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I recognise this, this is stress isn't it? Thank Christ for that, I thought I was going nuts.
Filed under: me
It is now Autumn in Australia, I can't say I noticed Spring or Summer, we seem to have skipped a year's supply of those and just had nine months of Winter. Oh well, it can't be sunny all the time.
I got through the second 29th of February of a 6 year relationship without that question being asked. Is this a good or a bad thing? I'm not sure I know. What I do know is that Emily will be peeved that she forgot to terrify me by threatening with it all day long, hah!
Filed under: me
36 hours door to door; not bad for a journey of 17,000 miles plus, but as always the last 8 hours were the hardest and I was close to suicide by the time the plane finally landed.
I’d been doing relatively well having sat next to a couple a bit younger than myself from London to Dubai who kept themselves to themselves and tried very hard to pretend they weren’t kibitzing at my completed crossword. I tried very hard to pretend their public displays of affection weren’t making me feel ill, probably with an equal degree of success.
A few tips for those travelling through Dubai airport:
From Dubai to Bangkok I sat next to a woman who must have been in her 70’s who couldn’t work out the touch-screen entertainment system. Once I’d shown her how this worked she watched Spiderman films for 6 straight hours. Maybe she just liked young muscular men in skin-tight lycra, maybe that’s why she was flying to Bangkok where a small amount of a UK pension will probably purchase many muscular young men in skin-tight lycra, the mind boggles.
A few tips for people travelling through Bangkok Airport:
As so many westerners can say "my luck ran out in Bangkok". I returned to my seat to find that septuagenarian Spiderman fan had been replaced by a man whose shoulder breadth was probably greater than his considerable height. We had a new pilot, a Dutchman who thought he was funny. If there is one thing the world doesn’t need it is airline pilots with a sense of humour, specifically Dutch ones. The child in the seat in front of me who had been a source of considerable amusement on the previous leg of the journey had run out of patience and become a screaming machine with no off button and had been joined by two more of the same. I drank as much alcohol as I could persuade the attendants to give me to try and knock myself out only to be woken every 20 minutes by the ‘please fasten your seatbelts’ announcements, the Arabic version of which sounds like someone clearing a particularly painful obstruction to their airways, or a fresh bout of screaming.
By the time I reached Sydney I was in such a state of unshaven disarray that I was twitching involuntarily and charging about the place with a slightly haunted look on my face in search of my luggage and the duty-free that would bring the blessed ease of unconsciousness once I finally got home. Every airport security officer in the world has been taught to look for that kind of behaviour and so I was stopped about every 20 metres by a uniformed, and sometimes armed, official who asked me where I’d been, where I was going to and details of the flights I’d been on. These questions are intended to make sure that you aren’t about to set yourself on fire shout "God is great" and detonate your shoes but after more than a full day of travelling it’s quite hard to be chirpy and give concise accurate replies. Nonetheless I made it out of the airport in record time only to find that it was raining heavily. I got in a taxi to find it being driven by a young man who looked like he was about to set himself on fire shout "God is great" and detonate his shoes. I set aside the racial stereotypes and chatted to him all the way home to keep myself awake.
That wasn’t the first time I’ve had a gin and tonic at 9am, but it was definitely the only time I’ve actually needed one at that time of day.
Apparently presence is an issue for me. At work, at home, in my life in general I seem disinterested to the point of total absence.
My life goes on around me nonetheless. The driver is not just asleep at the wheel but has stepped out for a swift half and left the handbrake off. The lights are on but...
If things continue without my attention it would suggest that my attention is not really required. Was it ever? Have I got this far without effort or even a guiding influence? How should I measure progress if I've been coasting?
If the life continues without the person living it, the body a husk and the eyes dead then what actually am I? Some Derridian nightmare; the walking signifier of my own nullity. A semiotic paradox placed in life by a quirk of spacetime/joker deity - the actual presence of me signifying my total and utter absence.
Don't look at me for an answer, I'm not here.
Filed under: me
This could turn into one of those annoying memes that people use on their blogs but I'm going to do it anyway; you know you've had a busy month when:
Central Sydney in a storm The hot seat Grow my pretties...
When we were given a couple of chilli plants in London we lived in a house that had a terrible mouse problem and the little bastards completely ate our plant right down to the woodiest twig. We had to nurse the small stick that was left back in to leaf and eventually fruiting. It now resides in Hertfordshire and is doing very well I'm told. I will forever be wondering about that mouse. I had mental images of a rocket-propelled rodent that made me giggle like a toddler.
