Make Friends Break Friends

I ought to add that I've been dumped by Kat, the girl I met at the park, which is puzzling and hilarious in equal measures.

Having been round to her house for a cuppa, she followed this up by phoning me on the morning we were moving house to make loose arrangements to do something two days later. I wasn't in the flat at the time but Darren took the call. It was over 24 hours before I got chance to phone her back, having been busy moving house, at which point she switched off her phone to stop it ringing and also hasn't replied to my text.

Spookily reminiscent of Sherry the scary Canadian who coloured her hair the same as mine and tried to wear my clothes, but that's for another day. I haven't lost any sleep over it.

Just to reassure you

no, no, we haven't been eaten by Tasmanian Devils. The blog has been suspended for the moment because we can't get connected to the internet at home until the middle of next week.

I have been keeping the blog on the PC and will post it when we're connected, complete with photographs.

In the meantime, a resume. We have moved into the new flat, which is a huge improvement on the last, not least because we have a bigger kitchen bin (amazing what small things make a difference). We also have a swimming pool; Ella has been hurling herself in with gay abandon. She's a proper Aussie.

The job at the university has fallen through because I just can't do the commute and be available if Ella needs me. They did try to wrangle it so I could work closer to home but it just wasn't feasible. This missed opportunity led me to ponder how motherhood impacts on a woman's career, which led me to proclaim that, in evolutionary terms, it's probably against mother nature to educate girls. Yes, I'd had a drink. But of course, I belong to this generation of "have it all" women, when really the term ought to be "do it all" because that's how it actually ends up.

So we'll be sending Ella down the Kalgoorlie mines rather than encourage her to get herself an education. She has a 457 working visa so it shouldn't be too much trouble.

In the meantime, I have met a man who used to be the director general for health in New South Wales. He's well connected and wants me to send him my CV. I do seem fated to meet these people!

Ella has settled really well into her new nursery and even though it takes me an hour to get her there and return home, it's well worth it for the mental space for me and the running-like-a-crazy hamster-in-a-wheel type thing for her. We've been doing some touristy things like Paddington Market and Taronga Zoo but I'll update properly once we are connected at home.

Switching off

We are attempting to get out of our internet contract today. We bought a plug-in wireless connection when we arrived, as our holiday flat has no landline.

The cost is extortionate and we think we have 30 days to change our mind, so we'll try to get out of it today and reconnect with a landline in the new flat. I'll try internet cafes in the meantime.

What News?

Australia comes across as a nation looking for an identity and trying to inflate it's own importance on the world stage. It's endearing I suppose, as you'd imagine this country would be secure in it's natural beauty and links with a diverse range of cultures from across the globe, but not so.

The Aussies seem incredibly proud of home-grown talent, especially if that talent puts them on the map elsewhere in the world. They love Kylie despite her having largely defected to the UK (perhaps because of it?). They loved Steve Irwin almost like the British loved Pincess Diana. He was a proper Aussie Bloke done good, and they still love Olivia Newton John (though the jury is out on Germaine Greer),

However, this state of collective mind does make them a little inward-looking. This is most apparent if you watch the evening news, which rarely features any news from abroad. Tonight's ABC news covered the following items. Compare this to the BBC and you'll see what I mean:

1. Australian corporate watchdog implicates company in asbestos row
2. Telstra (Aus telecom company) shows a slump in profits
3. Row over Australian prisoner held at Guananemo Bay
4. Possible US military base in Western Australia causes politcal in-fighting
5. Fire on board a Japanese whaling ship in Antarctic waters
6. Shooting of a coal miner in NSW
7. Shooting of a Sydney security guard
8. Financial scam on sale of homes in Pittwater NSW
9. Australian Liberal party in-fighting
10.Australian election issues
11. Sydney research team make genetic discovery
12. Man slips on scallop and suees Sydney newspaper for implying his claim was fraudulent (honestly - Victoria Wood would LOVE that line)
13. Australian stocks and shares
14. Australian house prices (Perth rising fastest - 36%)
15. Cricketer Brett Lee may have injured his ankle

And finally....as the credits rolled, they showed a snow scene and said "snow has been causing havoc in the US"

I am starved of Sky News and the BBC and will be looking into cable TV next week!

No Sleep 'til Bedtime

The dry run was a good idea in principle but I couldn’t drag myself out of bed to do it, so I’m none the wiser regarding the commuting time. It’s tiring having every minute of your day spoken for in some trip to buy something/find something/entertain Ella, so when another day of furniture hunting and sitting in the local park beckoned, I was more than ready to stuff my head back under the pillow.

Ella woke at 6am because the fan in her room was making her cold. With no air con, the evenings are sticky and there’s no way she can wear a sleeping bag or go without the fan. Being a light sleeper, however, we risk our evening peace if we attempt to switch the fan off before we go to bed, hence the problem.

Set out to the park this morning, just for a change. Arthur and Guinevere were there again with their odd-looking parents (father permanently attached to his mobile phone, mother resplendent in floaty white cotton but with mad, staring, glassy eyes. The whole family look as though they are members of a sect and perhaps they are).

Afterwards, we took Ella to her new nursery and spent an hour and a half with the kids, who all seem happy with their lot. The head of nursery has put her with the 2-3 year olds because she thinks she will be bored with the kids of her own age, which is good on the one hand, but I’m a little concerned that her pushing and snatching behaviour won’t go down too well. Already she’s taller than at least half of the other children in the group, but emotionally she’s still looking for reassurance that I’m there. She ploughs into the classroom with huge confidence and interacts with the other children, all the while keeping one eye on me. We go back next week for another visit and we hope she’ll go for a full half day on Tuesday so we can sort out the old and new flats. This one has dissolved into filthy chaos so might take some time to clean up.

