Diary of a Pom in Western Australia

I got forwarded this a while back and thought it was too funny (and close to the truth) not to post.

August 31

Just got transferred with work from Leeds UK to our new home in Karratha, Western Australia. Now this is a town that knows how to live! Beautiful, sunny days and warm, balmy evenings. I watched the sunset from a deckchair by our pool yesterday. It was beautiful. I’ve finally found my new home. I love it here.

September 13

Really heating up now. It got to 31 today. No problem though. Living in air-conditioned home, driving air-conditioned car. What a pleasure to see the sun every day like this. I’m turning into a sun-worshipper – no blasted rain like back in Leeds!!

September 30

Had the back yard landscaped with tropical plants today. Lots of palms and rocks. No more mowing lawns for me! Another scorcher today, but I love it here. It’s Paradise!

October 10
The temperature hasn’t been below 35 all week. How do people get used to this kind of heat? At least today it’s windy though. Keeps the flies off a bit. Acclimatizing is taking longer than we expected.

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October 15
Fell asleep by the pool yesterday. Got third degree burns over 60% of my body. Missed three days off work. What a dumb thing to do. Got to respect the old sun in a climate like this!

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October 20
Didn’t notice Kitty (our cat) sneaking into the car before I left for work this morning. By the time I got back to the car after work, Kitty had died and swollen up to the size of a shopping bag and stuck to the upholstery. The car now smells like Whiskettes and cat shit. I’ve learned my lesson though: no more pets in this heat.

October 25
This wind is a bastard. It feels like a giant fucking blow dryer. And it’s hot as hell! The home air conditioner is on the blink and the repair man charged $200 just to drive over and tell me he needs to order parts from fucking Perth ….The wife & the kids are complaining.

October 30
The temperature’s up around 40 and the parts still haven’t arrived for the fucking air conditioner. House is an oven so we’ve all been sleeping outside by the pool for 3 nights now. Bloody $600,000 house and we can’t even go inside. Why the hell did I ever come here?

November 4
Finally got the fucking air-conditioner fixed. It cost $1,500 and gets the temperature down to around 25 degrees, but the humidity makes it feel about 35. Stupid repairman. Fucking thief.

November 8
If one more smart bastard says ‘Hot enough for you today?’ I’m going to fucking throttle him. Fucking heat! By the time I get to work, the car radiator is boiling over, my fucking clothes are soaking fucking wet and I smell like baked cat. Fucking place is the end of the Earth.

November 9
Tried to run some errands after work, wore shorts, and sat on the black leather upholstery in my car. I thought my fucking arse was on fire. I lost 2 layers of flesh, all the hair on the backs of my legs and off my fucking arse. Now the car smells like burnt hair, fried arse and baked cat. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

November 10
The Weather report might as well be a fucking recording. Hot and sunny. Hot and sunny, Hot and fucking sunny. It never fucking changes! It’s been too hot to do anything for 2 fucking months and the weatherman says it might really warm up next week. Fuck!

November 15
Doesn’t it ever rain in this damn fucking place? Water restrictions will be next, so my $5,000 worth of palms might just dry up and blow into the fucking pool. The only things that thrive in this fucking hell-hole are the fucking flies. You don’t dare open your mouth for fear of swallowing half a dozen of the little bastards!

November 20
Welcome to HELL! It got to 45 fuckin’ degrees today. Now the air conditioner’s gone in my car. The repair man came to fix it and said, ‘Hot enough for you today?’ I wanted to shove the fucking car up his fucking arse. Anyway, had to spend the $2,500 mortgage payment to bail me out of jail for assaulting the stupid prick. Fucking Karratha! What kind of sick, demented fucking idiot would want to live here!

December 1
WHAT!!!! The FIRST day of Summer!!!! You are fucking kidding me!

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Why we moan and what we love

Some things are just so ingrained into the British way of life that it really wouldn’t be stretching any sort of imagination to think they’re actually part of our genetic make up.

For example, 99% of people in possession of a British passport seem unable to enter a kitchen without immediately switching the kettle on – regardless of whether they fancy a cup of tea or not. It’s a scientific fact you know, with research and pie charts and everything. At a guess, I’d say 20 seconds is the average time it takes from door to sink, followed by a frantic hunt for the last cup you used and put down somewhere. It’s often in the microwave, having been re-heated twice and still left half full. Or half empty, depending on what sort of person you are.

Yes, we British certainly do love the dried, leafy stuff – whether it be the black, white, green or sugared variety, or those rather rancid concoctions laced with plant extract and smelling like air freshener. In fact, we love it so much we get through 165,000,000 cups a day. That’s an estimate for the entire population by the way. For one person to try to drink that much would just be plain silly. And expensive. And incredibly time-consuming. You’d need to plug the kettle in by the loo and then drink them back-to-back around the clock.

The ‘other’ drink that requires the use of a kettle – or a conveniently located Starbucks, Costa, Cafe Nero or McCafe – comes straggling in behind on the ‘consumption counter’ at only a paltry 70 million cups per day. I reckon that’s partially to do with the sheer volume of choice and all those ridiculous names they have. The average person in search of a cup of basic ground bean is generally unwilling to sidle to the front of a queue and ask for a ‘Venti Grande Skinny Chai Latté With An Extra Shot Of Double Strength Mocha Espresso’, or whatever it is that some Americans seem to drink – no offence intended.

