Day One - the excitement!

Well, Gentle Readers, we survived 14 hours on a plane with a screaming toddler... just.  AsyouknowBob, I am not that fond of small children ("Anyone who hates children and small dogs isn't all bad" (widely attributed to W C Fields but open to discussion), but it's the parents who are usually to blame.  They had four kids, three of whom didn't make a peep the entire flight, and the screaming monster.  Did they give the kid a dummy?  Did they F**k.  They just let him scream and scream and scream and scream... OMG.  All I can say is thank the ghods for noise eliminating earphones and Emirates'* excellent inflight entertainment system.

I watched 3 movies in an attempt to drown out the little shit.  Elysium (not bad, a bit too much crash bang wallop, and not enough Elysium, but it was lovely to see the always gorgeous Jodie Foster in action), About Time, which is a nice (and very English) film from the clever Richard Curtis, which reduced me to tears (in a good way), and The Butler, which was an interesting take on two of the sides of the American Civil Rights movement, and which had quite a good performance from some woman called Oprah Winfrey - apparently she has a show on TV in America so maybe she needed the money?**

Anyway, the 6 hours from Dubai to Rome was blessedly silent, mostly because I was crammed into a 17" wide sardine tin of a seat, mouth open and a stream of drool issuing forth as I slept.  Or so Mr G tells me.

We arrived two hours (two whole hours!) early, and our driver was there to meet us.  Honestly, Gentle Readers, before you look askance at each other and ask "Driver? Oooh" in that snarkey tone, just be aware that for Eu37, you too can be met at the airport by a well dressed man holding a sign with your name on it, have your bags taken from you, be ushered into the back of a spotlessly clean Mercedes Benz and driven right to your door, where the bags are then taken back out of the car.  Having rung the doorbell, said spotlessly dressed man waits until the door is answered, shakes your hand, takes your money and drives off into the night.   Yes, it's (only slightly) more expensive than the train & a taxi, but really, on a cold wet Sunday night, who cares?

And then, this morning, breakfast:

Eu5.  That's $A7.70 for two excellent coffees and two fresh, delicious cornetti (mine was chocolate, his was poppy seed).  You can buy two coffees in Sydney for $7.00 - in fact, in 2011 in Perth, at a particular hospital, a very ordinary coffee in a paper cup with nasty plastic stirrer was $4.50... so you see, Gentle Readers, even with a truly crap exchange rate, Europe is mostly cheap.  

Also, I now know where those amazing men who sell umbrellas come from - they pop up out of Churches:

We were crossing Corso Vittorio Emmanuel II on the way home from an excellent lunch (two beers, a glass of wine, two pizzas, a bottle of sparkling water, Eu37/$A57) when I spotted these guys.  I love Rome.

*Not a sponsored plug, but if anyone from Emirates is reading this & wants to upgrade us, feel free.

**

Louisville, Tennessee

Hello there Gentle Reader from Louisville, Tennessee!  Please let me know how you found the Journal Cover Tutorial, was it too hard, not detailed enough, boring, useless, what?


Today, Gentle Readers, Mr G is at home to callers.  Also, he's still asleep, as befits a gentleman of Advanced Years, (that is, 451 tomorrow), and taking up an inordinate amount of the bed.  When we were first coupled, we had a double bed (well, I had a double bed, he had a king-sized futon which I refused to sleep on - how bad are they for your back, hmmm?) and we survived about six months before I insisted on buying something bigger, and made him ditch the Futon.  I think we would have been divorced before we were even married if we'd stayed in that double.  He likes to sleep with his elbows out, and rolls into the middle a lot.  I joke quite often about my eighth of the bed, but it's not really a joke.  I frequently wake up right on the edge, with just enough of the covers to stop me from freezing to death in the night.  


Tonight we are staying here before flying out at 6.00am (shudder) tomorrow to Perth... It's going to be a long, long day.  They are three hours behind us, of course, and so we will be arriving at 11.00am for us, but it will only be 8.00am in the wild West.  I plan to be in bed by 8.30pm, after we've done everything we need to do, such as, collecting the seafood, shopping for forgotten Christmas treats, buying wrapping paper Just In Case, buying Christmas Cards for people we didn't think about before, you know.  The usual Christmas last minute panic.  Only difference for us is that it's a different shopping centre, which is why everything will take just that little bit longer - trying to find the shops you know about in your own shopping centre is one thing, but in a foreign shopping centre?  Phew.  