At lunchtime we drove to Darling Harbour with a plan; Ella would fall asleep (her head was already lolling about as we set off), we would cover the pushchair with the Burka and enjoy a peaceful lunch in one of the harbour-side fish restaurants. We see other parents doing it, so hell, why not?

I should have known better after the debacle of our evening out in St Ives last September (We went to an open-air restaurant after she fell asleep, on the advice of other parents with children the same age. Ella slept for four hours, but woke during our dessert, which meant we had to finish our meals alone while the other pushed the pram up and down the road outside). Today’s plan worked well for ten minutes, then Ella woke up, sat up and started demanding again.

Considering she’d had only ten minutes sleep, she was relatively well-behaved in the restaurant, though the child’s portion of “tomato and basil pasta” turned out to be a huge bowl of steaming hot spaghetti that she simply couldn’t handle, leaving her demanding “want it” and pointing at Darren’s “Fisherman’s Basket”. The meal was not the most peaceful I’ve ever had. It’s hard to enjoy a meal when you have to place your drinks and cruet onto the pavement to avoid them being “wanted” and grabbed, though even this was a waste of time in the event, as a glass went flying straight onto my plate, leaving my meal and my clothes swimming in low-alcohol beer. Why must it all be such enormous hard work? Why doesn’t our child sleep? There are times I would gladly stop the car and post her back to the UK recorded delivery if I thought somebody else would be able to cope with her constant demands.

After the lunch, we walked around Darling Harbour towards the aquarium. She still wouldn’t fall asleep, instead hanging out of her pushchair crying and shouting “I want walk, I want see water”. We gave up on the sleep and paid $28.00 each for entry to the new Australian Wildlife exhibition, which would probably have been interesting had we been allowed to stop and look properly at the animals. Ella ran ahead, tripping over in her exhaustion and becoming quite hyperactive. “It’s like she’s been eating blue Smarties” commented Darren. I find it such a depressing experience to be in Sydney with a toddler. I don’t regret being here, but it’s not an experience I would recommend or wish to repeat.

All around are people with actual lives, people having lunch, chilling out, drinking wine, chatting, just like we did last time we were in Sydney. I worked out this evening that I had listened to Ella crying for about four solid hours today in the heat and humidity and the whole problem stems from her absolute stubborn refusal to take a daytime nap. Without the new nursery on the horizon I’m not sure I would be staying in Sydney longer than six months because I’m not ashamed to admit that I simply can’t look after Ella on a full-time basis. Whilst she is absolutely charming, especially for grandparents looking after her for an afternoon, in real-life, with us, she is the most extraordinarily alert and verbally demanding child I’ve ever come across and until she develops some reasoning skills, we need significant amounts of help to care for her. Even Darren is at the end of his (very long) fuse and I can see him dying to get out of the door and go to work to stop the crying and demanding ringing in his ears.

Am I a rubbish mother? I don't know. I just know I have huge admiration for stay-at home mums; not the sort who lounge about on the sofa watching Jeremy Kyle but the types who try to engage with their kids, the ones who cut up playdough and wipe finger paint from the walls and cook all their child's meals from scratch. It's much, much more exhausting than going out to work.

Meet Mary Poppins

The new nursery school is like a dream. It’s an old fashioned type of place with staff who actually appear to like children, heaps of play equipment and an ethos of following the lead of the child (it calls itself “progressive”). The food looks good (home cooked) and Ella had a tantrum when we took her away. Best of all we’ve managed to get three days rather than two, which means I can potentially accept the job and still have a day to myself every week.

I slept on making a decision about the job. My main reservations are (1) the thought of the commute (the traffic is often gridlocked at peak hours, so tomorrow we are having a dry run from here to the nursery and then to the job) and (2) the idea of Darren at home on Mondays and Tuesdays four weeks out of six while I’m at work. We came to Australia to spend more time together and here I am talking about going out to work while he’s at home. I need to stand back and consider our priorities. Either way, we are taking the childcare place because it offers Ella what she needs and what I simply can’t give her seven days a week. We were incredibly lucky to find it.

The weather has returned to its glorious self after three days of drizzle and torrential downpours, so this afternoon we drove to the harbour beach at Balmoral and had lunch under a tree, watching the boats bobbing on the harbour. I’m reading a book called “The Secret River” which is set in nineteenth century Australia and it’s full of vivid imagery of the coast around Sydney (particularly Broken Bay, further north). I could easily imagine Sydney harbour (Port Jackson to give it its correct name) before there were any settlements here. It’s so odd to be reading a book then looking at the actual scenery (then again, you should visit Kefalonia, where every second tourist is reading Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – we cheated and watched the film on DVD before we went).

So after almost four weeks, we are very nearly settled into a proper life in Australia, complete with flat, furniture, cars, jobs and childcare. This week we must find a bed, fridge and washing machine and then we’re sorted. We are both exhausted but when we visited the nursery school and knew instantly that it was right for Ella, we felt that things were finally turning a corner, so once we are finally settled into the new flat, we can think about enjoying what Sydney has to offer.

Fraudster!

I went to one of the universities today. They have more or less offered me a job on their top whack pay scale, which comes as a surprise because I hadn’t ever stopped to think I could be worth it, nor had I ever considered I might land a job in a university. When I was at university, the staff fell into broad categories of (a) social inadequates, (b) mousy women with mousy glasses and (c) bearded men with leather elbow patches in the style of a history teacher (apologies to any history teachers reading this but fess up – you’ve probably worn one).

So which category would I fall into? (and before you mention my extreme short-sightedness, think again because I have dynamic new specs).

At least half of the SLTs reading this will know what I mean when I say we are “always waiting to be found out”. I graduated from university with sound theoretical knowledge (and a clinical distinction, having pulled the wool over the examiner’s eyes good and proper) but not the foggiest idea how I should apply it to my patients, a complaint I’ve heard many times from colleagues trained at different universities during different decades. We suffer from under-confidence because the previous generation of SLTs (who taught us) also didn’t have the foggiest how to apply their knowledge, so they holed themselves up in academia where they felt safe with their research grants and criticised every clinical move we made. I have a bee in my bonnet about this, so I’ll stop ranting before my head falls off. I therefore believe that someone someday will find me out. After today, I think my time might be up. I’m definitely going to be rumbled.

