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Sweat-stained boots and cheap whisky

2 Nov

I apologize to those of you who have some interest in my life and are trying to keep track of it. There is yet another twist in the tale, so you will all have to reset your Dave radar once again to show the little green blip in the fair town of Canberra, with any luck attending a tertiary institution.

In order to make my time in the UK feel less like a cunning plan to avoid winter I decided to throw in my temporary catering job and take advantage of my remaining few weeks in the northern hemisphere by seeing some of those things that I meant to see in my previous three year stint. For some reason the Scottish highlands have always pulled on my heartstrings. I don’t know whether this is because my heritage lies there if you travel back far enough, or simply because it is the home of whisky, but I’ve always wanted to go and now seemed like the perfect opportunity.

So this is why I find myself sitting on a park bench in Kelvingrove, Glasgow, under grey, spitting skies. Glasgow is the stopping off point for Fort William and Ben Nevis. I could have gone to Edinburgh again, the two cities are not very far apart, but my natural curiosity rose to the surface and I had an urge to add to my slim file of knowledge on the Glasgow. I know that they used to build a lot of ships here, it’s a predominantly working class town, it gave rise to Billy Connoly and that Glasgow used to have a huge heroin consumption. I now know that I understand German more clearly than the Glaswegian accent, it doesn’t rain here all the time, and that on a Friday and Saturday night the city centre is dominated by 15-year olds wearing slipknot shirts.

It would be easy to paint a grim picture of Glasgow. On Sunday morning I was walking along the banks of the Clyde and came upon a group of tramps that had formed a lounge room of discarded armchairs under a bridge. One of them was holding his own form of communion by shooting up next to the main road, only a stones throw from the local church. There’s no doubt that this city has seen some hard times, but the locals meet it with a resilient humour that tries to laugh in the face of adversity.

The city doesn’t compare well with Edinburgh in the natural beauty stakes. It is an industrial place, but there are parts of it where you can escape the city and disappear into another world. The river Kelvin winds up through the suburbs, and following it takes you on a walk that captures the essence of nature within a city, much like Central park in New York. Of course, I’m not claiming that Glasgow is the New York of the north, but it’s refreshing to be able to walk through a city while being totally enclosed within the confines of a wooded valley and with a stream burbling along next to you. When I climbed out I found myself in the Botanical Gardens with just the faint hum of traffic in the background. Admittedly, they are the worst Botanical Gardens that I have ever seen, with a smashed glass-house slowly being overrun with ivy, but it was good while it lasted.

Fort William is a town groaning under the weight of the tourism industry. Every second house seems to have been converted into a B&B or hostel, and the high street is littered with shops selling Scottish trinkets that only Americans would be stupid enough to buy. It’s easy to see why Fort William warrants all this accommodation. It leaves behind the sprawling southern Scottish cities and seems to embrace the towering mountains that surround it. It’s the largest town in the highlands and, located halfway up the west-coast, it lies in the shadows of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the UK.

It is an amazing feeling to hoist your pack on your back and start walking, soon to find yourself alone but for the company of the streams and hills. The stroll on my first day took me underneath Ben Nevis and along the Nevis river. I squelched along the riverbank enjoying myself thoroughly, even when I almost lost my boot in deceptive mud a few times. While the abundance of water did make for soggy progress it brings the countryside to life with countless little trickles happily letting gravity do the work. After struggling along next to the river for a while I decided to head uphill. I followed a waterfall upstream and sat next to it on the brow of a hill, enjoying the warm sunshine and letting the scenery work it’s magic.

As enjoyable as that day was, it was just the prelude to the main event. The climb up the godfather and mother of all British mountains, Ben Nevis. In my usual manner I made very little preparation for this walk, but learning from my earlier mountain hiking experiences I decided that taking some water and a change of shirt would be a good idea. This proved to be a fortuitous decision as within minutes of setting off up the path I was drenched in sweat. I put this down to a combination of the facts that I was walking directly into the rising sun and have a general lack of fitness.

The Scottish highlands are a rocky part of the planet, so it was no surprise that the path was like walking on a dry creek bed, or that sometimes it actually became a creek. It’s a spectacular path that winds its way past a loch and a waterfall before starting a long and twisting journey to the top. It’s the kind of mountain where the top appears to be close but keeps shifting further up. As soon as you get to a point that you thought might be the top you can see the mountain stretching onwards a bit further. My decision to reread ‘The Lord of the Rings’ was proving a good one, because as long as I ignored all the German tourists I could imagine myself as Frodo on his tortuous journey and stride forward with righteousness on my side.

It sounds funny to say, but I found the top of Ben Nevis to be a slight anticlimax. I don’t think the view from the top is that much better than the view you get on the way. Also, after three hours of struggling up loose rocks you start to yearn for a change, which makes the fact that the top of the mountain is a flat football pitch sized area covered in loose rocks slightly disappointing. But you forget all that once you plonk your weary ass down and take in the view, which stretches away into mountains on all sides, with the odd loch glinting in the sunlight. It was a perfect day with the odd cloud rolling over the top just to remind you how high up it was.

The next day I felt like I had just climbed the highest mountain in Britain. I hobbled down stairs of the hostel, my boots stained with the white salt of evaporated sweat, my movement impeded by blisters, and my calves feeling like they were made of a new type of wood that is capable of feeling pain. Not one to be seen lying idle when I could be toughening my feet up, I took an aimless wander, the sort that I specialize in and that quite often lead me somewhere interesting. It wasn’t looking promising as I attempted to reach the other side of the u-shaped lock that Fort William is situated on in order to look at some uninspiring houses. My every turn was being met by the sort of housing that give beautiful landscapes a bad name. I found myself walking along a path that went past the railway yard, a deserted oval, and an electrical sub-station. By this stage most normal people would start listening to their aching feet and go home, but my perseverance was rewarded when I stumbled across a castle.

Australia is not blessed with a large amount of old buildings, which has probably increased my reverence for them. I find it staggering that a 15th century castle can be surrounded by the most ordinary, boring places imaginable and only be marked by a sign 100 metres from it’s entrance. Admittedly, it’s not a very big castle or in good condition, but it goes to show how lightly history is taken in this part of the world. If we had a castle in Canberra it would be sign-posted from 100km away.

I whiled away a pleasant hour sitting in a crumbling tower, which in better days was the king’s chamber, by reading my book and taking the odd warming sip of incredibly cheap whisky. It was the kind of whisky that needed to be sipped carefully as with overindulgence you ran the risk of waking up in the morning to find your head neatly split in two and your brain writing around in agony on the pillow.

My next move was to head to a place called Mallaig, which is where the Inner Hebrides begins. The night before I left the hostel I experienced my number one hostel hate in a disturbingly aggressive form. I refer, of course, to snoring, a sound which has the ability to drive me to murderous thoughts. This particular night I was stuck in a dorm room with not one, but two snorers. One of them had a whistling undertone and the other sounding like a pig that had been shot in the throat. I’m planning to start an association that will seek out and brand snorers, thus herding them all together into the same sleeping quarters. I think this is the only way that I will avoid committing a pillow-related homicide at some point in the future. Even so, I am considering getting some earplugs and ramming them up the nose of the next person I hear snoring.

The train journey from Fort William to Mallaig is reputed to be one of the most spectacular in the UK, and my journey had the added poignancy of being driven by a bug old steam engine, the last running of it for the summer. It certainly adds to the fun of a train journey to have those chugging sounds coming from up ahead, and to watch hordes of trainspotters train their expensive cameras towards you. The scenery is magnificent, with majestic mountains dropping away into deep lochs. It is the only place that I have been in the UK that feels like wilderness, not just countryside. There are”t any little farms dotted about, just mountains, water and sky.

Apparently the small fishing town of Mallaig only took off in 1901 when the railway arrived. I can only imagine how small it was before then as it barely rates a mention now. There is a smell of smoked fish hanging heavy in the air but the town is dwarfed by the surrounding terrain. A vast mountain range that ends abruptly where the sea begins. There is no gentle introduction to one another, they just collide. It is the most rugged coastline that I have ever seen.

