Monday July 21st.
There are so few uncrossed off dates on our departure
calendar even it may be getting excited. Just over a week to flight time. Yaay!
Work was pretty much as it usually is except most of my
co-workers in Archives know I’ll be zooming to the antipodes next week and they
have been asking me all sorts of stuff about Australia.I haven’t been able to
tell them about the entire continent as I have only glimpsed selected places on
my circular tour in 2010, but I do consider myself an expert on Western
Australia. They are amazed that the weather will be very like our English
summer even though it is their winter. The don’t quite get the daylight thing
though. I mean it is dark at just after 6pm and light just before 7am and the
dusk is sudden. There is no long twilight like we get at our higher latitudes;
the sun sinks slowly into the Indian Ocean and a few minutes later, switch it’s
night time. They also didn’t grasp the temperature range. In the summer it is
not so extreme but in the winter at about 6 am it can be as low as 4 degrees
rising up to 25 by mid arvo!
I had to bring in my two passports to show them, I mentioned
it last week and they are surprised that the Aussie one is so like the British
one in terms of layout and information. (What did they expect a letter of
transit?) My Aussie one doesn’t expire until 2020 whereas my UK one runs out in
2015.
They were also aghast at the idea that masses of food stuffs
have to be thrown away when you arrive in Australia. I recounted the tale of an
Arab woman who, on my last visit – last year – had to dump almost the entire
contents of her hand luggage as the Aus authorities wouldn’t allow it in. I watched
it happen as I walked to the domestic arrivals section of Perth airport. She
was really upset.
I have promised each of them a goody bag of things
Australian when I come back. There are only four of us in ARR so it won’t be a
great expense. Five if you include Mrs B.
Back home I think Laura finally gets why I like “I’m Sorry I
Haven’t a Clue” on the radio. Tonight she actually laughed out loud several
times during a game called “Alternative Definitions”. They had Condescends – a
prisoner in a lift and Gladiator – an unrepentant cannibal. Both of these
tickled her fancy.
We had a go at making some more up as we walked down to the
restaurant. I had Balderdash – a race for those with no hair, and Fairy Tale –
a beer made from ferrets (it took her ages to see that one!). She came up with
a couple of laudable efforts: Goblet – a small mouth, and Icicle – a bike made
by Apple.
We were still giggling over Countryside – Killing a Tory MP,
when we arrived at Dom’s. He asked us why we were crying and I tried to explain
what we’d been doing. He gave a sort of laugh at our initial four but I don’t
think he really understood what we were doing. We decided not to tell him
Countryside as that might be a translation too far!
I thought up about twenty more during the course of the
evening whilst listening to my new CD, a boxed set of Mendelssohn’s complete
symphonies and 7 overtures. I had to wipe my eyes several times as I kept
getting the giggles as I thought of new ones.
Here are my top five;
Canopy – a tin of urines
Kaleidoscope – a device for watching road accidents.
Lieutenant – a person renting a toilet.
Tirade – a bicycle puncture repair kit.
Zebra – keeps ladies’ bosoms firm.
I have copied them down in my note book to take to Australia
as I just know the kids will love the idea, especially Jill who is very keen on
word puzzles and games.
Laura found them equally amusing as we walked up through
Coumes Brook back home after work. She thinks we should keep on doing it and
writing them down, so I showed her my note book with them already written with
space for more.
Tuesday July 22nd
Important news before the rest of the day’s entry; Yorkshire
beat Middlesex by over 200 runs in Scarborough on the last day of the match,
today. I haven’t checked the table but I think that puts them back at the top.
I will update this when I find out.
We tried the alternative definitions out on Sarah after our
swim this morning and she worked out Laura's Goblet – a small mouth, on the spot!
Good for her. She had never heard of “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue” though. I did
a quick poll at work and only Mrs Briggs knew what I was talking about too.
Does this show I move in a more rarefied atmosphere than most other people? I
certain have no idea what my colleagues are talking about when they refer to TV
programmes they watch; I must sound like the village weirdo when I say, “Erm… I
have never seen it!” to any television related question they ask me.
