Tag: Family

Australia, part I


Arrived in Sydney last night. Skies were grey and overcast. Considered asking for my money back, but today has dawned bright and sunny. Not sure of the temperature but it feels like mid-high twenties, with a slight breeze, which is nice.

Am staying with the Coy family in Denistone, NSW – a suburb of Sydney. Managed to edge out the eldest son (Andrew) in a game of Fifa 06 last night, although the teams were heavily weighted in my favour. Am going to need to continue to fix a team ‘handicap’ to have any hope of competing with these young upstarts. Phil and I reminisced on the Subbuteo contests of ‘86 and how technology had moved on somewhat. I assured him that the Subbuteo flame was still lit, at least on Boxing Day between myself and Slid. Although not this year, alas, as I have another Boxing Day fixture to attend.

Discovered that my Aunt Dulcie phoned this morning to welcome me to Australia. Embarrassingly, I was still in bed. The problem was I woke up early (good old jetlag), checked the time, which was 1am. This was a little disappointing. Woke up at periodic intervals thereafter to find the time still depressingly early. Was confused by the obvious sounds of the younger Coy boys playing in the house from about 5am. Eventually checked my watch to find it was 10.30am. I had been checking the clock on my mobile phone prior to this, and only now did I realise I had left it on Singapore time (-3 hours). D’oh. My aunt rang again this evening, so mercifully I was able to explain that I wasn’t being a sluggard and how I am normally up really early with a cheery wave and friendly greeting ready for anyone in earshot.

Ok, so I have noticed some important differences between life here in Oz and the UK.

• The house numbers are painted on the kerb
• The light switches are labelled (light, heat, fan etc)
• Pedestrian crossings – when the green man comes on it makes a sound like aliens shooting ultra-laser-stun-molecular-disintegrator weapons (I imagine)
• The (sun)light is definitely different here. I fumbled my first few tennis-ball catches on the beach today before putting my shades back on

Y’know how in Scotland, on a summer’s evening after the sun has gone down, it can get a bit chilly, even though the day has been gloriously warm? Apparently that’s what happened today. My hosts starting shivering and reaching for their jumpers. I reassured them that it wasn’t cold at all, oh no.

During lunch today, one of the boys noticed a spider, fairly big by UK standards, on the ceiling. Mrs Coy calmly announced that it was only a baby tarantula. Tarantulas are not considered particularly dangerous, according to Mrs Coy. There are much more lethal spiders to worry about. This is good, as where there’s a baby tarantula there must be a mummy tarantula nearby. I was just considering this, the baby tarantula, and its larger, hairier mother, when the Coys’ pet rabbit brushed up against my leg. It was at this point that I lost forever the illusion of macho masculinity that I try so hard to convey to people who don’t know me very well.

As I write, the baby spider has not yet migrated into my room, but hey, it’s got the whole night to do that. And I’ve got the whole night to think about it.

Night night, sleep tight, don’t let the… yeah yeah

Singapore

Back home, very near to where I grew up, there is a road called Orchard Road. It’s the narrow, twisty, hilly road that took us to church on Sunday mornings, and on the way back, as we crested a rise, we could see our house framed against the Mourne Mountains. My sister once crashed the car on this road.

Here in Singapore, they also have an Orchard Road. It’s a bit wider than the one I grew up near to, and has a few more shops. But I would tip my sister to crash the car here too.

Singapore has been warm and humid, and has been mostly raining since I arrived. Our Aussie pilot came on the PA about 2 hours out from Changi airport, with confident predictions that we were about to be thrown about in a storm on our approach, complete with detailed explanations of how he would abort the landing at the last possible moment, if required. But this was ok because he’s been flying for Qantas since 1967 and let us know this at least 3 times. Naturally, we flew straight in and landed without any problems. Favourite comment from the same pilot, before we took off from Heathrow: “We’ll be taking off and heading east, aw look folks, we’ll be heading that way all night.”

Have now spent a wonderful day in Singapore with Koji, Hwee Sng, and their gorgeous children. Koji hasn’t really changed in 10 years, apart from putting on a little more weight, and losing a little more hair. He still retains a wonderfully positive outlook and smiles a lot. And he still has a BB gun. Hwee Sng, I think, despairs of him ever growing up.

