BREAK ON THROUGH

Simon, Frankie and I continued life on the road and drinking red wine from boxes for a few more days staying in campsites with lots of other roadies and their motor homes.

We saw the Bay of Islands from a yacht which was really cool as were the bottle-nose dolphins swimming alongside the boat and showing off for the inferior-brained humans by performing backflips. We didn’t see any Orcas but we’re pretty certain we saw a shark. The captain of the ship drove us through the famous Hole in the Rock which I’m not sure he is allowed to, but we whooped and screamed as if we were at Whisky-A-Go-Go watching The Doors as we broke on through to the other side.

One night we kind of had a disagreement, those two called it a debate, and it was strange that I became embroiled in it, it was all a bit sixth form for me. Luckily the next few nights were brilliant…

Eventually we arrived back in Auckland whereupon we found Verandahs backpackers hostel. It is the best hostel I have stayed in; small, clean, newly-renovated, quiet and full of my new best friends.

In no particular order they are Kevin (24) from San Francisco - he’s a cook and although he drinks and smokes like a trooper cycled the length of New Zealand in five weeks on a single-geared bike with no suspension and a bike mounted beer holder which he swigs from as he overtakes serious, latex clad cyclists. I really hope to meet up with him in The States as he makes me cry with laughter.

Erich (37) is a Swiss mountain rescuer and also hilarious. He looks like a Columbian drug dealer. Emily (18) is German and crazy, but in a nice way even if she is very rude to Paul the French guy who has seemingly travelled to the other side of the world to play Warcraft on the coin-based hostel internet. I think he thinks he’s a wizard. The newest member of our little family is Silke (24) also from Germany. She did well to fit in with the absurdity of the situation and rubbish we speak.

Here are just two of our jokes:

What does Snoop Doggy Dogg use for his laundry?
Ble-atch

What’s brown and rhymes with Snoop?
Dr Dre.

After Kevin’s incessant wshing of his balls in sinks, our gang is called the Indian Washnut Gang, named after the organic laundry detergent nuts. They are real though I would prefer it if they were imagined. The first night we drank more red wine from a goon and Simon became quizmaster. Seeing him without his girl there I remembered just how bloody funny he is, lighting the room and brightening everyone’s evening with his daft Bristolian comedy. It made a change for me to be someone’s sidekick as a while ago I would have competed for the attention but not any more.

I’ve been drunk for almost a fortnight now, what with the road trip n’ all but it really doesn’t matter so long as these guys are here. That said, my little buddy Kevin left for SF today

We played word and drawing games like backpackers do, with the self-titled “beautifulest girls in the world” Anna and Marika from Holland stealing the show with their self indulgent, over the top musings on love, life and themselves. That’s not true though because I saw the most beautiful girl in the world yesterday. She was on the bus and looked like a friend of mine from London called Vicky.

Speaking of self-indulgence, Natalie has started a blog, which she informed me she had hyperlinked the words “spreading your self-centered, egotistical bullshit for all to see and no one to actually read” to this site together with a couple more digs. What a complete… well insert your own word here. I think she believes this is all for her and she’s the only one that reads it!

You’d think that an ex-girl-friend or whatever she does/doesn’t want to be called this week would have kinder words. Good job I receive the love and affection she once gave me from K, oh and in other unfinished business news D got in touch too which while its not been mentioned must mean she is single! That said if I were a betting man, I’d put a tenner on me and K ending up together from the way things are going! But first there’s a little trip to America…

Erich and Kevin said that something I said was the “quickest, funniest thing they had ever heard” that the universe stopped for a few seconds and even God was laughing. They were still laughing two days on. Now that’s the kind of thing I like to hear, yes its needy but in my experience all writers and performers are, at least I’m self aware enough to know my flaws. Yet however needy I am, I know I always give more than I take in terms of emotion.

So let me take this opportunity to thank you all for reading, it does mean a lot to me and I do love hearing from y’all. The secret project is underway, and there’ll be a few changes around here, but trust me you will all love it.

I best get back if I can bare the thirty degree sunshine outside, as my new family will be wondering where I am.

There is, afterall, beer to be drunk.