Work was just as before. It must be a quite season. I am
still copying paper files to the computer. This does take much longer than you
would expect and it can get tedious unless the files contain interesting cases.
So far this week there have just been the same old same old.
Back home we had an earlyish meal and I pottered about in
the garden when Laura went off to the restaurant. The lavender had a lot of new
dead heads, or maybe ones I have missed, which needed sorting and I also
scalped the lawn again. I pulled up a few weeds from the gravel which surrounds
the lavender but they were only really small ones and needed next to no effort.
I gave Callie’s palace a thorough clean out and swept the outside clear of
cobwebs and the like. If it is fine tomorrow night I will stick another layer
of creosote on the outside of it. A job I usually do over the summer months.
Cricket. Yorkshire did go top of the table with their win at
Scarborough. Adil Rashid went through the Middlesex side like a dose of salts
on the final day and the Tykes are now 5 points ahead with every team but two
having played twelve games each but they are nowhere near a threat. Yorkshire
have four games left; Sussex, Lancashire, Notts and Somerset. The
Nottinghamshire game could be the decider as Notts are the team five points
behind. Isn’t it a surprise to find me talking about sport that isn’t Australia
Rules Footie?
I do miss scoring for a cricket team. It fitted my OCD very
well indeed. Maybe I ought to scout around for a local side to volunteer for. I
know Bradfield have a side as their ground is at the foot of the hill to High
Bradfield. It nestles picturesquely in the valley floor and looks idyllic. I
bet they have an incumbent old fart who has been their scorer for years and
would treat a woman volunteer with less than contempt. Maybe I am being unfair.
I may send out some feelers next season. I will be away until then end of the
current one.
As I mentioned AFL, the Dockers are currently fourth in the
ladder having played 17 games so far. They will no doubt be visited by the
Rhodes/Smith family combination during the next few weeks along with a Thomas
too. She has never even seen an AFL game on TV so going to one live could be a
revelation for her. I suppose we will be going to more than one now that Jeff
is officially a Junior Docker! Good for him. Maybe he could become the new
Matthew Pavlich? He has become the first WA player to reach 300 games!
Wednesday July 23rd
Dad phoned from Arran this morning. Apparently it is lovely
there and having a mini heat wave. I was a bit panicked when he called as I
thought he may have forgotten he was driving Laura and I to Glasgow Airport
next week. He hadn’t forgotten, but he isn’t driving me. He has got Errol to
drive us up and he is coming across from the island (as a foot passenger) to
the airport (by train) so he can see us off safely and collect Callie from
Errol. What a bloody complication that is.
It will mean we will have the house to ourselves for a few
days, so I have told him we are going to throw a wild party and invite everyone
in the village. He just said, “OK then, that’s fine!” Bloody Australian
mentality! This may mean we stay put in Sheffield until Monday rather than
drive up and be by ourselves in Dad’s house. We will arrive at a decision on
Friday afternoon.
The fact our flight isn’t an early morning one is apparently
the reason they decided to stay on the island, that and the gorgeous weather. [We
fly at 2.15 pm] Errol is going to drive us up and rendezvous with Dad at the
airport. He’ll drive Dad and Callie back to Ardrossan and then they’ll catch
the last ferry back in the evening as foot passengers again. He even invited
Errol to cross over and stay a few days, leaving his car in the secure parking
at Ardrossan but Errol declined.
All of this does seem an unnecessary complication that could
have been avoided. Mum thinks he is being selfish. I was so gobsmacked by Dad’s
new arrangements I just had to phone her to tell her. She wasn’t surprised in
the least. If there is a choice between a simple way and a fiendishly
complicated way, my Dad will always plump for the fiendish one every time.
Well, at least according to my Mum – but she may be a bit biased.
Swam, worked, chilled, read, dog walked, had sex. Usual sort
of day for the rest of it.
Thursday 24th July.