Of course when I say ‘conveniently located Starbucks’, I am aware of the irony of such a phrase. With over 16,858 stores in 50 countries, (including over 700 in the UK) there’s no longer such a thing as an inconveniently located Starbucks – what with their ‘Expansions Team’ on a continuous mission to fill up every available square inch of empty high street, shopping mall and green belt across the land. Their global domination is even more impressive when you consider that their coffee is rated the worst of the lot – including the stuff they pump out at the birth place of the Happy Meal and the Big Muck.

Not to digress even further and turn this into a totally Starbuck themed blog, but surely you’d think that with their primary product – namely coffee – being so poorly regarded, they’d think twice about paying stupid money to change their already recognisable branding (yet again) and drop the word ‘coffee’ from the logo?

And that’s beside the idea some numpty in management has had to do away with those nice big chunky mugs, which are, let’s be honest, the only real reason many of us go there in the first place. Well aside from the whipped cream and the free WiFi… and the rather moorish cinnamon swirl.

Anyway, moving swiftly away from those corporate coffee giants with no common sense and getting back to what I was initially talking about. Which was, oh yes, being British.

Moaning about the weather is also woven into our DNA, along with our ability to come over all shocked and every so slightly offended as it once again pees down with rain all summer, starts to get cold in the Autumn and freezes over in the winter.

You’d think as a nation of welly wearers with pale skin and permanently frizzy hair, we’d all be rather used to this weather pattern by now. But no. We all work ourselves up into a right lather, muttering under our breath every time we open the curtains and fervently digging out records since time began – just so that we can once again prove that we really have just experienced the wettest, driest, hottest, muggiest, windiest, coldest month ever. And that’s just in July.

Actually if we can’t have paper proof from the Met Office that we’re experiencing the worst weather since the first atoms exploded, or the dinosaurs discovered a Starbucks, conveniently located at the mouth of a prehistoric cave, then for some strange reason we feel positively short-changed.

So, to all those British people out there who love to moan about the rain and waste countless hours believing that every other country in the world has better weather than we do – please don’t.

I’ve been around a bit (in the traveling sense of the world) and seen enough climates to realise that not only is our weather not that bad in the grand scheme of things, it also isn’t the be-all and end-all of life.

Take the Middle East for instance. Living in Bahrain, I remember the summers being hot enough to cook your organs through your skin. I’d sprint from an air-conditioned flat to an air-conditioned car to an air-conditioned office. My sunglasses were always running with condensation, the steering wheel burnt my palms and I could never put the roof down on my convertible for fear of heat stroke. OK, so no sympathy on that one I’m sure!

The time spent laying by the pool, bobbing around on beautiful boats and risking my neck on dangerously fast jet skis did help to make up for the heat, but you get my drift. Oh yes, and in the winter months it also got very cold, very wet and very windy.

In Singapore it certainly never got cold, but then again it never got anything other than humid. And humidity, as anyone with a pair of hair straighteners will know, is a living bloody nightmare when it comes to taming a frizzy mane.

And if you’ve ever wondered why Singapore is a nation of compulsive shoppers, it’s all to do with the heat. The malls, as well as being massive and stuffed full of great shops, are kept at roughly the same temperature as a fridge. So all in all it’s cheaper to spend 5-hours a day browsing through stuff you’ll never buy, than it is to stay home and run your own AC.

And then there’s Perth. Good old sunny Perth with its constant blue skies, sandy beaches and a climate so perfect everyone and their brother, cousin and mother-in-law wants to live there. Or so the Tourist Board tells you to draw you in.

Had I had any idea how cold I would have been for the 3 winters I spent down there, I would have taken more decent jumpers and some tog rated socks with me, not sold all my thick fleeces on Ebay before I left. The lack of any proper insulation, double glazing or central heating meant that I often went to bed wearing half the contents of my wardrobe, with a portable radiator by my pillow and icicles forming from my nose. Highly unattractive and not terribly conducive to any form of martial nocturnal activity.

The summer was always a relief when it arrived. Or rather it was until the temperatures really kicked in and took off, and then it became impossible to go anywhere between the hours of 9 and 4. Every time I took my son to the playground he’d complain his head was cooking like a sausage and asked me to take him home. Having a  pool helped a bit, but by the time we’d dragged off the cover, fished out the red backs and plastered up in sun cream, all energy and motivation was gone – along with all that sun cream, 5 minutes after hitting the water.

So finally, after chasing the sun all around the world and declaring loudly that I simply can not deal with the miserable English weather anymore, I’ve finally come to realise a few things. As I mentioned before, the UK isn’t that bad in the grand scheme of things and getting a higher percentage of sunny days really isn’t the be-all and end-all of life.

Finding a decent cup of (green) tea on the other hand… That’s far more important and a whole different kettle of fish.

Oh Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree

This time of the year is definitely a highlight on any trees calendar, or at least it is if you happen to be a Fraser, Balsam, Noble, White, Douglas or Grand Fir, a Norway or Colorado Blue Spruce or a Scotch Pine. We are of course talking Christmas trees here, and lots of them.