TERRITORIAL PISSINGS

Spade in hand, that afternoon we ventured to new Zealand’s only Hot Water Beach, a geothermal spot on dark muddy sand. Hot springs under the beach permeate upwards through the sand for two hours either side of low tide. Like Roman invaders from Aquae Sulis we started our own Bath Spa. I dug a little close to an elderly man’s wall which collapsed a tiny bit so he complained a little too vociferously, telling us to get our own spa as that was his…

In a Teutonic accent, of course.

As kids screamed and frolicked in the sand and surf, I half expected this old-timer to pull a German flag from his beach bag and plant it in the sand.

He looked like a gumby underneath his knotted handkerchief and huffed and tutted until I asked where he was from “You’re German I guess?”
I’ve always called a spade a spade, not that he was black, just his cold evil eyes.
He hissed a reply “Yesss”
“Thought so”

“English?”
“Yup!”

Dig in, I thought - trench warfare was about to return to the country that invented it.

I set about reconstructing his wall with the enthusiasm of half a million blond-haired, blue-eyed boys at a 1936 rally. Two and a half minutes later I was finished. An eight foot wall separated us so I pointed out in a loud English voice that if he wanted to get through Checkpoint Charlie was at this end.

I had even sculptured a tiny Reichstag at the other, ready to be burnt down.

There was no love lost here, there would be no Christmas Day football ceasefire, no pipes of peace and definitely no Paul McCartney songs.

He muttered something in his mother tongue to his wife.
“Genau. Genau” I shouted over my wall.

We dug further with hands and spade to find a few hotspots, but nothing overwhelming. A nice Kiwi man offered for us to come join him in his, showing a sense of community.

Ze German stood, grey pubes in a race to escape his black thong, he leant over and in a show of solidarity announced they were leaving and that we could have his hot pool. I think he was a little embarrassed by his actions.

No need for that mustard gas after all.

Much as it loathes me to admit it, his pool was much better than ours. It must have been seventy degrees Celsius in there. Bubbles popped on the surface and the temperature burnt the back of my already sunburnt legs. It was too hot for Frankie and I, but we all loved it. Volcanic activity on the beach; my idea of heaven.

Upon our return to the same hostel in Thames I chatted to a nice German girl Frieda about her book “Lord of the Flies” while Simon lampooned me by pulling handicapped faces and performing pelvic thrusts in the doorway behind her. A few minutes later there was a commotion inside so I went to investigate. Two guys were chatting to Simon about the fact that they were meant to be in our room not us. We said we would wait for yummy mummy Kim to arrive and sort it all out from there.

We had placed our bags in the empty room for four that we had been in two nights before, but they insisted that the two of them wanted the room for four. After the day’s territorial pissings it was funny that these two guys wanted to lay a claim to land they didn’t need and that wasn’t theirs.

Can you guess which country they were from?

If you said Germany, you’re allowed one more guess…

That’s right.

Israel.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

The next day we drove to Cathedral Cove. A forty five minute trek along winding paths which tests the calves, but boy was it worth it. Millions of years of erosion had eaten away at the rock producing a cave inlet to walk through to another beach A small waterfall provided an après swim cold shower and birdy bath for the seagulls and Indian minor birds.

The sun beat me off again and burnt the back of my head, legs and spleen.

After two years travelling Australia Frankie stated that it was one of, if not the best beach she had seen. While she read her book, the surf was perfect for us two boys to mess around in. There are advantages to swimming with your girl like kissing and cuddling but competitive male streaks shine through and a very welcome, different kind of bets, that being boys are always undertaken.

Standing behind a rock we were battered by wave after wave, drenching us every time and making us fall over, crying with laughter at the ridiculousness of what we were making each other endure. Sand filling my Arsenal shorts resembling a poo, we’d cough, splutter and spit out saltwater in time for the next oceanic onslaught. Two kids joined us to do the same and were almost taken apart.

THEY CALL ME THE SEEKER

The next day as I was typing another e-mail desperately seeking Simon and Frankie I received a phone call from him, he was five minutes down the road and waiting to pick up the car. Three hours later after buck-passing and misinformation from train ticket clerks we had the car and set off on our road trip. The ride from the airport to central Auckland was as nondescript as any ride into any city as was the first portion of the freeway. Turning off on to the Pacific Coast Highway was when the thing I was worried about happened.

Thomas Hardy’s Dorset hills gave way to Scottish Highland lakes and forests of fir.
To my right Swiss, Alpine grassland while to my left Australian beaches.
Wooden, red, Icelandic farm buildings scatter the greenery and azure rivers defy logic for they are surely meant to be diluted; mud acting as diluvian gravy browning . When we stopped in the summer sun you could hear the unmistakeable sound of the wind ruffling Douglas Spruces.

