take twenty six

Wandering

2010-11-22T05:30:00.000-08:00

Wandering

Lonely as a cloud

Is a thing of the past

In Grasmere

The entire stinking town

Is a bun fight

And old Will Wordsworth

Would say the same thing

If he was here today

If he struggled for a parking spot

If he'd had to pay

Three pounds twenty pence

For a hot chocolate

"Dog eat dog," he'd say,

"Eyeball to eyeball.

Every man for himself."

Watching gangs of city traders

On their long weekends

Scrapping for seats in a cafe

Wearing North Face jackets

And extremely clean boots.

Throup fight at the OK Corral... The horror, the horror... Down, and out for the Goose... Take twenty-seven.

2007-07-18T13:32:00.000-07:00

I couldn't decide the right title. It's been that kind of a week. Sunday was the worst Goosing I've ever had. As an experiment, landlord Steve Throup had me down to start work at 2pm, which is - unsurprisingly - the nadir of the shift. It doesn't get any busier at lunchtimes - the Goosing doesn't come any worse. And into which section was I drafted with my Vaseline smile and dazzling customer service skills? The 10s? The 40s? Outside? No. Steve had me pegged for 'Backup'. This is, according to the other waiters, an invention. It means I scope the entire restaurant with the principal duty of hand-washing cutlery. Marek thought this was very funny. He is gigantic, almost Andre the Giant size - 6'8 tall, and top heavy with 21 stone of muscle. He also speaks excellent English, which renders him unique amongst my colleagues. Scottish and Polish, I'll hasten to add. Last week a diner asked for mayonnaise and Emil returned five minutes later with extra menus. We have almost exactly one fork per customer, which leads to terrible shortages as the more experienced staff hoard cutlery for their section in cubbyholes hidden throughout the building. The restaurant has undergone two large extensions in the last nine years, but the kitchen is the same size. The result is chaos when front of house is full and baying for the blood. I imagine this to be a bit like chronic plastic surgery.

Sunday. My Christ, Sunday. The horror. After waiting over an hour for their meals, roughly a quarter of customers walked out. I grew so tired of taking complaints that I gave up even asking the kitchen when the meals might be ready for table 27
6
47
44
91
22
Your lucky numbers: it could be you. Every head in the restaurant turns to the kitchen door when I emerge with my plates in dribs and drabs, and every head sighs, curses, mutters evil things as I drift past their table and take the plates elsewhere. One man pleaded with me. "I ordered fifty minutes ago," he said. "I don't understand. Please-" he caught my arm. He had a thin moustache. "Please. I'm hungry."

I resigned. If I really wanted a job where I was paid minimum wage to be roundly abused while addressing non-stop customer complaints, I'd work in a call centre, and then I'd quit that too.
"Leaving us so soon?" asked Steve. He has eyebrows liked a badger.
I was grim. "Yes," I said. "Hell yes."
"But why?" He seemed genuinely puzzled. I took a deep breath and began listing reasons. I had ticked off six fingers by the time he spoke again.
"You don't want to give it another week?"
"No."
"Just one more week?"
"No! I'm going to London."

And so I am, readying myself to Megabus the country with final destination of the spare room in my brother's East Dulwich apartment. I'll stay with him for a while - Tim reckons he can point me towards some recruitment agencies who will be much better at working out what I want to do than I am. I'm dubious, and I still want to get back on my travels, but I'll give it a go.

It's been a strange few weeks in Inverness. The Goosing has slid by in a flash of loathing and disgrace; I barely noticed my birthday until it actually happened. Twenty seven years old, and hang your head in shame if you didn't spot 'take twenty seven' coming a mile away... now it's almost over. Another three-hundred and sixty-four days to go. A curry with mum and dad, dog-walking, bouldering on plastic, books in the attic, forgotten things. Everything in a compartment! It's hard to feel positive about it all. The girls I kiss and the tears I burst into during ad breaks, the rocks I fall off and the beer I drink, the friends I catch up with and those I won't see or speak with for months at a time, the streets I walk and the films I flick between. Trying to write more than a thousand words at a time, trying to make it all stick together, somehow, anyhow. The things with which I measure happiness, little victories like roaching Noel Edmonds' business card or playing cricket with Banks and Phil. Failures like constant uncertainty, my returns to the Goose. Things inbetween like the girl wearing suspenders at fancy dress but I drink too much wine and go to bed. These things haunt me for months at a time.

It took me two weeks to latch that last sloper at the climbing wall. I'd been stuck for so long, made so many attempts, that I actually started laughing aloud when I realised I was about to finish it - that I'd finally got my balance right, finally found the sequence, the right foothold, matched my hands, reached the top. No-one is around when I drop back to the mat and lie there laughing. The lamps in the ceiling make hot white dots in my eyes when I look away.