It has been estimated that approximately 200 million Christmas trees are bought worldwide each year, with more than 65 million being sold in Europe. In the UK alone, 8 million trees are currently being hauled into cars, dragged through homes and decorated to within an inch of their life. We’re not even going to guess at how many baubles or miles of tinsel are required for that many trees, though at a rough estimate, we’d say there are probably 4 million stars and 4 million angels involved.

Of course Christmas trees have long been the focal point in every festive household, but in just the last five years, sales of the rooted variety have grown a thousand fold in the UK. That’s an awful lot of tree. And an awful lot of needles being dropped, scattered, walked on and sucked up the Hoover everyday.

And if you’re wondering about the logistics of growing so many trees, well there are approximately 25,000 hectares of them (that’s over twice the size of the City of Manchester) growing around the UK, under the watchful eye of The British Christmas Trees Growers Association. And yes, all of these trees are earning their keep long before they hit that netting machine. Each acre of ‘Christmas tree’ provides the daily oxygen requirements for 18 people.

The Christmas tree has a long and interesting history, dating right back to the evergreen trees that were first used to celebrate the winter season before the birth of Christ. They weren’t decorated however until 1510, when those cheery folk in Riga, Latvia decided to start a trend that definitely lasted the distance. Small candles were first used to decorate trees in the middle of the 17th century, until Thomas Edison’s assistant, Edward Johnson, came up with the idea of making special electric lights for them in 1882. A much safer idea than a naked flame you would imagine, but far more annoying when that one solitary bulb comes loose. These Christmas tree lights went into mass production in 1890, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Today cities across the country now compete to offer the largest, greenest, most sparkly tree on the block, to help draw in those shopping crowds. But few places have one as special as Westminster. Their tree has been sent over as a gift from Oslo, Norway every year since 1947; an expression of good will and gratitude for Britain’s help to Norway during World War II.

So, now for a little guide to all things ‘Christmas tree’..

Well first up, rather obviously, is making sure you put your tree somewhere safe – so away from sunny windows, radiators, heating vents and any spitting embers that might escape an open fire. If you have children or pets running around it’s probably wise to secure it to a wall or a stable piece of furniture. Secure the tree that is, we’re not recommending tethering your toddler or pooch to the bookshelf with fishing wire over the coming weeks, no matter how tempting that idea might sometimes be.

When selecting your tree, make sure it’s a fresh one. No, this isn’t the same as the ‘sink or float’ egg test, you simply look to make sure the needles are shiny, green and staying put when you pull the branch – not dry, brown and collecting on top of your shoes when you tap it. When you finally get your tree into it’s final resting place and have finished your celebratory cup of tea, just remember that trees also love a good drink. In fact, they get so thirsty they’ll need to be continuously topped up with water for at least the first week.

And finally, once you’ve eaten the cupboards bare, stripped the turkey to it’s innards and all festive cheer is now but a distant memory, you’re thoughts will inevitably turn to how to get rid of that now very annoying tree in the corner of the room.

Tempting as the idea may be, we’d highly recommend that you NEVER burn your tree – inside the house or out! Burning it in the fireplace can contribute to creosote build-up and burning it outside can present a severe fire danger. Instead, dispose of your tree according to local regulations, via trash collection, chipping for mulch, or recycling. Recycled trees are used for all sorts of useful things, like making sand and soil erosion barriers and being fish shelters in ponds. So do a good deed for nature and set yourself up with some positive karma for the coming year.

Of course if you have a potted tree, then simply plant it back out in the garden, give it 12 months to recover and regrow and then you can start the whole Christmas hoopla all over again.

What a rubbish thing to do

Just a quick early morning gripe before I start work and gear myself up for the day.

This morning, as predicted by the weatherman all week, we woke up to snow. Not a lot of snow it has to be said, but enough to turn the roof of the car white and make the garden look as if it had been dusted with icing sugar. Needless to say my kids were ever so happy at the prospect of building a snowman this weekend. I however failed to conjour up quite the same level of excitement.

I do of course love the look of snow as much as the next person – it has the magical ability to always make the place look prettier than it sometimes is. Even the ugliest looking council house – the sort with a mattress in the front garden and an old rust bucket of a car being stripped for parts in the driveway – can often look lovely under 5 inches of the white stuff. Bung in a couple of robins and some well placed holly and it might just pass as picturesque… example below.

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OK, granted this particular dwelling I passed last year in Norfolk wouldn’t exactly be classed as ‘grotty’ without the snow, but I rather liked my photo so thought I’d add it anyway.

The downside of a winter wonderland is of course the inevitable drop in temperature. Add to that the daily windscreen de-icing fiasco and the often perilous driving conditions, and all that snow, as pretty as it is, can soon become something of a pain in your rather chilly backside.

But hey, we’re living in Norfolk now so I’m happy to accept that the first falling flakes mean that we’ll be living in Uggs and 2.6 tog socks until spring. Yes, you can actually get ‘tog rated’ socks, I found some last week and picked up several pairs. Along with some extra thick ‘booties’ from M&S. I’d rather they’d been called slipper socks than booties, but there you go.

