T + 636. MEH This isn't as funny as I thought it would be.

25/11/2014 - sleeplessnessnessness...

Recovery - CMV appears stable, prophylactic Valganciclovir dose is holding it. Mouth ulcers tolerable and eyes liveable but still rissoles and I wear sunglasses in anything other than artificial light. No obvious ballooning from predisone yet, but it's early days Mr Pumpkin head is no doubt on his way, maybe just in time for Crimbo.

As previously mentioned we're not crazy about running the air conditioning in the apartment so tend to have the sliding doors to the balcony open save for on the absolute hottest of days. The park opposite is chocka with wildlife and the dawn chorus is a pretty raucous affair, kicking off at about 5am for about an hour and a half. My meds make me a very light sleeper so during the course of our stay I've come to know the various birdsongs pretty well and am now able to identify most of the birds that we get to hear regularly;

That's right it's Vince Cable

• Kookaburra (iconic and very distinctive - looks a bit like Vince Cable)
• White Cockatoo (vey, vey shouty in an Essex Bird way)

and then there are the lesser known varieties

• R2D2 Warbler (distinctive beepy tweetings)
• NSW Squeaky Trolley Finch (skreeek-skreeek-skreeek)
• NSW Dropped $50 Bill Seeker (similar to the Trolley Finch above , but where-where-where)
• The Snooze Button Bustard (falls silent if you throw a shoe at it)
• Postgate's Clangerbird (a bit Jethro Tull )
• Postgate's Lesser Respected Clangerbird (wanky jazz flute noodling starts early - puts me back to sleep)
• The Delbert Wilkin's OowaahOowaahKatanga Wagtail (distinctive)
• The Walnut Washboard Grater (dry rasping rhythmic call)
• The Nutsack Cheese Grater (high, piercing and frankly chilling)
• Farginelle's Hopping Natterjack (big feet - lives on hot tin rooves, farginelle!! - farginelle!!)

and I'm on the lookout for;

• The Quiet Silent Hush Thrush (hopefully a fuckload of them will move in and take over) 

These guys really go at it for a good hour to ninety  minutes after which time things fall suddenly quiet
- as I assume they are either all knackered or have been rewarded with many, many shoes.

Once again I have to apologise for a Facebook repost (pic below) but there is a postscript which I think justifies a little self plagiarism (can you do that?). Saw the product in the pic. 'Nads' in our local supermarket, apparently it's called 'Veet' elsewhere in the world. Being of an obviously juvenile demeanour I couldn't wait to get home and share the pic.

'Nads' for those times that you want your scrotum
to look like a frigate bird's neck pouch

Jeannette got a bit of a giggle out of it and was explaining to a colleague at work what the gag was. Her workmate cracked up and said - it gets better than that - there is a 'Nads Waxing Salon'  - big sign and everything at the Castle Hill Mall (huge - and I mean REALLY huge Mega Mall about 3 klicks away). Apparently it was originally going to be called Scrote and Ringpiece Waxers, but it turned out that the name was already taken by Australia's premier PPI claims Solicitors...

Another misunderstanding occurred this week, when Jeannette was advised not to worry about smart business attire for an upcoming work occasion and that it was OK to 'Just turn up in your Muff'. Further (and urgent) investigation revealed that this is the Aussie slang for dress down - from mufti, bloody obvious once you know, but for any non-UK readers, 'Muff' in the UK means erm...Lady Garden.

Oh and a thank-you to those of you that persist in perusing this drivel - page viewings/site visits have just passed the 12,000 mark. I know it's not earth shattering in the big scale of the the internet, but I'm fairly chuffed with it considering the biggest previous audiences I've ever had have been at Magistrate's Courts.

T + 631. What's that peeking through the square window?

Back on 25mg Predisone on alternate days for a bit (a steroid to you normal people) so suffering some sleeplessnessnessness and thought I might as well update this thang. Been for my second visit to the Haemo Consultant at the Kinghorn Cancer Centre (cheerful) near St Vincent's Hospital in Kings Cross, Sydney.

When I was here in the early 80s' Kings Cross was kind of equivalent to London's Soho at the time. Although I have very little memory of the event, Colin, the friend that I was travelling with tells a story of how we spent a very happy evening getting vey, vey, rat-arsed with a bunch of stubbly six foot transvestites at a pub here near to the Youth Hostel. Like many big city inner boroughs the world over, it has undergone a process of gentrification and is now a much sought after 'cafe society' locale.