London is gigs and carabiners and house parties and eyes that meet and flash green in the Underground where the trains complain with whale song but still turn every corner.

Take twenty seven.

Dumb waiter

2007-07-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

I had forgotten the feral mentality of the waiter until my first full shift at the Goose. It is a truly mercenary business. Any attempt to help my colleagues - carrying plates, sharing cutlery, making coffee - is met with hostility, curiosity, aggression. The reason for this is tips. Assisting someone with their section is tantamount to demanding a share of whatever tips from whichever tables you assist with, and splitting tips is taboo. The gratuities are the only reason we work there - nothing else would justify the pressure, which can border on violence. It may sound like I am exaggerating the workings of the restaurant business, but you simply have to understand: the Goose is a machine. Moloch, burning babies, ancient industry. Minimum staff level, maximum customer numbers, a goddamn factory line from Brakes Bros. to the microwave oven to the greasy burning plates to my hands to the table. Three plates stacked along my right arm and one held in my left hand, or two plates and swooping on the pickle tray as I pass the dumb waiter. Computers relay the order to printers stationed throughout the restaurant. The system is perfect - the weakest link is the soles of my feet. Dessert menus, further napkins, another pint, do you have a children's menu no madam we offer half portions.

You can't fight the system. Sometimes the Goosing isn't too bad - other days I'll get a thorough Goosing but the tips will make up for it - and often I'll be horribly Goosed without the sweetner. The tips can be phenomenal. On Saturday I worked from noon until 10pm with a twenty minute break. I am paid minimum wage of £5.35 an hour - totalling £53.50p for my shift. But I also took £97 in tips - taxfree cash - not including the visa card tips on which we are disgracefully levied tax as part of our wages - so I made £152.30p overall, or £15 an hour, which is actually a better hourly rate than most of my employment as a camera assistant. So much is unusual, but I make a minimum of £20 a day, and more often £50. This money goes directly into the bank, though I want to buy a rope and Tiso's are selling last year's Edelrid stock at £85 for 60m...

There is a soundtrack of unoffensive music drifting discreetly throughout the restaurant. You can't hear it in the evenings because the chatter, but on quieter afternoons the horror is unleashed... Enya, The Corrs, James Blunt (best rhyming slang ever?), Rod Stewart raping Cat Stevens. Dire fucking Straits. I can just imagine Knopfler in the studio, perma-tanned and wizened as a walnut, smug in his sweatbands, nodding with pleasure as some hard-up session musician does terrible things to a pawnshop saxophone and weeps silently, thinking only of the rent. Did any instrument ever suffer so much abuse for so little reward? And I'm not sure how, but somehow Richard Cheese covering Nirvana 'Come As You Are' has made it onto the soundtrack. This was probably a mistake but could potentially be a joke by some hateful graduate student with an iPod and spots.

Everyone comes to the Goose. Only three things are certain in life - taxes, eating in the Goose on a Saturday night, and death, which is actually the one I wish for if I am working on Saturday night. Not my death, of course, but the deaths of everyone who comes to eat. Slow death, painful death. We get the nouveau riche Irish eating fillet steak with asparagus, cooked rare, and the old money Scots who come every week for the bangers and mash. We get ned drinkers demanding WKD, which we don't serve, and pensioners in for their halves of IPA. Newlyweds who have already run short of things to say and grandparents still holding hands. Yelling kids, babies wearing mashed potato, German bikers in full leather, surly teenagers with eyeliner and hair dyed black, nuns drinking only water, business lunches who never ever tip on the company credit card, first date dinners, American tourists appalled at the atrocious service.

Last week there a woman wearing sensible boots and an ankle length skirt. She was in her late fifties and she was called Charlotte or Margaret or Victoria or Elizabeth. And she was sad, so sad, looking after her husband and his stroke, or his depression, his haemorrhage. He took over an hour to eat his ploughmans, and I don't think he spoke at all. He sat there with his big red nose and an archipelago of blue and grey on his arms, his rolled-up shirt sleeves, the shoelaces she tied this morning, sat there staring down at cheese, chutney, apple. I think at school they must have called her Charlie or Lottie or Lizzie.

One month and twenty-nine days to go.

Tune in next week... same Goose time, same Goose channel.

The canape weasel strikes back

2007-07-04T00:47:00.000-07:00

Chi leaves Nick hanging: I think this might be my favourite photo of all time.

