Birthday bliss

I love my birthday, but I don't have a great track record of sharing it with people. In fact, the last time I tried holding a 'do' was my 30th, and several people forgot to show up (more fool them - it was a scorching summer's day, we went to Luna Park, and I brought party pies and fairy bread and we went on the rides and finished up at the Espy, drinking wine on the front balcony, watching the sun set over Port Phillip Bay. Hurrah!).

Birthdays in England are a bit weird because they happen in winter here, but I figured 35 was worth some song and dance, so I made some plans this year.

And we had a lovely day - a very low key, eaty-drinky 'do just what you please' afternoon at one of my favourite free houses, run by mine excellent host Ollie the Irishman. There was rugby on the telly (which suited Ants), Aunt Sally in the backyard (It's a game - a uniquely Oxford thing - don't ask me to explain...) and several large chickens, live music and a spot of trivial pursuit - just the kind of celebration I had wanted. There was much nattering among friends, good food and drink, and nobody forgot to turn up. It did start me thinking though, just how much my world has changed since that party at 30. Mikko was still alive (he didn't show because he was working, but at least he didn't forget!), Ants wasn't even a distant blip on my horizon, and I was desperately looking forward to finishing my masters and saving up for my 'strictly 12 months' adventure in the UK. I had never sung solo in a pub, never re-enacted in a real castle and wished I could work out how to use emission factors for calculating greenhouse gases.
Back then, I knew not a soul among the 20 people who turned out in force yesterday. They're no substitute for the family and friends with whom I've shared so much history at home (and who were also out in droves sending birthday wishes by phone and facebook, email and text). But I felt rather privileged and well loved, and as I curled up with Anthony's arm around my shoulders last night, my last thought was that it had been a very happy birthday indeed.

Support your local CFA

Facebook has details of a 'Buy a CFA Volunteer a Beer' event and fundraiser, hosted by 'grateful victorians'.

Do it, people. They are amazing men and women.

The worst of all fears

All worst fears have been realised. February 7, 2009 wasn't as bad as Ash Wednesday: it was three times worse. Latest expectations are for more than a thousand homes destroyed, and up to 300 people dead.

I've spent much of my spare time this week glued to my laptop, poring over news sites to try to understand what's happened at home.

It's been a rollercoaster week: enormous pride in my cousin Kate, a CFA (Country Fire Authority) volunteer and, in the eyes of many, one of 7000 heroes who tried to stand between Saturday's firestorm and people's lives and homes. She was stationed for 24 hours straight at Kinglake, where maybe 700 homes are gone, and at least 40 people have died.

Monday brought the first shock, as word filtered around re-enactment circles of people who had fought for their homes - not all of them successfully. But at least everyone we knew is still alive.

Then on Tuesday, flicking throught The Age Online, up popped a familiar face, a former colleague, above a link to a list of those 'missing, feared dead'. Professor Rob Pearce, head of sleep disorders at the Austin, where I was PR Manager, died fighting for his home. His wife and adult son survived. He was a brilliant doctor, and great craic as media 'talent', with his untameable hair that made him look every inch a scientific genius, and his knack for describing bleeding edge medical stuff in terms anyone (even the Herald Sun) could understand. Vale Rob.

Wednesday, and the invariable near miss stories are filtering through now. My dad doesn't know if one of his patients is okay. My stepmother's nephew spent hours sheltering in a creek bed, her son turned back by a road block. More relief.

The tiniest details in the paper prompt floods of tears. Emergency shelters put out a plea for dark coloured clothing, suits and dresses - because people who escaped with only the clothes on their backs are struggling to find 'suitable' clothing to wear to the funerals of their relatives, friends and neighbours.

I've stopped reading the news at work - I mustn't cry at my desk in front of my team. But every day I wear the earrings I bought at the St Andrews Market, when Ants and I went home to be married.

