Gent:home of the Counts of Flanders

Guidebooks will tell you that Gent, a major centre of commerce, weaving and dyeing in the middle ages before falling into decay, got halfway around to reinventing itself as a medieval city centre a la Bruges, but never finished the job. The result is someplace a little grungier, a little edgier and way more vibrant and hip.

And it has something neither Bruges nor Brussels can boast - a centuries old castle (albeit one rebuilt over the past 200 years, and not always faithful to the original).

For 500 years, from the 10th-14th centuries, Gent was the home of the Counts of Flanders. Like so many duchies in this part of the world, this noble house was eventually subsumed into one of the great houses of Europe (the Hapsburgs, in this case) and the Gravensteen (Count's castle) fell into ruin. Repaired by volunteers full of romantic ideals, it's impressive nonetheless, the weaponry is chilling (check the 2 metre long sword, and the war hammers, below) and the views from the roof are cracking...

Bruges has a Half Moon of its own!

Oxonians (and avid readers of this blog) will know that my local pub in Oxford is the Half Moon.

In Bruges, the Half Moon is the name of the only brewery still open in the city centre. Their spiel tells you that 30 years ago there were 37 brewing houses in Bruges and implies they are all closed. It seems they're actually just moved outside the city limits (certainly Belgium doesn't seem to produce fewer beers as a result - there are more than 500!). And even De Halve Maan doesn't brew onsite any more.

So it was all a bit touristy, but the stories were good, and 5 euros bought us an hour long tour, loads of insight into the things that make belgian beers unique (the addition of citrus peel, fruits, coriander, anise, or camomile to the brew: apparently 'blond' beers are even made from cornflakes!), a lovely view from the roof and a free house specialty: Brugse Zot (the crazy man from Bruges) before we traipsed back into the cold.

Yum.

Bruges - Venice of the North

I've read guide books that say any other city this laden with tourists would never get away with it. I neither know nor care about that - Bruges is gorgeous. By night or by day. Point final. (That's belgian for 'end of story'.)

Random Belgium moments

Marcel Proust once wrote, "the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" (thanks Special K, for putting it on yr email tag).

So why is it that sometimes we have to go away to remember that the little things that make a day special actually happen every day? With that in mind, here are some of my favourite random moments from Belgium, caught on camera...



We thought this sign for a 'Winkel gallery' was really funny... until I remembered that 'winkel' is Flemish for 'shop'.... hahaha. Not far from here, we found some of the coolest winkels you ever saw, selling proper old fashioned wooden train sets, and puzzles and tin spinning tops and... Ants was like a, well, like a boy let loose in a toyshop!



The guys that run 'Zucchero' (italian for 'Sugar') sell very cool handmade sweets. You can watch them at work through the windows. Sound familiar, Aussies? Yup, they learned their trade from the boys of 'Suga' in Melbourne... small world, huh?




Belgians really aren't PC, which makes a rather gorgeous change from England, where Noddy and Big Ears aren't allowed to sleep in the same bed any more, because Big Ears is clearly a dirty old man... Here's St Nic and his two 'Black Peters'...

Belgies have a wacky sense of humour too - we saw Santas just like this one climbing up and down buildings all over Brussels and Bruges.

Perhaps inspired by the locals, we hatched a theory about this cheerful, geranium bedecked building (okay, so they're not so obvious in this pic, but the flowerboxes in real life are riotous red against the grey streets). It's actually the Department of Defence building in Bruges. We reckon that if ever the building came under attack, their first line of defence would be a button under someone's desk that sends terracotta pots crashing into the street below. "Unleash the geraniums!"

This dashing musketeer lived on a wall just near our hotel in Brussels. He looks a little too 'Antoinio Banderas' for mine, but Ants liked him.

We never actually made it inside the 'Taverne L'amnesia'... our memories were hard pressed enough to cope with the 21 beer assault and copious gluhweins!

This is just a small part of the bicycle parking space around Gent- Sint Pieters train station. There are bike racks for several blocks in every direction, as far as they eye could see. My inner hippy chick did a little dance...