Back to the Goose. For those who don't know, I have a long and chequered history with the Goose. It opened in 1999, not long after I decided not to go back to study in Aberdeen. It was a fairly dismal time, for a number of reasons, and I needed a job. The Snow Goose was recruiting. It was easy money - on good days I would double my wages with tips. I'm not sure where all that money went, but I think it involved Aberdeen, alcohol and a girlfriend.

For forty hours a week I would wait tables. The Goose did - and still does - a roaring trade. Folk would queue in the rain half an hour before opening to guarantee a good seat. It's just solid pub grub at decent prices, the same as every other one of the three hundred Vintage Inns. They have identical decor, too, faux-antique furniture with crafted burns and wax, quirky candlesticks and tarnished brass picture frames with prints of days gone by. A truly hateful arrangement, in other words.

I was the canape weasel, raiding the fridges and bain maries to create small stacks of food, balanced delicately atop the half-roast potatoes used in the salads. Ross and Duncan tolerated this little thievery. They understood my art.

A fat American man was studying the menu, while his fat American family sat around him in check jumpers. He was wearing golf trousers. "Honey, what's a fuckin' Snow Goose? You ever hear of a fuckin' Snow Goose? Naw, me either. I mean, it's on the sign above the door, but I don't see it on the menu. Yeah. Yeah, maybe they're out. Still, what is a fuckin' Snow Goose? Like some kind of mythical animal? It ain't snowing. Hey! Waiter! What the fuck's a Snow Goose?"

I couldn't answer him. I was crying, hysterical with laughter. The place started to fill me with spite. Fight Club came out. I watched it three times in four days. I got in trouble when the landlord heard me dealing with a query.
"Is everything a la carte?" asked the customer - sorry, the guest - "Is everything home-cooked?"
"Absolutely," I replied. "We serve the very pinnacle of microwave cuisine."
"Simon," said Steve, "can I have a word?"

I'm still - genuinely - not sure how I wound up in Lancaster. I don't remember filling in the UCAS form, and I can't recall any particular flash of inspiration that lit the path back to university. During holidays, I usually found myself back in the Goose, my spite both unabated and honed by resentment. The last time I was there, I worked four shifts before someone in London offered me work and I fled immediately on the train. I do not sense any chance of that rescue, this time round. I'm back in the Goose. I'm amongst the oldest waiters by several years. The whole place is synonymous with my personal failure. It's a horrible, poisonous regression. Customers look at me in a puzzled manner and ask politely what I'm studying at university. Because I'm on holidays, right?

Right?

I get up, cycle to the leisure centre, swim a little, cycle home, cycle to work, work, cycle home, beer and bed. On half days I take the dog for a walk where he chases ducks with an optimism that verges on inspirational. I spend a lot of time looking at my map of the world. I've read the entire Rebus canon. I listen to Modest Mouse 'We were dead before the ship even sank'. Every now and then I have a beer with Baker or James or Ruaridh. I helped out at Dad's am-dram group last week doing the lights for the world premiere of The Brahan Seer, first in English then Gaelic. Ewan and I came third in the pub quiz last week thanks largely to his borderline autistic sports knowledge, though Matilda rolled up for long enough to tell us that vodka, cointreau, orange and lime is a Cosmopolitan. I'm leaving in September, though I don't yet know where or why. I've been applying for jobs in some of the Alpine chalets but Europe might be too safe.

And in the meantime, Hammer Time - you know when you've been Goosed. It takes two to Goose. Can I have a dry red, please. Hey, waiter. What the fuck's a Snow Goose. Upsell, upsell.

Two months, four days and counting.

Sunset over the Black Isle

"Dude, rainbows are beautiful arcs of light in the sky!"

This last shot was taken just after midnight.

YOU KNOW WHEN YOU'VE BEEN GOOSED

2007-06-23T02:58:00.000-07:00

"This is how it goes: not with a bang but a whimper. And with a whimper, Jack, I'm splittin'."

...and the longest days of the year drift in a fug. Dreary grey cloud, thick with rain, sour as three-week milk. It doesn't get dark at night - the sky never dips beyond mid blue. At the moment I still enjoy the miserable weather but really it's just the same as in Australia. The killer is monotony.

I've signed up with a temping agency in Inverness who send me out to drive vans for Lynx in Elgin or Inverness, map-reading and address queries or Not At Home or "Sign here and print your name, please." Strange memories wait on every corner: you can't go home again. The stressed man with crazy hair at the pharmacy at Raigmore - "I can't accept this, I won't take this, this needs to go somewhere else!" The door goes slam. "Fuuuuuuuuck!" screams Donnie at Lynx. "Fucking bastard fucking bastard fucking bastard fucking bastard fucking bastard!" He smashes the scanner off the desk in time with every word.

