Happy Birthday, Dom

Happy birthday, Dom, from your Mum and Dad and, I'm sure, the rest of your family. I've won a bottle of red from Stuart and Damian who both said you'd never make it to 15. We gave Dom a trip to Vietnam as his present but today, as you always have to do, we had to provide something extra: in this case it was a Spiderman Wii game. All visitors will be able to play it but we'll be better because we've practiced...

After the floods

The news today is that the rain and floods in England have finally got to Oxford and that "water is lapping at the doors of the famous colleges". Where exactly are your new digs, Joe? Hope they're above ground level. Amanda clearly got out in time as I had an email from her a few nights ago from Europe and an email last night from Annika saying she'd arrived safely. All the action is clearly in Europe. Australia is having a bad run at the moment. New Zealand beat us in rugby and netball, and Japan beat us in soccer. Australians came one and two in the most recent MotoGP, though, and, baring death, Casey Stoner will be our next motorcycle world champion. We're adjusting (slowly) to life after Vietnam. Dom's soccer team beat the top team 5-2 (unfortunately while he was away) but he played last weekend in a 7 - 1 victory. Hard to see anyone stopping them as the season gets to the pointy end. I've been invited back to the Isle of Man next year so I'll have to dry the passport out again. Julia is desperately trying to restructure her job so she can have a semi-normal life and has (gasp!) indicated she wouldn't mind a few days on the Isle of Man herself. I've just set the table for dinner and there are only three plates. Where did all that time go? Nick and Adam made it back to Newcastle in the freezing Camry and it sounds like Nick is REALLY enjoying having a car again. The sound system from his old car is just about to be installed in the Kombi...

Amanda in Oxford

I am just back from an extremely pleasant Sunday afternoon stroll with Joe, Sars and Xavier. We called in for a pint at the pub the locals call "the bird and baby" (which rolls off the tongue a little easier than the eagle and child), the famous C.S Lewis and Tolkein used to hang out. Joe informs me there are blokes at Oxford who are such Tolkein nerds that they can actually speak Elvish! One of them has even changed his name to Elvish Presley! Actually that last bit is a lie.
I had a bit of an adventure getting here. As you may be aware there has been extensive flooding in England, and a small monsoon hit as I was attempting to leave London. All services to the north of London were delayed or cancelled, and Paddington Station resembled a U.N. food drop, with stranded travellers competing physically for the few available trains. The only way to get a seat was to mob the information boards, where they were announcing the platform that the trains were departing from 2 minutes prior to departure. As soon as the platform was announced, there was a mad scramble to get there, which involved hurdling other commuters, quite a feat if you have a large back-pack, a handbag full of books, a ukelele and a beer. I would have prefered to be killed in the stampede rather than pay for a nights accommodation in London, so I managed to get a "seat", straddling a set of golf clubs and an aged Pakistani lady. My destination was the hamlet of East Hendred, on route to Oxford, where a mate is working and living in the local pub. Unfortunately the train station was completely flooded and the train was unable to stop. I got off one station later and walked in the flogging rain in the general direction of somewhere until I got to the middle of nowhere, which luckily has a tavern in it. The tavern was full of other wet and bewildered people, and i managed to flag a lift, driving through almost submerged villages, (blow up boats down the high street etc) and got to the pub a mere 7 hours after my e.t.a. People criticize English food but I have never been so happy to see a rack of lamb and a mountain of mashed potato in my life. Trains after that were completely cancelled, and Joe had to come and rescue me. (Thanks Joe) Not so lucky were the motorists on the M5, who were forced to sleep in their cars overnight.

Xavier is the best looking, wittiest and most physically powerful baby I have ever met. Along with Lachie and Sally. And I've heard Maisie is no slouch.

This is the Bodleian Library, they have 7 million books, 7 million and one including the new Harry Potter. My fly is undone in this picture, but hopefully you cant quite see that.

The most celebrated moment in Australian politics took place here in Oxford when Bob Hawke downed a yard glass in world record time. So proud.....so, so proud......

Man that's cold

Nick and I texted Annika from the outskirts of Melbourne hoping she new how to get the heater working on her Camry that Nick is borrowing/destroying while she is away (he wrecked his). Her reply, "Hahahahahhahaha". So no heater. She said she had a blanket in the back for just such an occasion so Nick and I rugged up in double hoodies and blankets for the trip. The photos make it look like we are Antartic explorers, gangster style.


I found the best site in the world for fans of Ska, Rocksteady, Skinhead Reggae, Calypso, Dub, Soul and some Roots Reggae. Check out :http://youandmeonajamboree.blogspot.com/
You definately need broad band but you can get a whole new collection of good music in a couple of days. Check it out music lovers.

