Let it rain

It's been a bit busy recently. We had a great Easter weekend. In a nutshell:

Good Friday- Semaphore Kite Festival and a long walk on the beach















Easter Saturday- Wine tasting & lovely picnic with Emma, Mark & Jake in McLaren Vale














Easter Sunday- chocolate, more chocolate, salmon and scrambled eggs in the garden for brekkie, sofa shopping and then cinema in the evening to see Aussie film 'Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger'














Easter Monday - lovely walk in Belair National Park, including looking around the Old Government House 'summer retreat' and servant quarters. Very grown up.













This week the big news is that it rained a few times. I woke up this morning to the sound of birds singing and rain falling! It was perfect apart from my banging head following gym drinks yesterday ($200 behind the bar is enough to tempt anyone away from our fitness regime...) followed by dinner at Sonia and Teds place in Glandore.

We've moved all of the plants into the centre of the garden to get optimum benefit from the rain. I saw a child at the hospital collecting rain in a cup! His mum said it was a real novelty for him!

Today we've been clothes shopping and I have bought my winter coat so am now set for the cold weather haha. The temperature dropped to 19c this week and it scared me! Back up in the 20s next week though so looks like I'll have to wait a while before I can wear my new coat!

As for next weekend... you may realise by now that I never talk about what we've got planned in the future - there's only so much I'll give away to the whole wide world. However, it's going to be a cracker and we can't believe that after arriving 10 months ago in a city where we knew no one and had nothing that we've ended up doing something so random yet so much fun! Watch this space... it'll make you chuckle, guaranteed.

Happy Easter

The long weekend has officially started (well, it has for me as I've got Thursday off this week!) so it seems the right time to wish all of our blog readers Happy Easter!

It feels weird that Easter is happening at the start of Autumn - doens't quite have the same feeling of new beginnings in Spring as we're used to!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

You'll be pleased to hear the heatwave is over and I have a spring in my step again! This evening it is 25c and I am feeling some what chilly! haha. I'm even wearing a long sleeved jumper! Sensitive little sole.

Seriously though, it's lovely to have some air again and quite a relief for everyone!

The AB kebab...

Great weekend so far. A mixture of wallowing in the heat, ideally keeping indoors under the fan and in front of the evaporative cooler and venturing out when the sun goes down.

Went to see Monty Python on Friday night at the outdoor cinema in Port Adelaide. We can't recommend this outdoor cinema enough - it's free, good films, and a great way to get some slighty cooler air! I even quite enjoyed Monty Python which surprised me.

Last night we toddled along to the Persian Garden - an outdoor club set up in Elder Park as part of the Adelaide Bank Festival of the Arts.















A good experience but we followed it up with an even better 2am experience... an AB kebab... apparently an Adelaide institution and Taryn and Mark told us that by eating it we can now officially say we live in Adelaide.





















The following is a good description of an AB that I found on someone elses blog (why reinvent the wheel). Granny and Grandpa please excuse the bad language, I didn't write it...

"AB" does not stand for "absolutely beautiful"
This is probably an Adelaide-only thing. The rest of you, thank your lucky stars and say an extra Hail Mary or something. An AB masquerades as food and is beloved of uni students and pissheads. It involves a waxed paper box, several forks, an arseload of hot chips, half a cow's worth of greasy yiros meat and a variety of reflux-inducing sauces, usually garlic, barbecue, sweet chilli and tomato. Separately, these things are innocuous. Together, they are lethal. A bit like Sonny and Cher, really.

Two cafes in North Adelaide claim to have invented the AB. One of the cafe guys says it stands for "absolutely beautiful". Any uni student who has lived in one of the two nearby residential colleges will tell you it means "abortion". I prefer to think of it as an abomination.

It also comes wrapped in pitta bread, masquerading as a harmless, tummy-settling yiros. I found myself with one of these monstrosities in hand late one night and took a bite, expecting refreshing salad and tabouleh with my greasy lamb. Nup. Chips ~shudder~ If you've accidentally swallowed strychnine, forget the Ipecac and get an AB yiros down you.