The visit to the university was exciting and depressing in equal measures. Their facilities, working conditions and general environment are astounding. Their set up is like a utopian vision of how things ought to be, complete with palm trees and parrots in the garden. They also know their onions about the particular field I’d be working in. I most definitely do not know my onions. I can barely recognise my broccoli if we are going to speak in metaphors, hence the feeling of panic in the pit of my stomach about being rumbled.

“Okay, I’ll have to be straight with you, I’d need a lot of support to do this job”
“We’ll give it to you”
“It’s a heck of a commute from home” (try 12,000 miles)
“You can leave early to miss the traffic”
“I have no childcare either”
“We can hang around until you find some. You’d be really good at this job”

The manager has a masters degree from Cambridge. My brain is roughly half the diameter of hers, yet she has the sort of head that would look nice in a hat. Where’s the justice in that?

So, readers, the question is, do I work two days a week for the next twelve months, or do I sack the whole thing off and slouch about in cafes and museums? Both are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and I’m not sure what to do. Your thoughts are appreciated.

It's not what you know......

“I’m phoning to see whether you have any places in your nursery”
“How old is your child?”
“Nineteen months”
“No, sorry. You can ring us back when she’s two”
“She acts like two, really. She counts and says her colours and speaks in sentences”
“We’ve got a long waiting list”
“My next door neighbour sends her little girl to you. She says you are wonderful”
“What’s her name?”
“Niamh Dawson”
“Oh yes, Niamh. What days are you looking for specifically?”
“I’m flexible. Any two days but especially Monday and Tuesday”
“What a pity, I just offered those exact days to another family on the waiting list”
“Have they accepted them?”
“They’ll let me know tomorrow, but they probably will”
“Ok, what if they don’t?”
“You would be jumping a long waiting list”
“That would be very naughty”
“You wouldn’t have to tell anybody”
“I don’t know anybody. Who would I tell?”
“Ring me back tomorrow after lunchtime”

God was shining on us today. The other couple turned the place down. We visit Niamh’s nursery tomorrow and her mum has suggested we might share the journeys, which means Niamh and Ella can have tea parties after school. Could this be exactly what we are looking for?

Childcare Woes - Part II

The nursery school turned out to be the stuff of nightmares, or at least, the stuff of my nightmares. The thing about working with children yourself is that you tend to be choosy about childcare and particularly watchful of the way other people interact with the kids they are caring for.

We turned up for our “orientation session” yesterday so that Ella could integrate with the other kids while we were still there. The baby room (0-2) was chaotic at best. When we arrived, the kids were sitting down for “craft” but the nursery teacher running the session didn’t seem to care a hoot whether the kids were participating in the activity, provided she was able to tick the box to say she had completed it. When she decided the session was finished, she quickly shooed the children away and removed the tablecloth before they had chance to finish what they were doing. The kids had no idea what was going on.

(She also looked uncannily like Julie T Wallace in the BBC adaptation of “The Lives and Loves of a She Devil”, but I digress).

After “craft”, she started on the nappy changes, picking the kids off one by one and half dragging them into the nappy room when she plonked them on the table and changed their bottoms without looking at or speaking to them. My overall impression was that the kids were an enormous inconvenience to her and that the children were shooed between too many activities in too short a space of time with no opportunity to learn from any of them. And all of this in front of parents.

When I got home I wanted to cry. Ella needs the company of other children but there’s no way on earth I was going to leave her with Julie T Wallace. Today I rang the centre manager and told her I was removing her name from the list because my observation of the morning session had concerned and upset me. “As a professional” I told her, “if I had to comment on the quality of the interaction occurring in your nursery, I would slate the place”. “Thanks” she replied, “I think I’ve got some work to do there”.

So it’s back to the drawing board, playdoh, crayons, bricks and dingle-dangle scarecrow song for me. I know half of the second verse now, It’s character-building stuff.

Trolley Dash

"Okay, we've got to be back here at 4pm, so that gives us three hours. It's a 40 minute drive to IKEA, have we got enough time?"

"Probably"

"What do we need to buy?"

"A bed, mattress, cot, mattress, TV cabinet, two bedside tables, loo brush, baskets, two feather pillows, dish drainer, cafetiere, cushions, shelving unit, toy buckets, toothbrush holder, rugs, soap dish, chopping boards, kitchen bin, nappy bin, duvet covers and anything else we remember"

"Can we manage it?"

"No worries"

Early Warning System

Just as darkness descends very quickly here in Sydney, so the weather changes rapidly. I'm currently acting as the early rain warning for two or three rows of seats at the SCG, keeping Darren up to date with approaching downpours via text message. Watching the cricket on TV when the floodlit sky is clearly visible from our balcony is frustrating, but not as frustrating as return text messages informing me that Darren didn't heed the last warning, which read simply "big rain!". Only one spectator (a woman) got out her poncho in response to my message, and within minutes the whole lot of them were drenched. Next time the message will just say "Run!"

Lone Explorers

It’s the Chinese New Year and the Chinese community here in Sydney have been putting on a show downtown. Our plans were to go down to Belmore Park to join in the celebrations, but that was before England beat Australia on Friday night and we realised that the second match in the finals series was being held at the SCG today.

Of course, strictly speaking, it was my turn to go to the cricket (by quite a long way – I haven’t been to a cricket match since we saw the day/night match at the SCG on my 30th birthday in 2002 and missed the entire ashes series at home in 2005 through being too pregnant), but I knew Darren would really love to go along today, so I encouraged him to see if he could get a ticket, which left me holding the baby (again).

