HOW MUCH

A few of us went karting out at fully sick Eastern Creek the other week.

After sweating our ass's off for about 2 hours...im more of a lower back, feet & forehead sweater, just for the record.

We then went to the Cricketers Arms for a beer afterwards, it was a lovely little pub reminded me of the sort of pub from the motherland / Oxfordshire...anyway i go to order 2 pints and a schnitzel and i am in return asked for forty three Australian Dollars. I hand over the cash, as I ask how much the pints are ($8.00 she replies) as she is sorting out my change I am doing some very basic mental arithmetic, $8.00 x 2 + $22.50 = . . . . about 20 seconds later I blurt out...

"ERRR excuse me 8 x 2 is 16 + 22.50 is 38.50....how did you get to 43.00??"
"gravy is $4.50"
"WHAT!! it better be liquid gold"....(walk away from the bar feeling cheated, but secretly hoping this is going to be some amazing gravy, that i will have to buy a barrel of before i leave)


The plates are put on the table and I scoop up some gravy all by itself, to taste this extortionately priced meaty juice...and its pretty boring to be honest. As im grumbling away into my plate. Davy next to me is tucking in to the same dish, gravy & all... to which he whispers.

i didn't even ask for gravy....!!

BASTARDO.

thoughts to paper

whad'up.

think its time i put some of the extremely useful thoughts that are going on in my head to paper:

Comedy sketch:
A family are sat around a dinner table with a mountain of bills on the table, looking stressed and debt-ridden (would need some good actors to pull off looking "debit ridden")
There's a knock at the door...the peer through the window to see who is there.
OH NO ITS THE BAYLEAVES!! - in stroll some hard looking Bayleaves.

Australians queing for the bar:
For some reason old Australians...and some ill taught younger ones, que up in a straight line away from the bar (not along it) then it is seen as horrendous manners if you go up to the bar. Wrong wrong wrong, line up along the bar and just have the eticate to direct the bar staff to the person who has been waiting the longest.

Powerade Pee

So this actually happened to a friend of mine...no it was not me.

A couple of friends are driving through this town, with one following the other, as the lead driver was more familiar with his way around.
They have been at the pub and had 2 schooners and halfway through the drive, the following driver is busting for a wee.
Does he:
A. Flash the driver in front to pull over
B. Finish his powerade and start to wee into the empty bottle.

You guessed it he starts filling up the powerade bottle, and its filling up & filling up....until it flowing into his lap when he starts to panic, BANG he drives into the back of the mate he was following as he wasn't paying attention.
The bottle comes out of his hand and covers him in his own urine!

As the lead driver gets out the car and walks back to the drivers window, the following driver is waving him back shouting don't come back here (as he is still weeing into the foot well). But his calls go unread and the lead driver gets to the window to see his mate covered in piss & weeing all over the pedals. And simple says "what the f@ck".

True story.

tenth person to move in

Sup fools.

Since Christmas iv settled into the new place and had 10 different people live with me, now is this because im a meticulous clean freak who has to wipe down work surfaces at the sight of some toast crumbs (completely different to bread crumbs, much more annoying & I have a feeling bugs prefer toast crumbs so they have to be cleaned up immediately) or is it cause everyone is traveling?

Ben moved to Perth with work, Lee & Tom were staying for 3 weeks and went over to Perth subsequently Tom's now in Melbourne and Lee who spent his time in Australia on Facetube & constantly calling England, surprised none of us by going back to the UK.

David moved in when these 3 left and is proving to the longest serving person in the new flat, maybe we should call him "red" from Shawshank as everyone else has done a "Defrain" and ran for the hills. His boat may have broken down 5 weeks ago now, but we had 2 trips on it and that is why he got the room in the first place! Has turned out to be a top fella as well which is awesome.

Jess then moved in (Ben's soon to be girlfriend and my surrogate little sister) so she stayed for about 2 months and has followed suit and headed West. The machine gun laugh has gone now, which is a shame. Also missing having a good old whinge with her, it was always good to come home and blow off some steam about work and have her there to listen to my ramblings, she turned out to be the Jack Lemon to my Walter Mathieu (i have grumpy old men set on the Foxtel for Sunday) on top of being my "little sis" you couldn't ask for a better housemate.

Minna, Malin, Matilda & Ebba came back down from the East Coast after Hurricane Hamish put an end to their Whitsundays trip, so they all stayed with me, Jess & David for a week. Cooking us Swedish meatballs and mash one night as a thank you which the next day gave me burps that would make stig of the dump smell like rose petals fermented in channel number 5. I did come back from football on the Sunday to find 5 Swedish girls waiting in my bedroom for me "which is always nice" I was meant to be bringing along George (Nina's boyfriend) as he didn't know they were back early, but he twisted his ankle in the game so had gone home.

During the week they stayed I was working yet another 70 hour week, with the printer constantly playing up and deadlines getting closer and closer (all this for no time in lieu or overtime, DO NOT GET ME STARTED ON THAT ONE).

So during this sh!t time at work and then coming home to a busy house with 6 other people who were always up for a laugh, stopped me from sprouting my first grey hairs I would say.

Now Alexandra has moved in, the first thing she said was....did Jess used to live here. As it turns out she works in the Shark Bar where Jess had worked and we know quite a few of the same people, which makes things a bit easier I think. So after ringing her boss and finding out what she is really like. She moved in yesterday.

So in all everyone I have lived with has been a breeze to live with, and you get some people saying it’s hard to find good flatmates.......WAIT A MINUTE...iv had 10 different people live with me, I’m clearly the person who's hard to live with.
Yeah right, I’m clearly the best housemate in the world and its just a case of everyone wants to live with me.

Gott Nytt År!

