What a busy few days I've had!

Firstly there was the wedding - and what a wonderful day it was. It was probably the hottest day we've had since we arrived in Oz. I had stayed at Sarah's sisters the night before and spent a quiet day there while Sarah dashed around like a mad woman back in Barwon Heads and the hairdressers in Queenscliff.

We drove down to the venue in the air conditioned car and when we got out it was like a furnace. They set up the seats in the garden and it looked lovely. We had the Mistress's cottage in the grounds of the venue and I waited in there with a bottle of the wine that the venue produces.

And boy did I wait!! She was over half an hour late - not thankfully because she was having second thoughts but because her sister got lost on the way to the venue! Oh well the best things in life are always worth waiting for!

So there you are we're married!!

Good things about the day

The beautiful lady in the ivory dress

Toberlone cheesecake

Sarah's youngest daughter cracking a huge grin and saying "Hello Daddy"

Many other things too numerous to mention

Bad things - just the bloody flies.

So after staying the night in the cottage at Suma Park we flew up to Sydney on our mini honeymoon. The reason for going was to see the stage production of Priscilla Queen of the Desert at the Lyric Theatre.

It's long been one of Sarah's favorite movies so I was looking forward to taking her and it was well worth it. I'd bought a VIP package which meant we got a goody bag with feather boa, bottle of fizz etc and included a free coctail in the Priscilla lounge - Sarah had Sex on the bus while I went for Cock in a Frock!

"A bus full of drag queens lost in the desert! Yes I know it sounds like a movie!"

The show was really good and followed the movie with a few changes - kylie replaced ABBA for example. The ping pong ball scene was there and at the end hundreds of them fell on the audience. Some of them had the logo "for external use only" on them.

No sooner had we got back from Sydney then I was out at Pauls Bucks night. I'd missed the barbie and golf but arrived in time for the meal at a German restaurant. It was an "authentic" German beer cellar but the band had an odd idea of German music as I spotted the birdie song. Una Paloma Blanca and the Loch Lomand song in there.

We had to pay $25 (£10) for unlimited beer so it got a bit messy. Sarah's brother was sick - a fact that was announced with the words "Hey the Poms spewing" I got back at 2:45 a bit the worse for wear!!

Last night we went to a carol service in a park in Geelong - carols by candlelight. It was a bit chilly and the candles kept blowing out. There was Santa and a brass band and suddenly it felt like Christmas.

Today it's Christmas and guess what we had sleet and hail this morning - just like being at home!! Coldest Christmas day in Melbourne in 150 years apparently!

Merry Christmas everyone x x

Well in the afternoon actually - about 5am UK time. Hopefully the weather will be as nice tomorrow as it was today.

I've been dispatched to Sarah's sisters house so I don't see her until the wedding. I've got my suit, the rings and all of the stuff we need for our mini honeymoon.

I went surfing today using a borrowed bodyboard. The girls were having another lesson so I thought rather than sit and watch I'd get in there and catch some waves. The surf was much more than I've experienced before in Cornwall and it was quite hard work.

At one point I got knocked over and ended up on the rocks, I found it difficult to get up and then I started to get a cramp in my leg. I thought "I can't drown, I'm getting married tomorrow". When I got to safety I discovered I'd bashed my knee to go with my cycling injury!!

Oh well - my last blog as a single man!1

The kids went surfing today - shortly after we heard reports of a shark attack off the coast - great white apparently!!!

Two days to the wedding - aaarrrrggghhh!! Sarah's dad has just arrived in Oz.

This is a beautiful place - going to be hard to come home!!

Driving down the freeway, sunglasses on, air conditioning up full blast - listening to "Last Christmas" by Wham!

It's been weird having my birthday in the sunshine! it's usually more likely to snow.

Had a good day but it's almost over down under!

arrived in Melbourne this morning but we are very jet lagged!! The house we have rented is beautiful.

second attempt!!

here I am 7500 miles from home and still only 2/3's of the way there! We are sitting at Kuala Lumpur airport waiting for a flight to Melbourne.

So what's happened so far? Well we got to Heathrow and my visa wasn't on the system so that was worrying but it eventually got sorted out.

