With my running shoes through Old Sydney Town. Or, "Hello, my name is Damian."

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

A rare day free of work, travel, thingy-ing or whatcha-mahoosits allows me to catch up with RC threads and post something of my own...

I've now been in Sydney just nigh on a month and the love affair continues to grow. And just like falling in love with someone, a new city can, and has changed life immensely. In fact pretty much every aspect of life is somehow altered by this new abode (and here I should point out that whilst officially temporary, I am more or less determined to make it permanent).

It's an odd city in many respects, and I'm not sure how to describe it, but I had coffee with a friend of mine who three years ago moved from London to Sydney and made some interesting comparisons - chief among them was that whilst London is (apparently) a town you get to know pretty well, large slabs of Sydney remain untouched and unexplored even after three years because it's such a spread out kind of place with a strange, but effective road and public transport system. And that reminds me - Richard Branson is currently in town and said in a newspaper interview that after a difficult period, his ownership of British Rail has now worked its magic and the trains are "brilliant" and running "fantastically well". A question for you Britishers - is he right?

Speaking of trains, as I may have previously mentioned, I spend two hours on the train each work day and am loving it - the chance to spend a large slab of time reading and (especially) listening to music without the nagging thought that there are "more productive" things that ought to be done, is fabulous. And as a measure of how Sydney can be slightly eccentric, I have noticed many odd things during my short time using the said locomotive transportation. Perhaps not as odd as El Gordo's peach-coloured bath robe and matching towel experience, but on my train I have seen surfers in nothing but wet suits carrying surf boards 90 minutes from the beach in mid-winter, a man carrying a microwave oven and a vacuum cleaner (making me think that must be a very time-consuming way to move house) and a young bare-footed guy wearing only a singlet and board shorts (mid winter here remember) carrying a volleyball. Sometimes I spend ages just trying to figure out what these people are doing. Quite entertaining.

Also entertaining was the station announcer at Central Station during one peak evening crush hour. I had just arrived up the stairs from the tunnel I use to get to the station when the p.a. blared into life with a young, unusually enthusiastic Aussie guy saying "Good evening everyone my name is Damian and I'll be your station announcer this evening. Thank you all for choosing to travel with CityRail tonight and ... er, I've completely forgotten what it was I was supposed to tell you. Hang on a tick..." What it was he had forgotten I don't know as my train arrived at that moment, but it was a welcome change from the usual "(indecipherable) platform (indecipherable) departs in (indecipherable) minutes stoppping at (indecipherable) and then all stations to (indecipherable). Thank you."

Fortunately I don't normally have to travel on the crush hour trains as I work fantastically long hours in my stupendously demanding new job - well, I'm exagerrating a tad, but my normal work day goes soemthing like this:

Up at 0445 to catch the 0541 train to the city to start work at 0640. I then leave at 1915 and catch the 1925 train home, arriving back at 2020 in time to snaffle a bit of food before hitting the hay to be up again at 0445...

The advantage to this mayhem is that I only have to work 6 days per fortnight, a life style I'm actually really enjoying. My dream of 4 day weekends is now sort of reality, the only snag being that I still have to put in 40 hours each week... but I think I'm going to love it long term.

I'm currently living about 30km north of the city, in a relatively small and peaceful suburb. It's quiet, undulating territory, with little traffic which means it's not too bad for running. There are no beaches, being a long way from the ocean, so I've had to get used to undulating suburban terrain again, which is no bad thing. There are no long hills as such, but plenty of short, sharp hilly bits which can be demanding. Still, on the whole very pleasant running.

The strange working arrangements and whole new way of life have of course meant I've dropped all thoughts for the moment of major race goals. For now that hardly matters as I'm maintaining my fitness levels and being completely absorbed by my new town. And I'm feeling great. Despite the reduced mileage my weight has fallen to its lowest levels in over 20 years, which I'm attributing to a moderate amount of running, a careful diet and reduced alcohol intake. And persistence perhaps, although at times it doesn't feel like it.