Not to be deterred, Ella and I made an executive decision that we would go to the Chinese celebrations on our own. Ella has been having some trouble with her daytime naps again, so it was 3.20pm when we finally set off into the city, at which point the heavens opened and I remembered I had neither a coat nor an umbrella in the car. The weather was coming in from the Pacific so I drove down to Coogee to assess the situation out at sea, which didn’t look great, but if there’s one thing I’m learning from this whole experience, it’s not to worry or plan too much (because everything will turn out differently anyway), so we carried on regardless.

The rain was welcome, but not to the hoards of surfies abandoning the sands at Coogee draped in beach towels. The weather has been so hot that the rain hitting the road caused a layer of steam to settle on the tarmac. The tyres didn’t like the conditions either; I skidded a couple of times on the way to Bondi, where we left the car and headed for the train station into the city.

It was the first time I’ve ever used an underground system with a pushchair and I now pity those who have to do so on a frequent basis. For a start, it’s really hot and sticky below ground level (and it smells like Asia – don’t ask me to describe what Asia smells like, it just has a particular smell which I really like), and secondly, finding lifts and having to wait for them is tedious beyond belief. At Bondi, I ran like hell for a train standing at platform 2, which was a serious blow to my street cred (if I had any) because Bondi Junction is the end of the line. So having made the mad dash to board, I then sat for ten long minutes waiting for the train to depart, which was made even less bearable by sharing a carriage with a group of adolescents engaged in high jinx like nicking each other’s eskies (cool boxes) and jumping off the train (until the police got on and sorted them out).

At Central station I shared a lift with a man with cerebral palsy. He was navigating his way between stations and complained loudly that the train guard had failed to understand his request for assistance with alighting at Central and turfed him off at Town Hall. His speech was quite difficult to understand unless you watched his face closely. I understood everything he said, but it must be immensely frustrating when others don’t take the time to listen. I didn’t know my way out to street level, so he escorted me, which was kind of him, but his wheelchair was like the proverbial off a shovel and I had to virtually jog to keep up with him. I think he was taking the micky, which was amusing. He sped off round the corner with a wicked look on his face after he’d showed me to the exit.

The celebrations at Belmore Park were a bit of a letdown, which was a pity because the entire journey had taken me 70 minutes from leaving the house (I hadn’t wanted to cross the city in the car because of the cricket traffic). The main attraction was a large old Chinese lady warbling on a stage in the manner of Marguerita Pracatan (if you ever watched the Clive James Show, you’ll get the reference). Even the local Chinese looked non-plussed. More pressingly, there was no char-sui pork at all, though Ella got two ice creams (having dropped the first face-down for a mud topping). We headed back for the station with Ella covered in ice-cream, the cornet and I melting at a similar rate.

Ella was on her best charm offensive with our fellow passengers during the ride back to Bondi, which started with shouting “hello lady” and “I got ice gream, I dropped it!” and progressed to standing up in the pushchair bellowing “I done a poo” down the carriage, which was a ploy to be allowed to get out. She had not done a poo, I checked twice, but this didn’t stop her insisting “I got stinky bottom” very loudly. I tried to catch the eye of the other people in the carriage to give one of those sardonic, ironic type looks, but I couldn’t seem to press the right buttons for the Aussie humour and was met with “bad mummy” looks, even when I asserted that she was just trying it on. Only the lady next to us smiled. She asked Ella’s age and was astounded that she’s only nineteen months. She looks and acts older. “Yes”, I replied as Ella counted accurately to fifteen, “I don’t know where we got her from, but she’s driving us mental”. She understood exactly what I meant when Ella fixed her with her new “defiant” facial expression and said “Ella want peaches”. It’s been a long day.

Dear Prime Minister.....

The relative humidity is 82%, which entitles me to a long list of complaints. I shall be writing to Prime Minister Howard about the following points:-

Three weeks after arriving, we are still in our holiday accommodation waiting for the current tenants to move out of our new flat. This situation is getting us down for the following reasons.

1. The flat is short on storage space. The kitchen has three cupboards, one of which is half-filled by the fuse box. What storage we do have has been filled by the owner with things she things would be useful in a holiday flat. These include

(i) several thick woollen blankets
(ii) An enormous yellow glass punch jug and four matching glasses
(iii) two large lidded pots in the shape of a sheep and cow, of unknown purpose
(iv) a large picnic basket

This leaves little room for any food in the cupboards, so the food is strewn about the limited work surfaces.

2. We only have one set of keys. To get in, we have to use three separate keys and perform hand acrobatics worthy of Cirque du Soleil. It is impossible to do this holding bags.

3. Bringing the shopping in from the car involves enormous effort and a certain amount of grunting in the style of whats-her-face (the tennis player). It means an average of three trips from the car to the front of the building, wedging the security door open and throwing the bags into the communal hallway before trekking upstairs with them and throwing them into the flat. Ella cannot be left in her car seat while I do this because she’s well out of sight. The task is further complicated by the fact that the plastic carrier bags are flimsy and very liable to snap midway through the exercise. And it’s hot and sweaty.

4. We have one small square dining table which also serves as a high chair and desk. We have given up on clearing it off to eat our evening meal, we just shove an armful of paper and wires sideways and brush the crumbs onto the floor. All of our important documents, our box of stationery and box of medicines are stored on top of the microwave but it’s impossible to navigate them because of the mess.

5. The carpentry is shocking. The sash windows and doors all rattle in the wind, so we have to repeatedly wedge them open or closed to prevent them slamming onto Ella’s fingers or waking her up at night.

6. The washing machine is rubbish. It doesn’t get stains out of Ella’s clothes, so all of her whites are ruined already. To prevent further calamity, we have to strip her off whenever she’s eating, which she thinks is a game and unfailingly runs away from.