After an agonising wait at security we were soon on the plane. The flight was nice but apart from Ben none of us got much sleep. The in flight entertainment system was good and I listened to some new music by the like Souad Massi.

However when we arrived in Kuala Lumpur Ben's pushchair has gone missing. No one knows where it is - could still be in London or in transit to Melbourne.

More later

...we go to Oz. It has seemed so far away for so long it's hard to believe it's actually here and about to happen. Yesterday was quite emotional for both of us as we spent our last day at work. Sarah had a cake, Champagne and prezzies while I got a huge card and a secret prezzie yet to be revealed. The Directors of the company are even paying for me and Sarah to go out for a meal in a nice restaurant when we get back.

Just before I left they opened a bottle of champagne which caused me to have a few tears - so soft!!

So in a few hours we're on our way. Who knows what will happen over the next few weeks but it certainly will be an adventure.

Watch out for Blogs from down under!!

Oz minus 0

Just doing the last of the packing and I inadvertently gave away where me and her are going on our mini honeymoon.

Oz minus 1

Well yesterday we had good and bad news. The ticket arrived but while we were out and a card was put through the door. So it wasn't till this morning that we got to the Post Office sorting office to pick it up. Once it was in my hands I could hardly open it due to the shaking. Thankfully after we checked it three times we decided it was ok - phew!!

We got Ozzie dollars today and bought food for the plane so all systems are go. With the weather today I'm so glad to be on our way. It was in the 100's where we are going today which was better than the thunder, lightning and torrential rain we had today - and there was a tornado a few miles up the road.

Thanks to Isadora and all those who have wished us well for our upcoming wedding.

Oz minus 3

Well it's in the post anyway and we have a Royal Mail tracking number so it should be here tomorrow or Thursday - fingers crossed. It took another stressy day to finally get it sorted out but today I sent e-mail after e-mail to the manager at the ebookers Indian call centre till he was sick of me.

They have offered compensation though!! £30 in ebookers vouchers - wow!! I spent more than that on phone calls and anyway it will be a cold day in hell before I use ebookers again.

I'm all packed as well and my bag is only 22kg so all systems are almost go. Last night we decided on the vows etc for the wedding (ones we could say without giggling!) and we confirmed the menu with the venue and booked the photographer.

Getting there slowly

Oz minus 4

Still no ticket for Ben - spent most of day stressing and on phone to ebookers. They told me they couldn't re-issue his ticket because they hadn't recieved the old one back despite the fact that it had been signed for on 29th.

It took them all day to work out that the lady who told me to send it back had given me the wrong address!!! I'm assured that it will be issued tomorrow and we will have it by Thursday - well let's hope so.

Yesterday was Christmas Pt1 and we had a lovely day. I cooked Turkey and all the trimmings. We all opened our prezzies. I got a "grow your own boobs" set from Sarah's eldest daugherD

We weighed the first suitcase today - it was 18Kg which is a good start. Mine's nearly packed but there are still 4 people to pack for.

Oz minus 6

I can't believe it - this time next week we'll be on a flight to Kuala Lumpur - well assuming that Ben's ticket turns up on time. Yes those wonderful folks at ebookers have done it again. I was told to mark the envelope "Urgent Re-issue" when I sent the tickets back.

Quite why I don't know because they got the tickets on Wednesday and did nothing for three days . I rang last night and was told there was a technical issue?!? I called back today and spoke to the woman who has been looking after us and she said they would be re-issued on Monday as the ticket office (being in Britain) doesn't work weekends!! She said they would then be posted to us - I'm holding out for a bike to my office.

So another few sleepless nights but other than that things are moving along. I finally got the last bit for my outfit - a shirt and some cufflinks. I've been looking for cufflinks for a while as I couldn't find mine which I hadn't seen since I moved out of the former matrimonial home in May 2005. I couldn't find any I liked anywhere. I asked my Dad when he came down if he had any but the ones he brought weren't me. Anyway today I bought some when I got my shirt and then I came home, went out to the garage to find mains adaptors and put my hands straight onto the cufflinks I'd been looking for

Tomorrow is Christmas day!! Ages ago we decided to invite Sarah's Nan round for Christmas dinner as she wouldn't see most of her family over the holidays as we would all be in Oz. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it still is but....well you can guess. So tonight at 9pm we dashed off to Tesco to buy a Turkey and all the trimmings. We spent £115 but luckily we had some tesco Clubcard voucher which took a huge lump out of that. There's load of booze which will never get drunk so at least I'll have something to relieve the stress later in the week. We went for Ozzy wines and beer to get us in the mood!!