A visit from Jan and John

It was nice in the week to have a visit from Keem's Mum and John. They live in Brisbane but were staying with friends Vic and Glenys in Stirling so popped round to say hi!

We had a lovely evening despite it being extremely hot! There were even some freak drops of rain (there were no clouds above...) early on.

Adelaide smashes heatwave record

I like a good competition and my energy levels perked up when yesterday I learnt that Adelaide has 'smashed' the heatwave record and is now the hottest Australian city - beating a heatwave in Perth back in 1988! We are the champions!

Read the full article here.

Today it's forecast to get to 40c and the temperatures aren't going to drop until possibly Wednesday. That will be 16 days over 35c! Crikey!

My bedside thermometer last night... (temp on the left is in our front garden, temp on the right is in our bedroom!)














My bedside thermometer this morning...

Happy Campers

Just had a great long weekend (yes, another one...) and despite the intense heat we managed to have a good one.

On Friday night we went to see Run Fat Boy Run, a Simon Pegg film with some very fitting moments for our recent trips to the gym. In the UK I would have never considered going to the cinema on a warm sunny day but here it is bliss to spend a couple of hours in ice cold air con!

On Saturday we decided to test our new tent out and headed to the McLaren Vale to Lakeside Caravan Park. I was impressed at our ease of assembling the tent - we didn't even argue! There was a pool at the campsite which was bliss for an afternoon dip.















In the evening we had a chinese takeaway (ok ok, we don't have cooking equipment yet, or even an esky so a takeaway was a good option!) and sat outside our little tent waiting for it to cool down. It was still roasting when we went to sleep (I reckon around 30c) but waking up in the morning was bliss as the sun hadn't yet risen and the air was reasonably crisp.

We headed to Willunga for brekkie which is going to be a nearby town for us when we eventually move down that way. It's a lovely town and I actually prefer it to McLaren Vale itself.

We then went over to the coast (we called it a progressive breakfast) for a cuppa at the Star of Greece in Port Willunga. I'm gutted when I remember the restaurant is named after a shipwreck and not named so because of it's distinct resemblance to a Greek island! For me it is complete Mediterranean bliss!

I can't actually remember what we did from then on. I think the heat has made my head a bit fuzzy! There was definitely a visit to the beach on Sunday and Monday - a dip in the sea is a perfect remedy!

I might sound a little bit like I'm whinging about the heat. I have to emphasise that I absolutely love the heat and that horrible feeling of cold bones is a million miles away (one of my primary reasons for moving to Australia!). I guess I am potentially a little whiney but I blame having no air conditioning at home, living in a two story house (rare here!) so the heat rises to the bedrooms and having quite a few hot restless nights... Also, when I'm talking hot - it's hot!

I challenge you all in the UK to crank up your heaters to 39c to experience a day time temperature, and then maybe turn it down a few degrees to about 30c, leave it on all night long in your bedroom, sleep like that for a week and then see if you turn out a little whiney like me! haha!

Anyway, enough moaning. I'm off to the beach. ;-)

A heatwave record for Adelaide - 9 days in, 7 days to go!

Click here to read the heatwave story on Adelaide Now

A week in my life...

I seem to have had a little obsession with whipping out my mobile phone and recording videos this week. Maybe it's because there is a lot of exciting stuff around, maybe it's the weather, maybe I'm just crazy...

Anyway, here's three videos that you might enjoy (or not!).

Nice view of Adelaide...


The things I go to for the sake of a free lunch...


Brilliantly amazing buskers on Rundle Mall (part of the Fringe)...


Having a 'moment' in Adelaide...

Hot and tired...

Just a quick update to say that we're mid heatwave and loving it! The heat started on Sunday/Monday and it isn't due to cool down until the end of next week. When I'm talking hot, I'm talking over 35c! Tonight we finished work and headed to the beach and it was still 35c! The sea was bliss!

Had a great weekend - had a barbeque with Jane, Tommo, Gilly and Michelle and consumed a large amount of the red stuff so spent Sunday recovering. In fact, come to think of it I think I'm still recovering.

A good week so far, though it feels like a long one. I think the heat makes everything go slower! Looking forward to the long weekend.