So anyway, back to the gripe.

As I was rushing around the house trying to get both kids fed with an oat-based warm fodder and stuffed into their respective down-filled jackets, I paused by the front window. Mainly it has to be said because I was trying to woof down my own Oatabix on the move, and it seemed like a good idea to hover by the radiator to finish them off before they concealed into mush and stuck to the bowl like concrete.

Outside the house some miserable looking men were trotting up our hill to gather the recycling bins into the middle of the road ready for collection. I say miserable, because it was obviously cold out there, the bins were covered with snow and all of the men in question looked like they’d rather still be in bed. As indeed we all would have been I’m sure.

The lorry backed up, the rubbish was loaded and then it drove off. The miserable bin men then proceeded to return the bins to their rightful owners. Though not in a helpful way mind you, that would be far to kind.

Instead they plonked each bin back on its respective driveway, making sure that it was positioned right smack bang in the middle. Of course it could be a complete coincidence that they chose to place each wheelie in a place where no car – except a Smart car perhaps – could possibly hope to get by, but somehow I doubt it.

By the time I had chipped off the ice to open the car door and shoved an annoyed little boy into a seat that was probably cold enough to make his bits drop off, I certainly wasn’t in the mood to be trying to navigate between a bin and a hedge. Yes, I could and should have just moved the bloody thing out of the way first, but it was cold, I was grumpy and we were late.

I believe that some of the hedge may have been slightly damaged on our way out, but I’m sure it’ll survive and grow back. My bumper on the other hand, had it come into contact with the badly placed bin, wouldn’t have.

You probably think I’m being a tad over-sensitive and more than a little paranoid, thinking those men were out to get us all today. But I swear, the only time that those men cracked anything resembling a smile was as they walked away, smirking to each other and looking slightly too pleased with their handiwork.

Little sods, next time I won’t bother washing out my tins…

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Raining Cats, Dogs and Maltesers

Mother Nature wasn’t very happy yesterday. In fact, I’d go as far as to say she was pretty pissed off. If I was a guy I’d probably say it was a case of PMT, but I’m not, so I’ll just hazard a guess and say she was having one hell of a bad hair day.

Whatever the reason, Ms Nature certainly gave 2 fingers up to anyone in Perth who’s been moaning about the weather. Or more specifically, the 40 degrees of constant heat with not a drop of rain since November.

Now I do appreciate that to people in wetter isles, England lets say, the idea of nearly 5 months without rain might seem like something of a dream. But let me tell you, it’s not. When a total lack of precipitation is teamed up with temperatures more suited to melting iron ore, it can make for some pretty uncomfortable living. Not to mention a rather dry, dusty, brown and monotonous landscape.

So that said, I think it would be quite safe to assume that rather a lot of people in Perth (and some extremely dehydrated plants) were rather looking forward to the dry spell breaking. And break it did. With bells on.

With barely enough time to drag the dog through the fly screen, the blue sunny sky disappeared and the hailstones arrived. Hailstones the size of Maltesers, pouring out of the sky so fast you’d think God had accidently left his freezer door open, and a passing angel had carelessly tipped it over. We were lucky only to get Maltesers, in the city they were apparently the size of golf balls.

Then came the rain. Or should I say the downpour, pelting in at us from at every angle but up. Within minutes our garden was several inches under water, and there was, what could only be described, as a flash flood going past the end of our drive.

Being me, of course I tried to take some photos of the hailstones stacking up 9 inches deep at our back door. But the moment I opened the door to take the picture, the bloody dog shot off into the garden. How stupid is he? He see’s, what to him must have looked like a Noah’s Ark moment, and he still decides to go out for a quick dig in the sand.

Needless to say once he went out I refused to let him, or his soggy wet fur, back in again. He may be of the non-smelling variety of pooches, but even a soaking wet Spoodle has something of a whiff about it. So I hardened my heart and held my resolve – right up until the point where my daughter stood sobbing at the window, looking down at a pathetic excuse for a fur ball, trying to pin himself flat against the wall with his damp ears plastered around his snout. Two clean towels and a vigorous blow dry later and he was back inside and on the rug. I hope he’s learned his lesson, that nothing is worth the pain of a dig in the hail.

Dumb dogs aside, in the sort of weather that heralds the start of Armageddon the average person normally chooses to stay indoors, steer clear of windows and turn up the TV. Sadly I’m not average, so I grabbed the car keys, swam to the car and set off with oars at the ready.

Of course as the sky turned pitch black overhead and the odd branch blew past like tumbleweed, it did cross my mind that this might not be the most sensible decision in the world. But really I had no choice. My son, who isn’t partial to loud noises and the car wash at the best of times, was stranded at his nursery 8 minutes down the road. Even if he’d had the foresight to take his water wings with him that day, I very much doubted he’d have managed the journey alone.

“The clouds are very angry” he told me, over and over all the way home.

My poor husband arrived back quite a bit later than usual that night.  Something to do with me having his car, the train tracks being flooded, every cab being taken and the buses being fit to burst. I’m not sure it necessarily helped, when I pointed out that if he had had his car that day, he’d no doubt still be stuck in the bumper-to-bumper traffic, as the world and their wet dog struggled to leave work.

