Grinding Again

Work has resumed for 2025, so I am back at the grindstone.

I love my company immensely, and my aim this year is to be a great co-worker in a team that contributes to fantastic results for our employer.

My teammates are enormous in drawing out every skerrick of talent I may possess, and I hope to be able to do the same for the people I get to work with.

And while I’m doing that, I want to enjoy every moment I get to spend on a bike, even if it is as dark and bloody freezing as it is around this time of year.

Cop A Gander At These Rippers Too...

  • Fit As A Mallee Bull: Tough Types For Torrid Topography

    There are plenty of ways to say someone is in good nick, but Strine has never been particularly interested in leaving a perfectly good bull out of the conversation. Tell someone they’re as “fit as a mallee bull” and you are saying they are in extremely good shap, strong and healthy. The image comes from the Mallee, the dry inland country where mallee eucalypts grow. A bull tough enough to survive out there was imagined as a pretty robust bit of cattle. The expression has been part of Aussie English for decades. Early evidence includes the form “strong as a mallee bull” from the late 19th century, while “fit as…

  • Be Careful What You Wish For…

    One of the highlights of Kangaeroo Corner is the Fountain of Strewth, which I placed with the hope of attracting birds to the garden, but the role has been served so well, I’m now drawn to the idiom used in the headline (which stems from a passage of Aesop’s fables that says “We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified,” according to Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations Sixteenth Edition and as I learned today). Sweltering heat and fierce sunshine has made the Fountain of Strewth a popular part of the neighborhood’s avian residents. And I’ve been delighted by this, sitting in the living room and watching as the birds have enjoyed…

  • Got Rich On The Sheep’s Back

    Australia is said to have gotten rich on the sheep’s back. オーストラリアは「羊の背中に乗って」豊かになったと言われている。 Australia is a wealthy country and has been for most of the time since colonization, mainly because it has bountiful mineral resources. オーストラリアは植民地化以降ほとんどの時期で裕福な国でしたが、その主な理由は豊富な鉱物資源にある。 But before things like gold, iron ore, diamonds, uranium, lithium and the like starting bringing in the bikkies for Australia, the squattocracy raised merino sheep that fuelled the then thriving textile mills of northern England that were making Britain an industrial superpower in the 19th century. しかし、金、鉄鉱石、ダイヤモンド、ウラン、リチウムなどがオーストラリアにもたらす莫大な収入よりも前、19世紀のイギリスを産業大国へと押し上げていた北イングランドの繊維工場を支えていたのは、squattocracyが飼育していたメリノ羊だった。 The squattocracy were wealthy farmers who stole the land they used to get rich and then used their financial clout to wield political influence. スクワットクラシーとは、土地を奪って富を築き、その財力を使って政治的影響力を振るった裕福な農場主階級のこと。 Example Australia reckoned…