The Derby 2012

Yet again our excellent friends Noan and David invited us down to Southampton for an amazing day out at Epsom Downs racecourse. This year was made extra special for a number of reasons....

1) We originally thought we wouldn't be going.

2) Steph couldn't drink beer and had to watch what he was eating.

3) We won a wee bit of money!

4) It was wee Betty's jubilee and she was in attendance - and even drove around the racetrack before the races.

So we did our usual and got the flight down to Southampton and met David at the airport - from then on it was non stop hilarity (and drink) for the whole weekend.

On the Friday we had a barbecue out in the park and played some quoits (like last year) and then we sat up far too late before retiring to gather our thoughts and dream of winning a million from a £3 stake on a horse we had never heard of before,

The day itself was very much along the lines of last year - charity auctions, guest presenters etc.

We had a great time though and  couple of people asked us for our autographs....

I gave this guy some career advice

Alan was sacked from Celtic the very next day.....ooops.

Before explaining the benefits of a classic floating 5-3-2 to this guy.....

Alan Pardew may be able to pass my tips on this year to the Newcastle team.

Katie and Andrew get excited when the food arrives.

Noan and Chris pretend to know what they are doing.

Katie returns with our winnings

She adds a few zeros before telling Noan how much we won.

it's the jubilee!

I love you man. No man, I love you.

Winning.

No, I've not put on the beef, this is Steve Backley.

The end of the night is a bit blurry.

Everything is wonderful

Everything is wonderful - apart from the fact we have no internet in the house.

So I am currently sitting in a Beanscene people watching, trying to upload photos on what I am pretty sure must be a dial up internet connection and I thought I would update the blog. Probably no pics in this post but we've had lots happening lately and what I will do is return to this post in the very near future and make it much more visually interesting by inserting photos where required.

Last time I wrote it was all about moving house again, well it finally happened. and here it is....

(pics to follow)

It's in Shawlands and at the very top of a big tenament block - glad we don't suffer from vertigo. We had no real problems with the move other than logistics but let me take you back a couple of weeks in order to fully appreciate the nightmare logisitics of the situation.

We had to move out on the 1st of June. However we were flying out to Southampton to return to the Derby races extravaganza with our friends David and Noan on the 31st of May (more about the Derby later) - so all of our stuff had to be out of the house before we left........problem was, there was nowhere to move it to.....our new place wasn't going to be ready for us moving in until the 9th of June.

So, we scattered our possessions all across the city and beyond. There were boxes in our cars, boxes at my parents, we had stuff in a lock up in Paisley, boxes at my school and various expensive items hidden in a variety of more secure locations.

The mission? After a drunken weekend return to Glasgow, find places to stay then try to remember where all of our stuff was then move it into our new place on the 9th.

We returned from Southampton on the 2nd and Noan had very kindly given us a key to our house in North Queensferry which we very gladly accepted. We stayed round the corner from Gordon Brown for three nights then relocated to Motherwell (Carfin!) where our great friends and Godchildren live. They looked after us for the next three nights, which was great. I should point out at this time that we are extremely grateful to everyone who helped us either by giving us a bed or helping to store our possessions.

We moved in on the Saturday and hired a van, but Katie was the only one who knew where her paper licence was so she had to be the driver. So we bought her a copy of The Sun, a coke and a Gregs.

Everything is fine with the new flat and at the time of completion of this post we now have internet and Sky HD......but no television.......that comes tomorrow........two months after we moved in!

The really bad coffee perspective joke. (which is actually quite good)

Crazy times

I'll skip the bit I usually put on posts these days, apologising for the lack of posts and promising future posts......it's getting really dull, but then again, so is the lack of posts.

So, here is a post....With info and everything and some photos - how exciting.

Firstly, it is a big congratulations to myself for finally getting a full time permanent job - it's in the school I am currently in and they have very kindly started my contract immediately which means I get paid for some of the summer twice (I suppose if you move from one job to the next and are owed holidays then you get paid for them). So that's also allowed us to book a holiday - we are off to a secret location in Portugal. So secret in fact that we've just found out our good friends Ewen and Andrea, with our Godchildren, will be there at the same time.