Several of my friends who visited this country never came home and I was worried that I too may fall in love with this country.

And I did…

It is so God damned beautiful yet at the same time a total enigma.

How can these contradictions sit next to each other on opposite sides of one road?
The Pacific Highway provided some of the most breathtaking panoramas I’ve seen. Driving along you see perfect horse-riding countryside next to bay after bay scattered with islands sitting in the crystal blue ocean, all the while autumn year couples sail their four wheeled Winnebago ships passed you.

The first night we stayed in a backpacker’s hostel with about three rooms in Thames, a tiny town with the cheapest supermarket in NZ: Pak n Save. Much cheaper than Australia. We rented a dorm for four paying eight pounds each hoping that no-one else would take the fourth bed. They didn’t. Frankie had the bottom bunk to herself and drew the curtain, transforming it into a Princesses bed. Drinking beers and wine we stayed up in to the small hours chatting rubbish and listening to music.

The next morning we drove to up the Coromandel peninsular into the tiny quaint town of Coromandel which feels like a town in a sunnier Lake District, not much to report save for Simon getting pooed on by an albatross. And so to HaHei we stayed at a converted dairy farm hostel and I cooked Thai Green Curry with no coriander, lemongrass nor lime leaves. I’ve eaten like a king with Si and Frankie, they have taught me loads about life on the road - both organising, saving, planning, picnicking and having a cardboard box as a portable larder.

SLUMDOGS

On the plane from Sydney to Auckland the cabin crew announced that the first passenger to successfully answer the million pound question on the Who Wants To be A Millionaire game would win a return flight from NZ to Oz. Right, I thought, I like a challenge…

After three or four go’s, and wrongly thinking that golf clubs were stored in a caddy (not tea) I made it to the million dollar question and called Sian, the cutest air stewardess ever to act as witness so they knew you weren‘t cheating or a Slumdog Millionaire. I used both lifelines I had left and told the computer that I thought the Cavaliers called the Roundheads “delinquents” the screen flashed and I had won. My fist clasped and I let out an elated “Yesss!” I very nearly asked Sian out for dinner to celebrate but couldn’t quite muster the courage yet I was pleased with the flirty thing we had going on ‘til I remembered that’s what they’re paid to do - sexy little uniformed minx-whores of the sky.

My rucksack weighing me down like my hands on the shoulders of an unnamed kneeling air stewardess I reluctantly made my way to a backpackers hostel in the centre of Auckland. Logging into facebook, one of my best friends from Bristol still hadn’t got in touch. Bugger. I had after all changed my flights to come see him and his girl and go on a road trip…

Sitting on a bench smoking a cigarette I realised that the indigenous population (or more so the indigenous-looking population as almost two hundred thousand Cook Islanders, Tongans and Fijians join the Maoris in Auckland) are far more homogenised than the Aborigines in Australia. In Sydney I saw one Aborigine, the dude painted with white spots who plays drums to a techno backbeat on Circular Quay. Here the locals have embraced their English, Irish and Scottish coloniser’s ways by drinking and driving, shouting, cursing, fighting and fornicating on the streets.

That said, the backpackers seem a little older and less drunk than Sydney, which is nice. Auckland seems a quieter, more reserved little brother of Australia. There are less bogens in Auckland and with it less pokie and gambling games rooms and less shouting.

Like every night after a flight, however short, sleep comes like a phantom, ghosting in and out of your consciousness as texts sending friendly love from my new-old best friend punctuated the dorm room like tiny audible exclamation marks.

THE WEATHER GIRLS

The weather in Sydney is like a girl; she blows hot and cold, one minute you are basking in the sunshine, lapping her up the next you are cowering under cover trying not to get hurt from the onslaught of hailstones. Up ‘n down, up ‘n bleedin’ down.

Apart from imagining the endless sunshine and hanging with friends I had this view of Australia from the previous five times I’ve been here that I would be leading a healthy lifestyle. When I worked on the Gold Coast although we’d all go out drinking every night, as the sun rises at five, I used to get up, do some yoga, star jumps, push ups, squat thrusts, tummy tucks and go for a run or better still when I had my deck a skate, every morning ending up at the smoothie shop for an apple, orange, ginger and beetroot smoothie and a shot of wheatgrass all before going to work at 6.30a.m.

