Happy Australia Day

Today is Australia Day, a day when everyone, except me and a few hundred other journalists, gets to take a public holiday and rejoice at being Australian and all that means. Chanting 'Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi' over and over again, drinking beer, having barbecues and taking part in a zillion public events on around the country. In Sydney there is the famous ferry race on the harbour and masses of fireworks tonight. There has been a big hoo ha because the organisers of the big music festival -The Big Day Out - that is on today have banned all Aussie flags and nationalistic symbols anxious their presence will inflame racial tensions. Everyone thinks it's nuts to give the racists control over the flag instead of taking it back as the British have done with the Union Jack after the National Front had it for years. Rather frustratingly my office overlooks Darling Harbour so we all get to look down on all the people having lots of fun without being able to join in. Rob is out and about with Scarlett. They are in the Botanic Gardens as I type getting ready to watch the ferry race. We are having a load of mates over for a late lunch tomorrow so we'll get to celebrate together then. Aussie, Aussie Aussie...


In other news it is now only 7 weeks until our baby arrives. It kicks like a striker all the time and is quite uncomfortable especially when I am sitting down and it really goes into full Jackie Chan mode. We have the cot set up, but superstition prevents us from doing much more until he or she arrives. I'm told second labours are typically about half as long, which bodes well as Scarlett was 6 hours door to door. Please let it be true. I can have the baby and be home in time for Neighbours at 3.30pm. We have numerous friends waiting for the call to swoop in and look after Scarlett for us and she has been briefed that she's not allowed to come to the hospital when the baby comes. This explanation is usually followed by a 'Is the baby coming out now?' question from Scarlett. Unlike when I was pregnant with Scarlett, I currently feel as if I have bowling ball suspended inside me and that if I cough or sneeze unexpectedly the baby will drop out at any moment. Apparently this sensation gets worse with every subsequent birth. I can't tell at this stage which way up the baby is and whether the bit sticking out at the top is the bum or the head. There is a great deal of activity all the time, much of which can be seen through my clothes, so we hope the baby is lot calmer once it comes out. I am still very small, but now obviously pregnant so it's been very weird for many of my colleagues who had no idea I was pregnant. I didn't really start to show until about 25 weeks, when we were in the UK and now I am back at work people keep coming up to me and saying 'I didn't know you were pregnant - when are you due?'. When I reply '7 weeks' they nearly faint. It's like I am having a special express pregnancy that you just add hot water to.

Blown off

I recently had the following column rejected by my editor for being 'distasteful'. I road tested it on my sister, who usually keeps a stiff upper lip on the subject of wind, but even she declared it 'hysterical' adding in her email response that she was 'wiping tears of joy from my face even as I type.' Personally I think both the reader's question and my answer are very funny, even if I do say so myself. Editors - what do they know anyway?.

Q. Being fairly uninhibited folk, my partner and I rate our burps out of ten. We have also considered rating our fluffies but here lies a problem. While burps are usually a single movement, the humble bum trumpet can be a multi-part symphony over the course of 5 to 6 seconds. We don't know on what basis to compare an excellent single blast with a multi-stage performance. Can you advise?
M.W, Artarmon, NSW
I understand your fascination with the scoring of gas omissions, having attended a mixed sex Roman Catholic secondary school in England in the 1980s. In the grimy days of Thatcher's Britain, the grading of one's blow offs was practically part of the curriculum. As an adult I fell in with a crowd who were as free and easy with their combustibles as you and your partner. Indeed when I met the man who would become my husband, I knew he was the one for me when during an early date he responded to a request to take a weekend away together with a brief trouser toot that I understood to mean, `I love you, Bognor sounds perfect.' Later in our relationship we began a system of gas grading using types of car to suggest quality. For example, a small, silent event that attracted no attention from an outsider would score only as a manual mini cooper, whereas an event that could still catch the ear and nostril of a stranger some metres away on a windswept beach would be scored as a Ferrari. I have retained the crown in this contest since 1992 following an episode aboard a British Airways flight from Turkey to England following a 3-week holiday on the Turkish coast. In my defence it was a trip punctuated by frequent spells in restaurants feasting on piles of creamy fetta cheese, ripe tomatoes, olives and aubergines. About an hour into the flight, a noiseless gas escaped from me causing the sleeping passenger next to me to not only snuffle awake (slowly at first and then in a state of panic, with arms waving, much coughing and spluttering) but to attempt to kick out the plane window in a kung-fu style in order to provide fresh air for herself and the other passengers in lieu of oxygen masks dropping down. It took a weightlifter from Theydon Bois to subdue her in the aisle. Which vehicle did we feel matched this moment? What else? To this day it is known to us as The Queen's Coronation Carriage of farts. Please feel free to use our system as your own. I think you'll find it useful as it allows you to talk on a subject most find unsavoury in a secret and polite way. I must go now as I have a Porsche Carerra in the carpark close to its expiry time.