Secondly, we are in the middle of a heatwave here in Scotland - this makes a big chncge from the usual crimewave. This week people have been burning to a crisp, bursting open fire hydrants, dying in ridiculous accidents, drinking all day and generally getting nothing done. Some girls in my school complained that it was too warm to do PE - I asked them what the optimum temperature for PE is because they complain when it is mild, complain when it is cold and complain if it is dry. I should have copied the picture above from the BBC last week when it forecast a whole week of sun - i didn't because I was so sure it was a mistake.

Third thing, and this is a doozy, is that we are on the move again! Not to anywhere exotic unfortunately just further into Shawlands. Our landlord has had to move back from London which has kicked us out, the flat we'd like to move into can't have us move in until the 9th of June. But we have to be out of our current accomodation on the 2nd. Further confusing the matter, we are going to the Epsom Derby again this year, leaving on the 31st of May. So we are packing up our stuff and moving out on Wednesday the 30th. Flying to London, returning on the Sunday (3rd) and then we'll be homeless until the following Saturday. It's a wee bit like being back in NZ again.

Oh, and to top it all off - the people who are currently renting our flat are on the move too - but not until July so we can't even just seamlessly move back into our own flat. On the bright side, if our current tenants don't steal all our furniture, then it will be a good time to get in and get our stuff back.

What else is new? Hmmm, it's hard to pin point anything else in the middle of what we are dealing with at the moment but we did go to Paris a couple of weekends back for my Mum's 60th. We had a great time, my brother and his new squeeze came along and it was all in all a trip de magnifique or something like that.

So, that's that for now but we have quite an exciting few months coming up - in fact it's an exciting year. Definitely one that's worthy of regular blog updates......but I'm not promising anything.

What the fudge?

No posts in over two months? I hate websites that never update themselves......

Well, it's a pretty bad excuse but our small compact camera hasn't been working so we haven't had much media coverage of our comings and goings recently and stories without pictures just aren't as good. here are a selection of photos from my very basic camera phone telling some of the stories over the last few months.......

Katie relaxing at Christmas, the present on the sofa is actually a filtered water bottle.

In a year of unprecedented SNP inspired Scottish-ness I made an incredible Burns' supper

As I hurtle towards my 40's the body is starting to show some signs of weakness with a recent diagnosis of Coeliac disease - although I am still awaiting the results of the truly horrendous gut biopsy to confirm this. And the jury is still out - Coeliac disease might actually be a superhero quality rather than an autoimmune disease.

But it looks like it is goodbye to Pizza and Beer - and I have a farewell party to all my favourite foods the whole week before my gut biopsy.

That meant goodbye to ......................................

Lager, Doritos, Pizza, bread, rolls, sausage, pasta, kebabs, chip shops, horlicks......tons of stuff really. Anything containing wheat, barley and rye. The good news is that there is a lot of alcohol which is gluten free and that gluten free life although expensive is all round more healthy.

As part of being Coeliac you get a prescription for food from the NH of S. ;o) Once everything is confirmed I will be able to collect a prescription for bread, flour, biscuits, rolls and stuff from the chemist. All the companies are competing for this business so they are all sending me freebie packs at the moment of gluten free pasta etc. Good times. To put the expense into perspective a loaf of gluten free bread is three quid and it's only a half loaf. Whether I am Coeliac or not what I do know is that I feel a million times better than I did when I finally gave in and went to the Doctor. Stop eating gluten people - it's bad stuff. ;o)

Other notable highlights over the last few months (which don't have photos so aren't worth talking about at length yet) include:

* Katie and I setting a date (if you haven't spoken to us recently you really should get on the skype......Lorna.) More to follow on this breaking news story.

* Steph keeping his job until May.

* Bungo-rific parking issues at the flat

* Tenants installing their own satellite dish

* Katie on a mission to finish her Masters

* Katie's new car 

* Steph inheriting Katie's old car

* The payout for Steph's crashed car

* Katie's pending pay out for injury when crashing Steph's car

* Steph's bonus from the Taxman

* Katie's bonus from the NZ taxman

* Steph's impending bonus from the NZ taxman

All in all things are going well and I will definitely (now the wee camera is back in action) try to keep this updated. 

Upcoming events include heading to Paris for my Mum's 60th birthday - should be a photo fest.

Au revoir tout le monde, 

Steph

200th post

Well, here we are, the 200th post. We've not been the most prolific blogging team in the world but hopefully even if one or two of our blogs have interested you or made you laugh then we have done a good job.