I have lost weight, but not in a healthy way. It costs too much to eat health food and supernoodles don’t count. Tis amazing what you can rustle up with a packet of them, a clove of garlic, a third of an onion, a chilli, a carrot and a courgette. You can make onion, courgette, garlic and chilli supernoodles, so not that amazing thinking about it, not exactly a miracle, not enough to feed five thousand, but enough for me.

I had some money this week, so I bought some food, at least it meant I did not have to steal fruit and veg. Though at this countries prices that’s still appealing. Some things are dead cheap but others stupidly dear. For instance a lime that in Sainsbury’s costs twenty pee is a pound. A single ten pence carrot is fifty pence and a forty pee tin of kidney beans is £1.50, there is no rhyme nor reason.

With no money to go out, I’ve been living the life of a vampire, going to bed when the sun comes up, its just a phase I go through sometimes, being the world’s worst (or best) insomniac. What with the time difference days just bleed into each other and friend’s birthdays seem to last about a week. It’s just easier this way, plus I can chat to people at home about my project and the two girls in my life…

I’ve given up drinking, not for good but for a while as this is a major factor of my sleeplessness, but am going out to some free gigs at the weekend so will maybe have a couple of drinks, but not get pissed. Drinking the blood of virgins is much better than beer and its free.

Speaking of vampires, I watched Twilight. Essentially its an inferior, two hour episode of Buffy without Whedon’s genius. It spends an hour and a half telling us, the audience what we already know (that he’s a vampire) and the first major plot point occurs twenty five minutes from the end. There is no denouement, no tension; an utterly pointless film. Can I get those two hours of my life back, please?

The same cannot be said of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire - just watch it. He’s come a long way since directing Inspector Morse.

THE LOVE CATS

In Tim’s house I live with Sam and Kev. Only one of them is human. Sam. And a bloody interesting human at that. We sit and shoot the breeze over the best homemade cups of coffee I have ever tasted. I’ve got quite a good brain for history and the like but Sam seemingly knows everything, and not in a pompous way, he’s just fascinating. Being interested in local history from under a mop of ginger hair he tells you what buildings used to stand where as you walk to the shops.

I was stoked that he knew Simon Winchester’s works; as expected I recommended The Day the Word Exploded about Krakatoa and in turn he suggested The Surgeon of Crowthorne. He also likes the guy that wrote No Country for Old Men, (another great film of the year if only for one performance but I didn’t like the abrupt ending) saying it would be good to read crossing southern America. I recommended my mentor Harry Thompson’s This Thing of Darkness - one of the best books I’ve ever read.

Anyway, you can see that Sam and I have lots to talk about and it makes a change from talking about film or jokes or booze or girls or myself, though we do cover all these topics too!

The house is riddled with cockroaches. Sam went to pick an olive out of the salad he made and it moved. I left two pieces of toast with Nutella and a glass of full fat milk for three minutes while I went for a pee and when I got back they had gone; replaced by a seething mass of black-brown buggery like a bad horror movie. Sam informs me that Newtown is nice now, but it used to be a slum area and that no matter what they might do, the roaches will always find a way back, so I have come to think of the cockroaches as “hideous dwarves jumping and leeeaaping!” from Hammer’s Quatermass and The Pit from the 60’s.

On the plus side it is fun when they go pop in the microwave.
One day I hadn’t seen Kevin Bacon until late afternoon which is unusual. Kev is the biggest cat you will ever see - part moggie, part cougar.

He wandered in through the back door and meowed. Only it wasn’t his normal, chirpy meow, he was trying to tell me something was wrong. We brought him in before I had to go out and watched closely over him for the next few hours.

While I was out Kev crawled under my bed and wouldn’t come out. Poor Sam thought he was dead but luckily his girlfriend April, like me, had been brought up with cats… I told Sam when he rang that cats often go to crawl under a bush to die, but regretted it immediately. They took him in a taxi to the vets who told us that Kev had a bladder the size of an orange.

If Sam and April hadn’t have taken him to the vet that night, instead the next as we planned, he could very well have died. I didn’t relish the thought of that phone call to his Dad, Tim in Thailand.

