Australia Day: lazed around in Sydney listening to some live music (try to imagine what would happen if The Wiggles mated with a bush band. Now try really, really hard to forget it). The sun weaved in and out of the clouds all day. This was the view when I looked up from where I was sitting:

That evening Daniel went off to play computerised war/shooting/blowing-things-up games with his brother. They�re dork enough to actually belong to a gaming �clan� that fights together in �scrims� (matches) against other clans. Where the hell do you come up with word like �scrim� anyway? It sounds like an ailment suffered by pirates � or a euphemism for �crabs�. Or both. �Yarr, I be sufferin� from a terrible nasty case of the Scrim, yarr.� *scratch scratch*

I now accept that my boyfriend is a dork. I am also a dork, but I am openly dorkiferous. Daniel is a sneaky dork. He�s done all the cool-kid stuff, he�s gotten up to no good and certain portions of his youth could definitely be categorised as �misspent�. But now he goes off twice a week for �scrims� with �clans�.

Recently I dug out some old Beatles cassette tapes of mine � yeah, that�s right punks, I still own cassettes! And God help anybody who tries to take my record player off me. Anyway, I spent all night listening to The Beatles and drinking beer. I absolutely *love* the Beatles; they�ve been my favourite band since I was 13 years old. I�m trying to pass on my love for the Beatles to Daniel, but my Beatles Appreciation Crash Course has met with limited success. Our musical tastes overlap in the jazz, funk, hip-hop and alternative arenas, but he�s just not a pop-music kind of guy. Still, I got him to download a few of their albums, and some of the songs have even made it to the five-star playlist on his iPod. Now I just have to play them so often that he finds himself unwittingly humming along because somehow the lyrics have weaselled their way into his brain and burrowed into his long-term memory.

Manipulative? Me?

It�s hard though sometimes, listening to my old favourites. It sounds strange, but I am haunted by happy memories. My first boyfriend and I got to know each other because we both loved the Beatles and the same British comedies. We were together for nearly three years; we even moved in together. Now, certain songs bring back memories of the high-school courtship, the staying back after school to work on our sketches together, the sharing of walkman headphones in free periods in the library (one earpiece each), the long drives out to Razorback to visit him when I got my licence. I can�t seem to disentangle the songs from the memories. I wonder if I want to. Sometimes I think I do, but they�re mostly happy memories so it seems silly that I want them to go away. I think that for the most part I just miss the innocence of being in high school and even university, and not working eight hours every day and then coming home and cleaning up the place or making dinner. Back then, the only thing that distinguished the weekend from the rest of the week was that I had dance classes on Saturday morning.

I really like living with Daniel, but sadly, we�re Grown Ups now and life can be a bit regimented.

Luckily, Daniel introduced snowboarding into my life, and it�s such a great release, just that occasional chance for some exhilaration, riding around together, relying on nothing but ourselves � no motors, no machines, just ourselves and our boards � to get us to where we�re going, weaving through the trees and back out into the open again. In the past year I have had approximately three days on the snow, so I�m getting some pretty serious withdrawals here. More than anything, I want to spend a lot of time in the Australian resorts this winter, if we can afford it. Until then, I�ll just have to make do with the knowledge that I�m going to the Alps in six days, and not coming back until March.

So there.

We went down to the farm over the weekend. As usual, Daniel�s parents had invited a large group of people round, so there was plenty of company.

This is what the farm looks like:

I didn�t think to get any photos of the farmhouse itself, which in hindsight was a bit daft of me.

The newest addition to the farm is a dartboard, which kept us entertained (and considerably nervous about ending up with a dart lodged somewhere on our person) for way too long.

The second newest addition is a dune buggy. This is basically a small car, but without any panels � more like a couple of seats in a frame. It�s easy enough to drive as there are only two gears, one of which makes the buggy go backwards, so even I could understand it. Daniel�s brother has cut a �racetrack� through the trees so I did a few laps of that, but because the grass is so long in places � and because there is no windscreen � an alarming variety of six- and eight-legged beasties was catapulted onto my lap. While I was driving I didn�t really notice what insectoid life-forms were propelled towards me with legs flailing; it wasn�t until I was the passenger that I realised what an assortment of creepy-crawlies were flying at us. Several brightly-coloured spiders landed on my lap or my shirt (none of them much bigger than three centimetres, mercifully), and a large cricket kept hurling itself at me, not to mention the multitude of other insects that were flung in my direction kicking and screaming. I didn�t mind that too much, but what freaked me out was the knowledge that these things �

� live in the area. This photo was taken last night in the foyer of my block of flats, on the floor our unit is on. The horizontal legspan of this monster is more than 5 inches � forgive me for not getting close enough to take an accurate measurement � and right now there is a second one living on the adjacent wall, with a legspan of at least four and a half inches. There�s a good chance that I would lose an arm-wrestling contest with one of these things. They�re really big.