World Traveller

Australian Passport Requirements
As per the requirements given by the Australian embassy, London:
The applicant must be photographed looking straight at the camera with a passive expression, open eyes, closed mouth in good light.
The challenge is to get a 5 week old wrecking bull to comply.

So you want a photo of me for something called a passport eh??

How's this one Mum and Dad?

What about this then eh??

4 hours later....

On another note, we have had contact with Amanda and look forward to taking her to the Bird and Baby tomorrow for a pint.

Zacs Adventures (Slightly Delayed)

Hey Everybody!! (Hi Doctor Nick)
ok sorry, had to start with a lame simpsons joke. Anyway, just thought that now that i am at home in geraldton i would fill everbody in on my little adventure last year. I would have done it earlier (thanks for your torrent of abuse annika) but my university doesnt let me access the RoffReport, apparently it is dangerous.....i kindof see where they are coming from.

So in a nutshell last year my best mate and i travelled round the world, starting by working in a summer camp in the States and then cruising around canada, the states, mexico, brazil, argentine and chile before going around europe on a EuRail pass and a little bit of Asia (HK, beijing and malaysia) before heading home.

It was an awesome trip, and we got to do alot of tourist cliches, such as a NFL game (uncle Dam, we watched the Rams!!), a couple of major league baseball games - one at Wrigly field, niagara falls, disneyland, cancun, all the normal fun places in europe such as paris, brugge, amsterdam (i dont wanna talk about it), we got to shake the popes hand, visit my old host family in norway, see stonhenge, spend new years in Ireland (apparenly they like a beer over there) and then see the great wall of china and some other pretty interesting things around Biejing, including the Forbidden City, which was really amazing. Turned out though that if you had about $8 its not really all that forbidden.

Hope all is well with everyone,
Zac

Ahhh, Paris

Ok so here i am in Paris. It's overwhelming.

They have police on rollerblades. They are a push over.

So many day to day things here are art: the people the food the shops the wine....the late night tv here is brilliant, very arty. And yet, the music is awful, and the street theatre worse. I went to the Louvre but it was just too much. Thousands of people swarming around looking at really old famous stuff. The sensation of thousands more dead people, somehow present through the artifacts, breathing down your neck. I ended up in the bar staring at people's shoes. However, the modern art museum was just the ticket. I spent five hours in there, staring at, among other things, 50 dead birds with little knitted outfits on, a bicycle wheel stuck to a chair, a piano wrapped in an army blanket, and film of huge inflatable blobs flying around in deserts. All of it made perfect sense to me. I hope that gives some indication of my state of mind. I have been immersing my self in French literature, and I am about to go and visit the very famous Shakespeare and company book shop in the Latin quarter where Ernest Hemingway and Henry Miller used to hang out to buy more books. My head is spinning but as French author Andre Gide says, you can't hope to discover new lands unless you are prepared to lose sight of the shore for a long time....So any way, Joe and Sars....i would love to come visit you and the new kid in town, and keen to have a pint in that pub where Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used to drink. Let me know your phone number and whether you are around /available over the next week.
cheers!

Nerd or Geek?

I just spent the weekend in the lovely little beachside village of Gerroa, just south of Kiama. I was there with four other girl friends and we did puzzles, played uno, danced and sang to Roxette and Bon Jovi, danced and sang to Top Gun and Dirty Dancing (we didn't do any dirty dancing obviously) and drank clean skin wine. The big question at the end of the weekend was (besides can we fit more chocolate and cheese in) 'are we classified as "geeks" or "nerds"'?

Any thoughts?

Don't worry. It Surprised a lot of us!

On this day, Friday 13th, twenty five years ago, a man known as Stuart married a lady named Marry-anne. So, let me be the first to congratulate the pair on their marvelous achievement.
And on a similar note, i thought i might remind everybody that their eldest son, Daniel, will be celebrating his twenty sixth birthday in four weeks.

Holy cow!

Did anyone just watch The Great Climate Change Swindle and subsequent debate on the ABC? Where did they get that studio audience from?? The panel discussion was lively and interesting, but the audience members were off the planet. Apparently environmentalism = eugenics. An entertaining night's viewing.

mmm... Nachos

It's cold tonight in Adelaide. It's so cold that when I got home from work I couldn't face the prospect of braving the elements again to secure some dinner. So I did the unthinkable: I tried to prepare a meal.

Unfortunately, it's been a while since I've been shopping and I was forced to work with only the ingredients I could pry from the darkest recesses of the pantry and the fridge. Having seen a fantastic episode of Iron Chef on the weekend, I dubbed my struggle to prepare an edible meal the 'share house empty fridge battle'. I knew I'd be racing against the clock. Soon enough my own laziness would get the better of me and I'd give up, settle down on the couch in front of the Simpsons and consume a packet of uncooked two-minute noodles.

