Cooking Brekky

If you're going to cook your husband breakfast of Ayrshire organic bacon and eggs, you may as well be wearing the apron he bought you for Christmas and a 50p charity shop vintage tiara.

Cute Pics

• Kaytlin and the Christmas tree
• Cameron and the Computer Game
• Christopher and Michelle and their niece, baby Sophie. Unbeknown to Michelle, Christmas day was the 3rd last day of her pregnancy. Their baby boy got so excited over the talk of figgy pud, that he came 8 weeks early.
  
• And finally, our niece Hayley....ahhhh...I'll just lie back here in my satin jammies!
  

Grannie and Whisky

I am lucky to have Grannie "Lottie" Sinclair as my gran, who likes a dram now and then. She's inclined to mix it with ginger beer or lemonade, so it was with this in mind that we bought her Sheep Dip, a blended whisky.

So here we are on Christmas Day 2006.

• Pic 1 - Don't turn your nose up at a blended malt!
• Pic 2 - It's all smiles at the old folk's home
• Pic 3 - Did you really buy me Sheep Dip?
• Pic 4 - Yes, we really did - and look what happens to you when you drink it!

Ali andJock's Holiday Message!

To see Ali & Jock's Christmas message, click here

Christmas Crackers

The UK is Christmas mad. More money is spent on buying cats and dogs presents than the entire GDP of **insert small African country here**.

What I find funny is the Christmas tunes pumped through the stores here. And that's every store. Not just your Marks and Sparks, but your Pakistani corner shoppe and your local hairdressing/tanning/stick-on nail salon.

To qualify for going onto high rotation on radio or into the CD player, all a song must do to achieve Christm-arse repetition overload is to have the word "Christmas" in it. Innit.

A point in case - I was in the famous toy store, Hamley's of Oxford St London, when I heard The Pogues Fairytale In New York come over the in-store muzac system. Now this is a toy store. There are small children around.

And this is what they heard:

You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last

A song primarily about being heroin junkie. If you would like to familiarise yourself with this little ditty, click here for a wee listen.... And meet Shane McGowan, their front man, pictured here on the left.

Now you may argue that the kids are too busy looking at toys. But I say - do you know all the words to Hotel California? Well do you? And did you ever own said Eagles song? No? Neither did I... but I know the words. That is because of the evils of commercial radio and high rotation.

In saying all of the above, I would much rather listen to The Pogues than "Do they know it's Christmas", Cliff Richard or that horrible boob tubette, Messiah Carey with her horrible horrible, evil song, All I Want for Christmas is You (to shut up). And here she is singing it live... uh! Just horrible!

John Howard Donkey Kong

I was always more of a Snoopy Tennis girl, but this reminds me of the eighties and just how slow computer games used to be. Bipp...bipp....bipp....move a bit to the right....bipp...bipp...bipp.....move a bit to the left....Deyooh!(Fire!)...Deyooh!... Deyooh!....bipp....bipp...move a bit to the centre.

So here's the game to play in those few days after Christmas when you've got nothing to do.

http://www.donkeyjohn.com/donkeyjohn/

Ali & Jock's Holiday Message!

Hello Family, Friends and Random Bloggers

It's been a fabulous year for us as we've settled into Glasgow, Scotland; caught up with old friends and made new ones, partied in the summer and got dreary in the winter as the darkness takes hold at 3pm :(

On the work front, I continue to have a love/hate relationship with the Transport and General Workers Union and Jock is settling in to his new job with the environmental carbon footprint software company IES.

More importantly, on the adventure front, we've caught up with friends, Cathy and Nick in Hong Kong, Jeremy and Neus in Catalonia Spain, Jamie and Jeannie in Belgium, Loree in Sweden and Ali's family in France. We've also welcomed lots of visitors to our little tenement flat.

Highlights of 2006 will include the many fantastic gigs we've been to, participating in the West End Festival dressed up as strawberries and sashaying down Byers Rd in front of 50,000 people, attending the Barcelona anti-war rally, falling in love with Provence, visiting old friends in London and relishing the Aberdeen snow.

Lowlights include having our stuff nicked at a music festival, the continuing war in Iraq, our local shop individually wrapping capsicums in plastic and missing our families.
Well be having Christmas with Grannie Sinclair and Aunty Hazel in Aberdeen but will be thinking of everyone back home.

Love to you all, and have a fabulous 2007 - we'll be seeing in the bells in St George's Square in Glasgow and to give you a little piece of Glaswegian Christmas cheer, check oot tha irn bru ad below! The end bit is where we'll be for new year! Cheerio!

Love Ali and Jock :)

England Muppets

I have just watched Adam Gilchrist's superb knock at the WACA (..or the Gabba, it doesn't matta, where you are, this summa....because it's the number one team in commentary, it's me, Richie Benaud, and me, Tony Greig....and don't forget me (shut up Bill), Bill Lawry...),

What a stunning innings! And here is a picture of Animal, who for the purposes of this blog entry will represent Gilchrist.

And aren't England SHIT? After being in the UK and seeing/hearing all the hype about the defence of the Ashes, here is Beaker, who represents the English cricket team.












And finally, here are Statler and Waldorf, who represent cricket commentators Geoffrey Boycott and that posh bloke on the BBC radio (Johnathan Agnew??). They aren't happy chappies...

