Of course, by “on record” here, I mean “it’s the hottest weekend that I can remember since the last ridiculously hot weekend that we had”, which now that I think about it, I can’t really remember when it was. See, that’s what age, plus a lack of sleep do to you. Also, colours look subtly different.

Anyway, Kristy pointed out that every story on the gerrod.com front-page except for one, featured a picture of food, so be prepared for that trend to continue with this:

Kablamo! Bet you didn’t see that coming! In fact, this delightful morsel of a lamb bone is representative of the highlight of our weekend – an afternoon/evening with the Durhams. We hung out with them on Saturday at their delightful abode at Woody Point, where it must have been at least seven degrees cooler than it was in Everton Hills. I tell ya, if it wasn’t such a commute to work every day, I’d be moving there tomorrow.

Not only did our afternoon have some geocaching, some ping pong, and obviously some roast lamb, but we also watched the first episode of Survivor: Redemption Island, which featured the most amazing tribal council that I’ve ever seen. Apparently, it went for over two hours off the air! Thank goodness for editing!

I’m going to go out on a limb here and presume that you’ve already heard about the flooding in Brisbane. Kristy and I are thankful that we live far enough away from the Brisbane river (and at the top of a hill to boot!) such that the rising waters didn’t affect our home at all. Unfortunately, my workplace is somewhat of a different story.

We put sandbags and plastic sheeting out the front of our office to try and stop the inevitable flooding of the street from damaging the building. We had no idea how high the water would rise, and we had no idea if the sandbags and plastic sheeting would actually do anything to help.

We also pulled out as much of our electrical equipment and furniture as we could. What we couldn’t fit in storage, we tried to put up as high as possible. We were all sad that the ping-pong table had to be left to the mercy of the water!

(Disclaimer: This isn’t my photo, I think it was from news.com.au originally.)

This is the building directly to the left of ours, but I’m not sure when it was taken in relation to the peak height of the water on our street. I’d say this is pretty close to as high as it came – pretty much right to the top of the plastic sheeting.

This was the first view I got of the office this morning when I got in. From the marks on the wall, it looks like the water came up about a metre inside. All the wooden furniture and desks that were left on the ground soaked up water like a sponge, and consequently had to be thrown out. We tried to clean the squares of carpet with a high-pressured hose, but it just wasn’t working, and we ended up having to throw them out too. It’s amazing how heavy they are when they’re full of water.

The place scrubbed up fairly quickly once all the carpet tiles were up, and we took to the floor with the hose. It will be a while before we get the furniture and carpet replaced, but the first priority is to get the power back on. We luckily have another office we can work from just around the corner in the Valley, which fared much better than ours did in the flood. We’ll all feel a bit displaced for a few weeks I’m sure, but overall I think we were lucky to come out as well as we did – there’s definitely a lot more places who are far worse off than we are.

More photos from the flood damage at work on Picasa.

It has been raining in Brisbane now for so long that I don’t even know which records I should invent just to say they’ve all been broken. Suffice to say that it would have been a lot of them though!

Our yard does not cope well with the deluge, either. We have quite a slant on our block, except for in the middle where the house is – which means the water pools around the house. Nothing serious though – it’s only a few inches deep – but if we dug it out a bit, we could easily build a moat!

Here’s a quick video of the rain on Sunday – it’s a bit shaky, because I was filming from underneath an umbrella – but it captures the rain well enough for us to remember.

(Not that we have any trouble remembering at the moment – we’re getting daily reminders!)

The weather in Australia has been pretty atypical since we’ve been home. For example, about one week after we got back – so we’re talking the middle of winter here -the temperature soared to over 33 degrees!

Had the temperatures have kept up, we would have been in for a disturbingly hot summer, but thankfully, everything became respectably cold again by the end of August.

Now in October, we’re getting an early batch of summer storms, and we’ve already had one major outbreak of flooding in Brisbane. Then once again today, the heavens opened for about 20 minutes, and we once again had a few flash floods across the city. I walked to the street outside our office and peered out in fear, not looking forward to riding the scooter home in the torrential downpour.

My fears went unfounded though, as the rain stopped almost as quickly as it started, and less than an hour later, the sun came out to dry up the roads for me. Sweet!

