2001: A Dave Odyssey, England/Paris/ Venice/Edinburgh, 2001

2001: A Dave Odyssey


So I’m in hospital a couple of months ago.

I must look like some kind of mutant electronic octopus, cause I’ve got dozens of these wires and cables coming out from all over my body.

I’m hooked up to about 15 machines that go “blimck”, but those “blimck” sounds are about the only thing I can hear, because it’s really quiet - late at night, or early in the morning, maybe 2am.

Occasionally I’ll hear something other than my machines, like a fellow patient’s snore, or a mild hubbub from the emergency room next door when someone else is bought in, or a cleaners mop as it hits the floor, but mostly, I just hear the comforting, repetitive (thankfully) sound of “blimck”.

And anyway, even though it’s quite late, the events of the day and the novelty of the surroundings conspire to keep me awake.

I’m not in pain any longer, and (for those of you that were wondering, or worrying) I won’t be in pain again - false alarm, no big deal.

But my unique (some would say unfortunate) situation actually kicks starts something positive in me.

You see, I’ve got none of the usual distractions around. There are no mobile phones allowed in there, so no chance to text message. I’m not at home, so I can’t distract myself with crappy, mindless television, or I can’t pick up one of the dozens of books or magazines that lie around my place, queuing up for visual attention. I’m not at work, so I can’t allow myself to become overwhelmed with prioritising a million menial missions or sneaking some free Internet access. I’m not around my friends, so I can’t do the usual and talk crap and have a laugh at the absurdities of life.

I’m physically exhausted, but too mentally excited to contemplate sleep.

And the reality of my situation sinks in: I can’t move from the bed because of all the machines I’m hooked up to, a prisoner of the ECG. For the first time in conscious memory, I am truly alone. Not just from human contact, but from all the little things I use to fill my days. I can’t sleep. I can’t talk to anyone. I can’t go for a walk. I can’t read. I can’t write. I can’t watch TV.

So basically, weirdly, unexpectedly, unavoidably, I find myself doing the one thing that I haven’t done properly for ages...

…I think.

…Wow…

That might not sound that impressive to you guys, but let me tell you, after I started, I got on a roll, and began to remember what thinking is all about.

I was like: yeah, I remember this, I used to do this when I was young and had time…

I actually started to enjoy it. I was gloriously trapped in my thoughts for hours, just me and them, waltzing around the glorious ballroom of my brain, unencumbered by the usual two left feet of “life” that usually drag me away from that level of myself.

It was pretty cool, and in its own modest way, quite a profound moment.

Then again, it always could have been about the drugs they’d given me.

Those were pretty strong.

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But anyway, my thoughts in that lonely hospital that night ran over many ponderences, ruminations and memories. And basically, to try and assemble the mix-master mess of those thoughts into some bite-sized chunks, palatable for our viewers at home (i.e.: you), allow me to paraphrase:

TIME

Or: Where has the year gone?

Like a speeding car on a freeway while you’re standing still…zzzzzzzzzzzznnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggg………, this year, for me at least, has passed by in a blink.

Exactly a year ago from that night in the hospital, I was lying on the warm Saharan sands watching shooting stars, taking in a glorious starfield…and now here I was gazing skywards at some white ceiling tiles with little black pinpricks for ventilation – kinda the photo negative version of that starfield. But it honestly seemed like yesterday that I was lying on that desert that cool and breezy night in Morocco. So many weird and wonderful experiences between that night and this one, but that memory (and so many like it over the last few years) seemed so fresh, no new, so recent, that it could have been the same night.

WHY? Why are the years now zooming by in the blink of an eye, when in my youth, all they could do was drag themselves painfully, inexorably, utterly slowly towards the next one…each year, day, minute seemed to last forever when I was a kid. Maybe it was because life was simpler, easier, more basic then. Not so many immediate challenges and commitments. Lots of stuff that could wait while I just had fun in the moment. And now, it seems, I’ve caught up with that stuff that I put on hold for so long and find I’m shovelling my way furiously through it, without any pause for reflection…hmm…

Sorry to get existential on your asses, but that reflection happened as part of my little story.

Am I slowly down, or is the world speeding up? Probably both true, yes.

Am I nowadays trying to cram so much more into my life, my days, that I’ve got no concept anymore of the time passing? Or, having passed the third of a century mark at 3.49pm on the 21st of June this year (give or take) am I just turning into an old bastard?

Probably both true, yes.

Does this even matter? Most people prefer an insanely busy day at work to and interminable boring one – “makes the day go faster” they say. But should this be applied to “life”? Yeah, you want work to go faster because it pretty much sucks, but life???…

I guess I’ve been filling my life (unlike my work) to overflowing with fun and good stuff, which means that it’s OK that life goes so fast because it’s fun. But it’s a real bummer that it takes a situation like this to hold me down in solitary confinement and say “hey man, you’ve been having fun, but do you actually know you’re having fun?”

Which, for the record, I have…

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2001-MY FAVOURITE YEAR

But then again, every subsequent year after the one before seems to be my favourite year, so many cool things keep happening. But, this one has been a pearler. In so many ways, nothing much has happened to me, and since things settled down in April there hasn’t been the usual back and forth, “what and where” turmoil that has been my life the last few years. But, since I returned to these fine English shores in February, or pretty much since the last Dave Report e-mail at Christmas 2000, I realised that I haven’t actually done the usual and written down my experiences for myself, or co-incidentally, for most of my dear friends around the world (i.e.: you lot) to share via this wondrous e-mail doo-dad thingamajig. Sure I’ve seen a lot of you, or chatted on the phone, of spun off a quick e-mail note to keep you posted briefly on the stagnant but splendid state of my life, but otherwise you’ve been missing (I’m sure!) the little stories that have delighted/amused/annoyed so many of you the last few years. So brace yourselves because HERE THEY COME.

My life this year has been largely based in London town. But the first few glorious weeks were spent back home in Australia, resting, rejuvenating and topping up the old tan. Christmas 2000 was my first non-freezing festive season for a few years. Bring on the heat. Bring back those childhood memories. Long walks along the beach. Spotting huge turtles in the surf near Mum’s place. Exploring thick hinterland bush. King prawns for lunch. Deep sea fishing expeditions (which turned into deep chunk hurling in the case of some of us). I had three candles (instead of 33) in a Yatala meat pie on my birthday. So yes, it was a lot like childhood in a lot of ways. For starters, I actually fit again into my ten-year-old clothes. Even more surprising, I was sober on New Years Eve!!! For maybe the first time in 15 years, I didn’t have a single drink - I was totally sober, totally straight, totally with-it, and totally happy to be standing on Point Cartwright with my Mum watching the fireworks for kilometres up the coastline, from Caloundra to Coolum.

But OK, yes, while I, personally, might have enjoyed some regressing, some things had changed back home. Maybe the most extreme was the proliferation of little people. When I left Bris-vegas in 1998, there was not a nappy to be found. A few years later I was either surrounded by tiny gurgling drooling persons or else pronouncements that there was more of these wonderful little humans to arrive in the future. And the bestest, most proud-full announcement of all, from my sister, that I was finally gonna have the official right to be known as “Uncle Dave”. Yippee!!!

So it was hard to leave home – again – back in February. Whether it was hardest to leave my family, or my friends, or the massive new 16 screen Megaplex cinema in the Chermside Shopping Centre is a tough call.

But I left all that behind, left my tender-Mummy-care, and returned, broke and skinny, to the bitterly cold UK in March. And promptly cried my eyes out. Luckily, I had many friends around to take over the care duties from my Mum. Some nursed me to back to health when health screwed me over. One introduced me to employment – scoring me a temp job as the oldest office boy flunky in history - in a funky little IT software company which has lasted till this day. One introduced me to her sister on a blind date, and yes, my lovely date that night must have been blind, and deaf, and dumb, because that relationship has also lasted till this day. And, thankfully, given me much more fulfilment than my job! For those not fortunate enough to have made her acquaintance, my lovely girlfriend’s name is Frances, and she is very English, very beautiful, and (obviously) very patient. She loves small children, cuddly pets, and raw peas in ascending order of desire. And by some miracle I have wormed my way onto that list. (I’m not too sure where I rate, but it’s definitely below the peas).

My wondrous relationship with Frances has also bought some stability to my usual itinerant lifestyle, so the past nine months in London I have lived in only six different abodes – rather settled for me. The hospitality of Frances has meant that she has taken me in to share her home for extended periods twice this year, otherwise it has been the usual doss for a few weeks here and there – until a month ago when my shaking, commitment-phobic hand signed yet another six-month lease. I now find myself committed to sharing a fantabulabous garden flat in Kensington with my dear friend AJ (yes, he’s still on the scene), plus another couple of smelly, blocky immigrants. Worst thing about the flat is the cost. Best thing about it is the two-minute walk to work – which means no more tube cattle truck nightmares/delays, and even better for me - much longer sleeps...

All I have to do is keep my job (hmm…) till May when the lease expires, and when hopefully AJ and I jump into our hotrod van for the next four or five months of the much-mooted, but yet to be realised, Magical Mystery Tour of Europe.

That’s the plan Stan, for 2002. But…

Back to 2001.

I’ll start with the exciting stuff first.

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PARIS

My first trip to this amazing city. I spent this four-day weekend with my eyes agog and my jaw wide open, and not just because Frances did me the honour of accompanying me across the Channel. Or under the Channel, to be precise, through the Chunnel tunnel on the Eurostar bullet train, although we rode slightly more comfortably than did Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. We made up for this comfort when we arrived in Paris and Frances discovered to her chagrin what travelling “Dave-style” was all about. I think Frances expected an elegant weekend of sipping wine and nibbling on cheese as we sat in shady Parisian cafes, with maybe a romantic amble along the banks of the Seinne. Well…instead she found herself collared/dragged along on my quest to sqqqqqqqqqquuuuuueeeeeze every possible crazy second out of those four days, which ultimately included bolting top speed down the centre of the Champs de Elysses at rush hour, travelling every line on the METRO (love those closing doors sounds), shoving my coat up under my shirt to imitate a Hunchback at the Notre Dame Cathedral, photographing the Eiffel Tower from every conceivable angle, and doing what NO person has ever done before – seeing every single room in the Musee du Louvre in just one morning!

Mission accomplished: I left Paris satisfied that I had tasted every little corner of this beautiful town. Often it was just a token whirlwind tourist-flavoured taste of those corners…but I got them. Whereas Frances, well, she left Paris exhausted. She thought she was going on a holiday, and she discovered she had instead gone on some kamikaze tourist endurance race. But thankfully she kept smiling all the way.

I think she might have been the only person ever to fall asleep at the top of the Eiffel Tower. She was waiting for me, and I was waiting for the sun to set. Unfortunately it was our first evening in Paris, and I’d miscalculated the time of the sunset (about 11pm!). This, combined with the fact that it has taken much less time to queue, enter, and ascend the tower than expected, meant that Frances and I became quite intimate with that structural landmark, spending a total of maybe…four hours exploring it’s heavenly complexities. Well, I explored them, Frances tapped her foot and waited or else just slept in the rays of that interminably setting sun. Our last evening in Paris brought a much better Eiffel Tower-sun set experience – relaxing on the grassy lawns and watching the glorious colours of the latter spread out behind the former, all the while sipping Frances’ much sought French wine, and nibbling on our picnic of ham and cheese and pate and baguettes.

That was one of my favourite Parisian memories. But there are many. For those of you that have seen Amelie, Paris was just about as perfect and idyllic as that. I loved feeling that sun on my face as we cuddled halfway up that tower on our first day, and at the edge of its shadow on our last. I loved the haunting melodies of the nun’s choir in the Sacre-Coeur Basilica, and watching Frances feeding sparrows in the hedges outside the Cathedral de Notre Dame. I loved wandering the cobblestoned lanes and bookstores off the Latin Quarter and through the street artists and musicians around Place du Teatre in Montmatre. I loved cooling my feet in the fountains of the Louvre, and consuming ice-cream cones alongside fountains in the exquisite gardens of the Palace of Versailles. I loved the sparkling lightshow the Eiffel Tower put on for us every night, and the music from the buskers as we finally took that sedate stroll alongside the River Seinne.

And, I loved the people. And here’s the thing about the French – or Parisians at least. They are stylish. Even those really grungy, possibly homeless characters who look like they haven’t bathed or washed their clothes in a week somehow managed to pull off a Calvin Klein look. It’s amazing what you can do with a Euro-label and an attitude. And yeah, the French do have attitude. I especially loved the immaculately fitted old ladies strutting around with tiny fluffy little gay-looking dogs, both ladies and dogs with chins held haughtily in the air. And the waiters – all middle-aged men over here it seems – who define “disdainful”. One waiter actually kept a straight face as he served to me a Coke – which was in a huge litre stein glass and cost the equivalent of £7.00. When you ask for a “large Coke” in Britain, you generally get served one in a small soggy paper cup that wouldn’t look out of place in a sperm bank. But in Paris, when you ask for a large Coke…you get a…well, for that price we should have been able to keep the glass, or at least got another type of coke.

But the only people in Paris that Frances really didn’t take to were the tourists – of the American variety. Lots of ‘em. Loud, fat and most of them queuing and jostling to take a photo of the Mona Lisa. (Who was OK, kinda cute, but not nearly as interesting as the nearby riots caused by those desperate to photographically prove they’d come close to her). We did bond with some nice tourists though, a couple of teenagers who asked us to pretend to be their parents so they could get to the top of the Arc de Triomphe for free. Of course we obliged, only feeling insulted later when we actually thought about it.

