Paulkyville

This week I attended three of the BBC Prom concerts at The Royal Albert Hall. The RAH is a wonderful building whose only black mark is the appalling aircon, but luckily so far this hasn't been the bane of previous, hotter years. On Saturday there was music by Holst, Elgar and Delius, and we had a similar line-up on Sunday. All very competently played by the relevant orchestra. But it was on Tuesday we have something very special, courtesy of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. They played a 20 min plinky-plonky piece by someone who's still alive (always something that gives my sister and I pause for thought when booking, as invariably it will be an atonal piece. When will the organisers learn that people go for classical music, which has a tune, rather than the orchestra playing some great tunes, but not necessarily the same one?). That aside, they followed it up with a fantastic performance of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.2 in G major, with Simon Hough on piano. Absolut...

The fact that I couldn't get the weather gadget to accurately forecast anywhere other than New York has finally got the better of me and I have canned it. Perhaps at a future juncture I will resurrect it, but for now, it's toast. I suggest if you want to know what the weather is like, look out the window.

Whilst I await word from the AHC, I thought I'd share with you my plans for when I (hopefully) get my permanent residency status, a plan I refer to as my Exit Strategy. Once all the hard work of selling houses, closing bank accounts, moving pensions and so forth is done and Mrs Paulky and I have our bags packed, the plan is that we will travel to Australia via the US. There are several reasons for this: It breaks up the mind numbing journey. It enables us to catch up with friends and relatives. We'll get to see a lot of the country. We'll be so broke afterwards we'll never attempt a journey like it again. If all goes well, our first port of call will be on the Sidewalker family , who live in New Jersey. We'd use their place as a base and visit New York, possibly going up to Niagara Falls too. Then it's down to Florida to visit a cousin in Miami. Having been to Florida before, I'm not too fussed about going to the theme parks, so it will likely be a few days ...

Aside from being one of my favourite Crowded House songs, this post title is alerting you to a new gadget I've added, which shows the weather in Perth, WA. Bear in mind it's currently the middle of winter in the Southern hemisphere, so don't gloat too much over rain and cool temperatures! It sometimes struggles to get above 18 degrees Centigrade in the summer in the UK! EDIT : It would appear my shiny new gadget is stuck in New York! Despite my changing it! Anyway, I'll leave it up for now in case it's a glitch, but in the meantime by all means click on the edit option and type in Perth, then select Perth Australia if you want to see how the weather is doing there.

Well, it's been a quiet week on the migration front, with no new directives from AHC on what more they require of me. I suppose this is how it will be over the next few weeks, or even months, as they go over my application with a fine toothed comb. In some ways I feel strangely detached from it; after all, I can't influence or change anything and mentally pacing, awaiting news, in not going to do me any favours. I shall just sit, and wait. There are plenty of things to keep my mind occupied, not least of which is work, which is busy as always, and naming random people on the train, of course. The BBC Proms start tomorrow and next week I am off to a few concerts, so I'm looking forward to that. It's something I do every year and have done for the last 22, and is perhaps one of the few things I will miss about living in the UK. And yes, I know you can listen online, but nothing beats actually being there.

There's a random ramble coming! OK, so I spend about three hours a day travelling to and from work, and after a while you get to see the same people every day. Now because I'm English I don't speak to any of them, which I know is strange, but I refer you to the start of this sentence. So every day, same train(s), same people. Over the years, to while away the time, I have come up with names for the regulars, which, in a moment of boredom, I choose to share with you. We have Mac, so called because, in winter at least, he wears a...go on guess...no, try again...YES! A mac. Now Mac has a Harem; a little coterie of woman of a certain age who congregate around him and are always dressed to the nines. Mac isn't a bad looking bloke, about late Forties I reckon, and clearly his Harem think he's something worth preening over. I often wonder what his wife would think if she saw him with them. Then there's Miss Plain, who, as the name suggests, is a dowdy, dumpy woman who...

One of the items I was required to read when I made my application was a book about "Life in Australia", and one of the items that caught my attention was the use of slang. Now most cultures have their own unique words, Quid for a pound, for example, but I don't think we in the UK can hold a torch to the prevalence of use of slang in Australia. Even their politicians use colloquialisms . Can you imagine Gordon Brown telling the populace that he's going to have to tax them a few quid more to get us out of the doldrums? No, neither can I. So the Australians have stubbies (small bottles of beer), sand shoes (trainers to you and I) and thongs. Now, to most of us, a thong is a piece of floss that you wear as underwear, but to an Australian it is a pair of flip flops. I'm assuming everyone knows what flip flops are. They also like to shorten words and stick an "O" on the end, such as derro (a derelict or tramp). So when in doubt, shove an O on. Though not ...