Anyroad, as half expected the end of the ECP treatment and maybe me being a bit slacksy daisy about some of my meds has resulted in a flare up in  GVHD and CMV. Nothing too nasty but the Doc is trying a new (to me anyway) technique of  prescribing Valganciclovir in an ongoing lower prophylactic dose to keep the CMV down without unduly hammering my blood levels. I've had to start being a lot more conscientious about the non tablet stuff (the tablets are easy to remember) - Betametasone mouth wash, false tears and eye gel last thing at night and in the am. I've also got a Betamethasone cream which is nominally for external use only, but which the Doc has advised I apply to my mouth ulcers 3 times a day. He's also looking at bringing forward my innoculations as I have to have everything done again - all the stuff that babies have up to and including the BCG - should be fun especially polio. It's a bit of an adjustment working with the health system here, we'd been involved with the NHS infrastructure for so long that we had all the contacts and relationships in place so as to make things pretty seamless (a lot of this was down to Jeannette who is great at building relationships and getting people on side - I'm more your taciturn type of bugger).

A lot more of the health service is privatised than in the UK, so it'll take time to get the various agencies used to my presence and to get them to start liaising efficiently - a good example is the blood pathology labs, totally divorced and separate from any hospital and set up as high street walk ins, where all the samples are shipped off to a major processing centre in Queensland before the results get back to the Doc. It took more than a week for him to get the results - makes the NHS in the UK look turbo charged - and this is a week in which my CMV levels were still unknown (but on the up as I suspected).

Enough of that. You may be waiting to read of the latest act of muppetry from this family - we all have our moments and this week it's my turn. Now as a general rule we tend to walk around in the apartment wearing not a hell of a lot first thing - the house cleaning service doesn't normally come around until midday so it's never normally an issue. Milo feels so comfortable in the nud that he's normally down to just his vest within a couple of minutes of walking through the door. We tend to have the sliding doors to the balcony open rather than run the air con full time - being poms unused to living with it, the air con gives us all runny noses.

Oh bloody hell - looks like Humpty's out on the piss again.

So, getting ready the other morning, Jeannette away to work, Milo in his room watching kiddies TV on ABC1. I had just run a bath in bathroom number 2 adjacent to the entrance to the apartment as the ensuite only has a shower, was (obviously) naked when I remembered that I'd left the Kindle in the bedroom and nipped back to get it. Stopped on the way back to stick my head round the door so as to check on Milo - he's watching the Australian version of Play School and singing along to a song called 'Walking in the Bush' lyrics as follows;

Walking in the Bush
Walking in the Bush
Nothing's quite as lovely
As Walking in the Bush

So I started singing along with him and after a bit headed back to the bathroom having tweaked the words slightly to;

Walking in the Buff
Walking in the Buff - etc you get the idea.

Rounded the corner to go back to the bath to be met, mid verse by the  room service maid who'd dropped by early to get started.I couldn't really make out her face as I'd put in my lubricating eye-gel which makes things pretty blurry for about 10 minutes - all I know is the door slammed bloody quickly -  so not a big music fan then. I decided not to try and follow to apologise as it might only make things worse and still have no idea which of the maids it actually was. I now have to brazen things out with a big shit-eating grin whenever I meet any of them in the corridor, reception or lifts.

Milo is all teed up to start kindergarten at the school local to our new address on 2nd or 3rd of Feb next year. In the meantime he's got about 3 weeks on and off booked in a preschool nursery from now until late January. It's mix of between one and up to three days a week which is great in that it'll give us both a bit of a break from each other and allow him to makes friends with some of his peers who'll be moving on to the same school next year. He's gradually picking up how things work here, one of the carers at the preschool was telling me about how all the kids were lined up the other day ready to go outside and play. So they all put their sunhats on and have to hold their hands out to get a squirt of sunblock to apply to faces, arms and legs. Milo stood dutifully in line, received his squirt of sunblock and then immediately double timed it away to the bogs to wash the stuff off his hands. It took two of them to get him coated up with the slap before he could go outside.

