Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Flown. Australia goes on for a very long time, though it was mostly haze, though you can see the prevailing wind direction in the land. Landed late on New Year's Eve (Abu Dhabi couldn't cope with the traffic, so the queue for security at one terminal started in a different one), collected from the airport, dumped luggage, driven out to quaff champagne and watch the fireworks on the city buildings glittering beautifully in what turned out to be the outflow from the power station.

The next day was a fair bit of sleeping (going to bed at 3.30 am is great for beating jetlag, because it means you can't tell) and being shown around the city, plus a bike ride round to a convent that was mostly shut (summer hols here).

Wednesday was heading to the southern suburbs to explore a bit, discover that I wasn't very far from a friend who I hadn't quite contacted before leaving, who was a brilliantly muddled when he stopped trying to walk past me and eventually recognised me. I assumed it would be tea (well, water or juice) and a chat before leaving, instead it became heading out for gelato, wandering round St Kilter (I saw the penguin pier, except it was the wrong time of day) where the conversation ran between the two people who didn't know each other, then heading into town to the market with him, just before they shut, so half price fruit (Australians get gouged on everything, a bowl that costs £12 in John Lewis costs $60 here).

The next day was... oh, I'm not doing well on remembering. There was giant scrabble in the evening, so most of the day was just prepping for that.

Oh, I didn't get very far with this and it was actually an email to one half of the audience. It's now a while later.

Big Scrabble, a last minute Kubb (fun but, er, there are those who score and those who wave sticks about while waving Pimm's) and a barbecue in a taxi, plus assorted meetings of people.

Friday was more town wandering (in a hairdrier), then dinner at Stairs', featuring an ailing, um, quick blogname, Landing, and a scaredy cat and not so much one (and some annoyingly good food), with Ahab and Jezebel and Omega's other Alpha or Siemens or something to be decided upon. Then out to a pclub to be puzzled by drag acts and then watch burlesque performed by males with predictably punny name, which was not wholly bad, with a remarkably well recovered Landing. We waited until the outside temperature was below body temperature before leaving. We saw the second show.

Saturday was, well, planned and booked before we knew Friday was happening, so featured getting up a few hours later, driving out into the winelands (and burnt out lands), to be dumped at a winery to sample their range (good to unpleasant) while the driving couple go to be assessed for suitability to adopt a puppy, while I watched swifts picking off midges and an ibis picking through the bins. Lunch at a brewery with a beer sampling thrown in (good to unpalatable; the stout was like drinking a recently quenched fire, complete with grittiness), then a quick dog supplies buying expedition as the woman with the puppies had decided to drop the get-out clause inspection so Jezebab could take him that day. And so off to explore the tree ferns of a place that lies (there are no badgers) and to buy some wine from a weddinged out vineyard and so not.

Then came puppy. Which didn't seem to go anywhere near as badly as the passengers were expecting.

And already I've forgotten when things happened. Somewhere there came riding down the coast to a beach near the Queen's beach hut. I'd missed swimming in the sea. And the sea here makes you swim properly, because like Swannidge it has cooler lower layers, but it also has sandbars rising into the knee zone.

I think the next day I saw Ned Kelly's bucket and read his history wondering why exactly he is so celebrated (bushranger = outlaw) and discovered the turncoat who became Speaker and other fine characters, and that the town was once upon a time know as Batmania.

What else? I cycled past where I meant to go upriver off the edge of the map and then slowly round via a few detours (oh, hello Ikea, and oh, so those Gardens are actually a shopping centre), from where I got me to a nunnery too late for cake and so headed home in the rush hour over streets where either Apple Maps did the line painting or the tarmac forms bow waves on each tyre.

Oh yes, cycling here largely seems to work, though am in a fairly inner place (it's scarcely urban yet so much less suburban than further out) with very few hills of note. The trams a bit odd, as they're here's tube, but seem to stop if not every block then every other one, so cars overtake. But it is quite a nice place, if occasionally provincial and outright American in parts (and presumably British in the parts I don't notice as odd).

Yep, so big cars, big streets, power lines up poles, and charges of jaywalking (yes, I've seen the police do people for it, and yes, people ignore the rules but instead of checking for traffic check for policemen at intersections, you know, because that's safer).