Oz minus 10

Oh my God what a stressful few days we've just had. In the run up to the trip down under and of course the wedding everything just started to go wrong.

Firstly there was Benny's ticket having the wrong surname on it. You'd think it would be easy to rectify wouldn't you - but no!! Two weeks of increasingly frantic phonecalls to ebookers later and at least the name change has been done on the system but we are still waiting for the ticket to arrive.

In the end I had to insist on speaking to a supervisor at ebookers who after she heard my tale accutally assigned someone to look after me - you would think this would be standard wouldn't you but no. Nobody was handling the problem so things were only getting down when I was phoning in. It didn't help that they gave me their own fax number instead of the airlines at one point.

Malaysian Airlines then dragged their feet having to send the details all the way to Kuala Lumpur to get permission to make the change - good grief. So today I could finally book 9 seats together and get permission to take Benny's carseat on. That was a struggle in itself - you'd think that they would have a list of compatible seats but no that would be too easy. In the end we had to take the one in Sarah's mums car as we could find info about that one.

Then in the middle of all this we went back to have a dress fitting for the dresses that needed further alterations and they had seriously messed one up. It ended up being 3" too short!!! The dress came from America and there was no time to get another one sent over. In the end the seamstress had to make the whole bottom half ofthe dress again out of material similar to the dress colour. A very agonising wait over the weekend worrying about the possibility of having to find 4 more dresses at short notice. Thankfully it worked out ok.

So now we're onto the packing and at least the stress levels, almost unbearable over the weekend have now dropped to merely heart attack inducing!!

To scrape 4 children down off the ceiling!!!

Less than two weeks till we leave for OZ

Ferrero Rocher

Nasty Chocolates and their ads are awful!!

"With these Ferrero Rocher, you're really spoiling us"

(for parts 1 to 4 see last year in archive section)

My MP3 player broke

I bought an Archos 20GB player about two years ago and I loved it - I have very wide ranging tastes in music so being able to carry so much music with me was great. I thought it was a great little machine until three weeks ago.

I was on a train up to London and it just suddenly stopped working. I tried everything and nothing worked so I phoned up Archos. they said to send it to them for repair which I did. I waited ages and eventually they came back with a repair cost. The hard drive had failed and the cost to repair it was £105.

Now I kind of think this is a bit steep as it only costs £135 to buy a new one. I paid £180 for it less than two years ago which means it has cost me £90 a year!! I'm not going to give them the money for the repair and I can't afford to buy a new one - even if I could I'm not sure I'd want to buy another Archos anyway. A google search shows that they are prone to HDD failures so again if this is a common fault why should I have to pay so much.

Anyway with the trip to Oz coming up I don't want to be without one so yesterday I bought a cheap and chearful 2GB from Dixons (sorry Currys.Online) for £25. It's ok and will do for now but there is a fundamental difference between it and my old one. The old one allowed you to play albums the new one only lets you plays tracks (as far as I can see) which is not the way I usually listen to music.

Oh well beggars can't be chosers as my Granny used to say!!

No need for words me thinks!!

I went to the hospital on Friday to get the results of my CT scan. They had a map of my head on a computer screen - amazing how all those brains fit inside my head

Anyway the reason I had a scan was due to the headaches that knocked me flat for 3 weeks earlier in the year. I've been getting them for 7 or 8 years, usually once a year and for about two weeks. They are excrutiating and knock me sideways. No one seems to know what is causing them.

Anayway I'm still non the wiser as the scan didn't show anything. It's not my sinuses which is what they've been treating me for the last few years. They've given me a nasal spray and if it doesn't work I have to go back.

She's gone out on her hen night but she was nearly an hour late getting there

I'm a bit worried about the tape measure in her handbag though!!

Why does this always happen?