He's having weekly swimming lessons and has been doing really well doing the doggy paddle in his arm bands - up until the past couple of days, when having seen me doing lengths of front crawl in the apartment pool, he has decided that this is how he will swim. To be fair, he devotes a lot of energy to it but the armbands don't help and the mad thrashing looks like he's trying to part the waters vertically down through the pool like some demented mini-Moses rather than make any visible lateral progress. Still it knackers him out and that's got to be good. Oh yeah latest stats anomaly  - I'm suddennly shit hot in Turkey, 20 views in one day!?

Reminder for self - Bing Lee next time.

T + 619. No Soup for you!

Thought I'd start this one off with a meds refresher for those of you that are either pre or post transplant. Daily I am on;

Ciclosporin 125 mg OD am
Ciclosporin 150 mg OD pm
Aciclovir 400mg BD
Mycophenalate Motefil 2g BD
Penicillin 500mg BD
Budesonide 3mg TD
Amlodipine  5mg OD
Betamethasone 500mcg TD
Folic Acid 5mg OD
Omeprazole 20mg BD
Pozaconazole 5mls YD

This is pretty much how things have been for about 18 months now the only real change is when I get a CMV reactivation and have to swap out Aciclovir for Valganciclovir. I take the occasional batch of steroid eyedrops and artificial tears but really they don't seem to make things any better.

I recently tried some quack eyedrops I saw advertised on TV - synthesized from Manuka Honey (with its amazing healing and antibacterial properties blah blah blah). The blurb said that after some initial sensitivity I would feel relief from soreness and dry eyes. The ad showed people who had been suffering for years, only to be healed by this miracle stuff.

Ah - that's better

So I popped a couple of drops in each eye and spent the next ten minutes writhing and blundering around the apartment in absolute agony. It was rather like someone had kicked me really hard in the plums, then gouged my eyes out of my head with a spoon and then squeezed my screaming testes into the vacant eye sockets. The only way these fucking things give you relief is when you've virtually dehydrated yourself crying enough to wash them out of your eyes. There is no fool like an old fool - because they get more illneses! Lourdes runs on mugs like me.

Jeannette came home from work with a great story  - she's starting to settle in to her new role and is zapping here and there across the country by jet getting in to see the various medical units and consultants who work in haemophilia in Australia. As they get chatting things often get very technical and as in any specialist area there is a whole language of acronyms and professional shorthand in use.
On some occasions the subject of my history of illness comes up and as it is a fairly rare type of disease the consultants are usually interested to hear more details. In this particular instance from what I can remember it went something like this;

Cons: 'So hubbie's had a BMT - what was it MUD, autogenic?'
Jeannette:' No - allogenic full match sibling'
Cons: 'Oh - OK , for ALA?'
Jeannette: 'MDS'.
Cons: 'Uhuh - 5q short string, Refractive?'
Jeannette:'No  - RCMD.'

The conversation carried on in this vein for some time and eventually came up to date with how I am now;

Cons: 'So current prognosis then?'
Jeannette: 'Chimerism 99 / 100%, transfusion free, but has chronic GVHD - ocular and oral, on immuno-supression and prophylactic anti-b's'
Cons: 'OK I see - Jellybean?'
Jeannette: (slightly perplexed) 'Eh? I haven't heard that before.'

a brief silence....

Cons: (starting to lose it) 'It's a sweet - I'm offering you one' ....hilarity obviously ensued.

A quick aside - I'm getting a bit dubious about the quality and accuracy of the stats calculator at blogspot. I dunno if other people reading this can go into the stats part of the site and see the country by country breakdown as I can, but out of the blue yesterday I was a big hit in Romania. Nothing at all for that country since I started in Feb 2013 and all of a sudden 43 page views out of nowhere. Weird.- unless the story about a massive nadgered dwarf appealed to the national psyche?