But even the weird experiences are good memories. And the weirdest, in Paris, was our hotel. I don’t know what the French translation of Fawlty Towers is, but if you can work it out, please insert here: ………………. This place had it all. It was in the midst of some bizarre refurbishment, yet still had the balls to accept guests. And we had the balls to be those guests, I think the first! First off: no number or sign on the exterior of the building. Scaffolding everywhere, including over the window of our room. While conducting the initial transaction with the hotelier, I leaned on the concierge desk, and it wobbled and almost fell over. No room number on our door, but after a day, this was remedied by masking tape written over with biro. Everything inside the room was new - a good thing – and we could tell everything was new because the price tags were still on everything. The mattresses were still even wrapped in plastic – and it has been more than three decades since I’ve needed that kind of precaution. Wiring and open fuses were hanging out all over the place. No lightbulbs in the wall lamps. The bathroom was the piece de resistance (woohoo! French lingo in a French story!). The toilet lid fell off whenever it was flushed. There was a huge hole in the wall tiles behind it. There was no hot water on our first day. The shower had water taps, but no nozzle, nothing for the water to come out. This last nightmare was fixed after a couple of days so we could shower…but this caused an even more interesting disaster. I woke early one morning, got outta bed to take a wee, and found myself standing in the small lake that the floor of our room had become. Basically the plughole of the shower was all blocked up with plaster, and this combined with the fact that the shower wouldn’t stop dripping overnight to cause mass flash flooding. Luckily this was our last morning in Paris, and we fled the hotel after graciously thanking the French equivalent of Basil Fawlty for a memorable experience.

As it was a memorable experience - as Paris as a whole was a more than memorable experience. But as I said, an exhausting one for sweet Frances. After the way I dragged her around Paris, from the front of the guide book to the back, covering every major tourist attraction in four days, photographing everything that looked, sounded or smelled foreign…I thought she’d never agree to travel with me again….

But…as I also said, her patience and understanding knows no bounds, and a month or two later, as a birthday present from me to her, she allowed me to whisk her off to a surprise destination, a place that made us look back on Paris as kinda normal and unexciting, a place that was like nothing we’d ever seen before, a surreal mixture of fairytale and reality, an incredible, beautiful, miraculous place, a place of boats and canals and tourists and pigeons, a waterworld of history and culture and romance….ahh…

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VENICE

It’s one of those names that you really have to preface with a nostalgic sigh…ahh…Venice…

First off, tell me say that I never thought it was possible after Paris - or New York - but there is a city even more photogenic. But Venice (basically a few islands in a distinctly non-tropical lagoon in the north east of Italy) is a purely, truly, incredible assault on the senses, simultaneously overwhelming and relaxing, beautiful and ostentatious, fairy tale and real. Sometimes I felt as if I’d stumbled upon a pseudo-Disneyland, a tacky trick of fabrication and falseness and façade that the Italians had been duping visitors with for centuries as the genuine article. But at the same time, rounds dozens of corners, in dozens of squares and courtyards and windows and waterways, I realised that this town is real, living, breathing – and the locals are loving it and enjoying it just as much as us, the tourists.

And in Venice, that means a lot of enjoyment. Smiles are plentiful and laughter is omni-present. Like Disneyland, this place is packed with people out to have a good time through new sights and experiences –and with other people very willing to provide that good time.

For a price, of course.

Which is the other thing. Venice ain’t cheap. Although getting there was…

Wrap your pursestrings around this: The price of ½ hr gondola ride through a few middling canals in Venice (£50) was at least SIX times more expensive than the two hour flight to get us to half way across Europe to Venice (£8 pounds each, before tax). Something not quite right there….

But our bargain-basement flight meant that we could enjoy a few other things we might normally have not. And Frances birthday certainly meant a more relaxed pace, a loosening of my grip on the guidebook (if not my camera), and a lot of strolling, a lot of sailing.

No cars. No roads. It’s amazing how much difference that makes. Totally chills you out. You walk everywhere, over bridges, alongside canals, down alleyways. Wherever you don’t walk, you hitch a boat, the most fluid, most scenic public transport system in the world. Water everywhere. If you can’t see it, it’s just around the corner. It soothes you, relaxes you.

When my eyes weren’t transfixed by Frances, or glued to a camera, or a map…then they where taken by that water, that wonderful water, which makes Venice so unique from any other city – more vibrant because its carriageways are actually living, alive - not dead concrete or dull steel tracks, but this beautiful symphony of movement…water, always in motion, like music, one way or another, catching the sunlight, or the moonlight - green, blue, brown or black…shimmering, shimmery. It’s a very special place.

Venice lives around this water. The Grand Canal – Canal Grande - is rimmed with neo-classical mansions and palatial hotels and spectacular casinos, some of the most stunning residences in the world - but with all those gawking eyes on the water buses, not exactly the most private. Which might explain the strangely silent, empty feel of these homes. On the smaller canals though, across tiny white stone bridges, is a real feel of Venetians at home – shuttered windows open to the sunlight and ladies hang out washing to dry. Lorry-boats deliver fruit and veggies to canal side market stalls. Cafes and restaurants - with yes, even ruder waiters than Paris - wait comfortably for business they know will come.

But Canal Grande is the heart of Venice, the lifeline that all others feed off eventually. And if Canal Grande is the lifeline, then its traffic is Venice’s lifeblood. Unlike other major cities, it’s never stressful, rushed, frenetic traffic, even in peak hour, it just seems to ebb and flow effortlessly throughout the town, just like the water. The traffic ranges in size and style. At one extreme is the large and unrefined: huge barges lugging concrete or piston-planting the long wooden mooring poles alongside the canal banks. Next up are the water buses, which we became quite intimate with – plentiful, comfortable, functional, and very easy to use. And yes, sometimes they would get almost as crowded as a London tube, but there was never any hint of tension or agro. For starters the view from a Venetian bus is a lot more relaxing than that from the tube. We saw lots of local businessmen and workers on these buses, obviously enroute to work with briefcases and lunchboxes, but unlike London, nary a one had their face buried in a newspaper. Along with the tourists, these locals were all enjoying the magnificent view and the breeze from the canal, albeit in a much less gawking “oh my gosh Betty Lou, get a shot of that!” sort of manner, and more so in a self-satisfied “yep, this is my home” sort of way.

After the buses on the boating ladder were the motorised pine-panelled water taxis, which apparently have exorbitant fares, and look exactly as gorgeous as those that chased Indiana Jones around these canals in The Last Crusade. Then there is a plethora of miscellaneous local traffic: ambulance boats, police boats, newspaper delivery trucks, and all manner of little dingys whipping the locals and their friends and families and their wares around town.

And then, at the far end of this boating hierarchy, is the smallest in size yet greatest in honour, the gondola. These long yet narrow craft are unspeakably, unreasonably beautiful. Black and sleek, finely – but never tackily – festooned with ironwork, gold trimming and floral decorations, and sporting dramatically severe thin jagged metal keels, like some sort of cutlery item, the gondolas are a vital, inherent part of Venice. And also one of it’s most photogenic. The gondolas were always packed with tourists waving all manner of photographic equipment around, and it’s tough to estimate if the tourists on the canal banks and buses take more photos of the tourists in the gondolas, or vice versa.

The gondoliers are as unique as their craft. They are often decked out in the classic red or blue striped shirt, and the classic boater hat with ribbon. They exhibit incredible strength, precision and fitness by propelling their cumbersome vehicles along with such fine-honed finesse. They exhibit an additional flair for impressing the tourist trade by singing romantic songs in Italian (although as often as the singing, we saw gondoliers chatting on mobile hands with one hand while thrusting their boats long with the other!) They exhibit incredible pride in their craft, strutting around and polishing them whenever they get a second, showing off any decorative extras to their fellows the way a 50’s street racer would show off a new chrome exhaust to his buddies. And…they also exhibit an incredible arrogance, a cockiness that says “I hold in my hand, in my boat, one of the unique experiences in the world. If you want it you will pay for it”. So…

The undoubted highlight of our trip to Venice was our own gondola ride. On Frances 25th birthday we boarded the boat at Piazza San Marco, and headed off under a multitude of ornate bridges and through a network of narrow, peaceful canals. Our pathway was a little crowded with other tourist-packed gondolas initially, but it soon thinned out. Only once did we get a waft of the infamous “stench” of Venice’s water that we’d been told to be wary of, and we never saw any evidence of the disastrous flooding that the town had suffered through last century. In the quietest canal, we disturbed a rat perched on a step up into someone water garage, and around another corner, amidst a lot of frantic wing flapping, we busted a couple of pigeons shagging. In stilted English our gondolier pointed out the three nicest house balconies on the block as once giving views to Mozart, Casanova, and Marco Polo, we nodded dutifully, snapped away, and thought “lucky bastards”. But mostly, on our gondola ride, we just sat back, chilled out, and gazed around in wonder. The only sound was the soft lapping of the water against the keel, and the gentle splash of the gondolier's vast paddle whenever he dipped in it the water. This, plus the melodic, relaxed tune he sometimes sung, mostly hummed in the quieter stretches. To call this experience a little romantic would be like calling the Pacific Ocean a little wet. It was great.

Everything in Venice - including gondolas, water taxis, buses, bridges, alleyways and canals – seems to converge eventually in one spot – Piazza San Marco (St, Marks Square). It’s the largest open space on the main island of Venice, a vast plaza filled with golden cathedrals, towers, baroque museums, colossal monuments, splendiferous hotels, designer stores, ice cream stands, street artists, hundreds of coffee tables and beautifully played, live classical music. And yet all of these amazing, extraordinary things I’ve just listed are overwhelmed by two other things in Piazza San Marco: the tourists and the pigeons.

And what a relationship they have. The pigeons love the tourists for obvious reasons: the brighter and tackier the T-shirt they spy in the square, the more food will likely be forthcoming. But why the tourists love the pigeons - that’s a little more of a mystery to me. The tourists seem to spend more time on the birds than on San Marco’s other, more historic, cultural attractions. Maybe it is the same attraction they have to the water in Venice: the movement. Everything else in Piazza San Marco, however grandiose, is static, still. The pigeons, conversely, are in constant motion: flocks of them flying overhead, masses off them scurrying around underfoot, the odd renegade indulging in a dive bomb expedition on a hapless tourist with seed in her hair.

Frances, as always with dumb animals, took an immediate shine to the birds, insisting on the tacky tourist route of buying overpriced birdseed in an attempt to procure the biggest opportunity of getting overpriced bird shit on herself. All this despite my bleated warnings about pigeons being disease filled vermin, the “rodents of the sky” as it were. But, her enthusiasm (and the enthusiasm of hundreds more tourists who had obviously never heard of bird rabies) relaxed me, and before I knew it I was standing there with an outstretched hand full of birdseed, screaming at the top of my lungs as a mass of grey feathers, red claws, and greedy beaks descended on me. It was a similar experience to feeding the pigeons in London’s Trafalgar Square, although, because I was in Venice on holiday I justified it as a cultural excursion as opposed to a feral one. Frances loved it, managing to get the pigeons to assume all manner of poses for the camera with her. She’s a regular Dr. Dolittle, Frances is. She had a particular fascination for the mating ritual of Venice’s pigeons, or “courting” as she charmingly called it. To me, it didn’t look that exciting: some horny male would simply puff his plumage up and chase some disinterested female around for awhile, she would eventually convince him to get lost and he’d immediately transfer his attention to another bird and chase her instead. Just seemed like another Saturday night on the town to me.

Although San Marco and it pigeons is the focal point of Venice, and Canal Grande and its traffic the heartbeat, there is so much more to the place. Venice is the best city to get lost in, pigeon or otherwise. We loved the unexpected finds down winding alleyways: classy art galleries, painter’s studio courtyards, church theatre shows, cobblestoned cafes. And of course the shops. Whenever I disappeared on one of our strolls Frances knew I would invariably be found snapping a photo. But whenever Frances disappeared, I needed to look no further than the nearest shop. My favourite shops were the one with the masks, those classic, mysterious, magnificent Venetian masks that appear in every arty-farty period movie set in Venice. Frances on the other hand loved the exquisite glasswork – hundreds of these coloured ornaments of all shapes and sizes – and we even visited the nearby island of Murano to see an artist at work, blowing furnaced sand into hot, gloopy glass, and moulding the glass into fine sculpture. Another ferry island trip was to the Lido, once a resort as famous as the French Rivera, now a beach scattered with filth and debris and fences to keep us “common folk” away from the private hotel beaches. The sudden rainstorm we encountered on the Lido beach drenched us to the skin, and caused us to squelch and drip back to the ferry, with Frances completely oblivious that her flip-flops (Aussie word: “thongs”) had filled with mud and, with every step she took, were not only coating the back of her own legs in mud, but also whipping significant dollops into the face of the snooty lady behind. But that’s us, that’s the Lido, all class.

I could go on (as I’m sure you know/fear) about Venice, but I won’t. I won’t go on about the vast seafood and antipasto platters (of squid, snails, you name it), that we enjoyed in a tiny canal-side café, a spot generally undiscovered by tourists. I won’t go on about the walk back to our hotel that night - cobblestoned alleyways, little stone bridges, half moon reflecting of the water. I won’t go on about waking up in our hotel to the bells from the church in the courtyard opposite, and looking out from our top floor window to the view below…ahh…Venice….

But I will mention – Trieste. After the romantic dreamland of Venice, Frances and I took a small side trip on a train to a much less fairy tale part of Italy: Trieste, a down to earth little town near the border of Slovenia, and flavoured exotically Eastern European because of it. Trieste was very different to Venice. For starters it seemed real. It had comparatively zero tourists. It was quiet.

