Monday, January 28, 2008

What I did on my holidays

I've been away for a little bit thanks to either a shortage of time or a shortage of wit with which to write. You know how this bit goes, I say sorry and promise to write more often, you say yes, that would be nice and shrug your shoulders in a believe it when I see it kind of way then wait for the next random event to inspire me to actually type something, anything. Well lets just skip that bit and pretend we did it eh. You really want to read about the random.

Not technically what I did on my hols, just this weekend. I went to a barbecue which turned into a party then escalated to a shindig. Thankfully it died down before we had a full blown hootanany on our hands. No you read right, I said barbecue, yes in Salford, yes in winter. Why? I'm not entirely sure, but I'm glad it did.

There was of course a reason given. It was arranged by my good friend Hannah, who is a visitor to our shores from the merry old land of Oz, in honour of Australia Day. This is a day when Australians celebrate Australia and, I'm told, Barbecues are cooked on and beer is drunk. Thanks to the way the planet works they have their summer over the Christmas period (crazy I know) so the timing of their national day is quite clever and conducive to barbies.

Salford is approximately 15000km or 9400miles or 1.59684e-9 ly from Australia. If you drill a hole straight through the Earth from Salford you would come out, well actually in the Pacific Ocean a little bit South East of New Zealand, but it's quite close to being the opposite side of the planet. So yes the idea sounds crazy. And it was. This is exactly why it worked. Winter can be a dull and dreary old affair. Especially now with storms and rain rather than good proper snow. I'm not knocking it, it keeps me in a job, but it used to be fun to model snow melt. Back to the point. Winter can be depressing. Especially towards the end of January when the holidays are wearing of and the sniffles are setting in and to be stood huddled round a barbecue gathering for warmth off the charcoal and talking nonsense while waiting for snags (that means sausages, we were practicing our lingo quite a bit), it was a fantastic occasion. The planet either agreed with the bizareness or felt we deserved points for effort because it gave us a mild clear night to enjoy it in.

Later it got colder and we moved the party indoors and a game called cereal box was played. There was also a good old fashioned sing song where everyone chipped in with any Oz songs we knew. The home and away and Neighbours theme tunes featured prominantly with some of Rolf classics thrown in for good measure and the crowning glory of the whole first verse of the Australian national anthem.

It anyone else wants to celebrate their national day outside their nation, I suggest the UK. We seem to have a knack for adopting the mildly insane. We call it quirky and eccentric and accept it for the fun it is.