Joanne made me promise that just before midnight, mum, dad and I would pose with an activated glowball. Never let it be said that I’d disappoint my cousin! So here we are, each having a New Year brew and sending out our New Year wishes.

Some of the Cooks see in the New Year, Joanne style

I can just imagine how many of these things are bouncing around the crowds at Lismore about now. Hope the party is/was fantastic Jo!

Also a big New Year kiss to my wife, who is presently in Singapore where it’s not midnight yet.

And Nicktor, of course. Who I’ve been missing a helluva lot. x

So, the rain decided to give us a miss today. The sky was blue, the temperature up at about the 28 mark and not even a sniff of rain. At last. Fantastic.

Mum managed to dry her 24 loads of washing without any problem at all. I had two swims – the first with two very well behaved children and the second with some noisy Americans – and a lovely walk by the canal.

A lot of people had managed to squelch themselves out of their homes and were gallivanting around the park down by Double Bay beach. I even spotted a wedding going on near the cafe. Talk about lucky! One day earlier, the bride would be wearing a wetsuit. And they don’t look that good in white.

This morning we went into Caloundra again so we could change the slowly deflating airbed I’ve been sleeping on for one that remains inflated. It’s very odd on a queen size airbed because the two sides lift up as the air goes from the middle and you end up cocooned. There was no problem exchanging it. In fact, it must happen a lot because the girl on the check-out seemed to be expecting it.

Mum then drove off looking for photographs while I went to Sanity to buy our Christmas presents from mum & dad (a load of DVDs). After buying the shop out, I wandered over to the Coffee Club to wait for mum. She. meanwhile, had pulled into the car-park (it’s a very big, spread out car-park) and, coincidentally parked next to Trace.

Mum then went into K-Mart and texted Trace to see where she was. ‘In K-Mart’ came the reply. And there she was. So they both did whatever they had to do then came and joined me for a coffee. A lovely surprise.

Back at home (which is a duplex rather than an apartment!) we unpacked the shopping (including a few thousand Cherry Ripes for Dawn) then realised the Internet was finally on!

It took me a while, but I updated my blog and blips and FB, read and discarded most of my 300+ emails and downloaded The Archers episodes I’d missed. Mum went through her emails as well, getting rid of lots of rubbish. It always happens.

Because the sun was out, I managed to get some nice shots around mum & dad’s little community. Here’s one of the roads that leads to their place.

The road to mum & dad's

And here’s one of the canal just across the road. Down a few streets and through a small alley.

The canal separating Kawana Island from the rest of Queensland

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the meanwhilst, Mirinda had to say goodbye to her mum as she left for Singapore this afternoon. In her words, she was ‘utterly miserable’. Completely understandable. She has been with Claire (and Bob, of course) for over two months now so it’s obviously going to be a wrench. For all of them. I hope she has a good time in Singapore over New Years.

And my best wishes to Claire (I’m assuming Bob will be reading this to her) and I hope the damned trachy is gone soon!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In other medical news…dad is slowly getting stronger. The length of the hallway means he gets the equivalent exercise of an iron-man every time he moves from the bedroom to the lounge. We’ll get him on a surf board very, very soon.

He came for a ride with us in the car yesterday which was a big step.

I missed my one year of blogging! Dammit. I’ve decided to celebrate it posthumously with a very short post and a link to the beginning.

This one.

I had never been to Brisbane before. Until today. I arranged to have lunch with my cousin Joanne who made massive alterations to her plans to go from Melbourne to Lismore in order to meet up. I am so glad she did. We have an amazing lot in common and a lot to catch up.

The day started at the primitively quaint Landsborough Station. Because today was a surrogate holiday, the trains were on a Sunday timetable and there was no-one at the station. The first thing that struck me was the lack of an indicator board indicating when the next train was and where it was going. Absolutely nothing.

Next I noticed the total lack of anything resembling what a reasonable adult would call information. Oh, there were a lot of timetables – for buses, trains and more buses – but nothing to indicate which one was relevant. A simple sign (handwritten in blood would have done) on the shutter where the ticket office normally is would have done. It could have read “For Monday & Tuesday refer to the Sunday timetable”. They could have made this shorter by saying “For public holidays…” but there could be some tourists who have no idea when public holidays are when visiting a foreign country. It happens to us in Paris all the time.