You know you're in a scenic place when even the view from the Ladies loo is this good... that's Ghent castle in the background. Jolly clean, spacious and well appointed loos, too.

Twelve years ago, I sat on a bridge in Bruges for a photo. Mum, I'm not sure if this is the same bridge, but this pic is for you...

Long may the memories - and the lessons - last, even when we're home.

It's official...

After years of bollocks and excuses from the Howard government, Australia ratified the Kyoto Protocol yesterday.

At last, I can start to live down years of international scorn and shame.

Australia’s new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has also pledged that Australia will cut emissions by 60% (below 2000 levels) by 2050.

Whoot!!

Belgium: five days of wining and dining

We've been planning and saving for this adventure for months, and Belgium didn't disappoint.

Brussels is less than 2 hours from London on Eurostar. We love the train to Europe. It's faster, it's greener, the queues are shorter, the station is easier to get to than the airport, and there's no chance of your bag accidentally being sent to Belfast instead of Belgium. (Don't laugh, it happened to our friend Heather, who joined us for the Brussels bit - she swears that next time, she'll go by train too!)

On arrival, we scooted up to Bruges, trudged through the rain to our wee hotel and went in search of lunch. We found it.

Mussels gratin, snails in garlic butter, beefsteak with frites (and mayo, of course!), rabbit stew, and the lushest vanilla icecream. Okay, it was tourist quality food, but at a tenner each for a 3 course lunch (that's 14 euros, or $A22), it's value in almost any country.

And that was just the beginning - we followed up in the days to come with olliebollen, flemish stew, witlof tart, cured sausage with mustard, flemish asparagus, steak tartare (called 'cannibale'), frites and more fritjes (always with mayonnaise), croque monseiur, croque madame (croque monsieur avec un oeuff), waffles with chocolate sauce and cream, grapes dipped in toffee, daily hot chocolates, lashings of gluhwein and 21 different kinds of beer. The highlight has to have been proper moules mariniere, served in a massive black cast iron pot, with a lid deep enough to act as a bowl for the cast off mussel shells.

And everywhere, in every cafe, for every meal, gorgeous old-world surroundings, strange-yet-familiar, making me realise that Melbourne is not an English city. It's a European city. High ceilings, centuries-old decor that's so much less gaudy than the Victorian pubs of London. Mirrors and lights everywhere, indoors and along the streets, give the illusion of space and make the night less dark. Outdoors, even streetlights sit lower, brightening the street rather than sitting high above rooftops like so many insipid little suns in foggy gloom.

Some places were genuinely familiar. It wouldn't have been Brussels without scouring the streets around the Bourse until we found the brass duck embedded in the flagstones marking the narrow alley to a la Becasse. Their specialty is Lambic Douze, the first beer I ever liked and the best I ever had, servied with sausiccon sec (dried sausage), roughly sliced at the bar and served with a massive glop of mustard. A day or so later we shared a final brew at A La Mort Subite (the Sudden Death) - ironically, or perhaps not, always a favourite of the Finn's. But the place we all kept going back to was Le Cirio, where the house specialty drink is a half-and-half: half white wine and half champagne (and a steal, at 3 euros, that's £2!). I've been wondering where this place is ever since Francis first took me there twelve and a half years ago... (oh my, I'm getting old).

Like the first time, and the last time, I was there, I knew I could live in this place.

It's gonna be so hard to go back to English food after this.

(If you want to know more about Belgian food and why it's so damn good, this article is brilliant)

Weston-super-Mare and our first C14th feast

We've not been away for a weekend in ages, so a little windfall on our gas bill (the gas company realised they'd overcharged our house by $A650) convinced us to get away for the end of year banquet for our new group, Ye Compaynye of Cheualrye.

They're based down in Somerset, so we hopped a train for our first trip to the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare. 'Weston' (as the locals call it) is not far from the mouth of the massive Severn River, and is famous for having the second largest tidal flow in the world, after the Bay of Fundy in Canada. This sounds cooler than it is - although it's eyepoppoing the first time one sees boats marooned in the sand and a pier that finishes more than a mile short of the waterline at low tide.

