Teenage woes..

Or rather the woes of the parent...

I have picking up duty for #1 when he finishes work. Now I finish work after him, and so he is expected to walk or catch a bus for the short distance between our two work places. This should take him about twenty minutes. If he can't manage it I will pick him up at work, he only has to wait there. Is this too much to ask? Yes.

So far this week, on the first day he finished at four and I finished at six. I rang him, "Where are you?" " I don't know." " What do you mean?" " I'm ..er...I'm." "What can you see?" " Shops." ( No s**t Sherlock, I work in the town centre.)" Which shop can you see?" " Ummmm..." " Look at the sign...can you read it?" (Remember he is 17..) " Oh! Yes, I'm at.*****" "Stay there , I'll come and get you."

Day two and after a stern warning he had to be at my work by eight. At six I rang him. " Where are you? " " At the bus stop." " Good, see you soon." At seven I rang him, " Where are you?" " At the other bus stop." "Excuse me...get on the next bus..." At eight I rang him. "Where are you?" " At ********." " How did you get there? That is ten miles in the wrong direction, stay there, I'll come and get you. "

Day three, I finish at 4, I am coming to your work, stay there! "Where are you?". "At your work, where are you?"

We did try "Be where we want when we want or you're walking", this led to several after midnight trips back into town, and when you get up at five am that is no fun. I have to think of another plan.

New glasses

I have been telling Homer for some time that he needs glasses for driving, usually in a shrill voice accompanied by the phrase " BRAKES, please in the name of god BRAKES!"

Finally he went to the optician and had his eyes tested and ordered his glasses. Today was the day they finally arrived and he went to collect them. This was all done in top secret, mainly to annoy th s**t out of me I think. By the time I got home from work I was in a fine old state to see the new glasses.

I rushed through the door and stood in front of him.

" Show me , show me, put them on."

He obliged, carefully placed them on his head and looked at me. " Oh my God!" he exclaimed.

"What, what?" I cried.

"I thought I'd married the other sister."

He cracks himself, up he really does.

Milla says she loves child #4, mmmmm, that would be with the benefit of half the planet between him and her microwave. I think the sole purpose of #4 is to enable other parents to have someone to point at and say, " See, we aren't as bad as his parents, our child doesn't do those things, well not ALL of them."

I ought to update every-one on the bridge though. Child #4 has succeeded in bridging the ravine in the back yard and is now pondering the possibilities of an opencast mine beyond the great divide. This has involved recruiting all the neighbourhood children to dig a big hole in the backyard.

All the boys are dead keen and I'll soon have a new pond, something I've been trying to get Homer to do for a while. ( The possibility of a pond and the fact that I can see the boys from my writing window are why I have allowed this project to continue.) The girls don't join in, they sit around talking about how silly the boys are, whilst keeping a furtive eye on them. So nothing changes as we get older then.

A large part of my day at work is spent commenting on how silly boys are, whilst keeping a furtive eye on them.

As for indoor activities for the school holidays, well Homer needed to mend the phone so he got the soldering iron out. ( Yes, child #4 had broken the phone by taking it apart to find the ring, I'll show him the f#####g ring!) I don't know why he did it, but he left the iron unattended to get something for at least thirty seconds, which is about twenty-nine too long. He returned to find a paper clip soldered to the cooker.

I have had words with both boys, the small and the large, concerning soldering and the suitable times and places to carry it out. The large boy looked suitably embarrassed but #4 had already moved on.

I should be grateful that the cat was catching up on a missed sixteen hours of sleep whilst the soldering iron and digging activities were underway. The cat had had a busy morning learning to skateboard with #4, she seems to quite enjoy it.

Expat musings #2

So we got to the house we had been provided with and all fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. (Twenty-four hours of screaming had at least tired out #4.) I imagine that my fellow passengers had arrived at their chosen destinations with stories to tell of screaming babies and bad parents to keep them busy at dinner parties for months.

When I woke up it was even hotter. Well I thought I better ring "home" and let them know we have arrived. I had no idea what time it was where I was, never back in the UK. ( Slight hiccup in the watch adjustment department.)

I picked up the phone and there was a silence, followed by a strange whirring noise. Apparently this is the dial tone in Australia, a sort of pregnant pause that you just feel you have to say " Hello, hello?" into, followed by a noise that sounds like the phone is broken. Seven years and I still get confused with the noises that issue from the phone. There seems to be no consistency with the noises, you just sort of dial and hope.

After several attempts, double checking with the phone book, waking a small child to see if he could work it out, and accosting a stranger in the street..

"Excuse me, yes you,... excuse me can you come and tell me if the phone is working? and how to dial it? ...Please? "

The poor man must have thought we some sort of care in the community refugees, but it goes to show that Orstaaaalins are basically friendly people. He was a great help, although he did keep his distance from us, and it gave my mother a bit of a turn when a complete stranger rang her and in an Australian accent said " G'day, yuritethere? earsyurgirl. " ( hello, how are you, here's your daughter). We didn't even offer him a drink, what with the getting of a plane and sleeping thing we didn't even know if the taps worked... can you drink the water?

In retrospect I was wearing clothes I had had on for two days, more or less, and had been asleep for eight hours, I must have looked pretty scary; and that was before Homer (a very large man) appeared (loomed?) behind him in a state of semi undress. MMM he probably thought he had been lured into an axe murderers den. We haven't seen him since, well not if he saw us first.

First thing my mother said, " Have you any idea what time it is here!". Well actually no, I don't know what day or time it is here, never mind what time it is there.

