Schrodinger's cat....?

Has anyone seen this cat?

Much to our dismay we haven't seen the adorable friendly tabby fluffball for a fortnight now. He/she adopted us for a few days, to the point where we thought we'd better feed the little cutie. And not just any old leftovers, we gave him a saucerful of freshly barbecued snapper. But. Since then, we haven't seen him, and we miss him.

I can only hope that Schrodinger's cat thought experiment hasn't happened in reality :)

How not to climb at Kangaroo Point cliffs

We did get all our kit together, and we did go down to Kangaroo Point after work one evening, and I had spent my lunch hour that day picking out climbs from the guide book that'd be good starters. But. Once at the cliff I learnt something about Australian climbing that wasn't mentioned in the guide book. They have different bolts here. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but when these different bolts require you to slip a plate over them as you're climbing to be able then clip a quickdraw into them, it does make rather a lot of difference. After re-appraising my list of climbable routes with the new criteria of which of the bolted ones have normal bloody bolts, we were left with only a single route So, we stepped up to it to find that the first bolt was bloody miles in the air. Perfect. Undaunted (well, outwardly so!) I got started up it. About halfway to the first bolt Elvis got the better of my left leg, and discretion proved to be the better part of valour I downclimbed as much as I dared before leaping backwards off the wall. I had another crack at it, but again the commitment to reach that first bolt was beyond my out-of-practice ass. We did at least have a barbie afterwards, so the evening wasn't a complete loss :)

So - I'll be off to the shops soon to get some bolt plates (whatever the hell they are) and then we'll be back to show that bloody cliff what us Englishmen are really made of :)

Anyway - I did take rather a nice panoramic photo of the location which I thought you might like to see.

Day at the cricket

(I'm a little late posting this entry, but despite the recent cricket results, here goes!)
Many, many months ago I spent over an hour frantically hitting refresh on a webpage whilst hitting redial on a phone. When I did eventually get through on the phone, the conversation went something like this....

"G'day cobber, welcome to bloody Ticketek, what do yous wan'?"
"Good day to you too, my good man. I'd like to purchase 8 of your finest tickets for the first day of the first Ashes test at The Gabba, in Brisbane please"
"Strewth! Another bloody Pom! Ya know yous got two chances this year - Buckley's and none"
"Ho ho, we'll soon see about that. I think you'll find that although Our Boys are recovering from injury, your Dad's Army team won't last the series!"

...and so the conversation continued, until finally the ol' credit card was brandished and 8 tickets were promised in return :)

Fast forward a few months to Thurs 23rd November, and here's the view we had:


Not bad :) Wish I could say the same for the result, though :( Through the morning, it looked hopeful for England, and I had a couple of chances to punch the air and gloatingly fire make-believe guns with my fingers at my Aussie companions. But on the field, the Aussies took control and settled in for a long, long afternoon of sustained excellent batting. The boundaries were coming quick and fast. By the end of the day, I was pretty much stuck with my head in my hands, despondantly watching my national team get whipped, whilst Nat and Rod turned to me on every boundary and just grinned. Bastards :)

International huband and wife team

Well, the rest is history. Australia convincingly won the first test, and I'm writing this in the aftermath of the horrific result from the second test - England managed to both declare for 551 in the first innings, and lose the match. A new entry in the record books...

It's a funny old time to be a Pom in Oz - one friend (who shall remain nameless!!!) suggested now would be a good time to adopt an Aussie accent to avoid the jibes and gloating. Not a chance :)