T + 615 The Power Shot.

Health still holding out well, manageable mouth ulcers, -  eyes just as sore, not great and looking a bit like that army fella Sir Mike Jackson before he had his 'eye-bag' removal operation! However - no CMV reactivation, great appetite and now swimming every day in anticipation of getting back in the gym when we're housed - so not whinging for once (much).

Need a hand with those bags Nick?

Huge relief at this end that we've finally secured a home (for the next year at least) - and now it's time for the not so fun bit ie handing over the large wad of cash that we had to dangle at the Estate Agents and landlord to secure the tenancy. The talk over here is exactly the same as in the UK as far as the property market goes, just switch 'LONDON' for 'SYDNEY' and it's ident-kit. Unsustainable house price bubble blah blah blah, first time buyers priced out of the market blah blah blah, negative equity all round when this goes tits up blah blah.

I was here more than 30 years ago and the character of life was still pretty distinctive and most markedly Australian  - not sure if McD's had arrived back then, I do remember 7/11 being here. The intervening years have worked on this country in much the same way as they have on the UK. Increasing Americanisation and incremental dissolution of the existing domestic lifestyle. Except here there is a hybrid of Commonwealth leftovers, US influence and things that are still undeniably and indelibly pure Australian. The national obsession with sport of any kind for one thing and a very sensible attitude towards the use of 'language' on TV. The daytime TV hosts swear their heads off (arse bugger crap etc) without an eyebrow raised or grovelling apologies for 'any offence caused' which is really pretty refreshing. I haven't come across any songs or films yet where the word motherf**ker has been rendered as 'motherflubber' or otherwise obscured by the censors as happens in the UK.

We went 10 pin bowling as planned and it was a great success, went down much better than the mini golf. Getting there was a tad comical - although I'm gradually familiarising myself with the surrounding area I still plug most destinations into the sat nav before setting off. In this case I programmed it in and set off for Castle Hill AMP Bowling Alley, about 15 mins to Castle Hill or so I thought. We ended up pretty much mimicking a scene from The Simpsons where Homer jumps in his car, does a U-turn in the street, parks outside the house opposite and jumps out, having arrived at his destination. We could have walked it in less than 5 minutes I reckon. I haven't been for yonks and so it was all very rock n roll and high tech inside Milo was eyes and mouth agape.

Steady there Milo

I had the gutter bumpers and ball ramp set up for his game - he insisted in trying to use a 12lb ball and minced, hunched over to the ramp like a dwarf hauling a huge scrotum in front of him, occasionally dropping it and each time (thank god) narrowly missing his foot. He developed a technique that he called his 'power shot' that involved increasingly long run ups to the ramp before giving the ball a push - sending it pinballing off the bumpers down the alley. The run ups got progressively longer as the games went on, until by the end of the second game he was disappearing from sight off behind the games machines away to the right of our lane for a 10-12 second run up for the 'super power shot'. This was all well and good except for the fact that he came to a grinding halt at the end of each run up to push the ball!

Today we shall mostly be window shopping for;

• a big yankee style fridge freezer with ice maker
• portable air conditioner (none fitted at new house)
• microwave (we dumped our old crappy one in the UK)
• new hoover (Australian border control requires hoovers are spotless to avoid contamination, so we left ours with the UK tenants)
• broadband, TV and phone package.The equivalent to UK Freeview is called Fetch TV in Aus.