Our family friends' neighbour Jo, demonstrating her skill with crosswords. She's a Kiwi. This concludes my explanation. (Except to say that I haven't yet got the real answer.)
We all finished work early on Thursday for another Christmas party (seems to be in keeping with Aussie style to have lots of parties) where we had to walk for 20 minutes in mid-30s heat, only to find that at the restaurant the aircon wasn't working! Not good. Peter and I had a pretty involved discussion about sunrises and sunsets that led me here via a roundabout route - I'd forgotten how
I managed to get all but one of my presents last Friday, but managed to swap that one with one my parents hadn't been able to get for someone else. Possibly my best ever for buying presents. Friday night was quite thundery, and, looking back, I think that might be the first time it's rained in more than just a shower in the 7 weeks since I got here. It was still raining when I went to bed, and, while it remained dry till I arrived in Sydney on Saturday afternoon, it started up heavily again on the drive down and didn't let up till Christmas Eve lunchtime.
I've then had a pretty relaxing 4 days in Kiama. A bit less hectic than my visit last year, despite the general Christmas rush. Christmas Day highlights included a barbecued turkey with homegrown roast potatoes (and non-barbecued shrimp), enjoying a warm, sunny but very windy 26C day (I was very glad to be away for Christmas - Melbourne reached just 14C, its coldest 25/12 ever, and some of the skiing resorts in Victoria had a white Christmas!), the most idiosyncratic playing of The Name Game I've ever been involved in (one name repeated 4 times, 4 others repeated at least once, and one of the names being a bottled beer rather than a person), and finding an adequate replacement for Fentiman's.
Other events included a walk over the cliffs on Boxing Day (photo below), an afternoon trip to Helen and Steve's to see their new pool, some of Christmas Eve afternoon spent fixing Steve and Jo's PC (10,000 miles from home and my reputation precedes me - first evening I was there Pauline started to ask me a question that I somehow knew was going to be PC-related!) without seeing any of their resident redbacks and generally enjoying being able to wear shorts the whole time.
In Sydney airport today, I decided that, just in case, I wouldn't repeat last year's mistake of taking a photo of the city centre from the airport. Yes, the risk of being stopped by US Customs on arrival at Tullamarine is probably a bit lower than at LAX, but once bitten, twice shy. I think the cabin crew may have been at an office party the previous night, as they were still in quite high spirits, including the announcers calling each other names during inflight announcements, one stewardess swearing at her lifejacket when the whistle got caught in her belt and the final "Thanks for flying with us etc." speech being rounded off with "Last one off's a rotten egg."
TODO : find a copy of "Your Grace Amazes Me" as sung at the Melbourne Christmas Carol Concert on Christmas Eve. That was a spine-tingling performance, but I can't find anywhere who it was who sang it.
3 comments:
blackguard? rapscalion (spelt wrong), ditto scallywagg and a host of other things. Little shit still seems the best option though.
Good to here that christmas was good, not too shabby here either.
I can find some hits on "your grace still amazes me", does that help?
stay well
No, none of those. Rapscallion and scallywag, when spelt correctly, don't have 10 letters. You're given word fragments that make up the answers and blackguard and ragamuffin (which was my best guess) don't fit.
I've found a couple of Youtube versions of it, but by comparison to the (clearly opera-trained) singer who did it on Christmas Eve, they're ... well, like hearing you sing it!
well, i guess that's me put in my place!
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