Needless to say the news teams and anchormen (I would be P.C. and say anchorwoman, but all the women sound like men anyway) were practically salivating with joy on the TV last night. Finally, something worth reporting in Perth that didn’t involve a drunken AFL player, a misplaced kangaroo and a runaway shopping trolley on the freeway.

As I know I’m rather prone to the odd bit of exaggeration (creative license and all), I’ve added the pictures below to show that for once, Perth really did have something happen to get excited about.

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PA in our Pocket or Marketing Tool?

As technology surges forward, mobiles shrink and mankind busies itself getting connected, the world continues to grow smaller with every passing day. Now, wherever we turn, we see people talking, texting or completely oblivious to their surroundings, engrossed by the latest download.

Of course it’s good to talk – or so they say. Everyone and their brother are now happy to be ‘friends’. They post, comment, and tweet, happy to share their life and divulge their souls. Yet should they one day pass in the street, they’d probably just walk on by.

Yes, the world may be talking, but what, if any, conversations are actually taking place?

Not long ago mobiles were such a simple tool; used to catch up with family or make a quick call. Today, in many ways, they help to run the world. They are our lifeline and motherboard rolled into one.

We rely on them to bank, shop, travel, and date. To track down, meet up, and break up. They tell us what time to wake up and where we need to go. They can be our secretary and our salvation. For the foolish, who use them to cheat and deceive, they can also be our downfall.

As this market grows and mobile advertising looks set to explode, you have to ask yourself this – are phones really designed to help us manage our everyday lives, or are they just a marketing dream – a tool designed to sell, and therefore, in turn, control us?

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There’s no such place as perfection

Lots of people heading over to live from the UK want to know, what’s life in Perth really like? Is it all blue skies, suntan cream and sandy beaches? Is it better than the UK in every way? Is everyone as ‘happy as Bruce’ and do the kangaroos all smile and wave you on your way as you speed off to work your 5 hour day?

In a word, and a very short one at that, NO.

Despite popular misconception, it does get cold here as well – Perth has long winters with not much sun and a lot of rain. Just like the UK, everyone isn’t happy all of the time, and kangaroos don’t really smile. I’d say if anything they smirk.

Some people, understandably, given how many burning hoops they have to leap through to get a visa, want to believe that Perth is the answer to all problems on earth – and the very opposite of evil old England. Yes, without a doubt it’s a lovely place to live and the lifestyle is so laid back that many have trouble getting upright again. But like every country it’s far from perfect.

Houses are still expensive and the cost of living high. Jobs are often hard to come by, and the working hours and commutes long. Older kids are often tempted by the huge drug scene on offer. Gang crime, knife crime and gun crime still fills up the news. Politicians still fail to deliver and continue to talk out of their backsides… So Perth may be many things to many people, but if you’ve built it up in your mind to be ‘perfection’,  then you might just be shocked to find it’s not the answer to all of your prayers.

Those migrants fresh from the plane and still marveling at the vastness of the sky, the millions of stars on view at night and the wide open beaches will tell you that ‘Perth is as good as it gets’. And that, I think can be very misleading to those trying to decide whether to make the move over. Firstly because the reality of life overseas (once the initial excitement has worn off, whether that takes a week, a month or ever a year) can sometimes be very different to what people expect, and secondly peoples idea of ‘as good as it gets’ can vary greatly.

Many people move over from the UK for a better lifestyle and a house in the sun, a chance to escape a country that is spinning out of control. But despite this, a massive 40% of those who move over from the UK still decide to go back again. That’s an awful lot of people making an extremely costly and difficult decision to return – a decision no one would ever take lightly, or do without good reason. Moving your life around the world is a big enough upheaval in the first place, moving back and starting again is an even bigger one.

Everyone has their own different reasons for not wanting to stay. Some find the distance from friends and family too great. Some feel too cut off from the rest of the world. Some realise that problems faced in the UK are also faced over here. Perhaps some just didn’t want to spend their weekends surfing, hiking, fishing, camping and drinking beer around a BBQ. Or maybe once they’d had a year of cooking sausages in Kings Park, eating fish & chips at Hillarys and trying to spot animals at Perth Zoo the novelty of it all simply wore off. Who knows, maybe the reality of life here simply never lived up to the hype.

So if you’re leaving England and heading south in search of perfection, then it might be wise to really get the lay of the land before your feet touch down on the dusty ground. This way you cut then risk of being surprised, disappointed or disillusioned  by what you find. Because if you arrive ready to start your new life Down Under with your eyes wide open, then you will probably love it all and never look back.

To quickly go back to the original question of what’s it like to live in Perth, here’s my answer:

Today I got woken up early by the radio. It was grey, wet and cold outside and the drone of irritating DJ’s put me back to sleep – until the dog barked millimetres away from my ear. I dragged two children from their beds and fed them breakfast. I made my own breakfast and then watched it conceal into concrete as I hunted for last nights homework sheet. I stepped on the dogs tail as he rushed past me to the backdoor. It was still pouring with rain, so as the school bell went in the distance I threw the kids into the car.