I've given up on looking for proper jobs since it occurred to me that I don't actually know what I'm looking for, or indeed what a proper job is. A career. I'd like to travel more, but any further journeys will have to be funded by work on the road - which is not, in itself, a bad thing. I harbour fantasies of a pub job in Fontainebleau where I boulder by day and pour beer every night. That's about the limit of my ambition, and way beyond the limit of my French.

We've won the pub quiz two weeks on the trot, although last week was an embarrassing victory. Eight of us won by half a point over a team of two, but Thursday was better - Jon, Ewan, Kate and myself earning a drink and a fiver each. Zinc - Nixon - Elton John. The tiny dancer in my hand.

Fantasy Cricket

2007-06-21T08:30:00.000-07:00

This was written, over by over, between Andy 'My Friend Otto' Banks, Phil 'Dancing Phil' Powell and myself when the England-Windies game was rained off. I actually think it's a lot better than real cricket. Anyone who knows what they are talking about is welcome to add another over in the comments - this does not include Jeremy on account of him being Australian.

Over 1
WICKET! - Strauss claims his first golden duck of the series. At least he's consistent. Vaughan steps up like a graceful yet somehow mechanical and boring puppet. He pads a few away, one falls short and pitches up plumb for the slapping, but Vaughan defends, actually shouting, "Safety first!" as he does so. Cook rolls his eyes. Interesting email here from Thinky McGenius, "Wouldn't it make sense to have Collingwood as one-day captain?" Sounds like good advice to me - what do you think?

Over 2
OBO is reminded that test matches are supposed to last for five days, and when you lose a wicket to the first ball of the match, it’s worth thinking of the bigger picture rather than chasing every half-chance for runs. Vaughan once again demonstrates his astute captaincy by valuing the team rather than his own run rate. On the Collingwood issue, the general consensus in the inbox is that everyone seems to have forgotten that prior to the commonwealth bank series and the world cup, Mr Vaughan hadn’t played first class cricket for 18 months which is approximately the same amount of time since OBO last got laid. There are bound to be problems when you’re coming back from such a lay off. “Collingwood is a key bowler and batsmen and fielder in the one day side,” observes Mia Buttreaks. “Look what happened last time such a key man was made skipper, the last Ashes tour anyone?” Quite. On the field, Cook scores consecutive fours using his monobrow instead of his bat. Unorthodox!

Over 3
WICKET! - Vaughan falls. He's blocking the shot before it's even out of the bowler's hand and a bouncer ricochets of the shoulder of his bat into his grille, forcing metal to cut up his stupid face, and into silly point's diving hands. KP steps up, improving the run rate 200% by getting a sensible test rate of 2 an over rather than none. Very steady KP! Cook says something, causing the umpire to fall momentarily asleep. "What we need from a one-day captain is energy, belief in the team (rather than self-belief which I admit Vaughan has mistakenly in spades) and to lead by example. For me, Collingwood has proved he should at least be made Vice, if not full captain of the one-day side." Good words Mr. Iknoweverythingaboutcricket.

Over 4.
"Now these batsmen," says Geoff 'Two tins of Stella and a sleeveless vest, please' Boycott. "These batsmen don't want to score runs. That's not how you play cricket. How can you possibly hope to win a game if you score runs? They want to not get out, that's what they want. Look at me. I never got out. Not once, me. Concentrate on not getting out, and then maybe on day three or four, they can think about squaring their shoulders and looking for a quick single. But they don't want to score any runs, no." Alistair Cook unrolls his sleeping bag and opens a good book.

Over 5
Pietersen has gently played himself in by only taking 32 runs from his first 2 balls, but is then almost cleaned up by the third whilst scouting the crowd for a new missus after his current squeeze's career disappeared out of sight almost as quickly as "Ashes fever" did late in 2005.

Over 6
Cook appears to have got a pint from somewhere. Pietersen smacks ANOTHER for 6 as he casually chats up a female streaker. Umpire looks unhappy but refusing to take action. Vaughan shouts something from the pavilion, he looks cross, and more than a little drunk, it was something about, "I used to be good" I think but it's hard to tell through the slurring.

Over 7
With today's opponents still not identified, Cook's average will not suffer from this so far lacklustre display of sleeping and drinking whilst at the crease. In the press box, the debate about Flintoff's replacement for the India series rages on. Cook perks up to take a quick single from the final ball of the over thus denying KP the strike. He looks cross.

Over 8
Alistair Cook strikes a glorious cover drive while asleep. KP on the boundary colelcting telephone numbers. The ground is covered in pictures of Flintoff - the 'slightly retarded' pose. We have reports that Simon Jones is in an underground bunker shaving his head and body. He has guns and computers, but will not be able to take over the world just yet due to injuries to hip, shoulder, both knees, one ankle, three metatarsals, seventeen fingers and his penis.