Happy new year! hope you all had a excellent festive time off. I fully endulged and it felt like the first proper holiday i have had for about 3 years! no work, no stress, no worries.

This year was the first one without any family, last year they all came over here to me. But this year was a proper Australia Christmas, met on the beach at 10am for a Christmas Day surf arranged by Matt Damon himself (well the S.A one) Rodney! where about 20 of us got in the water and made a mess for a while, ditching our beers as we headed in, this would explain the life saving boat that kept its beedy eyes on us.

Christmas Day Surf.

Then down to the park for a BBQ & a bit of backyard cricket, now i am the biggest Christmas grump you could meet but after feeding myself a nice rare steak and a few beers i lightened up a bit, only to switch back to serious mode tout suite as a highly competative game of cricket got under way, which of course we won. Jayne Wells turning out to be an inspired choice for opening bowler taking 4 wickets in a row. We knocked of the 20 runs needed to win with consumate ease.

As if on request the sun came out and we headed for the beach for more drinking, swimming & frollicking. I wish i could say i missed the family but im sorry i didn't. Waking up on Boxing day aching from all the running around i had done was a new feeling too, normally is a port hangover and in desperate need of some prune juice to get the yorkshires to work their way out. I did get passed around my aunties house on Christmas Day as my Dad still had some credit no his Australian sim card (yes that is the only time they will call, when they have free credit).

NYE was AWESOME too, instead of heading to circular quay and fighting for a good spot to see the fireworks we decided to head to North Head, the entrance to the harbour (about 10k's away) where we had a view of the whole city and could see all the fireworks while enjoying our eski's full of booze, eventually staying up there til 3am before walking home as the sun was coming up. B E A U tiful.

I like to think they are deathstars exploding in the background.

Here's another couple of pics as i can't be bothered to write anymore, Mumsy & D-fens are coming over in 3 weeks so that'll be good. And who knows when i'll be back for a visit.

View of the northern beaches.

View from the spare bedroom.

Some stormtroopers playing pool in a pub in Brisbane.

2009 the year of Lee!

x

oh me oh my

I heard a story the other day about someone who brought a dress because he boyfriend was going to propose to her, the woman in the shop let the customer know that someone had brought the dress earlier the previous day but had returned it later on, with the labels intact also wishing the lady well and to...."let me know how you get on".

Two weeks later the woman comes back into the shop to return the dress, saying she had been proposed to but then the 3 days afterwards she had spent in hospital after receiving 3rd degree burns from the straps on the dress.

The shop owner got in contact with the person who had brought the dress in the first place...and she had to own up! She had brought the dress for her sisters funeral and did not have enough money to buy the dress, so she put her in it for the open casket then returned the dress!!
The formaldehyde that was on the body had rubbed off on the dress then reacted when the next owner wore the dress, burning her. EWWWWWWWWWWW!


I went kayaking to Cockatoo Island at the weekend (iv heard you like a cock or two, as Rodney has said on several occasions) it was really good fun with 2 out of the 3 of us capsizing and the 3rd slipping on his arse as soon as we got to the island, looking like he'd projectile-pooed his pants, this was one of the first things in which the 10 year old BULLIES tormented us for while we were putting up the tents, next on their list was calling us George, Sam & Tim...and the final straw was when they threw burger rings into our tent. We were effectively being bullied by 10 year olds and after, the age old adage of ignoring them and they will go away had no result we had to resort to "leave us alone or we will tell your parents what little fuckers your being!" JOB DONE.

We were invited to join a group of 15 women/girls from Camden who were on their works Christmas Party (from a swim school) they were a barrel of laughs and fed us up with their picnic snack and homemade quiche's! It was an experience to speak to possibly the dumbest blonde i have ever met, who when talking about black people said it with a bit of distain....so i had to say, that’s a bit racist. To which i heard one of the best comebacks i have ever heard (without a minuscule of sarcasm or irony)

Im not racist, Barrack Obama is hot!

JESUS H CHRIST!

Many other pearls of wisdom were spouted by this air brained entity, which left my jaw firmly rooted to the floor. She is in desperate need of some education.

$30 extra for my Casio illuminator/calculator watch in bright yellow rather than black, now that’s money well spent....isn't it?

Time's are a changing

So as you can see from the last post, i got drunk at a work do and brought something from the silent auction again, last year it was the signed Aryton Senna picture. And this year after categorically saying i was not going to bid on anything....after a few glasses of vino, the Arthur Daley / Del Boy Trotter came out of me thinking "what a great investment". I have been told by the people who made it that it is worth twice what i paid for it, just need to find a fan who really wants to buy it.

During the last few weeks iv moved house, we've moved 1 suburb out of Manly now, so its a bit cheaper to live and I shouldn't be going out as much as it's not as easy to "pop out for 1 beer (who ever has 1 beer)"
Also have been interviewing for a new house mate for the spare room, and my current housemate Ben leaves to go and live in Perth in mid Jan, so will need to find someone for his room too. All very exciting as will be meeting & living with new people and making new friends...but if they turn out to be the sort of person who leaves tea bags in the sink & comes home drunk and goes for a wee in the corner on my Don Bradman cricket bat then that wouldn't be so great.

D-fens (aka Mr Wainwright Snr to you!) was over for the last 2 weeks, hopefully he had a good time de-stressing from work and catching up with "#1 son" (aint that right Russ) we went and visiting Lindfield where he lived when he was 4-6yrs old....good job the grandparents couldn't settle here otherwise i wouldn't even be here.
A couple of mates have landed in Melbourne over the weekend and are coming up for a few days on Wed, and Dunny should be here in early new year so looking forward to that. Also counting down the days til we get a nice break from work! 3 weeks off is just what i need.

So after the last 4-5months being pretty lousy, things (i hope) are on the up!