Walkies!

Every year the RSPCA a holds a sponsored walk, dogs included of course, to raise money for their organisation. This year, more than most years, they really needed the money. One of their Brisbane locations was completely devastated by the floods and the money was desperately needed to get it back up and running again.

They did okay; I was told the Brisbane event raised $110,000 on its own, with similar events taking place in 59 other locations Australia wide. You could choose to walk 1 1/2 km or 3 km, depending on the size of your dog.

So who went?

Well, Baggy, our dog, didn’t go. He’s 13 & a 1/2 now, that’s apparently 94 in human years. Walking long distances isn’t much fun for him these days. But my wife and daughter went along with our friends Lisa and Stacey with their children and around 2000 other people. And lots of dogs……

So, why didn’t I go?

I went up to the city on Saturday evening to watch the FA Cup final in the Pig ‘n’ Whistle. Not just the cup final either, this year there were other games taking place with Manchester United securing the Premiership and other teams battling it out to avoid relegation.

There were TVs everywhere, these are just some of them…..

West Brom v Everton

Sunderland v Wolves

FA Cup Final

Make a mental note of the position of that canvas umbrella; I’ll be coming back to that in a minute.

For those of you who like to know the price of a pint in a proper pub, rather than some fancy pants West End venue, my round came to $58 for 7 pints, and I mean real pints. Four Guinness, two Carlsberg and I had a pint of Little Creatures Pale Ale.

Now I reckon those kinds of beers would properly cost you three pound a pint back in England, so £21 versus $58. At the current exchange rate of $1.53 to the pound, that would make Australian beers about 80% more expensive than those in the UK. That’s a huge difference!

On the other hand, the Australian beers cost 1.76 hard yakka’s, and the UK beers cost 1.39. So there is no doubt that beers in Australia are more expensive, but using the yakka they are only 26% more expensive. That makes it a little more palatable, but not much.

And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you need to read my post called Hard Yakka.

Anyway, I got home at four in the morning so I didn’t really fancy getting up at 7:30 AM to go walking dogs. I actually got up much, much later than that and I still had a bad head day.

And the cup final?

I was more fascinated by this tree that was growing right there in the middle of the pub. Just behind that umbrella…

The trees base

Tree branches

Tree leaves

Anyway, who won the cup? Anyone know?