On the subject of which - Milo continues to be a source of total joy and teeth gnashing fury often in the span of the same minute. Mealtimes are particularly testing - often a minimum of 90 minutes to get it down him and a constant stuggle to keep him and his attention at the table. Earlier today after 45 or so minutes of me attempting to get a bowl of chunky beef soup and a slice of toast inside him we had the following exchange:

Me: 'Come on you like this soup! You said you loved it the other day - eat up'
Milo: 'No - you can't make me'
Me: 'Do you wanna bet? Either you eat it or you're going to be frigging wearing it in a minute son' ( I'm pretty sure I just said frigging)

No Father!! - I shall not eat the chunky beef soup you offer

Jeannette at this point could hear that the situation was escalating toward meltdown or mutually assured destruction and stuck her head out of the bedroom door to call over ' Nick - TAG!'
I've written about this before, it's a coded (we thought) system we use so that if one of us can see that the others' fuse is burning short they can jump in to avert murders. I just about had the red mist and was in no mood to be tagged and then Milo piped up; 'Yes  - tag Mummy in now Daddy, I've had enough of you'.
Defeated and deflated I skulked off to the bedroom to sulk and play Scrabble on the i-Pad. Obviously not that much of a code then - and less than 5 minutes later the little turd had finished the rest of his dinner completely and came in to give me a consolatory losers hug. I am now officially out of my depth.

Coda: - at the beach today him, standing in the sea  shouting back to land at the top of his voice
'Mummy! You have to wash my swimming costume tonight'
Jeannette calls back from the beach 'Why darling?'
'Because I've just done a great big wee in the sea'

Cue twenty or so heads swivelling towards us from adjacent towels.

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.

T + 612. The cracks are starting to appear.

 Well here we go again another Monday morning spent waiting by the phone to see if our application for the house we viewed and offered for on Saturday has got any legs. I have progressively grown a thicker skin over the past couple of weeks and no longer feel the burning urge to hunt the Estate Agent down and crush their throats until their eyes pop if we don't get accepted for a place. Thing is you see the same guys each week so you can't really afford to piss anybody off.

The object of our desire

Going to the viewings can sometimes leave you with a bit of a funny taste in your mouth afterwards, - being a chap from the southern counties of the UK, I tend towards natural politeness (except with friends and family) and maybe some people get overly competitive, but I really have seen some Grade A sharp elbowed aresholes trying to ingratiate themselves with the Estate Agents on the day. There was one particularly pushy prick at the 3rd viewing we attended on Saturday, he was mobbing the Agent with his paperwork - bank statements, credit card statements, mobile phone bills, personal references etc I think I even saw his certificate for the 100 metres front crawl when he was 8. The geezer was stomping around the house loudly declaiming to his wife where their furniture was going to go, he was a real bell end.

What he hadn't realised was that at some point earlier in the day his fat arse had split completely through his the back of his shorts and his hairy white butt cheeks were playing peek a boo out the back - it kind of put the dampers on his 'top boy' act - Jeannette and I took great delight in keeping schtum about it. I kept myself amused by making very loud juvenile comments about what a cracking house it was, - asking about the ring main and musing that it was a bummer that there was no air conditioning, just ceiling fans. It is of course entirely possible that this was another tactic on his part - you know, to scare people off touching door knobs thinking maybe he'd had a scratch but I could be over (anal)ysing. I've probably got completely the wrong attitude - but I find it a bit demeaning to be seen to be 'trying too hard' - you've got to have a bit of self awareness and grace about this kind of thing.

Just heard from Jeannette at work - the Estate Agents have been on the blower to her boss to confirm that he is her boss and that she is employed where she says she is, which is further along the process than we've got before. Hope they don't try and get references for me - not that they'd be negative, it's just that I left the company 3 years ago and Transport for London is such a huge organisation that I wouldn't know where to start if I were trying to get a reference - let alone someone based 10k miles away in a different time zone.

Mrs has just been on the phone again, EA's wanting more background info on us and on Wellie - I'm forcing myself to feel negative about this because I don't want the kick in balls feeling if we don't get it - the thought that Mr 'Arse-Me-Out' Trousers could get it over us would really be just too much.

We had some storms and high winds over the weekend and as I write all I can hear outside is chain saws and wood shredders going off around the neighbourhood as the clean up starts.

In an effort to be a better Dad I'm doing more varied 'stuff' in the daytimes with Milo. We did Putt Putt Golf last week and we're kicking off this week with 10 pin bowling. I'm psyching myself up and hoping it doesn't end up with tears and another public tantrum. Just can't help it though - I fucking hate it when my ball drops into the gutter at the last second.

So we're off to do that and I'll update soon.

Oh and here's another FB repost just for posterity.

