Roo burgers and lamingtons

By 7pm Saturday I was embroiled in my third cultural hit in 24 hours - my own. Catherine-from-Sydney (on the right, in the photo above) has in previous years stumbled on a pub near ours whose Aussie staff do a wee tribute to our national day: roo burgers, lamingtons, Tim Tams and an Australian music playlist that is planned weeks in advance. For the record, the hats are from the Sydney Daily Mail (melbourne would never do something that daggy, not even for free!).

I've realised how much I miss music from home - the Living End, Midnight Oil, Killing Heidi, Missy Higgins, even Icehouse and Silverchair, and the ubiquitous Crowded House (kiwis, I know, but nearly from home), Men at Work and Cold Chisel's Khe Sanh, which was played four times.

P'raps the best bit though was our chum Sophie (left, in photo above, and below), who is the only English lass I know who can do a passable Aussie accent. She can even distinguish it from an equally plausible Auckland twang. (Smartypants!)

Before we knew it, she had an Aussie bloke and a Kiwi lad convinced that she was from "Coonabarabran, on the NSW south coast, just up from Eden". We picked Coonabarabran cos it's one of those great Aussie place names (I also like Yackandandah) although I made up the location. Nobody called our bluff.

I was relieved to learn online today that it IS actually in NSW. However, it's in the northwest of the state, not the south east. And nowhere NEAR the coast.

Here's where it gets fun. The website http://www.coonabarabran.com/ says that "Coona" (as it's known to the locals) is a friendly country town of around 3,000 people. It's the nearest gateway to the majestic Warrumbungle National Park, and known as the Astronomy Capital of Australia for its stunning night skies.

Checking Wikipedia, I learned that it's also not far from the buzzing nightlife of the towns of Gunnedah, Narrabri, Walgett and Boggabilla.

I PROMISE I AM NOT MAKING ANY OF THIS UP!!!!!

(Except the bit about Walgett having a buzzing nightlife - the only buzzes you'll hear are the night time insects, although they are HUGE!!)

Good for a laugh? Mate, I nearly cried!
Happy Australia Day!

Georgi's first English football match

It's taken nigh on two years, but Alex-from-the-London-Office at work happens to be a die-hard Oxford United supporter and, back before Christmas, made a mildly intoxicated promise to take me to my first game in the UK.

It has to be said that only the die-hard fans go to see the 'U's - aka the 'Yellows' and the 'Bullocks' - play these days. Fifteen years ago, it was a different story. Oxford was in the First Division league (the top one, where Man U and Liverpool and all the famous ones play) and they'd just opened a brand new stadium, The Kassam, on the outskirts an Oxford.

Melbournites, fyi, the Kassam bears a remarkable resemblance to the old VFL Park at Waverley - loads of concrete, dumped in a paddock in the slightly boganised outer suburbs (they say 'chavvy' in the UK - and it's a field, not a paddock). But I digress.

Apparently there's a hex on the stadium, which is sure doing its work. Oxford have been through a succession of crap seasons and relegations so that they now play in the 'Conference' level - that's the 5th one, and about as low as you can go and yet still get paid for your match.

I don't care. They're my local team and I have to say that for sheer skill they dance all over the standard of football played at home. And footballers really do have best legs. Much more elegant than mine.

Anyway, the boys played solidly for a nil-all draw, Alex and I devoured pints, cups of tea and hot chocolate and even pies at half time - although mine was chicken rather than Four'n'Twenty.

If it weren't for the fact that tickets are £20 (that's $50 aussie), I'd probably go more often.

Scots wha' hae!

Ants was working til 10pm, but that didn't stop us hosting our first Burns night on Friday. We'd done a bunch of reading up and in the end, decided to dispense with many of the formalities, but the essential bits were there: haggis, whiskey, a poem by the bard himself, a little bit said about his life (mostly involving the remarkable legacy he left the nation, in syntax that no foreigner could ever understand!), lashings of Scottish music and damn good company.

None of us possessing a passable Scots accent, we dispensed with the dozens of verses of Burns' ode "To a haggis", although we did sneak in the Selkirk Grace. And none of us plays the bagpipes, so we had to settle for putting 'Scots wha hae...' on the CD player to carve up the pair of sheeps' stomachs filled with offal and oats that I'd picked up at the market the week before. But there were proper neeps and tatties, some token green beans, and if I may say so myself, the whisky and cream sauce I made up worked a proper treat!

Sophie and Catherine, you're dreadful pikers for refusing to eat sheep's guts, but thanks for coming anyway. Darren, Alex, Phil and Ants, you are proper honorary Scotties and if I had any capacity left after all the wine and whiskey, I'd raise one more glass to ye... oh my head will hurt in the morning!

Making sense of life when the good die young

Back home in Aus, two families on opposite sides of the country have lost sons who were also considered heroes by a huge base of adoring fans.

On January 5, I had a text from my mum to say that Clinton Grybas, a lad from my home town who coached my brother at basketball and studied Journalism with me at RMIT, had been found dead in his flat in Melbourne. Clinton had been full throttle on a meteoric career in sports journalism - voted Australian Sports journalist of the year at barely 30, calling Aussie Rules matche on national radio, and many of the sports at the last Olympics with flair and informed comment. And he was a totally lovely bloke - always took time to have a word to my dad off-air when Dad called Clinton's sports show on 3AW, asking after the family.

He'd built up a huge fan base in a short space of time, and it's felt weird to see so much written about him, in the papers and online, since he died. Here are footballers and cricketers who I've worshipped as players playing tribute to the the bloke I remember as a tall skinny fella, smart but a bit geeky, who we used to give a lift home to after training, cos he was too young to drive.

