The Best Night

Last August I published a post entitled The Best Day about the day I did the Neighbours tour and met two of the guys from the show, Fraser and Ringo. It was the best day.

Well, here‘s ‘The Best Night’!

As you know, I am a little bit of a Neighbours fan. Just a tad. Being back in Melbourne this summer, I wanted to do the Neighbours tour again, but no-one wanted to come with me – and going on my own would be crossing a line I didn’t want to cross (unlike doing the Neighbours tour twice). So what to do?

Well, it just so happens that there’s a Neighbours evening held at an English pub in the city – so we went there instead! And check out these photos...

This may be the coolest photo I’ve had on my blog yet:

The Doc – the reason I’m doing my PhD. (Not really). Mum kissed him twice (but my Dad’s cool with it).

And we also met Steve and Stu Parker and Marco: It was a great evening – rounded off by Doctor Karl’s band, The Waiting Room (geddit?), who were actually really good (and much heavier than you’d think).And there was a pub quiz that night too. Our team was the Salvos, and we came in third (which was pretty good, I thought. Roughly two places behind the winning team). The quiz had absolutely nothing to do with Neighbours (which is why we only came in third), but was much more general knowledgey – do you know the four countries in Europe that drive on the left?

As the guy read out the results, he asked if we really were Salvos, to which we said ‘yes’ (because we were) and he asked for another round of applause for all the work the Salvos do, to which there was applause (as requested) and cheering. I had mixed feelings about this: on the one hand it’s great that we got to raise the profile of The Salvation Army amongst the group and to show them that there’s young people in the Army – it’s not all Harold Bishops. They all seemed to know who we were, which is also good (not really an issue in Australia, where the Salvation Army has a very high profile, but most of the people in the pub that night were from the UK, Ireland and New Zealand), but it did leave me feeling a little guilty about sharing some of the credit (which of course, we’re not in it for) for the fantastic things the Army does, when I don’t quite do as much as I should. And who’d have thought I’d come away from a Neighbours night at a British pub feeling challenged about what I do as a Salvationist?

I didn’t actually get to see much Neighbours while I was there, but be prepared for the tackiest funeral you ever did see (tacky even for Neighbours).

Ode to Aldgate

Ode to Aldgate Underground Station

I can understand your sadness,
I know how hard it must be,
When someone steps on to your platform
And shouts ‘This isn’t Liverpool Street!’

Your workers must feel so unwanted.
‘Which platform for Barking, please?’
Broken-hearted, they say, with a sigh,
‘I think you want Aldgate East.’

You're the station that nobody aims for:
As soon as they’re in, they want out,
Over the footbridge or back out the door,
They never stop to see what you’re about.

Always the source of disappointment,
It’s only natural you’d want to stand out.
But now, just between friends, dear Aldgate,
What is this really all about?

I can understand your sadness,
And sometimes you must feel like a grumble,
But when, and why, dear Aldgate,
Did you start to resemble a jungle?

The Truth

I edited this picture myself. Could you tell?

And so I’m back! Before I start, let me just tell you that I’ve updated the mitchenstein365 blog with photos from the Australia trip. Some of them are pretty cool!

But this blogpost has, in fact, nothing to do with Australia (that’ll come). Before I went away I posted twenty ‘facts’ about me, but three were, in fact, false. So which ones?

1. I keep a Christmas Card list throughout the year, adding/removing people as I get on well with them/they annoy me.
This is, I’m glad to say, FALSE. I can be quite sad at times, but this would be a step too far, even for me. What is a little worrying is that those people who commented on the post took this one for being true...

2. I keep a list of every Salvation Army corps (church) I’ve ever seen.
This is TRUE. 142 down, roughly 15,000 to go.

3. People blowing raspberries makes me feel sick.
This is TRUE and I’m now wondering why I put this on here. That was pretty dumb.

4. Part of me still thinks I’m going to be a pop-star.
TRUE, obviously.

5. I don’t like touching food that others are going to eat.
Yep, this is TRUE. Weirdly, I don’t mind others touching my food (within reason, obviously).

6. The same goes for cutlery and glasses that other people are going to use.
TRUE. Unloading the dishwasher is a nightmare (fortunately I don’t do it often :D )

7. Un-sporty as I may seem, I ran for my school when I was younger.
Oh, this is so TRUE. Not only did I run for my school, but I got into the final (my day of glory, aged 10)

8. As a kid, I was desperate to become an estate agent.
Sad, but TRUE. I had my company logo designed and everything.

9. When I was a kid I once lied that my mum worked at McDonalds because I thought it sounded cool.
This is TRUE too.

10. Whenever I’m writing a list of things to do, I always put some things I’ve done already so I can tick them off.
TRUE. Definitely.

11. Whenever I go on holiday I send out loads of emails so I’ll have lots of emails in my inbox when I get home.
Again, sad but TRUE. And it works without fail.

12. Whenever I need to ask anyone in London for directions, I speak with an Australian accent.
This is also TRUE. Once when shopping in Quiksilver I took the ultimate risk and pretended to be an Australian when talking to an Australian. I got away with it, but then again, my Australian accent is pretty darn convincing. (OK, this bit did have something to do with Australia.)

13. I was once stopped on Tottenham Court Road and photographed for a modelling agency.
This is also TRUE. And I was phoned twice by the agency afterwards and, stupidly, never phoned them back. How different my life could have been...

14. When I was thirteen, my best friend and I invented our own language which we spoke for nearly one whole day.
Yep, this is also TRUE. The only sentence I can remember now is Kaya mika Mike, but I can’t translate that in case Mike reads this.

15. I once had a birthday card signed by the whole Tottenham Hotspurs team.
Also TRUE. Pretty cool, eh?

16. I don’t lend out books to my friends, because I can’t stand it when they get creases down their spines (The spines of the books, I mean. I don’t care if my friends have creases on their spines).
This is so TRUE, so don’t even ask. It’ll save us both embarrassment.

17. I’m a member of the Esperanto Association of Great Britain.
This is one of those FALSE ‘facts’. I know hardly any Esperanto at all – I find it hard to take any language seriously when the word for ‘bird’ is ‘birdo’.

18. When I was younger it was my dream to work in Argos.
Absolutely TRUE. Don’t you remember that amazing feeling when you’d ordered a toy and there it appeared on the conveyer-belt behind the desk? Fantastic. And I wanted to share that feeling with others.

19. At school I once got three detentions in one day, including one for fighting.
This is also TRUE. And boy was I glad when I got home and Mum had a real headache and wasn’t really able to take in what I was telling her.

20. My bookshelves are organised in alphabetical order of each book’s country of origin.

FALSE. Come on, as if I would be that sad? I only did this with my CDs.