What's New, Pussycat?

The Sweet Smell of Debt

2009-11-03T16:45:51+00:00

Exciting but terrifying news: Dr G and I have purchased a house! Bloody hell. The happy dance of home ownership is somewhat restricted by the little financial shackles clamped round our ankles. Ahh, remember the days when a grown-up purchase was just a vibrator or a litre of very cheapest vodka.

It's a great place; the same age as Dr G (36). I had to surrender my naive Great Australian Dream of a laundry room but it's in our favourite part of town and there's space to grow tomatoes and shelter Antipodean visitors.

The only problem is that part of the house stinks. In the literal sense. It smells. It whiffs. It honks.

I don't know we missed this at the time of viewing. I did have a really bad cold. Or maybe I was too busy mentally allocating rooms to notice, "One for me, one for Gareth, one for the budgie..."

How can I describe it? Stale and smothering... Eau de Elderly meets Something Dying Under The Floorboards. Like a mangy cat moved in during the intervening weeks between us viewing and collecting the keys. Or like a real estate agent was so suprised at selling a house in a time of deep recession that his bladder burst from excitement. We may never know the true answer.

Turns out the smell was living in the carpets. We figured this out by snuffling around on the floors like truffle pigs. The hallway was the worst offender. I actually reeled backwards when I inhaled, gagging and coughing.

"Gareth, you have GOT to smell this floor."

"No way man! I don't need to smell it, I saw your your reaction."

"But you have to experience it for yourself! Otherwise you'll always wonder if it was just me doing bad slapstick."

"Noooo!"

"SMELL IT!"

He reluctantly kneeled, then promptly keeled over.

Just to be 100% sure the problem couldn't be solved by bicarb soda or Febreeze, we called in Mother-In-Law Mary to verify. She just walked about the house; we didn't make her get down on the floor.

"Yes, yes!" she was her verdict, eyes watering, "You need new carpet!"

So we have spent the past three nights attacking the floors with Stanley knives. I am quite enjoying the destruction. Sure there's the unfortunate bit when you peel back a layer and get a big lungful of Stink but the ripping up part is very theraputic. Beneath the carpets and underlay lurks 30 years of grime, so every time you take a step or cry, "HA HA look at this mess!", a long trail of dust flies up like a Mexican wave. There will be some long nights of scrubbing before we move in December.

Fortunately removing the carpets seems to be removing the scent, so already it's starting to feel like Our Place and not That Pongy Financial Burden!

Citizen of the Dunny

2009-09-30T22:21:39+01:00

Today I officially became a British citizen! I attended a ceremony at Dunfermline City Chambers, mouthing the words to God Save The Queen while seagulls squabbled outside.

The Provost told us new inductees that we should be "proud of our achievement". But obtaining citizenship is not so much an achievement as a display of endurance and financial commitment. It's been 6.5 years and about £2,500 in Home Office fees. Now that I'm on the other side I can freely bitch about those stinking Home Office fees.

Cynicism aside, I loved the minor pomp of the ceremony and it's great to be an official Fifer. Eh! KEN!

I reluctantly moved across the water to Dunfermline in 2005, just before I married Doctor G. I thought it was a grotty hellhole - incomprehensible accents, crappy shops and pavements strewn with exploded kebabs. But now The Dunny feels like home. Even if we could afford to move back to Edinburgh I think I'd stay here. As much as I miss Edinburgh's cafes and concerts, I like my tiny commute, my kickboxing club, the countryside access and laughing at the stupid peacocks strutting down the high street.

How could you not love a town that gives you a commemorative mug for becoming a citizen?

It features stunning Fife attractions like historic Culross, St Andrews cathedral, the Rosyth Dockyard and the Forth Rail Bridge (The Greatest Feat of Victorian Engineering™).

And a puffin.

And for some unknown reason, a Chinese dragon thingy.

Catchy slogan, eh?

So with dual UK/Oz citizenship I have permanent access to two lovely nations and my wrestles with bureaucracy are finally OVER! Unless of course we move back to Australia and Gareth can experience the joys of the Department of Immigration :)

You must be in good shape

2009-09-18T16:24:28+01:00

I was moseying around Picardy, France earlier this week for a work trip. This warning sign in front of a bouncy castle was my personal highlight.

At a kitchenware shop in Keswick

2009-09-06T23:13:21+01:00

Wonder how many dogs wander alone into this shop to buy a spatula only to have the lady shout at them, "Didn't you READ the SIGN?!"

Bitter Pill

2009-08-26T10:02:37+01:00

I spent Sunday afternoon curled up on the couch, bowled over by cold and fever... or perhaps just the agony of Australia getting slaughtered by England in the cricket.