But still… I found it exciting. It had one of those classic roman amphitheatres right in the centre of town – but obviously this was not unusual in Italy, because here the locals had built all these boring modern buildings right alongside it, as if it were just old parkland. But it wasn’t, this amphitheatre was ANCIENT HISTORY, you know - Julius Caesar, Gladiator type history, and here it was, collecting weeds, neglected. Maybe it’s different in Europe to Australia, maybe they’ve got so much Ancient History coming out of their butts they can afford to neglect or forget a few hundred sites. But for someone like me, who comes from a country where the oldest man made thing (apart from pre-historic Aboriginal artwork) is only a coupla centuries old, seeing this gorgeous amphitheatre sitting just off the modern street like it was only a few years old – it fascinated me. Let us hope that fascination doesn’t burn out after five months in Europe next year!

But Trieste had more than just historic idiosyncrasies. Just outside of town we explored the largest (that are open to the public) limestone caves in the world, descending hundreds of wet mossy steps into a vast chamber that would have accommodated Piazza San Marco several times over. At various highpoints on our tour of stalagmites, stalactites, and other rude shaped geological curiosities, our Italian guide would stand and pontificate at length in her native language for the benefit of the local family on the tour with us. Frances and I would look at her blankly and shrug, that is until she reached into her pocket and produced a cassette tape which she played through the cave speakers, and which replaced her commentary with one from a distinctly English voice, circa 1950, speaking very properly and pronounced, the voice sounded just like Lady Penelope from the Thunderbirds.

From these caves we descended on foot and by steep tram through little vineyards and farms and villages to the centre of Trieste. And the centre of Trieste (which was a town I’d never ever heard of before planning the trip) was really quite spectacular in itself, having the only town square in Europe which opens directly onto the sea - a huge plaza with baroque classical buildings, cute fountains, and a refreshing lack of pigeons. From the very end of the old stone pier, Frances and I dozed and read and soaked up the sunset over the Adriatic Sea, counting our blessings that - apart from the freak thunderstorm over the Lido – the weather on our trip to Italy had been one of the many idyllic, magical things about it. On our next trip, a few months later, to the other side of Europe, we would not be so lucky.

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EDINBURGH

Then again, the weather is not one of the things Edinburgh is known for. At least, not good weather. Not that it matters, because the weather is not something one travels up to Edinburgh for, especially in August, the Fringe Festival season. I journeyed up to Edinburgh to immerse myself into culture and comedy with Frances, AJ and Jane. Our flight from London was briefer than the average tube journey within London, but, slightly more interesting. On the tarmac at London Stansted, the pilot announced there was a problem with one of the engines getting going, but, not too worry, they were going to try “the crosswind manoeuvre”. This was apparently where they zoom down the runway on one engine and hope the velocity will somehow jump start the lazy engine into shape, seconds before the wheels leave the ground. Hmm…what can you expect from a dodgy airline that only charges £25 per head to get from London to Edinburgh? It was too early in the morning to panic and assume crash positions anyway…

Safely in Edinburgh we made our way to our lodgings – at our old, dear friend Tamara’s place. (She’s not that old, actually quite young, I just meant that she is someone I’ve known for a few years. And by “dear” I don’t mean she’s expensive, just…special. Doh!) Tamara’s flat was lovely, nothing like the disgusting hovel that Trainspotting had led me expect. In fact, Trainspotting had skewed my expectations of Edinburgh in a lot of ways. Because ultimately, the areas we visited were also safe, welcoming, and apart from copious amounts of alcohol, drug free. It’s a great little town, very compact in it’s centre, great for strolling if you don’t mind the odd hill or two. It’s also quite stunning, at least in the sunlight or by the night-time fireworks, with the majestic, seemingly impenetrable Edinburgh Castle sitting atop a steep rocky outcrop, and being essentially dominant in every view of the town, whether from down below on Princes Street, or from the towering ramparts of the castle itself. From these ramparts a cannon fires everyday at 1pm, and shocks the bejeebees outta any newcomer not expecting it. Luckily I had read the guidebook and was expecting it. Even better, AJ had not read the guidebook and was not – he jumped like he thought the cannon was signalling the start of some gang war, instead of the signal for the locals to calmly check their watches and keep walking. The Castle itself, which we explored, was full of Scottish history, full of scary vaults, and full of dead pets. It was an usual place for a pet cemetery.

But then the Scots love their dead pets. The most famous dog of the area, Greyfriars Bobby, was a little terrier mutt who became famous after his owner died, when he insisted on sneaking into the cemetery to lie on his gravesite, despite the best efforts of the cantankerous caretaker to roust him. Bobby eventually succeeded in his quest and died alongside his owner’s headstone. Subsequent books, movies, and statues memorialised Bobby, not to mention a pub named after him, which, going by the reverence that pubs are held in Edinburgh, is the ultimate sign of respect.

In fact, there almost seemed to be more pubs and bars in Edinburgh than homes. But, despite attempts from AJ and Jane to drink these establishments all dry, that was not the predominant reason we were there. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is a world famous massing of a variety of entertainment, from theatre to dance to cabaret to comedy acts. Depending on their talent and the number of tickets they can sell, these groups perform in a variety of venues in central Edinburgh, from large traditional theatres, to university class halls, to basement clubs, to pubs, to park marquees, to stages on the street, to…well, the street itself.

Finding a show to go to is not a problem. Deciding which one to attend is a mission, given that there are literally dozens to choose from at any given moment. Walking down the Royal Mile, the focus of all the above ground activity, we were assaulted by a constant barrage of colourful flyers advertising these shows, accompanied by a begging, pleading, arm-twisting patter from the show-pushers. Something like: “Come and see Hamlet in Hell!!! The Sunday Times called it the funniest laugh-out-loud tragedy of the year!!! To see or not to see, that is the question…”. Eventually you’ve got no choice but to avoid these budding Oscar winners and refuse to accept anymore paper flyers, when you look around and shudder to realise that the Scottish Highlands must have undergone some serious deforestation to provide them.

Slightly more formal entertainment along the Royal Mile are the street performers, most of them doing little skits to promote their shows later that day. The more serious and funded of these perform on a series of little stages set up along the street. One afternoon, shortly after Frances and I had dragged AJ and Jane out of yet another pub, we happened to pass one group performing a show on one of these little stages called “Who Killed Stanley Bishop?”. AJ was feeling, shall we say – “jolly” - and he asked me how much I’d bet him that he wouldn’t go over and jump up on stage with them. Considering the performers were all big burly blokes who looked more like gangsters than actors, I thought my bet of £10 was pretty safe. Needless to say, I bought the next round in the next pub and thanked the stars that AJ hadn’t been beaten up by these blokes when he’d jumped on stage and started yelling “Who IS Stanley Bishop?”, before shrugging at the guys as they approached him… ”uhh, I didn’t kill Stanley, I just want a photo with you guys…please…”.

During our few days in Edinburgh, we saw a variety of acts – all comedy. Well, they were supposed to be all comedy. Some of them were so funny we almost passed out from lack of oxygen, some of them were so bizarre that the X-Files should have been called in on them, and one or two of them were so dire that…well, at least we had the pub. As Jane kept reminding us, when in doubt, the pub was a good venue.

Aussie talent was well represented, with the Scared Weird Little Guys, the Umbilical Brothers, and Lano and Woodley all being popular with the crowds. But the hottest ticket is town was undoubtedly to a show, which on the one hand made me proud to be Australian, and on the other, completely grossed me out. For those of you who haven’t heard of Puppetry of the Penis, the show is pretty much exactly what the title promises. It’s simple, basic, and brilliant. Just a coupla Aussie blokes manipulating their private parts into all manner of creative shapes (and sizes, ouch!). It’s basically what perverted boys have been doing behind the school shed for years, and yet here were these guys on stage – with a video screen for close ups behind them – and a huge ticket paying audience in front of them. The joke was definitely on us.

Even before we entered I knew we were in trouble. AJ, funnily enough, had taken half of our group to the pub and piled them with shots of booze, so even before we walked inside, Jill was swaying unsteadily and Lynn, her twin, was shouting “Penis!” with great enthusiasm. I almost wished I was drunk too when the puppeteers whipped off their robes and commenced the genital origami. But what can I say, really…as the show went on, I was blown away (sorry) by their creativity, their imagination. At various stages (or sometimes all at once), I thought the show was funny, gross, shockingly painful, macabre, fascinating, offensive, hilarious…and simply the most original idea that I’ve seen on stage, ever.

Without going into too much detail in this PG rated e-mail, here’s a brief example of some names of the sculptures/shapes/presentations: the snail, the bullfrog, the IMAX theatre (ouch!), the baby-bird, the parachute, the eye, the brain, the didgeredoo (double ouch!), the hairy tongue (yuck!), the windsurfer, the Aussie Coat of Arms, the KFC (double yuck!), and the hamburger (which, I have to admit, was the first thing I tried in the privacy of my own room – and amazed even myself). But the best thing about the Puppetry of the Penis show was the reaction of Lynn. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the video close-ups, maybe it was a combination of both…but not even the halfway through the show, Lynn leaned forward and vomited all over the floor and the chair in front of her. Now that’s a decisive review if ever there was one.

The theme of bad taste initiated in Edinburgh by the above show (I can’t bring myself to mention it by name again) continued on our last evening in town. Firstly I sat down to a meal of haggis. Secondly it was served in a pub offering Scotch Flavoured Condoms for sale in the loos. Thankfully, I never did taste the latter, and the former (a traditional Scottish meal of nasty sheep offal) turned out to be quite OK, maybe even tasty – kinda like a gritty mince, even better when covered in my usual tomato sauce. And afterwards we enjoyed a theatrical experience that was the flipside of the Puppet show in terms of class, style, and cultural worthiness.

The Edinburgh Military Tattoo has been running for decades, but some parts of it seemed centuries old. It basically involves huge regiments of army dudes marching around with precision moves to precision marching tunes. I know, it sounds dull, doesn’t it? Trust me, it’s awesome. The core parts involve the Scottish regiments with those tall black, fluffy hats, playing bagpipes and drums, but there was so much more: modern war games, Irish dancing, Norwegian rifle twirling, Cossack sword fights, Russian hand dancing, and – bizarrely – Cook Island hip shimmying. The setting of the Tattoo – in the forecourt of the Edinburgh Castle, lit by flaming torches, adds immeasurably to the dramatic atmosphere. A person that would that always insist on looking on the bright side of life (i.e.: me) might also claim that the rain added to the atmosphere as well – if so, there was a lot of atmosphere. It pretty much rained for most of the show, onto the performers and the audience, alternating between usual English drizzle and tropical bucketing-down. And the most incredible thing? Of the several thousand drenched spectators, only a handful abandoned the spectacle for a dry refuge. The rest of us just sat there in our garbage bags and pools of rainwater, transfixed by the colourful motion and the magnificent music. We got soaked but we didn’t care. The show was that good.

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ENGLAND

There is a lot more to Scotland than Edinburgh. Hopefully I’ll explore a little more one day. Similarly, there’s a lot more to England than London. A lot of it – around the south and west, I cavorted through in 99 and 2000. This year, thanks to Frances, and her family, and some judicious weekends, I managed to check out a few gorgeous spots to the north of the metropolis I “live” in.

And none is more gorgeous, or more typically English, than Frances’ home town, a little village (yep, they actually call it a “village”) several miles outside of Cambridge.

Escaping from London for our regular trips to the village, we often found ourselves with exactly the same escape route that Harry Potter takes enroute to Hogwarts, although we always caught our trains from either Platforms 9 or 10, never in between them. And while we never ended up in a magical school-castle, the English countryside and English country towns I visited this year were pretty magical in themselves.

Picture this: Rolling green farmland, with random hills covered in bright yellow rape seed or bright red poppies. Narrow laneways for driving, often only a single car width wide, sometimes between high green hedges or thick trees which meet over the road (you half expect Robin Hood or Dick Turpin to drop outta the trees and demand some gold). Instead of the prim poodle mistresses from Paris, here we’ve got old but sturdy gentlemen, wearing raincoats and deerstalker hats, walking the fields and roads with virile, real dogs (which look like they eat rabbits – and probably poodles - for breakfast). Old stream driven tractors park out the front of country pubs. Over fences in peoples backyards are Shetland ponies or those Yak-like Hairy Cows. You slow down the car to allow ducks to cross the road. By a county stream filled with swan one afternoon I saw a stoat. If you are wondering what a stoat is, it’s a small weasel. (I said: “Look! There’s a small weasel!!!” Frances responded: “No, that’s a stoat”. OK…)

Then there’s the towns themselves – sorry: “villages”. Thatched roofs abound. Tudor style everywhere. Sometimes you feel like Hansel. Or maybe even Gretel. In a village in Suffolk I found a shop actually selling rusty old steel animal traps “Any 2 for £2”. This same town also had Hobbit sized doors, and most of the houses where leaning over at such a severe angle we started to wonder if it was us that was crooked. Every village has a church which seems humble to the locals but which staggered me in terms of size and architectural splendour. We have nothing like it back home. Each village has several cosy country pubs, each with a roasting fireplace and a different warm beer, all seemingly built centuries ago when people where four foot tall. (Nowadays most English people are around five foot tall).

Frances’ home village – Meldreth – is just as charming. One month ago, we spent several hours raking up a thick carpet of brown leaves in her parents’ backyard. I think the volume of leaves we swept up that day would probably equate to the same that fell throughout the entire area of Brisbane last autumn. Anyway, as we are raking, Frances tells me to be careful I don’t skewer any hedgehogs. Hedgehogs!!! I’d kill to see one of those little walking pincushions, let alone skewer one with my rake.