A note to those without a blog account, I have now changed the settings so that anyone can leave a comment, should you wish to.

Looking at my ads is really depressing me now, so in this post I hope to redress the balance. I love going to the beach; it's one of the (minor) reasons for moving half-way round the world. Beaches don't come much better than in WA. Here's a picture of a sunset taken on City Beach. So I look forward to the day when this is always available, though like many things in life, when you can have something nice on your doorstep you invariably don't use it. We'll see. Hopefully this brief post talking about beaches and sunsets will get the bloody ads about lung cancer screening off. Here's hoping!

Well, an unexpected consequence of my last post has emerged; I now have ads about lung cancer, asbestos and other health related issues! What the hell happened to the banjos?

Two bits of good news to report today! The first came through yesterday, with the arrival of my Police Certificate. This is a mandatory check you have to undergo to prove you don't have (or confirm you do) a criminal record. In my case it came back with the words "No Trace" emblazoned in the middle of the form. A quick read of the accompanying notes reveals this means that there is no trace of a criminal record for me in the Police National Computer. This is what I was expecting, of course! But knowing my luck there would be another Paulky out there with a similar date of birth or something who was banged up for an armed blag (I watch too many cop shows) and they had gotten the two confused. But for once everything has gone smoothly and my un - blemi shed record is confirmed by the boys in Blue! My other bit of good news comes from the Doctor, who confirms my second lung X-ray is normal so I am not dying of something horrible. Phew! So the AHC should get my medical in...

Well, rather disappointingly , there are no ads for Banjos, Porsche's or Space Shuttles. So here's my own for the Space Shuttle ; think of the possibilities ! It would be the world's greatest garden ornament. Be the envy of your friends! And a snip at $42,000,000. I think I'll get two.

When I make a post I often glance it over once published, just to see if it looks "right". And sometimes my eyes flit across to the ad banners on the right of the page (click on these, good folk, for they make me money). And I notice that, rather cleverly, they latch on to something I've posted (key words, I assume) and tailor the ads to match. I ranted on about printer ink a few weeks ago and Hey Presto!, I have ads that take you to sites that sell them. So I'm wondering if I make a post that mentions banjos, lots and lots of banjos, and those fine cars made by Porsche, you know, like the Porsche 911, whether I'll get ads for those too. It's just idle curiosity on my part. Space Shuttle. Sorry, forgot to mention that one. I think they are actually for sale as NASA is ditching them due to their age. So you might get an ad to by the Space Shuttle shortly.

I called the Doc today as I'd heard nothing back regarding the second X-Ray I had last Friday. Typically, she had left for the day and is not back until Friday. However, a nice lady at the clinic confirmed they had the second X-Ray now. Then, for what it's worth, she told me, " unofficially " (i.e., don't sue my if you die of lung cancer) I had nothing to worry about. Had she been a trained health care professional , I would take great comfort in that. But, by her own admission, she's not, so I'd probably have as much luck offering up a diagnosis on this. I should stress that I haven't even had the luxury of even seeing the damn things in the first place, otherwise I mightn't be so anxious. However, I suppose it's a step in the right direction (at least I know they have both X-ray's now) and I await the call on Friday that will either put me out of my misery or stick me further in it. Being a glass-half-full kinda guy, I'm expecting p...

Regular readers will have seen a post last week mentioning that my original X-ray had shown some "Thickening" on the lung(s) and the Doctor (after leaving a message telling me not to worry; duh!) asked me to get another one done, from a different angle. Unfortunately the blog goblin seems to have eaten that one. Anyway, on Friday I went back to be bombarded with lethal X-Rays again (do you think if I have one often enough they will actually give me something to worry about?), this time for a lateral view X-ray. So once again I am in the Star ship Enterprise. I am told to stand side on the the machine this time, and adopt what I can only describe as the brace position you are shown on airplanes, only this time standing up. So I have my hands on my head and my arms forward and I look faintly ridiculous. Two pulses from the X-ray and once again I am cooked. Once again the radiologist goes off to check the image and once again says it's OK. I think she means it came o...