CFA Volunteers have been taken off the grisly job of searching homes for bodies- too often, the ruins they're sifting through are in their own town, their own street. It was too much.

Once the coroner's staff have been through, houses are tagged with red and white ribbon, indicating the all clear, or blue and white crime scene tape. But outside my mum's place, a victim of a hit and run lies dead in scorching sun for half a day because there are no coroners' staff available: they're all up at the fires. There's hysteria, as the dead girl's friends come down to where her body lies on the road, and traffic is backed up for hours.

The whole of Marysville is one big crime scene. The town is no more: residents were bussed back there this week to see the ruins for themselves, understand what happened to their homes, but no-one was allowed off the bus. Police say it could take weeks to sift through the remains of more than 120 houses (just 5 still stand, they say), and remove the bodies of perhaps 100 people - 20% of the town's population. I cannot comprehend loss on that scale.

I feel helpless, I want to go home and do something, not just give money. I want to be able to stop talking about it: I don't want the sympathy of my colleagues at work. I'm still one of the lucky ones: everyone I love is still alive. So many can't say that much.

Welcome to Murrayfield

Ants has wanted to see Scotland play at Murrayfield since before he ever set foot in the UK. So this year, Santa made it happen and on Sunday morning we carefully defrosted the car and nudged her out of our snowed in street and onto the motorway towards Heathrow.

Saturday's sunshine had cleared most of the roads, and the trip in was easy, as was the flight to Edinburgh. It feels strange to think that somewhere that feels so culturally far removed from southern England is just an hour away by air (agreed, NOT the most environmentally friendly way to travel!).I love Edinburgh and I can't believe it's taken us this long to get back here.We bussed in to the ground, bought baguettes stuffed with beef and gravy and our first pints. I needed a scarf, Ants was already wearing his Scotland rugby jersey. The man searching bags asked if that was a recipe for disaster in a relationship: we said not as much as one of us being Aussie and the other a Kiwi. Lacking a lighter, Ants found that every Scot he asked was more than happy to oblige, 'good sir - and good luck!'

The Welsh were already singing. It was just like going to a packed house at the 'G: a family friendly environment where women and kids are welcome, as unlike going to the soccer as could be. As the stadium grounds began to fill us, anticipation grew, as did the retinue of silly hats. Check these out!HRH Princess Anne shook hands with both sides, there were fireworks and bagpipes and huge jets of flame, an airforce flyover and the match began. We got donuts and hot chocolate at half time and Wales won, in part because Scotland knocked out two of their own players, one chap going unconscious while commiting a foul. 'I can't give him a yellow card when he's knocked out' said the ref into his mike, 'but his replacement can't come on for 10 minutes'.After the match we joined the thronging thousands who walked into the centre of town, about 2 miles away. Ants' feet got sore so we bargained with a pedicab for a fare, and then realised we had no idea where the place was that we'd agreed to be let out. Found our bearings, found a bar with a restaurant at the back, tucked into smoked haddock soup, followed by haggis neeps and tatties in whisky cream sauce for the lad, and 'Chicken balmoral' (chicken stuffed with haggis, wrapped in bacon, whisky cream sauce. mmm. calories.) for me. Finished with 12 yr old whisky and a brisk walk down to the bus through a light shower of snow, vowing to come back soon.Sadly, we nearly didn't leave. After an exciting few minutes going through security alongside the Welsh rugby team (it's not often people make Ants look small, but several of these fellas did!), we arrived at our gate, took our seats... and there we sat for the next 3 hours. The light snow had gotten heavier, and by the time the de-icer got to our plane, the runway had been closed. 'Cooped up with a bunch of pissed rugby fans' is not the best way to spend 3 hours, and even Ants' patience was stretched by the time we finally took off.

We finally made it home at 2.30 am, knackered, but still vowing it was worth every minute.

Another Ash Wednesday?