A catheter was affixed to Kevin Bacon’s pork sword and a drip in his little right arm. Phosphates and Magnesium had crystallised in his bladder making it impossible to wee. Sam and I have been to see him and I went again tonight, spending between forty five minutes and an hour with him; he was very timid when I arrived, trembling with fear but within a few minutes I had him purring and dribbling and wandering round his cage, brushing up against my face and snuggling in for some Will love.

So after a few days and some fair amount of worry later he is now doing fine and due home tomorrow, I’ll go and collect him and keep him in the house until Tim gets home. If I can get hold of Timmy to pay the $1600 bill that is, else the vet might have to keep Kev until he gets back, accruing more expense every day.

You gave us quite a scare Kevin Bacon, lets hope you can get back to your footloose and fancy free ways soon.

Oh and Tim, if you’re reading this… pick up the bloody phone mate!

A QUICK GUIDE TO BRIZ

Saftrnun, me Muh n’ me fought it were a bit code this wintertime so’s wheeze decided to book our ‘olidayz and wents to book ticketts to the United States of Americawl, but I wanted a petezawl so I wents to gets some from dat lush new Petezawlhut I seen near da ‘ippodrome innit cos I ant bin dere befores only I wuz wearin me new daps so I went a right pisser up the steps and scraged ma knee n was led there forevers til de bleedin amblance arrived innit?

No pauses, no punctuation, no breaths, and since it rises at the end it becomes a question, innit?

Try it again, faster this time.

A QUICK GUIDE TO STYRNE

“Hey, I’m Bill and I’m Stryne”

“Hello, I’m William and I am Australian”

If ‘Straya is the country, then Stryne is the language. Without being disparaging it’s a very lazy language with more short-cuts than hobbits through Farmer Maggot’s fields. A bit like Bristolian or Briz, on their own, the words sound like English but if you’re not from there the phrases make no sense whatsoever, so I’ll start with a few obvious ones.

This afternoon - this avo
The Salvation Army - Salvo’s
The Off Licence or Bottle Shop - Bottlo
An ambulance - Ambo
The Fire Brigade - Firies
Parents - Oldies. Or just olds
Milkman - Milko
Hong Kong - Honkers
Erskinevillle, a suburb of Sydney - Erko
Very Good - Rip snorter (that was a rip snorter of a party)
An Argument - a shitfight
Whatyamacallit - Thingo

And my favo’s

Lets drink some beer - Lets drink some piss
Something very dry - As dry as a dead dingo’s donger
To get an erection - To crack a fat

ALL BETTS ARE OFF

Okay so what’s been happening, it’s been ages since I posted anything, I’ve been really busy with a project… Top secret of course, but as you may know I throw myself into things and can only focus on one thing at a time so the last thing I threw myself into must take a more of back seat from now on. Sorry.

Well it’s 2009 and we are all one year closer to death.In Thailand it’s the year 2552 which makes you 543 years closer to death.

So Happy New Year, unless you are Chinese and reading this in March.

What a year 2008 was, eh?

Travelling the world, falling in love (twice), climbing volcanoes, selling my house, not selling my house, living like a king, living like a pauper, leaving my job, desertion, desperation, credit crunch, counselling, companionship, co-dependency, love, loneliness, laughter, ecstasy and homelessness.
Highlights include: climbing Krakatoa, sunrise on Mount Bromo, writing, sunshine, living like a king in Thailand and spending three months with Natalie.

Lowlights include: locked in a hotel room hallucinating, nearly dying in quik-mud, Full Moon Party, having no money, my motorbike crash and spending three months with Natalie.

Just before Christmas I moved into Tim’s room in Newtown in Sydney while he holidays in Thailand with my mate Tom. I was so glad to have a base especially over Chrimbo else homelessness beckoned; Half my belongings are scattered round friend’s houses in Sydney but it goes to show that the less possessions you have the freer you are. Perhaps that’s why they are called trappings?

In my last but one home, my girlfriend and I cooked with one of four £100 saucepans.
What the hell is that all about? I can now see what I had become. London life essentially means buying shit you don’t need to convince yourself of contentment. I’m not talking in any existential hippie way, just practical logic. Nor am I climbing onto some moral soapbox, nor am I about to cast aside my earthly possessions to don an orange robe… its just something I’ve come to realise. I don’t need this shit. I like nice things, and some may even call me a snob for the clothes I used to wear or the accompanying accessories.