I'm a bad father and I'm going to go to Hell. At Clontarf Beach today trying to get Milo to write his name in the sand. He's not interested. So I said look, if I trace the letters in really lightly with my stick, you can go over them afterwards with your stick and it will look like you're writing them. All of a sudden he's interested so I trace the letters out lightly and leave him happily to it.

When he finished he came running proudly up the beach to take me back down to see his writing. To give him his due , it did look fairly impressive scratched in 24" high letters across the beach;

MILO STOREY SMELLS

I'm just sad that we didn't have a camera to hand so I could show you the expression on his little face as he was standing proudly next to it.



*******STOP THE FRIGGING PRESS**************

Ahem - er - We got the house - so suck on that Mr Bumcrack. I fang yew.

T + 609. This one's like Bertie Bassett at the STD clinic.

This first story is a Facebook repost from earlier in the week - apologies if you've already seen it, please feel free to apply for a full refund on your way out.

Milo calls to me from the bathroom;

'Daddy  - I think we're going to need some more shampoo because I've just washed my bottom.' Curiosity compels me to check. It appears to have taken entire large bottle of Johnson and Johnson No More Tears Formula baby shampoo to get his arse clean and the bath is luminous yellow with the stuff, maybe he self administered an enema with it - I don't bloody know, I'm beyond incredulous. When I eventually get him out of the bath - he's slicker than fricking otter shit due to the 50/50 concentration of shampoo to bathwater, the only way I can think of to get him cleaned up is to slide him into the shower cubicle and keep him there until he stops foaming. The other apartments must have thought I was trying to cram him into the microwave for all the bloody racket he made - anyway now to face the rest of the day with the shiny arsed little critter.

Time to get out now Milo

About time I wrote a bit about MDS, recovery etc etc which is supposed to be the point of the blog in the first place. I am (thanks to the big fella) currently enjoying an extended hassle free spell of relatively rude health. Mouth GVHD is at manageable levels and does not impact on my eating, the eye GVHD if not significantly better, is still no worse and I can spend a part of each day out of sunglasses even in full sunlight. That said, my eyesight is not good and it looks like all the effects of the Lasik I had in 2006 have now been negated by meds  and even though I hate wearing them, I may have to be Mr Speccy Twat again in the near future.

However whilst I'm enjoying this spurt of good health, I'd like to give a mention and pass on my best wishes to two of my Facebook buddies who are currently having less than glorious times at the hands of MDS - Tammy in Canada and Sam in the UK. I hope that you can both look at what Jeannette and I have done in the teeth of my illness and cast forward to a time when there is much soppy fun to be had and many stupid arsed things to do - post transplant. My thoughts are with you both.
I'm not due back at the Hospital until 18th November and no blood tests due until 14th or so, meantime I just have to sit tight and steer clear of antipodean lurgies. Good name for a band.

In an effort to demonstrate that I wish to educate and inform and not just sit here brain farting, I'm going to lay some of my newly acquired local knowledge on you. For example, bedding such as sheets, pillow cases etc over here is known by the generic name of Manchester. This apparently is because that in them there olden days all of it was imported from the UK in crates marked up with the the place of manufacture hence "Where do you want me to stack this shitload of Manchester" caused the word to enter common parlance - shops and supermarkets actually have "Manchester" signed above the relevant aisles Apparently the same is true for crockery becoming "China" and now I'm just off to relax with a nice bit of Colombian (no - the coffee).

Next, a RORT is Australian for a con, scam or rip off. I was most disappointed to learn that hardly anybody says "Bonza" anymore it has slipped out of the idiom over here in the same way that "Jolly good show" has in the UK. Another thing is that for sheer uncaring, unresponsive, arrogant and just plain shitey unprofessionalism Australian Estate Agents leave the UK guys in the starting blocks. Demand in the housing market here is such that the lazy buggers just have to turn up at the the house they are showing, unlock the door and then just sit back and wait to be hosed down with cash. Absolute shiny faced money grabbing fuckers to last so far in my experience.

In the interests of keeping Milo occupied and unmurdered, I took him for a couple of rounds of what I used to call Crazy Golf at a place called Ermington Putt Putt about 30 minutes drive from our apartment. It was nudging 30 deg when we got there at 11am and the course was pretty much deserted apart from - well I'll get to that bit in due course. There is a choice of three different courses Water, Jungle and Crazy and we elected for two rounds starting with the Water course. Now saying that Milo is hard-headed, stubborn and opinionated is like saying the sun is hot and big and difficult to lift. They just both are.