This natural beauty is enhanced by the sky, which alternated between thunderous clouds and clear blue sky in the blink of an eye. Occasionally the clouds break and the sun will shine like a spotlight on one particular mountain. ‘Do you see the ligh’?” I cocooned myself in a hotel room with a westerly view and watched the clouds roll by. Presently it looked bright enough to go for a walk, but no sooner had the thought entered my mind than rain started hammering into the window, making me feel glad to be inside. When I did get out the Small Islands poked out of the sea like mountains that had accidentally wandered off. All the sky was dark with the exception of the horizon behind the islands, which glowed with an eerily bright light.

That night in the hotel room, just as I was just drifting off to sleep, I heard a strange sound. It was as if someone was moving in the bath or scraping a chair across a wooden floor. With sudden dread I realized that I could hear snoring, presumably coming from the room above. It appeared that there was no escape.

The next morning I brushed weariness aside and caught the ferry to the Isle of Skye. I stood on deck as the cold wind slapped my face and made my eyes water. Being in the middle of the Sound of Sleet, the name of the passage of water separating the Isle of Skye from the mainland, gives you a better view of the surrounding mountains, but there are no words to do them justice. It is an amazing part of the world. I did”t have long to spend on the island, and did”t explore enough of it to do it justice, but i”s a good excuse to come back to this part of the world someday.

Dave out.

An Anderson Fairytale

27 Oct

The second part of my two-leg short term holiday replacement for Egypt took place in two different countries over six days and despite the sound, it was more rejuvenating than I was expecting. I really hadn’t planned this getaway, more jumped on the tail of someone else’s. My housemate and good friend, Adam, who will be familiar to some of you from such tales as ‘The Move From Hell’, ‘The First Time I Took Ecstasy’ and ‘The Most Tired I Have Been On Christmas Day, Ever’ had planned to visit his brother, Jon, in Germany.

I think Adam’s idea of a perfect holiday is smoking some nice skunk, getting the munchies, eating, resting and repeating twice before taking some magic mushrooms and visiting a brothel. Not surprisingly Amsterdam is very close to his idea of heaven. Adam is a professional musician of the brass variety and would not look out of place in a rugby scrum. His brother Jon looks nothing like him. He’s much taller and thinner and as such they make a strange combination but you couldn’t find a stronger bond between siblings. The fact that they love each other is obvious. They are always there for each other and have seen each other through hard times with the promise of better ahead. Jon studied astrophysics and was working near Frankfurt for the European Space Agency but sounded like he needed a break. In the past year he had studied frantically to try and pass his degree, which once finished smoothly transformed into a summer job in London which swiftly transferred to a full-time job in Germany, all without a break. If I had been him I would have been bashing my head against the wall in an attempt at relief so I was fully supportive of Adam’s plan to enforce a break upon him whether he liked it or not.

It was in high spirits that Adam and I left for Germany. It was a lovely morning and I was feeling better after successfully catching a plane twice since missing one. I have a suspicion that I will never be late for a plane again but am doomed to sitting in airport terminals for hours on end. I must admit to not feeling totally confident that the trip was going to be a good one. For some reason something always goes wrong when Adam and I travel anywhere so I was on my guard. It may have something to do with a lack of planning. I don’t like organising things in detail and Adam likes drifting about in the breeze just as much as I do, so all we had done was to buy tickets to Frankfurt and arrange a lift from the airport. The basic outline of the plan was to hire a car in Germany and drive up to Amsterdam but that could wait until we got there. We were just happy to be on the move and get some relief from the urban jungle and daily grind that our lives were turning into.

Everything was going to plan as we took our seats in the plane. There was a bit of jostling for position as we both hog a bit of shoulder room, but as I exerted some authority on my personal space Adam leant a bit too far into the side of the plane. There was a loud crack and I shouted “I don’t believe it! You’ve broken the plane.” Adam looked appropriately abashed and put on his “I didn’t mean it … please don’t hurt me” face. I thought my shout that the plane was buggered would bring some attention our way but no-one seemed that worried about it. They were too busy shoving their bags into the overhead lockers. Eventually Adam got the attention of the flight attendant who came over and tried to stop laughing but couldn’t help herself. Apparently a slight dent in the inner lining of the plane and little bits of foam sticking out wasn’t a big deal. I offered to fix it if she could find a screwdriver but I guess they don’t like amateur mechanics five minutes before take-off. In the end it turned out to be fine. We probably could have ripped the whole panel off and stayed in the air but we managed to survive the remainder of the flight without causing any more damage.

I’ve been to a few airports and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that they can reflect the personality of the country they are in. London airports tend to be busy and frantic while slightly unorganised. Bangkok airport is steamy and full of plants. Barcelona airport is light and relaxed. When you arrive at Frankfurt main the first thing that hits you is the acres of space and the second is the brisk efficiency.

Jon lives around Darmstadt which is a large town near Frankfurt. It has a large, airy feel to it but in a very planned and ordered way. There aren’t any small, dark alleys or buildings spilling out onto the street. Everything is new, in rows and clean. This mainly has to do with the fact that Darmstadt was demolished during the second world war, a victim of English fire bombing. It probably deserved it – large Nazi headquarters were based here in the town hall, strangely enough the only building that remained standing. I should point out that I have done absolutely no research about this so don’t blame me if you’re at a party going on about the Nazi headquarters in Darmstadt and an ex SS officer tries to kill you. You’ve had fair warning.

I picked most of my information up during my last trip to see Jon so I was happy to put my inquisitive mind on hold for the week and abandon myself to the lures of relaxation and switching off. In that spirit our first night in town saw us at the pool hall. Based on the popularity of the place on a Tuesday night it wouldn’’ surprise me if the next Pool champion of the world comes from a small town in Germany that no-one has heard of before. I guess a small town is a small town the world over. I understand the ethos, coming from quite a small city. There isn’t a wide range of leisure activities so you have no option but to follow the flow. The local brew was consumed and a few games racked up before we stumbled back to the house in order to rest before the next day’s preparations.

Jon works in one of the prime jobs for anyone who loves space. He’s located amongst Europe’s scientific elite at the headquarters for the European Space Agency. At 22 most of his colleagues outstrip him in age by decades but have the looks of scared adolescents and social skills to match. In this respect it probably isn’t such a fun place to work but it’s hard to resist an organisation that launches and controls satellites as a way to start a working career. A quick tour of the building revealed banks of computer screens, the obligatory map of the world and different time zones, the worst hair styles I have seen for many a year, and some pretty cool satellite replicas doubling as garden sculptures. It feels like the kind of place that goes about a mile underground and the number of important looking doors with no windows didn’t do the conspiracy theorists any harm. No-one has that many brooms.

Our main reason for going to ESA was to enquire about cheap car rental. I am not exaggerating when I say planning for this trip was minimal as you will see later. We were directed to a car rental firm somewhere in Darmstadt and the taxi kindly took us to the car rental heartland. The first place we went to was run by the type of woman you expect to be roasting a pig and preparing sauerkraut by the barrel while running the pub and suckling a baby. She sensed we were not German very quickly and we sensed that she didn’t like us. It’s strange to be on the receiving end of language prejudice. I must remember that if someone doesn’t understand a word, repeating it slower and louder doesn’t really help. We had to leave in the end but luckily the place up the road had a slick, black VW golf. We jumped in and with transport sorted we were halfway there.

A minimum of effort was spent in packing before we jumped in the car, bought a map and set off for the bright lights and aromatic smells of Amsterdam. I have mentioned elsewhere Adam’s incredible ability for getting lost. It’s almost as if he senses the wrong direction to go in and chooses it every time. Luckily the road to Amsterdam follows the freeway all the way there without deviation. Jon got us onto the right road and directed Adam to follow the signs to Koln. I don’t know quite how it happened, and there was rigorous debate at the time in the car, but Adam managed to get us heading south, rather than north. It took about 10 minutes to find somewhere to turn around, but by the time we were heading in the right direction the stereo was pumping, the sun was shining and the car was being pushed to top speed on the autobahn.

