www.flickr.com

nothing because it has to be connected to my computer to work, grrr


prawn cocktail crisps

pilchards on toast (you can get pilchards there but they just don't taste the same)

decent tv

jaffa cakes

Greggs pasties

proper beer (as in Black Sheep, or Timothy Taylor's Landlord, or Cwrw Haf, the list goes on...)

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

All change

As some of you may know (I have noticed that bad news travels fast!) I am coming home.

Today actually.

Given my last post I know that this is a leeeetle bit of a change in direction but I have my reasons. I ummed and aahed about blogging about this but then I thought 'sod it' this is my blog and I can write about whatever I want to.

Anyway, you may recall me mentioning the CTG in a couple of recent posts. He is, in actuality, the son of the woman who owned the hostel I was living in. Being male and therefore a mass of conflicting and confusing emotions and shit, he didn't know what he wanted. Specifically concerning me. After a few weeks of arguing and then making up I pretty much realised that the rules in this world are very different for men and women. He was allowed to go out and ask out whoever he wanted, visit strip clubs, be a general single male with no ties but if he wanted me I had to come running. I, on the other hand, had to act as if we were in a relationship and was barely allowed to even talk to other men, let alone go out with them (or, as was the most recent crime, spend the night at someone's house, however innocent the evening may have been).

So. Valentines Day. That wonderful day for lovers and couples and generally loved-up people everywhere. How did that fantastic day end for me? Well, unconscious on the pavement outside the pub in Murchison with a black eye and a headache that would last for days.

CTG's mother made it perfectly clear the next day that although she would not ask me to leave the hostel or my job I was no longer welcome. After a couple of days of being unable to work for more than a couple of hours at a time without falling over I decided that I no longer felt safe or welcome (odd that!) or comfortable there. CTG wouldn't even look at me, I don't even know whether he registered the black eye. His family were split apart, they all saw what happened apart from his mother and, apart from his mother, were all on my side. My friends were all really supportive but I just couldn't stay there. I also knew that no matter how bad an idea it would have been, there was a chance that after a while, when the black eye had faded and people had forgotten all about it, that I would go back to him. I could see it happening and I would NOT let that happen. I've done some dumb things in my life but that would really take the biscuit so I'm simply removing myself from the equation. I can't go back to him if I'm not there now can I?

Anyway, I went and hid out at Nagambie for a week in order to think things through and decided that I wanted to come home. For a little while at least. I want to see my family, my new nephew, my friends, my home.

Then I'll come back here :)
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Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Oh to be an Aussie

I think, quite possibly, I was born to be an Australian. Growing up in Wales, much as I love the country, the people (well, most of them), the language and everything, I never really did fit in especially with an accent as quintessentially English as mine is. After I left to go to University in Leeds I had a bit of a troubled time and once I'd graduated never seemed quite comfortable enough there, there was always the lure of somewhere else to go to.

Australia was always a country that I longed to go to ever since watching Warming Up when I was about 7 or 8. Watching Neighbours religiously for years didn't help either!

Since coming here I have felt a sense of peace and belonging that I havn't felt in a very long time. This feeling was confirmed tenfold when, the other evening, I was sitting on the veranda of my 'husband's' house with a glass of wine in my hand cooling off after a swim watching the sun set over the gum trees and the 'roos start to appear with country music in the background (yes, I'm quite sad I know). Sitting there, bravely ignoring the mozzies which in turn were bravely ignoring the Aeroguard I had sprayed all over me, I thought 'Yes, this is me'.
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Monday, February 13, 2006

Wonderful times

I had that most elusive of experiences this weekend...a full weekend off! Yes, I did! Two WHOLE days when I didn't have to be in that bloody shed smelling (and smelling of by the end of the day) rotten tomatoes. I was pretty much ecstatic when I left work on Friday afternoon (early, yet another bonus) and quite amused my friends by jumping up and down and grinning like a loon going 'I don't have to be back until Monday, woohoo!'. Suffice it to say the good mood lasted right up until about 6am this morning when I started again. Boo.

Hey ho, the rest of my weekend was fantastic and I wouldn't have been able to afford to do it without the job so every cloud has it's silver lining :)

I very nearly jumped out of a plane again this weekend. I've been having serious withdrawal symptoms recently. It's been 6 months since I last did a jump and am now classified as 'non current' which means I have to be briefed by an instructor who will check that my memory isn't always quite as bad as people think it is before I'm allowed to jump. I just can't wait to get back in the air, out that plane door and flying again :)*

I also got off my lazy arse and rang my credit card company expecting to hear that they will, reluctantly, send me a new card given that my last one was stopped because I missed a payment (see above comment re memory) and had the wonderful surprise that my card will work, I don't need a new one! They just wanted me to contact them before re-opening it. Fantastic! Hassle free or what? This means I will now be able to apply for my visa extention for the next year. All fingers that can be kept crossed would be welcome :)

*yes mum, I am also looking at updating my travel insurance before I jump so don't worry. Too much anyway.
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Saturday, February 04, 2006

Jaffa cakes

An often posed question but an important one I feel.

Jaffa Cakes. Cake or biscuit?

Answers on a postcard to...
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Thursday, February 02, 2006

Weirdness

I've been having the weirdest sort of flashes, I'll be thinking about something random when into my head will come a really really vivid vision of generally somewhere at home, the carpark outside Borders in Swansea, the Pizza Express behind the Corn Exchange in Leeds, the strangest places! I don't feel homesick as much but these pictures are really odd. Any ideas?
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Busy busy busy

I must apologise for the complete lack of interesting things that I have to say at the moment. I'm afraid that generally there is only one thing on my mind at the moment. Tomatoes. Evil, red blighters that haunt not only my waking hours (Literally. I'm working from 5am to 7.30pm and then I generally go home to bed, food and other necessities like alcohol are falling rapidly by the wayside. Like my weight, woohoo!) but my nights as well. I was completely confused yesterday by the fact that I remembered an entire day of packing and working but when I asked someone about it, it turned out that I had dreampt the entire day. I woke up from a nap a couple of weeks ago (way back in those halcyon days when life was good and work finished at the wonderfully early time of 3pm)in a panic because I was sure that I had to help Myriam and Tabea, two german girls living at the hostel at the time, to stack boxes.

Work is all consuming. We eat, live and breathe it. Even when we do occasionally decide we need to do something else and all descend on the pub for a drink or four all we talk about is tomatoes because that's the only thing that anyone had anything to do with recently.

I have a slight reprieve at the moment because the machine broke down so we all got sent home at 9am and have to go back to work at 1pm. Due to this we won't finish until around 10 or 11pm. Oh joy. I'm not sure I will ever be able to eat a raw tomato again.
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