Lots of cloud first thing but I sort of guessed it would
burn off during the morning. It hadn’t done so by the time I got back with
Callie or when we came home from swimming but on the drive into work it was
starting to disappear and the sun was peeking through the clouds, albeit as a
pale lemon coloured disc. By about 9.30 it has appeared in full glory and was
beginning to imagine our bit of South Yorkshire was actually Southern Spain.
Phew it was hot.
I had some research to do today for case law, rather than
digitising old files, which is always more fun. This time I was looking for
sentencing precedents for an appeal against a lenient sentence. There has been
a new law enacted which allows victims of crime to appeal against the perpetrators
conviction if they feel they have been given an unduly light sentence. [Lots of
the lawyers in the firm are quite pleased with this ruling as it means more
work and more money! I sometimes wonder if all this legislation which gets passed
under the name of fairness isn’t first mentioned by lawyers with an eye for a
fast buck.]
So, basically I was given a certain crime (sub judice if I
mention it perhaps) and then have been searching for the sentences handed down
over the years for similar offences. I had quite a list by the three pm
deadline I had been given. I don’t know if it will help of not but the the
range of sentences went from the lowest possible to the highest possible under
the statute with no discernable reason why (if I had read absolutely everything
about every case I would be here for a month of Sundays). The solicitor who
asked for the information was pleased with what I had found, which is all that
matters.
Laura had been getting grufty again in Repro and my spare
lab coat was filthy once more. Apparently it is something to do with the medium
they are printing on which doesn’t dry as quickly and they forget this as they
don’t use this surface very often. She had a really fetching smudge of it on
her cheek below her left eye, she’d obviously no idea it was there. I rubbed it
off with a tissue and gave her a quick kiss on the spot where it had been, to
my surprise she flung her arms around my neck and gave me a really big hug. She
planted a huge smacker on my lips so I responded in kind. I am not sure if we
were observed as we stood by my car in the car park but we didn’t care.
On the drive home she confessed that working in Repro,
although paying good money, was dullsville in the extreme. She would be glad to
be able to take the money and run tomorrow! I sort of figured she may find it
not as thrilling as she first thought but it has put a tidy sum into her bank
account and she now knows that this kind of work isn’t for her. She has seen
what I do and has been amazed that I can sit and transfer old files to computer
without being bored to tears, I told her that it would if that was all I did
but things like today’s search was like finding diamonds in the ordure. Those
were the things I enjoyed doing, so a bit of occasional tedium was quite worth
it.
She, quite astutely, agreed saying what I did was very like
what I was doing for my PhD research and what I had been doing for my Masters’
so it was no wonder I enjoyed it. Smart cookie, eh?
We had a huge salad for our meal and then I walked down with
Laura and Callie to the restaurant, we went the long way, via Onesacre but I
promised to fetch her in the car to save her lovely legs from the steep climb
back up our hill when she finished.
Dominic was lamenting the fact it was her last but one night
for two months when we arrived and he was wondering if the place would be the
same without her there. I felt this was over doing it rather, but let him wax
on in his histrionic Southern Italian manner. He is one of the good guys after
all.
We hit the charp after I’d walked Callie and we’d had a
shower. The day had proved as hot as I had feared but the house stays
relatively cool being stone built and old. Plus the windows to the bathroom and
my bedroom create a really refreshing cool breeze which helps reduce the heat.
After a bout of mutual pleasure giving we lay and chatted about Australia. It
seems Laura is worried whether Suze and Pete will like her. I reassured her
that it was almost certain they would, they know what a difference she has made
to my life since we became a couple and they will feel that anyone who can make
their sister like her old carefree and happy self is bound to be a person of
worth.
As I hugged her before we fell asleep, we often go to sleep
hugging each other, I could feel my left breast getting wet. She was crying. “What’s
the matter?” I asked.
“Nothing. I just love you so much, “ she said. “I am crying
tears of happiness.” It took a hell of a lot of effort not to join her. [OK, I did a little.]
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