Meldreth is a town where the locals (i.e.: Frances) can’t go strolling the streets without bumping into someone she knows – not that extraordinary I hear you say - but these people are on a HORSE DRAWN CARRIAGE!!! And they stop the horse for a chat. At the annual village fete there was a competition where I saw an old farmer type guy throwing potatoes at coconuts, and the guy running the stall was drumming up business by announcing “if you hit a coconut, you win it. If you miss the coconut, you still win it”. I scratched my head and passed – sounded too simple to me. But visiting the village is like regressing to a fairy tale, to another time. It’s great. The only other house in Meldreth apart from Frances’ family’s that I’ve been into is so old that it’s haunted. The most freaky thing about this haunted house is not that the ghost has been seen three or four different times throughout the last two decades, but the fact that the same family is still living there. But apparently, the ghost is friendly, Casper-style, and the house is very nice. It’s got a great fireplace we’ve already roasted chestnuts over. We will be spending Christmas night there I’m told. As Ray Parker Junior says: “I ain’t 'fraid of no ghost!”. Much…

Something in the shire not far from Frances’ village, which adds to the surreal, storybook feel of the area, is Woburn Safari Park. As I’ve said, Frances loves animals, and she determined to introduce me to what I expected was the local petting zoo: a few cows, some chickens, maybe an errant hedgehog. Well, I missed the hedgehog yet again, but my expectations were blown away. After an obligatory dip into some foot-and-mouth disease killing footpads, we entered a zoo that was of the open plain variety, and we were shortly driving metres away from lions, tigers, and bears. The last thing I expected in the English countryside. No fences, no ditches between us and the savage beasts, just a half a centimetre of grubby car window. Sometimes the window came down for a photo – but never for too long. The giraffes and the penguins were the friendliest. And the monkeys – we were permitted to take a walk through their enclosure. Before our walk, the keepers warned us to watch our pockets, because the little monkeys would try to steal whatever they could from them. What they didn’t warn us about was another bad habit of the little creatures, which a poor kid found out to his chagrin after he batted a monkey away from his pocket – said monkey promptly positioned himself on the fence, took aim, and peed all over the kid. Classic.

One of the larger villages in the shire around Frances’ home is called Cambridge. Actually, it’s a pretty damn big village this one. It’s also packed with beauty: alongside the River Cam are dozens of stunning old buildings and grounds. These are called colleges. In fact Cambridge itself is basically one big university. Unlike back home, where the universities take up an exclusive area within the city, here in Cambridge (and some other Pommy towns too I think), the university is the town. Colleges and libraries and faculties and residences are everywhere. It’s like the shopping malls and the CBD and the pubs were built as an afterthought to the main priority: prestigious education. Pretty cool concept. The college grounds are all pristine and the ornate archways of the halls and churches and bridges are aesthetically compatible. I can’t imagine what studying at Cambridge would be like. Very different from QUT I suspect.

Central Cambridge has little room for motorised traffic, so is filled with two alternatives: bicycles and boats. Basically every local cycles out of necessity, and almost every tourist boats (or punts, as it is called) out of fun. Bicycles are everywhere, zooming down the cobblestoned lanes, swishing across the stone bridges, leaning against the fence railings waiting for collection. Many of them don’t get locked up. Frances told me of a friend of hers who used to stagger from a pub of an evening, or a lecture of an afternoon, and, not owning a bike, steal the closest, ride it wherever she needed to go, and abandon it. I doubt anyone would have noticed, there are so many of the damn things everywhere!

Punting, on the other hand, is a little more relaxing. If you know how to do it that is. We did not. And we never really learned. There were seven of us – initially – in two different punts. Shortly before the end of our punting adventure, there were only five of us actually in the punts. On was splashing around in the River Cam, and one (myself) was rolling around on the riverbank in fits of laughter. Basically, punts are very shallow wooden boats. The person doing the punting (“punter” sounds like a good as name as any for them as there is a high degree of chance and luck in getting anywhere) stands on the back of the punt and pushes a long, thick, heavy pole into the water and then into the riverbed, pushing the boat forward, and somehow steering at the same time. Most of us on our boat kinda got the knack of it – going downstream that is. We relaxed and thought we looked cool and admired the view and scoffed at the toffs that had hired professional punters to do all the work for them. Then came the time we decided we’d better head back to the dock…hmm…and cockiness and confidence deserted us as we attempted to swing the bow back upstream. It was a hopeless task. For every ten feet of hard won punting we did in the right direction, the current swept us twenty feet back down the river. I completely lost the knack, if ever I had it. AJ merely succeeded in crashing our boat into another containing the same grumpy English family, twice!. Frances insisted she couldn’t punt properly because her heels were too high. Alex did OK, but our zigzag fashion increased our progress from backward to a mere crawl. It was hopeless, but it was so much fun. None of us stopped laughing at our incompetence. Eventually an executive decision was required and I jumped from boat to riverbank, anchor in hand, and began to tow the punt back upstream, like some ancient draughthorse. We made up the time in seconds.

Soon our friends boat hove into view, moving swiftly, full of cocky advice about how the plant the pole, which side to steer from, etc. We graciously accepted their advice. Then they went to overtake us. BAD MOVE. Our boat spun with the current, out of control, yet again (I’d relinquished the anchor). It ever so gently struck our buddies boat. Their boat wobbled a little. Richard, punting at the back, wavered in his balance a little, recovered. Then, somehow, lost it. Into the Cam he went.

This was around April, long after winter, but hey, this is England, so Richard shot back outta the Cam quicker than he went in. Drenched. His girlfriend Katherine dove straight through Adam’s standing legs towards him – impressive devotion we thought…but no, she was simply going to rescue her handbag from a similar drenching. Poor Richard spent the next hour in a warm pub with the girls’ coats tied around his waist, grimacing politely at stories about people dying from the rat-poisoned Cam water. About three hours after that, we finally docked our punt!

We decided not to try punting on our day trip to Oxford, although I think they have it there as well. In fact, Oxford has most things that Cambridge has: punts and professors, cycles and colleges. Hugely sought after University places. Some of Oxford’s buildings might be a little flashier than those of Cambridge, with a few more balustrades here, a couple of extra gargoyles there. But Cambridge wins due to the sheer small town intimacy factor. Maybe I am getting used to those cosy pubs after all.

One intimate experience Oxford gave us that Cambridge couldn’t match, was eating our dinner in a prison cell one night. Ever eager for a new experience, especially if it was cinematically related, I’d managed to score some free tickets to a special screening of “The Shawshank Redemption” in Oxford Prison. That movie – forever one of Dave’s Faves - has oodles of jailbird atmosphere when you watch it in the comfort of your own home. Watching it in a prison courtyard was better. Searchlights, screws patrolling the line, barbed wire, it all added to a great movie. Even our Disneyland-like introduction to the prison – herded in like new prisoners, yelled at by the guards and the warden was fun. Thankfully they drew the line at the strip search and delousing procedure.

Before I talk about the biggest English town of all, let me tell you about Brighton. I have been to this seaside resort a few times, and it’s always tack-orama, always fun, and always amazes me. What amazed me most of all on our trip down there this year was AJ’s stupidity. We were travelling along on a very fast train, with those seating booths next to the entry doors, and AJ decided “to see what would happen” by mindlessly flicking the lock on the door. Well, he found out what happened. The door was flung open by the velocity of the train. Another intellectual genius in our group decided to clamber/hang halfway out the open doorway to try and pull the door shut, forgetting about the oncoming trains that would have neatly severed…anyway, I pulled them back in. Someone pulled the emergency cord. The train stopped in a tunnel. A train guy came along, shut the door and abused us. We then resumed our course to Brighton.

It might seem that any Brighton experience would be boring after that, but nothing is boring in Brighton. There were thirteen of us in one dorm room. AJ was trying to sneak into every girl’s bed and share it with them. Frances and I were sneaking back and locking the door when no one else was around. And that was just our accommodation. Next up, the beach. Brighton has maybe the most popular beach in Britain. And get this: it’s not even a real beach! It’s pebbles – stones, rocks! People go swimming, and then lie on rocks!!! Actually I’ve never seen anyone swim there, but there is lots of rock-lying-on. (To be honest, I tried it, it’s not bad. Has a weird sorta massage value, plus the rocks don’t invade every corner of your body like sand. But it’s still not a real beach!!!)

Speaking of the beach, we ended up sitting around a fire on the beach one early morning right after we’d finished clubbing. And I do mean “right after” we finished, because the best clubs, bars and pubs in Brighton are right on the beach. Not on the other side of the vehicular esplanade and some footpaths and a set of stairs. I mean on the beach. The road runs above the tunnels the clubs are built into. You walk out the front door of the club, cross three metres of concrete, then hit pebbles…sorry, beach. It’s a bizarre place. I don’t remember a lot about the clubbing experience that night, except that Mr T. was there, and that I saw him later in the toilets applying skin makeup to his face to keep it looking dark. Weird…

The real fun in Brighton – the daytime, non-chemically dependent fun - is to be had on the pier: think Luna Park, think Coney Island. In fact, Brighton Pier is very un-British in it’s blatant commercial crass-tacky-funess. Every amusement ride/slot machine/rollercoaster under the sun. Or lack of sun. Best ride of all was the Ranger – still the same exhilarating ride as the Brisbane Ekka offers, but the view – when you are hanging upside down in a harness 100 ft in the air looking straight up the English coastline and trying not to hurl…unbeatable. It’s best that we ate after that ride, especially considering that we ate the Brighton specialities: fairy floss, pre-processed crab sticks, tiny cockles, and best of all, jugs of Pimms and Lemonade.

When I left Brighton after those few days, I felt like I’d survived some surreal, seaside circus. But, returning “home”, I thought to myself that visiting Brighton (like visiting Cambridge, or Paris, or Venice, or Edinburgh) was nothing really to be that proud of. What I was proud of, when I realised it, was that I was not only surviving, but living, and loving, in the biggest circus of all…

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LONDON

It’s so hard to know where to start on this place. For some reason, I’ve come back to live here three separate times. When you first touch down, it can be tough to get a toehold in London, and it seems like the whole city is conspiring against you. Arriving initially in the bitterest cold of the bitterest winter, completely broke, utterly homeless, and relatively friendless is not, in retrospect, the wisest move I’ve made in my life. The expense of London is insane. The filth in the air and in the tube stations gives you huge black gollies. The complete cold impersonality of the mass of people that stampede you onto streets, onto buses, onto tubes is crushing, literally and metaphorically. And yet, I keep, coming back…

Why? A lot of cynical antipodians suggest that we keep coming over here in a singular quest for only one thing: the almighty British pound. And yes, the exchange rate is unbelievable. But on the miniscule salaries I’ve earned, not really enough to compensate for the sacrifices I’ve made in quality of life. What sacrifices? Warm weather. Good customer service. Friendly locals. Common courtesy. Good value groceries. Space.

That’s a big one: space. My definition of my own personal space has been vastly reduced in this country, this city. Maybe it’s because I’ve come from the most sprawling country town in the world, to here, the complete opposite, a place that was started to be built when people were just above dwarf-size, and a place that is continuing to be built with the same tiny, cramped areas because space is at a premium, and people to fill that space, aren’t. I just don’t fit anywhere. Bus seats are the worst, but anywhere…I can’t stand up straight on the tube. I can’t sit down on the toilets of some pubs and shut the door. I feel like Gulliver in Lilleput, half the time. London is a claustrophobe’s worst nightmare. Even driving is claustrophobic. Get this, on half the streets in London, parking is allowed on both sides on the street (because, yes, space is at a premium). However, on most of these streets, whenever cars are parked on both sides (as they always are, vacant spaces last an average of about 0.326 milliseconds) there is only room between them for one car to get through!!! So basically, on most streets, if there are two cars heading towards each other in opposite directions, then eventually one of them is going to have to stop, reverse to the end, and give way to the other. But because usually there are more than two cars on any given street, this process if infinitely more complex and stressful than that. And here’s the thing: Londoners are used to it. They accept it. Albeit in a less than happy, horn-blaring, expletive-yelling way sometimes, but they only ever question the individuals, never the actual insanity of the process, of the road rules. It’s a very nutty place.

But that’s just one example of many. I’m not whinging mind you, that would make me a Pom. I’m just pointing out a few idiosyncrasies of my second home. But if I was accused of whinging – about the space deficiency, the miserable weather, the miserable people, the miserable crowds, here is what I would say: the good stuff outweighs the bad. Is has to, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. It doesn’t hurt that I know I’ll always have paradise to return to one day, in a year or two, but right now, even paradise seems boring. Because here’s the thing: London isn’t. Boring that is. It is the antithesis of boring, the anti-boring. It’s got more life, more vibrancy, more energy and vibe, than any other city I’ve visited, apart from the Big Apple.

I’ll be the first to admit I can’t keep up with London. It’s a folly to even try. It’s ridiculous to try and ride the wave of every sensory and cultural opportunity that is available to you in this town, you’ll never stay on top, it’s too big, a tidal wave. What you can do is let the wave wash over you and become drenched with a little portion of these opportunities. And you do become drenched. When you live in this city, you never really have to go looking for London. London comes to you.

I won’t continue with this crap-spinning stream-of-consciousness for too much longer. But let me list, briefly, just a few of the things that London has bought to me in 2001.