For the moment I'm concentrating on my new job, making it a permanent position and then looking for similarly permanent accomodation. Hopefully that will all happen over the next 2-3 months. Then I can begin to settle down adn think again about longer term race plans. For now however I am just happy doing 30 and 45 minute runs - great for fitness and not too taxing on the motivation gland.

And loving it!

Keep plodding...

MLC Man.

[El Gordo]

Thanks MLCM -- excellent update. Sounds like you're having one of those genuinely life-changing experiences. Glad to hear it's going so well.

Branson's Virgin Trains bought one of the franchises that resulted from the sell-off of the nationalised British Rail. I was an early victim, using -- or trying to use -- a Virgin service to take me to Manchester early on a Monday morning, returning me on Friday evenings. I did this for a few weeks, and a thoroughly miserable experience it was. The trains themselves are quite impressive, if plasticky, but they never ran on time, and took far longer to reach their destination than seemed humane and reasonable. This was around 6 years ago though, so perhaps they've improved. Trouble is, as often happens, since that early bad experience, I've shied away from using them again, so I wouldn't know how they're doing. I still think their schedules are painful. If you're not travelling directly from and to a major city, their routes are slow and circuitous. There you are, more than you ever wanted to know about Virgin Trains.

When it goes right though, I agree about the pleasures of train travel. I spent more than a year commuting to London -- about an hour each way -- and was amazed at how much reading I got through. Spending so much time in front of a computer, I seem to have lost the knack of reading, which is very annoying. (Well, this morning I did just finish reading Mark Haddon's brilliant "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time", but it's hardly a taxing read.) I've just signed up for a couple of short Open University courses in readiness for doing an Eng Lit degree from the new year, so I'd better rediscover the art of extended time with a book, or I'll be in trouble. But anyway, train journeys, and travel in general, are great for catching up with books as getting the PC out is just too much hassle.

Talking of which, has anyone come across one of the new electronic reading devices like the Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader? I like the idea of them but I can't help feeling we've not yet arrived at our true destination. They're still expensive, and not flexible enough (no pun intended). The Kindle isn't available in the UK yet but the Sony arrives very soon. I'll still hang on for a while yet though.

Anyway, glad to hear it's going so well in Sydney.

El Gordo

-------

PS You are being strangely muted about the Olympics

PPS No running to report from over here, but as the stomach spills ever closer to my feet, the loins are beginning to twitch....

[Sweder]

Sir Richard is, not for the first time it should be noted, talking bollocks.
'Train' rhymes conveniently with 'pain', the one married to the other on an endless stream of phone-ins and letters to The Times.

Syders sounds seductive, a Siren city. I've got this horrible feeling that if I were to finally gain some form of financial security (ie freedom from slavery) I would end up there. My seven days in 2003 were enough to convince me of the dangers of returning.

The Olympics. Well, that medal table does bear some scrutiny, albeit with head shaking side to side. I've been half-listening to the (OK I admit) excellent Victoria Derbyshire on Five Live this morning dealing with the usual bleaters and whiners complaining that sport doesn't matter and there are far more important things to spend money on. If you apply that thinking to life you'd never have a pint and Oxfam would get three quarters of your income.

Sport lifts the spirits and God knows Britain needs a pick-me-up right now.
Moment of the games so far was the women's 100 metres final. British youngster Jeanette Kwakye finished in sixth. I was truly gobsmacked to see a Brit in the final having contrived to miss the heats and semis. She looked fabulous in the race, stolen beautifully and comprehensively by a Jamaican triumvirate who, like Usain Bolt in the men's, made this sprinting lark look like a walk in the park compared to my own painful labouring. But it was her post-race interview with 'uncle' Phil Jones trackside that had me taking notice. Her eyes blazed, passion raging within after a life-changing experience, and she wanted more. Many athletes in the past have expressed satisfaction with crawling into finals and semis on the world stage; not this firebrand. She thanked Uncle Tom Cobbly and All, including the BBC team, before skipping off to begin her preparations for the next championships. Watch out.