So I told her about the croc at the airport, with a quick aside into "They call that an INTERNATIONAL airport."

Next tasks, transport, money and food!

Musings on being an expat

I just realised that is now seven years since we arrived in Oz, and it got me pondering on how we've done with our big move.

The flight here was a traumatic experience, twenty-four hours on a plane with four children, at the time aged 10, 7, 2 and 1 was NOT FUN. We arrived in the middle of the night expecting fairly similar temperatures to the UK, after all summer there, winter here? Right? No, wrong, so wrong. It was like being hit around the head with a warm wet towel, and it was 3am, it was as low as the temperature was going to get.

This was followed by a wild taxi ride to a rented house. (I left all the travellers cheques and passports in the taxi, having travelled exactly half way around the world I lost them when I arrived- the taxi driver actually came back to the house and returned them--wow! what a great country-honest taxi drivers.)

The taxi driver took great delight in telling us, much to our dismay, about the croc he had nearly run over the previous week at the airport. We have since found out that this is a fairly regular occurence at the airport. You may survive the crash landing, but then you have to avoid the crocs waiting at the end of the runway.

We have acclimatised fully to the weather now though, and as I sit here typing I am freezing, wrapped in winter woollies with only my nose showing. We can spot the tourists very easily at this time of year. They are the ones wearing micro dresses and shorts while the locals are wrapped in ugg boots, scarves and duffel coats.

When we first went to a shopping centre after arriving we stared in amazement at the offerings of thick jumpers, coats and scarves, " Who buys these things?" we asked each other. Its so hot! The answer, we do.

Smiley Saturday...small man still at it.

Smiley Saturday is here again. Child #4's enquiring mind has been at it again this week. Homer's car battery was going flat so he went to have it replaced, taking the small children with him as it's the school holidays.

The poor man doing the work had never been subjected to the Hobbit inquisition before. It's like Chinese water torture, only more relentless. Questions that aren't answered are repeated until an answer is obtained. Questions that are not answered fully are followed up on, if the answer seems to be avoiding the point then more probing missiles are launched to pierce holes in arguments. Poor logic or contradictory information is mercilessly jumped on.

As an example, " Do you work here?"..."Yes". "Do you get paid?", "How much". " No, exactly how much and how often?" ( Homer intervened here and explained that the boss was doing the work so he didn't get paid, he just paid everyone else.) " Who does he pay?" ..."the people that work here" ..."So does he have any money left each week". "Just enough to give the tax man his money and buy petrol for his car."

"What are you doing now?"... " How much do you spend on petrol a week?"..." No, exactly what size spanner are you using and why are you taking that bolt off first?"... "What happens if you take the other one off first?"... "Will you die if you do it wrong?"... ( Always at the forefront of #4's mind in view of his activities.)... " How many of these do you do a day?"... " How much do you charge?"... " So that means you get $xxxx a day, how much do you pay the men who work here?" Another question headed off by the father of the hobbit.

The questioning went on for the full length of the battery replacement. Number 4 employs the wrong foot technique of questioning, he asks questions along several different threads simultaneously, returning to subjects you thought you had covered and got away with later in the conversation.

The battery replacement was probably the quickest and most stressful job the poor man had had to do that week. He commented at the end of his ordeal that the Gestapo couldn't get information out of him now, and we should hire out #4 for training SAS recruits in interrogation, how to do it and how to withstand it.

" Is he always like this?"

" Yes"

" How come he's still alive?, No wonder you look stressed out."


Children were loaded back into the car and they left. Imagine the man's horror to see them return five minutes later. " Oh no!...er... I mean is there something wrong?"

" Um, no, I thought I was watching him, but you might want these back." Sheepishly Homer returned two spark plug spanners and a hammer.

"How did he get those? He was stood next to me watching all the time, how did he.." Homer said the look of confusion on the poor man's face was nearly worth the embarrassment. He couldn't really blame Homer for #4 having liberated the tools as he had never seen #4 leave his side or pick them up either. " I was worried for a moment that he had follow up questions" Nervous laughter.

And he's not even started on "Where do babies come from?" ...yet.

You Were a Lynx

You are a great knower and keeper of secrets. A bit psychic, you can bring out hidden truths.

What Animal Were You In a Past Life?

Sometimes I could just....

Todays paper features a full page story from a "self-confessed" hoon. He is protesting against the new laws that allow the police to take away his $50,000 baby if he is caught repeatedly hooning. (Yes, he refers to his car as his baby.)

He says that it amounts to stealing by the police if they take his car off him, and goes on to say that,yes he does speed, and disobeys road rules, and bullies other drivers out of his way if they don't shift. He sees nothing wrong with tailgating or speeding through school zones, or doing burnouts and donuts on residential streets.

Of course he is young and has no children playing on those streeets or attending those schools. He can't see that repeated fines and driving bans don't stop habitual offenders, and cheerfully admits that when he has gone over his points he drives without a license or insurance, because insurance is a rip-off.

I feel like clipping out the article and keeping it for ten years to show him when he has a family, or after he or one of his friends has killed some-one. (Hopefully that won't happen, but it happens every day.)

Up until now the cars were just taken for a day or two but this seems like it will be a permanent thing for repeat offenders. Every day repeat drunken drivers, unlicensed drivers, and uninsured drivers are reported in our paper. The post makes a point of photographing the newly banned drivers emerging from court and getting into their cars to drive home. How does our hero suggest the police deal with these people?