I was fortunate that Trace had printed off the up-to-date timetable from the Internet (pointless waiting for Telstra to connect the Internet for mum & dad) so I knew exactly when the train was arriving and where it went. A lot of other people were not so fortunate. They were wandering around like lost souls, unsure of anything. I guess the train company doesn’t really care. Maybe the Queensland trains are run by Telstra…

Anyway, at least the train arrived dead on time and wasn’t packed. In fact, I have little bad to say about the train into Roma Street. Big seats, comfortable and lots of legroom. The carriage I was in (and Joanne said her’s as well) did smell a bit damp. Given the unimaginable amount of rain Queensland is presently receiving, I think this is pretty understandable and something I could put up with. I had a pleasant trip in.

Arriving at Roma Street I texted Jo to find out how far away she was. She had forgotten the time difference between the rest of Australia and the primeval north and, consequently arrived an hour before I did. She was on level 3. I took an escalator up, she took one down and we met in the middle.

We then hit Brisbane. Fortunately Joanne knew it a bit better (ie minimal) than I did (ie not at all) and so we headed up for the centre of town and wandered up the pedestrianized area looking for a pub. There isn’t any. It’s a bit sad when a country renowned for its drinking suddenly has no pubs. Still, there you go. Clearly they’re turning into a load of wowsers. Or just drinking at home.

We eventually found a nice spot called Milano’s where we could enjoy beer, food and indulge in a fine amount of people watching. And we chatted and chatted and chatted. We have a lot of years to fill in.

I found out an awful lot about Joanne. We are amazingly alike. For instance, we share a love of Caravaggio. (You have to take my word that it just came up in conversation.) It doesn’t happen very often and is quite thrilling when you accidentally find these sort of things out and then share your passion and love with a like mind.

We talked about everything under the clouds, but it was all too soon time for me to accompany her back to Roma Street in order for her to catch her coach to Lismore and her New Years party (she always tries to make it and it sounds like a great hoot).

We said our sad goodbyes, promising to keep in touch and I waved as I left. I then waved again when the coach crossed in front of me as I was wandering over the crossing outside the station. And blew kisses.

I decided to have a wander before going back to the rain-drenched north and visited a few shops, took a few photos, watched a few people, the usual stuff. The centre of Brisbane is a pretty vibrant place! When I grew up in Sydney, Brisbane was always thought of as a big country town. It’s not true now. I actually quite liked it.

As I said, I took a few pictures. While it didn’t really rain during my wander around, it was all still grey and gloomy. You have to imagine how lovely it would look under blue skies. Here’s the river looking a bit swollen.

The swollen Brisbane River

And here’s one of the knobbly balls right at the top. A lot of people take photographs of their relatives sitting on them. I have no idea what they are or why. Enough that they look quite funky.

Knobbly Brisbane balls

And so I finally ended up at Roma Street for the final time and caught the slow train back to Landsborough (with a change-over at Caboolture) where Trace met me for the wet ride back to Kawana Island. It hadn’t stopped raining all day and the Internet was still not accessible.

A lovely day with lovely company. Thank you, Joanne.

Why is Queensland so backward? It seems that technology is a very difficult concept in this state. We are still without the Internet, with just a flashing red light teasing us with the infinite possibilities of life online.

I can accept not having a connection to the web when I’m floating down a river in France aboard a small boat. I can even accept it when I’m in an ancient cottage somewhere in the Vale of Severn. OK, I don’t like it but I can accept. Rank incompetence, however, I have a very difficult time accepting.

Moving house, while a pain, should be quite simple as far as utilities are concerned. Flick a switch here, take meter readings there, tell the post office where you’ll be living. Being a veteran of many moves, I prepare a list of everyone that needs to be informed and gradually work my way through the list. Obviously, the Internet is high on the list.