Seaside resorts in England are ghost-towns for about 8 months of the year, shiny gaming arcades and rides defiantly flashing lurid neon lights (Melbourne readers - remember what Rosebud was like in the 70s?) as if vainly hoping to attract someone's attention. Not much chance of that on the bleak old day we arrived - freezing cold, squally rain and blowing a gale.
Some wag on the 'net reckons Weston is always like this, on account of the 'mouth of the severn' microclimate and its proximity to the Gulf Stream.

I'll say one thing for Weston though - it has the Taj Mahal of public convenience blocks, truly remarkable in a country that, as a rule, doesn't particularly believe in public lavvies. These were clean, spacious, naturally lit, and apart from the signs warning people not to leave their handbags lying around and reminders to not shove nappies down the loo, could almost have been considered classy.

It's a wee bit sad that I have more to say about the loos than the food, but that's England for you. After lots of wandering, we did eventually find an old fashioned tea-room, with low ceilings and hand-written menu boards, that served fresh and hearty tucker. The proprietors clearly considered their lasagne (served with chips or a baked potato and free garlic bread!) to be pretty avant garde, and they were truly proud of their range of desserts, which included trifle, spotted dick and knickerbocker glory. Honest!!

Further meanderings after lunch (okay, nobody 'meanders' anywhere when the wind is trying to blow your bollocks off) led us to the posh part of town, which really was quite lovely - all Victorian and 1920s art deco buildings. There was even a craft fair...

All too soon, it was time to seek out the biker pub where we were meeting Anthony's mate Nick, who was giving us a lift to the feast. Now HERE was somewhere I could feel at home. High ceilings, very laid back vibe (once we'd been thoroughly checked out by the regulars and evidently considered harmless) - and downright friendly once folk knew we were mates with one of the regulars.

And then our adventure really began.

Ye compaynye of cheualrye

Ants has been away with this mob a few times over the summer. They do England c.1370 and their kit is really good quality, so they get awesome bookings at castles like Beaumaris, Caerphilly and Farleigh-Hungerford.

They're lots more structured than Nordmannia, or any other group I've been involved with back home - newcomers start as a villein (serf) and, as you attend more events, contribute to the club and gradually assemble the appropriate kit, work your way up to a yeoman after about a year, then a few years later a retainer and, for a privileged few at the top, a Lord or Lady (actually, they're all lords). So I was a mite nervous, but they turned out to be a gorgeously laid back and friendly bunch, and very welcoming of "Ants' lady". The 14th century surcote and shift I'd knocked up over the previous week happily passed muster, Ants and I were awarded free beer in return for some singing, and enthusiastically joined in the food fight at the servants end of the table (what else is one to do with one's trencher after a bottle of mulled wine and some mead?)

Apparently, I'm under pain of death if I tell people that, in this photo, Anthony is wearing my hose and braies. For non-re-enactors, this means my husband is wearing my undergarments!

But back to the feast. Malcolm, the group Vintner, did an excellent job with cooking - his 'grete pye' was something to behold. After dinner there was blindfolded piggyback jousting and other silliness late into the night, and plenty of bacon sandwiches the next morning to soothe bellies and clear aching heads.

I can't wait for the next one!

Abingdon - home of chavs and friars

Working up at Warwick has introduced Ants to a whole new time period, and we're off to a 14th century feast next weekend with some of his workmates. So damn and bugger, but I need a new dress!

We jumped the bus down to Abingdon, where the fabulous Masons haberdashers have just about every fabric under the sun. Given that we start off poor, I was fairly stoked to find some wool in a soft grey twill for £4 a metre. Ants found buckles for his new padded jack (basically a 14thC gambeson) and we could have spent loads more money in there ... there's always another day.

I also wanted to show Ants around town, because the town centre is really very pretty. There was a massive abbey there for centuries, and the streets are still narrow and winding and marked by squares and ancient-looking grey stone buildings. It was not far from here that Robert Dudley's wife, Amy, met her untimely end.

We rounded out our afternoon with a couple of pints (a bargain at £1.50!) in an ancient coach house pub, set off the street in a cobbled courtyard - although judging by the 'no hats inside, the cameras can't see your face' policy, it's clearly not as genteel as it looks.