Save for my 5.1 surround sound, my decks, mixer and vinyl, my DVD collection, my books and a few other things safely ensconced in Somerset, I can do without everything else. For I have now learnt to live on the cost of just one of those saucepans for three weeks, double that in Asia. So the one thing I have learnt recently is how to live frugally, thinking on your feet like The Artful Dodger taught me to watching Oliver! The Musical as a child.

So long as I’ve got my laptop, my hard drive, a camera, a phone and my speakers, I’m happy.I haven’t used my backpack in a month, its still at Bec’s house, in my mind acting as makeshift collateral, I just need my bag of clothes, my electronics, toiletries bag, some food, a roof over my head and a companion else a guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. It don’t make no difference who the guy is, long as he’s with you. I tell ya. I tell ya…a guy gets too lonely and he gets sick.

I’ve read other people’s blogs and they all read like primary school diaries.“Tuesday the 23rd, I got up and met up with (insert random name of Irish girl, Dutch boy, coattail-hanging English male and Vietnamese prostitute here) and we went to Irish Mick’s Bar for karaoke. It was good.”
After a few weeks in South East Asia they have learnt the same things.I think I should script doctor them, replacing:

“Travelling in Asia has opened my eyes to so many things”
with
“Travelling in Asia has taught me seven new words”

“I’ve met so many lifelong friends”
with
“I’ve got drunk with so many people that I’ll probably never see again”

and
“I’ve learnt so much about the world, myself and have grown as a human being”
with
“yeah, yeah, blah blah bullshit blah”

It seems people under 25 may be travelling for the experience, but over that age and you travel for one of two reasons; to run away from a relationship gone sour or you have come into some money, in my case both. Then these people convince themselves that they are not running away but are in fact, as planned all along, on a journey of self discovery. They read The Beach, smoke some pot, listen to some reggae, get a tattoo and they think they’re a member of the long-lost Hong hill tribe.
I’m not saying that my trip is any more worthy, it ain’t but I’m not pretending to have had my eyes opened by what I’ve seen…

What have I learnt about myself?

Nothing I didn’t know already and could have told you months ago…

I drink and smoke too much, I don’t like being deserted or on my own, that I need constant love and attention and what was that other one?
Oh yes, I fall in love way too easily, and always with the wrong girl.

The proof?

Well I’m single aren’t I? If I had ever chosen the right girl, just once, she’d be at my side now.
You see, a heart only has four chambers and mine are full to the brim.

Like outside an NCB multi-storey car park on Christmas Eve, there is a sign on my right aorta reading:

NO SPACES

Now, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know who the four owners of those chambers are…

One has gone. Forever.

The last is just not an option.

One has disappeared off the face of the earth since we last spoke… I hope you are okay D

And this little piggy has picked the best of times, the worst of times to walk back into my life. We chat for hours on skype and we’re both ecstatic that we’re back in touch. When the internet connection fails and one or other of us goes offline, its like being branded with irons… its getting pretty intense with each of us saying things like I wish you were next to me now and obviously catching up on sixteen years of flirting. But that’s easy when you’re on separate sides of the world, we hardly know each other so lets not get ahead of ourselves. For once, I’m not going to allow myself to - I‘ve no idea what might happen but never say never…

All I know is that we’re definitely meeting up when I get back home, whenever that is, wherever that is…

When most people come out of a relationship they lock away their heart and hide the key…
For a while anyway. Not me, I run around offering it to the most unsuitable types.

Well I’m pleased to report that those days are over, playing out a scene from Casino Royale in reverse I have got my armour back on and its gonna take something pretty fucking special to pierce it again.

More than the aforementioned four put together.

That fucking special.

TONIGHT WE'RE GONNA PARTY LIKE...

Where did that decade go?

Ah yes, I remember…

In the following days I met up with Rob, who is off to Melbourne soon and Clair. We went out and were ignored by Rob as his real friends were there, you know the guys he’s met in Sydney. Andy came round the night before NYE and we got drunk, mainly by drinking beers and Bombay Sapphire that Clair had brought round to my house. Thanks hun!

New Years Eve, Andy and I ventured out to see the famous Sydney fireworks - the biggest party in the world Both with raging hangovers I managed to get him out of the house at dusk and we made our way amongst the throng of one and a half million revellers to a suitable vantage point. For scale, that’s fifteen Glastonbury’s. We had gone further in but aborted that mission as we ground to a halt.

