Round the Bay in A Day (or two) 2010

This weekend is the annual Round the Bay bike ride which circumnavigates Port Philip Bay, crossing between Queenscliff and Sorrento by ferry.  This you can see on the Map below is a bloody long way - 200km to be exact. So no, I am not participating. I am not that mad. Yet.

Accidents Are Prohibited On This Road

Accidents Are Prohibited On This Road – Russell McGliton

I have always thought Melbourne a close cousin of Manchester, my home city in the UK.  Melbourne tends to come out just on top by a cat's whisker, mainly due to the ocean, the beach and the weather, but those unfair natural advantages aside, they are uncannily similar. Both begin with an M for a start. Then there are the fine historic buildings & museums, great restaurants, their lively music scenes, world class sport, buzzing night life, and the fact they are both second cities (just don’t shout that too loudly to either Melburnians or Mancunians – another thing that they have in common.) There is also something about the vibe: energetic without being hectic, especially compared to their first city counterparts.

The YHA - now available with X Factor.

Cell Block H.

I remember my first ever night at a YHA Hostel.  I also remember what I said when I left that place – ‘Never, ever, again.’ I had fallen asleep in a four bunk room in the Lakes with two of my mates and woke up to find a complete stranger in the bed above me. No one had told me that we were sharing a room. I mean, he could have been an axe murderer or something.

The experience did nothing to dispel the notion that hostels were more-or-less the same as asylum seekers detention centres, crammed with old bunk beds, peeling wallpaper, stained carpets and over populated bathrooms. True, they offered the basic necessities - a clean bed, a bathroom and a kitchen, but that was pretty much it. If you were really lucky, you might have been given a towel.

Australian Rules Football: A Pom's Idiots Guide to the AFL.

Footy fever takes over the nation

Today is a huge day in Victoria – the AFL Grand Final between Collingwood and St Kilda. This is Aussie Rules, the only bona fide religion in Melbourne. There is nothing that compares to it in the UK or maybe the world, even the Superbowl doesn’t come close.  

And here’s the proof. Ten thousand fans turned up for Collingwood’s pre match training session yesterday. One hundred thousand lined the streets in Melbourne yesterday for the pre match parade. Yes, that’s the pre match parade. Festivals are held in Melbourne to co-incide with it. School Holidays are planned around it. Kids were allowed to wear their footy shirts on the last day of school. The Age - the serious national newspaper - features the Grand final as its front page story (out of respect all other sports have been dumped from today's edition.) There hasn’t been a single conversation over the past week with an Australian that doesn’t start with “so who do you want to win?”

Wherefore art thou, dictionary?

I have only seen five of Shakespeare’s plays in my life so I don’t for one moment claim to be an expert. Far from it. And I am definitely not one of those luvvie types. My dad worked for a living.  

However, I have enough experience of his works now to confirm that I really do enjoy them. Well, four of the five anyway. My Henry V experience in 1998 was a failure of such epic proportions, that I also failed to return after the interval. At first I thought it was the production company’s fault. Then I blamed the Palace Theatre in Manchester. The audiences were obviously a lot smaller when it was built in 1891. There wasn’t even room to swing a Cornetto. It took me fully thirty seconds to unwedge myself to let someone go past.

This Ain't a Love Song, this is Goodbye - Freddie Flintoff Retires too soon.

The right way to remember Freddie.

Alas, It's true. Freddie is gone.

It wasn’t a bad innings was it? The chronic injuries have finally forced Andrew Flintoff to hang up his boots and retire from world cricket. Everybody loved Freddie; everybody will miss him - none so more than me. Yet, I also feel quite let down by him. He messed it all up, and he only has himself to blame. Not so much Yabba-dabba-do, as Yabba-dabba-doh.

The Best Old School Hip Hop of All Time

From someone who has been listening to rap for the past twenty five years, here’s a rundown of my favourite hip hop tracks of all time.