Over 9
The Crowd are getting increasingly agitated with the nonchalance of the batting side and are just leaving en masse when - WICKET! - Cook run out! He was lighting his pipe and readjusting his flat cap when he mistook KP's shout of "One there" for the sound of a giraffe dying. The crowd return just in time to see future one-day captain Collingwood stride to the crease.

Over 10
Frankly, what a morning's cricket it's been. We've seen the end of Andrew Strauss' career, Michael Vaughan's intelligent captaincy and encouragement mistaken for drunken abuse and what the hell Cook was up to, we'll never know. Collingwood faces the first delivery from the still unidentified fielding team, forgets where he is and executes a terrific slip catch diving high to his left. Luckily the umpire signals no ball. The next raps Collingwood on the pads, Pietersen mistakenly takes this as a slight against Dickie Bird's good name and has to be persuaded from leaving the field in protest.

Over 11
The umpire has to be persuaded against leaving the field in protest at KP not leaving the field in protest. The fielding team light a spliff whilst England CC and the umpires sort out a sponsorship deal with Nike to provide more jumpers. Collingwood survives his appeal for LBW by disguising himself as a fourth stump and third bail. KP stands guard at the non-strikers end like a Rider from Rohan.

Squirrel goes nuts

2007-06-14T07:36:00.001-07:00

I know what you're thinking - two blogs in one day?! Crazy talk! The world's gone mad, I tell ya - but I had to draw your attention to this excellent piece of news from Germany:

BERLIN (Reuters) - An aggressive squirrel attacked and injured three people in a German town before a 72-year-old pensioner dispatched the rampaging animal with his crutch.

The squirrel first ran into a house in the southern town of Passau, leapt from behind on a 70-year-old woman, and sank its teeth into her hand, a local police spokesman said on Thursday.

With the squirrel still hanging from her hand, the woman ran onto the street in panic, where she managed to shake it off.

The animal then entered a building site and jumped on a construction worker, injuring him on the hand and arm, before he managed to fight it off with a measuring pole.

"After that, the squirrel went into the 72-year-old man's garden and massively attacked him on the arms, hand and thigh," the spokesman said. "Then he killed it with his crutch."

The spokesman said experts thought the attack may have been linked to the mating season or because the squirrel was ill.

That's a hell of a catch, that Catch-22

2007-06-14T03:31:00.000-07:00

Strange old thing, the sun. Whenever the clouds have cleared, the sunsets across the Black Isle are just as good as those over Ningaloo. Quietly, when no-one is looking, the sky turns red, and it is still a little light at midnight. But we're on the cusp of the solstice which means halfway to Christmas, I suppose. I always get bittersweet at this time of year, the mezzanine moment when the nights start to get longer.

Jobhunting is not going well. I spent all of last week in a dedicated trawl of both specialised and general recruitment sites, sent away a grand total of two applications and came to realise that I don't actually want to work most of the things I'm looking for. I don't even know what I'm looking for. I met up with Jon Todman and his cronies for the Phoenix pubquiz. It's a good, hard quiz. We fell down a little on music and general knowledge but swept the board on A-Z and the Famous Scientist Anagrams. We came fourth in the end - with two points seperating the top four teams. After the quiz we wandered over to Hootananny's in time to catch a London band called Scanners. It was a short set, maybe only half an hour, but they were excellent. Two guys and two girls in the full-blown Shoreditch fashionista regalia knocking out searing rock'n'roll. They had that same intensity as Sleater-Kinney, fragile, electric. Check 'em out at http://www.myspace.com/scanners - especially LOWLIFE. After the gig Jon and I sat in his house drinking whisky and listening to music. I staggered home in the rain in his borrowed coat at half-past four and woke up at six-thirty in the living room, sitting upright in a chair with the fully-hooded coat still making blinkers and the tv plays static. It's light. Bed...

... and up to the Heathmount the next night, catching up with folk bound for Rock Ness - James, Anna, Baker, Nicky, Sanjay, Martyn, Andy, Barbara, Clare, Ruaridh. I was drinking orange squash in an effort to dilute my hangover. Andy and I had a hour-long debate about the role of public-funded radio which was a lot more interesting than it might sound.

That cricket net in London has wound me up in all sorts of trouble. One of the guys from Dad's am-dram group plays for the local Northern Counties Second XI. On his invitation I went along to a net, and wound up with games on both Saturday and Sunday. The Saturday game was for the First XI away to Huntly, who are one of the best teams in the league. Thanks to Rock Ness, our team was depleted to three First team regulars, two players from the seconds, me, four of the Juniors and Sandra, one of the juniors' mums. And we still nearly beat them... valiant defeat, soup, midges, haar. Sunday was less glorious but a similar story - playing in the cup for the Seconds, and seven Juniors to replace the desaparecidos. We lost. Miserable weather.

