Park Life



The Parents in the newest addition to their property portfolio 


We have climbed mountains, been out for fancy dinners, met old school friends for drinks, explored parts of Hong Kong that even The Parents had not ventured, but the most exciting part of our trip so far has got to have been seeing The Parking Space. Regular readers of this blog will know that The Parents recently became the proud owners of their very own rectangle of concrete after renting their parking space for many years. They viewed a few but eventually settled on one with three walls bordering it, creating their very own little nook. It was an incredibly exciting day for The Parents when they finally signed on the dotted line and took possession of their little space and I was thrilled to be able to see it after all I had heard about this wonderful little piece of concrete. However, The Mother revealed to us as we were pulling in that the space itself was not actually the most exciting thing to see. You are probably now wondering to yourself what possibly could be more exciting than the ownership of a piece of car park. Well, the icing on the cake was the secret passageway The Mother had discovered to take them from their space to the door to the lift. I can’t say much more than that for fear that people may then flock to it, thus ruining the secret but it was pretty sensational.


So they now own a flat in Birmingham, two flats in Hong Kong and, the cherry on their portfolio, their very own half a million dollar parking space. I think The Mother may have aspirations to be a parking space tycoon as I caught her eyeing up other space adverts the other day. We’ll have to watch that – parking space buying can be addictive.

That's It For Another Year

So Christmas is over for another year and, like every year, we had a boozy Christmas Eve lunch with friends, attended the Christingle service at St. Johns as the only family without young children, took the Star Ferry across the harbour to see the lights on the skyscrapers, had a couple of cocktails in a bar to reward ourselves for being so holy, watched The Snowman and then went to bed uncharacteristically early on account of it being Christmas Eve – Father Christmas won’t come if we’re up, you see. Christmas began with the opening of stockings, followed swiftly by Bucks Fizz and honey-glazed ham on toast, phone calls to the Australian family (accompanied by more bubbles – they don’t really stop after the first glass at breakfast), present-opening, a light lunch of smoked salmon, canapés and cheese, a quick stroll around the harbour-front to walk off some of the booze and nibbles, a family game of Cranium (accompanied by accusations of cheating and a few raised voices, naturally – it wouldn’t be a family board game without it), evening drinks, more family phone calls, changing into evening wear, more present-opening, and then the big Christmas dinner. By that point we are well and truly done in and bed calls. It really is an exhausting time of year.  

Holidays Are Coming...

I’ve got that goosebumpy, butterflies-in-the-tummy, tingly, heart-racing feeling that comes with excitement that just creeps up at you from nowhere. The past month or so has been manic to say the least. An inbox full of work and numerous tight deadlines have lessened the usual month-long lead up of festive excitement to the big day itself. I simply haven’t had time to think much about Christmas, and unless you do it can easily pass you by in hot and dusty Karratha (hence the drive-by mentioned in yesterday’s blog). We haven’t done much Christmas shopping as there aren’t really the shops to do it in, there are no lights through the streets in the centre of town, and there haven’t been any festive plays or concerts.


However, the work is now done and we are preparing to fly off to Hong Kong tonight to spend Christmas with my family. And I have that feeling of soaring excitement, all jittery and hyperactive and manic. I was walking around in circles yesterday as I was too excited to stand still, at which point I made the discovery that it is incredibly hard to type when walking round in a constant loop – I don’t know how I managed to get any work done! So today will be spent packing, shutting down the house, putting masking tape on the windows in case a cyclone hits while we are away (you can’t be too careful during cyclone season here), and doing last-minute shopping. Hong Kong and Christmas, here we come!

Let There Be (Christmas) Light

The Husband and I performed a drive-by last night. Before you gasp in shock at the thought that Expat Wife and The Husband might be part of some sort of outback gang, fear not as it was not the sort of drive-by that involves bullets. We were armed only with Christmas cheer. Well, I was anyway. The Husband was a bit of a Grinch. We climbed into the car, put on a Christmas CD and drove to the top-placed houses in the 2010 Karratha Christmas Lights Competition. This appears to be yet another area in which Australia is actually closer to America than the UK – numerous houses in this little remote town, from which the majority of the population leaves over the Christmas period, can be seen from miles away, so bright and colourful are the lights decorating their exteriors. This is very much an American thing and I would have scoffed at it in England – bar some tasteful white lights strung around a tree, I think it’s tacky but that’s just me. However, in a scorching hot, dry and dusty town in the middle of the Australian outback, these outdoor displays really do spread some much-needed Christmas cheer. They are completely over-the-top, of course, but I actually think that’s really rather wonderful in a place that could be July all year round. There is no forgetting what time of year it is at those houses.


At the winning house, you had to peer very closely to see that there actually was a house underneath all the lights and accessories. Multi-coloured lights adorned every inch of the roof and the walls, the fence and the path; twinkling reindeer pulled Santa in his sleigh on both the roof and in the front garden; Santa offshoots popped up everywhere; a handful of snowmen lit up the grass. It was Christmas on steroids. We drove past the turn-off to find that the house was at the very end of a no-thru road which was jam-packed with cars and we would thus have to park up and walk down to it. The Husband was not happy about this – apparently he would deign to drive past the Christmas light-strewn houses but he did not want to be seen getting out and looking at them. There followed a very un-festive argument, which ended in us turning back and parking up by the house. We were not the only ones. Dozens of families had come to gawp at this modest house that, for a month or so, had been turned into Christmas Land. The kids loved it, as did I. I’m not sure his neighbours did though.

It's Just Not Cricket (this time the game, not the window-bashing insects!)

Not so long ago it felt very good to be an Englishwoman in Australia. Despite a shaky first day or so in the opening Ashes test in Brisbane, when I was repeatedly told by my Australian cousins (I was in Adelaide at the time) that they were going to “give it to the Poms”, we soon began to turn the tide. Having pulled up our socks and drawn the Brisbane test, we went on to annihilate them in Adelaide, something which must have been hard for my cricket-mad Adelaide family to swallow. I had left by this point but I can be pretty sure that they weren’t being so cocky anymore. And it felt bloody good. As has been previously pointed out in this blog, the Australians seem to have a strange inferiority complex when it comes to England – they always feel like they have to not only beat us but ‘take the Poms down’. They are so vehement about it, something that is reflected in the language they use – “we’re going to give them a drubbing”, “we’re going to give it to those Poms”, “we’re going to give those Poms a flogging”, “we’re going to put those Poms to the sword”... you get the picture.


When a traditional inferiority complex is combined with a deeply-entrenched love of sport, you can see why they love to beat us ‘Poms’ so much at any form of sport at all. Of course, by the same token, losing to us in anything from cricket to lawn bowls is more than they can bear. Generally the rule is that if an Australian sporting team is not winning, it is not reported – nothing will be said about it in the media, no-one will talk about it at work. However, if they are winning, that is all you will hear about. And thus has it been during this Ashes series. When they’re winning, it’s all over the new; when they were receiving a ‘drubbing’ there might well have not been any cricket being played in Australia for all we heard about it. Of course, it didn’t stop us from walking around with very smug faces. Unfortunately, our recent defeat in Perth has brought the Aussies out of the holes in which they were sticking their heads and the fighting talk has begun again. I am hoping and praying that we can “give it” to the Aussies in the next test, not because I particularly care about cricket, but just so that we do not have to be subjected to the Aussie swagger.

It's a Good Life After All

With the horror of the asylum seeker-carrying wooden fishing boat smashing against rocks in rough seas off Christmas Island playing out across our televisions this morning, perhaps it’s time to readjust my attitude to living in Karratha. It might not have made international news so I will recap: early yesterday morning a tiny wooden fishing boat carrying around 70 asylum seekers from Iran and Iraq crashed into a rocky cliff amid huge waves in one of the coves off Christmas Island, a tiny land mass in Australian waters housing a number of immigration detention centres. In recent years hundreds of refugees have attempted to sail to Australia for a better life, knowing that if they make it to Christmas Island, which is actually closer to Indonesia than Australia, they at least have a shot of being granted asylum status.


Yesterday demonstrated the huge dangers these people are willing to place themselves and their children to escape from their own countries and attempt to provide a better life for their families in a free and prosperous Australia. A camera caught the unfolding events yesterday as the boat was dragged into churning water and thrown against the rocks as if it weighed nothing. As it crashed against the cliff again and again, it began to break up, smashing the wood into smithereens. Men, women and children, some as young as two or three, were catapulted into the huge waves. The number of dead has not been finalised yet but the toll is already up to 28, with others seriously injured. Witnesses told of feeling helpless as they watched children flailing their arms in the air, trying to keep their heads above the water, trying in vain not to get too close to the razor-sharp rocks, screaming and crying for help.

I watched all this from the comfort of my spacious, air-conditioned, three-bedroom house, on my big television, while typing away on my laptop, in the very same free, prosperous Australia that these people are so desperate to live in. Whenever I or anyone else begins to moan about the flies, the isolation, the heat, the lack of things to do here, I will remember those people who were so desperate to come to this country that they travelled for hundreds of kilometres in a tiny wooden boat, risking their lives in the process. They would gladly swat away a few flies, sit under a scorching sun, find things to do amongst themselves for entertainment, work every day of the week if they had to, if it meant they could live in a country that offered opportunities for those willing to take them, that provided good education for their children, a country where they could feel safe and free from persecution. We really don’t have it so bad here. We are the lucky ones.