I returned from the school run, cleared up breakfast, emptied the dishwasher, put on the washing machine, swept half the garden off the kitchen floor. I then rounded up my son, his water cup and potty and headed out to the supermarket. We navigated the aisles with a renegade trolley while I fed him pancakes to keep him quiet and contained. I loaded the car, filled up with petrol and unloaded the car – all in the rain.

Next came lunch, as requested by my son. I watched him push it around his plate for so long that I gave up, ate it myself and then cleared up. He got all his toys out just to see what would take his fancy – we played with Lego, blocks and trains. The school bell sounded, so we set off with the dog in tow. We ran to the park so the dog could wear himself out while we all stood under a tree in the downpour. I supervised homework, cleared up the house, cooked dinner for the kids and remembered the washing in the machine from this morning. I shoved it all in the tumble drier as it was still raining.

Fed both kids their dinner – felt my blood pressure rise. Cleared up the mess. Supervised their bath time – felt my blood pressure rise further. Overcame a toddler meltdown when Tellytubbies said ‘Goodbye’. Shoehorned two kids into bed and then cleared up the house. Again. Started dinner. Again. Husband arrived home. We both collapsed in front of TV – exhausted. The dog barked at next doors cat and woke me up at 1am. I lay there staring at the clock and waiting to go back to sleep again. I started to panic when I couldn’t fall asleep. Then I suddenly remembered I’d forgotten to turn the tumble drier on. I went to sleep convinced I could already smell the washing going mouldy.

I got woken up early by the radio….

Point made? Living in Perth is like living in many other countries around the world – 5% sunshine and light, 95% reality of your day-to-day life. So whether you choose to live at the top of the world or down here at the bottom, your bills will still mount up and your funds sometimes run low, your children will still squabble, bicker and sulk, and the contents of your ironing basket will still have doubled in size everytime you walk past.

That, as they say, is life.

A bad case of wind

I mentioned in the previous post we’ve been having storms here in Perth, but really the word ‘storm’ doesn’t do it justice. It’s been more like a series of typhoons, cyclones and hurricanes all rolled up into one. Most days it’s wet and windy, and there isn’t a long enough break between the rain to even take the dog to the park. I did try yesterday, but I had to flatten myself around a tree trunk as soon as I got there, and then wait for the horizontal rain to give up and go away.

The stupid thing was I had looked at both my raincoat and umbrella on the way out the door, and decided, that with the sun shining directly above the house and the nearest dangerous looking cloud out on the horizon,  I’d go without. Apparently a rain cloud can cover ground a lot faster than I can.

So this is my 3rd winter in Perth, and without wanting to sound like a whinging Pom, they are definitely getting worse. I don’t know whether it’s global warming that’s causing weather patterns to shift around, but the climate and seasons are refusing to stick to the guidelines. Australian summers are getting hotter and drier, winters are getting windier and wetter, and the Gods of Thunder and Lightening are definitely way out of control.

The first of the big storms came a few weeks ago. A Monday to be precise, the day that my son’s tonsils were due to go under the chopping block. Instead, I was staggering around the house losing my breakfast to gastric flu, my daughter was in bed, busy retching into a bucket and emitting a series of very dramatic moans and groans, and my husband had just flown to Sydney on business.

Setting off to collect my son from nursery, I lowered myself carefully into the car (fast movements are not nausea’s best friend) and went to open the garage door. It went up half way. It came back down again. I pushed the button again. It went up a quarter of the way. It came back down again. Now of course common sense should have told me not to push my luck for a third time. But I did. It was cold, wet, dark and blowing a gale. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to walk to the nursery to collect him.

So I pushed the button. Once again it went up half way – and then stopped. This would have been bad enough on its own, but of course I’m not that lucky. A massive gust of wind then swept up the driveway catching the garage door on the way, it snapped it off the rollers and then buckled it in half. The twisted hunk of metal than dropped back down – to within an inch of the cars roof, with me in it.

Now I don’t want to come across as a useless, blubbering woman who falls apart in times of trouble, but this really was the very last straw in an incredibly long day involving a high temperature and a toilet bowl. I did attempt to use my very limited strength to push the door back up to an upright position, but unsurprisingly, the door had other ideas. So with the metal rippling away in the wind next to me, I called a friend and sobbed out my tale of woe.

Lucky for me she saved the day, collecting stranded son and sending round further reinforcements, in the form of her husband who helped me to tether the door up with ropes. That night I laid in bed listening to it banging away and imaging how much damage it would potentially cause if it broke free and took off the roof of the house across the road.

3 weeks on and the storms have returned to try and finish off the garage door, which is still roped up and wedged shut with ladders. Trees in the garden are bending like blades of grass and rubbish bins are flying up and down the street like tumbleweed. I feel like Dorothy, minus the safety blanket of a pair of sparkly red shoes.

So the other night my husband came in from work and shut the door. An hour later the wind picked up and blew it back open again. Every other door in the house slammed shut, the roof hatch disappeared up into the eaves and all of the AC covers in the ceilings went with them. Trying to shut the front door again was the tricky bit.  With a cyclone now picking up pace by the door mat, the front of the house had turned into something of a wind tunnel, and we couldn’t get the hall door open to get out there. I half expected the front of the house to take off into the night sky, leaving us hanging onto a door handle below.

