Portraits And Reminders of Home

The cold weather is making some strong appearances here in central Victoria, which oddly enough is something I now realise I’ve missed. Riding to work in the morning with the stars as company and only the Moon giving evidence that the Sun still exists is something that will always remind me of the colder months back home, but the stars are quite different over here as is the crescent of the moon and no doubt the winter will not be the same either.

As somebody who is over 25% Scottish, 100% desirable and was born in October, I am more comfortable in a jumper and thick socks than sitting in ball soup. The colder weather is a great time to layer up with the old pleather jacket and hoodie combo (a Turbowolf t-shirt also helps) and go out to rule Ballarat for a day, which is what I did today by buying a new hoodie, some gloves and visiting the art gallery!

Yeah, I rule!

There was an exhibition for our dear old Queen with some of the best photos taken by former royal photographer, Cecil Beaton, I guess it's to mark the diamond jubilee of Elizabeth Regina’s time on the throne, which is a British event I will be in Australia for, like the Olympics in London and my secondary school reunion... oh and Download Festival. I’d better do some awesome stuff to make up for it and to tell back home when everybody else is talking about how brilliant the jubilee was.

Or when they reminisce over another riot

So, yeah, photos of her majesty. All very nice but many of them had her looking quite sombre.

Cheer up, love. You’re on all the coins now!

I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve licked the back of her head. In Australia I have to do with licking the back of a baby dingo.

The rest of the gallery was quite good, although I was expecting it to be one room full of ‘local artist’ stuff that wasn’t very good. But there were some nice works and a lot of rooms to drift through. There were a fair few British pieces depicting green hills and sleepy villages like those seen on boxes of biscuits in the pound shop.

Not pictured: England’s green and pleasant land.

The small section of ‘contemporary’ art was there to show how many straight lines some guy could paint but next to that was the Australian art bit. A collection of Aboriginal and Australian born artists’ work which displayed stuff like this,

This was elsewhere, but still Australian (hence the Eureka uprising thing going on)

 But I especially liked this,

So much so that I think it could be my band’s next album cover... A quick Photoshop later and...

Shit hot and bad ass, I’m sure you’ll agree!

All very good, but now I had 4 hours to kill before I could get back to Gordon as Simon was working until 6.

So, I bought a t-shirt that was in the clearance bit of Target

I later looked around one of those punky alternative clothes shops that also sells bongs, I didn’t want anything, I was just killing time. However, the shop keeper asked me about my t-shirt and before I could answer she said ‘Turbowolf?’ at which point I readied myself for the usual ‘What’s that?’ but instead she said ‘I saw them supporting Monster Magnet a little while ago’. And for that I bought an AC/DC sticker as anybody who has heard of/seen Turbowolf deserves to sell me something of around $3 in value.

Went to Coles, got bananas, milk, toothpaste, apples and cereal. Exciting stuff.

Finally 6 O’clock came around and Simon was there to pick Ati and me up (I forgot to mention Ati was in Ballarat too, but she went to the library for the free internet)

Then I updated this blog.

A good day off, but I’ll be back to packing them ‘taters tomorrow and thinking about booking my travel/accommodation to/in Tasmania. Don’t expect too many exciting tales like the one you just read between now and then, but do expect some after then. In the meantime here’s an old ShitBad track, it’s an unreleased rare demo from the unreleased ‘Sausages’ EP that was never released because the song was a gift to Arran’s dog and releasing something you’ve gifted a dog is illegal in the UK.

And here's one more 'joke' about a painting.

Zorro was always the master of disguise

St. Paddy's Mother's Day

As somebody who is neither Irish, nor a mother, this weekend is all about the start of the new F1 season! But the race doesn't start until 5PM so I'll just talk about what I did last night.

I ate green potatoes,

And drank Guinness,

In the company of my house mates.

There was some folking woman playing some traditional Irish folk music like Danny Boy, Whiskey in the Jar, The Lion Sleeps Tonight and Living Next Door to Alice...