Time Travel

A few weeks ago I went to visit the family in Adelaide, a mere 4,000km away, across half of Western Australia and the great sweeping plains of the Nullabor Desert. When we heard we were being transferred to Karratha, I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to see a great deal more of my Australian family, most of whom I hadn’t seen for ten years. I hadn’t bargained on the fact that Adelaide was quite so far from Karratha, or that flights would be quite so expensive. I have said it many a time in this blog before and I will say it again – Australia is a bloody big place! What further adds to the travel is the time difference – Adelaide are currently 2.5 hours ahead of Western Australia. It is a very odd thing to think that I am more likely to suffer from jet lag from flying to another part of Australia than I am from flying all the way to Hong Kong, which is in the same time zone as WA. I left the house in Karratha at 8.45am and arrived in Adelaide at 6.10pm. It took me an entire day of travelling to reach the neighbouring state. It is distances like that that a girl from the tiny island nation of Britain and the even tinier city of Hong Kong finds it hard to fathom.


I arrived at the airport feeling slightly weary, to be greeted with much chatter and hugs and questions from seven members of the family. And this was possibly the quietest part of my week-long stay. From then on I was bombarded by an onslaught of family from the moment I got up until the moment I collapsed into bed. It was lovely really but living up in remote Karratha, far away from any family whatsoever, it was rather a shock to the system. I just wasn’t used to the running around, the screaming, the constant need for attention – and that was from the adults! The Father’s side of the family is big and loud and dramatic and opinionated and it is always a circus when we visit but, to be fair, I am also loud and dramatic and opinionated so I can’t really comment. I had a wonderful time, chatting away to cousins who when I last saw them were not even teenagers and now talk about jobs and girlfriends and travelling. As the eldest of 15 grandchildren, I am sort of stuck in between the world of the aunties, uncles and grandparents, and that of the younger cousins, so I took it in turns to dip into talking about boys and school and university, and conversing about mortgages and insurance and children and careers. Sadly, I think I probably fit more easily into the latter category – I certainly seemed to be able to contribute to those conversations more easily than the teenage ones. I tried to relate to them but I fear that I may have come off as an adult desperately still trying to be cool and cling to her youth. I had no idea what some of the words they frequently used meant, although that could just be an Australian thing - that's what I'm going with, anyway. Oh dear, I am definitely getting old, which is something that my 5 year-old cousin obviously thought too - he guessed that I was 45. On that note, I am really not sure when next I will visit Adelaide and the teeming masses but perhaps I shouldn’t leave it so long next time or I will be assumed to be close to retirement age.

It's Just Not Cricket

We are in the middle of a cricket epidemic. I don’t know whether other houses in Karratha are facing the same crisis, or if they just particularly like our house, but it’s beginning to get irritating. At first the little critters were a source of amusement. In the evening, when we are lounging on the sofa after dinner, we will hear a thud. Followed by another a few minutes later, and another, and another. Occasionally we will actually be looking at the window when these thuds occur and will be witness to giant crickets face-planting the glass. They appear to be drawn to the light, not realising of course that there is a double-glazed window in between them and the Holy Grail of light. They just launch themselves into the windows and then bounce off them. As I said, at first it was funny, but after crickets crash into you windows night after night after night, they begin to make a bit of a mess. Cricket smears have started to appear most noticeably on the patio doors – I’m not sure what part of themselves they’re leaving behind but it’s sort of green and smeary. Not nice.


The worst (and perhaps most strange) of all is the baby crickets in our bath. Sadly, they are not jumping about all over the place and having a jolly good time; they are all dead, every single one of them. We keep the plug in the bath (you never know what might come crawling up the drains out here) so it is a mystery as to where they are coming from. There are whole crickets, pieces of crickets (wings, legs) and little black dots which I can only assume are baby cricket poos. It is very strange and very, very gross. We clean the bath and the next day at least a couple more crickets and body parts litter it again. I don’t know how they’re getting into the bath, I don’t know why they are all dead, I don’t know why some are whole and some are in bits. It’s carnage. Perhaps it is a mystery that will never be solved…

Neck, I Love You

Last night I discovered what it would be like to have no neck and it turns out that it is actually a pretty important part of our bodies. The neck gets a rough deal really. Most people consider it to be merely an appendage on which to rest our heads but when it ceases to function properly, that’s when you realise just how important it is. In the middle of the night, I woke with an excruciating pain down the right side of my neck, shoulders and upper back. Thinking I had merely slept on that side of my body in an awkward position, I attempted to move and immediately let out a piercing moan. Red hot coals were being forced upon my shoulders and the pain shot down my back and arm. The sound woke The Husband with a start. “Whaf ish it, whad ish it?” he asked, the words tumbling out of his mouth in a jumble. I could do no more than say “pain, hurts, oh, it hurts” and point to the area on which the coals were being jabbed. Of course, as it was the middle of the night and pitch black, he couldn’t actually see where I was pointing to and after several frustratingly inaccurate attempts to pinpoint the source of the pain he found it, touched it and I screamed again.


He turned on the light and attempted to get me out of bed and that’s when I realised just how important the upper back is too. It appears that we use our upper back and shoulder muscles to pull ourselves up from a supine position. I had never really thought about it before – you just do it automatically. Except right then I couldn’t do it and The Husband had to support me until I was in a standing position. It was primarily when attempting to swallow the three Ibuprofen capsules that I realised just how great the neck is. I couldn’t just throw my head back to down them. Instead, I had to perform a complicated and not wholly successful manoeuvre involving bending my knees and then leaning my entire body back in order to get them down my throat. After wandering around the room in a daze, trying to stretch out my neck, I was still in just as much pain but I told The Husband to go back to bed and I attempted to do the same and somehow get comfortable, totally in vain it transpired. I drifted off sometime around 4am and slept fitfully, waking later in slightly less pain but still unable to fully turn my head. I have spent the morning turning my entire body every time I needed to look to my left or right and it is really quite annoying. Neck, I will never undervalue you again.

Carol Singing and Sunbathing

Yesterday evening we were sat on the grass on an oval bordering the beach, eating a sausage butty and watching the sun set into the Indian Ocean, turning the huge Australian sky a tie-dyed orange, pink and red. What was slightly incongruous was that we were at the same time listening to carols being sung and passages from the Bible read. I don’t know how many years it would take me to get used to the fact that Christmas in Australia is a hot affair, that it is normal to be sat in board shorts and a t-shirt whilst listening to children singing Christmas carols. The event was entitled ‘Carols by Glowlight’, in reference to the fact that glow sticks were held as the carols were sung. It is too hot for carols by candlelight and, besides, the risk of a bush fire is too great to allow candles, so children and adults alike held glow sticks in the air. Luminous light doesn’t have quite the same effect as a flickering flame from a candle but at least parents didn’t have to worry about their kids setting their hair alight.


We started our Christmas shopping, Christmas card writing and mince pie baking on Saturday. With the air-con turned up, we sipped mulled wine as we listened to songs about snow and log fires and chestnuts roasting, and imagined that ‘baby, it’s cold outside’. Then on Sunday we lay out in the sun and roasted ourselves. If I didn’t decorate the house, watch Christmas movies, listen to Christmas music, eat mince pies and drink mulled wine, it could be any time of year. I would do all of that anyway but it is especially important to be overly festive when somewhere like Karratha, or Christmas could pass you by altogether. Clearly other Karratha residents feel the same – as we were driving back from the carols by the beach last night, we spotted more than a few houses lit up like something from a bad American Christmas movie. You could see them from miles away, all gaudy multi-coloured lights flashing, giant Santas and snowmen grinning crazily from the roofs. We won’t go quite that far but it’s nice to see some people making an effort to be festive in the desert!

Bloodbath in the Kitchen II - The Return of the Bandages

What is with me and bloody fingers? Somehow it happened again – Bloodbath in the Kitchen 2, the sequel to the gory Bloodbath in the Kitchen where I slashed my hand open with a carving knife. This time, however, a glass imploded in my hand. I still don’t know how it happened - I went to pick it up and it shattered as soon as I closed my hand around it. I heard the high-pitched tinkling of glass breaking before I registered that my hand had just gone straight through it. A couple of seconds ticked by before the sharp pain was felt but my brain was working slowly and it was another second or two before I fully grasped what had happened. I brought my hand up in front of my face, saw the blood and experienced a strong feeling of déjà vous. Then I started to panic. I was all alone, The Husband was at work. What was I going to do?


I turned the tap on full blast and thrust my hand into the heavy stream of water, feeling guilty about the excessive water consumption despite my injuries – I have clearly been indoctrinated by the Australian water police. The blood would not stop, the wound looked deep and tears began to prick my eyes. My breathing became shallower, I was starting to go into shock. I needed to call The Husband but my mobile phone was across the kitchen, in sight but not within reach on the dining room table. I stretched over to the kitchen roll, grabbing it with my uninjured hand, and tightly wrapped my throbbing thumb, still managing to spurt blood across the worktop and floor. Thumb inexpertly bandaged, I rushed over to the phone and quickly tapped his number in but the call immediately dropped. I did it again and the same thing happened. Twice more the call dropped before it even rang and I started to panic further. I wasn’t going to be able to reach him, I was going to bleed out until my hand dropped off.

Crying, moaning, taking short sharp breaths, I tried to work out what I should do. Then the phone rang. It was The Husband. I quickly told him what had happened and he ordered me to wrap a bandage around my wrist to stem the flow of blood into my hand and keep pressure on the wound. “Just like before, remember?” he said, soothingly. I immediately began to feel calmer as I obeyed his measured instructions. He offered to drive home and take me to the hospital but I told him to call back in half an hour – if my thumb was still bleeding then, he should come back. I hung up, cleared up the blood splatters in the sink, on the worktops, floor and wall tiles and even continued with some work, typing one-handed, injured hand propped up on my head. As agreed, exactly thirty minutes later The Husband called and I delicately peeled back the padding on my thumb. “Oh thank goodness, it’s-“ was as far as I got before the blood started pumping out of the cut again, staining the kitchen crimson. “I think you’d better come back,” I said with resignation.

