A Month’s Worth of Dead Flesh

This week I have consumed at least a month’s worth of dead flesh, largely due to a friend’s birthday dinner on Tuesday night which proved to be a Portuguese Barbequed Meat Fest of Gargantuan Proportions.  

With all this protein, by rights, I should be rippling with toned muscle.  As it happens however, not so much.

*****

A colleague and I have been volunteered by the boss to form a ‘Social Committee’.  Now, my knee jerk reaction to that was so violent that it almost took my eye out, not least because I loathe committees.  They are far too much like ‘teams’ and we all know how I abhor a team.

["Look, I'll do my job, and you f*** off and do yours, and that's how it'll get done, K?"]

Nonetheless - and focusing on the niceness - it means we now have a company budget to spend on Group Activities, which is good because publishing pays badly and we mostly like each other.

[There are exceptions, but more on those two muppets later...]

We drew up a list of 12 suggested activities within the budget, ranging from ‘A day trip wine-tasting tour to the Hunter Valley’ and ‘whale-watching cruise’ to ‘birdwatching bush-walk with gourmet picnic’ and ‘Dinner and a show at the Opera House’ and asked people to sign up for anything they liked the sound of, to gauge interest levels.

We also asked for more suggestions for group activities.  So far, these amount to:

1. Dinner and a movie

2. Pottery Class

3. something illegible which could be ‘Porn Bowls’

4. Lame and Square Club

okay, so I made the last one up.

I mean, come on, dinner and a movie?  Pottery class?  Really?  That’s the best you can come up with when the company’s paying??

And nobody wrote ‘Fridays off in a drug-fuelled stupor’, which is a crying shame.

On Speaking to Colonials With Chips and Sounding Like the Queen

So, I’m trying to blend in here.  By here I mean Sydney, Australia as opposed to here, at my desk, in the office.  Although, yes, good point, I should probably try to blend in here as well… that way, I’ll get away with more blogging and eating of cake…

 

…Anyway, so I’m trying blend in here.  And thinking I’m not doing too bad a job of it.

 

But then The Volunteer Fireman/Handyman asks me where I’m from originally.  ”Norfolk,” I say, “Its a coastal county in the east of England. But my Father is Irish and I went to school in Rutland.”

 

“I thought so,” quoth he.  ”You sound like the Queen.”

 

*Harumph*

Two Sisters at The Three Sisters…

Two Sisters at The Three Sisters

Originally uploaded by norwichrocks

…My, how we laughed!

Well, actually, we didn’t laugh at all, we immediately stopped swearing and took our hands out of our pockets…

They have jolly clean habits, don’t they? (I can feel an obvious joke lurking in there, but I shall resolutely ignore it).

I wondered what particularly good deed they had done to merit a day trip.

And then I wondered which muppet ever thought white would be a good, practical colour for a nun’s habit. Even if all you do all day is pray you’re going to get grubby knees. And as for the perils of communion, well, just don’t start me off on red wine stains on white cotton…

A Water Dragon, A Deadpan Bird, A Spiky Ball and a Pregnant Fern

For your viewing pleasure:

An Australian Water Dragon sunning himself on the rocks next to a small pool in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens.

A Kookaburra watching us eat brunch.

A bunch of palm fruits which was about the size of my head.

And an eminently sensible way of reproducing.

Australia’s wildlife rocks.

The Archibald…

…is a competition held annually here in Sydney for portrait paintings.  Thousands enter from all over Australia every year and a minority are chosen to feature in a public exhibition in the Gallery of New South Wales - which is where I went to see them last night with 2 friends from work.

 

Some - maybe half a dozen - were excellent.  Well-executed, thoughtfully composed, and meaningful: they revealed something about the sitter as well as about the artist.  Quite apart from what they reveal about the viewer, of course…

 

Some were well-executed - some were even technically brilliant - but still completely forgettable.  Although one had been voted ‘best in show’ by the back-office staff of the gallery… predictably, since stupid people judge paintings by how like a photograph they are… and  yes, they deserve to be called stupid.  That IS stupid.  Its not a matter of subjective taste, its raw idiocy. 

 

The rest of the paintings failed to make up in vision what they lacked in technical ability.

 

And there were a lot of paintings covered in deliberate drips. Drippage seemed to be a major theme - no doubt in order to make some profound and topical point about the Dire State of the World and how oppressed/repressed we all are or some such banal drivel.  Art doesn’t need a Message.  That’s what politics and talk shows are for. 

 

Still, some were really wonderful.  And its fun to be an art nazi.

Before and After

Azahar asked me for the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos of me from the dating site, so here they are.  No pointing and laughing please.

I chose this one originally because I like blue and because I was happy when it was taken.  I was camping in the aptly named Kangaroo Valley with friends and there was nutella on toast for breakfast.

However, this one has proved to elicit a better response.  Even though I took it myself the other morning before leaving for work and consequently look rather self-conscious and uncomfortable.

Still, at least I’m not posing on my yacht, right?  Ahem.

Two Men in a Boat

So, the promised update on The Dating Situation.  

 

And no, before you get all over-excited, I’m not actually dating anyone as yet.  

 

However, the lovely Ombudsben recently reminded me that I should give the online thing another quiet prod on the very same day that another male friend of mine pointed out - kindly - that the photo I had been using of myself wasn’t doing me any favours.

 

So, I changed the photos - to ones which I don’t think are any more fair a reflection of what I look like (I am constantly and consistently surprised by my reflection in mirrors), but I suppose I have at least brushed my hair and I’m not in the middle of a three day camping trip when they were taken, so presumably they have to be an improvement…

 

The point of all of which is to introduce you to two of the men who have contacted me since I changed my photo.

 

Both of whom are over 6′3″ tall (I’m 5′10″ so tall is good, let me tell you - ain’t nothing a more guaranteed passion killer than feeling like a galumphing great heffalump in the presence of your beloved), both can spell and hold a decent conversation, like diving, are over 40 and have a yacht.  Each.

 

What do you think?  I mean, is it just me, or is it a little odd that both guys are so similar?

Coming Soon: A Dating Update. In the Meantime, Maths.

This is the kind of maths I like.

And this is my kind of Geography:

 

On Monday, I will post an update on the Dating Situation.  Yes, it deserves Capital Letters.  Its Important.

WRONG WAY GO BACK

 

Australia has the best, most helpful road signs ever.

 

I mean, this is EXACTLY the information you need, right?  ”You are going the wrong way”.  And the most useful advice. “Go back”.

 

Easier said than done in most cases, I grant you, but still.

 

I need signs like that for the rest of my life.

Bad Spider

I’ve been bitten. By a spider, apparently.

I don’t remember ever having been bitten by a spider before but I’m told its almost an initiation rite for new immigrants to Oz.

My skin overreacts to pretty much everything, but it is going into mottled red and burny hyperdrive over this bite.

Ow.