After a bit of a sleep in, we ate our breakfast at the supposed number one restaurant in Vernazza – II Pirata della Cinque Terre, or “The Two Pirates”. Conveniently for us, it’s directly underneath our room, so it wasn’t terribly hard to find! Our breakfast consisted of some freshly made pastries, espresso, and some blood-orange juice, and though it was no Full English with HP, I certainly wasn’t complaining. We had read that the hosts – two Sicilian identical twin brothers – were quite entertaining, and they didn’t let us down, making us laugh a number of times whilst we dined.

The day’s weather wasn’t looking too promising, but we didn’t let that hold us back, as we wanted to cover the 1.5hr (or so) hike to Corniglia, the next town to the south. Only a few minutes in, and already having climbed up a decent chunk of steps, we were rewarded with amazing views back over Vernazza.

Unfortunately, the first 10 mintues of our hike were about all that we had without rain; from there on in, it drizzled the entire time, making the already difficult terrain quite challenging! Who’d have thought that rain would make smooth rocks slippery? Thankfully, no spills though, and after more steps carved into the side of a hill than I care to remember, we eventually made if safely to Corniglia. After a quick stroll around the town (and a quick cache!), we found a little restaurant and tucked into a pesto pizza for lunch. Mmmm…. oily goodness….

Our plans for the afternoon were to keep on walking down to the next town (Manarola), but it turns out that the rain had plans of it’s own: to fall, fall, and keep on falling. While we were wiping the pesto and cheese from our chins, the rain became almost torrential, to the point where the owners had to shut all the doors to the restaurant to stop the water from flooding in!

The moment we saw a break in the storm, we paid our bill and headed on our way. After about 20 minutes, we came across a friendly Swedish guy – who I can only presume was a chef. He shook his head and looked at us disspointingly, then said “closed. closed.”. I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but his wife then clarified, saying “The trail is closed”. I was still confused – I mean, I don’t exactly speak Swedish – but Kristy managed to figure out that what the meant was: the trails had been closed (due to the weather).

Defeated, we turned around and followed the chef back towards Corniglia. We watched in awe as he proceeded to sell the same story to everyone that he came across; so much so that he amassed quite a gathering by the time we got to the train station! He should have seized the opportunity and whipped us all up a nice snack! But alas, we went without, and instead hopped the train back to Vernazza, to take a well earned rest in our room.

So now all we can do is sit and wait for the rain to clear, in the hopes that the trails will re-open and we can continue on our journey. But given that the path outside our building has become a rapidly flowing stream, I don’t really like our chances!

There’s absolutely no way that you couldn’t have heard about the cloud/s of volcanic ash which have forced the closure of much of the airspace in the UK and Europe. There’s an even lower probability that you’re pronouncing the name of the guilty volcano properly – “Eyjafjallajokull”. I’m going with, “EYE-ya-fah-HEE-ta-cool”, and chances are, I’m probably right. Well, actually – probably not.

Uncle Martyn called us on Sunday evening to check how the ash cloud had affected us, and I have to say – it really hasn’t! Since we had no plans for travel, life had basically been trolleying along as normal. We did see the digital displays on the M25 reading “Heathrow Airport Closed”, but that’s really about as close as it comes.

Sure, some of our friends like Todd, and Lea and Dean, are stuck overseas somewhere – but I hardly feel sorry for them; they’ve all finished up at their respective jobs and are on party patrol! In fact, given that travel insurance is probably now paying for their holidays, I’m actually a little envious!

All that changed today though, when Eyjafjallajokull delivered us a personal blow. One of our much loved bands – Powderfinger – were set to tour this week, and I have tickets to see them on both Wednesday AND Thursday nights. But since all the flights to the UK have been cancelled, they’re stuck in Brisbane, and have had to postpone their shows!

Denied!

The rescheduled shows are now set for June 4th and 5th – a Friday and a Saturday night. And, though I’m gutted not to be seeing them this week, a Friday and Saturday night concert actually works out much better for me anyway, as it means I only have to go one night after work, and I get to sleep in both mornings afterwards!

Ha! Take that, volcano!

