T Minus 43...

Exciting news this week at Gidday HQ.

Chicky is coming!

Yes, after almost a decade of me living here, Lil Chicky has booked her ticket and is coming to experience a bit of London Love at the hands of yours truly.

We'll get to hang out (so completely ace just on its own) and I get to show her around Fab Finchley and my adopted hometown.

We'll also make a little pilgrimage across the Channel to visit Dad's birthplace - the land of clogs and tulips - Amsterdam.

And there'll be the small matter of celebrating a rather important birthday while she's here.

So much to do in so little time together.

And 43 sleeps to plan it all.

Luckily she's already bought the t-shirt...

So in case you missed it, that's T minus 43 peeps...

Let the countdown begin!

Trickle Trickle...Splash Splash

Exciting news here at Gidday HQ.

I've had a new boiler installed. 

For those of you who don't know - like me before my migration north of the river and away from electric heating (in the ceiling no less) and hot water - the boiler is an essential piece of kit in one's house here in the UK. It not only supplies the hot water but also fuels the gas heating.

And with the temperatures dipping into single figures this weekend, these two 'objet d'omesticity' have grown particularly close to my heart. Especially as, after arriving home earlier this month to a chill indoors, I had to break out the bedsocks twice in the space of a week.

So last week, the pipes were fitted and the new combi-boiler installed. Gidday HQ is toasty warm and ready for winter.

But there's been an unexpected bonus. The water pressure is amazing.

No more shimmying around under the dribble from the shower head.

No more waiting 20 minutes to run a bath.

And the kitchen sink is full within a minute or two. (Let's face it, the quicker I can get washing the dishes out of the way, the better. It's not my favourite chore but there are not many other options when there's no-one else to blame nag cajole ask.)

It's gone from a trickle to a veritable torrent.

I didn't think it could happen but Fabulous Finchley just got even more fabulous.

I am one happy little Vegemite!

A Happy Little (expat) Vegemite...

There is some exciting news at Gidday HQ today.

My fellow expat afficionados over at The Displaced Nation asked me to write a bit of a travel yarn about my recent trip to The Eternal City and it's now live over there for your enjoyment.

If you can possibly bear to read one more thing about my Roman Holiday, you can meander over by clicking here.

While you are there, you might also like to have a little fossick around. I can confess to a particular addiction to the It's Fiction series, Libby's Life....

I am one chuffed expat!

ps...if you haven't been keeping up with my travels of late (and shame on you if this is the case), here's the Rome series for you:

The Gods of Rock...
A Holy Trinity...
All Roads...

Friendships Are Made Of This...

There's nothing like a special guest to make a new pad feel like home. Apart from the opportunity to welcome someone into your new space, it also makes you get your a*** into gear with that last little bit of unpacking. You know, the pile you have left in a corner and avoid making eye contact with, the half empty box you've been walking around while muttering 'I must get around to doing that...'

Anyway, last night Gidday HQ played host to its very first guest - A-down-the-hill (the down-the-hill bit a reference to the place I lived before). The guest bed was made up, living room cushions plumped, cosy blankets draped over the couch (our friendship has a history of much 'vino, cosy blankies and a movie') and the place was all ready for her arrival.


Gorgeous house-warming flowers from A-down-the-hill.
The thistles are fitting - hubby is Scottish!

A-down-the-hill was my first 'London' friend. Fresh off 'the boat' in 2004 and with only her email address to guide me, our friendship has been a rock for me - ups and downs 'n' all - over the last eight years and outside Mum and Lil Chicky, she's the person I feel closest to on the planet.

By the time this post is published, she will have featured a dozen times on Gidday from the UK, appearing the first time on the 29th June 2009 as 'A' in Muscles & a Minor Heatwave and most recently at my latest birthday bash, Pukka Picnic & Polo Ponies.

In between, there have been BBQs, baking, and bicycles. I've been a Hot Chick to her Hen, and an Emergency Handbag. We've been Ladies Who Lunch and we've even Kew-ed the Music together. She was also the one who inspired my Kindle-envy, culminating in my abandoning my bookish faith and embracing the pure, electronic loveliness of Audrey.

And she's another Happy Little Vegemite and Australian Abroad, an enduring fellowship for those of us who've made it beyond the initial couple of years here to 'settle', whether by marriage (her) or by sheer bloody-minded declaration (me).

So, A-down-the-hill was my first guest, a fitting tribute to all sorts of new chapters we've seen each other through over these last eight, London years. And to welcome her last night to Fabulous Finchley was...

...well...

...fabulous.


ps...today we also hugged each other Merry Christmas as we said goodbye as we will not see each other again before the big day. This provided little ol' moi with a timely reminder to let you all know that there are only 8 sleeps to go.

That's right, we are down to single figures peeps. Are you ready?

A Very Chicky Birthday

Today is Lil Chicky's birthday.

So I thought I'd tell you a birthday story.

The first one was fraught with competitive friction.