Back off Chubby!

A good night at The Billy in Gordon, followed by the weirdest episode of Taggart ever made. It had something about ginger bread men and prostitutes and 'mudder', lots of 'mudder'! I especially liked how one witness, a ginger kid, kept coming to a detective with evidence and the detective (I think it was Nicky Campbell from Watchdog) was more bothered about his writer girlfriend than solving the 'mudder' of the kid's father.

Plus he was really concerned about people buying faulty washing machines.

Today is Mother's Day and like every mother lover reading this I sent a card, granted it wasn't a 'Mother's Day' card, but that's because it's not Mother's Day over here until September (I think) so a card with a picture of a Joey saying 'G'Day Mate!' is as close as I could get. Still, at least it got to England in time for my dear mother to open it on Mother's Day, which will be before my sister gives her card, so, you know, I'm the better child, clearly.

Maybe I'm the messiah? I do make excellent muffins.

And that's about it for this weekend. I rode down to Ballan again (puncture free) to buy a few bits for dinner (cottage pie, because we need to use up the free potatoes I got over a week ago)

Right, I'm going to do nothing until the race starts. Bye!

Still Packing Those 'Taters

Working everyday has lead to my days falling into monotony. Work – eat – sleep – work – eat – sleep –rinse – repeat. To add a bit of difference to my day today I rode into Gordon on the way back from work for a bite to eat at ‘While the Billy Boils’. Chorizo and scrambled egg washed down with some good ol’ sarsaparilla (which was cool because there was some old 1950's style jazz music playing in the background)

Thankfully they didn’t play ‘Johnny Guitar’ once every 10 minutes like a certain video game. 

Actually, music is something this cafe likes and tomorrow there will be some music in the form of ‘live’ (along with a deal on pizza) so I may have to treat myself again tomorrow!

In further ‘news’, Simon and Ati are at it (not right now, thankfully. More on that later). I knew there was something going on but now I know fo shizzle. I doesn’t take a Colombo to realise with the array of clues being shown.

Just one more thing... Keep the noise down.

The odd thing is they are either ashamed or worried I’ll be annoyed as they don’t seem to show any signs of affection when I'm around. Only when I have got up and left the room, then come back in because I forgot my iPod do they even cuddle on the sofa and only once I have been asleep for a couple of hours do they have ugly sounding sex in the next room. Honestly, it’s like a fat asthmatic lifting a heavy box as Minnie Mouse is repeatedly surprised. Justin Timberlake may well have brought sexy back, but it appears my house mates have just thrown it out again.

Justin doesn't seem too bothered.

I have only been awoken by their... um... ‘intimacy’ once, so maybe they have put each other off. I certainly wouldn't be too keen on getting back on a girl that squeaked more than the bed. There, now there's some gossip about two people you will never meet that you can share with all your friends (or just share the Timberlake picture, whatever)

Bananarama!

Too many bananas to eat raw and in non-cake form in the house at the moment, so I have been practising making ordinary bananananas into muffins and cakes and ting!

Mashed banana mess, digivolve to...

Delicious banana cake!

As promised from yesterday's post, here are a couple of recipes I used to create some lovely banana based cakes (the second one even has Mars Bars in it!)

Have fun spending your money on two types of flour and two types of sugar along with all the other ingredients and the muffin pans and loaf tins you haven't got!

A Sunday Screw

It's Sunday, what better way to spend a cool and sunny day than riding a bike to the local supermarket to buy cake ingredients?

But not bananas, we have lots of bananas. 

The 'local' supermarket is 15K away in Ballan, a good distance to get one's blood pumping. Oddly enough, 15 kilometers is all I had to do as as soon as I reached this sign (pictured) my rear tire deflated.

The problem lay with my back wheel running over an up turned screw (which explains the title of this post) and the inner tube was torn with the equivalent of an axe wound running through it. I walked to the IGA super market and bought various bits including a muffin tray to make delicious muffins if and when I got back to Gordon!

