Random musings of a child progeny
I’m thinking about home more and more as it gets closer and closer to the time to go back to the UK after my round-the-world trip. I guess it’s only natural. It’s been interesting comparing different cities and cultures and how they do things.
I’m wondering what state the tram work in Edinburgh is at. If I’ve ranted about this to you before then I apologise but an experience I had on the tram in Melbourne last week has rekindled my annoyance.
I don’t think that I was quite with it when leaving Melbourne. I was flying at 1550 and had a good nights sleep so I had no real excuses for being a bit dopey. I thought that there happened to be a lot of people called ‘Mel’ working at the airport judging by their name tags . . .
Continue reading ‘Melbourne - Singapore - Tokyo (7,285 miles)’
I returned to the MCG yesterday for a stadium tour and visit to the National Sports Museum. The MCG has 100,000 members, 200 of which volunteer to give the tours. Our guide for the day was a elderly chap named Eric who put his name on the waiting list for membership in 1959. He finally became a member in 1981. Nowadays you can still expect to wait around 21 years and there is a select group of people that have been members for over 50 years. It is not a young demographic.
While on the pitch we were treated to an impromptu bird of prey show as a hawk was exercised to ward off other birds from the stadium. Not a bad idea but it could do with being done on a match day too as the amount of aggressive gulls scavenging was bordering on unsettling. Still, not as bad as Circular Quay in Sydney where I witnessed two separate seagull attacks on people having lunch, swooping down and knocking the food out of their hands.
The museum was obviously extremely biased towards all things Australian. There are special sections for the Olympics, AFL, cricket and an interactive zone where you can test yourself at various sporting activities. In theory at least: it’s the school holidays here and I couldn’t get to try anything.
Considering the plethora of stadia and facilities around the MCG (the Vodafone arena and Rod Laver Arena for instance) and the sterotypical fit, bronzed, Aussie surfer, it came as a bit of a shock to most when Australia took over the mantle of fattest nation on Earth last week.
If anybody were to ask me what the “must do” of Melbourne is then I’d have to say that you need to actually get out of Melbourne. The Neighbours tour is amusing enough but I would have to suggest a Great Ocean Road tour.
I went on one yesterday. It was a long day, setting off at 0730 and getting back to the city a little after 2100. We took in Geelong, Torquay and Bells Beach (as referenced in Point Break - the actual beach was in Oregon) before heading along to Split Point lighthouse (as seen in Mad Max and Round The Twist).
Having driven down the west coast of America it was a great pleasure to have someone else do the driving and consequently feel free to enjoy the views without worrying about crashing the car. We were so much closer to the water and maybe because of this the waves were on a far more impressive scale. The waves fell almost as if they were in slow motion. The water wasn’t exactly clear due to the recent rainfall.
However, the waves on the surf coast paled in comparison to those on the shipwreck coast. It was an extremely windy day which whipped up the ocean. The waves were honestly the biggest waves I’ve seen outside of a Laird Hamilton film and they crashed over the 100 foot cliffs.
We stopped at Mait’s Rest Rainforest and Kennett River to see some wild koalas and hand-feed King Parrots and Rosellas. Some kangaroos were also grazing in the nearby fields but there was still no hopping action.
The highlight of the day was taking a short helicopter flight over and around the 12 Apostles. After this, we made short stops at Loch Ard Gorge and London Arch before driving back to Melbourne.
There comes a time where a man must face facts. My hair has been thinning for a good few years now but nobody could really tell thanks to me being quite tall (unless I’d fallen over or something like that). I think it’s something I have in common with my grandfather. He was 6′ 6″ but bald as a coot by the age of 25.
Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. If it did I could buy a wig or a toupée1, get a weave or a comb over, fiddle my insurance for some Demoxinil or take up a religion that mandates the covering of the head.
Yesterday I decided that my hair was looking too straggly and as I’d all but run out of product I’d pay a visit to the barbers to make a date with the clippers before I got to Japan and chance my arm there. 30 minutes later after some clipper action, a cut-throat razor shave (including the back of my neck), a shampoo, rinse and a peppermint scalp massage I left feeling quite tingly and - with the wind blowing through the stubble - quite cold.
1 That reminds me of a joke:
Q. Why did the wig run out of the shop?
A. Because it didn’t want to pay!
Sorry.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve had a good rant at something. I was expecting the airlines to be a likely target for my attentions for causing me to miss a connection or losing my bags. Instead, it’s my bank that are bearing the brunt of my wrath at the moment.
I’m working on a basic premise for the next Incredible Hulk film. It’s quite a simple plot line really: Bruce Banner is on holiday in Australia and is trying to withdraw some money from his Alliance and Leicester account using an ATM.