And thats Abingdon, apparently. Like Nottingham, it's not a place to hang out much after dark, as, according to the Oxon-born-and-bred folks at work, Abingdon is apparently full of chavs and trouble makers.

It is pretty though - next time we go fabric shopping, I must remember to take my camera!

An ‘only in Oxford’ moment…

My blokey is looking for work at the moment, so we’re both spending time trawling noticeboards for potential jobs. This one in particular caught my eye:

Assistant Required for Antiquarian Bookseller. Permanent position part time (15 hours/week) £6/hour. Work includes cataloguing/packaging/general help. Central Oxford. Perfect English and preferably Latin required. No dreamers, skivers or literati. CV to ...

According to three separate dictionaries that I checked, “literati” means 'an educated person', or a person 'very interested in literature'. So this bloke wants someone poorly educated who speaks perfect English and Latin; who isn't really into books; to work in his bookshop.

Hmmm.

Oh dear...

Ants and the lovely Lizzy and I went to the Original Re-enactor's Market near Coventry on Saturday... we don't have ANYTHING like this at home. Imagine more than 100 stalls filling two huge sports halls, making everything from shifts and corsets to shining sallets, hand carved bows, books of medieval music, wax tablets, parchment and vellum, dandelion wine... and home made burgers and fudge for the hungry shoppers!

Yum.

One bloke, who makes beautiful pewter tankards also had informations on various saints, whose images he depicts on the handles of spoons. I wonder if Mikko ever knew that the Patron Saint of Alcoholics is St Mathius. (I'm sure his parents didn't)

Remembering the Finn

Remembrance Day (Armistice Day in the UK) makes Aussies everywhere stop and pause. Not because we want to glorify war, but to mark the suffering of those who fought and survived - and to recall those who didn't come back. Both my grandfathers fought in World War II: on my mum's side, my grandfather was the only one of three brothers and an inlaw to come home. (No saving private Lamble, then.) Living in England has given me a whole new perspective on the impact of war when it's closer to home: every British family paid a price through bombings, rationing and loss of family and friends. (Makes you wonder - if they could mobilise the entire population through drastic measures then, why can we not do the same against global warming, which poses an even bigger threat: the Stern report says so.)

But I digress.

Three years ago, I forgot to stop for the customary two minutes' silence. A phonecall had stopped the clock just after 8.30 that morning: Mikko was dead. The loss of the man who'd described people he admired as having a 'heart size of a continent' left a similarly sized void in the lives of all who knew and loved him.

In the early days I think we friends found a lot of comfort in each other and in continuing to do 'Mikko-shaped' things, from marking Finnish Independence Day to nights at The Dan, and preserving the ban on lighting cigarettes from candles (it kills sailors, honest).

Coming to terms with what my mum calls 'the goneness' has often been helped by keeping the best of him alive in me. When I buy a good red, cook risotto, campaign at election time, pore over a history book, watch certain films, or talk politics into the wee hours, I can't help imagining him, in hat, shirtsleeves and vest, elegant hands always busy, his rich laugh bouncing off the walls, interspersed with giggles, hovering somewhere behind me, peering over my shoulder.

But time passes, and new traditions evolve: the new-format Sunday session 'at Dan' opened up a new musical experience and a new circle of friends; new housemates bred a burgeoning love of rugby (after all the years I gave him stick for watching Bledisloe - sheesh!). And eventually I looked forward to breaking away from Melbourne and setting up a whole new rhythm here in the UK. I needed to do my own thing and resolve some past before embarking on a very different future with the lovely Anthony.

This last 18 months has given me much to think about. My marriage to Anthony is a wondrous thing, but it opened some cans of worms I didnt realise were so undealt-with. Sometimes I've felt as though I'm living two lives: the every-day business of loving Ants, working, travelling, and learning more about music and history; and the world in my head where the Finn need not be quite so absent.