However, when he walked in half an hour later and unbandaged my thumb, the bleeding had miraculously stopped. He cleaned up the shallower cuts on a couple of my other fingers, before starting on Big Red. My thumb looked like the Michelin Man but it was going to be OK. I wasn’t going to lose it. What a day. This wasn’t quite how I wanted to spend the first day of the festive season but I suppose the deep red of my blood was at least a Christmas colour.

Flying Home

A late afternoon flight on a western coast can provide some of the most stunning views you are ever likely to see. My flight from Perth to Karratha yesterday was delayed by an hour which was rather tiresome but meant that we were in the air as the sun set into the Indian Ocean. As it slowly lowered in the sky, changing from yellow to gold to red to pink, the landscape changed with it. Below us, the red hills of the Pilbara reflected the light, turning them an array of colours. The scattered, wispy clouds became pink candy floss, the ocean pink lemonade. It was beautiful. As we began our descent into Karratha, the sky had darkened and lights twinkled from houses, gas plants and distant tankers, occasionally illuminating the inky sea. Touching down on this Mars-like landscape I got the oddest feeling, one I never thought I would experience – I felt like I was coming home. Perhaps it had more to do with the fact that I was soon to be back with The Husband, as home will always be wherever he is. Driving back in the balmy early evening with the windows down, the deliciously cool breeze ruffling our hair, it felt right to be in Karratha. As long as we have each other and we continue to see the beauty in this strange, remote place, we’ll be alright here.      

A Wild Life

Driving in rural WA is not for the faint-hearted. Four- or five- trailer road trains hurtling towards you, physically blowing your car over to the side of the road, is just the start of it. At least you can see them from a distance on the long, straight roads. The real danger is the wildlife, and I don’t mean drunken hoons weaving around on the road, swigging beer and throwing the bottles out of the window, although they are a danger to every road user. What scares me more are the animals of the bush, as there’s a very good chance you won’t see them coming. Often, they appear out of nowhere, completely oblivious to the danger they’re putting themselves in. You really would have thought that they’d have learned by now – their brothers, sister, mothers, fathers, aunties, uncles and cousins (or parts of them at least) litter the roads throughout Australia. But no, they continue to bound or wander languidly across the road as vehicles come speeding towards them.

We drove the 1000km round trip from Karratha to Exmouth at the weekend for a little jolly on the Ningaloo reef. It was five hours there and another five back but absolutely worth it for the total escape it provided. We spotted an incredible amount of marine life while snorkelling but the journey there and back provided numerous encounters with wildlife on dry land too. We had to brake hard to avoid a kangaroo or two, a cow, a sheep, a couple of wild horses, and three emus who were in no hurry to get anywhere. At the side of the road were the remains of the animals that weren’t quite so lucky and more than a few who had clearly had an intimate encounter with a road train. We never drive at night as the risk of hitting an animal head-on increases manifold. Kangaroos are especially active between dusk and dawn and tend to freeze when they see the lights of your car rather than do the sensible thing and hurry along. Cows use the warm road to bunk down for a night’s kip. As we don’t have a bull bar fitted to the front of our car we run the risk not only of obliterating a roo, cow, sheep, giant goanna, emu, or other wild creature, but ourselves too. Not many survive a kick in the head from a flying roo. I felt safer in the water on the Ningaloo reef, amongst the sting rays, sharks, puffer fish and other nasties than I did on the road in the car.

Ah, the Ningaloo reef. Is there a finer place in this world? Talcum powder beaches, turquoise water, an aquarium’s worth of marine life just waiting to be discovered by you. We spent a glorious weekend going from sea to beach, beach to sea, back to the beach… you get the picture. Snorkelling on the Ningaloo reef is like immersing yourself in the biggest and best aquarium in the world, and the greatest thing about it is that, unlike the heavily touristed Great Barrier Reef, you won’t be surrounded by hordes of others. It feels like you’re discovering your own personal underwater world. In amongst the brightly coloured, incredibly shaped coral, swim luminous parrot fish, striped angel fish, giant fish of every colour, black-tipped reef sharks, shy octopuses, gentle turtles, spotted rays… I could go on and on. The only sounds you hear underwater are those of the fish chowing down on the coral. It’s another world and it’s a world I could be quite happy to explore for days on end.

Both on land and in the water, it’s a wild life in WA.

In Memorium of a Badly Behaved Goanna

An early picture of teenage goanna

Today is a very sad day, and not just because another insect dive-bombed my mouth but this time didn’t come up (so, so, so disgusting!!). No, today I am in mourning (and not for the flying monster – he brought sudden death on himself). I am grieving for my beloved goanna. If you are a regular reader of my blog you will have read a post entitled Goannas Behaving Badly, whereby I described the laddish behaviour exhibited by our two resident goannas. The baby goanna poos everywhere and the elder one tries to mate every female in sight. They’re little scamps but they were my little scamps. OK, not quite mine but they did live in my house and I rather took to them. They were always able to raise a smile on my face. Well, apart from when I spot a rogue poo left behind by baby goanna, then it’s more like a grimace.


Having seen them every day, wriggling across the floor or playing out in the garden, I had come to think of them as pets and I always made sure I said hello to them. Then, yesterday morning, I was sitting at my computer in the dining room when I heard a kerfuffle outside, followed by a thwack as a large bird flew into the window. It’s not an unusual occurrence for birds to face-plant our windows – I don’t know whether the heat affects their brains but it happens more often than you’d think – but from the glimpse I got this seemed like a bigger bird than usual. So, armed with my Field Guide to Australian Birds, I looked out through the patio doors and saw the bird perched on one of our chairs. It looked like an overgrown magpie with a long, thin beak and I am still not sure exactly what it was as before I could consult my book I noticed something peeking out of its beak. It appeared to be a bit of straggly grass but it was moving. The bird noticed me then and flew down onto the grass, turning its head so I could see what was poking out of the other side of its beak. By now you’ve probably guessed that that bit of grass was in fact teenage goanna’s tail and from this new perspective I could clearly see its head, rendered immobile by the powerful grip of the bird’s beak. I gasped in shock. How could this be? How could a goanna go from being a naughty, lively, lusty teenager to being trapped in a death grip within minutes? The bird then flew up onto the fence, goanna still gripped tightly in its beak, but I could see that the goanna was now no longer moving. He was dead.

The world is a brutal place – it is dangerous out there. Poor teenage goanna was in the prime of his life when it was cruelly snatched from him by an evil, ugly giant magpie thing. At least he had his fun while he was alive and I certainly do not begrudge his romp with the female goanna the other week now. Perhaps this is a lesson to us all – enjoy life while you can as you never know when you will be swooped upon by a monster bird and clamped to death. RIP teenage goanna.

Stealth Insect

It was bound to happen sooner or later. No, I am not talking about Will and Kate’s engagement, although I seem to be just about the only person in the world not chattering excitedly about wedding plans as if I might actually be invited to the nuptials. I am talking about a far more important matter than the impending wedding of our future king – yesterday it finally happened, I swallowed a fly. Actually, that’s not quite accurate on two counts. It wasn’t a fly, it was some sort of flying ant type thing, which is even worse. I shudder now just thinking about it. Secondly, the reason I know it was not a fly was that ten minutes later, while I was in the shower, I coughed it up and spluttered it onto the floor. My body is not stupid – it knew that this flying monstrosity was not gourmet food and refused to send it down into my stomach. However, it also meant that for the duration of those ten minutes I could feel it prickling the back of my throat which was not pleasant. And I really could have done without seeing what had flown into my mouth and down my throat.


In fact, until it came flying out of my mouth, I couldn’t be sure that anything had actually flown into it. I didn’t see anything buzzing around me or hear that irritating high-pitched whine. The first time I realised something had happened was when I felt something sharp in my throat. It just came out of nowhere, as if it was on a suicide mission. Does he think that there will be a thousand virginal flying ant girls waiting for him in flying ant paradise? Running is certainly a dangerous activity here, especially when there are stealth insects flying around. I really need to work on that closed mouth breathing technique.

The Pilbara Time Warp

Like in Thailand, it is often hard to notice the passing of time here - even remembering what month you’re in is sometimes a struggle (and no, that has nothing to do with growing older or a penchant for G&Ts). The seasons in Thailand were ‘hot and humid’, ‘hot and slightly less humid’, and ‘hot, humid and wet’. Here in the Pilbara they are ‘hot’ and ‘so hot you feel like you’re walking into a sauna when you step outside’. In England, the year is marked by its seasons. You get the cold, wet, gloomy first months of the year as winter properly kicks in, followed by slightly warmer days, the trees bursting to life with blossom and new leaves as spring arrives. Summer brings sunny days (well, at least for a week or two) and beautiful gardens full of roses, lavender and honeysuckle, before autumn heralds the necessity for a jumper and coat again and the leaves on the trees become a riot of sunsets and flames. In the last dying months of the year, the weather turns cold and frosty and starts to feel very festive as Christmas approaches. By mid-November, I have normally started the countdown to Christmas, one that starts on November 5th, Guy Fawkes Night.


