Eynsham in flood

I’ve decided that the entire English landscape has become one carefully engineered piece of dirt. From immaculately manicured public open spaces in London (parks and gardens make up 35% of the urban landmass, allegedly more than any other capital city in Europe) to pretty pieces of remnant vegetation and cultivated hedgerows designed to keep cows and cars carefully separated in the most aesthetically pleasing way possible.

Now I learn that even England’s wide green fields have a secondary purpose – they’re all very deliberate floodplains, designed to keep excess water out of the cities during the rainy season. Many of these ‘water meadows’ date to the 15th century, when lowlands would be deliberately flooded in early spring to ensure abundant vegetation once the waters receded.

This winter, those ancient meadows have been flooded for weeks at a time. As the land is so flat, entire areas are only covered to a depth of about 6 inches, but it looks damned impressive when the pretty little river Cherwell, shallow enough for punting and only about 5 metres across, suddenly swells to twice its depth and hundreds of metres across…

If only they could plan their cityscapes with the same skill, functionality and eye for beauty … sigh!

(PS I nicked this photo from Wikipedia - as it's in open cyberspace, I presume that's okay - if it's yours and that's not okay, please let me know!)

Ceilidh capers

I heard recently that the local Green party was running a fundraising ceilidh. I've been hearing about ceilidhs and what fun they are for months- so, I figured, what more could a girl ask for on a chilly Friday night??


My chum Lizzy, who's a ceilidh veteran, jumped at the chance to come along, and we made our way down to a local sports hall, collected the free drinks included with our tickets and proceeded to natter until the band kicked in. I got a wee thrill when Lizzy noted approvingly that I'd dressed in layers (in case things got warm) and brought flat shoes to dance in.


So, what exactly is a ceilidh? I confess now, that apart from being vaguely aware that music, some sort of dancing, and perhaps drinking might be involved, I had no idea what to expect.


That fabulous fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia, tells us that the word is actually Scots Gaelic (silly me, I thought it was Irish), and that what you get at a ceilidh probably depends on which part of Britain (or Ireland) you're in. The honest truth is that a ceilidh (which, by the by, is pronounced cay-lee) resembles nothing so much as a good ol' fashioned bush dance, or barn dance.


And it's such a riot of fun! Beginners need not fear - every ceilidh band includes a 'caller', who not only walks the whole floor through the dance beforehand, but calls every step through the dance... not that this is enough to stop a set (group of 4-8 couples) of complete novices from bollixing the whole thing completely... much to their own amusement and that of most of the floor.


There was no danger of that with this event - Lizzy is a seasoned caller, so knew every step of every dance. As is usual at these things there was a distinct shortage of blokes, so we ended up pairing up a lot of the time, taking turns to be the boy. So I was piloted all over the dance floor with grand style, and even had my first taste of 'ceilidh swing'... nowhere near as salacious as it sounds, it involves some kind of "one hand round their waist, one hand hangin' on to theirs" grip arrangement, and spinning each other around. Really fast.


Can't wait for another one.

Pancake Day!

It was a Monday afternoon like any other - until the inimitable Ms Crusty came up with the genius idea of a couple of us heading round to hers for Pancake Tuesday (better known to traditionalists as Shrove Tuesday). Wikipedia tells us that, for Christians, this was the date by which all fats and cream had to be eaten up in preparation for Lent, when eating good stuff was forbidden until Easter. Something to do with Christ being lost in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, so we all have to do without dessert too.

My personal view is that this was probably more a church dictate than one of Jesus' own (or even one from that womanhating Paul) - somehow ye olde Christos strikes me as more of an 'all foods in moderation' kinda guy.

But I digress. There was absolutely no moderation shown on Tuesday as we downloaded a recipe from the BBC, mixed up 4 batches of crepe batter and started flipping pans like pros. Some of the pans had pancakes in them - and some of the pancakes even made it back into the pan, cooking side down! A coupla vego savoury fillings and loads of butter, lemon, sugar and golden syrup later and the 6 of us were feeling rather bloated. But happy.

I'm still not convinced that anyone should give up chocolate for the next 40 days, but each to their own.

Me, I polished off my last King Sized Cherry Ripe from Melbourne today...

And don't cook when you have jetlag...

I thought I was doing so well with this jetlag thing. I'd survived my marathon trip home (30hrs door to door) and managed to get through those two days at the office. Slept most of Saturday and thought I had it all sussed.

Nup. Sunday lunchtime I managed to ruin a perfectly good heat and eat pasta, by leaving the stove on low until I had stewed the tortellini and burnt the sauce. In the same pan. Eugh.

The next night I totally destroyed a stirfry. Thought my garlic and blackbean was a simmer sauce, so poured in the whole jar then, when it tasted funny, finally read the instructions and realised it was only supposed to have 3 tablespoons in...