The two off us finally pushed the door open and slammed the front door shut, but not before the length of the hallway was covered in hailstones and the coats on the hall stand had all had a wash.

“And that is why I always lock the door when I shut it” I said.

With no sign of this bad weather letting up anytime soon, you have to wonder whether Mother Nature has a real axe to grind with this part of the world. Perhaps she’s ticked off with some Aussie half wit calling her a Sheila, or maybe she’s just having a shocking case of PMT. Either way, until we lower the excess on our insurance I wish she’d air some of her grievances elsewhere and give our badly built house a break.

Educational rubbish

I cleared out our mailbox earlier, and as usual, there was at least half a tree trunks worth of junk mail in there. The usual stuff. All of which went straight into the bin. The recycling bin that is.

This isn't on my gate I hasten to add, still they make a very good point.

There were coupons for Dominoes, offering $1 off the XXL super deluxe -  if you order at least 5, collect them in person and consume them between the sociable hours of 3am and 6am.

There was an offer of a ‘Free house valuation’ from the local estate agent. Free? Free? I should bloody well hope so. With the housing market the way it is at the moment, agents should be so lucky to have a house on their books that they could actually sell.

There was an extremely tempting offer on some reduced rate security shutter blinds -  if we have a large billboard outside our house advertising their services. Ermmm, lets think about that one for a minute. Nope. I don’t think prison chic really does that much for a house’s curbside appeal.

Then there was one from the Government health department, inviting me along for my free mammogram. Well strictly speaking the letter wasn’t exactly addressed to me, but someone who obviously lived here before and fell into the right age bracket. Not to be deterred and curious to see what I have in store for me in years to come, I thought I’d have a read through the literature.

Who knew I would have such a choice of languages – 30 in total, or 31 if you decided to read it in bog standard, boring old English. The other options were Amharic, Arabic, Bosnian, Burmese, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Croatian, Dari, Netherlandic, Farsi, French, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Japenese, Macedonian, Malay, Maltese, Khmer, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Serbian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Togalog, Thai, Tigrigna and Vietnamese.

Blimey, I’ve never even heard of some of those languages. Who knew that the northern suburbs of Perth were such a international melting pot of nationalities. The last time I took a look around, the only people living in the area were Australian’s, English, more English, even more English and a spattering of South Africans.

What I want to know is how do they even decide what languages to include on this type of bumpf?* Is it really based on the population of Perth, or do they just pick out the prettiest sounding languages and simply try to pad out the list to cover the entire alphabet?

Of course if you’re going to be really politically correct, then the literature should also have included Braille for the blind, a taped recording for the illiterate and a dictionary for the incredibly stupid. Then, when the whole lot is printed out on half a rainforest and delivered house to house, everyone at least has the option of either landing a job as a linguist in the UN, or using the 6″ wedge to stop their front door flying open in the storms.

* Incidentally, incase you’ve ever wondered about the history behind the word ‘bumpf’ -  it orginated in England during WW2, when the soldiers, who were overwhelmed with unnecessary printed materials, decided to do a spot of recycling and use them as loo roll – or ‘bum fodder’.

So there you go, don’t accuse me of never writing anything educational on my blog!

Planes, trains and watery accidents

My 2 1/2 year old son has been undergoing toilet training for about 6 weeks now, and I have to say he’s doing a lot better than I ever expected him to. Boys are, after all, meant to be a lot slower on the uptake when it comes to the learning about when to poop and pee, and when to clench and hold.

Of course there have been accidents. One next to the sofa, one in the bedroom where he shut the door on himself and couldn’t get out, and a handful around the bathroom – normally as a result of him misjudging the volume of wee in his bladder and shooting off the potty before he’s completed the job.

Trying to shoo the dog away as I re-dress, empty, bleach and wipe is the hardest part of all.

Unfortunately my sons days at nursery do set him back sometimes. Whether it’s the excitement of finger painting or the 15 or so other kids queuing up for the potty, some days I go to collect him and am met with a bag of wet clothes and a rather nasty smelling teddy. The washing machine never had such a good work out for so few clothes. One day, when he had gotten through all 3 sets of spare clothes in his Bob the Builder backpack, I arrived to find him wafting around the room wearing nothing more than a kimono from the dressing up box. That was one of those occasions when you wish you had a camera to hand.

As with many things in life, thinking about doing something is often worse than actually doing the deed. The very idea of replacing nappies with pants on a leaking child is one such time. I found the only way to really stay one step of the game in the beginning was to spend every 4th minute asking him if he needed to go, and then ferrying him backwards and forwards to the potty, armed with 16 books and a thermos of tea (for me). It was monotonous and repetitive, but it did the trick. After a while, and probably because he got so damn sick of being asked, he started to tell  me when he needed to go. Or rather he’d screech “Poo Mummy” as he scurried towards me, with one hand behind his back clutching his bottom.