Since then I've been taking the dog for the odd walk (he nearly caught a duckling the other day - as if he'd actually know what to do with it), reading an Ian Rankin Rebus novel every day and listening to the new Modest Mouse record: We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank is even better than the excellent Good News For People Who Love Bad News. I drink coffee and work at the computer so I can listen to the Triple J request show with Rosie Beaton. I type up my notes from travelling. Late night I stay up to watch A History Of Violence, Serenity, Rosemary's Baby, Catch-22, Inside Man. We went to the movies to see At World's End, which is not nearly as execrable as Tim made out. It is hopelessly convoluted and riddled with pointless special effects but it also has Johnny Depp arguing with himself about peanuts.

Botswana! Iceland, Patagonia! Ivory Coast, New Orleans, Mexico... the Day Of The Dead festival.

Bluebells and daffodils

2007-06-02T16:41:00.000-07:00

Just every now and then, I get caught up in songs. Although I'm not responsible for crimes against music like Gavin Nicol, who is entirely capable of listening to one song on repeat for days on end until you want to kill him, then the band, and then yourself. I hear Gav is going to Chamonix, though the reasons for this trip have been made vague by contradiction. The point of all of which is, a song by The Shins is caught in my head. It is called, by coincidence, 'Australia', and you can listen to it on http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=3225508, if you like. I don't much care for their other work, but this cuts me hard.

"You've been alone since you were 21
You haven't laughed since January..."

...wrapped up in a lovely little pop song.

London was OK, except for the last day where I was struck down by a hangover of truly epic proportions, the result of drinking 7.9% cider with Banks and Dancing Phil. It was one of those rare monsters that pulses stabbing pain through both sides of your head if you open your eyes. It was touch and go, for a while, until I had several paracetamol and two boiled eggs. And for a week I lived in the mistaken belief we were a day and a half ahead of the actual date. Tim and Alanna set me straight. I also had a couple of cricket nets which left me in well-earned agony, but sparked my interest in the game again. It was beaten out of me at Lancaster, and I didn't imagine it coming back. But cricket balls, much like carabiners, are objects of such tremendous, immediate tangibility that it is hard to resist them for long.

And now I'm back at home; the first plan was to see everyone in Edinburgh and Glasgow before coming back, but plans change, and - mostly for reasons of poverty - I've come straight to Inverness. I spent most of the train journey north of Edinburgh looking for rocks. Mum and Dad are well; the dog is all growed up, and we have a new kitten who embraces every new experience with almost lethal curiosity. The top third of the lawn has been staked with a gigantic trellis that should make croquet interesting, and we spent most of this afternoon digging up the old herb bed and using the mud to make, "A mound, you know, like a croissant". There will be bluebells and daffodils, sooner or later.

The revised plan, the second plan is to stay here while job-hunting for work in Edinburgh or Glasgow. I'm not especially fussy which. It means much time on the internet, and on every new form I tackle the dreary issue of rewriting my camera assistant CV for a job in an industry that is radically different in both attitude and application. I've applied for a post with the RSPB in Glasgow that looks like it would be good for me; moreover I'm facing up to the hard fact that all of the few jobs I'm qualified for - other than camera assisting - have preposterous titles concluding with 'officer', and I think again about Subway advertising for 'Sandwich artists' and I feel shame, shame. Media & Communications Officer; Press Relations Officer: substitute 'officer' for 'assistant' and you might hit the mark. I think the switch must have been orchestrated at a national level to generate staff motivation without giving a payrise. Bullshit parlance, a modern condition, punching above your weight. Tired again, always... I miss some things in Australia but it was the right time to leave. I haven't had any regrets, yet. Delaying the inevitable.

Wouldn't it be great if you could vote to napalm the Big Brother house? Wouldn't that be something? I'd watch that fucking special. And I think someone needs to feed acid to Avril Lavigne. Either kind. And they should bring back Crystal Maze. Banks and I once discussed in some depth the need to up the ante of punishments on Crystal Maze... electrifying the water in Atlantis zone, maybe, or using real guillotines in Aztec. Deep, deep inside Futuristic zone:

“Now Tracy, this is a physical game. But if the bell sounds three times, then the door will lock and the room will implode to the size of an orange.”
“What about me?”
“You’ll be inside.”
“Inside the orange?”
“Umm... yes.”
“So what size will I be?”
“Well, smaller than the orange, Tracy.”
“Oh. OK. I see the rope, and the bells, and the crystal, but where’s the orange?”