As another year drew to a close news helicopters lit up the crowds with follow spots as Andy and I made up names for groups of people. Fat girls were Frongles while pretty ones were Crème Brulees. Pretty girls that carry an extra few pounds are Cheesecakes. Annoying people were Piss Leopards and I forget the collective noun for groups of drunk topless shouty males of Indian descent, but there were many of these.

The fireworks were good but I was disappointed not to see Benny Hill.

Let me just state for the record, the fireworks look better on TV the next day.

After the fireworks, all twelve minutes of them I subscribed to Andy’s school of thought of let’s see where our feet take us… An hour and a half and a three mile walk later, we arrived back where we started without even finding a bar. When we did find a bar that wasn‘t charging sixty bucks to get in, I was allowed in but Andy was not. I got a Carlton Draft, talked to a few people and received a call from Rob slurring “Come to the Fortune of War pub!”

We walked the fortuitous minute there to find it closed and another phone call from Rob stating he had moved on.

CHRISTMAS TIME, MISTLETOE AND WINE

Christmas has been and gone and I can remember slices of it; I spent the day at Cath and Pat’s house who are friends of Clair and Linda’s. A motley crue of family, friends, waifs and strays appeared, ate drank and were merry in the kind of weather that gives you sunburnt teeth. I’m a hundred percent positive that I’ve met one of them Sarah before and she is from Bristol, my home town.

Uncle Peter and I provided the bad jokes while the hosts fed me shrimps, turkey, melted chocolate coins, beer, wine and cocktails until three in the morning..

Being the last ones up, over gin and tonics Cath and I had a fight. She was punching me as hard as she could on the arm, covering me in bruises for some unknown reason, but according to Clair she does this in a school playground way to boys she likes. Strange, beautiful Amazonion creature that she is. But that’s not the end of it - I want a rematch.

I swear Clair thinks we pashed, and I must admit the photos kinda look a bit suspect, but nothing happened, really.

T'WAS THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS

Well, t'was the day before Christmas and I was not running out of money, I was down to my last few dollars. I couldn’t even get a job being on a tourist visa. Things were getting pretty desperate. Deflated, I sat down on Sydney’s equivalent of Oxford Street for a cigarette. Laying my bag next to me, a coin suddenly dropped onto it, then another, then another… Was it raining money? I looked up to the heavens. Had Scrooge been visited by ghosts twenty four hours early? Nope, in my unshaven, bedraggled state, businessmen in suits were dropping me money. In the time it took to roll a cigarette I had become a wino, a tramp, a hobo, a vagrant, a bum, a son of rest…

Forty five moribund minutes and four dollars later, I decided this wasn’t the life for me, father hadn’t put me through my expensive private school to be reduced to the stakes of Mr Wendell. Father hadn’t paid to put me through any schooling in fact, skipping the country days before I started at the posh school my siblings attended, but that’s a whole other story…

Dusting myself off, I picked myself up… I’m a resourceful guy, I told myself, after all I had run my own car washing business when I was thirteen until Simon Boddy cracked onto the same idea and stole my customers. I kicked him in the nuts and rode off on his bike with his bucket and chamois leather, flicking the V’s all the way, which while not solving the problem made me feel a whole lot better.

I know! I could buy a bucket and walk door-to-door washing cars I thought, but that being too much of a backwards career step of over two decades, I decided to do some busking instead. Only I can’t sing and the only instrument I possess is safely tucked into my boxer shorts. I spent my last four dollars on a tub of Brasso, fashioned a drum out of a discarded catering-sized vat of mayonnaise and made my way to Bicentennial Park where I polished up my apparatus and unleashed it to the unsuspecting Sydney public.

Finding a spot at the intersection of four pathways on top of a small hill I opened my flies and opened my repertoire with the first of the four Christmas carols I knew:
Ding Dong Merrily On High, in heaven the bells are ringing…

With the correct thrusting movement from my pelvic region, the newly shined beer-bottle-tops hanging from my dangleberries acted as miniature windchimes in the summer breeze; providing the perfect percussion to my flamboyant drumming.

Jimi Hendrix used to play the guitar with his old man, butt I doubt he was capable of this…

Within minutes a crowd of onlookers had arrived, only no-one seemed to be joining in…

I quickly moved on to Little Donkey.