Anyway, back to the narration. On Saturday One and Doppelganger (he's bizarrely like one of my brother's friends in look, sound and manner) drove us (so mein host Omega, Three Oil or whatever he is, and me) out of town about ninety degrees over from last time up to Mt DefinitelyGreekNotYugoslavianOrIndependent, which is something akin to a hill station, being a cool, leafy hill full of expensive houses, with occasional empty plots with rusting gates, where presumably the insurance didn't cover rebuilding (oh yeah, Alpha's earliest memory is leaving when the fires went through; their house survived but few others did and they decided that was bit too close).

So we went for a walk though the assorted aged woods at the top, with view back through the mostly smoke haze to the spiky yet tiny city, and had a not quite picnic sitting on overhanging rocks overlooking that fey film featured earlier in this sentence.

Oh and along with the skinks and forget-me-nots (um, garden escape much?) we also saw an echidna (or two; we came back the same way and saw another but it might have been the same one). Instead of doing what it traditional (and what the first one did) which is to stick its arse in the air and dig into the ground, this one looked up a bit then kept rummaging among the mint being pretty much unperturbed by us, which apparently is really bloody rare (perhaps the mint swamped its sense of smell [though we were upwind] or maybe it's like catnip for monotremes). Um yeah, so basically I had to be dragged away, although the act of dragging prompted the echidna to shuffle off down the hill. And so we walked somewhat more livelyly back to the car, cool nature stuff having trumped the flagging bit.

And so home to order take away Thai because the Moroccan was closed for four months because it's summer and to play a board game, called Flash Point, in which one has to save people from a burning building (I may have done a dramatic slump at one point during the explanation of the rules, which I suddenly realised I'd done in public). The easy version we managed fine. The intermediate one we made jokes about who would get to rescue the dog, and so who would end up being interviewed on the local news (guess what the penultimate news story on Sunday was?), and killed off too many people including getting blasted out of the house ourselves, so decided to keep going to see what would happen (we managed to kill off the false alarms and rescue the remaining people, though only by fluke and with one damage marker left unused, deployment of which would have also finished the game).

Sunday was lazier, with brunch with friends of Omega's skipped because they wanted to meet at some ungodly hour (don't they know brunch is basically lunch?), then out for it anyway at some hipster place in the 'Swick (I've no idea what they actually call it, but it won't be the actual full name. Bruinies maybe), with a waiter giving a private dance to one of his friends, the owner commenting on the grammar on my t-shirt, the amusement of some couple bringing a set of parents in, to sit waiting for a table looking and feeling out of place for so long the eventually only the mother was left, and our waiter being the youngest who seemingly had never heard of any of the things we ordered.

Later we went into town to buy fruit (dalla manga, dalla manga, many dalla manga, al dalla manga) and quibble over names (butternut squash/Japanese pumpkin, mange tout/snow peas, peppers/capsicum, aubergine/eggplant, but if we're doing quirks of food how about a croak mon-sure and eggs flow-rent-eyn?) then head over the carnival at the start of their summer queerfest, which turns out to be some cute guys, some really shouldn't be pulling that face guys and some tents in a dustbowl. We didn't stay long.

Anyway, better stop now as need to clean things before this evening, oh, and there's a wattlebird a few feet away watching me.

Anyhoo,

Because what has a 12th century tune been missing all these years? A key change.



Ming the Messiah anyone?

Anyway, hello, sort of bye, Merry Christmas one and all. And you'd think packing for cold and packing for hot would be two discrete groups, wouldn't you? Turns out it's not quite so and I was meant to have left half-an-hour ago (hence procrastoblogging).

Love to both,

Anyhoo,

See also waiting for inspiration.

So snow then (snow then *cigar waggle*?).

It's not very interesting. It's mostly gone. The delivery they didn't make when I was in yesterday hasn't come today. I need to go into town to get a form to sort out something that the bureaucracy doesn't admit happens (and we're not even talking about the ones who lose things so don't pay anything, then only admit it's missing several months later. If they lose this copy I'll not be impressed), and which I really ought to have sorted out before Austria-et-al.