At the same time, I've devoured every article, every tribute, every posting on a website, hungry for stories to share. Here's his mum talking about replaying tapes of him at 7, calling the cricket just like Richie Benaud. There's a 3AW fan, saying they'll miss him giving stick to fellow-commentator Rex Hunt. Clinton is even on Wikipedia. And there's an email from Cliff Green, who still edits the local paper we both worked at, inviting tributes for the next edition. Finally, in came the emails from my mum, brother and dad, who went to his funeral, burial and wake. Only then did it begin to sink in that this incredible bloke is no longer in the world.

The other of course is movie star Heath Ledger, who may or may not have taken too many sleeping pills after a recent role gave him nightmares. Having been, in a small way, part of a public/private grieving over Clinton, all I can feel right now is enormous grief for his family. We expect our young, strong blokes to wake up in the morning, - dealing with it when they don't is hard enough without all the media attention.

But if there's an upside to all the public interest, it's this. I hope their families, the women who love them, and their closest friends, are able to share all the stories too. When someone goes too soon, we can't bring them back - but we do them a disservice if we let our grief at losing them take over our lives. It's okay to let the world stop for a bit. But little by little, I hope everyone who knew them can start doing the little things that perpetuate the best of these people - their essence - in the world a little longer. It's what helps us keep going when the 'goneness' threatens to overwhelm us.

And it makes the world a better place.

First anniversary festivities in Portsmouth

Somehow, it's already a year since that special-but-very-low-key day last January when Anthony and I were married.

It's fair to say that we have both - separately and together - faced some big challenges over the past year (you don't get to see half the hard stuff in these pages!) but the end of 2007 brought some welcome changes and our new year has started with an incredible sense of love and optimism, and determination to face down anything that comes along (touch wood we don't have to!).

So it was a happy pair of bunnies that hopped in a hire car (a brand new red Nissan Note, with just 9 miles on the clock) and headed down to Portsmouth for our annniversary on Monday.

We stayed in a truly gorgeous B&B just minutes' walk from the beach at Southsea. Spent our days gorging on champagne, chocolate and naval military history (the D-Day Invasion in WWII, all 5,000 boats, sailed from Portsmouth, Admiral Nelson's ship The HMS Victory is in dry dock here, and Henry VIII's famous flagship, the Mary Rose, sank less than a mile from the beach).

We even had sunshine, spending Tuesday walking the beachfront (see piccies below) in our shirtsleeves - no jumpers needed, let alone coats and hats! Has to be said, we found a new candidate for 'worst meal in England' (don't believe all the good spin you read about the Sally Port Inn) but it was a lovely, lovely time in every other respect.

First anniversary is of course paper, so I gave Anthony some replica WWII documents from the D-Day museum shop, and he gave me a book on the castles of britain. This is a cool tradition that we intend to continue.

He's promised me diamonds if we're still kicking around at ages 93 and 95!

The best bits deserve a spiel of their own, so here goes....

Southsea Castle

Said to be one of the last coastal defence castles built by Henry VIII. Squat and square and half hidden in the sand dunes, it looks lots more modern than its 500 years - but it represents perfectly the rapid change from 'building castles to withstand a seige', to 'building castles to withstand seige engines' to 'building castles that just maybe have a hope against heavy artillery'.

It was all locked up until April, but you can see a fair bit by climbing around on the sea-wall. Apparently Henry VIII was standing right here when his flagship, the 30 yr veteran Mary Rose heeled over and sank, right in front of the oncoming French. Not a good day for Brits.

Speaking of the Mary Rose...

We couldn't come all this way and NOT go back into the Historic Naval Dockyards. What's left of the Mary Rose (she was finally found and raised in 1982) is still kept in darkened seclusion, being sprayed with a liquid wax to preserve her timbers.

Her treasures, however, are on display in a nearby shed - and oh wow. The inventory reads like a re-enactor's paradise - leather bound books, purses and bags, shoes, surgeons instruments, bowls, plates and other crockery (both wood and some metals have been preserved in the salty mud!), a urethral syringe (for treating men with the willy pox - eugh!), shields for use in pistol fighting, and countless polearms, their bill hooks and axe heads long since rusted away.

And, of course, those famous, famous longbows - more than 170 all told (only one has been broken since, in a test-fire), about half as thick as my wrist, needing twice Anthony's strength to draw.

Oh, and here's Ants handling an ACTUAL arrow from the boat. There was a chap from the museum doing a show and tell session... made my boy's day it did. Cooool.

The Water Babies!

The Water Babies was the first film I ever saw at the cinema. I was five - or maybe even still 4. I remember being enthralled by the way Tom and Ellie changed from children to cartoon children and back to people again, and for years after, half-forgotten choruses echoed randomly in my mind.

I searched video libraries all over Melbourne, I asked friends, I trawled the internet in its early years, and I could find no trace of a movie called the Water Babies - anywhere.

Then my singing chum Sophie asked me to make her a medieval dress and in the course of a bunch of fittings confided that one of her favourite movies, as a kid, was... the Water Babies!

A few weeks later, in the gym, she handed me a 'thankyou' present - apparently, it wasn't easy to track down, but the internet is a wonderful thing.

I can't wait to watch it.

Happy New Year!

It doesn't get better than this. Ants resplendant in kilt, a supper of dim sum, fizz and stroganoff with the inconquerable Lizzy, pints and singing our hearts out at the Half Moon - (with the landlord, at closing time) - then adjourning to an upstairs flat for cheese and port.

Okay, so the walk home took an hour instead of the usual 25-30 minutes, and I was grumpy by the time we got there (not least because my lovely flatmate left the lights and heating on - at 25oC! - before taking off to London for the night - argh!).

But after a quick kip, I was ready to do it all again, and headed round to Guy and Sal's for their annual brunch of smoked salmon, cava and other gourmet delights. Mmmmm.