Gav's first Haircut

I will let Gav tell you about his first haircut in a wee moment but first I thought you would like to see a couple of pics from our Manly trip last weekend, can't believe it was a week ago! We had a wonderful day in Manly which is a suburb of Sydney, but you can take the ferry to reach it. It was lovely to sit and drink hot chocolate looking out at the ocean and hearing the lapping of the waves crash against the beach... blissful! We also did a walk through some of their national park and climbed up to a view point on a cliff. Here is a pic from the viewpoint:



On the way home we got a great view of the Sydney bridge and opera house all lit up. Here is a pic of the Opera house.



Work is going well and both Gav and I are enjoying working. Yes Jude I do have to make coffees and the first time I heard flat white, my reaction was the same as yours.. they also have a long black.. strange people! Gav is already looking very tanned, purely because he is not using suncream! You can gather that I am not impressed!!! He is sitting giggling beside me. However, on Wednesday this week he came home and presented me with a beautiful bunch of flowers,



needless to say I was totally overcome and forgot all about telling him off for not wearing suncream. I can forsee lots of flowers in the future if he intends to try and distract me from telling him to wear suncream.

Right, will hand over to Gav as he has a few stories he wants to tell you.

Gav the builder can he fix it! Gav the builder....... probably not, but he can dig holes, paint, shovel and fetch the morning coffee's. Well here i am once again let loose on the internet, i have to be honest and say that i had mixed reviews about my last blog but i wont let a few hecklers put me down. A lot has happened since i last wrote to you about my now famous ninja skills but as i said i don't want to talk about that. All this shovelling and digging and lifting seems to be paying off as a couple of days ago i noticed what appears to be the start of a muscle. In a flurry of excitment i decided that i needed a haircut to match my now new arnie/rocky/superman physique. I enlisted the help of my wife who has told me now for many years that she is an excellent hair cutter person (great english) but the only victim that i know of her's is her wee bro johnny who walked away with a fringe that appeared to be a result of a tag team cutting by Freddie Kruggar and Stevie Wonder. But as marriage is about trust i finally gave in and accepted her payment of 100 dollars to practice her skills on my golden locks. Here are the results i will let you all make your own minds up about it but i think it looks alright (i hear that denial is normally the first emotion that people who suffer a trauma go through). However the results of an extensive poll showed that i am still the most handsome man walking about on this earth (results gathered from interviewing a Mrs J McKinley).

Before


During


After


Anyway I have one other story to tell you all about. The work that i do is basically turning up to peoples houses and doing landscaping and general improvements like decking, driveways, fencing, stonework etc. In other words i am like a Handy Andy of Oz (or rather the bloke that Andy tells what to do!). I have seen lots of great houses as all our clients arent short of a bob or two, however they seem to forget how to make a cup of coffee! The last job i was on was a farm owned by a family of nut cases. No joking they are real wack jobs who have a huge house and a huge expanse of land in which they are making a kind of farm/zoo. They have three Al pacas (basically lama's but i was told not to call them lama's, it's funny as you know how i forget to do these things.....) loads of chickens, fancy pigeons, fancy turkey things, two horses and a reindeer! I was standing in the middle of Australia stroking a reindeer called bambi ( I didn't want to point out that bambi wasn't a reindeer as i had already mentioned the lamas like three times at this point!). But these guys are notorious to work for and none of our guys want to go there as they are so fussy about everything and watch continually out of their windows at what you are doing. I was told about them before i went to work there, and specifically about their ten year old boy who once brought a lama, sorry Al paca placenta to school for show and tell! The job that they wanted us to do was a really boring job that no one wanted to do so the boss in his wisdom of selecting the best qualified picked me and two others to go and sieve huge mounds of soil that they had got for free. The aim was to remove the stones and then go and fill in any holes in the ground that we could see. If you haven't already picked up on how stupid this is, basically the owners want this telly tubby looking farm with no holes in the ground that originate from the chickens pecking or the lamas and horses running around. They even want the natural bumps and hollows in the ground evened out. Pack of muppets they are, but hey its been fun to compete with chickens who are intent in pecking out the soil that you have just put in. And no the owners won't lock the chickens up when we work, sad as they seem to get covered in soil for some strange unknown reason.....

Anyway must go here as i have a chicken in the oven and lama sauages cooking.

Hope you are all well.

Gav and Jess