Sunday, January 5, 2014

Xmas Day 2013

 

Xmas Day was at Ruthy, Richo and Katies house in Edgewater, Maribyrnong. It was a full house with 13 of use present - Rich, Ruth, Katie of course, Mary (Richs mum), Margaret (Ruths mum) and John, Phil (Richs bro), Debbo, Jason, Frankie, Sonny and the two of us. Oh, and the two guinie pigs, Sophie and Rose, of course. Activities started around midday and rocked on until 9pm or so.



Cocktails - we started with alcoholic cocktails for the adults and fruity ones for the kids



Appetizer - our chemistry lecturer (aka Richo, who is getting into Heston Blumenthal and all his toys) prepared prawns on a bed of mango and cucumber salsa with garlic "foam", which was not as foamy as the chef would have liked but it tasted pretty awesome all the same.


We ate outside on the deck as it was a pleasant warm day, in the mid 20s.



Entrée - Richo again was the chef for Duck Three Ways. We had breast with port caviar (created with a pipette, as shown by the clown on the video), soufflé with truffle and Amiens pate. Yum indeed.

Exercise break - as most of the team left to walk around the lake, to make space for more food and sober up a little. We stayed in the house, had a clean up and prepped the main course...


Main course - BBQ butterflied legs of lamb with roasted veggies, by us! Not very traditional, but wonderful all the same.

Dessert - Ruthys lemon tart

Afters - mince pies, cranberry and chocolate cake or cheese.


Boxing Day Test 2013

Our first Boxing Day Test was in 1995 - the infamous test where Murali was no-balled for throwing. Stuey was so lagered up at the time he didn't even notice! We moved to Sydney to live before the test in 96 then returned to Melbourne in 99, where we went to every Boxing Day until left for the UK in mid 2010. We then missed 3 more until this year, so we have only missed 4 in 15 years, and unfortunately one of those was the last time England won the Ashes in Australia....



....which clearly didn't happen in 2013!! Awful, but that didn't detract from a wonderful day out with Debbo, Jason, Frankie, Sonny, Geoff, Abi and Olly. As the photo above shows, we were in the VERY top row of the Great Southern stand.

In the lunch break we walked around to the Members side of the ground and met up with Ruthy and Richo et al, who like us were still recovering from the feast on Xmas Day. We also met Steve, see below:-


And an amazing thing happened. We were all in the new England kits and a Graham from OPSM, one of the promo tents you can see behind us approach Stuey and asked if he would like to take part in a competition in the tea break. He didn't explain too much, except Stuey would be in the pitch watching some old Ashes appeals and he had to be the umpire and decide if they were out or not. The sponsor was OPSM, an optician.....eyesight....being the umpire....get it???

Anyway, Stuey expected to be on the pitch with a number of other contestants....not so, just Stuey!!


So to the decisions - the first was clearly not out, down the leg side. The second, as shown above was given out by umpire Stuey with the big glove. And the last decision was also given out, all correct which meant Stuey won a $50 voucher, a pair of Ray-Bans and a new iPad mini!! Woo Hoo!!





Saturday, January 4, 2014

Vineys at Cape Paterson



The Viney clan descended on Sat 14th Dec and to help with jet lag we took the dudes down to Cape Paterson.


It turned into a bit of an Auzzie wildlife safari. First we wend to the mouth of the Powlet River to check out the roos, as shown on the video above. We then went onto Wilsons Prom and were treated to emus, wallabies, an echidna and lots of birds including a crimson rosella and black cockatoo.






On the way back from Wilsons Prom, Jason was keen to see a Koala. He spotted one in a tree as we drove past, which earned him the nickname Crocodile Viney, due to his bush skills.



We played beach cricket and did some boogie boarding in the sea.