C'mon Fulham

Having been an SCG member for a few years now, experienced the F1 in Melbourne and the Indy Cars on the Gold Coast, visited Lords twice, really my only other unfilled dream remained seeing Premier League football. This, you may remember, was achieved last November when we went and saw Fulham play Blackburn. But to be honest this only partly fulfilled my dream. At the age of 10, as Craig Johnston made his way on the world footballing stage, I bought a second hand copy of Shoot magazine at a school fete and become a Liverpool fan. They were the pull out poster team for whatever month the issue was from and that poster adorned my bedroom wall throughout my childhood. I remember watching Liverpool beat Everton 3-1 in the 1996 FA cup final which began my love of watching football in the middle of the night. One of the coolest, but slightly strange things about livng here is watching sport during the day, more convenient, but lacks the self satisfaction you get from the effort you need to put in to be able to follow your team from half way around the world. Which brings us back to Fulham, which isn't my team. Nor is Blackburn for that matter. So, the reality of Premier League football was only partly fulfilled by our visit in the Autumn. The team I most wanted to see was Liverpool. Hamish, who I work with at school, is also a big Liverpool fan. He managed to see Liverpool play against West Ham, but unforunately Liverpool lost 1-0. When Liverpool made their away visit to Fulham's home ground, Craven Cottage, the cost of 240 pounds for one game was prohibitive. But when Hamish and a couple of his mates, Blunt and Little Andy, dreamed up the idea of becoming season ticket holders at Fulham, the chance to see Liverpool, Manchester Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea and big name players like Lampard, Torres, Gerrard and Ronaldo, live seemed to good to miss. So the four of us have become season ticket holders and will be able to see up to 2 games each month, travel plans allowing.

v Arsenal 23.8.08


Fulham's home season kicked off against front running team Arsenal. Arsenal lead for much of last season, but ultimately finished 3rd. Still, they have a young talented side, while Fulham have looked to rebuild their team after almost being relegated to the next division last season, only a last day victory from 2 goals down saved them. They had also lost in the first game of the season to Premiership virgins Hull, 2-1. As the other guys (the self named Geezers) were pre-disposed at the Reading Festival, Krystle come for her second and possibly last?? game of football. I had told her if the score was 4-0 to Arsenal at half-time we might leave early, and I was expecting an easy victory for the visitors. Instead, we got a close and thrillingly tight contest that ended with a surprise, but ultimate;y deserved victory for Fulham. As we were sitting with the Fulham diehards, it as hard not to get caught up in the emotion of a victory over their more successful London rivals. If the rest of the games this season are as good, it will have been money well spent.

From our seats looking down the touch line. The guy standing up in a suit is
Fulham boss Roy Hodgson

Surprise scoreboard

The seats are located in the corner, but close to the ground

Looking across the stand at the hopeful Fulham faithful

And here are some videos to give you an idea of atmosphere and how we see the action

CARNAGE AS NORTH SHORE SLASHING BEGINS

I know this want matter much to anybody really, but I felt I needed to share this quite important piece of information. Some peoples lives may be shattered by this, while others will sit back wearing a self-contented smug and wonder if the inevitable fall in house prices will allow them to purchase a property just a little closer to the promised land. I am of course talking about this:

"PEOPLE have been fretting in the letters page about where Sydney's North Shore begins and ends. My dears, some advice: if you have to ask, they don't want you living there. But let's get it right. The North Shore begins at Boundary Street, Roseville. It runs up the Pacific Highway, and about two kilometres either side of it. East of the highway is far tonier than west. It ends at Burns Road, Wahroonga. Full stop."

Those who have mistakenly bought properties based on your belief that the locality was within the hollowed boundaries, I offer my condolences. Those who have aimed to work their way up the ladder and point out that in all likelihood you are now further away then when you bought your house. The economic impact may very well bring the Australian economy to a halt. That's what you get for voting Labor.