I was nine, when Ash Wednesday raged across the state a day after my birthday. I remember scorching hot classrooms with the windows open, and gusts of smoke and warm cinders blowing in on the hot wind, sent down the Ferntree Gully Highway from Mount Dandenong. I remember my dad in his study next morning, glued to the radio, saying Cockatoo had been razed to the ground, and that I didn't realise he didn't mean a native bird, but a whole town. I remember being asked to choose clothes and shoes and toys to give to kids whose houses had burned down, and my mum volunteering at the shelter where hundreds of people now slept.

In Warrandyte, we grew up with fire plans and a wary eye on days where there was a hot northerly wind in summer. My mum has stood on the roof of our house stuffing the downpipes with rags so she can fill the gutters with water, and has put out spotfires in the garden from burning embers carried on the wind. I was 17 and raged with helplessness from a mile up the road, because they wouldn't let me across the bridge at the Yarra to help her.

Melbourne's outskirts are burning again today, and people have died and they say there could be hundreds of homes burned. Towns that once marked stages in my journey as I drove from Mitchelton at Nagambie to Melbourne and 'home' will now be remembered for Black Saturday, February 7: Broadford, Kilmore, Wallan, Clonbinane... and others from 'the back road' down to Mum's: Whittlesea, Kinglake, Hursbridge. They're all in trouble tonight, along with Gippsland and Horsham and other places too.

Folks here in England can't possibly understand the concept of a fire so out of control that it's all you can do to get the people out. It can race up a hillside in seconds, gut a house in minutes. Flames roar 70 feet high and generate their own 100km an hour winds as they suck all the oxygen from the air.

A couple of years ago, one such fire burned out an area the size of Portugal in the high country - although few if any lives were lost. This time, the area is much, much smaller, but the results are much, much worse...

I don't much feel like watching the rugby any more.

More Snow

Another day, another 6 inches of snow, another snowball fight among the busdrivers (this one looked to be 'boys vs girls') at the bus Depot.

It snowed all night, then half the day too, and work sent home all staff from outlying villages after lunch, then closed the office half an hour early, so the 10 of us that were left could all go home too. Ants couldn't get the car out, so didn't make it to work.

There's a layer of ice under the snow now, making pavements slick and 'slippy' (another quaint english turn of phrase). Reminds me of those winters in Finland, Belgium and Luxembourg, and I'm a bit amazed at how just a week of this kind of weather can transform the landscape and make the ice and snow feel so entrenched. It's still beautiful though - specially today, now that the sun is shining.

Ants and I are hoping we can still get up to Edinburgh on Sunday - we've tickets for the rugby, Scotland vs Wales. Anthony has wanted to see Scotland play at Murrayfield ever since we've been here. Keep yer fingers crossed!

Remember the blitz....

Some wag at work (you know who you are... Matt!) forwarded this around at work today after we'd all valiantly trudged in through the snow. How frightfully British! Hahaha!

Meanwhile, back in Melbourne...

... they're enduring a second week of temperatures above 40oC (that's 104F in the old money, Ms Kim!). Trainlines have buckled, and powercuts are becoming common, as people all turn on their air-con at once and suck more power from the grid than it can supply.

Our CFA (country fire authority) are an amazing bunch of men and women. Virtually every one of them is a volunteer, and they do an amazing job: my cousin Kate and her boyfriend are among them. The fire in this clip ran right up to the edge of my aunt and uncle's place outside Woodend. All are okay, but it burned out 120 hectares and needed 40 fire trucks and 'elvis' the water crane/helicopter to get it under control. Kate's fella was one of the 'firies' called up from Melbourne - it feels dead weird to be reading about all this when outside my window there's still a layer of snow!

They're saying it could be the worst summer in years for fires. I hope 'they' are bloody wrong.

Real Snow!

You've probably seen all the media coverage by now - a mere 4 inches of snow and Heathrow was closed and in chaos, the tube shut down (I don't understand how snow makes the underground trains stop running!). Our head office in London has been deserted all week - and people have been 'unable to leave their homes' because the snow was a foot deep.