The drive from Frankfurt to Amsterdam is unremarkable apart from one point. When you drive through Germany there are gently sloping hills covered with woods and deer. This continues for a few hundred kilometres until you reach the Dutch border. There are no big signs announcing your entry into a new country but they aren’t needed. Holland is characterised by a lack of hills but the extent of it doesn’t really hit you until you drive into the lowlands and all you can see is horizon. It is the dullest, flattest stretch of grassland I have ever seen. As far as the eye can see there are farms and a road stretching into the distance.

But we weren’t going to the Amsterdam for the scenery. We were going because dope and magic mushrooms are legal and it sounded like a very relaxing place to be. The first thing on my mind on arrival was securing a hotel but as we drove around the city it appeared that whoever had built it had ingested quite a few magic mushrooms beforehand. Amsterdam is the most confusing city to navigate that I have been in so far. There are no landmarks, the city is totally flat with two storey buildings everywhere, there is a canal on almost every street, the roundabouts split off in five different directions which connect with roundabouts going in another five directions, tiny one way streets, trams, bicycles, no map, no plan – we parked the car and walked for a bit. At this point Adam got a strange look in his eyes. He was in his Holy Land, Nirvana and Mecca all rolled into one. I don’t exaggerate his fondness for smoking and he had gone a couple of days without a spliff which is near his breaking point. He started wandering off down the street and while Jon and I were keeping an eye out for hotels Adam was peering into cafes in his search for dope.

He started to take on the aspect of a dog straining on his lead as Jon and I tried to point out that it made more sense to find a hotel before we smoked, as marijuana tends to relax you to the point of inaction, but it was no use, he was a man on a mission. We eventually came across a converted basement. It was like being in a hobbit’s hut. The wooden ceiling was so low that I couldn’t stand up straight but I stumbled over to a lavishly cushioned bench near the wall. Adam was at the counter perusing the menu. The menu consisted of little plastic bags filled with samples of skunk and hash which you can choose from. To be honest, I was feeling a little bit tired and grumpy. Dope is nowhere near my drug of choice and I’m not a heavy smoker. I was anticipating a couple of drags knocking me out and I wasn’t far wrong. In the dope head vernacular I was blitzed and monged but mainly tired. The feelings were shared and we stayed there long enough to regain motor control and the motivation to find some hotel rooms. As we headed out into the Amsterdam night all was quiet. It was clear and peaceful and I couldn’t feel my feet. I floated along behind Adam and Jon as we headed back to the car. It was nine at night, we were stoned, we had half a tank of gas and no sunglasses but it didn’t seem to matter that much. I’ll give skunk that much – it’s hard to stress out on the stuff. When we got back to the car I felt like going to sleep and I could tell Jon felt the same but to his credit and my undying gratitude he stepped up and drove that car like a beast in a strange city in our quest for accommodation.

Adam quietly asked if I would be pissed off if we had to sleep in the car. I replied that I would probably be a bit grumpy in the morning and I could tell by his thoughtful silence that he knew that was a situation it was best to avoid. We found our first hotel but it proved beyond our budget. We drove a little way out of town, gazed mournfully at the Ritz, then headed back into town. On our way to the coffee shop we had met a man who pointed out a non-smoking hotel with vacancies. It was a last resort but we just wanted to sleep at this stage. We turned up at reception, no doubt looking a little red-eyed and confused, a look I’m sure we shared with many an inexperienced Amsterdam traveller. Our saviour informed us that he only had one room left with three single beds at a good price. The three of us stared in shock at each other briefly before mumbling “Yeah … yeah … that sounds great.” The gods of not planning were on our side for once and we had stumbled into a great little room. I don’t remember much of the rest of the night but it was a very good sleep.

My plan for the following day was magic mushrooms. I really like psychotropic drugs. They agree with me, stimulate my thinking and allow me to transcend the everyday. It was a beautiful day and I was all for getting some mushrooms and relaxing in the park. Adam agreed with my plan and Jon was forced to come along even though tripping really isn’t his cup of tea. I understand where he’s coming from. There is a point towards the tail end of a trip when it can feel like your brain is going to collapse under the weight of itself and it can take some effort to maintain sanity. I don’t find this too hard but I can understand the reluctance of Jon to want to go through it, especially with the mentally taxing year he had been experiencing. Magic mushrooms are an over the counter drug in Amsterdam, supplied by new age type shops rather than the pharmacy. Mushrooms usually come dried and taste like crap. We settled down for a quick breakfast and tried to convince Adam to hold off on the mushrooms until we were actually in the park but he sprinkled a pack on his pancakes and chowed down. I’m sure you can see a character trait developing here. After breakfast I thought, what the hell, and joined him with a mushroom flavoured mars bar. It really was an amazingly nice day to be wandering around in a pleasant daze.

We had a map supplied by the hotel but it only vaguely helped. We could tell from it that Amsterdam was based around the port and spread out in ever expanding semi-circles of streets and canals. We could see where we were on the map and we could see where we wanted to go but getting there proved deceptively hard. We took a pit stop at an café and reoriented ourselves with the help of the waiter. New directions firmly in place we proceeded to walk in a circle back to the café. We set off again in a new direction and largely thanks to my strangely good sense of direction we managed to hit first the smaller park before finally making it to the promised land of greenery, ducks and ponds. It was a pleasant little park, but like the rest of the city, nothing spectacular. Amsterdam is the kind of place that, when you think about it, doesn’t have any famous landmarks. Paris has the Eiffel tower, Sydney has the Opera House and London has the Houses of Parliament, but to this day I don’t know what the Amsterdam equivalent is. Once we were in the park Jon started to make a stick hut from the little bits of wood scattered in the grass. It started out as idle hands but as it grew it turned into our own little landmark in a city bereft of them.

This is the strange thing about Amsterdam. The streets all look alike, the canals are dirty and nothing really impresses you about it, yet you still come away from the place feeling like you’ve been somewhere interesting. It’s more about the atmosphere, especially after coming from somewhere as tense as London. Some might argue that the place feels relaxed because skunk is legal but I get the feeling that the place has always been pretty relaxed – it’s just the way people are. When the evening commute came it wasn’t bumper to bumper cars or people cramming on buses, but lots and lots of bikes with people talking as they rode along. I think it’s a pity in a way that Amsterdam has the reputation of being the drug capital of Europe. As we left the Easter weekend was starting and I can imagine the scenes that followed as a wave of tourists descended on the city in search of exactly what I had been there for. I’m heading back this summer to check out the paintings I didn’t see this time, but it’s my last stop on the European mainland, so I think there will be a bit of partying as well.

Dave out.

Ay Laddie

27 Oct

In my ignorance and world innocence I thought London was a cloudy and wet place, but there is a new leader and champion of places that I have been with miserable weather. It didn’t come as a shock, and it didn’t stop my enjoying Edinburgh, but it’s worth noting if you ever decide to go yourself that it feels like it could drizzle for months on end. I suspect that the sunshine on my arrival was the first to be seen in Edinburgh for quite some time and as such I feel privileged to have basked in it briefly.

If anything, the low clouds and light rain add to the atmosphere. The castle perches high above the centre of town, an imposing reminder of a war-soaked past. It pops out at the most unusual times. As you walk along a street in the new town you glance to the left as you cross the road and – bloody hell! There it is. It seems to play some kind of optical trick on the mind, being almost too big and grand to fit into a modern city. It shimmers in the distance. It sits on top of craggy black cliffs with sheer drops an all but one side. Its presence lifts Edinburgh out of the ordinary at once.