There was one in our bedroom in the farmhouse. I�m not surprised it was there; with two-and-a-half-inch mosquitoes and three-inch moths to feed on, its life was sorted, at least until it suffered a particularly nasty death at the hands of Daniel�s mum.

So anyway, the idea of having one of those things flung onto my face whilst I was helpless in a buggy filled me with cold dread. I don�t care that they�re harmless. Just look at them!

Spidery side note:
Last night when I got home at about 10PM after visiting mum, I noticed that big spider sitting above the window in the foyer on the top floor. Despite my irrational fear of huntsmen, I am also fascinated by them, so I put my bags down and stood there looking up at it. All of a sudden it moved, jerking all its legs and pulling them in tightly as though something had scared it. Turned out that a small cockroach had been flying past, and this massive spider had caught it mid-flight. Huntsmen don�t build webs, they hunt, hence the name. I watched with fascination and disgust as the spider sank its huge fangs into the flailing insect.

(You can see part of the bug�s wing hanging out of its fangs here. The spider wasn�t sitting flat against the wall, but sadly the flash on my camera eliminated the shadow. It�s even creepier with a shadow.)

Then, for no reason I could fathom, the spider started to move its legs so that it was spinning in circles on the spot. Round and round it went, its legs working with surprising grace to keep it spinning. After a while it stopped, and began spinning the other way. Five inches of spider turning graceful turns like a macabre ballerina. I don�t know why it did that, but it�s odd how there can be such beauty in such ugly things.
End spidery side note

We also went out to Taralga, the nearest town to the farm (about 20 minutes away), a tiny place that was having a rodeo that weekend. I went with Daniel and his brother, and while we stood next to the car waiting for everyone else to arrive, I snapped this photo:

The town is tiny, yet it seemed as though there was a church on every street, many of them quite big.

The rodeo and horseriding area being prepared:

There wasn�t much going on so we went off to watch the sheepdog trials instead.

Yes, that dog is walking on the sheep. I thought it was funny at first, but all the dogs did it, and the sheep really didn�t seem to care. I went to an agricultural high school, so I already knew that sheep can be impressively stupid animals. But still, I was surprised once again at just how daft they can be. Sometimes the whole group would just walk around in tight circles on the spot because each sheep was following the one in front.

Agricultural-high-school-memories side note
We had to have our own gumboots and overalls. Mine lived in my locker, where they acquired a musty smell. In Year 7 we had to learn to throw sheep. We got into partners and took turns heaving these sheep over onto their backs, and the sheep were surprisingly compliant. I also remember that once a goat tried to eat my friend�s notebook � while she was still writing in it. We made rope halters once too, and we had to go out into a field and catch cows with them. We learned two ways to hypnotise chickens. They gave us our own vegetable plots, and mine always sucked because it never got any sunlight and the sprinkler system didn�t reach it, so nothing ever grew there except weeds, and I never got good marks for it. Once I found a potato growing there, which impressed me because I didn�t plant any potatoes. We once had a cow-milking contest in ag class. All of us day students had to stay in the boarding school for a week in Year 7 � not all at the same time, just two girls and two boys at a time � doing �Squad Duty�. This meant getting up before sunrise to go out and round up cows for milking at the machines, or to collect eggs for the boarding school breakfast, or whatever. Oh, and then in Year 10, we had to pregnancy test cows � with our hands. Well, they gave us shoulder-length gloves and a big squirt of lubricant, but you get the picture.

I suppose in a lot of ways my experience of high school was kind of unique.
End agricultural-high-school-memories side note

My friend V. is getting married this weekend. She went to the same high school as I did, and milked cows and threw sheep and collected eggs and grew spinach and all of that too. She�s a radiologist now. Anyway, Daniel really needed a new suit for the wedding, because the one he currently owns is a) too small, and b) slightly dated. He�s had it since he was about 19, which explains both (a) and (b).

His new suit is sexy! � even though his shirt is light pink. I would never have imagined him buying a pink shirt (Daniel is very much a blues/browns/greys/blacks kind of guy), but it really suits him. I love a man in uniform!

Question: why do so many guys feel the necessity to wear a slightly uneasy �happy now? I�m in the stupid suit� look on their face whenever they don a suit?

Daniel made banana bread the other day, and took a picture of it. He also hinted that I might like to post it online. So this is Daniel�s amazing banana bread (truly a wonder of nature):

Finally, a random note about our block of flats: the bottom floor often smells. Not always the same smell, and generally not an unpleasant smell, but there�s usually a smell of some sort down there, and only ever on the bottom floor. Among the smells that I have encountered: lemon � old person � burnt toast � spaghetti bolognese � vanilla � weed.

I�ll try to update soon so that I don�t have to post a ridiculously long entry like this again.

By the way, hello to all you random Googlers in Ireland, Italy and the US � thank you, come again!