ME: I hate losing to England!

GARETH: Well, now you know what it's like to be Scottish!

ME: Yeah but, we actually had a chance!

Hold The Line

2009-08-25T13:04:47+01:00

Things might look a bit weird today as I'm switching domain hosts. Hopefully I'll be done with all this geeky bollocks soon!

Mower on a String

2009-08-18T20:48:47+01:00

This chap in our neighbourhood has a ingenious way of dealing with his sloping yard. Or does everyone keep their lawnmower on a lead? I'd not seen it before...

UPDATE: A dude on Flickr tells me Mowers On String are hella common. I plead ignorance as someone who's previously always lived in flat places :)

Testing123

2009-08-18T15:09:46+01:00

test test testy test

123 4 5 678 9 10... 11 12.

Apologies for the errors and broken links galore. And I can't get the domain working properly so shauny.org/pussycat will work. Only pussycat.shauny.org works right now. OH THE JOYS.

MotoGP is Dead

2009-08-08T23:18:56+01:00

UNTIMELY BLOG ENTRIES
A backlog of drafts published long after they were relevant.
Episode #1 — September 28, 2008

Valentino Rossi zoomed to his sixth MotoGP world title in Japan this morning while I snoozed soundly in my scratcher.

It's hard to believe that just two years ago I would set the alarm to watch the long-haul races live. I planned my social engagements around the MotoGP calendar. I actually fainted from excitement at the final 2006 race in Valencia. MotoGP was thrilling, unmissable, daring, dangerous, dramatic and addictive.

And now it just. SUCKS. BALLS.

It started last year when the 990cc machines were replaced by wimpy 800's and they also changed the tyre rules. Sure it was nice to see Australia's Casey Stoner steal the title but with a few exceptions, every week he'd just ping into the distance and finish twenty minutes before everyone else while Gareth nodded off on the couch despite me whimpering, "No! WAKE UP! It's still good! Something exciting is bound to happen soon. You can't give up on MotoGP!"

This year has been even more abysmal, with the exception of Laguna Seca where Casey and Vale fought like dogs until Casey fell off for no good reason. Gareth has stopped watching all together and even the most pathetic diehard like me cannot muster any enthusiasm. The BBC commentary team is barely disguising their boredom - today it was so desperate Steve Parrish actually did a shoutout for someone's birthday.

The situation is summarised by the brilliant MotoGPNews.com:

"Last season was terrible - a cavalcade of tedious events sparsely interjected with droplets of averageness. 2007 didn't just lower the bar - it dropped it onto the earth's crust in what we thought was the lowest point it could have reached.

But how wrong we were... 2008 has stamped the pathetic bar into the putrid quagmire whilst successfully claiming that the biggest surprise was the lack of big surprises.

Surely 2009 can't be as bad? Well we said that at the end of 2007. Expect a 2009 season of utter mediocrity that way you'll only be slightly disappointed."

Personal lowlights:

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes feigning interest in their matching leather jackets at Laguna Seca
The environmentally obscene floodlit race at Qatar
The inaugural Indianapolis round with three (3) spectators and cyclonic winds

The BBC's Suzi Perry doesn't even bother showing up to half the races because she has seen into the future and the future is dull as dog shit. The only highlight of the season has been Matt Roberts getting more screen time - he writes a great column too.

I fear for the future of MotoGP. It was one of the few interests Dr G and I truly shared and if he can't be bothered with the bikes what it is to become of us? I'll have to climb more stinking hills and drink real ale so we have something to talk about, dammit.

Carmelo Ezpeleta you have ruined my sport and my marriage, you greedy bastard.

UPDATE: Season 2009 is actually pretty good so far! The new single tyre manufacturer rule has leveled the playing field somewhat. There is hope for the future.

And In The End

2009-08-01T05:28:18+01:00

Do you every worry about what will happen to all your crap when you die? All the embarrassing diaries and love letters and chocolate wrappers and half-written stories and ill-considered underwear. And the digital mess of emails and photos and blogs.

If your end comes swift and suddenly you won't have a chance to clean things up and destroy evidence. If you carry on to old age at what point do you decide, I better start tying up loose ends? You'd have to time it right to make sure you could enjoy your treasures and secrets for the maximum time possible but still have sufficient faculties left to do what needed to be done.

It's the thought of those left behind having to sort through all your stuff. It could be my husband or my sister or a child or the budgie or the indifferent social worker but it makes me nervous to think of them digging around and cringing at stupid things scribbled years ago or finding something I forgot to burn and thinking Crikey, what a dickhead, we never knew her at all.