It's possibly the funniest thing I've heard since I first came here and discovered that a 3 hr train ride to York would take 5.5 hrs, because of... wait for it... "leaves on the line". Yep. In a country full of deciduous trees, many of them planted along the railways. Who'd have thought that would lead to leaves on the line? Or that it would cause so much chaos.

Here in Witney, we'd been wondering what they were moaning about - after all, we've had an inch or two most days here, and surely a couple of inches more can't make that much difference...

This morning, the phone rang at 7.30am , it was Matt, one of my colleagues, letting me know he'd be late because the buses aren't running. I jumped out of bed and ran to the window and saw.... real snow! Also up to a foot deep in places, so exciting!

We immediately arranged carpooling for as many people as possible, and soon after Matt, Brenda and I packed B's car with shovels and a hi-vis vest and set off for work. We were late, but otherwise all was well. And the bus drivers at the depot at the end of our street were having a snowball fight - haha! - then at 8am they all climbed aboard and started trundling down the newly gritted roads.

So I still don't understand what the Londoners were on about - I reckon these English folk are just soft. (and obsessed with only planning for the sunny climate they'd like to have, not the weather they do have!)

The roads were nearly empty and it was SO pretty - quiet and still, the trees and fences coated with white powdery fluff, reminding me of driving through Lapland on holidays past. Look....

Our street, above, and our backyard

The driveway at work and, below, the carpark first thing in the morning...By midmorning, the carpark had sprouted a new population of snow folk...and fauna

Ants in uniform

I would have said I am the absolute last person to be a sucker for a fella in uniform, but I confess, the first time I saw Ants in his policeman's kit, I blushed.

(All of you that immediately thought 'mmmm - handcuffs!' can shut up right now. What I was really scared of was the gun and being seen snogging a copper in public).

When he moved to Warwick Castle, his work 'uniform' of medieval shirt, jacket and hose (tights, to the uninitiated!) was definitely cool.

Now he's joined St John Ambulance - and check out my husband the jolly green giant who glows in the dark!

Quiet on the homefront

... well, kinda. Actually, the new year is off to a flying start: Ants started a new job, with St John Ambulance, and is hard at it learning first aid, driving the ambulance, and 'manual handling' of patients (aka 'carrying little old ladies - or fat old blokes - down the steep and narrow stairs that seem to be part and parcel of every English home'!). Work is off to a mad start for me also - the less said the better, there will be tricky times in the next month or so.

And we moved house. Our new abode is 75 paces from the old house, two doors from the pub, and right next door to a Chinese supermarket. It's old and slightly wonky, with slopey floorboards and three foot thick walls - but beautifully done up, with new and very user friendly kitchen and bathroom, double glazing and a modern, superefficient boiler... toasty!

When we get some furniture, we'll get you some pix.

Snow!

They're calling it the coldest winter on record (records go back to 17-hundred-and-something). I wouldn't know. But I do know that it snowed this week. Twice!


Yes, sadsack that I am, I took my camera to work, so I could snap these pix of our backyard , our street, and the walk to the bus stop...


I now know what it really means when the grass crunches beneath your feet and the ground is frozen solid. I've found out when I've gone out to defrost the drinking water for our chickens every morning - and every night because it even refreezes during the day!

We feel very smug when we settle down to our open fire at night... we'll miss that when we move.

Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve and, after knocking off work (it was somewhat quiet - damn 'skeleton staff requirement'...), we headed to Bristol for a night of knees-up with the Company of Chivalry lasses and lads. It was good wholesome stuff: homemade pizza, cider, potato cakes from the local chippie (potato cakes! I haven't seen potato cakes since Melbourne!)... and Transformers Risk. The usual.

