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Tuesday 4th March
I've had a cold for the last few days but unfortunately I think it's getting worse. Why does sickness come along when people stop for a holiday!?
Nige and I moved into our new lodgings last night and today we went car shopping. Last time I went car shopping, I had to take out a loan and the girls know just how long it took me to pluck up the courage to borrow money!! This time, however, there was no 3 year old Ford Focus on offer, just Nige's idea of getting a station wagon - so we can drive around in it, but also sleep in it on the odd occasion… So that's what we've put a deposit on - a 2001 Citroen Xantia station wagon - with an added bonus of it smelling like a rather large dog has taken many a ride in it! It's a little frustrating that petrol here costs about £1.05 a litre, approximately $2.35 a litre, but that's how it goes. On the plus side, there aren't as many kilometres to travel around here than there are in Australia!
Friday 7th March
Courtesy of my cold (or should I say the thing that is making my head want to explode!), the only thing we've really done in the last couple of days was collecting the car on Wednesday. We're going to Cardiff on Sunday for a couple of days so we decided to take the car for a longish test drive in case we'd bought a melon. Luckily for us (and our £850 purchase) everything went swimmingly (we've even managed to either reduce the dog smell or we've just gotten used to it!).
Our day's journey took us to two places that I have been before, but in both places, we explored parts that I'd never actually explored before. We took the little car ferry from Sandbanks (which ended up being flooded just 2 days later!) to Swanage, where we took a walk along the seafront, before wandering up around the headland; a place I didn't know existed. Of course I made Nige take the obligatory photos of me exploring this "new" area of Swanage so some of these will be included in the latest album I've added on here. After devouring fish and chips (minus the fish for me) along the seafront (yes mum, at the place we went a few years ago with Faye, Neil and the boys), we drove about 5 miles to Corfe Castle, the ruins of a magnificent castle set on top of a slightly imposing hill. I have wandered through the ruins of Corfe Castle a couple of times, but this time instead of paying for that privilege (which would have involved poor sick me having to negotiate a pretty good hill), we followed a couple through a little gate that took us on a wander around the bottom of the hill, looking up at the ruins from a completely different angle. The car performed very well indeed so we are very pleased with our purchase, even if it is a station wagon...
Bring on Cardiff and Westlife!
Tuesday 11th March
I am not ashamed to say that as I expected, the Westlife concert was FABULOUS!! I believe Nige saw another side to me last night - my screaming boy-band loving side! I know that a lot of people don't understand my absolute adoration of ballads and boy -bands, but that hasn't worried me for a long time. So you can bag me out all you like, but I will just smile and pop my headphones back on! As for Nige, well I think he wished he had taken ear plugs to the concert - the 3 girls behind us made my random screaming sound like a timid little mouse…
There was one moment of concern during the concert, however it had nothing to do with the Irish crooners - towards the end of one song, we heard something being called out over the loudspeakers:the fire alarm was going off and we were being told to evacuate! After the lads were hastily told to leave the stage, I myself was completely torn between getting out in case there was really a fire or sitting there waiting for everything to be okay again! After a couple of minutes, the decision was taken out of my hands when the guys came back on and told us that it was a false alarm - and so the show continued :)
I was so impressed with Nige for sticking it out that I thought he deserved a drink or two. Step in Walkabout pub number 1 - so far from home, and yet so close to Australian beer! Unfortunately, Extra Dry does not taste that great when you're drinking it out of a can…
Other than Westlife (ah, sigh!), Cardiff offered us a place to ride out the nasty weather that lashed the UK's south west coastal areas on Sunday/Monday. As Cardiff is a coastal city, it was a little wet, a little windy and we broke one umbrella, but we still managed to play tourist, visiting the castle smack bang in the middle of the city centre. It's unbelievable seeing so many historical buildings/structures, especially those dating way back to the Roman era - this particular castle's foundations are 2,000 years old! Also fascinating to think about are how the heck people built huge churches and castles so long ago? And how many workers would have died during construction?! On our way home today, we stopped at Salisbury which boasts England's highest cathedral spire, which gave thought to the above questions. The detail of church stone carvings is absolutely amazing and buildings have really stood the test of time, i.e. hundreds and hundreds of years, whereas now things are built and have a relatively short shelf life. When I get home and want to build a house, I think I will get myself a time machine and hire workers from 1,000 years ago!
As for our next little trip around the countryside? Well, Nige is currently looking at the UK map… But first things first, we have to go searching for tide-me-over jobs tomorrow so that we can afford to put petrol in the car!
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