26-10

'The Balmore'
26-10 is an essential piece of knowledge when one is attending the lounge bar of the balmore.
To avoid getting chucked out and not being allowed to ever use the jukebox again, you need to put in no. 26-10 for your first song. This is 'laid' by James, and boy you know every single word after spending even 5 mins in the place.

The balmore this week was more of the usual: don't mess with the dominoe's players on wednesday nights. Like garry says: there's a reason domino players have blunt objects in their care when playing. and why darts players have sharp fast objects.
'the only gay in the balmore' had a 45min debate with G last night about bad/not bad british comedians. He liked Les Dawson or something like that and Garry didn't, i have no idea who he is, my contribution was well, what about Billy Connolly? of course everyone was in agreement with that (in the positive)so my comments went amiss, obviously not controversial enough.

and i'd forgotten how much dundonians swear. passing through the lounge bar to the loo every conversation i was in ear-shot of was well; blue. even the pensioners in the corner talking about the queue at the post office on tuesday. the c word was well in attendance.

weather watch: mucho of the wet stuff this week. and w-i-n-d-y. luvly stormy stuff. not so much fun driving in it but. Watching the red and gold leaves whirling about you was fun though.
Still very mild for this time of year. it'll prob snow when we get back from SA.

better go. planes to catch, brothers to see :) :) :)

KARAOKE TAXI'S!!!!! and the best things in life......

So.....it's been a busy few weeks. Nipped over to Limerick a couple weekends ago to catch up with 'the mad Sarah'. Self-timer and arm-extension shots a plenty, multiple hugs and laughing at irish signs done with, nipped back home.
Then, went to Manchester on the weekend to have a mini-reunion with my dear mates I trained with in enzed. Present and (in)correct were: me, Varsh, Ash, Anna (who's house we took over), Ange, Brenda. Missing in Action was Amy, who had better things to do (well, she said she couldn't get away) but that was ok, cos me and Ash imitated her the whole weekend so we wouldn't miss the bouncy happiness that is the A-to-the-M-to-the-Y. Also missing in action were Lisa and Tish and Shazza but they had a nearly reasonable excuse, being on the other side of the world (you in favona lisa bro?)

My word it was good.
Being woken up 7.30am on sat am to watch the NPC final by Anna's fulla (moooooloooos) made me realise how choice kiwi's are. As also was my inability to speak anything apart from 'bro-speak'. At one stage there were 10 kiwi's in a 3-bedroomed end-terrace house, and boy it was funny walking out the door to suburban manchester.

so we mucked about central manchester, going to cool shops and had lunch in a record shop, yes, proper records, where I even found a 'traditional maori songs' 33". cher bro. sum cuz musta left ut thur eh bro....Varsh even got a shopping fix, although her time in Wales has raised concerns that the queen of 'accessorise, accessorise, accessorise, girls!' has turned into 'where can i get the best trackies from?'.
but the bestest ever was on deciding to dine on 'the curry mile', after putting off the taxi for the 6th time and then it not coming, and then taking 15 self-timer shots (just one more!) we dashed for the taxi and lo! and behold. The reason modern technology should be embraced....

A KARAOKE TAXI! I thought my eyes were decieving me till Anna confirmed that indeed the wee screen behind the driver's seat was nothing but a monitor for the karaoke songs! The driver even handed us a microphone, and we were away. Whitney houston eat your heart out. We made the driver take the long way so we could finish our aria's.

It was great. But what I reflected on the 6 hour train ride home was: friends are great. They make your life great. They keep things in perspective, keep you sane (or insane, which is far better). They're better than any drugs or medical attention. A real Tonic. And you never see them enough.

So, if you can get past all the cheesiness, I'm bloody lucky to know everyone I do. And they give me so much. In the words of a big maori rugby-player fulla I met on the weekend:

Chur cuz. See you afta.

When in Rome (or Britain)....

I know I've been here too long. I almost constantly and enthusiastically talk about

'The Weather'.

It's fantastic! You don't have to discuss your feelings or talk about anything relevant to your job, and can avoid all confrontation by immediately switching to what the weather is doing.
This is particularly good for Scotland, where the best piece of advice (given to me by an Irishwoman!, nice one Liz) was "If you don't like the weather in Scotland, wait 5 mins".

My how true. You get 'proper' weather in this part of the globe. So it may only hang about for 5 mins, but hell, it's a spectacular 5 mins. So I guess this will be a regular feature of this blog.