Generally any given social scenario involving trying something new with my son plays out like this. I start off all good intentions and 'let me show you the wonders of my world mini-me' he digs his heels in and tells me in his sweet 4 y/o way to go poke it. I get stroppy - he gets stroppy, one of us storms off muttering 'Fuck this' and the other one starts crying - I'll leave you to you work out who's who. So to try and ensure that our day at the golf lasted longer than 3 minutes, I soon gave up on showing him how to hold a club or take a shot and kept my neck resolutely wound in whilst he held the club one handed, arse backwards and merrily divoted his way round the astro-greens - after all he was enjoying himself scoring about par 12 per hole.

As we were playing I was vaguely aware of a guy a few holes ahead of us who was setting up various bits of video and photographic equipment on tripods and taking loads of what I assumed were publicity shots. Milo and I carried on playing and eventually bickered our way round to the hole where this guy (let's call him Trevor) was set up. He stepped to one side as I teed up my first shot on the famed Bart Simpson  - the13th hole back nine at the Ermington Putt Putt Water Course. Just as I shaped to putt he piped up sagely;

'You want a tip for this green mate?'
I looked up at him unbelievingly, my face a mixture of confusion and dumb amazement - this is a 20ft long crazy golf astro green after all.
'Got a top tip for this - guarantee you a hole in one'
A cold creeping realisation went through me - this is the type of man who considers himself to be the Crazy Golf Course Resident Professional. This is the absolute definition of 'too much time on your hands'. Writ large. In granite. Mount Rushmore style. And floodlit.

Well lets get this over with then.

'Er - OK'

To save you non-pros from all the technical jargon, I had to cannon off the kerb to the left of the Bart and Lisa Simpson house sat in the middle of the green (I base this assumption on the fact that they were both small and rendered in yellow paint - they may as well have been dialysis munchkins as far as resemblance went. Oh and there's also a kind of melty Garfield who looks like the bastard offspring of Buddha and Tigger). The rest of the shot was then blind, but Trevor assured me that if I pitched it just right and cannoned at the point he'd indicated - well it'd be a no brainer.

And bollocks - he was right. To further improve the situation Milo decided that he also wanted to do a hole in one as well and went through the whole bloody course of instruction again before totally disregarding everything he'd just been shown and then getting a bloody hole in one via some kind of St. Vitus dance/hockey shot.

This was sufficient to convince said resident pro that we needed his advice on the lay and technical aspects of the next few holes. During this time I learnt that he is Captain of the Ermington Putt Putt Golf Team (pro tip - never call it crazy golf, it's like calling archery 'bow and arrowing shooty') and was in the process of making a video of himself scoring three consecutive 'holes in one' at each green on the Water course, shot in real time unedited to show there was no trickery to this feat. This done he was then going to replicate the whole process on the Jungle course. Stupidly, sucked in by the scope of his ambition, I said ' - and then the same on the Crazy course?'. I received a look  'Serious Team members don't play that one'.

Over the next few greens although there were no further holes in one, I learnt that Trev had filmed more than 200 videos of himself playing at Ermington which are uploaded to his Youtube channel puttputtdownunder. Monies raised from the channel and team activities all go to charity - so who am I to mock this man's magnificent obsession.

Our time together ended on a poignant note as I was telling him about where we live in the UK, which is in East Sussex not far from Hastings.

'Jeez mate! That's where they just played the World Championships - have you been?'

'Well not to the World Championships, but I have played Crazy Golf on the seafront'
'Putt Putt'
'Er - yeah'

He's gone a bit misty eyed and is looking at me as though I'm Neil Armstrong or Sir Edmund Hilary  - for I have set foot upon the hallowed ground about which he can only dream from afar.

T + 602 Landfall, Australia and Dead Ben

Seven days to go.

Turns out that we wont have to put anything into storage as our shipping allowance is 45 cubic metres which is enough to handle anything we want to take with us. The packers are coming on the 26th, 29th and 30th September - apparently they descend on the house like a horde of soldier ants. the shipping container is being dropped outside on the 30th for 3 to 4 hours during which time the entire contents of our house will be transhipped.