In a similar way the mountains impose themselves on you. You don’t have to go looking for them, they regally appear, crowned with clouds. I rambled up them one morning and with each step my mood lifted. I had almost forgotten what it was like to be really outside and breath fresh air. You can’t help but be impressed by the sheer steepness. I’ve been up the highest mountain in Australia but it’s just a molehill compared to these. I eventually managed to climb to the highest point. My legs were burning and sweat was dripping off my eyebrows. As I took in my achievement, basking at being among the clouds with the city barely visible beneath me, I glanced over to my left. An old woman trotted over the next mountain along accompanied by her four scotch terriers. It put my mountain climbing into perspective.

The one great pity about Edinburgh is that its shoreline has been taken over by industrial shipping as far as the eye can see. I would have liked to go exploring, but like the pyramids, this will have to wait until I’m older and wiser. For now Germany awaits and then it’s back to … no, I can’t bring myself to say it. It’s the homeward stretch, the two month sprint before the end of another job.

Dave out.

The Mis-Adventures of Me

27 Oct

It’s funny how life turns out, sometimes. You plan and plan then all of a sudden a twist shakes you off your tracks and you end up somewhere totally unexpected. This is how I feel writing this letter in a hotel room in Edinburgh. I had already mentally composed half a letter from Cairo, but that will have to wait for another day.

For those of you who weren’t informed by my drunken email, I missed my flight to Egypt. As the brusque gentleman at the Lufthansa counter succinctly put it – “These tickets – London to Frankfurt; Frankfurt to Cairo; are now useless.” There were no other flights I could be put on and as my heart sank he gave it a little kick. “That’s what you get for buying a cheap ticket.” I responded maturely with “For fuck’s sake! I was five fucking minutes late,” before I stormed off.

I was mightily angry that morning, possibly angrier than anyone has seen me, apart from my sister when she kept stuffing dead leaves down the back of my shirt and I punched her in the stomach. I could relate to how angry the Incredible Hulk had to be for muscles to pop out of his clothes. To make it worse, I couldn’t direct my anger towards anything. My lateness had been a combination of getting up a little late, waiting for the bus, sitting in the bus while it groaned towards a tube stop, getting slightly lost at Elephant and Castle, and waiting for the underground. It all added up to five minutes past the gates closing, literally.

I felt terrible on the way back from the airport. I couldn’t believe it, shit like this happens to other people. Tears sprang to my eyes and my shoulders were so tense it felt like I had been hanging from clothes pegs all night. When I got home I threw my bags on the floor and stomped around, swearing. I wanted to break things but in the end I quelled the voices with strong alcohol. I wasn’t too fussed about losing money on the ticket. It was all the frustrations from working in London bubbling to the surface. I know a few of you on this mailing list have experienced how working in London can transform you into a snarling beast chained to the treadmill of commercialism. I had been so close to escaping but the tendrils had closed around again and I was back in my flat, drunk.

As you can surmise, I was feeling a bit down at this point, but it takes more than a minor setback to keep a Bacon down. Perseverance beyond the sane is a family trait and I was damned if I was going to hang around London moping about my lost holiday, so I jumped on the Net and booked a flight to Edinburgh. I was happy to be going anywhere that wasn’t London, and if you think about it, there are a lot of similarities between Edinburgh and Egypt. They both start with E, people have lived there for a long time and there are lots of old buildings. To be honest, now that I’m here, I feel good about it. I think it might be a better break for me – more of a rest than an adventure. And let’s face it, the pyramids aren’t exactly going anywhere, it’s just increased my determination to see them.

The day I flew to Edinburgh it was raining heavily and I didn’t hold high hopes for the weather in Scotland being any better. I got to the airport about two hours early, even after the first bus I caught was felled by a faulty door. The one good thing about flying is that it’s always sunny at 30,000 feet. From my window seat I basked in the sun and watched the sea of clouds slip by. Coming into Scotland the clouds started to clear and I could see small mountains jut out, criss-crossed by streams. As we descended through some straggly clouds it cast my mind back to the book I had brought with ‘e ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’. Robert Louis Stevenson was from Edinburgh, and although the story was written in Bournemouth and set in London I like to think that he was imagining Edinburgh’s narrow cobbled streets wreathed in fog. It was a slight disappointment that blue skies and a warm sun greeted me at the airport but these feelings subsided as I relaxed into the bus journey into the centre of town. I’m just resting now as I wait for the midnight hour when I will quit my room in a bid to exorcise my inner demons in the quiet, dark lanes.

Dave out.

Samurai Dave on the Road

27 Oct

I have finally started my exploration of the European mainland. “Why has it taken so long?” I hear some of you mumble to yourself. “What’s the big hurry?” I retort hotly, before quietly slipping out of quotation marks. I’ve never been a big subscriber to the’live every day as if it were your last school of life living’. If I did that I’d be broke and suffering from physical exhaustion. No, I plan on being around for a while, and a life is quite a lot of time to fill if you break it down. But no matter how you look at it, I’ve been dilly dallying around London longer than I intended. This is no bad thing, but with my energy levels restored to something of a normal level I found those old feet itching again, so I decided to join the rest of Britain in seeking cultural solace abroad.

The list of places that I want to visit has been steadily growing for years but my first choice was never in doubt. Barcelona is deeply embedded within my mind for a few reasons. The first reason is that my parents met there and imbue its streets with a mythical charm. Secondly, I have been there before on a childhood trip around Europe. When you’re seven years old the Sagrada Familia and Gothic Cathedral make an even bigger impression than on a fully formed mind, and they remain some of the strongest memory of that trip. Lastly, I feel an affinity with Spanish people. They’re not as stuck up as the French, more relaxed than Italians and the less said about Germans the better. So with destination firmly planted I risked the terrorist filled skies and flew to the Catalunyan capital.

When I arrived my first mission was to find a place to stay for a few days. Being new to this travelling malarky I just went to a cheap hotel. The old woman who ran it was used to idiot travellers talking in a language she didn’t understand and slowly guided me through the process. By the end of the transaction I had a room that most solitary confinement prisoners would have been pleased with, but I was only planning to spend a minimum amount of time there, so I really wasn’t worried about it. Unpacking consisted of throwing my bag on the floor as I could feel the pull of the street dragging me outside. I tripped down the 20 flights of stairs and burst out into the fresh Spanish air.

I may have been in London for too long but my first impressions were of the pleasant aroma. Everything was clean and there was room to move around in. It was a novel feeling after being hemmed in by London’s small streets and bad smells for so long. I was staying right on the Placa Catalunya, which is a large square and focal point north of the port. It is also the start of La Rambla, Barcelona’s main drag. La Rambla extends like a beacon of light from Placa Catalunya to the port. It is a wide street filled with people walking, stalls of flowers and birds, outdoor cafes and high stretching trees that provide a canopy of safety. It feels friendly, exciting, vibrant and was outside my front door.

With nothing in particular on my mind I ventured forth in the approaching dusk to get a feel for the place. As I sauntered downhill past the beautifully bright Spanish buildings I noticed something peculiar. The newsagent stalls were selling hardcore pornography. I don’t know why this stood out. I wasn’t looking for it and was aware of the continent’s looser attitudes to adult publications, but it still comes as a bit of a shock to see a double fisting video prominently displayed on the street.

The shock didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the walk. It’s a truly spectacular looking city and even though night had fallen I could see why so many people had fallen in love with it over the years. Delicate alleys led to squares dotted with palms and cafes. There was a sexy, lively feel, that no attempt to standardise or modernise could subdue. I was suffering the effects of a head cold but still managed to make my way down to the marina, which has become a massive entertainment complex. I’d just left a massive entertainment complex (London), so was content to go back the way I came. I aborted an attempt to go back through the Gothic quarter mapless, tired and at night. The stray cats were giving me funny looks and I know when to take advice from a cat. I was groggy and stuffed up from my cold so I retreated to my room/cell and listened to Spanish ads on the loud TV, and the even louder sporadic arguments from the elderly owners of the hotel.