Click – whoosh. Goodbye Tracy! Too much television. I have a bad habit of flicking channels late at night until I'm too tired to focus. The upshot is that you can catch the tailend of excellent movies such as American Ninja 2: The Confrontation or Leprechaun 4: Space Platoon.

I've finished Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72; it's tremendous. I've started Travels With The Flea by Jim Perrin, and there is a stack of books queued up on the windowsill, read and to be read, the results of unpacking rucksack and room. I found my small map of the world, and I looked at the places I have been and the places I want to go, if I can ever twist my brain into the right shapes to enjoy them. I've been rereading my notes from my trip around Europe last year, while working on Trick Of The Mind... Jesus, no. The year before that. That would have been take-twenty-four... but there was nothing very happy about Vienna, about Monaco, about Venice, where the pigeons cluster on first-floor railings or skulk alone on mossy posts. I ripped them all apart. The hordes of tourists, or the worthless rich fuckers with expensive cars and trophy wives in cocktail lounges, the diners in street cafes, the orchestras competing for tips in the Plaza Saint Marco. I remember that American woman, the twist in her hair as she yelled at the band while they rested and shared a smoke.
“How much? How much for some more songs?”
“Madam, we cannot…”
“C’mon, how much son?”
“Madam, the first violin has gone…”
“Fuck the first violin, you’ll play better without him. Come on, how much?”

The fat joggers by the Danube, pointlessly soft porn in the hotel rooms, bins for dog shit, bins for drink cans, boulderers on bridges before I knew what bouldering was, drinking with Coops and Jenny in the hotel pool at 6am. Or in Mauritius, those long tunnels in endless sugar cane but almost hysterical on the plane home.

Too much time on autopilot and youll lose your sense of wonder, your sense of spite, and both are important. I'd like to feel settled anywhere for longer than three months.

"All you need is one more Saturday..."

Overlander: there can only be one

2007-05-21T01:44:00.000-07:00

It's all crazy. I was crying when I left Exmouth. The other passengers thankfully, studiously looked away. When we stop at Minilya roadhouse to switch busses at half-past one in the morning the air is cool for the first time in two months. I have never seen the Milky Way so bright. We have a replacement driver, a stand-in. He normally drives a school bus somewhere and the Greyhound is too much for him. His panic is tangible and by the time we reach the Overlander roadhouse he has ruined the gearbox utterly. We wait in pre-dawn light for the replacement from Shark Bay, nursing hot chocolate and bacon butties. Once the sun is up you can't walk outside, not even to look at the captive roos in the pen at the back of the building: the flies swarm upon you in incredible numbers. I'm looking at the map of Australia in the roadhouse. This part of the country is remote enough that the Overlander is actually listed, just like a village or town. They have nothing else to fill the expanse without putting in the petrol stations.

The replacement shows up a few hours later; a minibus chartered from some resort. It's a long ride down to Geraldton and the transfer onto a decent coach. I drift in and out of sleep until we get to Perth and my clearest memory is of a gigantic windfarm, sixty or seventy towers beating in unison against the offshore wind. Slint play 'Nosferatu Man'... "I saw the fortune-teller..."

Jem and Joan - once again - gave me bed and board for a couple of days. We got some mowing done in the orchard - the changes to their block are phenomenal. What was dusty and brown is now green and lush; where the bonfire sat hulking with decay is now a satisfying circle of ash.

The plane was delayed out of Perth but only by enough to kill the transfer time in Singapore. Jem and I had a beer in the lounge. I watched Apocalypto and drank beer. I pull a five millimetre spinifex splinter from the tip of my index finger and drink beer. The sunset, my christ, the sunset. Something small inside me breaks whenever I see these things; a band of red so dark, so deep, impossibly red, blood red, neon red, ferocious red, red forever... red forever, until it fades away and I drink beer. For a while I think I was the only passenger who noticed the lightning. For an hour we flew over, through, around a gigantic thunder storm. I was sitting next to a guy called Joel who plays in a band called the Howling Bells. He took some photos which he promised to email to me. The storm was colossal but silent through the plastic windows, vast strikes that shook the sky with light, the spill of jellyfish cities that crawl up through the cloud, the fug of white cloud that stops in a straight line... nine kilometres high and the cloud simply stops. The moon is a careless hanging crescent, it is spinning, the moon is spinning, the world is turning and I am not changing.

I slept most of the way. My earphones produced nothing but a dull tone from the in-flight movie system so I listened to the first three Mogwai records and slept. In the morning I wolfed down the pre-packaged sausage and scrambled eggs and watched the flightplan unfold for the last two hours. I love those things; watching them is a mix of Risk and Roald Dahl. Kiev - Kilimanjiro - Warsaw. Places I will probably never go to but enjoy all the more for not actually going... Algiers - Addis-Ababa - London.