November 5th is when I officially allow myself to wear a woolly hat and gloves. Often I feel cold enough to don the woollies in October but I know that to do so too early would mean a very, very cold winter for me. Also, English people think you’re weird if you walk around dressed for a holiday on the ski slopes when summer has only just ended. So, I stuff my hands in my pockets to keep warm until Guy Fawkes Night, upon which I pile on jumpers, a big coat, scarf, hat and gloves to stand in the freezing cold and watch the fireworks. Then of course I get uncomfortably hot when surrounded by hundreds of people and standing right by a huge bonfire. But I’m getting off-subject now. The point I was trying to make was that unless I actually think about it, I have no idea what time of year we’re in. Guy Fawkes this year was 42°C. It doesn’t feel like Christmas is fast approaching at all. There are none of my usual markers – piling more clothes on when I go out, turning up the heating, the smell of wood smoke drifting from chimneys, dark days and nights, the first time you can see your breath in the air.

There’s now only two weeks until the start of December, when I will undoubtedly go into festive overdrive - decorating the house to within an inch of its life, blasting Christmas music 24/7, making mince pies, sipping mulled wine (with the air-con jacked up to ensure that I don’t collapse from heat exhaustion), writing cards and wrapping presents. My big fear is that if I don’t make it blatantly obvious that we are in the festive season, I might forget about it all together. I actually had a nightmare recently that I did just that and I woke with palpitations and a cold sweat, terror coursing through my veins. Whatever it takes, I am determined to make December as festive as possible, despite the raging temperatures outside.

Mile-High Muggers Get Their Comeuppance (but more needs to be done)

It would seem that my blog post regarding the extortionate charges airlines levy on their customers (see Mile-High Mugging) was somewhat topical as, unbeknownst to me, the very same day on which I uploaded it the European Commission fined eleven airlines a total of nearly €800m. It wasn’t in relation to fees for flight changes or indeed any passenger-related charges, but it is still a lot of money and it just might make them think. The record fines were for air cargo price-fixing, which went on from 1999 to 2006 before it was reported by an airline that decided to come forward. The illegal cartel co-ordinated with each other to ensure that their charges for fuel and security were consistently the same, effectively enforcing a flat rate surcharge. According to European Competition Commissioner, Joaquin Alumnia, the airlines involved had price-fixing meetings whereby they would ensure that every single carrier in the cartel increased their prices.


The ‘deplorable’ cartel, as Alumnia described it, might have primarily affected companies (although of course consumers always end up paying for it in the long run with hiked prices on goods to cover the cost of freight) but the principle is there. Big airlines cannot go around enforcing ridiculous fees just because they can. Now, it seems, they can’t - they won’t get away with it. Perhaps next the European Commission could look into passenger surcharges. Seriously, what is going on with these airlines? They burst into flames mid-air (2 Airbus A380s and now a Boeing 747 Dreamliner too, all within a week), they are increasingly stingy with what you get for free (on how many airlines do you now have to pay extra for checked luggage, earphones, food, drink? I had to pay for water on a recent domestic flight which I can assure you was not cheap but sure seemed like a no-frills service), their crews strike at times engineered to cause maximum chaos for all, their computers malfunction resulting in hundreds of cancelled and delayed flights and thousands of stranded passengers. It all begs the question - what exactly is it that we’re paying for?

Dirty Phone Call

As a freelance journalist, I am signed up to a couple of press release services which deliver relevant releases to my inbox each day. At least, that’s the theory. Sometimes I receive real oddball releases which are clearly not relevant to my request for material relating to ‘beauty’, ‘fitness’, and ‘travel’. In fact, some press releases are so odd I don’t understand how they could be relevant to anyone’s requests. The other day a particularly strange press release landed in my inbox, involving a survey conducted by a website which sells mobile phones. The title was, ‘Mobile Phones Can Give You Haemorrhoids’. Naturally, I was intrigued, in spite of it being completely irrelevant to me as a beauty and travel journalist. How exactly could a mobile phone possibly give you an ailment down below? Despite myself (and four imminent deadlines), I had to read on.


I shouldn’t really have been surprised that the link was so tenuous, it was barely plausible. It was also one of the weirdest surveys I’ve ever come across, and it produced some disturbing results. The website surveyed over 1000 people in the UK and found that a whopping 82% of them frequently use their mobile phones whilst doing their business on the toilet. I wonder how many of the people they speak to know where they are while they’re on the phone to them? It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'dirty phone call'. In this age of instantaneous gratification, do people really need to be doing something all the time, even when on the toilet? It is, perhaps, a sad reflection of our time.

You may still be wondering where the link between mobile phones and haemorrhoids comes in (especially if you are one of those people who secretly make phone calls whilst on the toilet). Or of course you might have decided that you really don’t care, but either way I am going to tell you. Those who regularly use their phone while doing their business spend on average an extra 3.5 minutes longer on the loo than those who do not, and it is that prolonged time spent sitting on a cold, hard surface that could give you haemorrhoids. So there you have it, a lesson for us all, don’t phone your mate while on the loo and you could avoid a serious pain in the bum. Oh, and next time someone calls you from their mobile phone, try not to listen too closely to the background noise – it’s probably best just not to know.

NB Because I have referenced their survey, I have to add the following link onto my blog or they may sue me – I guess they were smart in sending this release to everyone after all. www.mobilesplease.co.cuk

Mile-High Mugging

I apologise in advance for the blog post that you are about to read as I fear it may turn into a bit of a rant. However, as The Husband is refusing to do his job as ‘ear to all and sunder for which his wife wishes to impart’, I have no other medium. I have just changed my flight back from Hong Kong in the new year as I will now be working as blogger for a tennis tournament that ends a few days after my original flight leaves the country. I phoned up and was delighted to hear that the flight I wanted to change to was exactly the same price as my original one. Now, I’m not stupid, I knew that the airline would charge some sort of an admin fee. What I was not expecting was it to cost $136! How can it possibly cost that much to take someone off the list of one flight and put them on another. It was an online booking so it’s not even as if they have to print out another paper ticket, they just need to change some details on an e-ticket.


It’s crazy what some of these airlines think they can get away with but of course that’s just it – they can get away with it because you don’t have much choice, especially as they all seem to be about as bad as each other. UK and US governments are now cracking down on unfair bank charges but maybe they need to look at the exorbitant amount airlines are charging its customers. There’s no doubt about it – Qantas are actually making money out of changing my flight for me. They’ve turned flight change requests into a profitable business . You’d have thought that in this time of economic uncertainty, when less people are forking out the money to take overseas holidays, airlines would be doing everything in their power to reduce the cost of air travel and inspire loyalty in their customers. Perhaps that’s exactly the issue, though – the airlines are making less money these days so need to make some extra cash any way they can. What with this airline’s recent bad press regarding near mid-air disasters, you’d have thought they might be wanting to keep me as a loyal customer rather than mugging me for my money. This Expat Wife is not impressed.

Drinking Your Way to the Top

The Husband and I recently went to a do organised by the company he works for. They organise something every couple of months or so, just to keep morale up, to encourage people to mingle and to convince us all that Karratha really isn’t all that bad. One time it was a beach volleyball tournament followed by a barbecue (naturally – this is Australia and it is illegal to organise any kind of outside gathering that does not involve a barbie), another an al fresco film night with pizza and ice cream. The do we attended most recently was their version of Oktoberfest. There were sausages, sauerkraut, silly hats with protruding feathers, a sprinkling of large women falling (and at times rolling) out of their beer-maid outfits, and of course plenty of German beer. In fact there was clearly too much German beer. The party kicked off at 7pm and by 8.30pm half of the hall was already well on their way. Most Australians I spoke to had never drunk German beer before and had no idea how strong it was so they were chugging it back as they would a regular light Aussie lager. Then again, the Brits didn’t fare much better. I reckon the fact that it was all free probably had something to do with the fact that by the end of the night most people were hugging, kissing, and telling everyone they passed they loved them. One guy was so out of it he kept falling sideways.

The Husband wasn't feeling quite as much love but was giving it a go

This isn’t unusual in Australia, where drinking is an art form, but this was a work do. If you were running around like a crazed loon, kissing everyone that came near you, or falling into a crumpled heap like a rag doll, you were doing this in front of your colleagues and your bosses. Your colleagues you were going to see at work on Monday and endure endless ribbing and your boss you are hoping to impress in order to advance your career. However, there are two reasons no-one cared about any of that. 1) Everybody was inebriated so you were all in the same boat and it’s a good bet no-one else will remember the moment you tripped over on the dance floor and fell on your face. 2) Getting pissed with your boss is the Aussie way to network – it’s their version of schmoozing. Far from being looked down on come Monday morning, you will probably be called a ‘top bloke’ from then onwards. They’re a funny lot, those Aussies, but if drinking copious amounts of alcohol helps you get to the top in this country, I’ll go a long way!

Another Hot, Sunny Day

I did have something else in mind to blog about today but I couldn’t resist describing just what I am doing right now. Other than blogging, obviously. As it is a Saturday I thought I would escape the dark, air-conditioned interior of the house and get some fresh air into my lungs and sun on my face. I am lying in our back garden under a cerulean sky, the sun gloriously warm on my skin. I can smell sun cream (mine), that heady, happy, holiday aroma of freshly mown grass (not mine, I don’t do mowing, especially not in this heat), and a light, sweet perfume I can only assume is being brought to me on the breeze from the tiny purple flowers covering the tree languidly hanging over our fence. However, the overriding smell as you emerge from the gloom of the living room (purposely kept that way in an attempt to keep it as cool as possible) into the dazzling sunlight, is heat.