7. The laundry is downstairs and involves the use of yet another key. Even when we have plucked up the energy to go downstairs and load the washer, we usually forget about it afterwards. When we do remember, we have to peg it out in the communal garden, which opens onto a busy road. Ella thinks it’s a great game to try and run away while I’m pegging the clothes out.

8. The bathroom has no surfaces. There isn’t even room for a toothbrush holder, so the brushes just languish on the sink. We are in danger of contracting some sort of bacterial disease and being hospitalised before we even have a medicare card.

9. We have no air conditioning.

10. The Aussies clearly don’t trust their countrymen on the road. The list of things you must/must not do is ridiculous and includes having to park with your back bumper to the kerb (we got a $77 dollar fine within a week for parking forwards into a parking space) and having to park in the direction of travel when parking at the side of the road (when I unwittingly contravened this in the hire car, some helpful soul scrawled five question marks onto the windscreen in black marker pen). In addition, most of the crossroads/intersections are “no right turn”, so you spend your life deliberately overshooting your turn off and doing a u-turn, else planning your entire route in a set of left-turns. The highways people clearly think their country folk can’t be trusted to reverse out of a space or do the off-side thing at intersections. It’s frustrating, and you only learn the rules by breaking them.

Ahhh, cathartic!

Garage Sales

Started our day with a 7am garage sale in Bondi Junction, the first of four, which altogether turned up a TV, desk, chair, four lamps, a travel cot (for our holidays), a futon, bookcase, printer, laundry basket and salt and pepper grinders. It’s an odd experience to see people’s lives and possessions laid outside on the pavement. As Darren remarked, in their proper context, possessions seem unremarkable, but laid outside on tables, they suddenly seem random and shambolic. At the second house we ran into Cass and her husband (who sold us the doll’s house). “Hmm”, I said to Darren, “their sitting room is piled high with her sister’s possessions yet they are trawling garage sales for bargains – I think they were lying”.

Afterwards we had Eggs Benedict for breakfast at a cafe next to Bronte beach, which was truly delicious. Ella morphed from wriggling, arguing monster into complete serenity once her turkish toast and home-made strawberry jam had been delivered. All was well with the world.

Escaped - Again!

Drove to the north shore today to collect our new car. Illawong Jack almost died in the heat on the return journey. His future is now unclear because if he’s got major problems then it’s probably not worth the money to fix them. We need to investigate but as with many things, we don’t have the time.

The new car is manual so took a bit of getting used to again. We drove back over the harbour bridge because Darren missed his turning for the tunnel. It wasn’t until the car was screaming for a gear change that I remembered (the view being something of a distraction – I still can’t go over the bridge without whooping loudly, and shouted “how do you like them apples?” today for good measure).

This afternoon I made another dash for freedom in the direction of the train station at Bondi Junction while Darren took Ella to the park at Fox Studios. It's always a risk leaving men in charge of small childen. When I arrived back at the flat there was no answer to the doorbell or Darren's mobile. Eventually I got in, where I found Ella in a nappy soaked wet through to her trousers and the grillpan literally on fire as Darren was struggling to cook a sausage for her tea. I wasn't sure what to say, so just said "it's on fire", which at least alerted him to the situation while I got on with the nappy change.

Had a second shot at clothes shopping in downtown Sydney today , this time a little more savvy about the shops and loitering outside with the necessary facial expression rather than actually going in. Some of the fashion is a bit iffy. I have flashes of living at Porpoise Spit (in the manner of Muriel from Muriel’s wedding). Went into the Strand shopping arcade, a gorgeous building, to the jewellers who made my wedding ring. The same jeweller was sitting in the same chair as though he hadn’t moved in four years.

Later I sat in a café at Circular Quay watching the Manly Ferry arrive and depart and admiring the view of the harbour. Is there any better view?


This evening we booked a babysitter and headed downtown, where we joined the throngs in the Opera Bar before settling on the grass at Circular Quay to watch the England Australia day/night match on the big screen. It was a really tight finish – the Australian captain, Ricky Ponting, just doesn’t know what to do with himself when the ockers lose.

There’s an advert on the TV at the moment blaming the 2005 ashes defeat on the fact that none of the squad had a moustache (previous moustaches of David Boon and Merv Hughes held up as examples). Incidentally, Merv Hughes is now advertising breakfast cereal in much the same way as Ian Botham advertises Shredded Wheat and Steve Waugh is advertising the David Jones department store. These guys were legends when I was a teenager and this is making me feel old (even Shane Warne has retired).

England won the match, as I thought they would. We have a history of losing the ashes and rallying for the one-day series. The media out here are rude about the English team, openly referring to them as a bunch of losers and brushing aside our victories as pointless. Sport is such a huge part of Aussie culture, to beat them is to challenge their raison d’etre. They don’t like it a bit.

After the English victory, we headed to the Horizons bar on the 36th floor of the Shangri-La hotel to celebrate, but they wouldn’t let us in because I was wearing thongs (flip-flops). Presumably I was a terrorist threat. We were livid because the hotel is approached via three steep hills, which we had climbed in anticipation of a long cocktail. Being turned away makes you feel so small. We got a taxi home instead.

Lindt Extra Creamy

I would like to report that Lindt Extra Creamy Milk Chocolate (made in France) is widely available in Sydney. I've just had some. It needs to be kept in the fridge but I now have not the foggiest idea why they can't import the real stuff.

I'm going to get to the bottom of this.

Freedom is on the Horizon - Hurrah!

After two sleepless nights about the Thai childminder, I threw in the towel and rang the agency to cancel. The problem was in the finer detail. Sure, she plied me with mango, but she didn’t appear too keen to lock her front door or to put Ella on reins if they were walking to the park (insisting she would be fine holding her two year old daughter’s hand). When I rang her back to check things out, she also told me there was only a bed for Ella to sleep in (which is useless because she’ll get straight out of it). When I insisted on a cot, she solved the problem by mentally turfing the 13 month old baby out (and into the bed) or suggesting I buy her an extra cot but told me not to tell the agency, as this was against the rules. I had the impression that she didn’t respect other people’s wishes and that, despite having recently set up her business, she wasn’t intending to follow guidelines, and that’s just not for me.