Oh, yes, that. A friend, who's so long standing he must have a blogname [Omega? I think], offered once more his farsided hospitality (because it's only been something like eight-years since he first offered), and the only thing better to do I have for Janfeb (those wonderful d months: dismal, damp, dreary, draining, despondent, demoralising, drudge) is it sit in Tweetonshire watching the sleet and regularly asking "am I nearly better yet?".

And I've recently discovered that Peach Beach (really it should be Peach Stream, except that should be Peach Stone Vessel Or Large Portable Hot Water Unit, except that has to bend the rules, and anyway alliteration) has penguins. How this is not the best known fact about Et-alia, I don't know.

So I sort of said yes. And then I got an email informing me of my baggage allowance. So that solves that then (the BroSIL said they'd help, because they didn't like the idea of accepting someone else's generosity, although they're mid-move and the SIL just wrote their car off by going round a corner at 20 [onto a large puddle, thence bank with big rocks, thus grating the bottom of the car, but the other side of the road is a bank with big rocks going down into the river, so lesser off two weevils (whose joke was that?)].

So now it's a lot of wondering what I'm going to do with my time there. And a lot of finding answers and wondering how I'll fit it all in. And a lot of wondering at which point I'll break. Though Tamsin Indiana looks cool (Google seems to show land that no one's ever bothered changing; no roads, no buildings, no clearing, just natural processes beautifully illustrated).

Oh yeah, helps if I post.

Anyhoo,

And the prize for backing into the sign at the station goes to...

I avoided the stone corner of the station building and the bin left in a parking space. And I can't have been the only one to do it because it is a bloody stupid place to stick a pole. Although it was still surprising enough that all the long row of taxi drivers looked about 15 feet above me at presumably the sight of the British Rail logo wobbling.

And I can't think why I'm not putting this on a real name site (yes, I know there are ways, but shush), although it didn't fall over when I drove away.

Anyhoo,

PS. Bonus pertinent picture.

Naked men and such.

So there's a website for the more dysfunctional gay (it currently has a thread titled "Citalopram") and a group on it meets to do arty things and last week they had a meeting to draw people and having chickened out of the big mass party the site had a few weeks earlier and she of whom I'm meant to know little is suggesting that it might be a good idea to go out and do things sometime meant I went almost late with my hastily bought pad and pencils from some glorious poundshop and scurried in to the sex shop somewhat confused and uncertain.

Oh, yes, this life drawing thing was being held in a sex shop. Not a sex shop of the gigglesome videos type, but one that mostly seems to sell rigging, veterinary supplies, castanets on a pole and props from Dr Who. The were several "... oh!" moments. I'm guessing it's one of the few borrowable spaces that doesn't object to having naked people on the furniture (that and someone knows the owner so it's free).

Anyway, so I went to something where I didn't know anybody and I didn't faint or die or have conniptions and only pulled off-putting faces at the models for the first half as I was trying to remember how this whole drawing thing goes. I was asked by people looking through my pictures afterwards when I last drew, was it art school? It was for GCSE and I carefully wasn't saying how long ago that was (I'm guessing a chunk of the people there would never have encountered a rotary phone).

Anyway, just like being in an art gallery, sex shops work quite well at ice breaking because there's always things to comment on, even if the most frequent comment is "How?"

Basically I did new stuff and the world didn't end, which feels a bit odd. And then I met one of them a week later (thanks to the understanding ways of the ever delightful LD, who basically I'd marry if I fancied him at any level more than slightly-when-drunk, and he was a bit more confident, and fractionally more relaxed, and a few other tweaks. And it's ok to say this here, because he's long since forgotten blogging exists) for a studiously undefined meeting*, whereupon I found he's not much use in a pub quiz (which as he suggested it doesn't impress me greatly), that we're both about as awkward as each other, and that any previous buzz experienced in his presence was because I don't get out much and he plays better to a larger audience.

*A: are you gearing up to asking me out for a drink sometime?
B: Was that your subtle way of doing precisely that? Deftly done.
A: Ha I just thought if that was what you’re aiming towards I would save you the work.