You might not think that heat has a smell and I suppose technically it doesn’t, but it certainly affects whatever it touches. Hot brick, hot grass, hot dust, hot iron. They all have a distinct aroma and it is that which you smell first as you step outside on a hot day in the Pilbara. It is not an unpleasant smell, in fact it reminds me only of happy times. Those all too rare summer days in England when the sky is cloudless and the sun hot – sitting in a pub garden wearing a cotton sun dress and drinking Pimms; walking across a sun-baked London on our way to watch the tennis at Wimbledon; stepping out of our front door and feeling the thrill of being able to leave the house without a cardigan or jacket, of wearing sunglasses and sandals rather than scarves and socks. Only those who have never lived anywhere cold and wet fail to still be thrilled by a scorching hot day. It was only when I moved back to England for university that I realised just how much I missed and loved the warmth. Now I don’t believe I will ever cease to appreciate the rush of endorphins that flood my body with joy as I draw the blinds to reveal another hot, sunny day.

Cyclone Season

Monday marked the first day of cyclone season here in the northwest. From November 1st to April 30th, there is every chance that we will be hit by at least one cyclone, if not more. The northwest, between Broome and Exmouth, is the most cyclone prone part of Australia’s coastline – and that’s a big coastline. The area was subject to not a single cyclone last season (when we arrived in April it had been 16 months since it had last rained here) but this season they’re predicting at least two category 5 cyclones – the most severe and destructive on the cyclone scale. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology states that category 5 cyclones are, ‘extremely dangerous with widespread destruction.’ That doesn’t sound good. The Bureau elaborates with, ‘tropical cyclones are dangerous because they produce destructive winds, heavy rainfall with flooding and damaging storm surges that can cause inundation of low-lying coastal areas’. Right, that would be us then. I don’t know what to be more scared of, the storm surges or the ‘destructive winds [which] can cause extensive property damage and turn airborne debris into potentially lethal missiles.’ They certainly don’t mince their words – ‘potentially lethal missiles’ sounds like something a character would say in a disaster movie with a sense of foreboding in their voice, quickly followed by some dramatic music. This is seriously scary stuff.


Because of the very real threat cyclones pose, especially to communities like Karratha which live right on the coast in a low-lying, very flat area, each year the council provides a free clean-up service for residential areas. You’re responsible for trimming trees and removing loose items from your garden but if you put them at the front of your house, a big truck will come and take them away. The Husband spent an hour on Sunday evening hacking away at a particularly wayward tree which had grown beyond all proportions and was making its way across our roof. The trucks came on Monday, lifted up the branches and threw them into their beds, before moving on to the next house. There was an almighty racket and, peeping out through the window I spotted three or four trucks all advancing down the street like some sort of truck army. It was an impressive sight and brought home just how seriously people take cyclone season. The last thing most people want to do on their day off is clean up their gardens, especially in Karratha’s blistering heat, but the whole neighbourhood seemed to have rallied themselves to get it done – no-one wants a tree crashing through their window or a rogue length of hose hurtling its way across the sky and smashing through their own or someone else’s patio doors.

We’ve also got to prepare an emergency kit, including plenty of drinking water, canned or dried food, a torch, extra batteries, a portable stove, matches, candles and a first aid kit. In the event of a cyclone, the power and water will be shut off so we will have to fend for ourselves – not unlike camping, except with comfy beds and a roof over our heads (that is, as long as the roof doesn’t blow off ). The daunting thing is that research has shown that Australian cyclones are more erratic than in any other part of the world – the cyclone might last for a few days or a few weeks. I can’t imagine living like that for weeks on end – we’ll stink after weeks of having no air conditioning and being unable to wash and I don't even like baked beans that much!

They have predicted that we will get one of these potentially lethal category 5 cyclones before Christmas so any time from now we may be in trouble. Cue dramatic music...

The Mane Attraction

In the Southern Hemisphere spring is in the air and that can only mean one thing in Australia – horse racing. No, not watching a tiny TV in a dusty betting office surrounded by desperate men in singlets with names like Bruce and Wayne. I’m talking about the glamour, the fashion, the Champagne. Apparently horses are involved but it’s really about getting dressed up – ladies, pretty and demure dresses, killer heels and outrageous headwear are all essential and for gents it’s all about a sharp suit, scuff-free shoes and perhaps even a trilby. Racewear ideas fill the pages of Aussie magazines and Sunday papers and get massive coverage on television breakfast shows. It’s all about seeing and being seen and celebs make an appearance at the biggest meets, quaffing the free Champers and looking fabulous for the paps.


Unfortunately, the four big days of the spring racing calendar – Derby Day, Melbourne Cup, Oaks Day and Stakes Day – are all held in and around the city that inspired Crowded House to write ‘Four Seasons In One Day’. The weather in Melbourne is notoriously unpredictable, much like the UK really, although I do believe they do manage rather more sunshine in between the rain, hail and brisk winds. Derby Day was held yesterday and watching some of the highlights (the hottest marquees, most fabulous dresses, biggest names – again, I think horses were a part of it somewhere but who really cares about that?) was like watching an English event. It absolutely hammered it down with rain. It was torrential and lasted all day. I did feel sorry for the poor girls in their lovely dresses, hair immaculate, skyscraper heels, tottering about in the downpour, trying not to get wet. The forecast is not great for the rest of the week either, which doesn’t bode well for the other meets. It was 32°C with beautiful sunshine at Derby Day last year – this year it was 17°C with torrential rain. I feel right at home.

Memories of Mars

The In-Laws have now left, onto their next adventure in Singapore – at least I assume that’s where they are now. I dropped them off at the airport so presumably they caught their flight to Perth and are not still sitting in the tiny departures lounge with only the airport’s one terrible cafe to sustain them with crisps and toasted sandwiches. They picked a hot time to visit which, considering The Father-In-Law is a staunch cold weather person who doesn’t cope well with any kind of heat (his favourite pastimes are climbing the snowy peaks of north England and Wales and cycling in any weather, which in England usually means rain and cold), could have been disastrous. Even The Mother-In-Law was taken aback by the fierce heat, which hits you like a brick wall when you leave the cool air-conditioned interior of the house or the car. Having said that, they seemed to enjoy themselves in outback North Western Australia. Of course, having the air-con turned up to refrigerator levels probably helped but they coped admirably when outside under the blazing Pilbara sun too. The Father-In-Law did at one point adopt a granddad pose on the beach by sitting on a deckchair with his hat pulled down low over his face, his shirt on and a towel wrapped over his legs but I suppose he was being sun-safe which, when you have delicate English skin that hardly sees the sun, is a good thing when suddenly faced with intense Aussie rays beating down on you.


It’s easy to forget how alien a place like this seems to newcomers, especially those from somewhere thousands of miles away both geographically and figuratively. The heat, the barrenness, the remoteness, the lack of greenery and rain. We at least had come from Thailand which was both hot, which helped us to acclimatise to the higher temperatures out here, and another world to the UK, which meant that we were used to living somewhere totally alien to us. It’s when people come to visit and you see the place through their eyes that you remember how different to home the Pilbara is. When viewed from above from the plane it looks like Mars, all reds and oranges, rocky, barren and unpopulated. It really is like living on another planet – the In-Laws will soon be coming to back down to Earth with a bang, back to England and reality, where Karratha really will feel like a rocket ride away.

Fly Away

We have been gone for six days and in that short time Karratha’s fly population has quadrupled. Take a picnic lunch down onto the beach, go for a walk, or wander around the town and there are flies buzzing all around you. They fly up your nostrils, in your ears, under your sunglasses and in your eyes; they land on your lips, your back, your head, your arms. They are everywhere. From where they have all suddenly appeared, I don’t know, but we are having to adapt. We are quickly perfecting the Australian wave, a sort of slightly more aggressive version of the Queen’s wave, as we try in vain to bat them away. In the end, exhausted from our fly-swatting efforts, we let the majority settle on us, only batting away the ones that try to enter us through our ears, nose and mouth. There’s no point getting angry, frustrated or upset, no point in swearing at them, shouting or getting yourself in a tizzy (Husband, take note). The flies are here to stay and we had better get used to them.

I think the beach is going to be the place to be in the summer. The cool breeze coming off the Indian Ocean tempers the searing heat of the sun, the water is a beautifully refreshing temperature and the flies don’t like either so, down at the water’s edge, they are relatively fly-free. Luckily, there are many beaches to choose from and, with the tourists having all gone back down south to escape the heat, they have never been emptier. We took The In-Laws to five of them and they gradually got used to the heat. They suffered to begin with but by the fifth beach they were even able to spend a few hours out in the sun – quite a feat considering they stayed in the shade and were ready to leave pretty soon after lunch at the first one. The Father-In –Law got used to the flies pretty quickly too, letting them rest on the top of his cap and on his back in droves. Perhaps he has found a new calling as a fly whisperer - that would certainly be a very profitable business in Australia!

Drinking & Driving

We are currently driving very fast. The Father-In-Law is breaking every speed limit to get us to the airport on time. We had to visit just one last winery this morning before leaving Margaret River (no, really, we did, it was completely necessary) and the journey back to the airport is taking slightly longer than expected. We’re all just praying that we don’t get stopped by the police as I’m not sure they would be completely understanding of our reason for speeding – “Sorry officer but we had to squeeze in a few tastings at a winery before we left Margaret River and as a result we’re running a bit late.”