So we’ve cancelled the arrangement and gone back to the beginning. I slept remarkably well afterwards.

Today I made a list of nurseries from the yellow pages and rang them all (about 20 in total). 50% would not take children below two years of age. The other 50% had waiting lists varying from eighteen months to over two years. Three laughed hysterically and one quoted a waiting list of “well in excess of six hundred children”. I finally came across a nursery with places, but they charge $80 per day, which is the highest rate I’ve seen. We went to look at the place this afternoon and chat with the director. The nursery seems nice; spacious and well-equipped, with a large outside play area, and the director is British so was pretty honest with me. We can enrol right away, so looks like Ella will be getting more of what she needs and I’ll be getting some time and space and might be able to work after all.

Tonight I’ve waved goodbye to the hire car. We’re trusting Illawong Jack to get us to the north shore tomorrow so we can collect the Honda and after that, the world’s our lobster.

Four Car Family

We bought another car today. This is becoming something of a hobby for us, though not one we have time to give much thought to. Drove up to Manly (across spit bridge – not a great bridge as such, just a fantastic setting) and bought a 1997 Honda CRV for $9,500. It’s manual transmission which I’m actually disappointed about, because despite my previous procrastinations, I was getting quite used to the laziness of the automatic, especially on the hill-starts up and down the eastern suburbs.

It’s a good car with a full service history (every 10,000 km for goodness sake!) but process of purchasing it was more painful than usual as Ella was in a “mischevious” mood and had to be contained inside a Toyota Rav 4 for over half an hour (in a thunderstorm) while Darren did that thing men do – poking about at the car with no particular agenda and taking it for a test drive. The only minus point is that we can’t collect it until Friday because it’s due a service, so we had to have another discussion about whether the hire car was going back tonight and whether this was leaving me with Illawong Jack while Darren works a 12 hour shift on Thursday. The hire car stays – Darren had to start it four times this evening. Personally I think Jack’s age merits a “do not resuscitate” order but that’s the medic for you.

Escaped

I think I might have gone a bit troppo today. The humidity has been getting to me and I suddenly saw the attraction of pegging out the washing in my knickers. You’ll be pleased to learn that I saw sense, but I did do most of the housework in my underwear, not really caring a toss whether anyone could see into the flat. Am turning into a proper Aussie girl already, though am resolutely keeping my northern accent and turning my sentences down at the end.

Ella and I joined Playgroups NSW this morning. The Tuesday group is run by a man called Shane in a leather hat. You couldn’t wish for more really, though if I was going to pick holes, I was disappointed that the sing-along didn’t include anything by Banjo Patterson.

The playgroup was lovely. There were at least 3 other Pommie mothers there, including my fried Kat, who I met at the park. I meet lots of people at the park. Everyone is so friendly but it does remind me of being a fresher at University when you immediately make friends with everyone in your hall of residence and spend the next year trying to avoid at least half of them. On Monday I met an Irish woman who immediately introduced herself as a qualified Montessori teacher and mother of three. She was full of unsolicited child-rearing advice and frankly dodgy hints on child development. I kept quiet about my own experience in the field, partly because I didn’t want to appear smug (though plainly was) and partly because whenever I tell people what I do for a living, I get one of three responses:

1. That must be very satisfying (response: not as satisfying as finding trousers that fit)
2. Oh can you change my accent? (response: tut and roll eyes)
3. I once knew someone with a stammer, but I think it turned out to be a stutter (groan)

At half time, the kids all sat down at a long wooden table and helped themselves to a fresh fruit salad. They were all wearing their legionnaire hats; it honestly did look exactly like Australia is supposed to, which made me smile (they probably wondered what I was smiling about but I’ve learnt not to answer that question because people often think my musings are a bit odd – if you are reading this blog, you may be getting the same impression). Ella acted like a thug for the whole two hours – she’s laying into the ockers left right and centre since we arrived, stealing toys and generally pushing them around. She’s turning out to be remarkably bossy and, well, difficult. Can’t think where she gets it from.

This evening I escaped from the flat on my own for the first time. As I drove away I realised I hadn’t spent a single moment apart from Ella in exactly three weeks, which is a record (I was pushing a trolley around Sainsbury’s when she was two days old). To say she is driving me barmy is under-egging the pudding, so it was a relief to go out in search of a second hand hoover I’d seen advertised in the library (which I can’t join until we have a permanent address). After I picked it up I drove down towards Bronte beach, got lost (self-navigating with a rubbish map but I refuse to buy a tom-tom), got found again and parked up on the waterfront. It was a gorgeous evening so I walked along the beach to Bronte baths where there were still people swimming at 9pm (in case you’re not familiar with the baths in Sydney, these are outdoor swimming pools carved into the rocks. When the waves crash against them it’s quite a ride – see the picture). On the way home I could see the skyscrapers downtown illuminated red and blue and the lights of the eastern suburbs bobbing up and down on the hills. It’s a difficult decision to spend your life in the UK when Sydney has all of this to offer. I feel totally at home in Australia after all these years of carping on about the place, but it would never really be home and I’d never give up my British passport, so I guess tells me everything I need to know, doesn’t it?

Australia - Racist? Nous?

What is it about weird people? Do I attract them or do I subconsciously seek them out?

Yesterday I responded to an ad in the Sydney Morning Herald for a Fisher Price dolls’ house at a bargain price. I should have known there would be something dodgy about this because the lady who placed the ad had three of them up for sale and she gave me painstaking directions to her house three times on the phone.