Without getting all Dennis Norden about the best clips ever, I think the best received blog post to date is still the one about my shave in Nha Trang, Vietnam. If you are one of those people (copyright D. Norden) that likes shaving stories, then click on the old posts link and immerse yourself in the story of one man's bravery in search of a shaving nirvana. (and his subsequent disappointment and mental scarring)

Anyway, the 200th post is going to be a short one with some brief updates.....

1) We're still in the same house, have been for a year now which given our track record when we were away is some sort of record. The flat we are in though has just had the shower ripped out due to the fact the tiles were falling off, we can't park on our street for the next 5 months and there is additional extreme disruption due to all sorts of repairs. (a few months ago they resurfaced the roads, they have now had to dig a lot of it up again to pump concrete into abandoned mines.) read all about it on the Bungo Blog. http://www.bungoblog.com Which Katie also recently posted onto about the recent spate of bin raiders - quite the community champion ;o)

2) The car crash saga continues, no more crashes thankfully but no settlement cheque yet or anything. The insurance company of the hire car have of course been efficient enough to already deduct the excess from my account.

3) I am still working up in East Ren but that job may not last forever, there are a few other jobs just been advertised but we'll see how that goes.

4) This next bit should really have its own blog entry but due to lack of photos I am just going to tell it here.

We met up last night with Adrienne and Vicky, who we have known for a long while now but whom we stayed with whilst in Melbourne. You may remember that we attended a Neighbours night? Well they were the ones that dragged us kicking and screaming to it - only joking, I think it was the other way around. It was a hugely funny night though.

In fact, we had some great laughs with those two even though we only stayed with them in Melbourne for 10 days. They also visited us in NZ for a short while so we had lots to reminisce about.

We didn't have a camera this time though and Stefan Dennis wasn't there, so the only photo I have is of me with an NZ beer called Steinlager Pure - it really was my default beer of choice for the last year in NZ.

A good night was had by all though and hopefully we'll see them again sometime soon.

So, it's over and out for another post - hopefully we'll have some more exciting things to write about soon.

Halloween

Welcome to another new post - it's fair to say that this is quite a political post in parts - if you don't like politics or can't be arsed then just skate past those bits. I find politics really easy to ignore so it's easy if you try - just close your eyes and say "they're all bloody liars" three times and everything will be ok.

I've also nicked some photos to make it more entertaining - no attempt to claim copyright on any of these photos is being made, although it's obvious which ones are mine and which ones I have nicked.

Halloween.


Ah, it's that time of year again where you have weeks of notice that you are invited to a Halloween party and somewhere in your head you make a mental note that says, this is the year we are going to be prepared and get a costume so good it eclipses any other......and then as usual you leave it the last minute and the whole thing just becomes a bit of a chore.

Add to the mix the fact that you are invited to more than one party and you feel that you should really put in an appearance at both and this adds to the feeling that perhaps you just shouldn't bother at all, buy a bottle of wine, lock the door and hide from the world.

However, that would be the easy/sensible option - we decided just to go for the two parties. Party 1 was our friend Lorna's (not Lorna who is NZ) who was having just a general Halloween party with no specific theme. (best costume I saw there was Monkey from the 80's tv show although the costume wearer had seriously misjudged the age demographic of people at the party and people (apart from me) just looked at him strangely.

Monkey.......Magic.

Party 2 which was the main party we were to attend as it was with folk from Katie's work and this was the one we had been invited to first did have a theme.....and it was fairytale and fantasy. So, yep, lots of sexy fairies and alice in wonderlands etc etc. I was desperately trying to think of a funny, perhaps political statement to make and the choices were





a) the moon landings

NASA footage from the moon landings.

b) weapons of mass destruction

c) Mary and Joseph

First seen outside a church in New Zealand, caused a bit of a fuss. I don't know why?

The only one of these Katie liked was Mary and Joseph, although we did do a quick consumer survey and we were put off by the response about religious jokes in unknown company in Glasgow. Imagine my annoyance when some bloke turned up as Jesus at the party. He was sitting on his own though getting some aggressive looks (not from me)

Jesus outside the High Court after his acquittal for faking the water/wine incident.