Sometimes those two worlds collide and that still leaves me feeling confused and adrift. The more time passes, the more that sense of 'missing him' becomes a frustration that there's so much he's missing out on. Finland won Eurovision - with a deathmetal song. The Aussies clean-sweep-ed the Ashes. Then there's the small stuff: I wish he could see all the things we've all become - the ways that we've taken the things we shared with him and made them uniquely ours, and the new things we've made for ourselves. It's not always enough that if he was here, I know he'd be proud.

People say that time heals and helps the pain to fade - that's not true. When it wells up, it's just as agonising as the hardest days when he was still here and hurting, or that first numb, aching night of the day he died. I think time just makes us better at dealing with that hurt when it comes. The hole isn't ever filled - we just get better at living with it.

But if we give in to our sadness, all we prove is that he was right to give it up - and for all the crazy mixedupness of this world, and no matter what peace it brought him personally, it'll never really be okay that he took himself out.

At day's end, we can only do so much looking backwards, cos that's not the way we're going. Mikko's life and death will always be one of the most important things to shape my life. Letting other big things in is both healing and scary. Learning to balance things in their place is taking longer than I thought, and it's still not linear. There are days of peace and strength - those five days in Vienna, five more in Helsinki with Jarkko, Chaals, Satu & Hanna, Antti & Anna, a quiet triumph after gigs and sessions and travels and big days at work. I'm learning it's possible to smile through my tears and teach old memories and new to live side by side in my head.

But rakas Mikko, you will never be forgotten, and as I wound a poppy onto my hat this week, I thought less of older veterans, and more of you.

Guy Fawkes - saving us from an extra month of Bah Humbug

I've decided that most Anglo cultures have one last hurrah before seriously settling in to Christmas fever. In the US it's Thanksgiving, in Melbourne we have the Melbourne Cup and spring racing carnival. In the UK it's Bonfire Night, aka Guy Fawkes night. (The Brits need to wise up and give folk a bank holiday for it. If we can justify one for a horse race...)

Ants doesn't find Guy Fawkes nearly so big a deal as I do, cos they celebrate it in New Zealand too, but I grew up in a country where fireworks - or even little crackers that go pop - are banned from public sale. (The only exception is in Canberra, our nation's capital, arguably far more famous for selling dirty movies, marijuana, and fireworks than for governing the country.)

The buildup spans several weeks - off licences and dodgy corner shops put up signs, in various degrees of 'home made', advertising fireworks for sale. About a week in advance, a few over-excited teenagers decide they can't wait for the main event and pop a few off prematurely. News bulletins get filled with stories of innovative 'Guy's that have been made for burning, and diaries get filled with invitations to bonfires, bbqs and other things involving fire and night.

On whatever the nearest Saturday night is, the sky erupts into exploding colour, pops and whistles go off from dusk (about 4.30pm already - yikes!) until the wee small hours of morning, and the air all over Oxford reeks of cordite, or 'fireworks smells'.

I've no idea if the non-specific 'Slavic' family over the road have any idea that what they're actually celebrating is the discovery of a plot to blow up Parliament and the King (James VI and I). The confession of Guy Fawkes is one of the most famously documented examples of the use of torture in Britain by the state, which appears to have been much more rare than folk think. (What individual lords got up to in their private dungeons, on the other hand, has always been not the state's business!)

Technically, Guy Fawkes night (November 5) wasn't until Monday, which explains the repeat acts on Sunday and Monday - albeit on a smaller scale. But I'm sure there'll be random pops and whistles for a few nights yet. After that though, there'll be nothing to stop the stores going mad on decorations, endless carols recordings and exhortations to buy, buy, buy if you want to show someone you really love them.

Poor old Ants - I'm sure he'll be gutted to learnhe may have to settle for some nice home cooking and a song down the pub.

Moo Brew and other things that go in your mouth

My friend Jurgen is kind of like my Blog Guru. And he's come up with a pearler, courtesy of the fab boys and girls at Moorilla Estate winery, who now also own a brewery called Moo Brew.

For the benefit of any english people here, a 'bogan' is like a chav, but Australian instead of English.

Job perks that make you smile

Some of you will know already that I have a kind-of new job – same gorgeous people (!) but working to reduce carbon emissions from big public sector bodies, like government departments and the whole of Her Majesty's Prison Service. It’s so lovely to have a job that offers a mind stretch again.

