Tokyo

Tokyo
27 - 31 January 2007

Drum roll please ... Ladies & Gentlemen ... this is me having a poo ... on Tokyo train! Moshi Moshi

What a culture shock. That's right - 20 million people - I'm the only person with blond hair. I think that's why they were smiling at me. This one time, there was a big crowd and I wandered to the front and this guy, Mr Dai, tried to steal my hair with a balloon! It was ridiculous. I did come up with a cunning plan to hide my head though





























I found a way to shut Daddy up. I found a way to shut Daddy up. I found a way to shut Daddy up !!!




















This is Luna. She is my French Japanese friend (don't ask). She kept calling Daddy 'Grandma'. She looked after me and made sure I was wearing proper clobber

This is Robin. He is one of the nicest French people Daddy has ever met. He and Daddy bicker all the time, which amuses Mama. He is French and does Daddy's website. Him and Daddy went on a cool baseball pitching machine and played football together, which was Daddy's first time for ages and Robin's first since having a 7cm 'thing' removed from his body. He survived that AND the foot, which is a shame because he is French

During the day, Tokyo is one big grey lump of a city. Here we are looking out of a window of a government building. You can see people looking out of another building, they spotted my hair. We are looking at one of the parks. It is grey. At night, Tokyo is not grey. Its like Las Vegas during a power surge

I wrote a poem in Japanese. Translation below















Drink, Plane, Tree and Poo-poo
These are the words I can do

Dorothy, Thomas, Pooh and Baa-baa
These are my friends. Aah

Daddy, Mama and their friends I meet
These are my servants, they tickle my feet

If I want them to
Arigato
Barney Bo Allaway, aged 1.5 years




















This looked Japanese, so Daddy took a picture

So, as you know, my Daddy is also Ikun, an anime character and mascot for The Tokyo Anime Centre. Daddy (Ikun) was on this big screen, which was a bit weird being in this foreign land, hearing him on TV, but then technology here is amazing. They have sat nav with really cool 3D like you're driving thru the city, every car has a reversing camera (so Mama can watch herself crash) and heated toilet seats, although Daddy said we had those at home 15 years ago when he used to go to the toilet on a building site just after an Irish groundworker















We went to park. Moshi Moshi

And then ... alas ... the trip was almost over. Daddy's hair has reached catastrophic proportions. So he covered it up where possible ... could it survive the trip home?

Goodbye Shinjuku, Hibya Park, Ginzu, Akihabara, Ruri and Luna and hello normal words ... the adventure is over, until the next one. Thanks for reading my blog

Perth

Perth & Margaret River
18 - 26 January 2007

Just before we get started. I LOVE STANDING ON MY HEAD















Had I fallen over, I would have blamed Daddy (like I did in the Canberra video 'Daddy did it'). Only today I blamed him for the poo in my nappy and an explosion on the tele. I'm so funny. During the trip, loads of people just asked to have a picture taken with me. I am a supermodel. A very short one. Cool huh! These girls in Fremantle were really fit in the flesh - can't understand whats happened to the one on the right, she suddenly looks really old and her forehead has risen, like Bobby Charlton after an exotic holiday





























We can't actually remember where this is. Looks nice though. It may have been on an island or on the coast North of Perth or on route to Margaret River, renound wine area. 'Wine' is a favourite word of mine, although Mama looks embarassed every time I say it. At our favourite B&B (Tasty Olive in Treeton), Rosie the dog took us for a walk through the bush, then scared off this HUGE roo





























Daddy got up very early one morning to catch breakfast. Daddy says that although his is quite small - it was very strong. This was another great B&B (Golfers Retreat in Secret Harbour), they even laid on some chicks for me. Just as the picture was taken, I said "Who's Your Daddy?" Mine is Daddy





























Next up is a very embarassing wardrobe incident. We all wore our army surplus shorts. We matched. Surely I can sue my parents. Upon realising the mistake, Mama went to get changed but Daddy was like, 'No Way', he was very excited by the prospect of people noticing the weird matching family. He now wants us all to get perms, tank tops and Prince Alberts















Mama wanted to goto Penguin Island. Daddy hates penguins and hatched a cunning plan to escape. Alas and despite our camouflage, she caught us. This was also where I messed up a game of 'boo' with Daddy











































Still feeling a bit guilty about quitting a perfectly good job just to hang out with me, Daddy made himself visit another radio station, mainly to steal ideas. Every single person he met at 92.9 apologised for the mess (they are moving to new studios in a few months), they should see my bedroom. Oh. I don't have one. Ho-hum; one day maybe. They were only allowed to transfer one box of stuff each - sadly quite a few toys will probably perish





























New 92.9, just been threw car wash















Daddy did some more 'stand-up'. This was Anthony doing his 20th gig. He thought that tonight was the first time he was going to be heckled (crowds are obviously a lot nicer in Western Australia) and he was excited about a brilliant retort he had ready. He was heckled (as they all were by the same drunk woman) and it was the worst heckle put down in the entire world. Roughly it went like this: Drunk heckler 'blah blah blah' Anthony 'Right erm. Oh you just heckled me' Drunk heckler 'blah blah blah' Anthony 'Right OK then. Well. You're in trouble now. You are Louise' Drunk heckler 'blah' Anthony 'and I'm Thelma and I'm going to drive you off a cliff'. You didn't have to be there. Daddy researched his routine - checking out plenty of Muffintops*