Tonight I think I'll go to the local chippy.

Snacky antipodean goodness.

Running out of annual leave while waiting for visas meant going back to work on my birthday (boo). My cheery workchums livened up the day somewhat with a gorgeous card and abundant good wishes - always good on a first day back.

In honour of these two dubious grounds for celebration (getting older and doing more work than I had in more than a month), I took in a selection of the Aussie snack foods I missed most during my first year in the UK.

So funny to watch people walk into the kitchen and go ‘oooh, what ARE they?’ 'Are these savoury? Look those twistie things come in chicken flavour as well as cheese'. Easy to pick the folk who had actually been to Australia, by their squeals of 'look! She brought Cheezels AND Timtams! Yum!!'

Although personally, I’m more of a Cherry Ripe girl…

A stonking session...

This is my other local pub: the Half Moon in Oxford. It, too, runs a Sunday session that starts around 9pm. Although run by an Irishman, it doesn't actually feature a great deal of Irish music. The main reason for this is that there's far too much damn fine English folk around, and plenty of people who know how to sing it. Learning new material has been one of the best bits about getting to know the local scene here (along with meeting new people, and getting to perform ourselves!)

Last Sunday was my first session back at 'the Moon' and it was, in the words of my friend Lizzy, a 'stonking session'. A stonking session is one where the pub is still chock full of people at 3am, when the licence ends...

Only the English can get away with using words like 'stonking' and not sound like utter twats.

Back in Blighty...

My mad month in Melbourne has flown by, and suddenly, work permit firmly in hand, the time came to fly back to Heathrow and board the bus to Oxford.

My flight felt mercifully brief - I really can't quite believe I killed 24 hours, but sleep, half-decent movies and a few glasses of red did the trick nicely.

Returning feels much less of an adventure than arriving did a year ago. Heathrow is now drearily familiar, with its low ceilings and yellow and black signage everywhere, as is the M40, our major road home. I still don't understand why, when in England, Australia doesn't feel nearly as far away as England feels when in Aus.

But as I pondered over the route back to Oxford, I realised that there are a bunch of British things that I've really rather missed, and am looking forward to getting back to:
- green grassy hills; after Melbourne's yellow and brown vistas, they're a site for sore eyes
- gooseberry fruit fool and timpany rhubarb flavoured yoghurt
- sitting up front, up top, in double decker buses; my pal Crusty Chick and I do it every day on the way to work (or did,until she started driving - traitor!). My Mum gave me Bill Bryson's 'Notes from a Small Island' as an early birthday present, and he writes about being able to give new passengers 'that knowing look that says I've just seen the top of your head' from the upstairs seats. I'm not sure it's that - more like the fact that I still flinch everytime we go under the Oxford railbridge on Botley Road, because it looks like we're about to bump heads with it.
- heating one's towell up on the radiator while one in the shower, so it's toasty and warm for drying
- being able to use the pronoun 'one' in a sentence without sounding like a complete twat
- ciders on tap; there's a different one for nearly every pub, although if you find Addestones or Old English you're onto a particularly good thing!

Then, of course, there's the big stuff - the historical bits that so fundamentally shape daily living, the live music scene in Oxford and the opportunities this community has given us. And last, but never least, the friends we've made. It's good to be home again.

Sundays at the Dan

This is my local, the Dan O'Connell Hotel in Carlton. I've been hanging out here for more than 10 years. The most excellent Mikko used to say that the best pubs are the ones that feel just like your loungeroom at home, only bigger, so they can fit more of your friends inside. By this measure, the Dan is the best pub ever.

This is a session. Sessions at the Dan happen on a Sunday, from about 9pm. I met the lovely Anthony at one such session, almost exactly two years ago.

This is Ants being daft... big drums like this sound silly played with a tipper...

Life doesn't get better than Sundays like this.

Random Melbourne Pics

There's no particular story to most of these places, just that they were part of my everyday world when I lived in Carlton and worked in town, and they're the sights I needed to see when I spent a day in town playing tourist...

Federation Square

Flinders Street Station...

the MCG across the Yarra... Southbank ...
the Block ...

and Chinatown.

One thing worse than losing to England

There’s one thing worse than going to the MCG, with my dad, to see my one game of cricket for the summer, only to lose to England - in the last over.

Knowing that next week I have to face all my English mates...

The Wave is banned...

The Mexican wave has been part of 'halfway through the second innings of a day/night match when the crowd gets bored' ever since I can remember. After years of training (and the infiltration of subversive types of my own age) even the staid and proper Members' stand goes up as the wave rolls around the ground.

Not any more.