Actually, I hadn't played Risk in about 4 years, so I was well pleased. Even more so when I teamed up with the lovely Martin (the blurry pair of hands on the left in the photo above), we became Decepticons and cleaned up the board.

Race was on to finish the game before the midnight countdown - and then wake Anthony, who had fallen asleep on a 2 person camping chair... before it was too late...After popping the cork on a bottle of fizz, trading the traditional hugs and happy wishes then racing outside in socks and no coats (in -5C!) to see the fireworks that every man and his dog had saved up from Bonfire night and was letting off in the street, well, it all turned a bit silly.

Here is our host Liz, seeking an opinion on whether her chicken fillets, or plastic pasta bowls, do more for her cleavage...
Needless to say, a late night was had by all and there was much in the way of bacon sandwich munching the next afternoon... My husband did both the shop run and the cooking for 7 of us, and is a god among men.

Happy new year folks, and may all your 2009 hopes and dreams come to pass. xoxox

More dinner bliss

And we did!

Sophie and Phil are brilliant musicians and fabulous friends and we don't see them nearly often enough.

So when we had a text to say 'how's Tuesday for dinner', we fell over ourselves to make it happen. After all, we'd been promising since we moved into this place that we'd have them to dinner, and we move out in less than 3 weeks!

Sophie is a member of the brilliant Magpie Lane*, who I finally managed to see live just before Christmas. And she and Phil are among that rare breed of 'people who play together a lot' who just know one another's timing and harmonies as naturally as breathing.

On a good night, Anthony and I can find something of it too, but whenever we hear it, it's breathtaking, uplifting and balm for the soul. Phil and Soph are also proper foodies, and Phil loves a good red - he brought one with him, and it matched a treat with the roast lamb, christmas pudding and cointreau butter that constituted our version of my friend Zenta's 'Christmas the sequel'.

After dinner, Sophie got all excited (in that fabulous, 'kid in a lolly shop' way that she does so well) about my christmas pressies from Ants.... She already has a dress - so we might make a re-enactor out of her yet. I'm quite enjoying this dinner-do thing... i cant wait til we can do it in our new house too!

*The group takes its name from an infamous Oxford street, known as a reliable place to find ladies of negotiable charms, and in pre-Victorian times called for centuries by the less salubrious Gropec*nt Lane. Truly!

Bliss for dinner

It began with a boast about gravlax. 'What's that then?' asked Em, on a rare quiet moment on the desk at work.

'It's where you take salmon and you cure it in your fridge on a bed of rock salt (maybe with a bit of vodka, lemon and dill) and you serve it up with rye bread and cream cheese and more dill and lemon and radishes and it's delicious. We used to gravlax a whole salmon every Christmas.'

(English people still find it soooo amazing that, when it's 35 degrees outside, Aussies eschew slaving over a hot roast turkey, in favour of seafood, maybe a bbq, cold ham, potato salad, other salads, christmas pud with ice cream, lashings of cold ones, and a swim. Does life get better?)

'Ooooh! Sounds amazing. Tomaz loves seafood - can we make some when he visits from Slovenia?'

And so a very cunning plan was born... The challenge was to put together a three course meal that had a seafood theme to all three courses. The gravlax entree (in the UK they call it a 'starter') was the easy part.

From there we moved on to a seafood risotto ('king' prawns were recently on sale at Sainsbury's - the mostly-english dinner guests all oooh-ed and aaaah-ed about the size of them, but they were soo little compared to even the ordinary prawns we get at home!) and that amazing Marsanne. Then came my cunning piece de resistance: Guylian chocolate seashells floating on a 'sea' of mousse. The original plan was a chocolate mousse, but a week ago I realised that everything except the mousse was on the 'safe' list of a friend who is on a really insane allergy-testing regime (fish, rice, certain veg, lemons, dairy stuff as long as it's 'on the side). And apples. So I found, and followed, a recipe for a baked 'apple mousse' and it worked a treat! I was soooo chuffed! So we ate, drank and nattered before the open fire until the wee small hours. Thank you Emily, Tomaz, Brenda and Tess for a lovely, lovely night.