It was this incident that ultimately spelled the end for the mice. The non-aggression pact was rendered null and void and the use of force authorised, if not completely encouraged. One week of peanut-butter baited traps dealt with the incautious and letting our neighbour's cat into the house seemed to have dealt with the rest. I'm not particularly sure how effective a hunter Wonky the boss-eyed moggy would have been but we didn't see many mice after that.
I appear to have inadvertantly imbibed the entire contents of my hipflask whilst watching A Better Tomorrow (honestly there is no way you can watch this film sober (though my cantonese has improved maarkedly)). To attempt to counteract the deleterious effects of about 4 double measures of finest Irish whiskey I have just drunk the first of two 750ml bottles of water. It's going to be a long night.
...was fantastic fun and whilst the hangover is still a little in evidence this morning has been one of those mornings that makes you glad to be alive.
I've been sat at Coogee beach watching someone's border collie jumping at the water from the showers. There are the usual hard-core of ocean swimmers ploughing their way accross the bay who won't be out of the water for an hour yet, not even the shark alarm phases them. I've finished a much needed bacon and egg roll and am trying to drink the coffee that my addiction craves but that is simply too hot for such a sunny morning. The bus I wanted home has just left behind me, I've decided to walk anyway.
As I'm scrawling this in my notebook it's 7:30am and the sun is already so powerful that I'm squinting with my sunglasses on. Without exagerating, the light has a unique colour that makes the world appear as if drenched in golden syrup.The pacific, for once living up to its' name, is glittering and the beach squeeking under my bare feet is already warm and unusually deserted.
One of the things you are never told about Australia is the smell. The eucalypts give the country a uniquely distictive odour. In the moments before a rainstorm they have the rank reek of a tomcat's favourite alley, territorially marked. After the downpour they give off a a sinus clearing mentholated perfume that makes you take enourmous lungfulls of crisp morning air. After a big storm the scent can last for days.
A lot of the hard edges to Australia, whilst they remain on many of the people, have come off the country itself. Bushfires still wipe out huge areas of the country and drought threatens the livelihood of everyone inland but as a whole Australia is in a boom time. The greatest resources here being the country itself - more or less a licence to print tourist dollars - and the people. The reason that Australia punches so far above its' weight in so many different ways is because the people here will back themselves to take on anything or anyone and will honestly give it their best shot.
Whilst walking back accross the clifftops, beaches and the rocks, scaring crabs back into their pools, getting indignant looks from skinks and seabirds alike, I realise something that has probably been very clear to everyone else; I'm going to be staying here for a while.
My Country is the poem probably most quoted on Australia day.
Sand dredging off Lakes Entrance
On the drive down we took a quick detour to Canberra to meet the Cheetahs at the nearby zoo. They actually let you in the cage with them. They have one hell of a purr and genuinely appear to like human attention. More pictures when I've dragged them off Em's camera.
We drove back along the coast after a quick stop in Melbourne to watch England lose the ashes and a detour via the Yarra Valley wine region. I like wine. I like drinking it when someone else is driving me between vinyards. Unfortunately this is the most expensive way to do this as you end up buying far too much of it. We were relatively restrained and bought no more than three bottles at each place.
New year was spent at a guesthouse/hotel just North of Wilsons Promentory on Australia's South Eastern corner. The isthmus is a huge national park and a designated wilderness for a large part of that. It is also beautiful, but there are snakes, bad snakes.
The drive up the coast was also stunningly beautiful despite the bushfires. We stopped at a couple of places worthy of note. Raymond Island has a huge Koala population for the size of the place, we counted 19 in an area about half the size of a football pitch. You can get really close to them and remarkeably they were sitting up and paying attention. Koalas don't normally do anything at all.
Montague Island is another national park reserve and a place of great significance to the local aboriginal people. A lighthouse was built on it 125 yrs ago from granite blasted from the Island itself. The boat ride out was fairly interesting, it was not a calm day.
I'm not sure I'm ready for a new year. I wasn't quite finished with 2006 and now it's gone.
Dogfish resting
The party itself was held in a room that you get to only at the end of walking round the aquarium and before the gift shop which sells a wide variety of high-quality tat. One whole wall of the room is glass looking into the largest and m