Its not often on the trip that we did a packaged tour, because when you do they pick you up well early. Here I am swan climbing to use up the time between pick up (7.40am) and ferry departure (8.40am). But we were going to cycle around Rottnest Island. I was very excited


































I look stupid. No wonder I didn't pull

Australia Day. Did you know that Australian drunk women are twice as hard to deal with than Australian drunk men - now you know the real reason Shane Warne retired. What a great craic it would be to beat The Aussies in the one dayer on Australia Day. We didn't, so instead we relied on a huge storm to dampen their spirits. We were watching from the airport (its all in the planning) and the storm got nearer and nearer as 9pm approached. But the firworks went off as planned - I pointed and said 'bang' to each one





























Sorry about another arty farty pic - Daddy gets that from his mate Harry





















*Muffintop is the flab that sticks out over a tight pair of jeans. It is also Australian word of the year. Humility wasn't even in the top 3,000,000. Our Australian adventure is over, just Japan to go ... and my funniest video to date!

Sunshine Coast

Millmerran (due West of Brisbane) & Sunshine Coast
13 - 18 January 2007

Time to check out the relics. I mean relies. As in long lost relatives that I'll only remember as a box on a family tree. 'Go West' the sat nav said (Daddy splashed out on a proper car) and we passed thru Towoomba on the way to farming country and a little place called Millmerran. These guys stayed in Fleet one night last year and it was our turn to free load off them





























Farming is suffering, like it is in the rest of the world. The only way for them to survive is get bigger. Some we saw were HUGE. So many thanks to Ken & Brenda for taking us in. Daughter Linda drove up from The Gold Coast to tell us about her visit to the UK when Daddy was 16. Apparently he went mad saying 'Mum - she sounds like she's on Neighbours'. We also met Dave & Pearl (Dave is Brenda's brother and Pearl is Ken's sister) and their son who 2 days ago had chopped his own knees with a chainsaw. Cool

We saw the most incredible storm. Huge lightning strikes so far away but lighting up the night cloudy sky. It was lighting lightning. Unfortunately the photos of it are cra*p so here's what the sky was like a few hours before





























So we left 'The Outback' as Daddy calls (in reality, the real OB was a further 500km West) and drove to Coloundra. These are our hosts. Sue & David. There aren't many photos of them, because they are ugly. No; hang on, it's because the camera broke. "OH NO WHAT ABOUT THE BLOG?" I hear you say? Well here's a crazy thing, Daddy's zoom was stuck and he typed the problem into google. It brought up a forum where at least 20 people said 'bang it. hard'. So he did. And it worked. Too late to take piccies of Australia Zoo though. That's actually a good thing because the guy at the croc show wearing a huge fake Steve Irwin head was scary!





























Currimundi beach. We were lucky to get there, because you never knew where Sue's magical mystery tour would end up! Talking of tour's ending up - just Perth and Tokyo to go. Still time to get in a quick swim and to throw David shoe's into the pool ...

Sydney

Sydney
1 January 2007 - 13 January 2007

This is getting ridiculous. What have Lou, Sian, Ant, T'Mark & Mogli all got in common? They all did Quantity Surveying with Daddy at Uni in Nottingham and now live in Oz. Great to see them all, only one of them unable to cut it at the QS helm - Daddy! Talk about a wise investment in a 4 year degree! Mogli (on the left) is now married to Lisa, and she told a lovely story about Ant (our previous host in Canberra) - apparently Daddy used to eat curry from his head after he'd fallen asleep















And yes, Daddy did get to stroke Mogli's beard. And I played football with him. OK, time for obligatory Sydney Opera House shot and impression





























Daddy hates beaches, something to do with the amount of sand that gets stuck in his body hair. What a woos - try getting it stuck in your nappy, combining it with poo to make a pretty good abrasive force - and I still LOVE them. Here's a shot of me on Manly Beach, which we almost missed. Daddy and Mama stayed at Manly Cove for about an hour (and were about to go home) when they realised the beach was a 5 minute walk away. Lucky they walked past a map. Durgh!





























Daddy has now been to the biggest radio stations in the UK (Radio 2), US (z100 New York), Canada (Chum FM Toronto) and Australia (2day FM / Triple M; mmm hydraulic desks - suits the 'shorter' style presenter) plus some decent ones including Alice 97.3 in San Francisco and More 99.2 in Queenstown. And what has he learnt? Nothing, commercial radio is pretty similiar everywhere. Back to sight-seeing ...

We took a tour up The Blue Mountains. Australia has in incredible amount of wildlife that I've never seen before. But then so has England (I was one when I left)











































Mama was the first person to throw a boomerang DEAD straight twice in a row. Also we rode the worlds steepest railway and we saw these three sisters and this athlete at The Olympic Village





























Continuing with his new found love of mountain biking, Daddy rode to meet us at Bondi Beach, which from North Sydney took him 1.5 hours. That was nothing, me & Mama had walked there from Coogee which involved a lot of carrying me & the stroller up steps. It took 2 hours. Another day we went to Balmoral Beach, where Daddy and T'Mark rode to meet us, taking the long route round all the bays. The government is buying up property trying to make a cycle path round the harbour, we'll go back when its done!















Daddy did his 5th stand-up gig in a place called Sandringham Hotel in Newtown, Sydney. 4 comics cancelled just before the show and Daddy had to do 15 minutes instead of 5. So he talked about cricket, knowing that the Aussies would love it, them being even worse bad winners than they are bad losers and all. He was happy but then couldn't sleep for a few days like he never can after a gig. Or a compliment.