Any Excuse
It was about time we had another good session and this Saturday gave us the perfect opportunity, for 26 January is Australia Day.
It all began, for us at least, two years ago whilst on holiday in Whistler. Canada has more generous holiday visa laws than America and routinely grants 6 month visas. This means that there tend to be more people in Whistler who stay for the whole ski season than you get in most other places. An awful lot of these are Aussies. When Stuart and I went in 2006 to see Messrs Foden & Eastwood we had no idea that 50% of the Whistler population were Aussies. Our first full day there was 26 January; we got up early in order to get our skis & boots and headed to the slope. At 8:00am there was a queue of people outside a bar called Longhorns made up of Aussies, most of whom were wearing an Aussie rugby shirt, shorts, flip flops, an Australian Flag over their shoulders and many were holding an inflatable kangaroo. The bar didn’t open until 9:00am so they filled the time with a few renditions of the national anthem. We rocked up to the bar at about 2:00pm and it was brilliant all night.
From then on it seemed like a good idea. Last year it was on a Friday and we took the afternoon off work and went to Walkabout, it was full of drunk Aussies even then.
This year we took full advantage of it being on a Saturday and threw a pre-Walkabout party at our flat. We went to town by insisting on Aussie fancy dress and we kitted the flat out in full Aussie decorations. We put up loads of flags, had green ‘n gold paint on the windows, Aussie artists on the ipod and Aussie pictures; we replaced our wedding photo with one of Scott & Charlene on their wedding day, had a picture of Warnie on the wall and a Steve Irwin shrine. To top it off we imported a couple of crates of VB.
However the day started, fittingly, with the Australian Open Womens’ final. I’m sure you’ll all agree it was a fascinating final:
Lovely Maria Sharapova and Lovely Ana Ivanovic make up the ‘Glam Slam’ Final.
Brings a tear to the eye, doesn’t it?
Everyone made a good effort, especially Crocodile Kev!
Aussie Day wouldn’t be right without pies and ketchup
It was then on to Walkabout. The tram ride proved eventful as we were all well on our way after ‘George Besting’ it for a few hours. We were singing Aussie songs and the tram driver even through in a request over the PA for Waltzing Matilda. Once at Walkabout I think we got in for free for our dress efforts and carried on…
It’s generally hazy for most of the night but so many people have commented on what a giggle they had all day.
Traditional picture with coppers outside Walkabout – the girls arguing next to us aren’t with us.
The hangover was quite bad on Sunday, making the Spurs game a real effort. Contributing to the hangover were the bottles that I have since thrown in the bottle bank:
3 bottles of vodka
1 litre of gin
2 bottles of sambuca
2 bottles of jager
1 bottle of Jack Daniels
That’s on top of the many cans of lager, strongbow and bottles of wine.
All that remains is to decide what to celebrate next. A quick shufty at Wikipedia tells us that coming up in February we have: Groundhog Day, Superbowl, Constitution Day (Mexico), Waitangi Day (?), Darwin Day, Valentine’s Day, Flag Day (Canada), Chinese New Year (China), Presidents Day, Pancake Day, Tache Wednesday, International Mother Language Day, Independence Day (Dominican Republic) and my favourite, Defender of the Fatherland Day (Russia).
That should all see us through February. We don’t bother with St David’s day as Wales isn’t a real country but on 14 March we have Pi day! In celebration of the approximation of the mathematical constant Pi.
Check this out from Wikipedia:
Pi Day and Pi Approximation Day are two unofficial holidays held to celebrate the mathematical constant ? (pi). Pi Day is observed on March 14 (3/14 in American date format), due to ? being equal to roughly 3.14. Sometimes it is celebrated on March 14 at 1:59 p.m. (commonly known as Pi Minute). If ? is truncated to seven decimal places, it becomes 3.1415926, making March 14 at 1:59:26 p.m., Pi second. Pi Approximation Day may be observed on any of several dates, most often July 22 (22/7 (European date format) is a popular approximation of ?). March 14 also happens to be Albert Einstein‘s birthday.
And people say I have too much time on my hands….
Do you think other mathematical constants such as Brun’s Constant for Prime Quadruplets get pissed off that they don’t get a day?
xxx