Jack Johnson in Barcelona, jealous? We know you are :)

We tend to cop it a bit because this Blog is so sporadically updated, or so they say. THEY claim that we hardly ever write anything on here and THEY say that we can go months without an update, and yet here we have our 3rd in 2 days. And as the charter of this blog clearly states that updates will only occur in months starting with the letter A enjoy it while you can because there will be nothing again until at least Actober! Also we do this for free which is hardly an incentive to update that often, maybe if we got paid, maybe through advertising, hmm on to something here (insert subliminal message: click on google ad please). If that has worked properly, then we have made a lot of money and will happily update this blog daily if that's what it takes. Woke up, raining again, caught the train to work. Train was late, again. See, scintillating tales from suburban London. That said, we are just about one year in this country and we have made 26 completed blog posts, which is actually about one every two weeks. Pretty good going really. That equates to about 13000 words, which if laid end to end would reach from here to the moon . . . . maybe.

As the title alludes ever so subtly to, at the end of June we flew to Barcelona and saw Jack Johnson, live, in concert. And it was great. We jetted into Barcelona for about 24 hrs. Our Ryanair flight was at a reasonable 9.oo am, so we didn't have quite the 3am start that has plagued other trips. The first problem occurred when we arrived at the airport and realised that our ATM card was at home. Now we don't need to go into who's to blame for this, it really isn't important. Let's just say that the party responsible has been severely reprimanded and has been put on notice to improve their performance or face immediate dismissal. Luckily we had some left over Euros from our last visit to the continent, but knew that we would have to really on credit cards in a country that neither of us spoke the language. The next problem, really a continuation of the first was that although Ryanair tell you they are taking you to Barcelona, which is here, they actually land somewhere completely different, actually just about here. This is one of the joys of Ryanair where for what you pay that just about get you there. It was going to cost us to travel from Girona to Barcelona about 50 Euros, and we only had 70 Euros on us. Faced with a dilemma we decided to hire a car. While a little more expensive it was a great decision, though when I first jumped in the car and realised everything was on the wrong side, I don't think either of us were convinced. Particularly as the car was a manual. We took a leisurely route to Barcelona, avoiding the bland motorways that so blight the countryside and reduce every trip in every country to a single common experience, without charm or appeal.

The view of the countryside from our car, it got even better once we hit the ocean road, just trust us on that. Notice the clear blue sky though.

We instead found ourselves meandering down the Spanish coast on a bright, sunny summers day. We learnt several things on this trip. 1. Spain is a beautiful country 2. We would like to go back to the Costa Brava region again 3. Spain is much warmer the England and 4. Spain has road side ladies . . . of the night, during the day. And they get to sit and shade themselves. Must have a good union.

We arrived in Barcelona in the late afternoon and managed to find our way there without having or causing an accident, going the wrong way through a roundabout, having the aid of a GPS or speaking even a single word of Spanish, very impressive. We found our Hotel and had a look around the streets of Barcelona.

The castle wall behind our hotel. This picture was taken from our room.


One of the back streets that seem to maze their way around the city . . . . . .

before you stumble back upon a main street. Remember to look left as you cross!

The highlights here included attempting to park in the smallest car spaces ever seen in a car park, a very nice dinner in a little Spanish restaurant that had what looked like preserved meat carcasses hanging from the ceiling, the completely naked man walking down the street who had some people stop him to take a photo with him and then the realisation that we needed to go to Jack Johnson, but really had no idea where it was. Actually, that's not entirely true. We knew it was in Badalona, which we had seen signs for on our drive into the city. We knew it was being held at the Olympic Basketball Stadium, we knew that we didn't know where that was and we knew we didn't speak Spanish. I did ask at a information booth in Barcelona, but obviously all those working here when Barcelona held the Olympics back in 1992 have been sacked or moved on to bigger and better things, because they had no idea. Spain and Basketball actually have a bit of a chequered relationship - check here and here, so maybe they just didn't want to be associated with the sport.

