The JaYmes Escape

It’s hard to believe that it was a year ago today that all this started when I boarded that plane to Riga. The grey of London and the cold of Northern Europe seem so far away now. I can’t imagine going out in anything more than a t-shirt. Christmas in summer is going to be wierd; in fact the whole season reversal thing is much wierder than I expected it to be.

Anyway, I thought I’d celebrate the passing of the year by linking back to some of my favourite posts:-

• 10th Dec Vilnius (my secret plot to pipe illicit booze from Belarus)
• 14th Dec Gdansk (a history lesson)
• 15th Jan The Big Blue Sea (’Stupid Strauss’)
• 4th Feb New Zealand (Teaching Kiwi rugby players how to drink Vodka)
• 3rd April Respect to the Hat
• 5th May Capsicums and Other Nonsense (Sideways dig at antipodean language mutations)
• 29th June So now I’m in Sydney (links to best NZ photos)
• 16th August Sydney Works

If you feel like saying ‘happy anniversary’ then stick a comment on this post or drop me an email. It’d be good to hear from you.

Anyone browsing through some of the latest photo albums might be asking themselves what ‘goon’ is. Goon is a slang term for very cheap wine that comes in boxes (or as they’re rather pretensiously called, casks). A typical 4 litre box of goon costs about AU$10-12, which equates to about £5. The most ubiquitous brand seems to be Stanley, which is why one might dress up as a box of it for a halloween party, drink some particularly lethal punch made from it, and then proceed to destroy said costume with one’s own vomit. Not that I’d ever do anything like that of course.

Those of you who’ve been earnestly waiting for pictures of Koalas, Kangaroos, Wallabies and Venomous snakes need wait no longer. My new Australian Creatures photo album has plenty of photos of all of these and more. Plenty of updates to other Sydney albums too.