On a more sober note I stayed up for the Miracle of Saint Paula in the wee small hours of Sunday. It was like watching Doctor Who as a child when the bloody Cybermen came on; a behind-the-sofa experience. You don't have to be Brendan Foster (a man deserving his own gold medal for incompetent race-calling and stumble-clumsy platitudes) to know that running a marathon with any kind of injury is folly bordering on madness. To do so with the echoes of a stress fracture in your leg is to go to a dark and fearsome place. Why did she do it? I know the public reasons but I can't help wondering if perhaps Team Radcliffe had another agenda. I can see no sane reason; she was never going to win the damned thing. Laying the ghost of Athens 2004? Perhaps, though she denies it. It made no sense to me and watching a woman who has redefined women's distance running in the last few years hobbling around the stadium on half a leg was truly painful. I peered through my fingers, heart filled with an ugly blend of worry and anger.

[Seafront Plodder]

Good to hear from you MLC. I echo what The Fat One has said.

Can't really empathise with falling in love with any big city. Dirty, smelly and loud places that they are - do hope that your affair continues though.

I suspect the deafening silence on the Olympics has something to do with the fact that the Ozzies are doing shite. We soap-dodging limeys however are flying. I've watched some sports avidly that I never thought could be so entertaining, cycling for one. Interesting article here...http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersp...mpics.html, and the same paper also had one of the better pieces I've read on St Paula's performance ...http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersp...mpics.html

I sat with my son to watch Phelps win his 8th gold, and found myself doing the father/son bit by telling him the significance of what we were watching. great stuff!

Thankfully my usual train experience is limited to the 15 or so minutes necessary to get back home from Lewes when Sweder drags me out for a couple of swifties, although El G is right about the shiny Virgin trains. The best idea that Virgin had was to introduce a quiet carriage. No phones, no music and no screaming kids - great!

I've also noticed that (although it may have stopped now due to the the accompanying howls of derision) station announcers stopped calling us 'passengers' and made us 'customers'. :RFLMAO:

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Well, be fair - it's not that Australia is doing shite at all - we're still on track for a very acceptable and expected medal tally. Rather, it's that GB is doing very, very well. And as the local commentators are saying in gushing and excited tones, with the medal tally you Britishers are racking up, we can expect that enthusiasm and motivation to flow over into the truly important events. Meaning, of course, that the next Ashes series is going to be a cracking one!

As for Richard Branson, well I'll give the guy cedit for making air travel much, much cheaper in Australia. He broke the long-standing airline duopoly that ensured we paid ludicuously high airfares, and air travel is now relatively cheap. Thank you Sir Richard.

Still not sure I'd want to share a taxi with him though.

[Sweder]

You should ask SP about sharing taxis.
He recently hailed a cab after a night on the ale only to engage a driver suffering from Tourette's. A terrified Captain Tom spent the entire journey home scrabbling for the door handle; by all accounts we're lucky the old boy is still with us

[El Gordo]

I thought all cabbies suffered from Tourette's?

[Seafront Plodder]

I tell you mate I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Me and Just-a-Half-Kev - the other mate in the back - were sure we were going to end up in a ditch along a deserted country lane somewhere.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

(Well, this morning I did just finish reading Mark Haddon's brilliant "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time", but it's hardly a taxing read.)

It's a good book that - I really enjoyed it. Much better than his later effort "A Spot of Bother" which is just cringey and even lighter weight, or so I thought. I think he tried too hard to be some kind of latter-day P.G. Wodehouse, but the first book is definitely worth a read.

[Sweder]

Curious Incident is a remarkable book. You spend a lot longer thinking about it afterwards than you do reading it. Didn't catch the follow-up and probably shan't bother now. My hardcover copy of The Curse of Lono arrived this morning along with The Proud Highway and Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist.

I'll be incommunicado for a while

[Sweder]

You folks are well known for knocking out most agreeable bottles of plonk so it was with some dismay that I read in this morning's Times about a rather sour vintage that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald this week.

Something utterly jaw-dropping has happened at these Games . . . the Brits have overtaken Australia on the medals table.
Once, not so long ago, Australians were proud people who walked tall with jutted jaws. The Poms were a source of amusement, a fallen imperial master weeping over a dog-eared scrapbook, its tattered images of Steve Redgrave, Seb Coe, Mary Rand and those five blokes from Chariots of Fire fading by the day . . .