One of the perks of the job is a company laptop, which is great for getting stuff done on the train between Oxford and London – I head down on average once a week. We've got this funky wireless internet connection thing happening, which picks up random networks as the train passes. You’ve gotta laugh at the things people call the networks… today my browser found one called “Big Floppy Donkey D!ck”. It’s an unsecured network, which means anyone can get a piece of it… if you dare...

‘Nother upside is the company sponsored travel. I’m sure I’ll tire of it in time – I’d hate to commute daily - but I’ve had some cracking nights out after work, catching up with friends who live in the big smoke. Today’s bonus came in the form of meetings at Elephant and Castle (yes this IS really a London suburb… see pic below!) then Denmark Hill, the latter needing a train from London Bridge.

Copyright Bert Hardy

Walking from one to the other takes about 15 minutes and really demands a deviation past the Borough Market, which for my money is London’s best foodie spot bar none. It's officially London's oldest food market, said to have been established by the romans. It's occupied its present spot, tucked in next to Southwark cathedral and not far from the Thames, for a measly 250 years.

But such food! Think French cheeses, polish sausage, tapas ingredients, seasonal game meats, sweets, ciders, organic veg and a wicked selection of baked goods. My first ever Chelsea Bun came from Borough Market – I’m yet to taste better.

They were out of Chelsea buns today, so I had to settle for some duck legs, venison sausages and poussin stuffed with chestnuts.

Yum....

A bad day for re-enactors everywhere

One of the most-oft-asked questions of historical re-enactors is whether swordfighting is dangerous. We talk about the strong emphasis on safety, the training we undergo with sword, axe, spear or lance before we can take part in combats, and the way our weapons are modified to make them safer.

Yes, we acknowledge, bruises are common, but even a small cut is uncommon and very rarely, someone is seriously hurt as a result of a freak accident (and, occasionally, a bit of stupidity). Until today I knew of no re-enacting fatalities, although I'm sure they exist.

To the family of the chap that passed away recently after a freak jousting accident at Rockingham Castle, in Leicestershire, my deepest sympathies. I hope that, if anything can give comfort at such a sad time, it's the knowledge that he no doubt died doing something he loved enormously, and in all likelihood with a massive grin on his face.

GEEK alert: Carbon tax vs carbon trade at the London School of Economics

My friend 'Alex from the AGO' (who doesn't actually work for the Australian Greenhouse Office anymore, cos he lives in London) suggested we go see this debate at the London School of Economics, which is near where we both work.

Geeky, I know, but we're like that.

First thing I noticed was there there wasn't a presentation aid in sight. Some spoke without notes. This was proper old fashioned oratory and highschool-style debating, except that the protagonists were blokes of clout in their 40s and 50s, like the head of carbon trading at Merril Lynch (big global firm).

I realised that, as a society doing business, we've gotten too reliant on powerpoint.

Then there was one of those 'holy crap I'm in London moments', where I looked up at the ornate, soaring ceiling and realised that I was in one of the leading schools for business thinking in the world, and that not only did I understand what was going on, but I had a bunch of questions I wanted to ask. So I did - skite!

If anyone's interested, the general arguments seemed to be that trading supposedly encourages businesses to be more innovative (although I've seen some companies come up with innovative ideas for getting out of paying the UK carbon tax, called the Climate Change Levy), while a tax gives business more certainty about the 'price' of carbon. However trading is bad because you can't trust businesses to do the right thing... and taxes are bad because you can't trust government to do the right thing.

In the words of one debater: "We can argue all we like about one or the other, at the end of the day we have to have something and in practical terms we'll probably have both".

At the end of it, the issue seemed to be less about what mechanism you use to raise funds/put a price on carbon and more on the fact that we have to do that somehow if we want people to recognise that emitting carbon is bad, and that the most important thing is that the money raised should be used (as it is in the UK) to help businesses and others embrace a low carbon economy.

I wrote an essay that reached broadly that conclusion during my masters - I confess I had a moment of smugness...

