Australia Day, Edinburghian-style

Today is, as you know, Australia Day. 

In honour of this day, and partly to assuage the pain of not having a long weekend, I made some lamingtons for both of us to take to work. Something sweet in the morning should surely help ease the fact that we both had to work instead of slobbing around on a day off.

Unfortunately, finding sponge cake was really difficult. No supermarket was able to help, as they didn't stock any plain sponge. Both Tesco and Sainsbury's are huge, bigger than Woolies and Coles, but they failed in this respect. I also tried making a victoria sponge from a packet mix, but it turned out incredibly thin. Seeing as the recipe requires the chef to trim the outside brown bits off the sponge, the lamingtons would end up about as thick as a wafer. 

So the answer was to buy premade long-life sponge cake with raspberry jam and butter cream filling. I know, I know, this isn't how lamingtons SHOULD be. But, frankly, on Sunday afternoonI had no motivation to scrape out the filling and use the plain cake.

I'd never made lamingtons before, and they're quite easy yet fiddly. It's vital to hold the choc-covered piece of cake over the bowl of sauce to allow as much icing to drip off as possible. This slows the process down, but luckily my sweet tooth overrode my impatience.

So today we both brought them into our respective workplaces, and they were a big hit. The fact that it was Monday morning probably helped things, as people were after a little something to cheer them up.

Here are the lammos:

After work, we headed off to the Old Town to the OzBar which is, surprisingly enough, an Australian-themed bar. One of G's workmates was due to be there, after having spent the day at the beach playing cricket and listening to an INXS tribute band. We got lost briefly, but should have guessed where the bar was as there were some drunken youths with Australian flags draped over their shoulders, swaying gently and yelling loudly. One of them came rushing past and knocked into me; his mate apologised and said "Happy Australia Day, mate!" in a broad accent. He was visibly shocked to hear my similarly-ocker response. 

The pub itself was as it promised to be - loud, cheesy and full of Australian backpackers. We had one drink each before leaving, but not before buying a box of Arnott's Pizza Shapes! That was the highlight of the day, for sure.

Here's one more photo, of Max trying to take over navigational duties in the car:

Bits and pieces

Hello again.

Just a quick email from work (during my lunch hour) to update people on our recent activities. We've generally been up to administrative and organisational stuff that comes with moving countries and settling down, although some of it has been unexpected.

Max's behaviour is still less than desirable. He's taken to ripping up the mail when it's delivered in the morning, before he gets collected for day care. A bank statement and a gas bill were destroyed yesterday, and somehow I don't think the gas company is going to accept the excuse of "my dog ate the bill" when we don't pay up. On Monday he destroyed my exchange of driving license form, but not G's, sent by the DVLA, so I had to queue up at the post office yesterday to get a new one. It's driving us crazy, because he's got such a neurotic, irrational brain for a dog that many of the techniques listed on separation anxiety websites, namely distracting dogs with a juicy treat when leaving the house, don't work. Max has never been ruled by food, so even though we leave some chunks of frozen beef for him each morning, which he always eats, he still sets about destroying things. It's forcing us to think wistfully about him not being here which we don't want to do, but it's hard not to when you come home to find your scarf chewed up and bite marks on the kitchen door. G's started preparations for fencing off the front garden, and a kennel and heating pad were delivered yesterday, so soon he'll be an outside dog again.

On the other hand, having the new car is really, really good. We had planned to go for a drive on Sunday, but the forecast was for sleet, heavy snow, and all sorts of undesirable things. But Sunday morning dawned with a lovely blue sky so we hopped in the car....and immediately the clouds started to close in. However, the rain held off for most of our trip, and only poured for half an hour or so. We travelled east from Edinburgh along the coast, and there's some lovely scenery there. We drove through North Berwick, which seems to be the Noosa or Bargara of the Lothians - one new housing estate didn't have any properties under £1 million, which is a LOT. We also passed about a billion golf courses, including one that was right next to the main road. I'm sure cars must get hit by stray golf balls.

G was excited to drive through Belhaven, the home of Belhaven Best, and we stopped at the gates to the brewery. Belhaven kind of merged into the town of Dunbar, which had the narrowest, most ill-signposted streets we'd ever come across, and produced some hairy driving moments.

Driving in the UK is good, because pretty much every road, aside from suburban streets, is names (e.g. A1907). This is really, really handy when reading from a map, because it's really easy to tell if you're on the right track or not. The fact that some of these roads turn out to be more like glorified cart tracks is a minor point.