There follows a rather sorrowful section on how Aussies would patronise their poor Pommy colleagues. The article ends thus:

What really hurts is the knowledge that, when they were down on their scabby knees pleading for any sporting morsel to be thrown their way, we came to their rescue. Here you go, poor Poms, have our coaches, our programs, our secrets to success . . .

Strewth.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

You folks . . . Strewth.

An isolated incident. As you will have seen from the extensive TV coverage, the Aussies are out in force at all venues loudly supporting the Brits (excepting where it's a head to head Oz -v- GB of course) in all events, and that is largely the case in the media here too.

Let's face it - as long as you're beating the snot out of the Yanks, the Chinese and (most importantly) the bloody Kiwis, we're on your side, matey.

Go GB!

[Seafront Plodder]

the Aussies are out in force at all venues loudly supporting the Brits (excepting where it's a head to head Oz -v- GB of course) in all events,

You've got little choice mate as your team arn't performing. :p


Just watched Usain Bolt win the 200m in a new world record. He destroyed the field to such an extent, and with all eyes on the clock the BBC commentator Steve Cram actually said "I'm sorry but I've no idea who took the silver and bronze". :RFLMAO:

Our games just keep getting better with a tremendous bronze in the 400m hurdles for Tasha Danvers.

[Seafront Plodder]

On the sebject of the Yanks, I noticed that both the mens and womens relay teams managed to drop the baton in the 4 x 100m.

No one likes to see that.

[Sweder]

Yeah, but there again it's dangerous to gloat sometimes . . . I see our own donuts managed to get DQ'd by missing the change lane :mad: No doubt we'll have to put up with the Aussies crowing about their glorious march to the Hockey fin . . . eh? Oh . . .

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Well, all I was going to say was that it's about time you lot started pulling your weight. Let's see now, hmm:

Great Britain (and I won't ask why three nations feel compelled to compete together as one mega-nation, especially when the West Indian nations see no such need at the Olympics): population 58 million, 44 Olympic medals.

Australia: population 21 million, 42 Olympic medals.

By my rough calculation, when you have in the order of 115-120 medals, you can begin to think about gloating. And then of course there even tinier nations pulling way above their weight, e.g. Jamaica, New Zealand et al.

Having said that, it was a pretty impressive effort by GB in the track cycling.

Can't wait until 2012. We're already speculating about what would make a good opening ceremony for London. We're thinking a 30 minute demonstration of fox-hunting, ending with the hunted fox being caught, set alight and the dying creature then being herded into the cauldron to light the Olympic flame, whereupon convicts then serve out BBQ'd fox meat to the assembled gentry.

I'm taking this well, aren't I?

[Sweder]

We're thinking a 30 minute demonstration of fox-hunting, ending with the hunted fox being caught, set alight and the dying creature then being herded into the cauldron to light the Olympic flame, whereupon convicts then serve out BBQ'd fox meat to the assembled gentry.

Why would Aussies play a part in the 2012 opening ceremony?

It's all good fun. Team GB (as they've become known since a certain Gordon Brown insisted on it) have exceeded our (admittedly pretty low) expectations. Its all given the country a huge lift just as we stand on the cusp of what seems to be an inevitable recession. At least we will be in recession so long as the bloody media keep telling us we're having one.

The 2012 OC has been the subject of much mirthful speculation. No question we can't (and should not try to) match Beijing's automated, here's-one-I-prepared-earlier perfection. Some wags have suggested we have a team of striking dustmen tip trash all over the half-finished stadium whilst synchronised hoodies rob and them stab them. Judged on the evidence of our eight minute stint at the closing jamboree today it'll be 'funky'. Jimmy Page thrashing out Whole Lotta Love off the top of a bus was a nice touch. I for one was relieved we didn't ask Beckham to hit anything more definate than 'the crowd' with his ceremonial kick. I had visions of him slipping, hacking the ball into Leona Lewis's face before glaring at an imaginary divot in the bus roof . . .