I must do more of this.

Learning something new every day...

I watched a Blackadder special last night (BLESS Christmas night TV!)... in the interviews at the end I couldn't work out why the guy from Time Team kept getting a guernsey. What made him such a blackadder expert anyways?

Suddenly, the penny dropped. He was Baldric!! This beautifully spoken archaeology whizz was the consonant-droppin' underling famous for his cunning plans and lucky willy. Look! (top pic below is from the timeteam website)

Who knew? Certainly not me! D'oh!

Our best UK Christmas yet...

Work schedules and flu had hitherto dampened our Christmas spirit and delayed its launch, but Ants and I finally found it after I knocked off work on Christmas Eve. I came home to discover that Ants had bought port and whiskey, Bailey's and sweet treats, even mince pies. He'd wrapped up gifts for the chooks (thank you for all the wonderful eggs) and Adrian batcat (merry christmas ratbag!) and posted notes on facebook to say my presents had finally arrived and let me know he was busy wrapping them.

It was all so festive, we just couldn't wait. Of course we pretended it was because so many European countries open gifts on Christmas eve - and because it was already christmas day in Australia and New Zealand... but actually we got like kids and were just too impatient to wait!And such pressies! Ants seems well pleased with his tickets to see Scotland play Wales at Murrayfield in February. And look at me with my new toys!
We decided to hold the rest til morning and adjourned to the pub for what turned out to be possibly the worst Irish band ever - although that didn't stop us from enjoying a good oldfashioned sing along - then decided, at 3am, that it would be a good idea to ring the folks in NZ.We started the next morning with a light but lushxurious breakfast, to mop up evidence of the night before, phoned home and opened the rest of our pressies: a pearl and amethyst necklace from my mum, and the best slippers from the out-laws in NZ: toasty warm sheepskin and exactly the right size! Adrian pusscat had more fun with the wrapping paper than her actual gift, and we played all over the loungeroom before getting ready for lunch.

Pubs in England open from noon to 2pm, and most of the establishments in Corn Street were buzzing, ours no exception. After closing, 11 of us cooked and ate christmas dinner with the landlords (Martin and Cathy), including 3 kids who all still believe in Santa, and David-from-Kenya, a friend of Martin's from his development work in Africa. It was amazing sitting in the pub in our stockingfeet, singing songs and unwrapping pressies while people came past and tried to get in cos they didn't realise it was 'family only'. We felt pretty special. Anthony got stuck early in the pub's reading room, although he emerged in time for port and cheese, served late into the night as various other regulars called in to say hello and raise a glass with friends. They were still coming in as we headed home, exhausted but happy, after our best UK Christmas yet.

Sleepy winter evenings...

Came from work yesterday to find a lazy Ants and a lazy pussycat, all cosy on the couch... I couldn't help taking this pic!

The 'best hot drink in winter' challenge...

In Germany they do gluhwein, in England it's called 'mulled wine', and if you're really lucky, you'll even find mulled cider in these parts. All are excellent at keeping the cold at bay, and lubricating vocal chords. But I have found the grandaddy of them all, hot on the heels of my first Magpie Lane gig at the Holywell Music Room in Oxford... hot Pimms (yes, that summer stuff that usually has strawberries and cucumber in), with brandy and apple juice. Mmmmm!

Happy solstice

England's long dark nights and grey days have given me new appreciation for the seasons.

This winter hasn't (yet) been as bad as some - I haven't spent 3 weeks fighting the urge to hibernate, as I did last year, and can blame the 2 week 'flu I had for having had no energy.

But 'tis no wonder ancient peoples celebrated the solstice and made offerings to the gods to ensure the spring would come again.

I've marked solstice for more than a decade - but never quite with the simple class of like this card from Tess. Cool - innit?