When ever I have to go to a parents evening or get home at a certain time to do something there is always really bad traffic and I'm horribly late. In fact it happens so often that I am beginning to believe that I influence the traffic through some sort of cosmic thingy!!

Tonight I had to get back for my eldest daughters parents evening as it would be the last one before her GCSE's. I had had to rearrange work commitments to get away. I left early and gave myself 1 hour and twenty minutes to do the one hour journey.

I got as far as Keston and got stuck in a jam because there had been a crash and a car had gone through a fence.

Then on the A21 just south of Pratts Bottom there was another queue at the roundabout. This turned out to be because cars were leaving the M25 to avoid the traffic jam that was on there. I knew as soon as I got to the slip road and saw the 40mph signs that I was in trouble.

M25

No sooner had I managed to escape the jam and get onto the M20 than I ended up in another jam.This was a combination of the traffic from the M26 merging, the roadworks at junction 4 and an accident on the other side of the road that had closed the London bound carriageway.

M20

I eventually arrived at the school at 7:10 after taking two hours to do 35 miles. I'd missed most of the appointments.

After yesterday and tonight I'm so sick of this overcrowded corner of the country and could happily emigrate!!

I left home at 8am this morning to drive the 35 miles into central London where I eventually arrived at 11:15. Most of central London was at a virtual standstill.

The reason for this became obvious as I reached Embankment station. The Police had shut off the area around Parliament because of the state opening. And when I say shut off I mean shut off - huge concrete blocks had been placed across the roads.

So in order to ensure the safety of the "great and the good" the rest of us were left to suffer and struggle through the mire. And we still had to pay the f-ing congestion charge!

Why do all the cufflinks in the world look like the ones my Dad used to wear 35 years ago?

and why can't I find the nice ones I used to own?

The weekend was taken up by runing round buying stuff for the wedding. We started off on Friday afternoon when we ordered matching waistcoats for me and Benny. I had to chase him round the shop to get the thing on him and then again to get it off him again. Still he will look cute when he's got the whole outfit on - when we buy it!! I also managed to order shirt for me too.

Saturday we went to Beckenham for the dress fitting - I was banished from the shop with Benny so we walked around the streets while all the girls were fitted. There were 8 dresses in all with the ones for Sarah's sisters wedding as well. Sadly half of them needed furthur alterations so we will have to go back again in a few weeks.

We stayed overnight at Sarah's mums house and went shopping in Bromley on Sunday which is probably the only shopping centre in a 30 mile radius we hadn't searched for clothes. We did manage to get some stuff including a little wing collar shirt and suit for Benny. We also got my youngest daughter something to wear for the other wedding - phew!! Sarah bought something for that wedding too but didn't have time to try it on and when we got home it was too big so I'll have to return it this week.

At one point we were pushing Ben round and he was shouting Sorry! Sorry! from his pushchair. When we looked he was missing one of his shoes. We retraced our steps several times but we couldn't find it so we had to buy him a new pair. Typically Mothercare didn't have any for him so we had to buy them in next - they're well cool though!!

We had managed to send three of the kids off to do Christmas shopping and I was looking forward to a nice Gingerbread Latte from Starbucks but when we got there there were no seats so we had to go to Costa instead. They were doing a spiced ginger latte but it wasn't the same without the cream on top!! By the time we got home we were shattered.

So because we were busy all weekend I had to go to Tesco tonight instead. I ended up being in there for nearly two hours and was starting to lose the will to live (something that doesn't usually happen till much nearer to Christmas!! The reason for my dispair was my daughters shopping list for her Food tech lesson at school. On the list was malt extract which I couldn't find anywhere. I could find Beef extract, vegetable extract, yeast extract even horse tail extract (whatever the f*ck that is) but not malt. My eyes were aching and my head was spinning by the time I left.

and I've just got in from work.

Wish I could think of something intellegent to say but a 19 hour day sort of puts an end to that.

Oh well nearly the weekend :0)

One by one we've fallen to the virus. First it was Sarah, then me, then my youngest daughter, then Sarahs eldest and finally last night her youngest (and we think my eldest has had it as well).

We have done nothing all weekend except mop up sick and worse. I had to go out and restock things like Dettol, anti-bacterial wipes and toilet rolls yesterday.

What a weekend!!