In Britain (the country that is usually regarded as backward when it comes to customer satisfaction and populated with a swathe of Victor Meldrew clones) the Internet tends to be changed when your BT (or other provider) account is moved. Very painless and (it seems) simple. For our last move, I just plugged the equipment in and, voila, I had the world at my fingertips.

I’m sure Telstra would say that it’s because it is Christmas and they are short staffed or that the rain and floods all along the east coast are hampering their essential work. That’s all fair enough and I accept that other people are having a very difficult time but they knew about this change two weeks ago when mum originally rang Telstra.

What happened then was the woman she spoke to, instead of just giving mum the existing number at the new place (which had an Internet connection) gave her a new one. She also promised the whole thing would be up and running when they moved in on the 21st.

I wish I knew her name. I’d be splashing it over the Internet (when eventually I get back on the Internet) saying how useless she is and how she needs some basic training in order to do her job properly. This was problem number one.

So mum and dad move in and the phone works fine but the Internet is non-existent. So mum rang again and spoke to some other woman in Adelaide who explained how the first woman had stuffed up, claiming she would fix it straight away and we would have the Internet on Christmas Eve.

It’s funny how we always trust these people because we assume they know what they’re doing. What tosh! We had no Internet on Christmas Eve. So mum rang again and this time a guy told her the second woman had forgotten to flick a switch for the ADSL (or something equally confusing) and now we’d not have a connection until Monday or Tuesday.

It’s Monday as I type this and we still have no connection.

The biggest problem is that we have no recourse. Because service providers force us to take out contracts rather than pay for services as we use them, they can do whatever they like. Mum and dad will still pay for the time they have been without the service they are paying for.

Imagine it was petrol. Each month you have to pay, up front for a fixed amount of petrol. Whether you use it or not. If your petrol station is closed for some reason and you can’t get any petrol, tough luck. You’ve already paid. The petrol company couldn’t give a toss. Sounds silly but it’s exactly the same. We pay in advance for services which we may not get and have no recourse. Sometimes I hate capitalism.

Rant over. For a bit.

Tonight I was lucky enough to enjoy my nephew’s famous lasagne. I’ve heard a lot about it. It has been praised far and wide. (Actually a guy stopped me in Caloundra High Street today and told me how good it was and I didn’t ask him anything.) Here’s a photo of it.

Feeding the 10,000

It was lovely and well worth the wait. It was also HUGE. Not wishing to dob anyone in but…someone didn’t finish their’s. Actually, three someones didn’t. Four, if you count the embryo.

Anyway, I had a lovely night at chez Chris & Chloe and was roundly stuffed with delicious food and quenched with Bob’s beer (cheers, Bob). A pity I didn’t get to see Michael & Emma again but hey ho, there you go. Apparently I try and avoid relatives too*.

I finished the night with a much appreciated nightcap at Trace & Bob’s, swapping horror alcohol related stories of excess. And dog dreaming.

I thought I’d include a shot of the happy parents to be. I’m not sure why Chloe is pointing at Chris’s forehead.

Chloe showing Chris where his brain is

* Just in case anyone finds that offensive…it’s a joke!

Rain, rain and more rain. And humidity. And really, really, really bad cricket. That just about sums up my boxing day. I visited the pool twice and forced mum to walk 20 miles to get the Sunday paper but otherwise dad & I sat and watched the dismal first day of the third Ashes test.

The weather all the way up and down the Queensland coast has gone manic. There is water everywhere and people are either flooded or about to be. Tonight on the weather, we were treated to the sight of more and more clouds coming from the sea without pause.

The weather bureau claims there will be rain until at least Thursday. Mum is worried about drying her washing. Contrawise, however, I went for a wander round the neighbourhood at about 9pm and the sky was virtually cloudless and the night, nice and dry. Go figure.

Here’s a photograph of the pool area, at which I am spending an increasing number of hours.

Where you'll inevitably find me when visiting mum & dad

This is the first Christmas I have spent apart from Mirinda and it is very odd. It just doesn’t feel like Christmas. That’s not to say it hasn’t been lovely spending it with my family. It was lovely having lunch with Trace & Bob, Michael & Emma, Chris, mum & dad. Particularly given that mum prepared a lovely roast lamb. But it’s not quite the same as spending it with the person you’ve been married to for almost 20 years.