We're in

We are finally in our new house and have had two nights there. So far we're loving it and have discovered the following:
It doesn't have a smoke alarm. I didn't notice the toaster was buggered and the toast was burning to a crisp and filling the high ceilings with smoke until Scarlett called out from the back garden in the manner of Steve McQueen in The Towering Inferno.
It is so big, we call 'where are you?'.
There is road noise from the very big main road we are close to, but we quite like it as background noise
We do not miss living under the flight path
Our old house might have been small but it had fantastic storage. Our new house is bigger but has very little.
The house is so big we have shoved everything we can't find a place for or don't know what to do with into two rooms we don't use yet and have closed the doors. When that happens, those boxes, those skis and that wedding dress simply do not exist.
Wooden floors are lovely but your feet get very dirty by the end of the day.
Having a huge garden is a great way of wearing out small children by throwing a ball for them to run after, over and over
Telephone companies all over the world are staffed by gibbering, drooling idiots who think it is helpful to say 'If you could stop raising your voice and swearing I'll try and help you.'
Scarlett thinks her new room 'is lovely' but is a bit freaked out by sleeping in it
Pam the cat is still living at our old house and we don't feel that inclined to go back and get her. Is this wrong?
We have lots and lots and lots of stuff even after we threw half of everything we own away.
We are very happy with our decision to move.
Once we are a bit more organised I will post some photos of the house.

On the move

We just spent the weekend driving between our house and the new place taking all the loose items that are too hard to pack for the movers - umbrellas, breadmaker, wedding dress, two year old. All quite stressful, particularly when trying to do stuff with small child constantly vying for attention. Bad mummy switched into gear by screaming at small child until she dissolved into tears, closely followed by mummy who felt like horrid heel. Made time the second day to do more fun things like go to the pool and hide under an umbrella from Daddy. Tomorrow Scarlett is having an extra day at nursery so we can finish all the packing and then we move on Wednesday. We'll be really sad to leave our lovely house. We have lived here for 5 years, the longest we have lived anywhere, it's the only house Scarlett and Pam the cat have ever known and we have had a lot of good times here. Last night, we went through all the things we will miss about Reuss Street and all the things we have to look forward to in the new place.
What we'll miss -
Sitting with the front door open hearing the noise passers by on the street
Our fantastic neighbours
Walking to our local Italian shops in the afternoons
The brilliant park in our street
Being 10 mins from the city
Sitting out the back at night under our palm trees listening to other people chatting in their backyards
What we're gaining -
A house twice the size, with 2 more bedrooms and an extra living room
A driveway big enough to do a three point turn in - not sure why this matters but it does
An enormous back garden
Haberfield and Five Dock's Italian shops
An organic market every week at the church in our street
NOT LIVING UNDER THE FLIGHT PATH - YAYYYYYYY!
Being 11 minutes from the city

Goodbye to all that

New year, new us. We have finally got over the jetlag and shocking colds that dogged us all of last week and have all enjoyed three restful nights without any nocturnal interruptions. Scarlett got over it all first, but kept waking in the night and yelling out for us seemingly confused by which bedroom she was in after all the different beds she slept in on our holiday. We have spent the last week, enjoying the balmy, muggy weather, swimming every day at the pool and Rob and I managed a day at the beach alone on Friday while Scarlett was in nursery and have managed to top up the golden tans that temporarily left us in Blightey. Having discovered that British Tv is just as rubbish as anywhere else, we have enjoyed a few quiet nights in front of the box watching the few shows here that are worth watching, thankfully not a thing with the word 'celebrity' in the title. We are now getting ready for our house move next week. We pick up the keys on the weekend so we can start moving over some bits and bobs, and the removal mob come on Wednesday with the big truck for all the furniture and boxes. We are really looking forward to all the extra space and in particular the massive back garden.

Happy New Year

We returned this week, on New Year's Eve morning, from 4 fantastic weeks away in Blightey visiting family and friends. We were based mainly with my Dad in Kent, popping frequently to stay at my sister's in East Sussex. The drive between their homes is a stunning thatched-cottage strewn dream of English country life and reminded me how much I took for granted the beautiful Kentish scenery when I was growing up there. It was brilliant to be in the cold, having to pile on jackets and boots for walks and outdoor excursions and it being dark at 4.30pm every night. It was so amazingly festive everywhere we went, trees and lights and carol concerts but sadly no real snow. Highlights included seeing our nephews Jack and William in their respective nativity play and carol concert, the Dickens Christmas Festival in Rochester complete with fake snow, our visits with great friends Liz and Mike in Whitstable (Liz and i got to compare bumps) and Moira and Fraser in Scotland, catching up with mates in London at our drinks party, a brilliant afternoon at the Tate Modern with Rick riding the tube slides, a gorgeous Sunday afternoon lunch with Ruth and Pete, the look on Scarlett's face when she realised Father Christmas had been, Dad's fantastic Christmas dinner and seeing George Michael in concert at Wembley and getting to spend an afternoon with our favourite honeymooners Sarah and Scott and their gorgeous children Jacob and Ruby who live in New York, but who flew over just for the afternoon to see us. Despite all expectations they would become lifelong friends, Jack and Scarlett fought like cat and dog so Maria and I have agreed they can't meet again until they are in their teens. We arrived back on Dec 31, jetlagged and full of colds, but managed to stay up for the 9pm fireworks, watched in style from an apartment in Walsh Bay over looking the harbour bridge.
In two weeks we are leaving our lovely home of the last 5 years in Leichhardt, renting it out and moving to a bigger house in nearby Ashfield, and from then will be known as the Duthies of Ashfield.