I have been away, and now I find NOTHING in the chat since the 4th February.

Faz, are you ok? Where is everybody?

THE FIRES:
OVER HERE WE ARE ALL WATCHING THE NEWS ABOUT YOUR WILDFIRES WITH HORROR. We don't get this sort of natural disaster;
maybe the worst is floods, with a (very) few casualties. I extend my sympathy to all who have lost family or friends, and to all who
have lost homes and possessions in this holocaust. May it all be ended soon.

Yeh jonny we're all ok here. Just been real busy with fleshlight orders and kitchens. I have been checking daily though.

Glad to hear kitchens are busy; ANYthing to do with construction here is in a poor way - layoffs etc. Here in Colchester, the building of new houses and apartments on the old garrison site has been left with many uncompleted.

The Army has moved from near the town centre, to a mile or so further out, replacing the old Victorian era barracks with proper modern facilities for the troops of the Air Assault Brigade, about 5,000 men; one battallion having just returned from Afghanistan(for the third time).

It's quite a thought: there was a garrison here in 65 A.D., maybe a gap from about 400A.D. until 1600, and the army has been here ever since!

I wonder if you will escape the worst of the recession. Perhaps your banks stuck to banking - ours have just turned into gamblers, and not very successful ones at that...

lol dunno if its going to miss the recession or not. they are trying alot to avoid it, but there has already been massive job layoffs country wide.

Mmm, pretty crazy down here. I could see the smoke in the sky on the weekend.

I can imagine Lordoth. I remember driving to sydney in 92 or 93 when all that was burning too and thinking man how smokey and red is the sky. That was around the same time that the back packer murders was happening.

And then Having to go from Melbourne to canberra in 02 or 03 when all the west side of canberra was burning. Ive been driving along the coastal highway thru the newcastle stretch and the sides of the highway were on fire.

Its amazing how often we get fires here in aus

I love it when you talk about this stuff. So much history over there. I really need to come to the UK one time just to see some of the places taught in history

you should faz. that was one thing i really couldnt get over when i went to the UK.
the history and how old some of the buildings are.
i mean the oldest thing with have is is no more than 220 odd years.
some of the stuff over there is 500 years old.

the fires certainly have been bad. we had smoke in the sky on wed and it came over the news for everyone to stop panicking it was just blowing in from the south and just to give you an idea im 1450km from melbourne.

Yea, geez. That's a fair distance for it to travel. I'm a bit closer myself. From the worst fires I'd say I'm about 50km away or thereabouts and some are much closer but not as wild as the one's on the weekend. During the hot weeks recently we have many small spot fires around suburban Melbourne and there was was one which was 15min from my house was only 2km wide in local park area. I am right next to the beach so we wouldn't never really be in danger unless the winds were at godly speeds. But looking today Melbourne was in an orange smoke haze and now we can smell it. C'mon Faz. Let us have some of that Qld rain ay! If only..

lol yeh weve been getting a fair bit lately. But then tis the wet season for us. Im waiting to see whether it floods here again or not. Up north has been. I was hoping it wouldnt rain today as I need to mow the lawns this weekend If I dont do it every two weeks now it gets out of hand

Well, they are at it again. I can see the thick smoke from my window at work. It's not that far but thankfully not as powerful as the fires on Black Saturday. Hopefully it's all contained before the 38*C day on Friday, and there are no more fatalities. :/

I saw on the news that more started close to Melbourne again. Wont be much left to burn down there at this rate.