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 ...