Swan Lake, performed at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, by the Royal Ballet Company. (I thought I’d start with the epitome of class and culture and work downwards). Swan Lake was a revelation to me. I went in with memories of Paul Hogan’s ballet skit featuring Nureyev dancing across the other dudes leotard lumps. I expected to exit bemused, instead I left awestruck. It was a weird form of entertainment to me. Shortly into the show, I realised that I had to give up my movie and theatre fed need for a cohesive narrative. It was only when I gave up trying to following the story, and completely surrendered myself to the experience, that I found myself mesmerised by the movement, hypnotised by the music, and totally sucked into both. Without even trying, I even followed the story in the final act, although I had to explain to Frances afterward that the ending of Swan Lake is not exactly a happy one. So yeah, I surprised myself and loved the ballet. Not as much as the old dear sitting in the row in front of us who was sobbing during the encore, completely overcome by the emotion of the show, but yes, I admit it, I did have a lump in my throat. If not my leotard…

Dropping a fairly large notch down the cultural scale, another West End stage show we enjoyed this year was Buddy, featuring an old friend from my work in a supporting role performing some showstopping numbers with more energy and style than Aretha Franklin. The rest of the show was pretty good, especially if you listened to Buddy Holly records all day long, because that was pretty much it, Buddy’s greatest hits. We left the theatre exhausted and dripping with sweat, not so much because Richie Valens had us swivelling our hips to LaBamba for the encore, but because the air-conditioning in the theatre was defunct, and that was the only night in the century that London was hit by a heatwave. Rave on…

My friend/starlet-in-the-making from the Buddy show was also the lead – a note-perfect Dorothy - in The Wiz, which is basically The Wizard of Oz with a black (sorry, “African-American”) spin on it. This show was all energy, all sass, and all fun, and was at least at entertaining as Buddy, but it was relegated to a classic but derelict old theatre in Hackney, not, shall we say, London’s scenic highpoint. It was almost as much of an adventure getting to the theatre as the show itself. The audience in The Wiz (not regular theatre-goers we assumed) could not have been more different than those in Swan Lake. The audience in the latter was so hushed and still and silent I never heard anyone dare breath, whereas most of the audience in the former – parents, children, and ignorami alike, acted just like they were in their own houses watching a video, wandering back and forth through the rows, munching on food loudly, commentating on the show, and showing a serious lack of respect and consideration that the performers weren’t actually on a non-interactive screen.

Somewhere over the rainbow, in multicultural West Central London, AJ and I attended the Notting Hill Carnival. Notting Hill is normally a cosmopolitan little area with the funkiest bars, bookshops, and blue doors in London. One weekend in July though, it gets turned into this raging street carnival, a barely controlled mass of people and floats and illicit substances that winds it’s way through the streets with hedonistic abandon, all to the thump of reggae, Caribbean, garage, dance, or head-exploding music. There is a unique balance between the fun the kids in the parade – heavily decorated with elaborate costumes – are having, and the fun that many of the heavily drugged-up onlookers are having. But hey, it works! It is a worry though when these young kids turn their traditional African-themed dance into obscene, bootilicious dance moves that even Channel 5 would be reluctant to screen.

Another event we attended with a heaving mass of several thousand sweaty people was a live concert on Clapham Common (a huge park) by Paul Oakenfeld – one of the DJ gurus of dance (or trance?? or take-a-chance??) music which is so-so big in the clubs over here. It might seem an unusual concept for a concert, but the star of this show never spoke a word to us, never even had a microphone. He just spun his little records on his turntables, played his psychedelic videos on a massive screen behind him, swirled a few laser lights in the air, and occasionally (to really get the crowd going) waved one hand in the air with his thumb and his pinkie finger crooked out. Even more unusually, this worked, the crowd responded as required – doing the same hand in the air move (both hands when really excited), thrashing their bodies about and nodding their heads rapidly in prayer to the great music God before them. Which is another weird thing – at these celebrity dance raves, members of the crowd don’t dance with their friends, everyone just turns towards the stage and dances with the one guy. It's a bizarre form of worship, but then again, most of the crowd are on drugs.

The event on Clapham Common was just a bigger, outdoor example of the massive club and drug culture in London. Every weekend, to let off steam, tens of thousands of young people part with hard earned pounds to descend into the depths of dingy, poorly ventilated, crushingly crowded dance clubs. The music and the strobe lights and the drugs cause them to scream and yell and thrash their bodies around in spastic contortions, which might look cool to them but trust me, when you are straight, these moves look absolutely hilarious. Most of them have partaken of a drug called ecstasy, which gives them a chilled-out buzz of boundless energy and an enormous feeling of contentment and goodwill towards everyone. Some are on other drugs.

This industry – for despite denials, the legal club and the illegal drug industry are mutually reliant on each other – is rife with irony. For starters, these clubbers spend the rest of their week getting stressed and uncomfortable being pressed up against hordes of people they don’t like on tubes, on the streets, at work - so you think on the weekend all they would be craving is a breath of fresh air, a solitary stroll in the country. But instead, no, they seek to intensify this feeling of claustrophobia, of sensory assault, and squeeze themselves into even more intolerable places/situations. And the only way they can deal with these intense weekend assaults on their senses is to take drugs, which ironically is a further – possibly hazardous – assault on their senses. Why do they do it? Well for starters, it’s a hell of lot more fun than a walk in the country…

The drug industry in London is illegal, yet blatantly obvious if you go looking for it. However there is another industry in London, this one legal, that to call blatantly obvious would be to call London populous. In a word: Alcohol. More chemically responsible for good times and bad times than illegal drugs a hundred times over, the flow of booze is so apparent in London that I would not be surprised if the Thames was a composed of it - a blend of Carling Lager, Guinness Extra Cold and Cranberry Breezers. As I said above, many young people use clubs and drugs to wind down from the pressures of the week, but almost all young, old and in-between people use the pub and pint culture a lot more frequently than that. In London, a pub-poured pint is generally closer to you than any other “necessity” – supermarket, tube station, movie cinema. Sometimes it seems that most houses come equipped their own pub next door. These pubs are tiny mind you, but they obviously do enough business. Then there are the larger pubs, and the speciality “wine bars” with polished pine floors and inflated prices. And of course the biggest pub-bars of all, in the West End, like the equivalent of cinema multiplexes, these watering holes have dozens of different themed bars scattered throughout. There's a pub with a tree in the middle in central London – Waxy O’Conners. Around the corner from this is a place, seven stories high, which goes on and on, unremarkably, it’s called “onAnon”. The final bar at the top of onAnon’s nine bars is decked out like a log cabin and looks directly out onto the flashing lights of Piccadilly Circus’s advertising billboards…and onto dozens of other bars.

I’ve long ago lost count of the number of pubs, bars and assorted other drinking establishments in London where I’ve enjoyed a quiet – or not so quiet – beverage in. One of them – where I started my first real date with Frances - was a quiet old place in Richmond on the bank of the river, which warned against parking cars near the forecourt, due to flooding (the next day we heard that several cars, the forecourt, and half the bar were filled with the Thames). Speaking of the river, another memorable drinking experience this year, was on the river, on a Kookaburra Queen-type paddle steamer, chugging from Putney to Greenwich and back. The event was a work function, with a Hawaiian dress-up theme, I showed my usual subtle restraint and decked my myself out head to toe in floral clothing or floral arrangements, except for the bushy face moustache, which made me look less Magnum P.I., more porn star. (“Buck Naked” maybe?). Anyway the highpoint of this river cruise, after the limbo and hula-hoop competitions, was dancing on the top deck on the boat, several different flavoured Bacardi Breezers in hand, as the roof of the paddle-steamer slowly rolled back to reveal (if not the stars, then) the stunning skyline of London. It’s not Manhattan, it’s not Sydney, but London always looks her best by night, from the river. We had St Paul’s Cathedral, the Millennium Wheel, Big Ben, and my fave, Tower Bridge. Awesome. But then, I had consumed a lot of breezers.

I wish I could confess to drunkenness on another night out with work colleagues, because “sober” and “kareoke” just don’t go hand in hand. The event was the leaving party for my dear boss Dallas and her sweet beau Mick, and they’d booked out a whole restaurant, which thankfully spared any other guests from our dismal kareoke renditions. Without my knowledge, AJ volunteered me for “I’m Too Sexy”, and I was in no way plastered enough to give the song the justice it deserved. Nevertheless, I was later told that my deep throated, tush-shakin’ rendition bought the house down, and gave the single a boost back up onto some of my friends number one lists. However later in the night, much more heavily lubricated by cocktails, AJ and I slurred our way through “You are so beautiful to me”, dedicated to Dallas. Simon and Garfunkel we weren’t. Simply dire we were.

I guess there have been many other booze-fuelled excursions this year. Funnily enough, one of them we got paid for. Back in February, before Adam and myself scored full time office jobs, we earned a little money to help keep us going with a few shifts as catering staff at one of AJ’s many workplaces – a huge convention centre called Planit 2000. Our first shift was a revelation as we discovered how to work “AJ-Style”. Apart from the management, AJ seemed to be the only staff member who spoke English with any degree of proficiency. So he usually whiled away the long, language-lonely hours by surreptitiously tucking into the vast supplies of booze he was (supposedly) in charge of. Before too long he’d introduced Adam and myself to the same procedure. And before we even served up first course, we were all happily sloshed.

We were serving a convention of German doctors on this particular night, which meant practising our bastardised German lingo on them. “Willcommen!!” and “Dunkaschern” were the order of the day. Here’s a brief rundown of how the night panned out. Entrée Course: We are out the back polishing off our first bottle of red wine and some strange blue liqueur. Main Course: Before we even serve the meal, Adam is laughing and gently head butting his fellow waiters. After serving, we decide he should not handle food anymore, just drinks, a bad move. Shortly thereafter, Adam, drinks tray very unsteady, spills a glass of wine all over a German Fraulein. Fails to find the German word for “whoops”. AJ not to be found as he is chasing girls around the back of the centre, Benny Hill style. Desert and Coffee Course: Adam spills an entire tray of milk jugs onto the same lady doctor he attacked earlier. AJ is not to be found to help with the damage as he is sleeping on a couch out the back. I find myself looking after both their sections, but still find time to steal some chocolate deserts, flirt with some young waitresses, and have a dance on the dance floor with my drinks tray when the band sings Huey Lewis’ “The Power of Love”. Adam spends the next few hours in the toilet, AJ constantly disappears by walking every girl he can to the tube, and I spend the remainder of the night assuring the management that Adam and AJ are “around somewhere”. And the weird thing is, AJ gets PAID to have that much fun every night!

A few paragraphs ago, when I started talking about London social/cultural events, I said I’d start with the epitome of class and culture and work downwards. Well, we are definitely at the bottom now. I can’t think of anything more removed on the class-o-meter from Swan Lake than The Church. How can a Church have no class or culture I hear you ask? Well…it’s not one of those Churches. “THE Church” that I refer to is an institution among homesick and alcoholic Aussies, Kiwis, and South Africans. There are, I guess, a few similarities to Swan Lake. There’s music. There’s a stage, and there are “performances”. The audience is often held spellbound by the stage show. But…it’s really quite different. Because unlike the grandeur of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, The Church is a huge, stinking, filthy warehouse in Kings Cross, with sawdust on the floor and drinks – cans of beer only - that are served and carried around in plastic bags tied to your belt. And people get very, very drunk. The music is classic Australiana: Barnesy, Farnesy, Men at Work. The comedian has a style and taste that makes Rodney Rude look like the Queen. Like Swan Lake, there is a dancer, but…she ain’t no Swan. She’s a stripper – AJ stills remembers her name, months afterwards (“Angel”). She is not in anyway subtle. She uses body lotion and audience members in her act. And then…after the stripper and comedian, it gets worse. I know, that doesn’t seem possible, yet…

Audience participation is encouraged in the debauchery on stage. During “boat races” (drinking games), handicaps are given to teams where the girls will not expose their breasts. Speaking of which: audience stripteases. Masses of both blokes and sheilas from the crowd clamber up on stage (separately thankfully), stripping down to their birthmarks and being judged by the audience. It was enough to turn my stomach. But, it didn’t. Because here’s the thing: I was drunk. That’s the thing about The Church, if you go in a group and go prepared to get plastered, then you are halfway towards having a good time. The other half is just shrugging your shoulders and saying “what the hell!” You admit that this behaviour is part of your home, and part of why you left your home to get away from that. You don’t really understand why so many of your countrymen – and women – are so emphatically embracing this feral side of themselves instead of looking to experience something different at this end of the world. But you don’t begrudge them that. So you drink up, tuck your moral fibre away till another day and have a damn good time. And wake up with a blinder of a headache.

As Homer Simpson says: “Mmm…Alcohol. The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

Or in the even simpler words of AJ Singh: “Alcohol is our friend…”

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I just thought of another London idiosyncrasy that might actually rank even lower of the class-crass scale than The Church. Page Three Girls. The media over here itself is actually pretty strange. Television reporting is very substandard. The funniest guy on TV is a brilliant impersonator whose satire of a jive-talking, hip-hop black-wannabe is incredibly broad but still too subtle for most youths not to take him on as their role model. Then there’s the newspapers : those of the larger broadsheet style are generally quite high quality, but each of them seems to have a definite political bias which they enjoy shoving down their readers throats. The cheap tabloids such as The Sun and The Mirror, are bizarrely, the biggest selling newspapers in the country. These are unashamedly right wing in their editorial views and content, and incredibly judgmental. And yet…on the third page (and often other pages) of these newspapers, are plastered huge photos of topless, dopey bimbos, basically a sort of legitimate, mild pornography. It’s not that I have a problem with it you understand, I just don’t really get it. This country is so stifled and conservative and repressed and staunchly conservative in many ways, yet Page Three Girls have been around for decades in this country (remember Samantha Fox), and they are treated with an incredible devotion and influence over here. Many of them want to crack it (so to speak) into the “legitimate” media, some of them end up as presenters or actresses. But the weirdest thing about these newspapers, and the Page Three girls, is that everyone pretends it’s so normal - and OK! - to wave naked pictures of girls on the tube around under everyone’s noses because they are in supposedly legitimate newspapers. It is not unusual, yet still quite bizarre, to have a Pommy bloke sitting on a tube with a huge photo of a topless girl on his lap, in full and complete view of the granny on his left and the school kid on his right. No one – in both the particular scene and general societal senses – bats an eye at this. Except maybe the school kid on the right. He loves it.

The tabloids aren’t the only form of “legalised porn” as those with delicate sensibilities call these publications. There are dozens of top-selling men’s magazines that skirt a fine line between the articles and the pictures. I guess guys feel less guilty buying these slightly more subtle porn mags. But why should they – when pure, filthy, hardcore, unashamed porn mags are available everywhere in the UK, every newsagent, corner store, and grocery store. But apparently video porn is hard to come by, strict censorship. And a lot of decades old classic horror movies are still censored here. It’s a strange country.