So, what did we go as?
Well here we are at the first party........any ideas?

Thought not. Noone else really knew either.

Here we are at the second party.........any better?

Full marks if you guessed Goldilocks and the three bears. Also score full marks if you correctly identified that the three bears in the original story were Mummy, Daddy and Baby and that we have completely ignored this.

We decided instead to go as "bling" bears. Almost akin to the bear off of Kanye West's album covers.
                     

Kanye West likes fishsticks by the way. 

Extra points if you were able to tell (impossible from these photos) that these all in one suits from Primark are actually Monkey suits not bear suits.

Someone at the party spotted the similarity between our costumes and 90's band, The Bloodhound Gang (who did the song, "you and me baby we ain't nothing but mammals" - entitled "The Bad Touch".

So here we are in a cupboard/office with the Bloodhound Gang,

So, that was Halloween for another year - we'll be so prepared for next year it'll be so unreal, honest........................

Here's my favourite costume from a very good friend of mine (who was at a third party we had been invited to).............top marks if you can name the character and the movie.

London and Billy Elliot.

It was the school October week and Katie and I decided it was time to head for London town to catch up with some good friends and Katie's sister. if you remember, I missed out on the Wimbledon trip so it was my first time seeing some folk for a long time.

We stayed at Gill's in Hampstead - Gill runs a hostel for young people coming to London to work who can't afford their own place. it's a bit like Uni digs for adults - there are all sorts of people living there but they get cheap (for London) housing and and all meals included, a great deal. And they are also living in one of the most well off places in London.

As usual we walked a heck of a lot around London and took in some sights - our favourite past time however was spotting people who could be considered to be famous.......we saw David Gray the singer, Sharleen Spitteri from Texas (the band) and in a cafe near to Gill's we saw "tabloid sex kitten" (according to the London Evening Standard) Abi Tittmuss. You could say that we didn't have much joy spotting celebs.

We did want to do a London show whilst we were down - Katie"s Mum had recommended Billy Elliot so we went to see it. Turns out that it was in the exact same theatre as the last show we saw - Starlight Express.

If you want a review you are asking the wrong person - I was impressed by the talent on show, the dancing and singing and all that - especially from the young lads in the main roles. But I think musicals are not really for men - even if we do enjoy any aspect of them we're really not supposed to say. I would rather have seen a band to be honest. I did spot someone else "famous" at the show though - ex Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Nicol Stephen.

We also visited Tara (who I taught with in NZ) and Sam with his pregnant wife Emma. They were all doing very well and at the time of writing Emma has now given birth to a wee boy called Max. Many congrats to the Carrington's.

However, we didn't take many photos at all - in fact I think we took 5 all in and they were either in the theatre before the show or on the train home. Some tourists we are these days......

This children's bike was chained to the railings in a posh bit of London

The Victoria Theatre for Billy Elliot

The excitement for the show builds

The excitement can't be contained - "I hope I don't fall asleep"

The child next to me belonged to a family who spent most of the journey home  reading their bibles.

An excellent trip all round and good to get away from the car crashes and all sorts of other things that we've had on our mind lately - let's hope there is more good news on the blog from here on in. The next story will be about Halloween and will have lots of pics, I promise!

Reunion

Twas that time of the decade again recently when all our friends from GHill and BSton got together - seems like we don't do this very often at all these days but I suppose with 50% of the gang having kids it's hard for the planets all to align.

We decided against the Clachan this time and decided to go to OranMor in the west end where we sat in a corner and talked about the old days - we could have done this in any pub, in fact after a number of pints we could have been in the Clachan for all we knew.

Great to see them all and fantastic to catch up - and we don't look like we have aged at all do we? (don't answer that!!!) Shame Kaz B couldn't join us but she was living the showbiz lifestyle.

Brown belt

Thought I'd quickly mention that my Karate journey continues......and that i recently graded for my Brown belt. In this style of karate that means I have two more stages to go before I get to Black belt and that'll probably take 12-18 months of hard training.

We don't wear socks when we train - I had just got home

Training sure is different here to back in Wellington - it's different especially because you have limited time and space in church halls and school gyms. In Wellington the dojo was the dojo and had no other purpose and you could spend all day there - that was fantastic.

But, the club I am at has some great folk at it so I am going to continue and hopefully keep on achieving higher grades.