After a morning building Lego houses and crashing racing cars with Isabella (5) and Ethan (2), Koji rescues his kids from further punishment by taking me off on a whirlwind tour of Singapore’s tourist attractions, including, all-importantly, the Singapore Cricket Club. Have posted some photos on my photo page (link on the right). As Koji drives me (efficiently) around I fall asleep in the car a few times. Am not good at overcoming jet lag – having my meals knocked out of sequence is never a problem, as I seem to be ready to eat whenever the opportunity arises, but the sleep pattern really suffers.

Singapore proves to be just as clean and efficient as Jones warned me it would be. And a lot greener than I expected. What’s more, they use British power sockets! I like it a lot here. The heavy rain makes me feel right at home, although thankfully we had a dry day for the sightseeing. Now, sitting at the gate waiting for my Sydney flight to leave, I regret I didn’t have more time here, but that’s just how it goes.

So, onwards to Australia.

In October 1986, I remember coming home from school one day to discover a couple of Australian visitors staying with us. It was my first experience of Australians, and I remember disliking them immediately for their self-confidence and assertiveness! I can also remember being in tears when they left us a week later. Growing up in rural N Ireland, with my friends literally miles away, and a non-sporty sister for company, the arrival of two sport-loving Aussies turned out to be an absolute dream. They taught me 3-man Aussie rules, came and watched me play for my football team on Saturday morning, gave me hope that going to church could be fun and didn’t have to require wearing a suit, and, crucially, represented Crystal Palace and Liverpool in three-way Subbuteo tournaments.

Eight hours from now, and a mere twenty years later, Phil, one of those globetrotters, will pick me up from Sydney airport. I hope I recognise him…

London, Day 3 and the Losing of the Ashes

This is a poster up in my sister’s kitchen, espousing the good old British spirit which carried us through the war years.

Spent most of Saturday setting my a wireless network and generally tidying up my sister’s laptop. IT literacy, like most things in life, is a relative measure. To my sister and her partner Angela I am fully qualified technical support. To someone like Jones I am a technical disaster waiting to strike. He knows the latter is a more accurate appraisal of my IT abilities because he has to field the panicky calls from me whenever I blow something up. However, this time all appears to be working ok after my tinkering.

This weekend I also had the chance to meet Jo and Stewart, friends of my sister, who will be in Melbourne at the same time as me. They are heading over there for a wedding in Airlie Beach, and are very sensibly only attending one day of the 4th Test at the MCG. Rather less sensibly, they are taking their baby son Lewis with them on the trip. Although Jo, like my sister, is a nanny by profession, so if she can’t handle it, I’m not sure who can.

Looking forward to seeing them again in Melbourne, it will be nice to have a couple of familiar faces there.

Last night, I joined my friends Tom and Joy at a carol service at St Paul’s Hammersmith. Tom was one of three flatmates who put up with me for my final two years at university.

All three of my ex-flatmates from that flat are now married. Probably the first to go (my chronology of these matters is a little vague) was Koji – who married Hwee-Sng when he returned to Singapore after graduating. Hwee-Sng was also studying in Edinburgh with us. Tonight I fly out to Singapore for 2 nights – sometime tomorrow I will see them again for the first time in over 10 years.

My sister, with her customary sensitivity, stops outside my door this morning, and announces “I think you’ve lost the Ashes.” Like I lost them myself, personally.

“I know” I reply, gruffly. I had, at some point during the night, switched on Radio 4 LW on the little radio I put beside the bed last night for precisely this purpose. Mercifully I missed the denouement itself, but I got the gist of the way things had turned out, even in a semi-conscious state.

Mornings are not a time when I like people telling me things I’d rather not hear, especially if I already know them. Tom and Koji, I imagine, both learned this. But Alison sounds positively cheery about England’s capitulation. Having recently opined that “There’s too much cricket chat on your blog”, perhaps she thinks this will reduce it.

Ha! Little does she know. Plenty of cricket left in this series. Still time for England to win two Test matches, and cast a gloriously artificial sheen on the series result.

Come on England. Keep calm and carry on.