When I regained consciousness the next day I revisited the coastal area. In my walk along the beach I was amazed at the Spanish man’s fascination with small dogs. I’m not sure if this is to make them feel more powerful but the number of them was beyond a joke. The water looked a bit brown and the smell whipping in off the sea breeze doubled my respect for the surfers braving it’s waters. You have to really love surfing to take it up in Barcelona. On the way back into the city I wandered into the Gothic quarter. Fate brought me to the Santa Maria church, which jumped out at me from around a corner while I was innocently walking along. It wasn’t open at the time but when I returned later the stained glass left me weak at the knees, which I’m sure is the desired effect. I also stumbled across the Picasso Museum. The man had a superb sense of humour. Barcelona feels like you’re walking along in one of his paintings – a beautiful jumble with objects jutting out where they don’t belong. It’s hard to tell whether they influenced Picasso or the modern structures have sprung up under his long-gone spirit.

My next jaunt took me inside the Gothic cathedral. It does it’s job of being an awe-inspiring spectacle. I havent seen many cathedrals, but this one rates highly on my list. I just feel sorry for the cleaners – stout little Spanish women with rubber gloves. They’re really doing god’s work. One of the female tourists near me fainted, but whether it was from lack of food or a vision, I couldn’t tell. One of the priests looked very excited at the prospect of a religious event but the woman’s friends were holding her legs up and splashing water on her face, so he wasn’t really much use. In the end she had to be stretchered away, so she was obviously one of the sinners. The old people in the area looked worried but I think it was because they knew it was their turn next and no amount of praying could prevent it. It made me feel good to be in a place with so many virtuous worshippers. Say what you will about them, they give off good vibes. Unfortunately my cold didn’t get any better. God must know I’m an atheist.

Everywhere you go in Barcelona you get a faint whiff of sewerage. It smells like the sea, which goes to show how much seafood the natives eat. It’s not a bad smell – it sums the city up. Even its shit doesn’t stink.

I made the obligatory trip to the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. For those who don’t know it, it’s that massive eight spired beast that has come to represent the city. I don’t know how the fuck they managed to put it together. The details are incredible. Huge stone angels are completely dwarfed by the enormity of it all and there’s an amazing amount of detail in the carving. I just had to lie on the ground and stare up at it for a while.

My first overseas jaunt has filled me with a renewed enthusiasm for travelling. I think Rome is next on the list, or maybe Edinburgh, and then there’s Germany …

Stay tuned for more in the ever expanding travelogue that is my life. Call me a Euro-slut and spank me hard Mary.

Hello – I’m Still Alive

27 Oct

Hello my very good friends,

It was pointed out to me recently that my entertaining stories of a young Australian living out his dreams in the Motherland had come to a rather abrupt halt. My apologies to all those scarred by the deafening silence from this end. Nothing was further from my mind than insult or implied stagnation. I’ve just been rocking along in my own little world as I usually do, and without the added stimulus of things like new countries I tend to get a little self-absorbed.

Enough of that! The purpose of this email is to fill you in on my latest wheeling and dealing without having to customise too much for each person. It’s true, these emails started as a time-saving device and grew out of my control. I’ll assume that you’ve all read my email regarding moving house. You can probably understand my need for a bit of a rest and a chance to settle down before I felt a sufficient excess of energy to devote to tasks like this.

The last you heard I had just moved into a new flat in South London. I was working a three month contract in Hammersmith and barely keeping my head above water. Since then the flat has become one of the nicest places I’ll ever live in. While not as big and sentient as Archer Street in Dicko, it’s rooms glow with warmth and the wooden floors are a much needed grounding with nature in a city obsessed with growth, change and fun. My room is on the third floor with a pretentious view of Canary Wharf, the biggest skyscraper in London. It’s as big as the lounge room, so I’ve stashed a couch and stereo up here, making it the ultimate chill-out room.

So that’s the house sorted. The other priority and source of irritation over here is a job. To be honest I’ve been fucking lucky. The number of positions in front-end web development has completely dried up and I think I snagged a permanent job just in time. I’m doubly lucky in that it’s quite a good job. There aren’t any Hitler-type power freaks, I’m not asked to stay till 8 at night yet and the work is enough to keep me going insane from boredom. It’s not much of a life though. It was suggested to me recently that I should take up a position in a light-house, and I must admit that it holds a certain attraction. Living in London is fun, don’t get me wrong, but there must be more to life than this?

As you can probably tell, I think far too much. But when I’m not thinking, I like to get horrendously drunk. Take the other Friday for example. The usual Friday drinks were on the cards at the local pub, the Beehive. The Beehive is a dark and dingy pit of despair but they stay open after closing time so it’s pretty popular. It was a doubly festive Friday drinks as it was Juan’s birthday. The plan for the night was to get very drunk at the Beehive before going to the local strip joint. I should point out here that I was raised under a strict feminist ideology. I’m probably more of a feminist than all those women who say “I’m not a feminist but …”. Suffice it to say that strip clubs aren’t high on my list of a good time. In fact, I find the thought of a bunch of old drunk men leering at a woman being paid to spread her legs distinctly depressing. From the looks of the outside of the Queen Anne you could tell what it was like inside. It was the size of a small house. All the windows had been boarded up, I assume to stop people getting a free perve. In preparation for the night a few of us decided to climb some trees in the park across the street. It wasn’t a well formulated plan, probably brought on by some absinthe consumption and copious amounts of beer. It was a relaxing way to unwind after a week at work and I’d recommend a sit in a tree to anyone.

The night started to dissolve after one of my colleagues broke the branch he was hanging from and tumbled with it about 10 feet to the ground accompanied by peals of laughter from above. He’s a tough Swedish lad though, so no harm was done, apart from to the tree of course. By this stage most people had gone into the strip pub leaving a few dissenting patrons in the park to enjoy the late evening sun and fine lager. The group of us eventually settled into some firm drinking at a neighbouring waterhole, nodding in sympathy at the ashen-faced compatriots as they left the den of inequity.

I was intending just to go home but my team leader Ian asked me to come in. Apparently some guy had seemed a bit dodgy and he wanted to check that everyone in there was OK. Bear in mind that I’d had seven pints and some absinthe at this stage, so I was far beyond caring or understanding. The strip joint was exactly what I’d been expecting. It was about twice the size of your average lounge, with’a ‘stage’ in the centre. Judging by the pattern of the carpet, not to mention the stains, this place had been going strong since the seventies. I’ll spare you the excruciating details. Let’s just say that dodgy strip pubs in Vauxhall don’t get very good talent. With my head reeling and half a stiffy (a bodily reflex, I assure you) I ran from the horrible women paraded before me. Once back in the smoggy summer air I paused for a second before heading back to the other pub for more beer. I think I’ll stick to clubbing in the future.

Dave out.

A Moving Story

27 Oct

As you may have heard on the grapevine, or maybe I told you myself, I recently moved house. It was one of the strangest and most horrendous experiences of my life and left me emotionally shattered.

Let me begin this tale of suffering and woe by describing the character of my friend Adam. He’s the kind of guy who would have revelled in the 60′s hippy scene in San Francisco. He loves smoking dope, free love and avoiding pain at all costs. You can imagine that he’s not a very angry person. I’ve only seem him really angry on a couple of occasions under extreme provocation but he’s normally a very relaxed character.

Adam and I had been frantically looking for a place to live for six weeks. We had made the decision to move out of our old house in Kilburn before Christmas and had been casually looking since then. If any of you know the London rental market you’ll realise that casually looking is about as likely to get you a house as knocking on random doors and asking if you can live there for a while.

We began to be under some pressure to move out. People had moved into Kilburn on the proviso that we would be leaving shortly and vacating one of the large rooms. We had already begged a one month extension to look harder but only two weeks of that was left. Adding even more pressure was the fact that I hadn’t been able to find a job since coming back from Australia at the start of January. As we headed into the middle of February we were discovering that landlords weren’t very understanding about my temporary lack on employment. Even my explaining that I was just between contracts was falling on deaf ears. If we wanted a place to live we would have to lie on a grand scale.