Given the conditions, I'm reasonably proud of the result. I name this dish 'Nachos Improvisar'. You too can cook it if, one night alone, you find yourself missing a range of ingredients.

You need:
- 3/4 packet Doritos Nacho Cheese (open packet several weeks in advance for appropriate level of staleness)
- Chunk of gourmet red wine & garlic metwurst, expiry date unknown
- A sizeable portion of your flatmate's expensive fetta cheese
- 1/3 Jar of salsa. (whose is it? when was it opened? will it give me a horrible disease if I eat it?)
- American mustard to taste

Method:
Get a fairly large bowl. A clean one if available. Sprinkle a layer of corn chips into the bowl. Cut metwurst and fetta into cubes. Sprinkle some metwurst, fetta, salsa and mustard over the corn chips. Add more layers and repeat. I've always felt the secret to a good nachos is multiple layers. You don't want to enjoy the top half of your meal only to discover a bleak desert of chips waiting for you at the bottom with no accompanying topping. You should have left some topping to go with the chips at the bottom. But you didn't, did you? And now your whole evening is ruined.

Anyway, once layering is done, place bowl into microwave and heat until hot. Serve with that one bottle of Toohey's Old that's still in your fridge after your last party.

Needless to say, any variation on the above ingredients will improve the result. Plain corn chips would be better than cheese flavoured ones. Normal grated cheese beats the pants off fetta in this context. Metwurst- ...well, you get the idea.

The result:




The tasting:
It's certainly not the worst thing I've ever eaten, or even the worst thing I've ever cooked. True, the fetta clashes with the sweetness of the salsa. There's something just a little bit wrong about having metwurst in a dish like this. And in retrospect, adding mustard was just a mistake. But I ended my meal feeling happy, both because I was full and because I felt as though, in spite of the odds, I had used my own resourcefulness to triumph over nature.

This is Mount Hutt. It is my local ski slope, its about an hour and half drive from Christchurch and so for the first time since Ive been going up the mountain snowboarding i decided i would take a few photos. Unfortunatly the conditions for the two days i just went boarding for were far to good to think about getting a few snaps so you are basically left with this one of the mountain from the car, the following one of the goats track.
There were plenty of thrills and a lot of spills, as you can see the conditions were good, good snow and heaps of clear skies, however with only two lifts open we had to sort our way through the conjestion on the trails leading to the chair lifts, the ski patrol were out in force and Giles and I received several verbal lashings from the ski patrol about boarding to fast through the crowds, bad luck for the ski patrol who could never seem to catch us.

Silly newspaper clippings

This is pretty much SPAM. Sorry. Not much happening. Dad and Julia and Dom are due back in Melbourne on Thursday. Nick and I are flying into melbourne as well for a bit of a get together before Annika heads overseas for her big adventure. Where did she learn how to save money?

AND ALL COUSINS SHOULD JOIN FACEBOOK NOW AND LOOK ME UP. We can form a group and play scarbble, and ..... stuff. We can waste time together. It will be fun!

Ad

Jake has a new camera - watch out.

I just bought an SLR camera, so look out Roff Report. Poor Lachlan has had so many flashes go off in his face, he may need a guide dog soon.

George must be retiring soon, so we have been practising getting low to pick the ball up from the scrum base.

We have been laying pretty low in Lismore of late. Damian and family visited the other day. They brought a trophy (the Maisie trophy) which would be the prize for doubles matches between Lismore Roffs and Armidale Roffs. You must be pretty confident to bring a trophy to a tennis match - Their confidence was rewarded with a 6-0 win, No-one told us that 11 year olds were allowed to hit that hard! (Admittedly, I was playing with a grandfather!)

The legend of the lucky scarf!

Yes, the lucky scarf* has come through again, assuring victory for the Wallabies in last week's game against the All-Blacks in Melbourne. Here it is being modelled by my paduan, Darth Maul. The proud record of the lucky scarf: it has never seen the Wallabies lose a live match!!!

* For those who came in late: the lucky scarf was forged form in the deep caverns of a novocastrian helmhome known to the local orcs as "cathie'smum'splaceinparkwayavenue". The scarf was delivered in secret to me in Adelaide as the weapon for an Australian win in the 1993 World Cup Rugby. These were dark times as noble knights such as Sir Joe Roff were displaced from the crusade by weasils and drug addicts but the lucky scarf remained a beacon for the Wallabies until the final hours before the coup-de-grace from Sir Jonathon Wilkinson of England.