When we arrived, she was standing at the front gate; an enormous lady with no neck and a gargantuan bosom barely contained behind a sweaty grey tee-shirt. The inside of her house was indescribable, but if you remember the BBC series “A Life of Grime” (narrated by the late and lovely John Peel), you might remember Mr Trebus, the old man who hoarded rubbish until it was piled high to the ceiling. This house was not dissimilar; there were children’s toys absolutely everywhere and the furniture was no longer visible under piles of clothes and shoes.

The lady (Cass) claimed that her house was full of her sister’s belongings and that her sister had relocated abroad and left her to sell it all off. She said she had no idea how she would get rid of it all. I have no idea either. At this point, her husband (Ronnie) arrived in his shirt and underpants. The conversation went like this:

Ronnie: Ah g’day – are you another $4000 woman?
Me: Sorry?
Cass: Oh Ronnie, shut up, Sarah won’t understand what that means, she’s from the UK
Ronnie: Ah, well, our stupid government give $4000 to every woman who has a baby, I don’t agree with it but there you are. They reckon the population is falling. I think we need more white people.
Cass: Why are you in Australia?
Me: For my husband’s job
Ronnie: What does he do?
Me: He’s a doctor
Ronnie: Well as long as he’s not an Arab, bloody Arabs, we let them in all the time
Me: Erm, no, he’s not Arab
Ronnie: I’ll tell you something humourous, a friend of ours went to the hospital and saw a doctor – do you know what he was? A bloody Muslim, that’s what. Poor kid was scared half to death
Me: Right. So all of this stuff belongs to your sister-in-law?
Ronnie: Yeah, they’ve got plenty of money
Me: What do you mean?
Ronnie: He’s a crook, but they’ve gone overseas
Me: Where have they gone?
Cass: London
Me: That’s reassuring….

I paid for the dolls’ house and a sit and ride car and Ronnie helped me out with them to the car park across the road (still in his underpants). The flyscreen on the front door was locked shut and I struggled to open it, so for a moment I thought they’d lured us in to kill us but we lived to tell the tale.

In the afternoon Ella and I we went to visit some childminders. The first was a young army wife who really seemed to be doing it just for the money and said Ella couldn’t bring any of her cuddly toys for comfort because it might lead to the children fighting over them. The second was a lady from Thailand who’s married to an Aussie. She has the usual knack of Thai hospitality (told her I was fond of Thai mango sticky rice and she had a dish of mango in front of me before I had chance to breathe). Ella seemed to like the place – a large swanky open-plan house with teak floors and a garden under a sunshade, though she wasn’t keen on sharing toys with the other two girls. Vecky(the childminder) worked as an air hostess with Qantas for ten years but now stays at home with her daughter. She’s a bit mad, in a good way, so I think we will give her a shot and see how Ella settles in. I’m dreading it because I think Ella will go beserk if I leave her. Our childminders in the UK were wonderful and have set a very high standard that I don’t think anyone will ever match up to, so I’m trying to keep that in mind and not be too anxious about it all.

Tearing One's Frizzy Hair Out

Sunday night and I’ve survived a whole weekend on my own with Ella without tearing out the frizz-ball that used to be my hair. I’m sure the coming week will be much better because we have some things planned, but weekends are a bit of a trial if Darren is working. Yesterday we went looking for a toyshop that no longer exists. We did however find a much better branch of Coles supermarket with wider aisles and plenty of halogen lighting. Don’t ask me why this makes the shopping experience more pleasant, it just does, and they don’t play piped music like the one in Randwick.

As advised by Jo, I’ve been trying to do the food shopping the old fashioned way, which means meat from the butcher, bread from the baker and so on. Apparently it works out cheaper, which might be true, but at this stage (and in this heat), the idea of Sainsbury’s on a cold January afternoon (with a shopping trolley that steers properly) is enough to make me come over all dreamy. I’m all in favour of the small independent retailer, but it is quite a task to do the shopping this way when you’re also pushing a buggy and when you’re still not sure about the currency. The shopkeepers could be short-changing me left right and centre and I wouldn’t have the foggiest.

Shopping for food is odd because there’s a reduced range of the things you are used to buying and then there’s a whole new world of products you’ve never seen before. The fruit is gorgeous, it all looks and tastes so ripe that I feel much more inclined to eat it, so this week we’ve been having plums, peaches, avocado and mango as well as Lebanese breads and hand-made pesto sauce. The chocolate might be disgusting, but the cakes look amazing and the yoghurts taste more creamy than the ones back home, so it’s not all bad.

Shopping for clothes is also a bit of a trial, or rather, a process of trial and error. Almost all of the shops at Bondi Junction’s Westfield centre are unfamiliar to me, aside from Laura Ashley and Crabtree and Evelyn. Clothes shopping becomes quite a humiliating experience because you unwittingly go into (a) shops where you can’t afford anything, (b) shops where nothing would fit you anyway, (c) shops for much younger people, (d) shops for much trendier people and perhaps least painful of the lot (e) shops for much older people (at least you leave the shop feeling smug about something). In order to survive this process with any shred of dignity intact, it becomes necessary to appear completely aloof, even when you have white mosquito-bitten legs and you are wearing a tee-shirt with half of your daughter’s lunch smeared on the shoulder. That’s quite an act to pull off, and it’s a real relief when the lift is empty and you can relax your face muscles between floors.

In the end, we hung about the petshop, which seemed a less painful option. The shop assistant looked about nine years old, so I managed to persuade her to open up the doggy pound and let me hold one of the puppies (a shih-tzu crossed with a poodle – I have no idea why, whether shih-tzus fancy poodles or what the ensuing offspring is called, and being about nine years old, neither did she). The price tag was $1300 so there’s one souvenir we won’t be bringing home.

Gone Troppo

This is a term which refers to a certain state of mind experienced by those unfortunate enough to live in the far north of Australia during "the wet" (the summer). Aparently the heat and humidity are enough to send people mad.

