Footy's Back!!!

Well since Cardiff we haven’t done a great deal. Christine is still battling with a cold, but seems to be on a very gradual improve. Were both working hard, while we have jobs to go to. Christine has the entire month of April off, partially because of the school holidays and partially because of our trip to Paris and the Neitherlands. My position at the moment was a 3 week placement, but will continue for an extra week or so which is good, should take me to within a week or two of our next planned trip.
Other than work were just chilling out at home most nights. Combination of resting so we can try and beat this London Bug, and also trying to save some cashola!
The weekends we are still trying to get out and about to do a few things. We visited the Natural History museum Saturday morning and Christine went to the Tate Britain on Sunday with one of the new girls at the hostel. Saturday afternoon we went to the pub to watch the football and was joined Amy, one of Christine’s teacher friends. After the saints had won, we headed off and tried out a couple of other bars before having some Thai for dinner.
While the girls were out doing the art thing on Sunday, Damien stayed home and watched the Melbourne Grand Prix on tv. Was nice to see Albert Park again, even if it was a bit cloudy. With the GP on tv at a reasonable time of day it’s a lot easier to follow, than in Australia where most of the races start at 2am.

Cardiff

We arrived in Cardiff by train, just before midnight on Friday evening. Back at Bren and Sarah’s apartment we chatted for a while before calling it a night.

Saturday we slept in and took it very easy. Christine is still unwell, so a bit of rest out of London will hopefully do her some good. Originally we had hoped to go to the rugby on Saturday, Italy is in town playing Wales. We never organized tickets, so instead the four of us headed to the local pub for the 2pm game. A few pints and plates of potato wedges later, Wales had won the match which we half watched. A few more drinks and we headed back home for dinner.
Dinner was Spag Bol, mmm, washed down with cold VB’s which Brendan had in the fridge and Absinthe shots, that stuff knocks you around!

Sunday we were a bit more adventurous, after a massive cooked breakfast we jumped in to Sarah’s car and headed out on a mini road trip. Leaving Cardiff we drove through the country side to Castell Coch. As our tour guide Sarah informed us, the castle is a fairytale castle just out of Cardiff, up on a hill. She had never been there before either, so we were all quite excited!

Our drive then took us past the power station and airport, two parts of Wales not to be missed! This was on our way to Porthcawl, a small beach town. Sadly as we arrived the weather was turning an all to familiar grey and rainy. We still walked around for a while, and the foreshore reminded us of some of the beaches in USA. It was like a giant amusement park, rides, slot machines, fast food chains and markets.

We headed back to Cardiff to cook a big Sunday roast for dinner.
Damien tried his best to help but kept getting kicked out of the kitchen… Sarah cooked an amazing chicken roast with homemade York puddings and 9 different vegetables! After a huge feed we headed back to the train station to catch our ride back to London.

We haven’t had to do anything this weekend, we have been waited on all weekend, which was so nice, I think we will have to come back sometime. Thanks guys for a great weekend!

London - Cardiff

We are currently on the train heading to Cardiff to visit Christine’s brother Brendan and his lovely girlfriend Sarah. It’s been a long couple of weeks since our last trip as Christine has been unwell and as she is such a sharing caring person, she has now made me sick.
Hopefully Bren and Sarah don’t keep us up all night and let us sleep in a bit tomorrow.

I have picked up a short term accounting role which is great as the pay is much better than admin or teaching assistant although it was nice to have a change. This means that I’m no longer the stay at home hubby and Christine is back to cooking most nights, much to her disgust. The job is really good, the hours are 9am to 5:30pm or whatever time I like. It’s paid by the hour so they really don’t mind when I show up as long as I make an appearance. The dress code is also less formal than a normal accountancy job so I don’t have to wear a suit and tie.

Last weekend was a lot of fun although Christine was not happy with me. We had a quiet Friday night, then we got up early for the TNT travel show. This was really good as we booked a 15 day trip to Egypt in October and a weeklong Sail Croatia trip over the summer school holidays in August. We left the travel show around noon, basically so we wouldn’t spend any more money and it was so busy it was getting hard to move. Christine headed home to have a nap before a couple of the girls had their big birthday bash.

I headed to the good old Walkabout to watch St Kilda win the pre-season cup. This didn’t happen, but I did make a few new friends including some boys from Mildura and their Canadian friend who needed all the rules explained to her. After the game, as a gracious loser, I headed out with them to get dim sims, because that’s what you do in Australia and drink £1 shots. I arrived home around 7pm or so, very happy and without the shopping Christine had asked me to get for dinner, opps. Christine had a good night at the girls Glam Rock Birthday bash.

We met up with my cousin Megan at the tourist Mecca The Hard Rock Café on Thursday night. She had a great day doing the Bath and Stone Henge tour. Megan is in London for a few days before heading off on a whirlwind Contiki tour of Europe. We will try to catch up with her again after her tour when she gets back to London before heading home to Melbourne. It will be interesting to see what she thought of the place we’ve been to and where she suggests we go next.

Finally… a quiet weekend!

Again we haven’t done a whole lot this week. Christine is in a school with a one month contract which is great. It’s about an hour out of London, so takes a while to get there and costs a bit on public transport. With our trip to France coming up in about a month, Damien has had no luck finding any accounting work. He has picked up a few days here and there both in schools doing teacher assistant work, and through a temping agency just doing admin roles. Nothing very exciting or well paid but better than sitting around the hostel all day!
After a series of busy weekends, we were both a bit relieved to have nothing much on for a change. Friday night we had dinner in a local pub with an aussie girl and her saffa boyfriend. Damien met her at his teaching course a couple of weeks ago, and turns out they live in the street next to ours. They are both very nice and a bit more familiar with the Paddington area, so were able to show us a couple of less touristy pubs. It was a good night!
After our cooked breakfast on Saturday we headed to the Shepherd Bush Walkabout, a dive of an Australian pub, but it was showing a replay of the St Kilda v Fremantle NAB cup game. It was about 12 hours delayed from the match in Melbourne, but we didn’t know the result, so were very pleased after a couple of hours and a few beers, the Saints won by a handy 70 points. Looks like we may be back there next weekend for the final. I hope everyone in Melbourne is planning on going to the game to cheer, on our behalf!
We are actually close enough to walk home and since the sun was out we strolled home, stopping on the way for coffee and cake! It’s so much nicer in London when the son is out, it get to a balmy 8 degrees Celsius!!!
Christine had an afternoon nap, again on her return to London she is unwell. Then we took it pretty easy, cooked dinner and had drinks at home on Saturday night. Sunday morning we headed back to the Tate Modern, and did another tour of one of the wings. These are always very interesting and give a bit of a story about the artist and the works. On the way home we wandered through Hyde Park, the sun was out but we were frozen. It actually felt like your face was freezing, it was so cold! Another quiet night at home, lots of rubbish tv of course!