Sorry, two final rants on UK magazines. The recent lead story in a huge selling, trashy gossip magazine over here was entitled “Brooklyn Takes A Nap”, and featured a dozen huge photos of a cute overdressed little kid in a pushchair… yep, taking a nap. Can you think of anything more boring to read about (or, if you are like most of the UK population, look at pictures of)? Well, the reason this toddler gets so much coverage for such mundane activities, is that he is the spawn of probably the two most famous people in Britain – Dad is an international football player with a high voice and no fashion sense, and Mum used to be a Spice Girl. And when I say “famous”, I basically mean that the media has made them that way, by shoving stories like that one above down the throats of the British public and saying, “Look! This is the best that we can do. You will find these people interesting”. The sad thing is, it works.

Finally, one of the oldest, best selling weekly magazines over here is devoted to Television. This magazine has maybe 98% coverage on current TV programs and stars, and both terrestrial and cable stations. 2% of its coverage humbly mentions what’s on the radio this week. And yet, what is this publication called? “Radio Times”. Am I missing something? Maybe it just me that’s weird. But I don’t think so…

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OK, let me relax a little now and mention something nice that I love above London. Tourist stuff. Of which it seems the locals rarely venture to. But it’s their loss. This year I haven’t done much touristic sorta stuff combined with years past. But I’ve made my usual pilgrimages to Wimbledon (rained again, but we saw Hewitt grunt his way to winning a match); the Tate Modern (Dali’s Lobster Telephone is about as evocative and non-sensical as London itself); and of course through my favourite parks – Hyde, Green, St James’ – they are different colours every time I visit. Next to the convergence of two of these parks this year, I finally entered Buckingham Palace for the first time, with Renu and AJ. Actually, it took AJ a little longer to get through security, because our visit was in mid-September, and AJ (imagine him with identikit beard) does bear a slight resemblance to the most wanted man in the world. Queen Liz’s house was spectacular, but to be honest, not really to my taste. A little overdone, a touch too busy. Her interior decorator just didn’t know the meaning of the word restraint. Neither did the licensing department for the gift shop. Genuine Buckingham Palace umbrellas for £15.95. Jeez!!! In some countries you can buy your own Palace for that.

If Buckingham Palace was almost as disappointing on the inside as it is on the outside (a big, grey, dull mansion), it was still cool to get inside Royalty Central. However, I was confident that the next stop on my tour with Renu – the British Museum, would not disappoint. This place is the most spectacular setting for a Museum that I’ve yet been too – a vast, open, sky lit atrium, with the museum’s multi-shelf-tiered Reading Room dead centre. In the depths of the museum we pretended we were Indiana Jones as we discovered ancient Egyptian Sanskrit, the Rosetta Stone, Cleopatra’s mummy, and the oldest known remains of man. Speilberg-themed movies continued in our next building – the Natural History Museum – where the brilliant animatronic recreations of Great White Sharks, Velociraptors and a massive T-Rex put us straight into the Jaws of Jurassic Park. We calmed down next with a sombre visit to the vast interior of St Paul’s Cathedral, from the windswept gallery right at the top of the dome, to the burial tombs of Florence Nightingale and Horatio Nelson deep underground.

But the real London memories, for me, will in many ways, not be found in the tourist traps and packed pubs in the centre of town, but in the two other pastimes I seem to spend even more of time at – my working life, and my home life.

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WORK & HOME

Work this year for me has been great. I’ve grasped new opportunities, risen to new challenges, bettered myself as a human being. Translation: I lucked into a decent job, and despite countless ineptitudes, managed to keep it…

I work for a smallish company in West Kensington. My dear friend Melanie recommended me for a temp job, which has somehow lasted for ten months now, and whenever people ask me what the firm does, I just furrow the bit between my eye-brows and say “ahh, we develop and market a product that directs traffic on the internet” (while on the inside I’m thinking “huh?”). All I really can tell you about the company is that there are lots of expensive computers around. Half the staff dress even worse than me, sit at computer screens and plug their brains directly into technical data with more proficiency than R2-D2 (and most of them have R2-D2’s verbal communication skills too). The other half of the staff dress a lot better than me, try to sell, market, and finance the whole operation, and with a few exceptions, act like stressed-out arseholes whose entire be-all-and-end-all in life is a company designed only to make a few other really rich guys richer. I try not to think about that or it depresses me. My role in the company is to support all these people – not in a caring, sharing, “I’m here for you if you need me” kinda way – but more in a most-of-them-can’t-wipe-their-bottoms-so-that’s-my-job kinda way. My title is “Operations Assistant”, which is interesting, because my boss, the “Operations Manager” recently left, and there really is no-one left for me to assist. I do a lot of support things – ordering stuff, post, couriers, building and facilities stuff – but the most interesting part of my job is dealing with the constant haranguing from the rest of the staff when something goes wrong. Now, me being me, this happens a lot…

Actually it hasn’t happened too badly for awhile. But when I started, the sum total of my on-the-job training was “there’s your desk, there’s you PC, you turn it on here”. Otherwise - zip, zero, nil, nada training. Sort of a “you work it out for yourself” approach. Which was cool, in the end actually, cause it made me learn fast. But I only learned fast by learning from my mistakes. And, understandably, this company doesn’t like mistakes. Especially big ones. My biggest was probably the copy paper fiasco. The fiasco was - I didn’t order enough. By Wednesday afternoon, all the copy paper was gone, and every single sales and marketing person had come down to my office in tears, sobbing about some huge presentations that were due yesterday, and convinced that I must have had a box hidden away somewhere for emergencies. Considering this occurred during my first week, there might have been some paper hidden somewhere, but I could barely find my desk, let alone a hidden stash. Needless to say, after that I ordered enough paper supplies for a year and squirreled bundles of it all around the company for the next rainy day. If only I could remember where I put it…

One of my most interesting duties at work is supervising the receptionist (and just one of the reasons this is interesting is that the receptionist gets paid a lot more than me. I don’t understand this, but then, they don’t pay me to understand it, so…). All the receptionists we’ve had have been quite different. The first lady we had was an incredible ball of joyous energy and soul-singing who never sat down, and kept ping-ponging back and forth behind the reception desk like a caged tiger. Not surprisingly, out soulless company couldn’t reign in her energy, and a few months after she left she was performing magnificent solo numbers on stage in a sold-out West End theatre show. The next receptionist we had was less West End theatre graduate, more Carry On reject – a busty sixty year old with a serious need to mentally undress every male in a ten-metre radius. She had a constant patter of sexual innuendo, a never-ending series of cleavage-revealing tops, and an ability to sulk that would put any five-year-old to shame. She sulked her way right outta the job, leaving the way clear for contestant number three, a charming young lady from South Africa. Unfortunately, her alarm clock is still set on South African time, which means if she shows up before morning tea we consider ourselves lucky. But her incomparable sweetness lets her get away with murder. She came to us straight from a friendly little town in South Africa, and couldn’t understand why her constant openness and friendliness and desire to chat to everyone were often misconstrued by male staff and visitors as maybe a touch more - so that for her first few months at work the queue of panting males at the reception desk was so long we had to introduce a “take a number” system.

So, as for any job, my friends at work make going to work easier. As for the work itself, well, it fills my days – and sometimes my nights – in that it is challenging, and enjoyable. Challenging not so much in the individual tasks (most of which a well trained monkey could complete), but challenging in the pressure to prioritise things so I can get done in a week what the monkey might take a month to do. This constant juggling act to keep people from yelling at me is – believe it or not – enjoyable. It is rarely boring. Most importantly, it keeps me off the streets.

As does my home.

As I said earlier, my home life in 2001 has been less transitory than before, but
I’ve still found time to move from home to home seven or eight times in the past ten months. And the truth is – while it’s nice to settle down proper for a while – I have found it easier than ever to live out of just one backpack this year. It’s amazing what you can do when you need to. When I moved out of Leigh Gardens in April, I had my backpack on my back (where else), and I was pushing a supermarket trolley stuffed with my other possessions (spare clothes/spare stuff). I had categorised the trolley possessions (which went into storage at a nearby friend’s) as “not immediately essential”, and assumed I could live without them for a month at the most. Nine months later, I retrieved them, and almost wished I hadn’t. I’d grown to enjoy having only one bag full of “stuff” to worry about.

I think I am becoming less about “stuff” the older I become. I’ve been looking for a leather/suede jacket since I landed in London, but I’m a lot less obsessed with the idea now. I actually still have my huge puffy-jacket, which I purchased three years ago in New York. I have a lot of fondness for this coat, not because it’s super-stylish or anything like that, but because we’ve been through so much together – puffy-coat has been there for me and helped me survive a few bitter winters. I love puffy-coat because he’s warm and comfortable and is the only item of clothing in the world that might actually be too large for me. But, I’ve had to make an admission to myself recently – Puffy is dying. When I first bought Puffy three years ago and walked the streets of Manhattan, it was like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters had returned for a belated sequel. The coat was vast. When I put the coat on I blocked out the sun. Not anymore. Puffy has a chest logo that says “FIRST DOWN”. But Puffy has abandoned so many feathers on his travels that he is surely onto his last down now. He’s a shadow of his former self. Over the winters, small but ever-enlarging holes have formed in the plastic on Puffy’s shell, and wherever we go, we leave a huge trail of feathers behind us. When I get off a bus – feathers. When I leave a shop – feathers. I’m sure a lot of people think I am carrying in my coat a barnyard fowl with a serious dandruff problem. Puffy is deflating by the day. He’s about a third the size he was in winter 1998. I think I’ll have to put him down after this winter. But that’s OK. Because in his way, Puffy already lives on all over London. Maybe the winds have even whipped him across the world. So if an errant feather ever blows into your mouth…think of Puffy. And thank him for keeping me warm.

Because Puffy is so huge (even now), and because he has been such a constant source of warmth and refuge in my winters over here, he has actually seemed like more of a home to me than many of the places I’ve actually paid rent at in London. But permit me if I may now to extrapolate the vices and virtues of each of the homes that I’ve had since February this year. These homes exist in districts laid out around the centre of London. (They don’t call them suburbs, and to be honest, after three years or so I don’t know exactly what these regions are known by). But they each have their own distinct flavour and feel, and, considering I’ve lived in almost all of them in my three years over here, I’ve tasted those flavours and copped those feels. Here’s this years:

Kensal Rise (NW): My prior home for many months from December 99 till October 2000, I returned there early this year. I’ve spoken at length before about my favourite London home and I can’t say enough about the house, so I won’t (except that one of my friends Lisa thought the house was trying to eat her this year during a party, the place was that cool). But the area the house stands in itself…it was fine. A little, dull, a little dreary, maybe a little poor compared to some, but that usually means a bit cheaper. Semi-suburban style family residences, and very down to earth. I saw a sign stapled to a tree one day in Kensal, scrawled in kids’ colourful crayon, asking if anyone had seen their “lost rabbit”. I couldn’t help them, but I had my suspicions, especially when I saw a fox lurking around some nearby streets late one night. Another night, after a brilliantly thick snowfall in February, AJ and I were walking home and spied a body – yep – a human body, sprawled in the snow on the footpath, one hand grasping a fence behind the figure’s head. AJ refused to believe it was actually a person – why would you? – he kept insisting it must be a mannequin – that is until the guy moved when we yelled at him. The guy was so wasted that we could get neither intelligible speech nor co-ordinated movement from him, so we called the ambulance, not wanting to leave him to the elements. Our good samaritaness extended only so far, and we didn’t wait for the ambulance, but instead scurried home to our warm home. The ambulance service kept calling us back though, to tell us firstly that we’d given them the wrong address to pick our snowman up from, and shortly thereafter, when they had the correct address, that he’d disappeared. Maybe he melted…

Fulham (SW): I stayed a while with Frances in her gorgeous, tiny flat in Fulham, one of the most prestigious postcodes in London. For prestigious, read: very expensive, very pretentious, and very nice. Lots of restaurants, cafes, and overpriced delis (i.e.: supermarkets). The streets were very crowded and the sidewalks were very narrow, which made is quite difficult to navigate the high volume of dog faeces on the pavements – one of Fulham’s unique specialities. The accents in Fulham were also unique, of the sort of “ra, ra…really darrrling” Ab Fab type. The first time I went to a dinner party at Frances’ place, with all her (very lovely) English friends, it was extremely intimidating – I felt like I was surrounded by the cast of “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, and there I was: daggy Dave from the colonies. But they were all extremely gracious.

Finsbury Park (NE): I stayed up this way only a week or two, and it was quite urban, quite inner city. I dossed in room surrounded by black vinyl and shiny knobs, but it’s not was you are thinking – the guy whose room I borrowed was a DJ, and the vinyl were his records, and the shiny knobs on his turntable. The flat I stayed in was situated over a hairdresser that specialised in hair braids. There weren’t that many white faces on that block in Finsbury Park.