I must just point out at this juncture that The Father-In-Law did not partake of the wine tasting and was therefore perfectly sober and legal to drive. To be fair, it was pretty early to be sipping wines and we did feel slightly like alcoholics as we drove onto the magnificent Vasse Felix estate (Margaret River’s first commercial winery) as soon as the cellar door opened at 10am. We were not, however, the first – there were already three elderly ladies propping up the counter who obviously needed something to get them going in the morning. Then again, if they’re anything like my English grandparents they’ll have already been up for four hours so it probably felt like lunchtime to them. They certainly weren’t holding back – they demanded a taste of every single wine on the 12-strong list and when told where the spittoon was located, they merely laughed and said, “Oh goodness no, we won’t be needing the spittoon but we may need bigger glasses!” When I grow up I want to be just like them.

So now I’m sitting in a speeding car feeling rather sleepy and mellow and not really caring whether we get to the airport in time or not. Perhaps I should have had a few glasses of wine before the journey to Margaret River a few days earlier. The Husband made a monumental error while map-reading, thinking we were 50km further north than we were, therefore turning off and managing to take a road back in the exact direction we had come from. It did mean that we got to see a bit of Mandurah, quite a lovely little coastal town, but it also meant that we had come 50km back on ourselves and, by the time we got back on to the road we were never supposed to have left, had wasted an entire hour. I didn’t think it was right when we turned off but The Husband will not be told he’s wrong, especially when it comes to anything to do with cars, driving and maps. Perhaps all car journeys undertaken with one’s husband should involve a stop at a winery beforehand.

Coast, Cave & Karri Trees

Margaret River isn’t only about wineries. I mean, it’s mostly about wineries, obviously, and if we were here for longer I would have done my damnedest to visit as many as possible. I can’t tell you how hard it is to pass signs announcing wonderful sounding wineries and not enter their hallowed grounds. Each time we sped past the rows of vineyards, manicured lawns and welcoming signs, I had to fight the urge to scream, “stop, turn in, turn in!” But, as I said, there is more to the Margaret River area than wine. There are hundreds of kilometres of pristine coastline to explore which, at this time of the year, is alive with pinks, purples, blues, yellows and reds as the wildflowers explode with colour. We drove to lookouts over waves crashing onto rocks and the shoreline, pounding the beach and anything in its way. The sea was treacherous, and it is clear how so many surfers catch their last waves in these waters. I certainly wouldn’t want to be out in it.


If the coast was full of drama, with an orchestra of sound bellowing about you, the Karri forest was quiet and almost mystical, the only sounds being the chirping of birds and an occasional rustle in the undergrowth. The tall, thin Karri trees reached up to the sky as shafts of sunlight gently floated through them. Wild lilies peppered the ground and the fresh smell of eucalyptus permeated the air. The caves were also quiet but this time echoing with the sound of tiny droplets of water falling from the straws on the roof. Stalactites and stalagmites made for jagged sculptures and the underground lake reflected its crooked teeth. Margaret River really is a spectacularly beautiful area and a couple of days don’t do it justice but we will be back. We’ve got a lot of wineries still left to visit and a lot more drinking to be done.

Winos

I am currently feeling very mellow. We have just returned from a mammoth seven hour wine tasting session and I am awaiting a cup of tea made for me by The Mother-In-Law. Yes, it’s almost the drinking hour of 6pm and all I am desperate for is a cup of tea. We have drunk a lot of wine. Six wineries and eight tastings at each makes for a lotta lotta wine. Not that I’m complaining, I do love my wine after all, but I am feeling quite sleepy now and am in need of something with which to perk me up. This has been our first full day in Margaret River and we made sure we did the most important thing on our list. Margaret River is known for its wineries and we were ready to visit a few of its 138+ wineries as a priority. It would have been rude not to really.


As each of us wanted to partake in the supping of wine, we booked onto a tour that transported us to several wineries, including one at which we stopped for lunch. We were picked up at 9.40am and were at our first winery, Stella Bella, by 10am. I don’t think I have ever drunk wine (apart from sparkling of course, which everyone knows can be drunk at any time of the day or night) that early before. But I bravely sipped my way through every bottle on offer and emerged into the sunshine slightly dazed but ready for the next winery. We visited two before our lunchtime stop, which was in stunning grounds, complete with rose gardens and the second tallest Australian flag in the country. The guy who owns the winery is from mining stock so he has a lot of money and the belief that bigger is always better. After a tasting and lunch we clambered back on the bus and visited three further wineries, plus a chocolate shop.

Despite the vast quantities of wine being drunk, we returned back to our apartment without too many injuries – The Father-In-Law bashed his head on the door of the bus (there’s always one – I’m just glad it wasn’t me as it normally is), The Mother-In-Law attempted to leave her seat without unfastening her seat belt, and we ran over a man-sized kangaroo. Other than those little incidents, our tasting our way round some of Margaret River’s finest wineries was a complete success. Now I just need a little snooze before I’m ready for our evening drinks!

Send In The Clowns

Cruising along in the cool interior of the air-conditioned car, en route to Margaret River, my poor skin is getting a respite. I was very foolish yesterday and committed that most heinous of Australian crimes – I did not re-apply my sun cream. I dutifully slathered it on at the beginning of the day, before sitting out at a pavement café in Fremantle, sipping a frothy cappuccino and basking in the feel of the warm sun on my face. It is a good 10°C cooler than Karratha down here in Perth, making it the perfect temperature in which to sit out and enjoy the sun rather than simply tolerate it.


Fast forward two hours and I am sitting on a beach, waiting for the others to finish their tour of Fremantle Prison. Having done it before with The Parents, I opted to lose myself in a second-hand bookshop and mooch around the weekend markets. When I was shopped out, I wandered down to the seafront, where we were due to meet for lunch, and sat on a pretty beach, whiling away the time by people-watching and daydreaming. By this point it was 1pm, the hottest part of the day and my earlier sun cream application was now hours behind me. But, with the cool sea breeze blowing across my bare skin, I didn’t feel the full force of the sun’s rays and happily forgot about my lack of SPF protection.

Happily, that is, until I met up with the others and The Husband pointed out that my shoulders and back were looking rather pink. They certainly felt a little warm but by this point they weren’t hurting. It wasn’t until the boat trip back up the Swan River, with the sun on my back, that they started to sting a bit. I draped my cardigan over my shoulders, sipped my wine and tried to ignore the stinging. Back at the hotel, I removed my big black sunglasses and looked in horror at my shiny red nose. Great, I look like a clown. Turning around with trepidation, I saw to my dismay that my back was also rather red, topped off with lovely white strap marks. I felt so silly. I am always the one to bark at The Husband to re-apply his sun cream at the beach. Perhaps that’s it – when you’re not out in the sun specifically to catch a few rays, it’s so easy to forget to keep protected. Let this be a lesson to all, including me, that it only takes a few minutes to burn if you haven’t slathered on your sun cream. I shall not forget again. In the meantime, the air-con is doing its work nicely.

Breakfast Beer At 20,000ft

I feel like a very hi-tech, 21st century, digital kind of girl. I am sitting in the departures lounge of Karratha Airport with my new Netbook perched on my knee, tapping away at the keyboard and feeling very smug. The smugness has arisen partly from the fact that I can now write and access the internet from anywhere (yes, I know I have been slow to catch on to this but it is very exciting now I am finally in the mobile digital age!) and partly from the fact that I seem to one of the only normal people here. Like on any flight to or from Karratha, most of the passengers are Fly-In Fly-Outs and half of them seem to already be intoxicated. It is 8.30am.

To understand how common this situation is, I must first explain a little about FIFIOs. These guys live in Perth or Melbourne or Brisbane and leave their families behind to fly out to Karratha for a few weeks at a time where they work solidly, earn a ton of money and then fly back home for a couple of weeks before starting the cycle all over again. It’s not like they are banned from drinking alcohol – most of the guys falling over and starting fights at that bastion of refined drinking, the Karratha Tavern, are FIFOs – but, like everyone working on mine or oil and gas sites, they are subject to random drug and alcohol testing every morning, which means they have to be really careful about what they drink the night before. Passing the test means a 0.0000 reading (there really do have to be that many zeros – The Husband just typed that in for me). There must be absolutely no trace of alcohol in your bloodstream – one beer too late at night could have serious repercussions. You’re sent home and are then inducted into the illustrious ‘Breakfast Club’ – tested every morning for a week which, as it can delay your start at work by up to two hours, does not make you particularly popular with the boss. Of course, many of the men have found a way around this with the ‘nine before nine rule’ – you can knock back nine beers as long as you drain the dregs of your last before 9pm. They are nothing if not resourceful.

Anyway, that was a bit of an aside, but my point is that these guys haven’t exactly been deprived of alcohol, it’s just that they are bound by strict rules which seems to make them want to rebel. As soon as they’re on R&R, they let loose, whether it’s 8 in the morning or 8 at night. They’re like the rowdy groups about to embark on a two week package holiday to Benidorm that you see in the bars at Gatwick, downing pints of lager with Jack Daniels chasers at 6am. Except the FIFIOs do it every four weeks or so. Qantas have even stopped serving spirits on its flights to and from Karratha because of the trouble they were getting from trollied FIFOs. From November, the airport bar will only serve alcohol from 11.30am for similar reasons. So here I am, amongst drunken men, some still in the fluorescent shirts they are required to wear when on site (which leads me to think that they’ve been drinking since they finished their shift last night), unshaven and wobbly. I think I might put my Netbook away now in case one of them throws up on it. I just hope I’m not sat next to one of them…

Beware Of The Wildlife

Flicking through the local paper the other day, my eye was caught by a photo that seemed to jump off the page at me. It was of a huge, fat olive python curled up on someone’s patio. The headline accompanying it read, ‘Beware Of The Wildlife’. In the city, the headline grabbing stories warn you to beware of murderers, rapists or muggers; in the outback you need to beware of giant snakes that that can fell you with one bite, their venom killing you within hours. Apparently, with the weather warming up, now is the time that the snakes start to emerge from their winter hibernation hideouts so residents need to take extra care. For me, this has meant shaking out shoes, shirts, skirts, gingerly lifting up the lid of the toilet in case one is laying in wait in the bowl ready to pounce (hey, if my little goanna can slither up into the sink and through the drain in the floor, a snake can somehow get into the toilet, I’m sure of it), stomping loudly around the garden so if there’s one hiding in the bushes or amongst the leaves so it knows to stay away. I’m sure they didn’t mean that you need to take quite that much care but I’m not taking any chances. I am determined to leave Australia without having experienced a dangerous encounter with a venomous snake.