I notice that to shake things up a bit, you’ve decided to come out this morning. I can’t help but wonder why you’ve done this, and would urge you to reconsider.

You see, we’ve become quite accustomed to not seeing you, and we have adjusted our lives accordingly. For example, we have all of our curtains and blinds wide open, to let in what little light is provided magically by the clouds, with no assistance from you thank-you-very-much. And then you come along this morning, all jolly and happy, and decide to make things extra bright! I know you think this is very helpful, but all it really did was illustrate just how dusty my keyboard was!

And if that wasn’t bad enough Mr Sun, take a look at what you did to our coffee machine – Miss Sylvia:

Sure, you may think that all this extra light is very helpful – perhaps you were also trying to ensure I got my daily dose of Vitamin D whilst making espresso! But I feel as though your radiating glow is also mocking my cleanliness, by highlighting the calcification on the surfaces of the machine (from the unbeatable water that we’re lucky to enjoy here in London). Seemingly, you also fail to appreciate is just how difficult it is to see if the “not ready” light is on or off, when every surface of the machine is shining brighter than Doogie Howser in first grade! How I am supposed to know if I should start frothing up some microfoam for my latte art?

So, Mr Sun, if you could kindly shove off back to Australia, where the extra light and heat is so desperately needed; we would like to go back to living our normal, dark, cold and sheltered lives.

Kind regards,
Gerrod and Kristy.

PS: Please no Mr Sun, I was only kidding! Come baaaaaaaaaaaaacccccccccckkkkkkk!!!!!!!!!!

Definitely the biggest problem of all the snow is all the ice that forms afterwards. And, since temperatures have regularly been below zero, the ice has taken an age to melt. Thankfully, neither of us have fallen victim to it yet, but I’ve certainly seen people who have – and it doesn’t look like too much fun!

This is what the platform at Gunnersbury station looked like on Friday morning.

And here’s where our car is parked on the street. The ice on the footpath was about a centimetre thick, which made it pretty tricky getting in and out of the car doors! On the upside, it was a bit warmer on Sunday (somewhere around two degrees) so the ice finally started to subside a bit. Plus, all the build-up on the car meant I got to put my ice-scraping skills to good use!

We took Gazpacho for a spin on Saturday because we were out of groceries (and we weren’t the only ones with that idea; Tescos was rammed). That’s the first time I’ve ever driven on ice, and I’ve gotta say, I don’t like it. It’s somewhat discomforting when you spin the steering wheel but the car doesn’t actually start turning. Thank goodness the brakes still worked!

After a very early start yesterday morning (4 AM Düsseldorf time, or 3 AM London time) we managed to make it to the airport for our 7:10 AM flight. Thankfully, the flight made it back to London with only about a 1/2hr delay.

The snow continues to wreak havoc here though – lots of flights cancelled, public transport is a nightmare, and even the high-speed rail service is suffering. I heard this morning that the Eurostar has a 40,000 passenger backlog to process!

Fingers crossed things clear up before our flight to Aberdeen on Thursday afternoon!

And I mean, hot. Like summer in Australia type of hot. Today it hit 32 degrees. 32! Now, I know what all you Australian’s are thinking – 32 degrees isn’t really that hot; and I agree, it’s actually really nice sitting outside in the shade! But London just isn’t equipped to cope with temperatures like these.

I’m lucky enough to have air-conditioning in my building at work – lots of people don’t though, and boy am I feeling sorry for them this week! Last week our office a/c broke down, and it rapidly hit 29 degrees inside. And, since all the windows are locked as a matter of policy, there’s also no air movement, which makes it hard to concentrate, but easy to fall asleep!

Thankfully, the a/c is back on this week, and at the moment it’s cranked up to it’s maximum. This has somehow caused it to leak water, and since we’re on the top floor, it’s been dripping through the roof. One of the business analysts that I work with had a leak above her desk that was so bad, that it destroyed one of her monitors. And those bad boys aren’t cheap (think £1,000+)!

On the upside, it’s been absolutely gorgeous outside these last few days, with nothing but beautiful blue, sunny skies to be seen. Perfect sunglasses weather! And, since we’re in daylight savings, it stays light until around 9:45 PM! All this beautiful summer is totally making me forget about the miserable winter!