On the second last weekend before we would have to leave Kilburn we rang about a place in East Dulwich in South London. The best we could do was arrange for an appointment to see the flat on Monday. As I wasn’t working at the time I was elected to go and look at the place. I decided to set the scam in motion by going down there in my suit with the story that I was working for Freeserve, the biggest Internet Service Provider in the country. On the way down to East Dulwich, due to my inexperience on the overland rail system, I ended up on a line taking me within 30 minutes walking distance of my destination. Normally this wouldn’t be a big cause for concern but I was on a tight schedule and wearing my new leather shoes that had left my heels horribly disfigured the week before. As I hobbled up the rain soaked streets I congratulated myself on buying an umbrella that morning. The weather had turned against me and was almost blowing me back down the street. I soon discovered that umbrellas bought in very cheap local shops don’t cope very well with gale conditions. I was being pelted with rain from every direction while my umbrella insisted on turning inside out. I was soon soaked to the skin in a suit that was smelling remarkably like a wet carpet, pain shooting through my feet with every step, cold fingers madly fumbling at the now soaked map, and starting to lose my temper. As I navigated the confusing streets between Herne Hill and East Dulwich I passed the local school which had been attractively decorated with a burnt out car. At least the kids round here were normal.

My attempts at map reading aren’t usually too bad. I’ve successfully navigated my way around many parts of London. This day was a different story. I put it down to having cold hands, a wet map, and being very, very angry. After various wrong map readings I’d ended up walking up and down the same stretch of street four times. I began cursing the driving rain, venting my fury at the nature that so cruelly hampered my efforts at finding a house. All the weeks of job and house hunting had ended up in this moment of frustration and pain. Despite wanting to go home several times I eventually found the real estate agents. Impressively I was only 45 minutes late. I imagine I didn’t quite look the successful young professional that I was hoping to portray but my excuse of being late for the appointment due to heavy work commitments went down well. On the way over to the flat, as I secreted my wet suit smell onto the leather upholstery of the estate agent’s Audi, I gave my work story when prompted. It all seemed to be going well with this comfortable and self-satisfied character. As we bitched about looking for places to live while working full time I could feel my fortunes changing. Sure enough, when we arrived at the two-bedroom flat it turned out to be a corker. It was probably the nicest flat that I had seen in London. The price was right, it was clean and as a bonus it was nicely decked out. In short it was an absolute godsend. The hard part was going to be getting it.

On the drive back to the station I asked the estate agent how one would go about obtaining said property to live in if one was interested. He seemed quite taken with my conservative young man impression and very helpfully ducked into the office to get a couple of applications. There were the usual costs. One months rent in advance, a months deposit and a hundred pound holding deposit while references were checked. What I was banking on was making enough of a good impression to get the wheels moving without giving them a hundred pounds. If they discovered that our story was false it would mean losing money for nothing. Money wasn’t in such abundance that we could afford to do that. Adam and I duly filled out our applications and faxed them off the next day. My follow-up call proved discouraging. I was told that while they could start to get ready to look at our application they couldn’t actually process it until they had one hundred pounds. “Well that’s that!” I thought. With the amount of false information on the application they could sink our bid at any time.

I was all set to have a last ditch attempt at looking for another place that weekend when Adam received an interesting phone call. One of the real estate agent’s had rung up to ask us to supply the necessary references with no mention of a hundred pounds. While still not being very hopeful of getting the place we set further lies in motion. Jemima very kindly agreed to ring up and pretend to be my human resources manager at Freeserve which I then followed up with a fake fax. Luckily they had spotted my good character and by London standards were virtually begging us to live there. By Friday it had all been sorted and on Saturday morning we went to pick up the keys. When we left the real estate agent’s with the keys in hand we were in good spirits. All we had to do now was the relatively simple task of moving all our stuff from Kilburn to East Dulwich. Had we known what was to follow we might just have left the country as a simpler alternative.

Adam’s parents had offered to come down and help us move in a hired van. We got back to Kilburn before they arrived and started to pack some stuff up. When they got there at about midday it was like a whirlwind of efficiency. The van was soon loaded with the first half of our stuff and Adam left with his parents to unpack. What followed I can only relate to you in the garbled version I got when Adam returned at four. Apparently his parents found the flat unsuitable for him to live in. His mother took a brief look at it before fleeing to the van in horror and bursting into tears. Adam managed to unpack all our stuff and they proceeded to drive back. All the way home his parents told him he was a failure, that he’d never amount to anything, the flat wasn’t fit to live in and that he should give up his musical career, leave London and start a teaching job. As I mentioned before Adam is usually a calm and friendly person and is used to his mother being a bit critical, but this time with a dual verbal lashing from both his parent’s he finally snapped. There was a massive argument which resulted in Adam telling his parent’s to piss off back home. When he arrived back at the house he was the angriest I’ve ever seen him. He was literally foaming at the mouth and acting like a deranged wildebeest bellowing in pain.

I fully supported him in his decision to tell his parents to go away, but now we had a slight problem. Half our stuff was at the new place and half lying rather messily around our current rooms. Other people were moving in the next day, so we absolutely had to be out by that night. It being around 4:30 pm on a Saturday hiring another truck was out of the question. The only person we knew with a car was Adam’s girlfriend Jemima. In hindsight I probably should have called her given Adam’s mood. She was in Wales at a harp competition and when he asked to borrow the car she said “That’s a bit cheeky.” Adam’s response was to bellow very loudly “WELL FUCK OFF THEN!” and hang up. Before you start getting the wrong impression of Adam I should point out once again that this was very unusual behaviour prompted by the fact that his parents had just ripped his guts out and virtually disowned him. Now that Adam had managed to get offside with his parents and his girlfriend only his brother remained.

Jonny is Adam’s younger brother. He studies Astro Physics in Canterbury and is a really top geezer. He likes clubbing and staring at Jupiter, but most of all he loves his maroon bug. Strictly speaking it’s not his car as he and Adam co-own it, but it’s Jonny’s if the amount of time you work on it and love it count for anything. Jonny was in the last stages of his degree and doing his best impression of a hermit as he stayed in his room staring at formulas. We couldn’t ask him to jeopardise his studying schedule so we now had no option but to take the bus to Canterbury and pick the car up. As we waited outside the Kilburn house for the mini cab we started to analyse the situation. We would get up to Canterbury by about 10:30 pm, make it back to Kilburn just past midnight and move the rest of our stuff in a couple of hours. We were emotionally shell-shocked and not experiencing the smoothest move in history but we could still do it. We were standing around in the cold for about 15 minutes before we gave up on the cab and legged it down to the tube. Three quarters of an hour later we were at the Victoria bus station being told that the 8:30 pm bus to Canterbury had just left. Compared to the rest of the day waiting an hour for the next bus didn’t seem like the worst fate.

Thankfully we made it to our destination without further incident. Jonny picked us up and we went back to his place for a quick cup of tea. We eventually got on the road back to London at midnight. “No worries”, we laughed to ourselves. After all that’s gone wrong what does staying up all night matter. It was in this frame of mind that we greeted the first snow flakes of the night. Being an Australian I’ve only seen snow falling a couple of times so I quite enjoyed seeing the cute little flakes tumble down. It’s only with hindsight that I realise blizzards usually start small and get big. In about ten minutes visibility had been cut to ten metres and the windscreen wipers were chugging under the weight of snow. It was almost too much to take. After all the events of the day we’d ended up with the possibility of being stuck on the north circular in snow for the rest of the night. As Adam furiously tried to remember the way back to Kilburn, claiming he couldn’t see the signs because of the snow, I thanked my lucky stars that the last misfortune to befall us had been a blizzard and not the car breaking down.

