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Published: January 2nd 2008
Santa
He arrived a good 11 hours earlier than normal!So its been a bit of a while since we've said anything on here for a variety of reasons - but we've made it to Christmas and have chucked work for a week or two in exchange for some festive cheer Aussie style!! We've also had quite a busy Christmas break - so loads to report and pictures to post over the next week or so!
And finishing work on the Friday night of the holidays was very much like finishing work in Glasgow - it was pi**in it down - like seriously pi**in it down! Not only that - the trains were cancelled (seems that Oz suffers from "leaves on the line" too) and it was blowing a howling gale.
Judging my moment inbetween downpours at about 4pm I left the office (admittedly a good 4 hours later than I had become accustomed to finishing for Christmas in the UK!) and headed for the tram. Just as I was passing the cathedral the heavens (diggin the link?!) opened again and everyone ran for shelter. I dunno if someone had planned for this but - as I hadn't seen in the cathedral I decided what better time, it was
Christmas!
It was actually pretty awesome inside and I was glad I ticked it off the list - even had an organ playing. It passed 5 mins while the rain went off anyway!
Friday night was the flying club Christmas party - our trusty car broke down on the way to it and we ended up having to get a taxi and arrived about 10 mins after my name had been pulled out of the hat to win $1,000 - you couldn't even make it up. Anyway - the least said about that the better. We had a top night and Michael was kind enough to give us a lift back home - or I am told he did...
It never fails to amaze me what a great social thing the flying club here is. We've had three or four great nights out there in the past few months and have met loads of really great people. Chris and Anne who are in the picture were amongst the first people we met - Anne is from Dundee and Chris from Kent. Chris works for Cathay Pacific and spends his free time at the club building his own
aircraft - a bit cool really! Santa also flew into the club (quite literally) presented Claire with a "naughty girl" present!
Dave (from work) and his girlfriend Suzanne had a BBQ on the Sunday afternoon which turned out to be another top afternoon. We had a good old expat chat to remind ourselves of the things we are missing from home at Christmas - like Turkey and cranberry sauce with stuffing and roasties - selection boxes and generally chocolate the way it tastes in the UK (unlike here where they have to put some special stuff in it to stop it from melting!) - and of course friends and family!
Dave and Suzanne had even put up a Christmas tree and wrapped their presents below it - totally putting us in the Christmas spirit! The afternoon flew in and, before we knew it, was 2am. Great company, great food and drink and even the weather turned out to be great - what more could you ask for!
One of the great things about Melbourne is that there is none of that curfew thing on getting into places - and at 2am you can get pretty much anything
you want. Dave lives about a 20 min walk from us - quite conveniently there is a 24 hour cafe bar about half way - so we stopped in and had a few quiet drinks.
We were both well and truly looking forward to Christmas and our holiday to Queensland!
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Lorna
non-member comment
santa's wandering eyes
Hey Claire, santa's having a good old look down your clevage!!!!! Clearly he's not used to little girls like YOU sitting on his knee!!! LOL