In other fascinating news, the Christmas tree I made for Miss Felicity, at All Toile and No Reward, finally arrived in Bahrain, about a month after I shipped it:

At least now she'll have something Christmassy in her Porno Flat.  More info?  You'll have to read for yourselves!


And finally, in the fascinating news department, I started making Conchita the Chicken from the 'Sew It, Stuff it' book that was amongst the birthday loot - it's huge, but it's going to look very cute.  I promise pictures will be posted when it's done.  Just because that may be next year doesn't mean it won't happen... honest.


And now, the smell of Mr G's vegemite and honey toast is making me very hungry, so I'm off, off to the glamour of the kitchen, and from there, we shall see what develops.   Sporadic posts follow, as time and festivities allow.  


I wish you, my Gentle Readers, a very Festive Yuletide, with peace and joy for all.   Ciao, Buon Natale, Ciao Ciao!

Where have you been, my blue-eyed son?

Well, to be honest, Remaining Gentle Readers, I never really wanted to go to Bali.  Did I mention that in a previous brain dump?  Perhaps I did.  No matter.  I had heard plenty plenty bad things about the Ugly Australians who go, get drunk, do Bad Things, make a Bad Name for our country, you know, yadda, yadda.


Ahem.  My first indication that it was another world should have been when we arrived at the hotel via a taksi from the Airport.  Instead of having to stand in line and wait, they whisked our luggage away from us, made us sit down, gave us cold towels smelling ever so slightly of sandlewood, and put a cold drink in front of us.  I was in love, right there & then.  I got to fill in the registration form sitting down on the lounge in front of the Koi pond, then we were whisked to our room, shown all the lovely features and left alone.  Tip optional.

Breakfast was included, and in the morning, after a good sleep in the king-sized bed, Mr G and I wandered down to breakfast and enjoyed nasi goreng (well, I did) and chicken-something... Mr G had the most anemic looking sausages I'd ever seen (chicken, apparently), before being joined by my lovely Ma & Hank.  Whoosh, into a taksi, and off to Carrefore, which is the biggest supermarket I've ever seen, sort of a combined Woolies and Big W, where you could buy everything from a pushbike to washing powder, a fridge to mens socks.


Back to the restaurant for lunch, joined by the other two partners in crime, and the six of us ate like kings for not very much money, before being collected by Wayang, our driver for the duration.

Wayang spoke excellent English, had a wicked sense of humour and apparently endless patience, and he had us out of the Denpasar traffic and noise molto rapidamente.

It was kind of weird going up into Ubud, as the suburbs never really die away, all along the route from Denpasar to Ubud there are little roadside shops and stands, people doing business, waiting for business, hoping for business... then... whoosh.  Nothing but the village, and little roads with sharp turns, and then a sign "very nice house for sale", and the villa, a completely private, self-contained universe but with an excellent view of the local activity and colour, including this man who was herding his ducks through the rice paddies.

Quack!

Vote early, vote often...

The truly excellent Baino, over at Baino's Banter, has provided a comprehensive guide to the upcoming Federal (read 'national') election, which is being held on Saturday.  I, along with every other Aussie of eligible age, will be required to vote, because voting is required by law, just like in Italy, and New Zealand, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Fiji, Argentina and Uruguay, amongst others.  


It's just as well it's compulsory, because if it wasn't, no bastard here would vote, that's for sure.  The old saying about 'getting the guvinmint you deserve' is very true, because we wouldn't get one.  We surely deserve no government at all, when you look at what's on offer.  Ugly madmen and evil atheists, by all accounts.  I heard a woman on the radio say that our lives were going to go to rack & ruin if we elected an atheist to run the country.  Not quite sure why the PM's lack of belief in imaginary deities should mean we're all doomed... but who understands how the minds of the religious nutters work?


Not me, that's for sure.


Anyway, remaining gentle readers, I fly tomorrow to Perth, way out West, to visit my lovely Ma & Hank for a few days.  I will try to pop in the occasional post about life in the wild wild west, and progress on the Sydney Pies quilt,  plus whatever else we get up to.  No promises, mind, as my Ma always said when I was little.


And here's a little light relief while you're waiting:

It's an oldie but a goodie - the Prince Regent standing outside the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, hanging onto the remains of a bike - his?  Who knows!


Ciao!

Ah, bliss

It was warm, you know, and sunny, and above all, dry!  It was quiet, and peaceful, and I did a spot of bird-watching...

and a spot of garden watching...

and a spot of dog-watching...