You’ll be surprised to learn that the car didn’t break down. It was the next logical step and I’d being mentally preparing myself for the eventuality for some time. Instead something happened that was totally out of the blue. We hit a traffic jam. It was about 1:30 am on Saturday morning and we were on a three lane motorway that was inching forward. Adam and I had quit moaning. We had turned to switching between stunned silence and incredulous, hysterical laughter as a means of temporarily maintaining our sanity. Eventually we crawled past a sign that informed us that road works were being carried out between 12:30 am and 6:30 am of just that night. I think they did it especially for us. It was certainly starting to feel like nothing would ever go our way. At our darkest moment we received a phone call from Jemima. She was on her way back from the competition and offered to come with her mother to help us move house. We were way beyond being proud and gleefully accepted her offer. All we had to do now was find our way back home.

We finally made it back to Kilburn at 3 am. There was a fresh blanket of snow on the ground which we silently crunched over as we carried our stuff between the house and the bug. Jemima arrived soon after and we filled her car up as well. We set off with Jemima close behind us to navigate the streets of London.

Now as much as I like Adam he does have one major fault; he’s a terrible navigator. However much he tells you otherwise he has a talent for getting lost. Every time I’ve driven with him further than the local shops he starts to get this slightly confused, slightly scared look in his eyes and before you know it we’re driving round and round in circles. I hoped that it would be different this time as he had already traversed this route earlier in the day but the emotions of the move must have caught up with him. He took on the aspect of a hunted rabbit in the oncoming traffic’s headlights and started glancing about him in an over-tired frenzy. We were soon horribly lost in South London. Adam had managed to find the right area but we couldn’t pinpoint the street. We were frantically looking for a London map in the car when we got an abusive phone call from Jemima. She was understandably unhappy about driving around in circles at 3:30 am on a Saturday morning. Adam found an old map behind the driver’s seat and we hastily did a 180° turn to get back on the right path. We had finally arrived at our destination 20 hours after starting the move.

We managed to unload the cars and dump all our shit around the house. Jemima and her mother were impressed by the flat and we were suitably grovelling and thankful for their assistance. 5 am saw Adam and I finally sit down in our new house and christen it with a Star Trek film. We only got 30 minutes into it before we had to stagger up to our beds and fall into a hard-earned sleep.

You would expect that to be all from a moving story. The heroes finally get all their stuff over there and start to enjoy their new pad but not us. Not by a long shot. The nightmare week had only just begun. We woke up on Sunday morning and started to clean the place up and organise our stuff. Adam got some more demoralising calls from his parents but they had already said the worst they could. We wandered up the road to get some breakfast and returned to the flat feeling better, if not quite normal. Adam still had a few things to pick up from his house so he went over in the bug Sunday evening to get them. In the meantime Jemima had come over and we were talking about how nice the new place was when we got a call from Adam. Once again he’d lost his mind and descended into raving loony land. His car had broken down on the way back from Kilburn. In the middle of traffic the accelerator cable came out and left him drifting to an agonising halt. To make it even worse the driver’s side door was stuck and the passenger side was blocked by a wall of Adam’s belongings. In the end he had to crawl out of the driver’s side window.

When Jemima and I arrived at the scene he wasn’t acting very rationally. He abused Jemima for not bringing a tow rope and very nearly yelled at me when I told him to stop yelling at her. We couldn’t leave him stranded there though, so we got a tow rope and took him back to the flat. When we got there we helped him unload the car, and Adam and Jemima went to get some food. Soon after I got a call from Adam asking me to stop Jemima leaving. I looked out the window and saw a sobbing Jemima get into her car and drive off. To summarise the situation Adam had been abused by his parents, pissed his brother off by being in the car when it broke down, virtually broken up with Jemima for the fifth time and he owed me a large amount of money.

That’s right, the mother of all evil had reared it’s head. On the Friday before the move I’d lost my wallet. It was the first time in my life I’d done this and it occurred at the worst possible moment. I was relying on getting money out of my Australian account to finance the deposit and first month’s rent. With the keycard gone I had no way to get the money we needed. In order to get the keys on Saturday Adam had written a cheque but we now had to cancel this cheque and promise to get the whole £1823 to the real estate agent’s in cash on Wednesday. I was relying on a combination of an emergency mastercard, paying money by cheque from the Australian account to my Eng’ish one and my first week’s pay cheque. Adam had been counting on some money from his parents, which now looked unlikely.

The hell that our lives had turned into continued on Monday. The computers at Adams bank went down for the day which meant that he couldn’t cancel the cheque but would still get fined £25 for not cancelling it in time. I found out that it would take too long to get money from my Australian account by cheque. We were now relying on a combination of my pay and emergency mastercard, which Adam had picked up from Kilburn that night. The next day our run of bad luck extended into the kind of period that sees most people hide under the covers for a while. I found that the emergency mastercard draws from the same account that you usually have. I’d transferred all this to my normal account, which I couldn’t access, and I couldn’t transfer it back because my normal mastercard had been cancelled. I also discovered that because I’d been payed by cheque for my first weeks work and that it wouldn’t clear till the end of the week. It was then that I started to shit myself. We were about £600 short and looking at being chucked out by a very irate estate agent. The only solution we could come up with was asking various people for short-term loans. While I sat at my desk at work, head in hands and rocking very slightly, Adam called our old upstairs neighbour Tony “Mr T” Peck. He was our last and only hope, and to our tremendous relief he had £600 stuffed under his mattress, which we very gratefully borrowed from him.

Tuesday night saw £1800 neatly counted out on my bedroom floor. They were just going to have to wait for the extra £23. Adam took this is in on Wednesday and since then things have slowly started to improve. The incidence of bad luck has slackened and we feel sure that the balance of the world should see to it that some pretty fucking good things happen this summer. The flat is looking awesome, it’s a great area, everyone’s talking again, and once Adam pays me back everyone will be happy.

Dave out.

Dave Has a Religious Experience

27 Oct

I thought that my three week silence would have provoked an avalanche of lamentations and pleading for more, but no! Instead you’ve all been as quiet as shy church mice. I guess I just have to come to terms with the fact that you’ve all found your replacement Daves and are getting on with your lives.

Casting all this psychobabble aside, let me tell you what I’ve been up to recently. These last few weeks have been like a black hole of time – insanely busy pockets of work interspersed with weekends of getting drunk and stoned. I’ve got newfound respect for all you 9-5′ers out there. I realise I’ve only got my training wheels on as far as a’normal’ working week is concerned, but I can’t imagine how you can do it for extended periods without becoming incredibly hardened or totally insane.

At the moment I’m keeping my head above water during the working week but occasionally find myself swamped by waves of depression. These are usually brought on by the sickly smell of stress that fills the subway on a busy morning. Work itself is incredibly busy. They gave me about two hours to settle in before ambushing me with a shit-rain of work This entails me taking new page designs from the graphic designers and doing a mock-up in HTML before using the Content Management System to change all the relevant pages, or add new ones. So far I’ve finished about four of these kind of projects with another two waiting to be done. It’s not the most interesting work but a job’s a job and at the moment I’m not very concerned about my future career path. I just want to make a bit of money and have a good summer.

Speaking of summer, have I got a link for these paragraphs or what? This weekend was the first warm one I’ve experienced in England. It felt like 30 degrees, but I’m sure it was just in the low 20′s. This summery weather happily coincided with my plan to take in some cricket this weekend. Imagine my stupendously, mind-boggingly huge excitement and joy when I figured out that Lords is only four tube stops from my house – a 15-minute trip! The home of cricket, the mecca for cricket fans around the world, is my local ground.

So it was with appropriate respect and reverence (and lots of beer), that I entered this hallowed arena, and had my first, and possibly last, religious experience. It was a perfect day for a game of cricket. The sun was shining, clouds drifted lazily across the sky, and I had my good rockin’ buddy Adam to drink beer with, and share the finer arts of the game of cricket (like explaining who Shane Warne was). That’s right my very good friends, Shane Warne was playing with one of the county sides starting with H, against Middlesex in a fiery one-dayer. The lineup was complete with Justin Langer being the captain of Middlesex this year, as a relaxed break from his No.3 position with the Australian test team.