I'm not sure the condition is limited to the tropics. This is my nextdoor neightbour, who wears her knickers to take her dustbin out. This evening, the woman across the road was watering the grass on the pavement with a hosepipe, despite the fact that New South Wales is experiencing it's driest summer for 100 years. She was wearing a hairpiece secured with a red scrunchie and a sort of spanish flamenco dancer's dress.

Folks round here ain't completely right in the head. My neighbours at home seem very boring in comparison!

We have a home - take two

We’ve got the flat for $440 a week, so our finances are looking much more promising. The equipment needed to clean the house in Randwick would probably have cost a week’s salary alone. We can move in on February 20th so we’ll stay here until then and carry on buying up second hand furniture to kit it out. We’re both really pleased with the place and relieved not to be paying $600-$700 a week for a hovel.

Darren started work today and returned with the impression that (a) the job carries more responsibility than his job in the UK and (b) the equipment and techniques are more up-to-date (surprise surprise). It’s going to be something of a baptism of fire because he’s got to hit the ground running and he’s not completely au fait with the systems. I wouldn’t go as far as to say he hasn’t a clue what he’s doing, but if I need an operation, I might head to the Royal North Shore.

Ella hasn’t had much attention recently, so at lunchtime we took a picnic to the park at Maroubra Beach. I am now officially a resident of Australia as I am driving the car around on my own and listening to the local radio station. The park at Maroubra is one of the few that you can use in the afternoon because it has a sunshade on top. It was fairly cloudy but I still managed to burn my shoulders, so I look like a proper tourist now, which is hypocritical considering the fuss I’m making of slathering Ella in factor 30 suncream and training her to wear a legionnaire hat.

The council were putting up a big screen at Maroubra beach for the day-night match at the SCG (Sydney Cricket Ground) this evening. What a great idea – watching cricket on the beach after it goes dark. I can’t believe that England are playing Australia in a one-day international less than two miles away and I haven’t got a ticket. With 36 overs left, Darren is hot-footing down to the SCG in Illawong Jack as England are putting up a fight. By the time Illawong Jack pulls up outside, there might be six balls left, but he’ll be able to say he was there so good luck to him!

Drove into Coogee this afternoon and found a great delicatessen run by and English bloke. He stocks Marmite, Bisto and Hellman’s mayonnaise ($8.99 a jar!). I can’t decide whether I ought to do as the Romans do and stick with Australian products or pay the extra for the British stuff like a proper whingeing pom. I asked him about Dairy Milk – he said he could get his hands on some for the right price (in the manner of a man pedalling cocaine in the backstreets of Soho). He even asked me “what sort of weight do you need”, to which I replied “Two months supply, about 400g” (a conservative estimare really). I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s actually an illegal substance. Bought Ella a bar of Cadbury’s “Furry Friends” (they have a different Australian animal on the front of each bar – chose the Bilby, naturally) and had a bite of it to remind myself how bad it is. It literally has no taste, so it looks like the peddler has himself a deal.

Same rubbish, different channel

This is the local answer to Grananda Reports. I can't imagine that enough happens in Wollongong to justify a whole programme, but the name made me laugh.

Our First Houseguest

How do you like this fella? (Here's one you definitely have to click to enlarge. He dropped in to the kitchen last night. Naturally I hid behind the door while Darren showed him the way out. I think he's just a starter for ten :0

Upside down or downside up?

I’ve often wondered how come we know that Australia is “down under” and we are “up top”. Map projections would suggest it to be the case, but how to we actually know which way up the earth is relative to space?

Last night I remembered that the man in the moon is upside down in Australia. I hung my head upside down and he looked exactly as he does in the UK. So there’s your proof. I’ll wonder no more.

Meet Illawong Jack

This is our new car. If it was a person, it would be an old man with a flat cap and glasses driving slowly and holding up the Sunday traffic on the A49 towards Whitchurch. We have therefore nicknamed him “Jack”, or “Illawong Jack” to give him his full title.

I did in fact drive Illawong Jack this afternoon, only for about a quarter of a mile, but it felt like further. Darren said it would be just like driving my old mark III Golf (ie no power steering) but he was still trying to hoodwink me into returning the hire car. As if!

Another stressful day househunting today, as has become the norm. I’m sick to death of leafing through the UBD (like our A-Z at home) as chief navigator and rear gunner (dealing with Ella in the back). Last night we concluded that a fortnight of stress has resulted in nowhere to live and a 20 year old banger for our troubles. The British Airways 747 was looking good and I even logged onto the BBC news website to catch up on the UK news (if we get cable internet I shall be downloading the Today programme from Radio 4 and watching Corrie within the month).

But today was another day (our last one before Darren starts work) so we made an executive decision to place a deposit on a house in Randwick. This is in fact the first house we saw on the day we arrived (remember? The first cockroach we saw). Somebody else had beaten us to it, but his money transfer hadn’t showed up on the estate agent’s books yet, so we put the cash down and gazumped him. I never thought I’d be gazumping someone for a house with a corrugated iron roof (we took the liberty of spraying it with the hosepipe to simulate rainfall – you should have heard the racket), but as Darren said, “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” and it was better to secure that house until next Friday while we keep looking. The house costs $600 per week. It’s in a good spot but it’s not a great house at all.

This evening we saw a flat for $440 which is absolutely ideal. Isn’t that typical – we’ve got a $600 deposit on a crap house, a banger of a car to get Darren from a house in Bronte that we aren’t renting, and along comes this flat at the (literally) eighteenth hour. It’s in a complex which is a bit like a resort, there’s an outdoor pool and a nice leafy outlook from the (large) balcony. Still only two bedrooms, but gorgeous inside, all new kitchen (just like ours at home but smaller) and no having to do the washing in the shed.

So Darren has been to the estate agent for that place (which is now closed) and put an application and cheque under the door. If we are the first ones to have done so, the flat is ours. Should find out tomorrow.