About the clocks...

These useful little timezone identifiers are linked in and based on the home addresses of some of our reading audience.
Sydney, for most of the Phoqaawii tribe members, tax people and bushy boy types.
Cairns is for Bimbo, as is
Alaska for when she is on the boat for three months. She was getting her immersion training in her survival suit today, by the way.
San Carlos is between San Francisco and Palo Alto and fitted for Dave Richardson, Laurie Stevens and Martin Doherty, before he finally admitted to moving to Pittsburgh! So Dave and Laurie get to keep the clock.
Largo is in Florida and where Richard and Paul, two very pleasant men of our acquaintance reside. It is also the same timezone as Martin now.
Blighty is for anyone who is based in or visits the Old Dart and we have more than one or two of those.
Tønsberg is for we fabulous people here in Guds eget land.

Actual Tønsberg news

So what the devil is happening over here, I hear you all ask? At the moment I'm waiting for some responses from job applications that I've got flying all over Oslo.

Rannveig has reluctantly realised that she is entering the home straight of her maternity leave and is working up the motivation to throw herself back into the working world.

She's also been buying a lot of lottery tickets.

Linnea Clare continues to develop at her own leisurely pace. Her current emerging skills include figuring out all the tricks she can do with her tongue and screaming her pretty little head off when she gets wind of it being bed time. I'm particularly impressed by the screaming, given she puts on an Academy Award worthy performance every evening and makes it sound like we are skinning her alive. Naturally, no tears are involved and all is well within about 10 minutes when she either gets bored with the yelling or decides she needs to give her bear and cow a good talking to.

We have both come to the conclusion that we are suited to a life of idle wealth. Rannveig has reminded me a couple of times that money doesn't buy love, but it can sure buy off a whole lot of stress. My favourite version of that maxim is that you can't buy love, but you can sure rent it at the going rate...but I digress. In any case, we are getting by well enough, but it would be a pleasure for both of us to have secure, meaningful, highly paid, flexitime jobs in close proximity to home.

Rannveig has been a real trouper whilst at home and has been tracking down a child care place for LC. Hopefully, she might have bagged one in the neighbourhood. For you non Norwegians, the state currently has a commitment to 100% child care coverage, which sounds really good, but you might also remember a certain beer loving PM saying that in 5 years time no child would be living in poverty... get the drift? The upshot is that it helps to have an "in" to snag a place somewhere within reasonable distance. Fingers crossed.

Me big bruddahs....

Bruce in the 60's

Something I'm sure he's always dreamed about ;) Anyway, the 60's I'm talking about are the 1960s' and not the scorecard kind. It's a stab in the dark, but I'd reckon this was taken around 1967 or 1968. My brother was always a clean cut bugger...how the hell did anyone get their hair to sit like that?

Dennis on one of his many death traps

This one is especially for you Trace! Big Dennis in all his bodgie glory. Taken on the same day as Bruces picture, Dennis probably relented from his well known aversion to cameras in order to get his baby on film. Denn and Bruiser, please note the lack of pampas grass in front of the garage. This really is an old picture.

Ah, school days

Erm..ahem. Well. It was the 70's, OK?

Click on image to see an horrendously larger version

In a break from showing the tribe members, this unearthed jewel is offered to my ex Homebush comrades. The Teasdale Debate team in our official photograph. It's been Photoshopped to correct the ravages of time and to get rid of Simon's dandruff, a two day job in itself.

We would have won that year except we got ripped off at Fort Street High because we didn't come from a nice enough school. That's my story and I'll stick to it. Nice outfit, Judy!

Neighbours..?

Here's a juicy little nugget (as in a chicken nugget for the pedants out there, not a gold...oh, never mind then) that I managed to figure out for myself in the last couple of days.

Martin Doherty, the tribes expat in the US of A lives in an area south of San Francisco called Redwood Shores. This is just a skip north from Palo Alto where, I'll be buggered, Laurie Stevens, one of Rannveigs old pals is based. Small world, yet again!

Correction: Mr Doherty advises that he now resides in the leafy hills of Mount Lebanon, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Those with passing knowledge of seppo* geography understand that the Pitts and Silicon Valley are not in close proximity. Now if I could just squeeze an exact address out of him I'd be happy.

*Australian rhyming slang for American. Septic tank = Yank, gets shortened to septic and eventually becomes seppo

Arnost and Nicole do it faster

A Horton-Khun co production

Todays mildly exciting news is that Nicole and Arnost have joined the broadband world. This means they can now get their spam mail 10 times faster than before! Ellie and Locky look suitably pleased by the all new, high speed access to the world of every unsavoury thing imaginable.

Arnost has kindly donated some treasures for the blog which will be making an appearance soon. In the meantime, you might want to update your address books to their new email address...which I won't write down here so that it won't get harvested by spambots. I'm sure they will send you a blanket mail shortly. If not, I'll organise it ;)

The way we were VI

Yikes! LA Law cast reunion

Here it is, in it's pre internet age glory. The full tribe plus one ring in. I have to repeat my thanks to Stuart and Lyndal who put in a big effort with the camera work on the day, we've had a great deal of pleasure from those shots. April 92' doesn't seem that long ago now, does it?

Anzac Day in Tønsberg

Vallø is a small neighbourhood just down the road from us. On April 25, 1945 with only 2 weeks before the cessation of hostilities in Europe, British Mosquitoes and Lancaster bombers dropped 380 tons of high explosives in order to destroy the oil storage tanks that were used to fuel the fishing fleet. This was a "just in case" raid as it was well known that there was no pressing military value in these targets at the time.

Rannveig and Auslag at the Vallø Memorial

The result was the area being laid waste, with between 10 and 80 Germans killed. The actual number is still being debated. But there were also 30 houses and 50 Norwegians killed as well, in some cases, entire families were wiped out. Our house like most others of a similiar vintage here, have some degree of bomb damage to this day. (Just for once I'd like at least one door to close properly)

There is a war memorial with a roll of honour at Vallø. The names are not of soldiers, but of the families who died during that pointless, terrrible action. April 25 means many things to Australians and Vallø is an grim reminder that the price of war is one all too many have had to pay.

Oskar annexes Munkebakken 2

My bath. Obviously.


Latest news on everybodys favourite furrball is that he has settled into a routine of sorts and is busily worming his way into every apartment in the building. The young fellow who bought our old flat there is apparently getting used to dealing with hairy legs sitting outside his door waiting to get in.

David and Solveig report that everything is going well so far. Clearly Oskar isn't really making an effort yet, so further developments will be reported as they come to hand.

The camera never lies...

...or why Marty is so twitchy

Ah, the joys of Photoshop. Take a perfectly innocent picture of Martin Doherty in Jervis Bay with a relatively empty background, find some nice white pointer pictures and you can come up with all sorts of mischief.

Shark? Where, where...?


I've settled on the first picture as the best. Colour is better matched, the particle reflections in the water blend in nicely and I got Marty's bubbles overlaying the sharks body for the final touch. These other two I threw together for a bit of fun, but they just aren't quite realistic enough looking for my taste.

So how did he survive? Some things even a shark can't swallow.

Even so, I fully expect that one or more of them will be doing the rounds on the net within a matter of days as "the real thing". Hang on Martin, you just might be on you way to short lived internet celebrityhood!

I took the original back around '93 during the infamous plankton bloom trip when a good number of the tribe donated their already eaten breakfasts to the sea after a particularly bouncy trip on the boat out from Husky (following a night not too wisely spent on the turps)