With Adam and me settled in on the boundary, in the shade, behind the bowlers arm, with a refreshing breeze and beer aplenty, the visiting side proceeded to stage a collapse. They are English after all. The rest of the innings consisted of me politely cheering Robin Smith on, and getting drunk. The only real excitement came when Warnie came out to bat, prompting the majority Australian crowd to start chanting “W-A-R-N-E-E-E-E”, and sing’True Blue’ – a little bit louder in those parts that involve standing by your mate in a fight. All this was just an appetiser for when Warne came on to bowl later in the afternoon, with the patriotic Australian crowd driving themselves into a drunken frenzy of laconic chanting and shouts. “I love you, Shane”, from one devout young man, prepared to put his ass on the line, to “You are a true god, Shane”, to which he responded with a wave of the hand in thanks. There was even a bit of “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie … OI, OI, OI”, which brought on a wave of homesickness and a tear to my eye.

I only emphasise these good Aussie lads as the match was fairly dull, with both sides only scoring 150. Middlesex won in the end, but not before Warnie almost snatched the game off them with three wickets. It was all those bloody English fielders who kept letting him down, as one Warne devotee noted when he shouted at the first slip fieldsman who had just dropped a catch off Warne: “Hang your head. Hang your head in shame. You’re going to have to do it yourself, Warnie.”

The biggest cheers of the day came not when the home team hit a four, but when Warne took one of their wickets. Warne’s like a walking home ground advantage in England because the Aussies are guaranteed to outnumber the locals at any sparsely filled cricket match.

With the cricket over for the day Adam and I did a passable impression of sober people, and headed for home. Unfortunately, Adam (I can only think disoriented by the exciting day) got us on the bus going in completely the wrong direction. Seeing he has lived in the area for four years, I figured he knew where we were going, but it wasn’t until we got to Oxford Circus in the city, that we both realised we weren’t at home. Putting it down as just an unfortunate accident, we headed back north, only to find that the Jubilee line train that we caught terminated one stop short of Kilburn. Not a problem, we thought. We just have to wait a couple of minutes for another train to come along – that is until we saw a team of men staring at the track and scratching their heads. In the end we had to phone Adam’s girlfriend for a lift home, which proved to be more exhilarating than the whole day at the cricket.

I hope you’re all well and enjoying the varying severity of an Australian winter. I think I could get used to going from summer to summer.

See you on the other side,
Dave.

Tortured Tales of a Correspondant

27 Oct

‘Keeping you bastards entertained isn’t easy’

Now I know how George Negus felt for all those years – constantly striving for an interesting angle and trying to meet the strict deadlines and high expectations of the ABC viewing public. My task is no less demanding in trying to satisfy this media-savvy mob.

Seriously though, I am starting to miss you guys. The first hectic weeks of a new town and trying to find a new place to live pushed routine aside for a while, but after settling into a new house I find myself with time to miss what I’ve left behind. The funny thing is, the person I miss the most is {insert your own name}. I guess part of the point of travelling is to try and discover the inner-self by leaving behind part of the social structure that defines you. That’s harder to do in this modern age, but the effect is still there.

Of course, the other bonus in travelling is meeting new people, which is as good a time as any to introduce you to my new housemates.

(Picture an indoor basketball court. All the lights are out, but a huge crowd is busy taking pictures. Suddenly a roving spotlight starts roaming around the court, and a deep-voiced American announcer comes on. You have to read the announcer part very slowly, and with as much exaggeration as possible)
Announcer: And now, introducing the London All-Stars!
(The crowd erupt in cheers, and the spotlight focuses on a man running onto court}
Announcer: Your fearless leader … the number one spliff smoker and tuba player extraordinaire … Adam!
(Crowd screams as Adam does back flips)
Announcer: Next up is your favourite art student and chronic mumbler … Colin!
(The noise is deafening as Colin walks to the centre of the court, shading his eyes, and reluctantly high-fiving Adam)
Announcer: Next on court, the one … the only … your favourite skater and mine … Matt!
(Matt comes flying over the crowd, launching of a huge ramp, before colliding with Adam and Colin)

Apart from Matt’s skating talents, this is a fairly accurate portrayal of my new housemates. Colin’s moving out in a week, to be replaced by Adam’s girlfriend, and they are all-round good guys. The house is on the bottom floor of a two-storey house, with other occupants above us. There are four bedrooms and no living room. Two of the big rooms double as lounge rooms, which kind of forces everyone to be nice to each other.

I think I’m just about through with sightseeing. It’s possible that I’m clouding my judgment with the fact that I have a bad cold and a bruised heel, which sees me hobbling around London like a leper, but most of the famous sights leave me a bit cold. They are dripping with foreign tourists snapping away and yelling at the kids not to run on the flowers. I went to Buckingham Palace today and the only people speaking English were the hot dog vendors. The other aspect of this is that the sights of London aren’t exactly unknown. It’s pretty hard to be delightfully surprised by something that, thanks to all those holiday programs, is almost as recognisable as your own home. Travelling to me entails finding things that you didn’t know about, rather than confirming that landmarks are still there.

That’s probably why I want to live in London for a while and try to see it from a native perspective. I imagine that this is quite different from what the tourists see and it’s probably more fulfilling. I would like to branch out and see a bit more of the British Isles and Europe eventually, but a job is the number one priority at the moment. There seem to be a lot of IT jobs (I just applied for 17 today), so I’m confident of getting one at the moment. If I descend into raving lunatic land again please send me encouraging emails.

I was seriously thinking about asking you to send some vegemite over but you could have knocked me over with a gum leaf when I saw a jar in the local petrol station. It just goes to show how many Aussies are over here. Apparently Kilburn has a fairly large Australian population but I’ve managed to avoid them all so far. Kilburn is full of large double story houses. It’s a very expensive looking area by Canberra standards, but expensive in London means inner city apartments. There are quite a few Jamaican and Islamic shops in the area but they’re done in a British way. This means small and unadventurous.

I hope that when this cold clears up I get a post-illness energy boost. I’m feeling the pressure to do things, otherwise the next email will be a long one about the paint scheme in my room, and all the interesting things to look at on the way to the shops. Actually, that’s what I usually do in the peak of health. I think I’d better get well, otherwise St. Patrick’s day could be the end of me.

See you on the other side,
Dave.

What You All Wanted To Know

27 Oct

‘But were too sensible to ask’

Being on the other side of the world hasn’t stopped me getting into a familiar routine, albeit starting four hours earlier. My new job at gameplay has been going for nine days now, and I can feel myself becoming ingrained into the structure of the place. My job is to sit with the web development team and fix JavaScript and Html problems they come across. It’s probably not my ideal job, but it’s a good start, with the opportunity to get into some more interesting areas. The gameplay corporation has offices in London, Leeds and Colchester, and is slowly expanding into France and Germany. I work near Farringdon and Chancery Lane stations, which is the only reference point I have. The building I work in is located in an innocuous looking alley, but has just been refurbished with the gameplay colours (yellow and purple), and infested with two foot plastic models of the gameplay logos. I work on the fourth floor, and unfortunately have to walk up it most of the time as the lift is a little unreliable.

Going from looking for a place to live, to looking for a job, to working very full-time hasn’t given me a lot of time to soak up the local culture. I did manage to get out to a club in Brixton called The Fridge. There’s a big main room with a mezzanine, which is infused with jugglers and stilt-walkers among the artificially frenzied throng.

I’m sorry not to have been writing a bit more regularly but I have to be in a certain mood to write letters (which I’m not in at the moment). I think it involves a lot of sleep and alcohol. People might call artists lazy, but I think they’re just working in their own way.

Goodbye for now. I’ll write more when I do more and feel the creative juices flowing in a torrent.

Dave out.

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