Seeing that I would drop everything and leap to attention when he needed to go, he quickly realised that the whole process could be manipulated into something of a game. I’d run to get him to the bathroom, peel off the layers, sit him down and then he’d laugh. “No Poo Mummy”. Hmmmmm. That one soon wears very thin, particularly when you’re in the shower, eating your breakfast or halfway up a mountain..

A Blue Mountain to be exact. Let me explain.

We’ve just got back from spending a week in Sydney. A week in Sydney in the rain. Who knew it would be so cold, or so wet at this time of year. Everyone but us apparently. Typically, the weather forecast for the week changed upon our arrival. It went from sun and a spot of cloud every day, to rain with a touch of rain every day.

Damp weather aside, holidaying with children is always a test – a test of a parent’s patience, stamina and will to live. Air travel in particular can be stressful at the best of times (something I wrote about before),  but throw in a couple of kids and several tonnes of ‘can’t get by without you’ luggage and you can find yourself half way to a nervous breakdown at 30,000 feet.

It’s always hard to know how your children will react to leaving the ground in a vacuum packed can. My son wasn’t amused. At all. Watching the aeroplanes through the terminal window – great fun. Walking down the air-slip onto the plane – not so fun. Sitting in his seat for take off – simply not going to happen.

So what does he call out in a desperate bid for freedom? “Poo Mummy”.

Yes, just what all the passengers around us wanted to hear. I’m sure some actually recoiled and held their nose in fear. So, with the fasten seat belt sign lit up and the plane doors already closed, he was whisked up the aisle to the toilet with potty in hand. Did he need to go? Of course he didn’t, but it would have been a pretty brave parent to take the risk.

And so followed a week of untimely potty stops. In the bushes in front of the Opera House. In the undergrowth next to the museum. Sat inside the land train going around Darling Harbour. Behind the seal enclosure at Taronga zoo. On a grassy knoll overlooking Botany Bay. On the train into the shops, and around the back of the Police Station in the CBD. There was no where he didn’t go. And there was no where we could go without a potty, wet wipes and spare clothes at the ready. It really is amazing how the bowels of a small child can shape and dictate your day.

The mountains, as previously discussed, were probably the worst. When he decided he needed to go, the rain was coming in at us diagonally from both sides – with the force of Niagara Falls. We happened to be out on a nature trail at that moment, trying to take at least one photo of the view to prove we had enjoyed the grey and misty scenery. We ended up in the car pack, huddled over him with umbrellas, as he sat on the ground to give it a go. Did anything materialise?  Nope, not even with the encouraging sound of gushing water hitting his parent’s heads.

Same story in the Jenolan caves, and then twice on the way back up the mountain at night, in thick and surprisingly spooky fog. At times like this it is definitely tempting to ignore the little voice from the back seat, but the car seat was hired and the excess for damage to the car was $3000. No pee is worth that much. This time he sat perched on his potty in the boot of the car, smiling up at us, as if it were all perfectly normal.

All pit stops aside, the biggest and most costly accident that occurred during the week, was not by my toddler, but by my husband instead. We were on the ferry traveling from Circular Quay to Darling Harbour, and had decided to sit outside in the spitting rain, to take some pictures of the Opera House as we went past.

Somehow, and don’t ask me how, the camera leaped out of his pocket, dropped onto the ferry floor and slid 2 foot across to the edge of the boat. As it happened (does it ever happen any other way?), there was a gap in the side of the boat. About, oh lets say, camera sized in width. The only bloody hole, I might add, that there was down our side of the boat.

The camera then proceeded to slide through the hole and sit on the outside rim. I’m sure the camera lenses winked at me. We both looked at it in disbelief – I know I was certainly wondering what the hell is it doing down there. Having a child on my lap I couldn’t move. My husband, who swears it all happened in seconds, apparently has the reaction times of a snail on speed.

PLOP, over it went. All of our photos sank right to the bottom of the harbour. I’m not embarrassed to say I burst into tears. My husband did what any intelligent man in the same situation should do. He kept very quiet and looked at the floor. After several minutes of watching my tears mixing with the rain, my daughter helpfully piped up.

“Now you’ve lost all of my photos.” Followed by. “This wouldn’t have happened if we’d sat inside you know.” I believe she received quite a glare.

We all left the ferry in silence. Even my son knew better than to say he needed a poo. Half an hour later, when we were standing underneath the sharks inside the aquarium, my husband ventured to speak to me. “Well obviously we’ll buy a new camera tomorrow.”

And so we did.

He did feel marginally better when told in the camera shop that he was the 3rd person that week to drop their camera into the water. Had our home contents insurance actually covered us for the camera outside of the house, then he might have redeemed himself a little more. But of course, despite trotting along to the Police Station to report it’s loss (hence the potty stop), it didn’t. Now had he dropped it into a mug of tea at home, we’d be quids in – go figure.

The new camera is shatterproof, waterproof, snow-proof and husband-proof. That of course means it comes with a manual thick enough to sit on at the breakfast bar. By the next holiday I might just have worked out which setting goes with which, and how to use the ‘Beauty Mode’. Till then, it’s safe to say my dearest husband will be remaining on the other side of the lens, and paying for his act of clumsiness through the public humiliation on this blog.

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