We decided to drive to Badalona and just drive around until we stumbled on the right place. That would work at Homebush because there is nothing else at Homebush, but as we stumbled off a freeway exit to Badalona, that at that point I thought may have been the wrong exit, we weren't entirely confident our strategy would pay off real quick. Plan B was quickly enacted, whereby I went to the first servo I saw and tucked in with the intention of covertly looking up directions in a street directory and using it without paying. Unfortunately service stations in Spain don't sell maps. So I needed to ask the attendant, or representante de servicio al cliente who spoke no English. I flashed him my ticket, he gave me a knowing look that suggested I wasn't the first nor would I be the last dumb foreigner to require his assistance, calmly led me to the window at the back of the store and pointed across the street. Success!!

The show was great, the first act we particularly enjoyed. He's name is Mason Jennings and I've included a few links for those inclined to listen to good music.
- Be Here Now
- Jackson Square

The second support act was G Love and the Special Sauce, which were about as good as the name suggests. Here some songs to check out anyway, but we found the lead singer, G Love himself, really, really annoying.
- Cold Beverage
- Baby got Sauce

Jack was very good, though a little hard to see through the thick haze. In Spain, the 3rd World country that it is, smoking inside is still allowed and the venue was a smogged filled, gasping for breathe experience that leaves you wondering how anyone thinks smoking in public venues was or is ever a good idea. That aside we had saw a really good show, and so can you if you want.
- Angel/Better Together
- Go On
- Sitting Waiting Wishing
- Rodeo Clowns
- Good People
- Banana Pancakes
- Times Like These

The show was was also notable for the oppressive humidity, the like of which we haven't experienced for almost a year now. Actually, the next day when we flew out, was our first day over 30 degrees since Bangkok last August, and still our only day over 30 despite the season being summer. Because we were really only there for the one night we only had a cursory look but it looks like a very beautiful city and we are most keen to go back again.

Note: our camera run out of batteries early in our trip so we didn't end up with many photos, another reason we'll need to go back.

Two Australians walk into an Irish Bar, and the Barman says . . . . . . .

Our second sojourn of the summer has been another revisit of sorts, bit of a theme here, as we took the opportunity of 1p flights to head back to Ireland, this time to Cork. We actually stayed a little outside of Cork, quite close to Blarney, in a small township called Killeens. Because our flight was so cheap, we had a 6.20am departure, which meant leaving here at 3.00am. And of course being summer, no, no rain, but it was chilly and foggy. We arrived in Cork and had a day to explore.

A bubbling brook in Cork (no the lamp post is not sticking out of the water)

Beautiful sunny morning in Cork looking up the River Lee

After a very nice breakfast at a pub we found, we took a bus tour around the city. Cork is actually a series of marshy islands that have been built over to make the city. Many of the streets run along waterway paths that have been built over and turned into streets. We were keen to have a look at the old goal, and found it very interesting. It was originally a mixed prison and then just for women. It was closed in the early 1920's but today remains as a demonstration of how it used to be. The goal uses lots of wax models and has an audio accompaniment that give you a lot of interesting history and a good idea of what the goal was like.

The main entry to the goal

The goal has turrets like a castle, looks really impressive, a far as goals go

People used to be punished in the goal by walking in a circle until they got dizzy. That'll learn 'em

No it didn't, so they tried this method instead. Here a young Max Mosley experiences his first beating, delightful!

Krystle was tired from being up so early, so found a place to have a quick nap

We also had a look at the butter museum, which was actually more interesting then it sounds, and it is recommended by the financial times. We actually went in their because Cork weather is just like London weather, and it had changed from just about to rain to actually raining, and we didn't feel like getting wet.

Our accommodation was quite isolated, but still very nice (click here). It was also quite close to a hotel which had a nice bar. We found ourselves there on the Friday night and amongst a Football club trivia night. I (correctly) anticipated a large number of Irish questions, and having never finished worse then second in Trivia decided my record was not going to be destroyed by some local knowledge questions. We wouldn't have won, but we wouldn't have come last either. We did enter the raffle though, Krystle's first for an entire year and won a bottle of wine. We later had to pay 20 Euros (20.00 Eur=33.8843 Aud - XE: the world favourite currency site 19.8.08) to check a bag in for our flight home, necessitated by the ludicrous 100ml limit in carry-on luggage. Apparently if you take a bottle of wine on the plane, then ask for a cork screw to open it, the cork screw could be used as a weapon to take over the plane. Still a fun night was had and that's the main thing.

