Moose on the Move!

In the lead up to Australia Day we had both started to feel quite patriotic...
We stayed up late on Wednesday night baking lamingtons and ANZAC biscuits, we logged into Triple J via the internet to listen to the start on the Hottest 100. Chris went over to the local corner shop and bought a few can of Fosters. Neither of us drink Fosters usually but what the hey! Just for fun we sent the photo to Triple J and have just discovered that we are on the Hottest 100 Parties list. Ha! Just the two of us standing infront of our brand new Aussie flag, each with an un-opened can of Fosters in hand. Here's the link if you want to see it - we are number 54 of 59 but you can look at them backwards.

We both had to go to work on Australia Day - but we each went armed with plates of goodies. I took a big plate of each lamingtons and ANZAC biccies to share with the kids and staff at my school and Chris took some to work too. Actually I took as much Australiana as I could find, a flag, our little Koala Bill, an Aussie cook book (thanks John) and a little bottle of Eucalyptus oil that I passed around the class for anyone to put a little on if they wanted... We all had very clear heads for the rest of the day!
I must have mentioned at school that Australia Day was coming up because one of my lovely Yr 6s brought me in a lamington that she and her mum had made for me. How sweet. It only had the chocolate and coconut on the top but it really a lovely gesture...

I shared the treats around the class at morning break time and had many of the kids ask for the receipes. Several staff memebers took some bits home to share with their family... (the following day one of the teachers told me she had taken home a lamington to give to her boyfriend and had told him it was a 'Lamingtons Bar'. "Lamington Spa?" he said, "I've been there!"). Lamington Spa is actually a place here in England.


That night we had a traditional Australian dinner (Chinese noodles with teriyaki beef) and then got wrapped up nice and warm and went to the local Australian Bar - the Walkabout. Nice for us because it is almost across the road from where we live.
We didn't hear too many Aussie accents that night but loads of people were wearing Fosters hats, carrying inflatable Fosters surfboards and other paraphernalia. If you bought two pints of the stuff you got a freebie. It seemed like a cruel irony that we left with two beach towels when it was forcast minus two that night.

Apparently the Scottish celebrate Burns' Night on the 25th January. What is Burns' Night? Well that's what we asked too - he was Scotlands favorite poet who died at the age of 36 in the 1700s. He had an increadibly prolific career and wrote many now famous poems and songs including the line about mice and men having well laid plans and that song we all sing (or try to) every NYE - Old Lang's Eye - you know the one.

Well our local Scottish friend Kate invited us over for dinner on Sunday to help celebate Burns by eating haggis and listening to her recite incomprehensibe Scottish poetry. I decided not to tell Chris what was on the menu, knowing full well that he would think of a solid reason not to attend if he knew it was haggis. As luck would have it he bumped into Kate in the street on Saturday and she let slip. Opps. He was only a little amused when I told him that I had know what was in store for us... I tried to explain that I was helping to broaden his horizons with new experiences, but that didn't cut much sway.

So Sunday evening we went along to Kate's house and found he in the kitchen boiling enough haggis and 'nips and tatties' (parsnips and potato) to feed a small army. They looked very odd in the pots, like large super stuffed sausages, but very dark.

There is a whole protocol for serving haggis on Burns' Night - the haggis is accompanied in by a bagpiper and all night people talk about what a great man he was and the wonderful insights that he had into humanity and society. Truth is he did write some fabulous stuff and I'm a little embarressed that I don't know more of it. We had a mini version of all that - Kate recited the appropriate poem and brandished a large knife around the kitchen a bit before stabbing the unsuspecting haggis and pulling it apart!
And as it turns out we both like haggis - perhaps not every day - but on special occasions like Burns' Night. So thanks to Kate for enriching our lives with a little (but important) bit of Scottish culture.

One last thing before I finish, a few months ago Chris picked up a book in the local postoffice that was wearing a post-it note saying "I'm free, look inside my cover". As it turns out this book was our introduction to the world of book crossings.

Not sure if you've heard of this before but there is a website where you can log on and register a book to then release intot he 'wild'. The idea is that each book registered is issued with a unique number and then you can log on and see where the book has been. You can pass a book to a friend or drop it in a public place to be found by a stranger. Some books travel all over the world and are read by many people. Others are dropped and never heard from again. Well, anyway, Chris and I logged on and registered our first four books this weekend! All ones that we had read and no longer wanted to keep. We dropped one of them right outside our flat and it didn't take more than two minutes for someone to walk past and pick it up! It was really quite exciting, silly, but exciting.