could. Because that's what she does. Always.

She cleaned and scrubbed our house with a vigour that the place had never experienced before. She stopped frequently, not through fatigue, but to cry. And she cried with as much vigour as she cleaned.

Today, as we unpacked, I shed a secret tear as I thought about the Colonel and how we miss her.

Surreality had moved aside once more for sadness.

I hope neither word appears on this blog again. For a while at least.

Australia's Game

September, in Australia, is the climax of the country's football seasons.

An exciting time for players and fans of both rugby league and Aussie Rules as the top teams battle it out to reach the Grand Final of their respective codes.

My NRL team the South Sydney Rabbitohs have had a great year. They made the Finals Series for the first time in eighteen years after a generation of being no-hopers. Despite going out on Saturday night to a strong Manly outfit, they've still provided me with some great moments since our arrival in Australia. I have still to achieve my ambition of seeing them play live, but I've watched them on the telly whenever possible since we've been over here and enjoyed it, I have.

Footy, as British people know it, is Association Football or soccer. In Australia, depending on where you are, footy can either be rugby league or Australian Rules football.

In Queensland and New South Wales rugby league dominates the headlines and the air-time, but here, in Kelly Country and in South and Western Australia, Aussie Rules is the go. In a big way. Much like home, everyone here has got a favourite team and the majority of the fans are fanatics.

I've heard and read that to understand a people you must understand their sport. Whilst in America I grew to enjoy baseball and, in turn, grew to enjoy America. So, this Sunday arvo, me and the family did the dinky-di and went to the footy. Which, roughly translated, means that the family and I did the typical Australian's thing this Sunday afternoon by going to watch an Aussie Rules game.

The code originated in Melbourne in 1858, and was devised to keep cricketers fit during the winter months. It's played on a cricket oval and there are 18 players on each team (I think!) And, given that all other sports played over here have their origins overseas, Australian Rules football can, without fear of contradiction, be regarded as Australia's Game.

To the untrained eye the game looks colourful yet chaotic. Melees break out frequently as players fight for possession. Once in possession players treat the ball like a hot potato and often get rid of it ultra-quickly by either hoofing down field as far as they can, or by punching it to a team-mate.

I didn't think I'd enjoy it and held out even less hope for the wife and kids. Playing time alone is two hours, split up into four half-hour quarters. I didn't expect us to see the full game out, but we did and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

It was the local team, Wodonga Bulldogs taking on the Yarrawonga Pigeons in a sudden-death finals match with the winner proceeding to a semi-final and the loser going out of the competition. So there was a lot at stake even at this semi-professional level and the teams got stuck straight into each other as soon as the game kicked off.

There were quite a few fights in the early stages and the girls absolutely loved it! One broke out on the boundary line near us and the girls were jumping up and down with excitement. What happened to my mild-mannered daughters who like doing cartwheels and making daisy chains?

I was surprised and impressed by the speed and physicality of the contest. The bloke standing next to me must have regretted his choice of vantage point as I questioned every aspect of play that I didn't understand. Which was almost everything. But, in what we've found to be typical of Australians, nothing was too much trouble and he answered my every question with enthusiasm and threw in plenty of additional information as well.

The teams change ends at the end of every quarter and during the break the crowd get to go on the pitch and 'have a kick'. I thought that was great and so did the kids.

Wodonga won the game 108-79 and advance to the semi-final being played this weekend.

I wouldn't be surprised if we do the dinky-di again soon.

Pay Little Pay Twice

On Thursday we successfully moved into the new house and officially became residents of Wodonga, Victoria.

We've settled in quite nicely despite being short of many items which we would normally regard as necessities.

The girls are sleeping in the double bed we've purchased for the spare bedroom, but the wife and I are sleeping on the two sofas we bought.

We've also bought a fridge. Despite the wife's advice I got it from a couple of lads who advertise in the local paper. They basically buy busted fridges and washing machines and repair them to sell on. I gave them a ring and arranged to go around and look at their wares. They were friendly sorts and I spent a bit of time chatting about fridges and life in general, as you do.

Mark and Craig were their names and Mark, who has spent time in the UK, became the first person over here to pick me as a Welshman. In doing so proving himself to have a very keen ear and an extensive knowledge of the extremely varied subject of British accents and dialects. Craig seemed mildly pleased when I told him his name translates to 'rock' in Welsh.