Brixton (S): Same with the white faces in Brixton. I never really noticed it before, because Kensal Rise was quite a multicultural area, but shifting living abodes so rapidly this year between Fulham and Finsbury and Brixton, I realised that London – if not a racist town – is very much a racially segregated one. I started noticing things: on the District Line tube through Fulham towards the South West London hoods, nary a black face was to be seen. I can’t remember seeing one black person sitting in a café or dodging dog shit on the streets of Fulham. On the trains towards Brixton, there was maybe an equal proportion or white, black and brown faces, but within minutes of the train docking, all the white faces seemed to have disappeared, dashed away into the safety or homes and pubs. The only white face I saw regularly on the streets of Brixton belonged to the tramp who slept on a lice-ridden couch near the train station, surrounded by beer cans. Otherwise on the streets of Brixton there were just angry black faces, scowling at you if you dared to make eye contact. Not happy people. This was just part of Brixton, OK – many other areas are rich into cultural and ethic diversity. Just not ours. We were house-sitting a truly awesomely comfortable flat, the only discomforting thing was the 100 metre dash to get there from the train station. I’m exaggerating, of course. A bit. When AJ and I told friends we were house-sitting for a few months in Brixton, the response was usually something like “ohh, you’ll be alright, as long as you’re not on Coldharbour Lane”. Guess what? We were on Coldharbour Lane, but thankfully, I believe, at the far end from where most of the action on this notorious drug haven took place. If that were the case though, I shudder to think what Coldharbour Central was like. On the brief walk between the flat and the train station, there was one hash den out the back of a mini-cab office, one crack den out the back of a hairdresser, and countless street traders hustling for business. The hairdresser – which seemed to be open all hours - was the most hilarious. Surprisingly, it took AJ and I a few days to work out what the hell was going on. We’d walk past this humble hairdresser and, on the street corner outside, dodge around all these super immaculate convertible cars, with their boom-boxes blaring and their drivers leaning on them, presumably to stop from falling over from the weight of all the gold they were wearing around their necks, and on their faces, their knuckles. Inside the shop there just seemed to be normally hairdressing going on – until we looked a little closer. Guys with hats, sitting in the chairs getting their haircuts. I saw a completely bald guy there one day getting a trim!!! What a cover. We later found out that the hairdresser was raided by police once a month, but then open for business as usual the next day. That’s Brixton.

Chiswick (W): Chiswick contains Frances’ second flat this year, just as comfortable and cosy as the last. The area is not as snobby as Fulham, but still packed with great cafes, restaurants, and more importantly: bookstores. It’s probably just as expensive as Fulham, but not as prestigious, so lacks the self-consciousness and the put-on accents. Vitality, the streets are much wider and largely free of doggy decoration. And like Brixton it has an unusual hairdressing salon, but for different reasons - Chiswick’s is proudly emblazoned with a sign that reads “George Lucas Salon”. I haven’t checked out the small print near the door yet, but I’m guessing it says “Wookies Welcome. Beards a Speciality”.

West Kensington (W): My current home. If I’d thought about it I would have been much too scared to sign the lease. It’s much nicer than we deserve, and much more expensive than we can afford. But…what’s six months, if not half a year. The area is really kinda similar to Chiswick above, but West Ken is much more central, bordering closely to Earls Court, High Street Kensington, Notting Hill, so it has more of a busy, inner-city, cosmopolitan feel to it. Our flat has everything we need to be comfy, plus a bit more. The room I share with AJ isn’t that big, but we don’t need much. Just a wall to Blu-Tak up our huge map of Europe. A bed for me to dream in. And a bed for AJ to crawl into and snore the night away after he staggers in and recites his infatuation for the latest girl of the moment. Actually, AJ’s snoring serves an interesting purpose apart from helping Boots (the chemist) to do a roaring trade in earplugs – it helps to locate him in bed. Otherwise you’d never be able to tell. Because there’s not much to AJ, he’s like a head on a stick. A living, breathing Dickie Knee. So when he gets into bed, he just kind of curls up and disappears into it, like the doona is Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak. So the snoring is a good thing. It lets me know he’s there. And AJ being there is a good thing. Because he’s my mate.

No one I known can lighten a heavy mood or moment better than AJ, but even he gets a little freaked out when he hears some of the stories that I’m about to share with you. Not stories though: real incidents. To give you an idea about the darker side of London, I’m gonna connect - to the places I’ve listed above as my residences - a few real life happenings (I was gonna say news stories, but a lot of this stuff happens so frequently it doesn’t make the news):

Kensal Rise: A few months ago, a guy walked into a quiet bar and shot eight guys. Eight. None killed, miraculously, but eight shot.

Fulham: Last year a famous news presenter was executed gangland-style one block from Frances’ old flat.

Brixton: Too many to choose from really, but three biggies spring to mind. Two years ago, a nail bomb exploded, maiming dozens. Last year, a black youth was shot dead by police because the cigarette lighter he was wielding looked like a gun. This year, race rioting. Not the picnic spot of London.

Chiswick: Just this weekend past, we are sitting in Frances’ flat, and look out the window to see four police vans pull up into the forecourt of the large block of flats. Two dozen police pile out of the vans, suit up into riot gear, and joke among themselves (e.g.: “My girlfriend sent me a text message asking me if I would be home for dinner, I sent one back saying after this, I don’t know”. Nervous chuckle of bravado). We watch through our window as the cops mill around aimlessly, then loosely assemble in front of a Nikko-drawn map of one flat’s floor plan, then grab shields, armour and weapons and file into the building to the third floor, just above Frances place. Lots of yelling as they battering ram down the flat door (Number 37), storm inside, and apparently disarm – and disable – a tenant of the flat who has supposedly gone mad with a knife. The cops return to the parking lot, shuck their armour and, adrenaline pumping, congratulate each other on their courage. A forensic guy cleans blood of their uniforms, armour, and shields. The knife in question is bought out in a plastic tube. The nutcase in question is bought out on an ambulance gurney, and whisked away from society. Life in the quiet, posh, eminently respectable borough of Chiswick returns to normal. Except in number 37. (Something like this would have been front-page news in Brisbane. Here – nothing.)

West Kensington: One of our Aussie mates from the flat upstairs recently investigated an altercation on our street, and found a gang hassling one poor bloke with a knife. He grabbed a knife out of his own kitchen and went to defend the lone guy from the bullies. The cops mercifully arrived, but the gang member with the knife got away, and the Aussie chap who went to the rescue got in big trouble from the police for carrying the knife on the street.

Hmm…what can I say? It’s a great town, but sometimes it’s a scary one. I know that Rudy Guliani has retired from New York now, but couldn’t he just come over and do some independent consulting?

(*Mental note: Delete above section from Mum’s copy before sending to her)

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2001-A MOVIE ODYSSEY

OK, I think it’s time to lighten the mood a little, and what better to do this than a trip to the movies? I couldn’t let a review of my year go by with this one obsession going by unmentioned. You might have even noticed that the title of this section – and of my letter/story/epic itself, alludes to that classic 1968 flick: 2001: A Space Odyssey. Maybe the experience of reading this piece has been for many of you similar to that of watching that film: endlessly long, repetitively monotonous, and quizzically pointless. Or maybe, like the movie, this essay is best experienced under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. But hopefully not. Anyway, I’m almost done. Movies first though.

Since this time last year, I’ve seen some classics, I’ve seen some crap, and I’ve seen some in-between. Here’s Dave’s Faves:

1. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Epic, mythic, breathtaking, heartrending, thrilling. Gives one hope that movies are finally getting better. “Lower your head and ask for mercy…”)
2. The Lord of the Rings (As above. “Let’s hunt some Orc!”)
3. Shrek (Almost beats The Princess Bride as the smartest, stupidest post-modern fairytale, ever. “I’m not gonna eat ya!”)
4. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Proof that Hollywood can respect the wishes of millions of kids (of all ages) by adapting faithfully, and adding their own unique magic to the written word. “Wicked!”)
5. Moulin Rouge (Like the wildest, craziest, most dream you’ve ever had – and wished it were real. A cinematic sensory intoxication. “Come what may…”)
6. Traffic (So intimate, so real, it hurts, but so entertainingly transfixing you can’t look away)
7. Amelie (A modern fairytale of pure pleasure that shows foreign language films don’t have to be deep, grey and miserable)
8. The Dish (Humble, modest, charming, perfect. Like most Aussies really…)
9. Memento (What a novel idea! A movie you have to think during to enjoy. Well worth the mental machinations)
10. Jurassic Park 3 (OK, the ending was crap. But for sheer, adrenaline pumping thrills, this stomps all over The Lost World and munches away the sentiment of the original)

And the worst film I’ve seen for years: Scary Movie 2. I’d ask for your sympathy, but I saw the original and still went to the sequel. “Scary” doesn’t even begin to describe how dire it is.

Here’s a few of my patented Dave Movie Awards:

BEST ESCAPE FROM BEWITCHED CASTLE WITH CHASING CREEPY MAGICAL STUFF: tie between Shrek and The Lord of the Rings

BEST FIGHT WITH CG CAVE TROLL: The Troll in The Lord of the Rings would eat the big grump in Harry Potter for breakfast. No contest.

BEST WIZARD: Sorry Harry. Gandalf ain’t no punk school kid. He’s playing in the big leagues.

BEST FLYING WIZARD: But here Harry comes into his own. Even Gandalf on an eagle can’t beat the Quidditch game in Harry Potter. I want a broomstick for Christmas now.

BEST USE OF A BOOK AS TOILET PAPER IN A PRE-CREDIT SEQUENCE: Shrek

BEST BLOKE FIGHT: Hugh Grant and Colin Firth bitch-slapping each other in Bridget Jones’s Diary. The most realistically hilarious tussle we’ve seen on screen in ages.

BEST CHICK FIGHT: Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Zhi in the most intense swordplay ever. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Choreographed with more grace and perfection than Astaire and Rogers.

RUNNER UP FOR BEST CHICK FIGHT: most of Charlie’s Angels. For high-kicking exuberance, never bettered.

MOST IMAGINATIVE USE OF AN ELEPHANT IN PARIS: Nicole Kidman’s boudoir above the Moulin Rouge

MOST GRATUTIOUS BREAST SHOT BUT-THANK-GOD-FOR-GRATUTIOUS-BREAST-SHOTS: Halle’s Berries, in Swordfish. She reveals them in a sun-tanning scene (think about it: a black person, sun-tanning???…) about half way through the otherwise average flick. AJ and I looked at each other and said, “OK, we can go now…”

SEXIEST SUPERSTAR IN A CRAP MOVIE: Angelina Jolie and her lips as the bra-enhanced Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. A comic fantasy come to life. She looked nothing like that when I served her in the bookstore last year.

SEXIEST FEMME FATALE IN A GREAT MOVIE: Liv Tyler and her lips as the sweet temptress of doom, One Night at McCools

WEIRDEST TRANSISTION FROM WHOLESOME SIT-COM STARDOM TO LEATHER CLAD FAUX-BUGGERY SCENE: Paul Reiser, from Mad About You to One Night at McCools. With John Goodman, also an ex-sit-com family man, providing the faux-buggery.

BEST HAIR: Michael Douglas with a quiff to put mine to shame, in One Night at McCools. (OK, it’s a weird movie!)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR WHEN THE ACTOR IS NOT HUMAN BUT ACTUALLY SPORTING EQUIPMENT: “Wilson” the volleyball acts Tom Hanks off the screen in Castaway. The viewer almost wishes Tom was lost at sea (again) at the end and Wilson returned to society – then we wouldn’t have had to endure a Helen Hunt reunion but simply a nostalgic return to the sporting goods store.

WORST NEW JURASSIC PARK DINOSAUR: The Spinosaurus. Nothing beats the T-Rex. JP3

BEST NEW JURASSIC PARK DINOSAUR: The flying Pteranodons. These guys come close though. Who wants to be a baby pteranodons lunch? JP3

BEST LONDON BUS SCENE: Brendan Fraser fighting off an army of Mummies as they attack a red double-decker bus all the way from the British Museum to the Tower Bridge. Sometimes it is that tough to get a seat on public transport in London. The Mummy Returns.

BEST EXAMPLE THAT CHARLES DARWIN’S EVOLUTION OF THE SPECIES THEORY IS ACTUALLY REVERSED WHEN IT COMES TO ACTING ABILITY: Mark Wahlberg being out-acted by primates – real and made up – in Planet of the Apes

BEST GARDEN-GNOME-TRAVELLING-THE-WORLD-POSTCARD IDEA ON FILM: Amelie

BEST MARKETING CAMPAIGN: Harry Potter (also a good example of a fantastic movie that was almost over-marketed, over-hyped to it’s own detriment)

BEST MATCH UP BETWEEN A MOVIE AND A THE MARKETING CAMPAIGN THAT COULD NOT REALLY HYPE THE MOVIE ENOUGH: The Lord of the Rings. Finally, a movie that was worthy.

BEST EXAMPLE OF OVER-MARKETING, OVER-HYPING AN AVERAGE OR CRAP MOVIE WHEN THERE’S NOTHING REALLY THAT SUBSTANITAL TO HYPE: tie between Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and the Planet of the Apes “re-imagining”

BEST PROMOTION FOR A PRISTINE, PERFECT PARIS THAT DOESN’T EXIST, BUT SHOULD: Amelie

BEST PROMOTION FOR CHINA’S TOURISM IN DECADES: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

BEST PROMOTION FOR NEW ZEALAND’S TOURISM, EVER: The Lord of the Rings

WORST PROMOTION FOR HAWAII’S TOURISM IN 60 YEARS: Pearl Harbour

FUNNIEST BRAIN EATING SCENE: Anthony Hopkins samples Ray Liotta’s frontal lobe while Ray looks on in Hannibal. I still can’t work out if it’s supposed to be scary, gross, or hilarious, but I’m opting for the latter two.

BEST WEAPON: OK , the nominees include:

Aragorn’s Sword, Frodo’s Ring, Legolas’s bow and arrow, Gimli’s axe (The Lord of the Rings), Amelie’s eyes (Amelie), Bridget’s huge panties (Bridget Jones’s Diary), Tom’s ice-skate (Castaway), Hannibal’s sauté pan (Hannibal), Harry’s wand (Harry Potter), Lara’s bra (Tomb Raider), Halle’s boobs (Swordfish), Guy Pearce’s tattoos (Memento), Shrek’s bad breath (Shrek),

but the winner is,

the magnificent Green Destiny Sword in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The only weapon the comes close to Darth Vader’s lightsabre for pure iconic power.