...which is exactly what happened. Fast forward 3 weeks - we are now ensconced in our temporary apartment in Baulkham Hills and settling in nicely. Huge amount to catch up on.

We are house hunting and are currently waiting to hear back on a lovely house in a suburb called Beecroft. There is huge demand for decent rental properties and the north western burbs (Pymble, St Ives, Beecroft, Turramurra) where we are looking attract quite literally dozens of viewers on open days. If we wanted to live around here (Baulkham Hills) you could get a dirty big new 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom place probably with a pool for about $650 pw - but I'd contrast it as choosing to live in Milton Keynes rather than Tunbridge Wells.

So what with me being the house bitch and all, I have wasted no time in getting the low down on the supermarket situation here. There's alot less competition here than in the UK, - I've only come across three different places so far Coles, Woolworths and Aldi. Woolies is the winner- Aldi is just as pikey as in the UK and Coles is more expensive than Woolies but the quality is about the same. Bit more expensive over here as well, but a canny house bitch is always on the lookout for bargains.

Milo reduced nearly a whole aisle of people to tears of laughter the other day - we were walking past the deli counter next to a partially used wheel of Swiss cheese when he piped up incredibly loudly 'Look Daddy they've got holes with cheese in it!'. He's also made a new friend - as we walk through the park to meet Jeannette for lunch or to go to the shops we see an incredible range of wildlife. There are eels and giant carp in the pond, weird birds and ducks, loads of wild rabbits and reptiles. In particular there is a very large very dead lizard by the side of the path that we have been seeing everyday for the past two weeks. Milo has decided that he's called 'Dead Ben' and I get an update on how things are progressing as Milo shoots off ahead to cop a look and then jogs back to report. It started off as 'Dead Ben has got flies on him daddy' then 'Dead Ben has got really fat' to more recently 'Dead Ben has exploded' and 'Dead Ben doesn't have a head anymore'. After we've stopped looking and move away he sometimes signs off with 'Bye Dead Ben  - see you tomorrow'

Just heard we didn't get the house. Bollocks. Jeannette isn't so pissed off because she didn't get to see the place, so she doesn't know what we've missed out on. I think I need to grow a pair and not get so invested in these places when we view them. I've been trying to see about 6 properties a day so far this week and its boiling down to great house  - shit location or vice versa. luckily Jeannette's work aren't going to pressure us out of the apartment but it would be nice to get it sorted as living here has a definite tinge of transience or weirdly being in limbo. once you find one you like (we now know) things get dirty, there are instances of people offering above the quoted weekly rental to secure a property or offering x number of months rent up front. We've checked the finances and we can afford to put up a bung of about 3 months rent to help secure a place if necessary - but it fucks me off massively to have to do it.

Have seen doc and had blood tests - all seems OK at the moment, no recurrence of CMV yet but as long as I'm on such high levels of immuno-suppression, it's really just a matter of time before something kicks off.
I had to take Milo in with me for the consultation as we haven't got child care or school sorted yet and the first thing the Doc said was 'Milo eh? My dog's called Milo'.

Jeannette's had me in stitches with tales of her recent business trip to Perth. On her flight was a large group of what I am going to term 'God's Special People' who I suppose due to vagaries of airline ticket booking, were salted generously among the general pop rather than seated altogether with their carers and medics.. Jeannette had reserved a window seat and as she approached her allocated seat she noticed that it was already occupied by a middle aged lady.

It's my window seat I tells ya!

She later told me that the general background cacophony of yelps, howls and gibbers should have alerted her to the fact that this was no ordinary flight - but she pressed on and asked the woman if she would mind moving as she was in the wrong seat. Big mistake - the woman started barking and howling at her bug eyed- and just as Jeannette was thinking no-fucking-way-aye-ay am I sitting next to this fruit loop for the next five hours, a woman from a couple of rows back came forward and announced that she was the carer and would happily swap seats - job done. It was apparently one of the funniest flights ever, with any passenger who wanted to use the loo having to bob and weave running the gamut of random flying arms and legs or being barked at - a bit like Indiana Jones trying to get out of the Temple of Doom. At one point the plane hit some turbulence which triggered a noise like the entire occupancy of an ape-house being electrocuted.