As for the unexpected bits, the door to the washer-dryer has broken, trapping a load of sheets inside (at least it wasn't clothing). This machine, an Indesit (see this page for one of many sites listing the brand's problems), is a piece of junk. We don't usually bother with the drying cycle because the clothes, towels, sheets etc, finish the cycle damp and steaming, rather than any closer to being dry. However, this means it takes about two days to dry things on the clothes horse, because, even after three additional spin cycles, the load is still sopping wet. All up - piece of rubbish that is to be avoided at all costs.

So, after realising on Sunday morning that the door of the washer was not going to open despite our best efforts, which included me kicking it, we called our landlady to tell her. She came over on Monday afternoon to check it out for herself, because she clearly thought that we were unable to work the door or something - she lives in Dundee which is over an hour's drive away, a long distance for British folk to travel unnecessarily. Not surprisingly, she couldn't get the door to open either, and phoned G on Tuesday to say she's going to replace the whole machine. Yay! G gets to do a bit of handyman stuff tonight and uninstall the washer, releasing our trapped sheets through the lid of the machine, all ready for the new one to be installed. It does mean, however, that we're going to have to go to a laundromat on the weekend to do some washing, which is a pain. Oh well, at least we're getting a new machine next week.

Anyhow, lunch break is over and I'd better get back to it. I'm interviewing for this role tomorrow, and I'm quite nervous. I just want to know one way or another what's happening with this position. I'd love to get it because then I don't have to go through the whole job-finding stuff anymore. But, what will be will be.

Cooking with gas!

Hi everyone,

Well, we've ticked off another item on our "to do" list and acquired a car. We took a chance and bought one from Ebay - all the kids are doing it these days - and after watching various options for a few weeks (actually, after our horrific train journey home from Wellingborough), G made a bid on a good car on Thursday. We won, which was terribly exciting! Dealing with stupid PayPal was not, so we arranged to pay the seller by cash.

So on Saturday morning, the three of us caught the train into Glasgow. We left home just before 8am to walk to the train station, and there was very little traffic on the roads, which was surprising. Maybe no one leaves their homes before the sun rises? The upside of this was that the train to Glasgow was virtually empty. We travelled through Falkirk (did not see The Wheel) before arriving, then caught another train to Cathcart station, which went through some pretty dingy parts of town. I guess you get those in every big city. 

The guy selling us the car hadn't had time to clean it out, which was a bit of a shame as he's a smoker, and there were some butts left in the ashtray. It would explain the three car deodorisers hanging from the rear view mirror - I usully detest these things, but was glad to have them on this occasion. The seller - who had a Spanish name but a strong Glaswegian accent - gave us directions to get back to Edinburgh, and after driving off we got lost pretty much instantly. 

Luckily, we managed to find our way to a main road and just kept driving, in the hope that things would turn out. We ended up making a lovely tour of Glasgow's southern ring road, before hopping on the M8 back to Edinburgh. After navigating some rather confusing road markings (nothing is straightforward here!) we finally hit the streets that we knew. It was a bit weird to drive down streets that we'd walked on or travelled through only by bus. 

In the afternoon, we drove out to B&Q, a Bunnings-esque store, to check out supplies for fencing off our garden. We were very glad of the car when the weather turned very squally and we could drive home with our groceries, rather than lugging them on the bus. 

Today, we drove north over the Forth Road Bridge (it's huge! As is the Rail Bridge!), and then up to Perth. Because the weather was still awful, we decided to just keep driving rather than getting out and going for a walk or something.  

Before arriving in Perth, various signs appeared for Scone Palace, which is not, as the name suggests, where the treat was born. Although it does sound like any scone they make there would be absolutely huge. (For some reason, while typing this I'm pronouncing it in my head as "scoan" rather than "sconn"...must be the atmosphere in the UK.)  Rather, it's where the kings of Scotland were traditionally crowned, so is rather Important in Scottish history.

Anyhow, we decided to make a diversion to Scone Palace, which would involve only looking at it from the car park as we had our little friend Max with us. We turned into the driveway to find the gates shut and a notice saying "Scone Palace is closed for a private function. It will reopen on 1 April 2009." That's some private function!

We drove home again along the scenic back roads, including through the town of Glenfarg. The countryside was so pretty, and would be even nicer on a day with better weather and during spring.

Having a car has given me such a feeling of freedom! We can do things and go places without having to check the train or bus routes. I know it's not environmentally correct to say this, but whatever. We're here to experience the country, and that really requires a car.

Plus, if we can avoid horribly packed trains in the Christmas period again it's okay by me.