It wasn’t that little, but they were unimpressed.

In what I presumed must be some bizarre Antipodean festive tradition the men in the crowd began shielding their wives ears and eyes before fleeing the scene with many women and children showing their appreciation with screams.

It‘s 1963. I’m the Beatles. I’m bigger than Jesus!

Unbuckling my belt and dropping my trousers I starting a rousing rendition of…

I Saw Three Ships come sailing in, come sailing in, come sailing in…

Coming back seconds later dressed in identical blue fancy dress and shorts, the festive cheer had seemingly drained from these school children’s faces. They stood, mouths agog pointing their early Christmas present toy guns towards me.

As they neared the top of the hillock I realised they were too tall for children and for the fourth time on my travels I had a bevy of law-makers brandishing their weapons in my face… but this time it was different; this time they were not the only ones packing a piece, like the Lord Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane I wasn’t going down without a fight, not this time, so I unbridled my secret weapon….
David Bowie and Bing Crosby’s “Peace on Earth”

Pounding rhythmically with my member I thought would be enough to whip the crowd into a frenzy so I began the first line at the top of my voice

”I am a Little Drummer Boy pa-rum-pum-pum-pum”

Nothing.

Whinging Ozzies; lighten up - it’s Christmas Eve for Christ’s sake.

Louder this time.

“Come they told me pa-rum-pum-pum-pum”

I used my the engorged end of my stick to change from military to a Caribbean steel band style drumming while my grab-bags added some Boney M syncopation.
This would win them over. Everybody loves that shit.

Who needs bongos? Eat your heart out Matthew McConnaghey,

The rhythmic, pulsing beat of the drums had everyone transfixed, they were hypnotized and even I was mesmerized, drawn in by the pre-historic, tribal beatz of our Aborigine forefathers.
I’m not sure how long the spectators and I were in what we call Dreamtime, it could have been a matter of seconds or hours.

Stuff your twenty minute drum solo, Bonham - My Moby Dick is longer than yours.
I saw the beginning of the universe, the dawning of man, the arrival of the palefaces, many dingoes stealing many babies over what felt like hours.

I was on fire!

Literally.

A warning shot whistled passed my left ear, sending me tumbling backwards.

These weren’t toy pistolas, they were the real deal…

The bullet had grazed the top of my ear and sparked my hair alight.

Barnet ablaze, my trousers round my ankles, my makeshift drum and I careered down the hill; my oversized drumstick accidentally entering the tub several times on the way down…
Landing at the Police Commissioner of New South Wales’ size twelves I realised this was gonna take some explaining.

“Merry Christmas” I uttered, my hair still smouldering and my privates smeared in week old mayonnaise.

I had gathered a large crowd yet my only reward was a night in the cells of George Street police station, but at least I had somewhere to stay Christmas Eve.

My crime - indecent exposure, arson and an illegal act with a giant tub of diet mayonnaise.

How I talked my way out of this one I will never know, but who’d have thought that mayonnaise could be so tasty or could clean so many pairs of Doctor Martens.
I think it must be the vinegar.

GYPSIES, TRAMPS AND THIEVES

December 24th, 2008
Having no money whatsoever meant I had to learn the meaning of a new word - “frugal” I have been surviving on one carefully planned bag of food a week, mainly consisting of fifty cent packs of super noodles; that’s when I’ve not been eating people’s leftovers in cafés and restaurants. One day in Bondi, when I was staying at Tom’s penthouse apartment (thank you again mate!) I spent about eight hours in a Mexican restaurant eating every customer’s discarded tacos, burritos and chimmichangas. I guess I better get used to that….

Feeling a bit like Bruce Wayne, I even stole an avocado when my newly found friends; the girls in the café weren’t looking. I felt bad but just it looked so appealing. There was no ninja training, no cape nor Kevlar body armour but Ra’s Al Ghul did follow Natalie and I around Bangkok the entire period we were there. I don’t think she ever caught a glimpse of him but I knew he was there, lurking never more than thirty yards behind, waiting for his moment to induct me into the League of Shadows and bring down civilization.

Now there’s a petit-bourgeois crime if ever I’ve heard one, not bringing down civilization, but stealing middle-class, high in monounsaturated fat fruit. Though to get technical it is actually a large berry. A bit like a tomato is a vegetable not a fruit and a strawberry is actually a type of tiny edible dog.