Why Garlic is Good For You

My mum used to make us take garlic tablets for colds when we were young - they stank your breath for days. Then they invented odourless garlic.

Then I learned to cook real food.

Now, after having centuries of wisewomen having good hunches, medicoes have it sussed. The Age reveals just why garlic is good: it makes your body produce rotten egg gas (H2S), just enough to make your heart healthy, but not enough to smell... apparently

Warning: don't die in the snow this winter

with love from... your boss xo

After the crappest summer on record, now the weather people are predicting the coldest harshest winter in years for England this year. Mind you, these are the same weather people who promised us one of the hottest summers on record... so maybe I shouldn't be too worried!!

My employer, however, is doing the right thing and getting us all to be careful out there this chilly season. This official warning from the government tells conscientious drivers how to stay safe this winter. My advice? Stick to public transport - if it's cancelled, you get your money back and have a great excuse for being late to work!!

Guide for life: Less stuff. More happy.

This is the BEST article on 'why consume less' that I have seen in a long, long time...I miss The Age!

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/09/25/1190486307021.html

Yours in happy hippy contentedness

x

Wales and back in a day was well worth it!

I survived the epic journey to Wales and back on Saturday – leaving home at 5am and returning around midnight.

A late bus departure from Oxford had me sweating I'd miss my coach in London. Frantic text to my mate Heather - bus isn't here yet. Roadworks just outside Shepherd's Bush - more texting. 10 minutes after our scheduled departure time, bus still hadn't turned up, but I had. I was home and hosed. We got away at 7am with more than 4 hours on the road ahead of us.

Arriving in Cardiff, an entire street had been closed beside the town hall so that dozens of buses could discharge their contents. I haven't seen so many Aussies in one place since I left Melbourne in February - and all those broad accents took some readjusting to! Time to break out the aussie flags, worn superman style (we kept our undies on the inside though!)Wandered towards the stadium through streets teaming with people in Red and White or Green and Gold, to find a pub and a bite to eat. It wasn't hard - Cardiff is a friendly little city with loads of good quality, affordable cafes - I don't know the name of the place that does such lovely banana and Baileys milkshakes, but it's just opposite the castle and I liked their style!

Arrived at the ground with loads of time to spare - disaster, no cider. So I drank brains. Sorry, that should be Brains - a cardiff brew that sponsors the welsh rugby team. There's something incongruos about seeing their logo emblazoned across the massive chest of a forward with no neck.. Brains? Yeah, right. Now I'm no beer drinker, but I managed a pint and a half by full time (although the ciders on the castle lawn after the match were even better!).

So, the Aussies played well in the first half, got totally undisciplined in the second, giving away too many penalties and had 2 blokes in the sinbin with 10 mins to go – grrr. They still won, 32-20, but will have to tidy up against the better teams.

But what really made my heart race was the singing. Welsh people are born to music. The sound as their rugby songs fill the stadium is enough to make your spirit soar and your belly shudder – rising, rich and lovely with the power of a tide, so powerful you can feel the sounds in the air. And melodic. This is no amusing English soccer chants - I swear there were harmonies.

It certainly beats hell out of ‘Aussie aussie aussie, oi oi oi!”

If only...

From time to time, past worlds and the present collide. I saw this article online today and couldn't help wishing that someone I knew could have lived to see this...

Guess who's off to the Rugby World Cup?

Okay, I admit to being something of a late convert to rugby. My hometown, Melbourne, is more Aussie Rules territory, and I didn't watch my first game of union until the last world cup - when my then housemates Etienne and Rhona persuaded me down to the pub to watch France vs Scotland. It was too late to score tickets to games (which were played in Melbourne and Sydney), but from then on I was hooked.

Four years on, married to a Kiwi, and I've been glued to the telly ever since host nation France got downed by Argentina in the opener.

Now, thanks to a 'heads up' email from a work chum offering cheap last-minute tickets, I'm off to Cardiff by bus, in the wee small hours of tomorrow morning to see Australia play Wales, in the Rugby world cup.

I'm so excited I can hardly stop jumping around for joy!

Yipppeeeeee...