Thanks to a bunch of idiots who throw heavy things up in teh air, not just their arms - including 'cans of piss' - and no, they don't mean beer, the wave is banned.

Didn't stop us sending it around for another 3 laps after this notice came up though....

Williamstown

What to say... a shop in Willi lays claim to the biggest range of ice cream flavours of any shop in Melbourne. Not sure they win hands down, but it was a lovely detour on our way back from Geelong, it was a hot day, and I'd never seen Melbournetown across the water looking quite this cool and groovy... but man, when global warming does things to sea levels, now I understand that Melbourne is stuffed!

I've also never seen me looking so lilywhite in the middle of summer - this was AFTER 2 weeks home!

Shopping with hippies

A child of Warrandyte and a motorcycle maid (such as I have been) really shouldn't see 33 summers before making it out to St Andrews Market. St Andrews lies on Melby's north-east fringe and is reached by some of the best surfaced, most delightfully winding roads that I've ever had the pleasure of putting two wheels over (although on this particular day, we took my cousin Sam's car, a burnt orange Corolla nearly as old as I am).

The town (village? hamlet? these words don't work outside England!) in its entirety comprises a pub (recently rebuilt after a fire), a bakery, about 10 houses and community hall beside a big open space that features the weekly Saturday morning market. If only it could be reached by public transport, it would indeed be indie hippy heaven.

My cousins (including the adorable Oliver, below), my husband (!!) and I spent several lazy hours wandering through stalls full of silk skirts, second hand clothes, home baked cakes, curries and lentils, funky gemstone jewellry, drought resistant native plants, second hand tools and even didgeridoos! Buskers played beautiful music and artists propped on rocks or fallen trees to sketch their surrounds. Apart from the frantic half hour where I lost the only surviving key to my cousin's car - it was found and turned in to a stallholder- it was a perfect way to spend a day.

A little bit about coming home...

I've been back a couple of weeks now, and England feels a long way distant - much further than home feels when I'm away in Blighty. We've spent our days catching up with many of the people we love best - friends and family alike - at endless bbqs on terraces and patios, with fish and chips on the beach (actually, it was cold and threatening rain, so we didn't make it to the beach, but the fish and chips were fantastic), and scoffing home-made garlic sausages washed down with single malts with re-enacty friends in Geelong.

In between lazy afternoons drinking wine in my mum's spa, I've also been trooping into town to stock up on foods I've missed and pressies for folk at home. It's funny to see Melbourne through the eyes of a tourist, knowing I'm here for such a short time, when so much of it is already so familiar.

It's set me to thinking about the things I've missed most while I was away. A surprising amount of it has been food-related, but the list in its entirety looks something like this:
- fat t-bone steaks and massive king prawns, both to be had for less than a fiver (sterling) per kilo;

- really truly fresh fruit and veg - watermelon, pineapple, canteloupe, tomatoes, avocadoes, basil... I could rave forever;
- ricepaper rolls from any of the hundred or so Vietnamese cafes on Victoria St - the best bit is that I don't have to make them myself;

- and Asian restaurants that assume you will use chopsticks (where they would never dream of asking 'would you like chips instead of rice with that', as Chinese takeaways must do in England!)
- Australian wine, at Australian prices;
- antipodean snacky goodness - cheezels, twisties, cherry ripes, timtams, witchety grub lollies and boiled sweets and rock from the lolly gurus at Suga (below);

- the taste of truly clean water that has sat in a reservoir being filtered by nature for two years, instead of passing through seven other people on its way down the Thames;
- public seating, public toilets, and rubbish bins in the streets - we clearly don't have the same fear of tramps or terrorists here!

- open spaces; our roads are wider, and they come with sweeping verges instead of narrow hedgerows (which are quaint, but slightly claustrophobia inducing); our pubs have higher ceilings and feel light and airy after England's dark and smoky haunts; and even the streets have fewer people in them;
- riding in the front seat of a taxi, talking (about cricket) with the driver and paying with my credit card. You can’t do any of that in English cabs.
- and, of course, trams.


All good for a laugh, but last of course, there's the big stuff. I left Melbourne knowing it was time for a break - so much had happened here in such a short space of time and I needed to head off, see the world and heal some old scars. I've come back to the happy realisation that, although I'd like to keep exploring elsewhere just now, Melbourne will always be my home town and there's much here to be proud of. It's a beautiful mix of old things and new, gloriously multicultural, with a little bit of something for anyone who cares to go looking.

I grew up here. I built a couple of different careers here. I loved and lost and found new love (those last 3 all in the one pub!). It's where my family and most of my oldest friends live, and now that I'm back, I'm not sure how I managed without them. It's good to be home, and I'm gonna miss you when I leave, in a way that I didn't miss you last year.