This young whippersnapper had the front to question her big sister's attempts at teaching birthday best practice

Her (L) and me (R)

 But it wasn't long before she got the hang of it 

Sisterly pride in the background

And tried to muscle in

'What's the deal? It's my birthday, not yours!'

So I had to re-assert my authority

Birthday territory re-established

And by the time we got to her 21st, we had learnt to share

21st birthday of Lil Chicky (in the green dress)

So we played happily together

Outside Flinders St Station in 2005

for ever

Anzac Day Match at the MCG 2007

 and ever

At Sand Sculptures in Frankston, December 2010

Happy Birthday Chicky!

Two For The Price Of One...

Today is Mother's Day...again!  With the UK already celebrating Mothering Sunday in March, it always leaves me wondering whether I should be wishing Mum a Happy Mother's Day then (as I am in the UK) or today - but I guess that two for the price of one is a pretty good deal and anyway, who am I to begrudge sending a little more Mother's Day love out into the ether?

In any case, those of you who read Gidday From The UK on a regular basis may remember that I have already posted in honour of Mother's Day Part One so I figured it was time to roast honour Mum in a different way - this time by regaling you all with the trials and tribulations of my childhood dressed as 'Two For The Price Of One'.  The story goes like this:

My Mum sewed.  A lot.  Before I came along, she made big stuffed toys like this gi-normous panda. 

Yes that's me with the panda!

She also made amazing 'pyjama dogs' that had a zip on the underside that you could pop your 'jarmies' in 'til next time.  Mine was orange. No, I do not have a picture.

Deciding that toys were not enough, she then moved on to outfits. It started innocently enough with individual ensembles...

(Lil Chicky was eye-ing off the Christening Cake)

And then she got thrifty...

Look at those ringlets - Mum's a talented woman!

We do love a birthday in the Hamer clan!

Actually I think our Oma might have knitted these vests - Mum got everyone in on the act!

And still matching hairdos!

...as not only could Mum get a better deal on the material, it meant that Lil Chicky could continue to wear my hand-me-downs for years to come.  (Boy, she REALLY loved that!)

Anyway, this continued on until we rebelled (it was a little uncool once we got to school and had friends who came over to play!), only to slide right back into it in our teens...

I'm (17) on your left, Lil Chicky (13) is on your right

...although we were being Mum's bridesmaids and she didn't make the dresses herself and they are different colours - but enough said.  A picture paints a thousand words.

So a it's couple of decades (and a bit) later and I figure Lil Chicky and I have managed to weather the storm and emerge relatively unscathed. ('Oh thank goodness', I hear you whisper.  No it's ok - don't apologise. I understand.)  But little did I realise that my departure from Oz had left such a gap...

Mum (L) and Lil Chicky (R)

Ladies, it's time to let go! 

Happy Mother's Day!

XFactor vs Strictly? No it's Vegemite vs Marmite...

The battle is really hotting up over here.  Never mind all of that Saturday night twaddle about whether XFactor or Strictly Come Dancing got the highest ratings - although by my calculation there must be a lot of empty restaurants and Saturday night 'venues' around in these weeks leading up to Christmas. 

No the REAL battle is over a couple of thick, brownish-black gloopy substances, Vegemite and Marmite.

If you click here, you can read more on the latest tactics in this age-old war between the colonials and the Empire but in short, Marmite now has a store in Regent Street, London - only a pop-up one mind suggesting that this is not a long term Marmite strategy - to proclaim the brand's...um...coolness.

Would be un-Australian of me to suggest that this in fact pointed not to coolness but to an inferiority complex?  I mean we don't need to resort to this in Australia for one of our 'own' - every self-respecting Aussie knows the words to 'Happy Little Vegemites' (indoctrinated during hours of childhood telly - click here to see it for yourself) and there is nothing more comforting and nostalgic for us Down Under than hot buttered toast with Vegemite (partic. when the toast is based on the fluffy, nutritionally-bereft bread we loved as kids - when did Granary overtake this in our psyche I wonder?).

But I digress...

I do remember supermarkets making a short-lived effort to stock this supposed British staple - like it or not, they stopped stocking it because NO-ONE BOUGHT IT! And no-one bought it because NO-ONE LIKED IT!

I suspect that Vegemite has had a reasonable showing in British supermarkets (and probably more so in the Greater London ones) because about 400,000 Aussies set up camp here and wanted some home comforts...and were prepared to be impolite enough (we call this being direct) to ask why it wasn't stocked anywhere.  And supermarkets, being what they are and hating to miss a money-making opportunity, put the smallest, most cost-ineffective jars on their shelves.  And we then proceeded to indoctrinate partners, wives, husbands, children and anyone who sat at our breakfast table to the Antipodean delights of Vegemite on toast as the ULTIMATE morning-after-the-night-before cure.  So we all went to the supermarket or the Australia Shop or harangued fellow travellers coming from our great brown land to get us some more so that we could put 'a rose in every cheek' possible.

I don't remember anything like this happening for Marmite in Australia...

I rest my case.