This is the blog of a Norwegian (Marianne, aka 'M') who moved to Australia in 2007 to be with Roger (aka R) and feels lucky to have escaped a comparatively communistic country with ridiculous weather!

 I have previously written about how R and I have been trying to catproof the garden. That worked well for a while, for all the cats except Julie, and after a while Odo figured out how to get out as well. We then changed the catproofing to a different type, which worked well for all of them, except Julie and Odo (again).

Odo could be let out in the garden under supervision, but Julie was too quick to jump the fence, so we kind of resigned to the fact that Julie can't be kept in.

But then we had a visit from the council and then our neighbour came over and told us that Julie had been coming into her garden and killing/injuring some of her guinea pigs, so after that Julie was kept inside. We tried to make some improvements to the catproofing and then let Julie out to test it, and every time she would get out, which meant we had to continue to keep her inside.

There was no way Julie could be an inside cat for the rest of her life, she wouldn't be happy and I can't stand to see her not happy. So it was eventually and reluctantly decided that we would get catnetting professionally installed.

It was installed last week, it cost a ridiculous amount of money and took a little over a day to put up (mostly because the guy putting it up was middle aged and stopped every 30 minutes for a coffee break) and it's working perfectly so far. What's also good about it is that we can now put whatever we want in the garden, and can have trees. With the DIY catproofing we had to watch where we put everything in case one of the cats jumped up on it and then got over the fence.

Netting being put up:

The finished netting, as you can see not very noticable.

And because the garden is now fully enclosed, we could put the shade cloth back up, which the cats love to sit on.

Roger put up some shelves for the cats to sleep on, sit on and look over the fence

Thomas

Since mum arrived I have been reminded of a difference between Norway and Australia. (I usually don't notice the differences anymore because I have gotten so used to everything Australian.)

Australia and Norway have the same alcohol limit when driving a car, 0.05%. But, in Norway the general population have the attitude that if you have a glass of wine or anything to drink at all, you can't drive a car. I experienced this a few times when I asked my dad for a ride and he would tell me he had had a glass of wine in the last hour or two, so he couldn't drive. I always accepted that, because that's just the way it was.

I then moved to Australia, where R informed me that here there is a general rule that says you are allowed 2 standard drinks in the first hour and then 1 drink per hour after that, and you will stay under the legal limit. One standard drink is about a glass of wine.

I accepted that, and have occasionally driven after having a glass or two, and so has R, and I have never had a problem with that.

Then mum came over, and we had dinner and a couple of glasses of wine, and then decided to go out somewhere. I thought nothing of it, but then mum said that we couldn't because we had been drinking.

I then explained to her that here there are different guidelines, and that having a glass or two before driving is fine.

R then made a good point when he said that the limit isn't zero, so why can you not drink at all before driving in Norway? There is no point in having a limit if you never drink before driving, it might as well be 0. 

Edit: Turns out the alcohol limit in Norway is actually 0.02%, after it was changed a couple of years ago, but that still doesn't mean you can't drink anything at all.

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 Mum left Saturday afternoon, after staying with us for nearly 3 weeks. She arrived safely in Ålesund Sunday evening, local time.

It was fun having her here, we went to beaches up the coast and down the coast and into Brisbane and to various shopping centres.

This was taken in Brisbane:

I will prolly post some more of her photos on my photo album site, I just have to get around to resizing them first...

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