We enjoyed Cork and the surrounding areas, but did find it all quite expensive. A pub lunch with a bottle of wine cost 43 Euros (43.00 Eur=72.8584 Aud - XE: the world favourite currency site 19.8.08), a bottle of wine cost 19.95 Euro (19.95 Eur=33.8097 Aud - XE: the world favourite currency site 19.8.08). We found that we may have found somewhere to eat and drink more expensive then London. We normally pay around 7-10 pounds (about 15-20 dollars) for a pub lunch/dinner wine, so the prices being asked seemed a little high. We had also had a rip-off of a taxi trip. After walking into Blarney in the morning, about a 5 and a half km walk, we got a cab out that cost us 10 Euros (you can do the Maths by now surely). As it cost us 12 Euros to get from Cork it seemed steep. I paid with a 50 though, so I think he was punishing me for that.

What is it???

No, really, no one is quite sure. The town of Blarney is offering a cash prize to anyone who can tell them

How much further do we have to walk, aren't we at Blarney yet?

Another early flight, this time 8.10am so up at 6.00am, we arrived back in London to, you guessed it, rain.

16 degrees and raining, must be summer in Britain

As I write this it is just two weeks until the end of summer and it has begun to rain again. It rains here a lot. Nothing torrential, but a continual drizzle punctuated by occasional dryness. And always cloudy. Winter seems bad when there is so little daylight, but summer this year has been perpetual twilight. Occasionally the sun has crept out and has been entirely pleasant, but it is a rare occurrence. Just as a comparison, the next four day forecast for Sydney is:

Wed

20°C | 10°C

Thu

20°C | 13°C

Fri

14°C | 8°C

Sat

16°C | 7°C

and for London:

Tue

21°C | 15°C

Wed

21°C | 15°C

Thu

21°C | 15°C

Fri

20°C | 14°C

remarkably similar,


We've made the best of it anyway. Money has been tight, with the moving and the like, so we haven't done anything to extravagant for the break. We have made two trips though which I will briefly outline highlights for.

ROADTRIP!!!

Krystle with the convertible mini (and sun).

We stopped at a pub outside of Sheffield that had the biggest fish and chips we have ever seen, this picture really only represents less then half the meal and you wouldn't be unhappy if it was your entire meal. Very impressive size and price.

Having had the mini for 10 months now we decided to rectify the shaming indignity of not having undertaking a good old-fashion road trip. The destination was set as Blackpool which is according to google maps a 4hr 15 min drive 252 mile highway trip. We instead chose this route (click here) which was a lot more scenic and enjoyable. We drove the whole way with the roof off, its summer with a convertible what else would you do, and handle the wind (of course), the sun (yay!) and even the rain (remember its always about to rain here). We took 2 days to drive up taking some nice country roads and getting rained on and dried out by the sun in equal measure. The rain wasn't to bad really, the worst part was going through a town where you slowed down enough for the rain to just fall, otherwise it pretty much got blown over your head by the breeze and momentum of the car. We got a few looks from people wondering who the half-wits were driving with the roof off in the rain, but the good thing when rain is always drizzle, is that just as it is true that it is always about to rain, its also true that it is always about to stop.

We made Blackpool, a little damp, but impressed by the mini's ability to handle the challenge of a road trip with the consummate ease befitting a far bigger car. It helps that he doesn't realise just how small he is. This was our second visit to Blackpool and proved just as enjoyable as the last time. We stayed at a lovely guest house that was hosted by a very friendly couple. The breakfast was ample and top quality, and the bar was well-stocked and the cheapest we've seen anywhere in the UK, including happy hour in Paris.

Tram to Fleetwood on the Northern End of Blackpool

We had a nice time looking around Blackpool, we travelled along the tram to Fleetwood, bought raffle tickets and played tombola at the Surf Rescue fete and had a relaxing and enjoyable time.