Snakes weren’t the only wildlife the journalist was warning us to be wary of but it wasn’t a spider, crocodile, shark or jellyfish either. Apparently we need to keep alert for swooping magpies. Yes, alongside venomous snakes, swooping magpies are dangerous and volatile Pilbara residents that need to be kept at bay. If you unknowingly get too close to one of their nests, they will swoop on you from behind and above, often catching you completely unawares. They won’t always just fly around you, trying to scare you off though – sometimes they will actually attack you, pecking at your extremities and drawing blood. I read of one attack last year that left a six year old girl blind in one eye after a magpie pecked it with its long, sharp beak. I am scared of a lot of wildlife in Australia but I really thought the birds were harmless at least. It just goes to show that you’re not safe from anything out here. Trust nothing and always be on your guard. I feel like I should be in some action movie – one woman against every bird and beast in Karratha. Just another ordinary day in the Pilbara.

It's A Small World After All

Living in a remote outback town in Western Australian, there are times when you can feel very cut-off from the rest of the world. Then there are the times when it feels like the whole world is connected by a major event, that wherever you are, in whichever country, speaking whatever language, you are all concentrating on one thing. It happened on the day that Lady Diana died in 1997, it happened when the Twin Towers fell on that fateful day in 2001. And it is happening now, but thankfully for far more positive reasons. I am currently glued to the television, watching the rescue attempt of the 33 Chilean miners trapped the depth of two Eiffel Towers underground. They have been down there, in a space no bigger than the average living room, suffering from incredible heat and humidity, for over two months. Amazingly, they are all still alive and the hope is that every single one of them will be safely brought up to the surface over the next day and a half.


The first rescue worker has been lowered into the escape shaft and has just hit the bottom, the first person the miners have seen in almost ten weeks and the world is anxiously watching it all. There is a live feed from the bottom of the shaft so wherever you are in the world – outback Australia, a city in England, a village in Chile – you can see the amazing events unfolding. There are times when it feels like a big old world, with peoples and cultures that are so different, but at times like this the world feels a lot smaller – no matter how many thousands of miles away from each other, how differently we look and sound and think, there are some things that bind us all as one species. We are all praying that these miners are brought safely back up to the surface.

Too Posh To Push?

I heard an interesting statistic on the news this morning as I was eating my bowl of homemade muesli (yes, homemade, by me, domestic Goddess that I am). Apparently one out of three Australian women opt for a caesarean over natural childbirth, and the reasons for that can on occasion be alarming. Before I get attacked for having a go at those who have to have a caesarean for medical reasons, that is not the case at all. I completely understand that sometimes C-sections are necessary to ensure that both mum and baby are kept out of danger as far as possible - it’s the reasons that were given in a survey of women by a midwifery journal that surprised me. Some women are opting for surgery because they view traditional childbirth as ‘undignified and distasteful’ and because they ‘distrust the body’s ability to undertake labour and safely birth a baby’. So a natural process that has remained unchanged for millions of years has become a source of distrust? What’s going on here?? And this coming from a country whose women are supposed to be tough – the archetypal ‘Sheila’ can withstand anything, she can get her hands dirty on an outback farm, scratch a woman’s eyes out on the netball courts and save a man twice her size from drowning (I’ve seen Bondi Rescue, it happens all the time!). Who are these women who are too posh to push?


Now, I know what you will be thinking. You don’t have kids so you are really not one to talk. No, I don’t yet but I hope that when I do I will have the courage to go through the pain of labour and, I imagine, I will be too busy screaming for drugs and cutting off the circulation in The Husband’s arm to care about the mess of it all. Of course, if I need to have a caesarean for medical reasons I will, but otherwise I will be trusting my body to do what it is designed to. After all, a caesarean is major surgery, which can take up to eight weeks to fully recover – how exactly is that easier than labour? I truly feel for women who have to have C-sections and it is certainly not the easier option. It’s women with views like that who give a bad name to mums who have to have caesareans. Complications occur more often than you might think, which is why so many women died in childbirth before the advent of modern medicine and surgery. If you are lucky enough to be able to give birth to your baby naturally, why on earth wouldn’t you?

Goannas Behaving Badly

We have a resident goanna. In fact, we have two. There is a baby lizard who likes to pop up via the drain in the floor of our bathroom and a teenager who lives outside in the garden. The baby has scared me a few times as when he moves (I have no idea whether it’s a he or a she – how do you tell with lizards? – but its recklessly daredevil antics strike me as being very male characteristics), he resembles a snake speedily slithering along, his tiny legs hidden beneath his body. Although his favourite point of entry is the drain, through which he squeezes himself up ones of the grate holes, I caught him with his face poking up through the plug hole in the bathroom sink yesterday. Just his face. He was completely motionless and utterly unperturbed by the torrent of water crashing down onto him from the tap. How he managed to hold on throughout that ordeal I have no idea, but he seemed to simply be proving a point as, as soon as I turned the tap off, he disappeared. Definitely a boy. Oh, and he leaves tiny lizard poos in the bathroom (but unfortunately not in the toilet) and doesn’t clean up after himself. Like I said, definitely a boy.


The teenage goanna resembles a dinosaur more than a snake as whenever he is frightened or feels threatened he jumps up onto his hind legs and sprints off. It is the weirdest thing to watch, like bearing witness to some prehistoric activity. He wasn’t alone on Saturday but I couldn’t work out whether the other goanna was a love interest he was attempting to pounce on or an enemy that needed scaring off. He constantly chased after it, unable at first to catch it. When he finally did, I realised that it was probably a member of the opposite sex as my goanna jumped on the other, rolling about on the ground and then lay motionlessly entwined for at least a couple of minutes before separating and skulking off. “I’ll call you,” was probably the last thing he said to her. I’m rather ashamed of my goanna for his cowardly behaviour. I hope the baby goanna didn’t see it – that’s not the kind of behaviour that should be encouraged. Although, with his messiness and stubbornness, perhaps it is inevitable that he will end up that way. It must be a male thing.

In the Immortal Words of Katie Perry, You're Hot Then You're Cold

Why can’t shops ever succeed in maintaining an ambient temperature? Walk into a shopping centre during an English winter and suddenly you’re in a Swedish sauna. The central heating is jacked up so high that you are forced to immediately strip off coats, scarves, hats, even jumpers. So you end up walking around looking like you’ve already done a day’s worth of shopping but refused any carrier bags. An armful of outer garments renders effective shopping almost impossible (as, generally, hands are required) and also makes you look like the worst shoplifter in the world. The heat seems to increase the longer you are in the shop and before you’ve been there half an hour you’re down to your strap top (which was only supposed to be a vest but needs must) and so flushed you feel menopausal. Walking outside into 5°C is a relief but it still takes a few minutes of frigid air and arctic winds until you feel cool enough to start putting your layers back on.


The shops in Australia have the opposite problem. They are ice boxes. Just as a bit of central heating is necessary in English shops in the winter, the shops here obviously need to be air-conditioned to some degree. It’s hot out there and the air-con is a wonderful respite from the harsh glare of the Pilbara sun. For about ten minutes. Then you start to shiver, goose bumps pop up all over your body and you walk more quickly just to keep warm. You stay away from the refrigerators unless absolutely necessary – you do not, under any circumstances, want to linger over which cut of steak to buy. My finger nails actually turned blue today. It’s 37°C outside and I was suffering from the early stages of hypothermia. As I walked outside into the heat that just thirty minutes before was suffocating, I breathed an audible sigh of relief. How wonderful it was to be back in the warmth.

So why can’t they get this right? Apart from being uncomfortable for customers, it is so incredibly wasteful. How much energy must be consumed to chill a shop down to 10°C when it’s 27°C above that outside, or to heat a shop to 25°C when it’s 20°C below that outside? And who actually benefits? But nothing will change so the only thing I can do is to bring my woolly hat next time I head into the shops. Oh no, that’s right, I don’t own a woolly hat because I live in the Pilbara and it’s bloody hot!

A Topsy-Turvy World

Living in the Southern Hemisphere can be very confusing at times. It’s October but it’s getting hotter – adverts on the telly and in magazines are all for outdoor furniture, sandals and floaty cotton dresses, air-conditioning units, barbecues, and bikinis. As the months wear on and Christmas approaches, so does the summer. As I said, very confusing. October in England means long walks in forests turned gold, orange and red, crunching the leaves under our welly-shod feet. It’s the beginning of fires being lit in living rooms and pubs, of the smell of woodsmoke in the crisp air. Shorts, strappy dresses and flip-flops are put away until the following May and out come tights, woolly jumpers and boots. October in North-Western Australia means pool parties, barbecues lasting well into the warm nights, lying in the sea just to keep cool and sports only beginning as the sun starts to wane in the sky.