This is Gus.  He's very funny, sitting right in front of the fire, even though he has a mat only 5 feet away from the fire.  He's just small enough to fit there, and Jarrah, who's the other Dog of the House, is very jealous, but too big to fit right there!


Note the big chunks of wood?  That's Jarrah.  People like me pay lots of money to have beautiful furniture made out of this wood, my kitchen bench in particular...

(Please excuse the mess but you get the idea) and over in the West, they burn it.  Amazing.

What else?  A nice lunch out here, a spot of sewing (pictures to come, I promise), and a spot of fabric shopping.  I feel very relaxed.  Well, I did till Tuesday, when the madness started again... however, only one more day of whining from me, and it's all over, back to 'normal'.  Can't wait, I have to say!

When I finally unpack the sewing I did in Perth, I'll post some pics.  And in the interim, I collected this from the post office this morning, from here:

and this:

I can't wait to trim something!

Ciao!

There's nothing like a few days off...

to make you feel better... so I'm off visit my Ma & lovely Hank for the long weekend we didn't even know we were having (it's actually next weekend, where we live, but this weekend where they live)... we got nice cheap flights, and I'm very happy not to be going into the office until next week now...


And the good news is that I've managed to find myself another job, working for the same monolithic megacorporation... but *voice squeaking in excitement* in town!!!


I'm finishing at the arse-end of nowhere on Friday 11th, and will be starting my new job after the 'real' long weekend, so I have three weeks in a row with less than 5 days (and hopefully less than 50 hours) in it!


All so exciting.  Not quite as exciting as lovely Felicity's adventures in Broome, but still enough to make the tunnel, and its associated light, a little closer!


And in the meantime...

I'm thinking about these... some of my favourite colours... nice combos, very tempting... being strong.  For now.

Have a great weekend, back soon!

And the answer is...

In no particular order, Milano, Beachy Head and Hove.


We took a side trip to Milano because Mr G got a bit bored with Water World after 4 days of 'sameness', as he refers to Venice.  Unbeknown to us, the world's largest Furniture Trade Fair was on at the same time, which explained why our fairly ordinary 3-star hotel in Milano cost at much as a 5-star hotel in Rome.  


The train was (as usual) clean, fast and on time, and the railway station at Milano is an incredible building, inaugurated in 1931, but begun (officially) in 1906.  It was easy to find the Metro lines, easy to buy a local 48 hour ticket (without the assistance of the helpful girl standing next to the machine who wanted me to give her E2.00 for showing me the button that said 'change language' (in English) and who didn't particularly like being told to "bugger off"), but remarkably hard to find our hotel.  


We got to the proper station (Repubblica), but the map was a bit vague, so we stopped a couple of locals and attempted to find the street.  One very helpful man told we needed to get on the #12 Tram and go about 5 miles in that direction, so we wandered up to a taxi rank and asked the drivers, who were doing the typical Italian thing of chatting over a fag*.  They all turned and looked at us as if we were foreigners (oh yes, so we were!), and one of them jokingly said "Hop on my back".  Turns out it was on the street (round the corner) where we'd asked the other man for directions.  Ah well.  At least it was close.


We wandered the streets, which, despite the Trade Fair, were not that crowded, stopped for coffee, and took lots of photos in some of the richly decorated churches:

Oh yes, and we had Pizza for lunch:

Then, we climbed the Duomo:

The roof of the Milano Duomo is made of slabs of stone, nice and flat and easy to walk on,

 and there are some incredible examples of the stonemasons art:

And we found the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia "Leonardo Da Vinci", where they had working scale models of Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings, as well as about 10,000 other things, all housed here:

And we spent a highly amusing evening at "La Tana del Lupo", but more on that later, the washing calls!

Ciao! 

Where's that then?

There's a blog I regularly read called "Unmitigated England", which I quite like, I might add, as he has the occasional post entitled "Where's That Then, No. xx", and invites his readers to guess where the black & white photo from 60 or 70 years ago actually is.  I got one, once.


Anyway, in case you were getting bored with the travelogue, I thought we'd have a similar quizzy type thing, with a few random shots from our holiday, just so you can stretch your brain a bit.


Here goes:

Answers, later.  Ciao!

And, while we were out...

More doors:

Across the road from our apartment:

Our Apartment Building door:

Mr Golightly outside a BIG door:

And outside a REALLY big door:

Prize for the shortest door:

Prize for the oldest (looking):

Prize for most interesting behind the door:

All in the Centro Storico, the historical centre of Roma.  Sometimes it pays to stick your head inside doors marked "Non Passo Carabile"...