Though, while it’s odd for me, it’s going to be pretty dire for Mirinda and her family with Claire in the hospital. And so I feel torn. Here, there, on our own. Christmas is an odd time. For an atheist, it is a time for reflection and family. But how do you spread yourself thin enough? It’s not possible to be in all places at once.

The weather for Christmas day was vile. According to Joanne, who I spoke to on the phone, it is deliciously cold in Melbourne. How annoyerating is that? Damn the weather gods. And Mitchie is enjoying snow. This is going to be a short entry.

An awful Christmas photo

I should explain why the photo is so awful. I am still learning how to use my new camera and I couldn’t figure out how to set it for longer than 2 seconds with the self-timer (I have since worked it out). This meant I had to race to get to my seat each time – this was the third attempt and the best of them. I have also focused on something odd, like the front of the table or the work bench. I don’t know. Sorry, it’s rubbish.

And a little something else.

Mum tells me that, in her day, if anyone did their laundry on Christmas Day, they’d be the talk of the street (and not in a good way). The people in the house behind mum & dad did their washing on Christmas day and hung it out to dry (waste of time that was), which was bad enough (I’m going to put a notice in the next community newsletter about her) but I have since found out that Trace did as well!!!! Oh, how standards have slipped.

Christmas eve and the rain hasn’t stopped. Dad had to go into the hospital today so the hospital could do what they needed to do, and I was to be left in charge of the house. Denise turned up bright and early and whisked them off.

Trace then turned up to take me shopping for mum & dad’s Christmas present part 2. Before she turned up, and following orders from mum, I put out her towels to dry. The sky was grey in patches but there was also plenty of wind and sun. I figured it would dry before it rained. It just shows how incredibly silly I can be sometimes.

We were in the car, just about to cross the Kawana Island bridge and the rain came down a-teeming. Trace also had washing on her line so we both sighed.

There is a ridiculous amount of rain around Queensland this year (and elsewhere in Australia). The news is full of floods, stranded cars, kids surfing in their back gardens and the usual tale of woe about how this woman’s house was flooded two years ago and took months to dry out and now it’s happened again. Well, der. You live by the river, you flood by the river. So I always say, anyway.

Now I don’t mind a bit of rain – I wouldn’t live in England if I didn’t – but this is ridiculous. It’s not your nice, friendly, mild-mannered English drizzle. Oh no! This is torrential, get soaked just from looking through the window type rain.

In fact, this afternoon, mum and I popped into the Kawana shopping centre so I could logon and perform some very important online stuff on a public terminal and, while it was fine when we went in, it was pouring when we came out. The drops were so big we were drenched from head to toe after about three feet. Mum had my umbrella but that was as useful as a wheelbarrow on an iceberg.

Rain. Mum and dad actually decided to move to Australia 50 years ago because they were sick of it always raining on their holidays. And that was nice gentle English rain.

Which reminds me, in an entirely different weather related vein. Trace had a call from Mitchell (her youngest who is presently in Norwich) in the early hours of this morning telling her how it’s started raining in Norfolk and the snow is vanishing. He now has the wonderful slush to look forward to. Lucky boy. Though he did say they are predicting a white Christmas. And I get rain. And humidity.

So the towels have had about 28 rinses while hanging around on the washing line. Just as they are almost dry, the rain decides they could do with another soaking. Pointless. Wish mum had a dryer. Not that she’d use it.

Here’s the sad old towels after their umpteenth rinse, looking a bit sorry for themselves.

Well rinsed washing

Also, I thought this next shot would show how awful the day is but it didn’t quite work. Still, the trees look like they’re suffering a bit.

Trees at the edge of a Queensland cyclone

We are still without the Internet. It’s like those movies where there’s a handful of survivors in the boat after the ship sinks and there’s a voice-over saying “53 days and still no sign of land. We ate the cabin boy last night. The men feel awful. Jones thinks it’s indigestion.” But without the Pythonesque cannibalism.