It also means flies. OK, I know I have mentioned them in a recent blog but get used to it as they will undoubtedly feature in many more to come as the summer really gets going. It is hard not to write about them as it is hard to avoid them and they are a constant presence if you want to ever leave the house. I went for a walk yesterday and spent half the time batting away the buzzing little creatures. It wasn’t that there were a lot of them, just that the flies in Australia are the most persistent I have ever come across in my life. One fly is all it takes to be a nuisance. They will fly into your ears, up your nostrils, under your sunglasses into your eyes, and land on your lips. No matter how many times you swat them away, they will not be beaten. Sometimes, the more you bat them away, the more determined they become – kind of like a little brother who knows he is winding you up and takes that as a challenge to see how far he can push you before you completely lose it. There is no point in losing it though, as it does you no good and usually makes you look completely barmy to passers-by. Summer flies are a fact of life here and you just have to get used to them. Either that or be known as ‘the crazy lady who mumbles and shouts to herself whilst waving her arms around’. Maybe I’ll buy one of those cork hats, or even better, one of those ones with the net that completely covers your face. On second thoughts, I think I’d rather be known as the crazy mumbling arm-waving lady.

Patriot Games

So the Commonwealth Games have finally begun with a bang – and, amazingly, not a bang from a roof or bridge collapsing, an air-conditioning unit falling from a wall in the athlete’s village or the terrifying sound of a terrorist’s bomb exploding. No, the bang emanated from dozens of Indian drummers, spectacular fireworks and Bollywood dancers treading the boards. It was an opening ceremony to be proud of and finally gave us all hope that the Games may not be a total failure after all.


I watched some of the coverage yesterday, largely of the swimming, and it suddenly struck me as odd that the Commonwealth Games is even still running. Unlike other major Games that are based on geography – the European Championships, the Pan-Pacific and the African Games, for example, to be eligible to participate in the Commonwealth Games you had to have been a British colonial outpost. You had to have had the humiliation of being ruled by a bunch of pompous Englishmen who thought your people were uncivilised barbarians who could only be bettered by learning British ways. It’s a very strange concept when you think about it. Most of these countries, including India who are hosting this year’s Games, would prefer to forget the period of time when they were a British colony. I wonder if the main aim of every county competing is to thrash the colonial oppressors, to take them down, humiliate them and take back the glory. I wonder about every country other than Australia, that is, as it is quite obvious that their only aim ever in life is to beat the Brits at everything there is possibly to beat us at. All they ever talk about is ‘thrashing the Poms’ – it is a strangely obsessive behaviour that will have even the most mild-mannered Aussie talking about a violent bloodbath with an evil glint in his eye.

Anyway, back to my original point – is the Commonwealth Games even relevant anymore? I think perhaps it depends on the sport and that has nothing to do with colonialism and everything to do with scheduling, as boring as that sounds. The Commonwealth Games always falls at the end of the athletics season – athletes are tired, sometimes injured and should be resting before the next season. Quite a few have pulled out this year because of that. It’s also not seen as a particularly important event by track and field athletes – Michael Johnson recently wrote in a newspaper article that in athletics, ‘a Commonwealth title barely registers any respect on a global stage.’ However, many countries use the Commonwealth Games as a barometer for the Olympics, two years later. This year British countries are certainly testing out the athletes who will go on to compete in London 2012 and identifying what needs to be improved in the training programmes.

Whatever anyone thinks of the Commonwealth Games, it seems strange to me that no-one comments on the fact that all these countries are competing because they are former British outposts. Still, any major sporting event is fun to watch and, with the Americans not competing, we’ll probably win more medals. That is, of course, if the Aussies don’t work themselves into a Brit-beating frenzy. Seeing as the British founded modern Australia, I really don’t see why they’re so intent on constantly crushing us. Perhaps it stems from the same complex that blights men who drive expensive sports cars...

Staying Cool In The Pool

It is hot. Exhaustingly, swoon-inducingly hot. It happened all of a sudden – one day it was hovering at around 28°C, the next it had shot up to 38°C and it hasn’t really fallen since then. This is it now – it’s only going to get hotter. Yes, hotter. It can reach 50°C at the height of the summer. But let me tell you, 38°C is hot enough – the morning of the 10°C temperature hike, we walked out of the house into what felt like a wall of heat. It hits you like a train and immediately saps you of energy. It really is frightening to think that it could get up to 12°C hotter than this. You just can’t do anything in that heat. I was in the garden for ten minutes this morning, hanging the washing out, and I stepped back into the cool interior of the house with a huge sigh of relief. I was dazed, confused and in need of a large glass of water. So what on earth do you do during a summer that hot in a place like Karratha where everything is outdoors. There are no museums, no galleries, no cinemas, no large and lovely shopping centres. And there are only so many times you can play Scrabble.


It is therefore very good news for us that we have friends who have just moved into a house with a pool. A cool, refreshing swimming pool is just what you need when it is too hot to do much else – lounging in the pool with an ice-cold drink, a good book, and some relaxing music playing is just the ticket on a blisteringly hot Sunday. And that is exactly what we did at the weekend. The pool was just the right temperature and it was so lovely that I really had to force myself out when it was looking like I might soon look forty years older if my skin wrinkled any further. Glass of pear cider in hand, I chatted away as meat sizzled on the Barbie and something very chilled was played on the ipod. Yes, I think I could quite happily while away a scorching summer in that manner. Perhaps I’ll be alright after all.

A Timely Debate

It’s amazing how heated some people get about the issue of Daylight Savings in this country. I mean, we’re only talking about the clocks going back or forward an hour twice a year, is it really that big a deal? It seems it is in Australia, a country where five states adopt Daylight Savings and three, including WA, do not. This means that a country which normally has three separate time zones fragments into five. The idea of Daylight Savings is to give people an extra hour’s sunlight in the warm summer months, which is quite a nice gesture really – I’m all for that. It’s no coincidence that those states that don’t have Daylight Savings – Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland – are all states with large rural areas and a lot of farmers. It’s generally the farmers that are against the idea as they still have to get up at the same time so it actually means extra darkness rather than extra light for them. Or something like that. The state that this debate rages most fiercely in is Queensland. The business end of Queensland in the South, an area that includes Brisbane, is desperate for Daylight Savings in order to keep to the same time as Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, something they insist costs them millions of dollars, but rural northern Queensland are just as adamant that they do not want it. There has even been talk of splitting the state in half with one side participating in Daylight Savings and the other not. Ridiculous. They just love a good argument, those Aussies.


The majority of WA is pretty vehement that it does not want Daylight Savings under any circumstances – there have been four referendums on the matter since 1975, the last being in 2009, and it has been rejected every time. However, there are supporters and they are passionate about their cause, even setting up a Facebook page to support it entitled ‘Don’t let the Fun Police ruin life – give Perth back daylight saving’. According to one of its most dedicated supporters, “it’s not a time zone, it’s a state of mind.” Hmm, perhaps just a hint of Drama Queen behaviour there. However, whilst that statement might be a little over-dramatic I actually agree. Who doesn’t want an extra hour of sunlight to enjoy the day? Year-round it’s dark or nearly dark by the time The Husband gets home. We can’t pop down to the beach or go for a walk or enjoy a barbecue in the sunshine. Those damn farmers. Oh well, at least we won’t lose an hour’s sleep on Sunday morning.

Is It A Bird? Is It A Plane? No, It's A Super Monkey!

Australia, like the rest of the world (or at least the countries directly involved), is full of news of Delhi’s bungled preparations for the Commonwealth Games. Every day there seems to be a new disaster to befall the Games, whether it’s a venue roof or footbridge collapsing, filthy rooms in the athlete’s village, or terrorism threats. All in all, it’s not looking great and a few Aussie competitors have even bowed out, believing it not safe to compete. Security has been a massive issue and, considering the very real threat of a terrorist attack, that is something that should be paramount. However, a few days ago an Australian journalist managed to walk into the main stadium with a suitcase full of detonators completely unchecked. When the journalist confronted a security guard and asked him if this would happen when the Games had started, he laughed. It’s good to know that they’re taking the possibility of serious, life-threatening attacks seriously.


So, what to do in such a situation, when even the security guards seem to be pretty useless? There is one obvious solution, at least to Delhi’s Games Officials - bring out the super monkeys! Of course. These large monkeys have been brought in to chase away smaller monkeys from venues where they have been a nuisance. Apparently, monkeys are a real problem in Delhi and are a common sight everywhere, running amok in government buildings, hospitals and prisons. The Deputy Mayor of Delhi fell to his death in 2007 after being attacked by a group of monkeys on the terrace of his home. Delhi really can’t catch a break can it? The majority of the super monkeys will be deployed outside the boxing and hockey stadiums (seen as the most vulnerable to monkey attacks, though I’m not sure why – perhaps monkeys really don’t like boxing and hockey), with two in reserve ‘in case of an emergency’. It’s good to know that their emergency plans include the deployment of two monkeys. Bring out the big guns, it’s time to let the monkeys loose!

They have monumentally cocked up so far but I do feel sorry for Delhi, and India as a whole. As the Beijing Olympics in 2008 was a display of China’s new-found global dominance to the world, so was the Commonwealth Games supposed to be an example of India’s shining light. At the moment, the reverse seems to be happening. Quite frankly, the whole thing is one big embarrassment. The Indian media has dubbed them the ‘shame games’. Perhaps, as the officials are promising, it will all come together at the last minute. At least they’ve got the super monkeys - nothing could possibly go wrong with those flying crusaders at the ready, right?