My view and thoughts on everything!

"As any English person will tell you Heathrow is one of those places that you simply detest, and is on par with Milton Keynes.....However, with my Lewis Hamilton driving skills, I managed to get to the check in counter really quickly" The time had come for me to head back to Australia after my 5 week stay in good ol' Blighty. The downside to this, aside from saying goodbye to family and friends, was the fact that I would have to head to Heathrow to catch my flight. As any English person will tell you Heathrow is one of those places that you simply detest, and is on par with Milton Keynes and, for the Aussies, Canberra in the 'detesting stakes'. The reason being is that Heathrow is always hard to get to if there are traffic delays on any of the connecting roads and, once inside one of the 4 huge terminals (number 5 is nearly operational), it is always quite difficult to get to your departure gate on time. Naturally my trip to Heathrow was always going to be stre

"At one stage I had doubled my money to 40p. Wow, I thought, I am rich!...we thought one of the spotters would have a cardiac arrest as three different types of buses all arrived at the same time " Saturday I had the chance to do something very quintessentially English. A trip to the Kent seaside. So off I traipsed with my mother and sister in tow to the exotically named coastal town of Herne Bay. For the uninitiated Herne Bay is situated on the North Kent coast and is sort of where the Thames Estuary starts. It also has a wind farm clearly visible in the distance. The turbines certainly look like something form a Jules Verne novel. Unlike other resorts around the world (Ibiza, Hawaii, Malta, Gold Coast etc) you don't really go to the beach at Herne Bay to get a suntan. That's not to say the sun doesn't shine as it does on the rare hot and sunny summer days. It's just that the beach is typically English and has pebbles instead of sand! Many foreigners find it

"maybe Doctor Who put me in the Tardis and, voila, its back to the Seventies....to take out a second mortgage on your house to buy a ticket to see your old faves" Since being back in the UK I have been experiencing feelings of deja vu. Naturally, deja vu can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what it is. Well in this case I feel that I have been transported back to the late Seventies. The funny thing is I don't remember being teleported back approximately 28 years. Maybe Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise did it while I was sleeping, or maybe Doctor Who put me in the Tardis and, voila, its back to the Seventies. Strange thing is I didn't need my passport! Despite my youthful age(?) I do remember a fair bit of the Seventies as I was still at school and going through the growing pains of being a teenager. I recall quite clearly that I was a music and sports fan as were all of my fellow friends and schoolmates. In fact I still am. I do recall being

"there are more choices of lotteries than there are of breakfast cereal....I can imagine a collective sigh from the anorak brigade" Every time I come back to the UK I always notice a few a few changes to the culture of the country. On the plus side, for example, it's easier to get a nice cup of coffee in virtually any town or village. A few years ago to get a cappuccino (aka frothy coffee) meant putting a plastic disposable cup under a machine and pushing the correct coffee button. What you would end up with, however, was a watered down coffee with hardly any froth on it. In fact, it probably tasted like washing up water after all the cutlery and crockery from a Sunday roast had been cleaned! One of the last bastions that the UK had resisted for ages (apart from sushi) was that of holding a national lottery. From memory, I cannot remember when it was initiated but having done a quick search on the Internet my friend Mr Google advises me that it was 1994. In contrast, Aust

"I have often thought about offering my services as a 'drought breaker'.....they always have facial expressions akin to a child opening presents on Christmas Day!" For the first time in the past fortnight the weather here in England has actually been superb for more than one consecutive day. Now I know to a lot of people around the world, especially in Australia, that might be surprising. Indeed it is to me as well. Normally when I am back here in the Old Dart it rains on virtually every day of my stay. For example, a couple of years ago it rained on 28 of the 36 days I was here. Even last year during the English summer it rained on more than 20 days of my five week visit. At the beginning of my holiday the country was in drought, by the end of it the dams and reservoirs were virtually full! I have often thought about offering my services as a 'drought breaker' as it always seems to rain when I am away from Australia! I imagine that I could charge large

“It could be said, however, that one of our greatest antiquities is indeed the Australian Prime Minister!….. or launching a midnight military style raid on Auntie Ethel’s home looking for that one item that could be worth a lot of money” During the past seven days or so I have had the pleasure (or not) of having watched a large number of television shows. I often find it amazing, that when I am in England, how the variety of programmes differ from that which is seen in Australia. For example, there are more quiz and cooking shows in England than compared to Australia. Chefs such as Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay and Ainsley Harriott are far better known than members of the British government! In fact, every single day of the week there would have to be at least two or three cookery shows on offer to us the viewer. Obviously, the public must be following the recipes judging by the widening waistlines of the vast majority of Britons! However, there is another category of shows that are extr