So, it's Autumn in north-east Scotland. Today was grey, but 'close'. Close is a great word the Scots use to describe the sticky/muggy/humidity of the air. It's fab. (Talking about language must also wait for another blog). So 'close' like your t-shirt will stick to you, that slightly clammy feeling. Yesterday however, was an absolute stunner, one out of the box, bright blue autumnal skies with the golden hues of the trees reflected by the honey sun. I stared out the window yesterday for about 20mins, just watching the trees literally change colour before my eyes.
a few days last week however, you may has well not have bothered to get out of bed. It was dark and grey, lights on allday type affair, and a steady drizzle of rain pattered down (well, apart from short 5 mins periods of blazing sunshine, but only about 3 of those in the day). Well and truly was a 'drookit' day. Another fab scottish word. The scots are just as good at describing weather as the Irish. I remember when i was in ireland there were at least 11 different words to describe rain, and all forms of it. But that's stereotyping. Must avoid that. I had some great long sunny days in dublin. it rained no more than Auckland. Explains why everything's so green.

Look at that! i'm so proud of myself. A massive long paragraph talking bout the weather.
must away before i get onto other proper things. Daylight savings goes into winter time the end of this month.....1 day before i bugger off to the bright light of South Africa. Ha! suckers.....

My Aunty may was right

It's a sign, a definite sign. I'm very paranoid. I just tried to type my blogspot website address and misspelt 1 and only 1 letter in the address, and the website for: rosa-bulldozer.blogpot.com displayed:

Amazing Bible Story, with a page of the wailing wall in Jerusulem. A virtual mega-library of everything religious.

Ok ok, does this mean i should have a full catholic wedding and immediately start attending every religious place within a 5 mile radius of my home? It's not good. I'm destined for the elevator going down to the uncomfortably warm place when i kick the bucket......

mwuaha-ha-ha! my evil plan is working.....

Well who would've thought it.
Mistah G purchased hiking boots today :)
no influence from me of course. No 'jesus mary and joseph you'll never get boots as cheap as that as they are today' statements.
It was great. Millets (TM, and no i'm not getting commission, although i should ask them,they are my fave shop) was having a sale today, and we wandered in 'for a nosy' after leaving the music shop eyeing up a ukelele.
We'll be walking the sidlaw's (hills near dundee) on christmas day and it'll all be grand so it will....

ah, the big sigh of contentment is so satisfying sometimes.

In other news, I have decided a regular feature of this blog will be.......


Balmore Street....*sung to the theme-tune of 'neighbours' in a bad-out-of-tune-karaoke style.

Balmore St is where our local pub is situated, called 'the balmore' funnily enough, in the heart of the Stobswell region of Dundee (aka 'stobey' to the locals) For those unfamiliar with British culture, the pub is an extension to people's living room, except much more social than the typical NZ pub. It's where neighbours and friends meet to chew the fat, (aka talk rubbish, or 'haver shite' as the scots say). Yes beer is drunk at the balmore, but that is not the primary purpose of the British pub. The primary purpose of the british pub (in my humble opinion) is to talk rubbish with friends and neighbours, and where the TV is absent (apart from catching the football scores, which in turn provides more discussion and debate and talking rubbish).

Now the 'stobey' region of dundee is particularly interesting in terms of it's high ratio of traditionally defined 'freaks/nutters' in complete unpolitically correctedness (god i love bad grammer).
e.g. when wandering down on a saturday morn (our fave time to peruse the characters of stobey) no-one bats an eyelid at volunteer workers turning up to the charity shops with humpbacks wearing marilyn monroe frocks, or young lads caressing the face of a statue of a butcher merrily holding a plaster-of-paris cleaver outside the local butcher shop. Mistah G and me however, sidle past hoping no-one will notice us and dash for the library doors. (which is a fab red sandstone building).
So.....my point is:
'The Balmore' is where a lot of the residents of Stobey congregate. It's fantastic people watching. So I hope to bring a weekly round-up of the latest happenings. But to introduce the basics:
there is, in the tradition of little Britain: 'the only gay in the balmore' a lovely bloke (originally from geordieland) who lives around the corner from us who mentioned that he was gay only approx 10 times the first time he started talking to us. G and him have heated debates about music, especially the validity of The Clash on modern music, and how G doesn't like enough female artists, so this makes him homophobic. I nearly hit him (as in the only gay in the balmore) tonight when he compared The chilli peppers to Phil Collins, before i realised he was, in the great British tradition, taking the mick. (he said the Chilli peppers were boring! how ludicrous is that).
There is also: Daniel* (not his real name, as all the characters will be) who is an institution at the pub, and always requests one song and one song only on the jukebox whenever you wander up to it ( a 'james' song).
It does have an infamous incident when one of mistah G's mates was visiting when a aforementioned 'freak' came to join our table and said 'Are you gay?' We all looked at each other and said 'no, but what's it to you?' The english mate of Garry did add (in what i thought was comedy genius) 'no, but I am English, which does confuse people'. The aforementioned freak (lets call him fred) said 'well it's just that last week there was a bunch of ukrainian potato-dressers in the balmore'. We responded: 'well, were they gay?' in some hope of finding relevancy to the opening question/conversation.
'Nah', said Fred, and wandered off to rejoin his imaginary friends.

God bless the Balmore.