Actually we’ve been far too busy unpacking the boxes that mum spent the last three months packing. 66 there were. She counted them. Once they were all empty and flat packed in the garage. I’m not sure why. She has sworn she will NEVER move again. When I ask her why she’s keeping the 66 boxes she said “In case.”

Speaking of flat pack. I’ve been engaged in a bit of construction myself over the last few days. And I’ve found the best set of flat pack instructions I think I’ve ever seen. I was so impressed, I scanned them and include them below. If you find them hard to understand…well, there’s no hope, I guess. I find it very useful that they thought to include how to deconstruct them as well.

Really tricky flat-pack instructions

I tried the pool today. I’d put together the outside table and chairs (see instructions above) and the sweat was falling in waves. It was so hot, my beer was evaporating before I could drink it. I completed the assembly and announced I was off to try the pool.

I joined an 80 year old long distance swimmer and we cheered each other as we swam laps. Actually, that’s not true. There was no cheering. I was cooling down, steam rising as I submerged into the shallows. He would swim a lap then stop, hugging himself as if freezing. It was not freezing.

I’ve never seen the sense in swimming like a lunatic in a pool. I’m generally there to cool down, not exercise. Exercise seems a bit pointless when you’re cooling down in the water. At least to me.

The pool here is lovely except for one of the rules. NO DIVING. I can understand no running, jumping, splashing, fireworks, gunfights, glass, electricity, etc but I love to dive in! I can only assume it’s because some morons can’t read the depth that is printed on the side of the pool and try and head butt their way to the centre of the earth.

But, enough of my flippancies, here’s a few more photos of mum & dad’s new abode. This is the kitchen.

Mum & Dad's new kitchen

And the corridor which supplies a constant breeze through the tiled house.

Hallway in Mum & Dad's new house - first on the left is my room

And, finally, here’s mum, unpacking her delicates.

Mum finding nothing broken

For a while she was a bit concerned about the whereabouts of Catherine the Great but she turned up eventually.

There is a reason we always use removalists. I’d forgotten. I quickly remembered.

Today mum & dad moved from Golden Beach to Kawana Island. From the second floor of a block of flats to a ground floor duplex. Much better for dad and mum has found her nirvana. We’d only been there ten minutes and she knew about five people. By the time the evening was drawing in, we’d been invited to drinks and to Christmas carols! Amazing woman.

But to return to the move…it was a very hot day. A disgustingly hot day. A melting-Gaz type of day. To say I didn’t like it would be an understatement. I guess you get the idea.

Bob turned up in the world’s biggest van and manfully reversed it into the parking area at the front of the flats and we started the long, hot trudge up and down the stairs, carrying heavy objects, sweating gallons. By the end of the day, regardless of how much water I swallowed, I was a dried up husk.

I shouldn’t moan so much but, honestly, at 55 I should be directing some other poor bastard, not lugging boxes and furniture myself! I guess it’s a just recompense for my multitude of sins. I’m hoping they’re assuaged now. I don’t want to go through that again.

As bad as I make it sound, we managed it all in two trips and about four hours. Tonight I have set up all the electronic stuff (we are being forced to wait for the Internet because Telstra is plain incompetent), put together a flat pack dining table and chairs and searched for various essentials that mum packed into the ‘last box’. It seems there were about 18 of these.

Still, the bedrooms are prepared, we’ve had our fish supper (it was supposed to be three whiting with lemon and chips and six potato scallops but ended up being four whiting and lime and ten potato scallops…don’t ask me why but it may have something to do with my hair…according to mum) and I’m about ready to collapse. Mum has just yelled out that she is off to bed in 10 minutes. Sounds brilliant.

Here’s a view up the side of mum and dad’s new duplex. I’ll take some interior shots as the boxes are reduced.

Mum & Dad's new place at Kawana Island

I keep forgetting to mention a headline I spotted on a TV news ticker a while back (after the Brisbane Test, actually). It read:

Selectors uncertain about choice of Beer

It relates to the introduction of an inexperienced (in Test cricket) Australian cricketer whose surname is Beer and I have to believe that it was expressed this way on purpose.