The lucky scarf was first unfurled in the Australia -v- Numibia world cup game in 1993. The Wallabies won by more than 100 points and the lion tamers of the veld were tamed by a mysterious force that night in Adelaide.

Then on to Australia-v- Ireland in Melbourne. Australia led by one point with ten minutes to go. Ireland threw the might of the green army against the Wallaby line and many Australian players stood tall to the task, including Sir Joe Roff who refused, alone, to yield at the last line of defence to the bald giant Sir Keith Wood, barely 5 metres from the Wallaby line. There was a strange force that protected the Wallaby line that rainy night in sodden Melbourne town!

But the storm clouds of a black fate for the Wallabies were gathering in olde Sydney town for a showdown with the all-conquering head-hunters from New Zealand. Weakened in their ranks by the undermining politics of a group known as "leaguies" the Wallabies were facing their sternest test and an unlikely victory until the lucky scarf intervened at Telstra Stadium. Against all odds the Wallabies triumphed.

Only the will of St George stood between the Wallabies and ultimate victory. Unfortunately, by a series of ill-adventures (see Episode #531) the lucky scarf was not delivered to the final contest and, sadly, the Wallabies lost by 3 points, riddled by corruption and indecision.

In an effort to re-build the Wallaby pride, a contest with the cannibal tribes of the Pacific Island nations was organised in Adelaide the next year. Many brave Wallabies such as young Clive Rathbone lost their heads in a fearsome battle. While the lucky scarf was able to ensure victory for the Wallabies, tragedy struck the greatest of their ranks, Sir Joe. Falling to a a trap laid by the evil Fijian groundsman Les ("Tui 'Fa 'Fa") Burdett, Joe was carried from the ground swearing loudly that he would become a better family man.

In its latest outing, the lucky scarf endured scorn and pity in Melbourne last week by the Maori cannibals in the pre-game rituals, only to later bless another miraculous win by the the Wallabies. After the contest many Maories came to understand the source of their torment (perhaps by the loose-lipped ravings of the scarf-bearer who was weighed down with the responsibilty of such a treasure) and they sought to steal the lucky scarf back to the land of the long white cloud. Fortunately it was held safe, possibly Australia's most important and valuable asset in the quest for world domination.

Frodo Baggins

Our Spanish Correspondent

hello dear family, sorry about the lack of contact, too busy getting lost trying to find and internet caf that

a) works
b) is relatively free of local morrocan gangsters
c) does not smell really bad.

I am now in veher de la frontera, its my birthday today and i couldnt hope for a better one. The house is amazing, everyone is super relaxed and having a ball. we eat feasts on our roof top every night, all enjoying shopping in the markets and cooking for 12 in the huge kitchen. the local produce is very high qual, and very cheap, as is the booze.

our jacuzi has a brilliant view, we have a giant lounge with audio visual set up, 10 min drive to the beach through fields of donkeys and sunflower plantations. We have been hanging out with a french muso friend who has booked me and may and dan luscombe a gig at a bar tonight called the priests bar. we have been drinking there exclusively coz they play bob dylan and lou reed, and they love us! as do all the restaurants we eat at. well i think they love us, they usually give us a complimentary round of the local home made sherry and the kitchen mamma always comes out and waves us goodbye, maybe they are just grateful to see us go.I am planning to write a more comprehensive updat for the roff report asap.

Amanda

Vietnam in pictures

That's enough blog space about babies - more important things are going on in other parts of the world! Here's a few of the thousand digi-pics we've taken in our quest to leave no tourist cliche untouched in our conquest of Asia...
Teaching mountain kids the "finger trick". They love it...

We had our own H'mong ethnic minority guide for our trecks near the Chinese border: her name was "Dom" which was easy to remember. Short, isn't she?

Jules on the balcony of our hotel in the mountains. China is over the other side of that mountain range.

As I said, no cliche left alone in our quest.

Floating markets in the Mekong Delta area. We bought, and ate, half a ton of exotic oriental fruit.

I wanted to be the snake handler but Dom insisted! Later this day he disgraced Australia by going down 12-5 in a table-top soccor match against a Dane. He managed a one-all draw against Vietnam, though. We're having a terrific time and will be heading for the coast the day after tomorrow for a few days in the surf.

Introducing Maisie Anne Roff

After years of Lachlan Osborne hogging Blogg time, we thought it prudent to allow Xavier sufficient time before introducing Maisie to everyone.So far she is doing all the right things, and is getting cuter each day. Kelly and I lived such unfulfilling lives before we had children. I only hope my cousins have an ounce of our happiness one day.
Further Maisie Anne photo's to come. Love Jake, Kel and Lachlan.