Basil & The Ashes

Since I last wrote, apologies for any keen readers out there (though I do get the feeling I am mostly writing for myself), Basil has arrived, August has come and gone, and almost most importantly England have won the Ashes. What fun I've had consoling my Strayian work colleagues. At least they're still good at the pole vault, or one of them is anyway.

Naturally England's win meant i won my bet with the neighbour, so thay are very kindly hosting a huge slap-up bbq for us in a couple of weeks. So jolly kind of them!

Basil....hmmm....Basil is a little monkey with piranha-sharp teeth. He is unbelievably cute and good-natured, when he's not trying to chew the backs of your legs. We've now had him for just over 5 weeks and he has doubled in size, eats like a horse, and craps like an elephant. but he's still cute. The picture is of him on his first visit to the beach down the Gold Coast. He loved it. Since then he tries to go swimming at every opportunity, which includes in his water bowl and under the garden hose. More of Basil later.

Having had a 3 week break from the homestay students we're now back up to full capacity with two swiss girls staying with us. It turns out that one is a sous-chef in real life so we're looking forward to some tasty meals in the next few weeks. In fact, we've got a pretty full-house at the moment with a couple of Megan's friends from the UK also staying, as they journey round the world.

Sadly megan and I have had to forego our honeymoon plans for October, owing to my work. We've been informed that we all 'have' to take 3 weeks off over xmas which basically means we can't take time off at any other time. So it looks like we may well be coming back to the UK and Hungary for xmas and New Year, and then will try to fit in our honeymoon on the way back out to Oz. Looks like we'll try to go to Thailand or somewhere similar. We shall see.

Thought I'd start putting in an Albertism every time I blog - in essence, a comment/deed/action or lack thereof, made by the father-in-law which should never have been made or contemplated in the first instance. At his daughter's graduation (yes the other one!), he was somewhat taken aback by the number of people of Asian extraction going up to collect their degrees and queried rather too loudly whether in fact they were getting their degrees in English.