You will probably pick up a couple of things straight away – there’s no Public Enemy, Jay Z, Eric B & Rakim, Nas, or LL Cool J on the list. That’s because all the tracks here are from the early eighties before any of these really got going. And no, this isn’t because I stopped listening to hip hop when the new romantics came along, far from it. It’s just that I prefer my old school to be from the very old school. Let me try to explain why.  

Gerrard 1 Lampard 0.

For some time now England have been able to boast of having not one but two of the most rated central midfield players in the world.

In the red corner presenting Steven Gerrard, captain fantastic of both Liverpool and England, athlete extraordinaire, scorer of sensational goals, and blessed with the ability to drop a pass over 80 yards onto a sixpence. He has also got the knack of scoring spectacular goals when it really matters - including THAT goal against Olympiakos which enabled Liverpool to go on to eventually win the Champions League, and maybe the finest goal ever scored in an FA Cup final which took them to extra time. Since 2000, he has been capped eighty seven times by England and scored nineteen goals.

Then in the blue corner, there’s Frank Lampard, Chelsea’s modern day master of box to box play, goal scorer extraordinaire, and the owner of 3 premier league winners medals, not to mention being a three times runner up. It’s an amazing feat that Lampard scored twenty plus goals and notched twenty plus assists in seven consecutive seasons at Chelsea. He also weighs in with a very impressive eighty three caps for England since his debut in 1999, with twenty goals (twenty one if you include the finest chip never scored in an England shirt.)

So with two world power houses in midfield both pulling on the three lions, surely all is well for Fabio?

August 2010, Phillip Island, Victoria

Phillip Island is one of the most popular spots for Melbourne masses to escape to in Summer time. It’s situated in the Western Port, about 2 hours drive south east from the city, which cuts through the beautiful Gippsland countryside: once you finally escape the tedious sprawl of the South Eastern suburbs that is. At just 26km wide by 9km tall, nothing is more than a 20 mins drive away along the single main artery which circumnavigates the island, connected to the rest of Victoria by a single road bridge.

There are around 7000 very fortunate permanent residents, a further 50,000 summer residents, and a staggering 3.5 million visitors per year. These willing visitors are enthralled by the natural beauty; the sandy beaches, the tranquil wetlands and the unique wildlife experiences.

We too were drawn in by the latter, but not by the usual crowd pleasing Aussie favourites of Koalas, Kangaroos, or Wallabies. We were in search of Penguins. Yep, those cute wobbly little birds that live in the snow capped and ice filled oceans of Antarctica. And we hadn’t gone mad. Australia’s largest colony of Little Blue Penguins is found on the southern shore of Phillip Island, adding several thousand permanent residents to its growing human population.

The Great Ocean Road 14km Fun Run 2011, Victoria, Australia.

“Run for 14km - where’s the fun in that? ” my friend grinned at me as I told him I had signed up for the 14km fun run, an integral part of the very popular Great Ocean Road Marathon weekend. What he didn’t know was that this particular run started and finished in the outrageously pretty Apollo Bay, which was a good enough reason alone to sign up, never mind being a great way to escape the tedium of the treadmill.

That was about 2 weeks before the race, and having just completed the last of my gruesome training runs with pain burning from my chest, I could see now that he had definitely been onto something. Maybe it was the nerves, but I had a vision of the race ahead, of me collapsing to the ground just yards from the finish line as pensioners over took me with a sympathetic smile and gracious wave.

With five events in total over the weekend, including the shorter races on Saturday, and the marathon on Sunday, I was anxious enough to double check that I had entered the right race on the right date, and thankfully with a sense of calm restored, I completed my final pre-race checks and route planning, and headed off for an early night.

July 2010 : Skiing in Queenstown, New Zealand

Well we manage to live a busy and hectic life at the moment... ahem... and just about squeezed in a week's skiing in New Zealand into our hectic schedule!

We flew into Christchurch where we stayed for one night, at the Hotel SO : I am sure that this type of hotel will get more popular... really small room, but funky as you like, mood lights, flourescent shower lights, free wifi, corner bed which doubles as cool sofa : great for one night, but not enough room to swing a cat. Or a bag full of ski gear. Christchurch is known as the garden city and the most English of cities outside of England, so home from home!