As you can see by my choices above, many of the movies I like tend towards fantasy, tend towards happy endings. They might seem childish and simple, but I love moral fables – especially ones like Crouching Tiger and Lord of the Rings. As with Star Wars, these movies are incredibly well produced, but their power lies not so much in the production values but in the values of story, the values of character. These films bring a sharp definition to things that aren’t exactly that clear in our own contemporary lives, or in the greater world. Beneath the flash and fire of the spectacular settings and the incredible action, they have a heart that is incredibly relevant to the journeys that we are taking ourselves every day, the way we see ourselves, the way we see the world. Stuff like friendship and loyalty is hugely important to these fables, as it is to us. Stuff like taking responsibility not only for ourselves, but for the world we live in, and the importance of taking steps to protect the good things in our life when these are threatened. I’m not saying I understand the depth and influence these tales of predominant entertainment have on out inner psyches. I’m just saving that it’s a good thing to see art reflect life, and see the values of courage and bravery and responsibility and hope up there on the big screen. If we see these movies and recognise ourselves up there, and aspire – even subconsciously – to ideals that are good and right, that’s gotta be a good thing. Especially with the world the way it is right now…

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THE EVENTS OF…

In all the media news that I read or hear these days, the terrorist atrocities that occurred this year in the United States are invariably referred to as “The Events of September 11”. No one needs to be more specific about what those events where. No one probably wants them to be more specific. Because everyone understands. The events of September 11 need to be constantly referred to, because they have directly affected the world we are living in right now, and the news headlines everyday. But beyond the date, nothing more is necessary. September 11th, 2001 is a date burned in the minds of many people in the world. I know it is burned into mine.

What happened that day was the biggest news event of my lifetime. Bigger than the death of Princess Di – which affected a lot of people on a personal level, but not the world on a global one. Bigger than even man landing on the moon, I would venture to say. I was only one year old at that time, but from what I understand people had been expecting it for weeks, and it was not a shock. Besides, news wasn’t the way then as it is now – immediate, all-encompassing, bombarding.

These events are all of the variety where you remember where you were when you heard the news. You remember how you found out, who told you. You remember your initial reaction – denial - “you’re joking”. When the media validates the news you enter shock: “gotta be some hoax right”. Then you think “maybe it’s true”. You run through fascination and a desire to find out everything you can to do with the incident. Even a sort of macabre guilty excitement – an acknowledgement that you are there/here to see the news event of the century, combined with an incredible relief that you and yours aren’t directly affected.

But here’s the thing: with September 11, we all were directly affected and continue to be. And, to be honest, I’m still in shock. A little part of me is still in denial actually. For weeks afterwards I would wake up thinking that the whole thing was just some nightmare, then I’d turn on the TV and…

All those disaster movies didn’t prepare us for this. This was real. I can sit here comfortably at my PC trying to analyse and understand this incident, but these are just words, they aren’t really real. What happened that day was indelibly, indefinitely real.

But – three and a half months later - I still struggle to get my head around it.

I know a lot has been written or spoken by others over the past few months, trying to put September 11th into perspective. Saying that yes, is way a horrible tragedy, yes several thousand people died in terrible circumstances, but please compare that to the plights of the thousands of people dying of terrible circumstances in third world countries and barely reported wars every week in the modern world. Yes, they have a point. Yes it would be great if the world was changing to acknowledge all this global suffering in non-western countries. Yes I hope that happens, but in the short term, I doubt it will.

But this comparative point – while bringing things into perspective - has not made September 11 any easier for me to deal with. I was very busy at work when it happened, and I found I barely had time to scratch the surface of the avalanche of news that flooded from the media those first two weeks. I put papers aside intending to read them later. I welled up with tears when I watched the news reports intending to cry properly for all those poor people later. On September 18th, a week after it happened, I took a day off work to do this. I felt overwhelmed and stifled. I’d been too busy with life to take in the enormity of what happened, too busy to care, to think, to cry. But my day off work didn’t help much. I read a lot, watched a lot of news. I understood the facts a lot better. But I still couldn’t cry. It was just too much to absorb.

I think what I was dealing with, in some sort of weird Dave way, was grief. A similar grief process to that you go through when you lose a loved one. Shock, denial, an inability to accept, to move on. I hadn’t lost a loved one, but I was grieving for something else. Something maybe not as intimately personal, but something gravely global, infinitely international. I was grieving, I think, for the world.

Or for something the world had lost – security. Not that the world ever really had this, but my world, like many other westerner’s, always seemed incredibly secure. My path might have been in doubt, but the world beneath my feet had seemed rock solid. No more. If those two great towers could crash to the ground so easily, nothing in the world would seem secure any longer.

Not long ago, I stood at the top at one of those towers, several times, on several different visits to New York, my favourite city in the world. The observation deck at the top of the south tower is – sorry, was – like the top of the world. Standing at the peak, looking across the vast bastion of freedom and liberty, I felt incredible secure, incredibly lucky, incredibly free. The wind was strong, but beneath my feet the tower felt as firm and solid as the ground below. This tower – both towers – where not flimsy structures. They were the strongest, sturdiest buildings on earth. Standing atop them, atop the world, back in November 1998 I thought they were as solid and permanent as the sun beating down on me, on them.

Now, they are gone. I still can’t believe it.

When those planes hit those buildings on September 11th, New York rocked. So did the world. When the last plume of dust had settled, the world knew - nothing was secure. If those beautiful buildings could be reduced to rubble within an hour, anything in our lives could. Anyone…

I haven’t grieved for the poor people who lost their lives that day as much as I have grieved for the world. That may sound harsh, but I haven’t been able to. Maybe it’s because I don’t know them any better than I know the thousands of third-world peoples who perish if in different, unreported circumstances each week, as I mentioned above. I can’t grieve for everyone. It’s a big world. Or maybe it’s because I’m still in shock.

I don’t personally know anyone who died on September 11th, but I do know several friends of friends, or colleagues of acquaintances, who did lose their lives. I could have known someone though. The odds were not that long. And there’s the thing, the point that has made this news resonate so deeply across the western world, and made it, more than any other horrific tragedy in memory, hit home so powerfully.

It could have been us. I could have been me on that building. It could have been you.

It could have happened to any of us. Unlike other shocking news stories from last century, this could have happened to me. There’s not much chance that I was going to be the first man on the moon, or an assassinated President, a martyred Princess. But there was a much greater likelihood that I, you, our friends, could have been one of the anonymous thousands on that September morning.

Other horrific events, tragedies, accidents, that have been reported around the world affect so few of us directly, because they are on the other side of the world, or somewhere we’ve never heard of, or maybe passed through once, long ago.

But the World Trade Centre was visited by me. It was visited by dozens of my friends and family. Dozens more of my friends have been inside for work. It is –sorry was – in many ways, the centre of the western world. Those that hadn’t ascended its heights knew someone that had, or knew someone that planned to make that pilgrimage. It was, to use a metaphor, sort of a global home. And by choosing this one place to strike, these gutless terrorists had – by accident or design – come upon a perfect strategy for making these people, making me, feel insecure, feel confused. Because with one strike, they had in effect, struck them, struck us all, in our home.

These thoughts that I’m attempting to express now all came to me that night in the hospital which I introduced this essay with. That night I was alone, awake, and wired for contemplation. For this first time since September 11th, I managed to organise my thoughts into a sort of cohesive form, and deal with the denial, work through the shock, acknowledge my feelings of insecurity with the world. Once I’d done this, I felt better. Still insecure yes, but more confident that I knew why at last.

I began to feel other things too, maybe even a little strength and resistance towards my insecurity. I realised that the death of several thousand innocent people was not the terrorists primary objective that day, but instead the death of security. They wanted to kill the western world’s feeling of security, of solidarity. They wanted to create fear, panic, doubt, hate. In other words they wanted us to become them.

I realised that my month long, unidentified feelings of confusion and insecurity were exactly what they hoped for. I resolved to fight these feelings whenever they arose. I resolved never to give into fear, or hatred. I resolved to try and get my mind around what was happening in the world, not just the immediate news, but all global affairs, and (for the first time in my carefree, careless life) take a continuing interest in it, and an acknowledgement that I was a part of what happened, a part of the world. I even got a faint stirring of what might have been “responsibility”, but as this was something I had never experienced before I decided to wait till another night, with possibly stronger medication, before I investigated further.

Also that night I started to think about the good that may have arisen from the ashes of that terrible catastrophe. I thought about the USA, and the fact that up until September, they had been the most insular, inward-looking people in the world. They have always been disinclined to venture past their our borders, study other cultures and histories, and admit that they are only a part of the world, not the only country in it. I’ve been to the United States a few times, and there are a lot of great things about their country – patriotism and pride being one of them (OK it’s sickening sometimes, but they’ve got a lot to be proud of). One of the not so great things though is their complete lack of global awareness, their inability to acknowledge the rest of the world and their country's place in it. International reporting in US media was minimal when I visited. Most of the locals I met had never left the country and never intended to. Many could name all the US states but could not tell you if London was capital of England or England the capital of London.

Since September 11th, this might, out of necessity, change. If the people of the US, and – by extension, it’s retard President – realise that they can’t afford to be so insular, and so dismissive of world affairs without those world affairs coming to them, then maybe they will start to assume a role in global responsibility proportionate to their size and influence. Maybe…

Maybe after the latest skirmish is over and Wild Bill Hickok in The White House gets his man “Dead or Alive”, maybe then – I hope - things might change. Insecurity might lead to good things. Middle America might read a few more newspapers. The media might report a little more responsibly. The “haves” in this world might begin – if not to share with the “have-nots”, then at least to accept and acknowledge that they are “haves”. Maybe one day that equation might shift a little, shift a little more. Maybe people will travel more, educate themselves about each others cultures and beliefs, become more accepting, more sharing more giving. Maybe.

And if you believe that you really have been watching too many fantasy movies with happy endings…

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I think maybe it’s best to keep my hopes and dreams a little modest for now. I don’t think they are too extreme.

Let’s start with the very close future.

It’s now 3.09AM on Christmas Eve. My immediate hopes for this year have already been met with where I am right now. I am in “The Village”, at my girlfriend’s family’s house, preparing for a traditional English Christmas. It has already snowed once – lightly, and the college grounds and bridges of nearby Cambridge were purely stunning when we visited the white expanses the prior afternoon. I will be spending Christmas with Frances – one of the sweetest, kindest, most loving persons I have ever known. Also here will be two of the best friends I have ever had – Katherine (Frances’ sister), the cutest, most guilelessly entertaining sex-bomb in my experience, and my old buddy AJ, who has not only stuck by me through great times and not so great, but never fails to make me laugh. We are here in the house of Frances and Katherine’s parents, the most charmingly hospitable and giving folk you could meet. The food is plentiful. The presents under the Christmas tree are numerous and costly, as my father used to say. Santa knows where I am. Before Christmas eve become Christmas day, we might go for a festive stroll and sing Christmas Carols in the nearby church. Feasting and fun await.

So what more could I possibly hope for there, you are asking?

Not much really, just a couple of things.

One is snow. I long to wake up on Christmas morning and see thick flakes falling from the sky, and a soft white blanket across the lawn to go play in, have snowball fights, make snowmen maybe.

Another Christmas wish is that I speak to my family on Christmas day, on the other side of the globe, by the beach. I hope I hear the joy in my Mum’s voice when she picks up the phone and realises it’s me. I hope my sister puts the phone to my niece’s ear so I can sing Jingle Bells to her.

My final hope for Christmas is that my friends, all around the world, know that I am thinking of them and sending them my love and best wishes. I hope those friends for whom there where just good times between us remember those times, and I hope those friends for whom there might have been some bad times forgive me for those, and concentrate on the good. I hope a Christmas toast is said to me all around the world, as I silently toast those friends that I can’t see this year.

Otherwise…

My other hopes are quite general. They only extend as far as this time next year, and they are all quite flexible.

I hope that 2002 gives me at least a fraction of the pleasure that 2001 has.

I hope we can go ice-skating at Somerset House in the New Year, and make the most of our time left in the wonder that is London.

I hope I can keep my job and my sanity and my health till May.

I hope the movies in 2002 give me some thrills and some laughs and some inspiration. In the coming months I’m gagging to see the casting wet-dream of Ocean’s 11, the Times Square scene in Vanilla Sky, if Spider-Man can save New York, and if Scully and Mike in Monsters Inc. come close to Buzz and Woody from Toy Story. Later in the year, I hope the Star Wars sequel exceeds the expectations set by its predecessor, and I hope the next chapters in The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Star Trek, James Bond, and Harry Potter meet the expectations set by theirs. I hope to see some of these films in strange languages in distant countries.

On the travel front, I hope that AJ and I manage to get our act together, save enough money, buy a van, and invade every corner of Europe with more thoroughness than the Roman Empire. I hope our eyes and our minds are opened and widened by a bombardment of new people, places and experiences. I hope AJ makes me laugh as much as ever, and I hope I don’t drive him crazy by being me.

I hope Frances forgives me for abandoning her for five months, and I hope she visits us on our journey somewhere, preferably somewhere really romantic like Tuscany.

I hope whatever directions each of our journeys take us, that maybe this time next year Frances will be enjoying an Australian summer Christmas by the beach, with my family and me.

I hope the sun will be out, the breeze of the Pacific will be gentle, the sailboats will be drifting languidly by, and the king prawns will be plentiful.

I hope my Mum will be healthy and happy.

And I hope that I will be – finally – holding in my arms a one-year-old little girl whom I have only seen so far in photographs, yet who is already so gorgeous in my doting eyes.

Her name is Sarah Ann Taylor.

And if ever there was a perfect embodiment of hope, she is it.

My name is Uncle Dave.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

See you in 2002.

XXX

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