Still he didn't walk away when I explained recent history, so that's good.

Oh, and the following day I was supposed to have my last ever therapy session, except we ran out of time so I'm going back tomorrow. Needless to say I shall be utterly cured come four o'clock tomorrow.

But then the lovely charming ATOS decided that ages ago, when I demonstrably wasn't (I appealed the ESA decision, got seemingly rejected (the money stopped and I couldn't get any information out of them) then a couple of days ago got some dreadfully official HM Courts letter saying the appeal was going ahead and did I have a lawyer? The letter incidentally was sent to an address I hadn't been in for months, despite having told various ATOS and DWPers of my new address).

So god knows, perhaps.

Oh, and then the friend who suggested overwintering in Australia suggested it again, with more details.

Don't know on that score either.

Anyhoo,

Bechamel!

Bought aubergines because they were cheap. She who cannot be gracious said she'd make fritters from them. She didn't. She then said we could make moussaka. This of course being her use of "we" covering the past fifteen years, thus meaning "you". So eventually, when they were pretty bloody limp, I made moussaka. I looked up how to make it, checked ingredients and went out specifically for those that were missing (while happening also to fill in the holes I knew about, and the things she who is infuriating had said we needed having denied we needed anything). I then spent about four-and-a-half hours cooking.

After serving her her first words were "don't you know how to cook spring greens?"

This did not go done well. I didn't react as much as I could have, or was tempted to. Her reasoning for why they were so inedible that she ate them before having seconds of the moussaka was that I must never have watched her cook them, which given the last thing I remember her cooking in its entirely without having someone else around to help (and take over) was pasta salad when I was about nine, was very probably true but for the reasons she's assuming.

For the next couple of days she continued to completely miss any of the many points she could have alighted on, criticising me for attempting moussaka in the first place, despite her pretty much commanding me to do so, ditto for making bechamel when she would have had white sauce but "You haven't seen me make a white sauce", except she can't see the point in making a sauce of any description.

Basically the only reason this stopped was because she found new things to complain about, while writing me off as this erratic, fragile thing she's been having to tend to for months (firstly "tend"?, secondly they flow's been pretty much the other way, even when it might have been useful for it not to be).

Essentially we were two people in similar boats. I've been bailing out and making for shore, she's been sitting in hers shouting discouragements to me making sure I know where I have been going wrong by her rating.

Which is why it's so frustrating when I'm needled enough that I want to unleash a broadside on her but know it'll either sink her or more likely miss because she's already so low in the water that there's not much freeboard to aim at.

She did eventually thank me for cooking, but didn't compliment any of it, instead picking away at the fact I hadn't used a specific set of implements around in her childhood that aren't in the house to prepare the vegetable.

As she put it "I don't understand".

And all this from a woman who has never knowingly shut a cupboard and only rarely opens them.

Oh, and yes, the moussaka was nice, exceptionally so (nutmeg makes everything better).

And yes, as Little Miss Therapist pointed out it doesn't actually matter, except of course I can't really get my head round it not mattering (or as I just typed it matering. Herr Doktor Freud, bitte). It's just the embodiment of that via-Oppenheimer quote gets wearing.

That and I can't think of it as pleasant or a minor accomplishment (featuring la roux, not the musician) because I can't now extricate that from she who must maim (and yet it was really nice [mostly from here]).

Anyhoo,

Yeah, so my cousin, who I've just been chatting to on Twitter has bugger-all humour. Except I've seen him around his mother so I know he is able to laugh at things. I'm guessing that if by the time he gets to the fourth tweet he still hasn't realised that the first statement was not wholly serious then there's not really much point in saying that all the explaining was to do with a joke which has now been embalmed out of existence.

I was about to blame the parents when I remembered who they are (the more related one takes a while to realise that the slightly odd thing that was just said might not have been completely straight, but does go into that mode when he remembers it exists. The less related one is American).

But then if he weren't so unaware of other meanings perhaps he'd never post something like the following: Actually quite sore from last night #Manhunt

And no, I don't know if he is (blasted modern youth allowing people the freedom to give potential signs which might not be).

Anyhoo,