Anyhow, having taken a liking to the lads I decided to ignore the wife's advice and have one of their fridges. Not only were they decent lads, but the fridge, at $350, was $200 cheaper than its nearest rival. It also fitted perfectly into the back of our car, once all the seats were down, thus saving us a delivery fee.

That's where the good news ends however. Although we'd checked it over in Craig's garage, when we got it home and plugged it in, it made a right old racket. I've heard quieter fire alarms.

I tried all the usual, universal remedies – 're-booted' it, kicked it, opened and closed the doors, played about with the thermostat, all to no avail. In our big empty house with it's opera-house style acoustics, it sounded like a jet engine.

The next day, after a noisy, sleepless night, I gave the boys a ring and Mark came around that afternoon. We got chatting again and it turns out that Mark is only a refrigeration engineer, or 'fridgey', by day and, at nights and weekends, is a stand-up comedian. How often does that happen to you?!

He told me all about his career to date. How, at the age of 34 and against the wishes of his wife at the time, he entered a talent contest in Melbourne. He'd been a 'fridgey' for all of his working life, but he'd wanted to do stand-up for his entire life. He won the contest but ended up losing his wife. She decided she didn't want to be married to a comic.

That was eight years ago and since that night in Melbourne, he's performed all over Australia in some of the country's most prestigious venues. In October he's attempting to get into the Guinness Book of Records by performing a world-record, thirty, half-hour shows in seven days. If you look closely at the photograph at the top of this entry you can see the poster advertising his act.

As well as being a funny bloke, Mark also managed to quieten the fridge down, although he is returning this week to replace the compressor. You can't say fairer than that.

The Fridge Man is a cool bloke.

Who knows, we may even become friends.

Down Mexico Way

We didn't do an awful lot this weekend.

We spent most of it buying some essentials to enable us to move into our new home, pictured left. I say ours, but it's rented.

The ship carrying our container, with almost all our worldly goods in, docked in Melbourne on Friday just gone.

Unfortunately for us it will take approximately seven to ten working days to clear customs and is unlikely to be delivered to us before the 19th September.

That's a shame, as we're moving house this Thursday, 6th September.

So, for around a fortnight, we'll be 'roughing' it without all our stuff from home. We've bought a double bed for the girls to sleep on, two sofas, which will double up as beds for the wife and I, a telly, fridge, kettle and some kitchen utensils. Just enough to keep us going until the cavalry arrives. Our friends Dave and Kaz live just down the road and have offered us use of their laundry services and anything else we may be short of.

The house itself is a big, spacious four-bedder with plenty of room for guests. So, if any of the good folk from home want to visit, we've got ample space.

It's in Wodonga, which is across the Murray River from Albury. It is also in another state, as the border between New South Wales and Victoria also separates the twin cities.

In days of yorn the border between the states was much more obtrusive. Different size railway gauges prevented the same train travelling between the two states - passengers travelling from Melbourne to Sydney used to have to disembark at Wodonga and get on a different train to continue their journey. That's not all. Apparently, and remarkably, the two places, at certain times of the year, were in different time-zones!

It is still forbidden to carry fruit across the border because of fruit-fly. Again, apparently, the searching of vehicles was commonplace in a bid to stop 'fruit-runners'.

Now though, the two cities have became a single entity in many ways. In name, the term Albury-Wodonga is used an awful lot now and much has been done to eliminate the 'red-tape' differences that had previously hampered commerce and general life between the two settlements.

There are some annoying regulations still in place though. Notably the fact that the wife and I will have to re-apply, at our own cost, for Victorian driving licences, having already forked out for NSW ones. Also, again at our expense, we will have to register the car in Victoria and change it's number plates having registered it only three weeks ago in NSW.

There also remains a certain amount of elitism on the side of NSW. Although mostly in banter, they feel Albury has the edge in many ways over it's smaller Victorian twin.

I'm fairly sure that it's not only a geographical reference when the NSW locals call Victoria, Mexico, and it's residents, Mexicans.

Which, rather neatly, brings me on to my favourite Mexican gag.

Why did the Mexican push his wife off the cliff?

TEQUILA, of course!