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate

I feel numb at the prospect of a citizenship test for migrants entering Australia. Worse, the proposed content of this test is making me feel sick. John Howard wants would be Aussies to know about Galipoli and mateship.

Gallipoli from who's perspective? As a defining moment in Australia's history, it was an abject failure on our part....

"The West Australians assumed that death was certain, and each in the secret places of his mind debated how he would go to it. Mate, having said goodbye to mate ... went forward to meet death instantly, running as straight and swiftly as they could at the Turkish rifles. With that regiment went the flower of the youth of Western Australia ..."

War Historian C. Bean, writing from Gallipoli, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 May 2002

Neatly, this quote combines both mateship and Gallipoli, but also it shows the absurdity of it all.

Don Watson has written a good summary on mateship - at its core, it's masculine. .. "we do need to recognise that the meaning of the word "mateship" is plainest when it describes the attachments and the needs of men struggling in a common cause".

There needs to be a new common cause - that of preventing this ridiculous, outmoded, outdated "test" for new Australians. I'm sure John Howard will say that it's not the same as the white Australia policy of a hundred years ago.

But it is.

This time though, the "white" in this policy is the crisp white linen sheet of history, hiding the many true histories of Australia - the Aborginal frontier, the women's struggle, the migrant struggle, the pioneer myth.

History is written by the winners. Let's make sure that the other histories that forge our identity are spoken about and learned - by all of us. And let's not put this in a test.

Ali and Friends go to see Pendulum

Yup - we saw them again. Pendulum, our favourite drum n bass DJs from Scarborough Beach, Perth were playing in Aberdeen and then Glasgow. Meet Avril, my work colleague, who boogied with us to the tunes of Pendulum at the Glasgow School of Art, a Rennie Mackintosh designed building.

The Aberdeen gig was way too crowded, and Paul the DJ from Pendulum, said his MC almost fainted in the heat. When trying to explain what we were going to see to my Grannie, we told her it was like poetry being spoken in a sing song voice to the music being spun on records in the background. Hmmmm....

The Glasgow gig was much more fun, and here are the pics to show you.

I'm in Sweden

Well, i can't say it any better than this.....

49-39 The King is Dead, Long Live the Kevin

Well, I'm listening to News Radio on the net and it's just come in that Rudd is the new leader of the ALP.

Questions:

• Will Beazley stand at the next election, or will he retire?
• Will the class of '93 move to the back - Albanese, Swan and Smith?
• Will Gillard take Treasurer?
• What impact did the media, the ALP membership or members of parliament have on forcing the ballot?
• Will Howard stand at the next election and deny Costello the leadership?
  
• If Howard does retire, will there be a challenge on Costello and will it be Turnbull?
• And finally, will Howard call a snap election???????
  

It's time to go to bed.

Kim looks really prime ministerial in this photo. Have I spoken too soon? Will Rudd be another Latham? Will the ten caucus members who are undecided run to the devil they know? Will Beazley triumph? Should I have stayed faithful and gone all the way with Kim "LBJ" Beazley?

I'll tune into Fran on RN at 7pm (dinner time here - it's been dark for 4 hours...) and listen to the latest. It's like the Ashes - I'm gonna go to bed just when the fun is beginning and have to read about it on baggygreen.com in the morning. Except the Federal ALP is more like saggyhasbeen.....

At this moment, I'm missing all my comrades to chew the fat over this current situation in the ALP.

And in unrelated news....I'm off to Sweden tomorrow to visit an old school friend, so it may be difficult to do blog entries between smorgasbords, looking for Stefan Edberg and visiting the IKEA store (click here to play the IKEA game). I'm thinking of bringing little stickers to put over the names of lamps, chairs and beds, so instead of saying "Nyklop" and "Semvik" they say "Narelle" and "Bruce".

Pissing Cousins

Ben's done it again....but this time he was arrested in Melbourne. That's a long way to run away from a Canning Hwy Booze Bus!

Crikey!

This is actually on the News.com website and recommended by my friend Mad.



It's always great to see grown men shitfaced at awards ceremonies...

Bring It On!

I'm supporting Julia and Kevin. That's it. That's all I have to say on the matter.

Go Bananas!

Okay, here's the thing....It's only going to work if:

• Rudd and Gillard win and the Class of 93 go to the back - that's Smith, Swan et al, and they just accept that it's not their turn to govern
• Everyone gets behind the dream team and we concentrate on the real enemy by coming up with an alternative vision for Australia which would include statements like - A world leader in new clean energies - to think of one....

or

• Beazley and Macklin (who?) win and, well, would Rudd have to step down from foreign affairs? He'd have to go to the back bench. So too would Gillard, because if Beazley didn't punish them for disloyalty then he'd be seen as a weak leader who can't control his party let alone the country.

God, what a mess. I'm really disappointed in Jenny Macklin. She's a sista, but she was AWOL during the last election and I don't think she has a huge profile because she doesn't say that much.

God, what a mess. I think this is what happens when rather than have community people preselected for parliament, you have a succession of career politicians who started out as electoral officers from their days as student politicians.

I promise now to get behind whoever the leaders are and support them 100% so we can win the next election.