We also managed to squeeze in a visit to Krystle's favourite hangout, the Walkabout. Here Krystle learnt that there is more than one way to make a snakebite, and I learnt that some pubs still have sticky floors, how 80s.

Blackpool at Low Tide. This photo is from the North Pier looking towards Central Pier.

And Blackpool at High Tide from the reverse direction. The contrast in
tides is amazing, and did you notice that its just about to rain.

Some Much to do, So Little Time to Blog

Having just realised that it will be four months since we last posted on this by this time next week, but I plead writer’s block, no temporary insanity, no I got it, sudden onset illiterate syndrome, that’s the one. Very rare, difficult to cure, only one known physician in the world who can treat it and having the condition de-habilitates your ability to read or write, makes it difficult to find the doctor. No worry though, all cured now. Feel much better, thanks for asking.

Luckily this condition isn’t contagious so we have actually been doing a surprisingly large amount since we last posted, none of which shall be written about now. Each major occurrence will get its own blog posting with appropriate pictures and be enjoyed as a separate experience rather than just being a bunch of stuff that happened. So here’s what has happened in the last (almost) four months in no particular order:

Mikehadabirthday(thanksforanypresentsgiven)KrystlediscoveredSnak
ebitesandtheWalkaboutEnglandgotanewcricketcaptainPaulandRobbi
ecametovisitPaulandMikewenttoLord’sandwatchedtherainKenLivingst
onelostthemayoralelection(Iknowyouwereallywondering)anditlookslike
GordonwillbeoutofajobanytimesoonThemoonlandingwasfakeWetravel
ledtoParisandvisitedtheAustraliaBarat(Very)HappyHourthenvisitedPa
ulandRobbienearDijonManchesterUtdwonthePemierLeagueandCham
pionsLeaguedoublePaulandRobbieleftMikefelloutwithhisbosswhilelook
ingforanewjobObamawillbePresidentNomoresnowMikesuckedbackup
tohibosstokeephisoldjobforanotheryearMikeandKrystletravelledtoBarce
lonatoseeJackJohnsonSallyleftHomeandAwayElvishasleftthebuildingthe
schooltermendedMikebecomeaFulhamFCseasonticketholderNewSouth
WaleswontheSheffieldShieldtheOlympicgamesstartedinChinaJustinand
KarenKingstonhadababygirlSaveFerrisAlisonandPetearehavingababya
ndboughtahouseJohnandHelenscaravansgotwipedoutbytornadosMiniro
adtripMikeandKrystlemovedhouseandfoundsomecotenantstosharewith

Hold up. That’s where we’ll start from. It has been quite a busy time the last few months. Paul and Robbie of course were here in May, very demanding, take up lots of time, will buy you dinner though so they’re really quite ok. We then decided to move. I had been looking at getting a new job out of London for the 2008-09 school year, but didn’t tell my Head-teacher, who unfortunately found out. Anyway, I didn’t have a new job, so in June I asked her (after giving her a full month to calm down, the British really are the biggest drama queens) if I could stay for another year. Having settled that, we started looking for a new place to live. Everything in our price range was fairly mediocre and we sent some considerable time looking at places that we really weren’t happy with. Krystle then found us some potential housemates and we vetted them thoroughly and began looking for a place for four rather than two. As I write this they are still about three or so weeks from even arriving in the country. They are an American couple who seem very friendly. Krystle rung them and was on the phone to Katie for an hour, before I spoke to her for five minutes, then Krystle spoke to her for another hour. So they might get on ok. We decided that although Goodmayes is obviously the cultural capital of London that we would look in a different area and found a nice place in a suburb called Leytonstone. It’s a nice little cafey (yes I know that’s not a word) type suburb (reminds us a little of the Darby St area in Newcastle), close to the tube, ten minutes from Stratford – Home of the Other Olympic Games, and twenty five minutes into London. It takes me little longer to get to work, from thirty seconds before to thirty minutes now, but it’s an easy trip by tube and train and I generally go against the rush. Here are some pictures, and I promise, more blogs will follow!