He loves banana muffins

But before I could go anywhere fast enough I had to fix the gaping holes that were hindering my bike's performance. To the hardware shop, which was open on a Sunday, and straight to the tiny corner reserved for bike pumps and repair kits (the only things I needed, although those gloves are goo... NO TIME! I must fix my bike!)

I got the kit and took off the tire, assessed the damage and realised the tube was screwed, in more ways than one. I used two patches at first before realising there were more than two holes (as an actress said to a bishop). Turns out the screw had been a bit keen and had skewered my ride in several places on the rim side of the inner tube meaning I would need a bowl of water to find them all and I didn't have one of those with me, so off walking I went, because every 15 kilometers has to begin with a single step.

About half way through Seasick Steve's album, Started Out With Nothing, a man in a van with an event organiser logo plastered on the side pulled up along side. 

He asked "Bike trouble? Or are you just walking?"

"Yeah, the back wheel has a puncture" I replied

He then asked where I was heading, which was Gordon, but you already knew that so I won't take up space by mentioning it.

Now, putting my bike into the back of a van that smelled like a dead person after "being to the tip today" probably doesn't sound like a great idea, but it was either that or walking another 11 kilometers.

You may be happy to read I was neither raped or mudered and arrived outside Gordon's pub in no time, so the next time a guy asks if you need a lift in his van, say yes, because the Daily Mail was wrong all along.

I had a cheeky few in the pub and my first bag of crisps for 3 months before slogging back the last few kilometers to Poverty Peak to cook up some muffins (after finally fixing the back wheel). I'll post the recipe another time, as they were quite nice.

Another small bit of news, Atti, the French girl here, is now working at the spud packing shed. Also, I cooked a banana based cake yesterday with some peanut butter in the mix and it was really quite nice. 

So now I shall be getting ready for work tomorrow and packing a couple of extra muffins for the guys at the packing shed, seeing as that's where the bananas were given to Atti and I for free. Then I shall listen to Pink Floyd as I drift away for a good 8 hours before being rudely woken by my alarm. Then I shall work and come back tired and deflated before posting two brilliant banana cake based recipes. So, yeah, that's my attempt at a cliff hanger, smell you later!

PS. I don't read moon speak, but I asked a guy who does what the characters on the inner tube meant... He said "WAH YOO WAN? YOO WAN PWAN BAWS? SPECIAL FWY WICE?" so I Googled the answer instead...

Me-Love-Screw-Long-Time... Spooky!

NRL Season Begins And I Finally Visit Gordon

Today was the 'rematch' between Manly and Auckland as the footy (rugby league) season starts up again. The first match is always between the finalists from the previous year, kind of like a charity shield match in England but as part of the league schedule so it carries more importance. I sat in the house as the match kicked off and realised something wasn't right, I wasn't watching sports with a beer in my hand! So I grabbed the bike and rode out to Gordon for the first time ever.

I have been here for over a month and have yet to actually stop into Gordon which is only 5KMs down the road from Poverty Peak. It's a village, pure and simple. It has one pub and a small shop/cafe and um...

A hat shoppe?

Anyway, bar.

 I had a couple of cheeky brews and watched the game. It's a tiny bar, but the TVs work and the woman behind the bar seemed happy to chat about where I was from, what I'm doing whilst in Australia etc.

The match ended with a win for Manly and I left the Gordon hotel with a few blondes (that's the beer, Pure Blonde) and rode all the way back over the high way to do some laundry and sit about in the garden with my laptop as today is the first in about a week that it hasn't been raining constantly.

And that was the highlight of my day off, now I'm going to play X-Com UFO Defence which is a stark reminder that video games used to be bloody hard back in the day, not like the 'hold your hand as you do everything because kids get upset too easily these days tutorial level having even hard mode is too easy regenerating health' crap that is out nowadays.

Life doesn't have a tutorial level and neither does this!