Yeah, back to London. Back to the air thick with train fumes but it tastes clean to me. Back to the Underground, rude people, rushing people and checking constantly for my wallet. Internet cafes, job-hunting, exhaustion. Cold air, crisp air, not a mini-skirt in sight, bank notes bigger than before and those beautiful goddamn arches in Paddington station.

Roo bars

2007-05-15T21:15:00.000-07:00

Time's up. I'm coming home. I leave Exmouth tonight on the twenty-hour Greyhound back to Perth, seats too small and kangaroo bars as thick as your arm. Come 100 kilometres an hour there isn't a roo in the world will bounce away from this collision. I've had enough. The heat, the flies, I can't think straight. I'm desperately aware that I'm off-track - the worst of which is that I still don't know which track is right.

I went climbing with Heiner in Cape Range yesterday; down five or ten kilometres of Shothole Canyon Road, clouds of red dust boiling up behind us. We were like kids in a candy store - the rock is everywhere, the lines glowing on every bluff and every boulder, the cracks, caves, natural bridges, stalatites, tumbled stones, slabs and overhangs. No amount of indoor climbing ever really readies you for the real deal. Most of the rock is rotten, loose but razor-sharp; erosion whittles down the sand and leaves the steel. We found some really good stuff - halfway up the Oh Yeah! crack, where a broken handhold spun me into the spinifex grass... I'm still picking the splinters from my hands. Another, fantastic slab climb of ten metres - the scariest top-out I've ever done at about grade 17, then hanging upside down on the natural window in my scummy sneakers. There is an unbelievable amount of virgin rock in Cape Range. The flies feasting on my blood, sticky and black around my skinned ankle. I also took a pebble to the face when another handhold came loose under the strain and catapulted into my chin... but if you're not bleeding, then you're not climbing. This slogan is going to rank alongside

BOULDERING: BECAUSE WHO NEEDS FINGERTIPS?

when I come to make a fortune selling t-shirts.

So what next? I'm going to fly home in a few days. I'll see Uncle Rich, Banks, Dancing Phil and maybe even that miserable hound Tim in London; then I suppose take the train north to Inverness to see Mum and Dad and the dog and the cats. I should really stop in Oxford, Chester, Stoke, Lancaster, Liverpool, Durham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Abernethy and Aberdeen on the way; so if anyone can work out how, let me know.

I have no plan other than climbing outdoors once a week. I need a job. Any ideas welcomed. That's it. I hope it's raining.

You unruly bastard

2007-05-05T02:18:00.000-07:00

Here it is! Information on the unruly white-tailed spider, which is almost certainly the cause of my septic woes. The nurses were actually impressed today when they, too, failed to squeeze out the goo: "Normally something this size pops like Pompeii," says cheerful Lesley.

Schmidt Rock

2007-05-02T19:53:00.000-07:00

Drink-driving is a given in Exmouth. The town is small enough for everyone to know just about everyone else, and be invited to their barbeques; but large enough to warrant driving home rather than walking. It makes me nervous. Seatbelts are also largely ignored. The biggest threat is from the kamikaze kangaroos. Dani hit one on Tuesday – it bounced off into the bush, apparently unharmed, leaving $1000 of damage in the bonnet.

Inday has added ‘tiger shark’ to her list of numpty things to go swimming with. Apparently this one was the best part of three metres and thick as the proverbial shithouse. Imagine three Bondi Beach blondes having nothing better to do on an afternoon than swap their coffee break for snorkelling with killer sharks. Can you imagine that? I don’t have to. I was drinking tequila with them last week. “What about swimming with a great white?” says Mel. “Wouldn’t that be loads gnarly?”

A band called Double Entendre came to Exmouth last week. It was the musical event of the Cape Range calendar. They were pretty good, too, in a scraggy dub and roots sort of way. I would give anything to be there when they pull into some of the trucker’s stops as they tour on further to the north: the drummer and guitarists are all barefoot in vests and porkpie hats, and they haven’t shaved since they were seventeen. Guitarist A is a good foot taller than Guitarist B but they are otherwise identical. The double bassist is that girl who breaks her parents’ hearts by going to uni to study social work and coming back a dreadlocked dandelion vegan. There was a lot of alcohol and for the fourth or fifth time since I’ve been in Australia a strange girl stole my glasses.

I’ve been getting really homesick in the last week, and a few unusual days of rain and cloud has cheered me up greatly. I have come to realise that this is a country for holidays or travelling, but for habitation? Ridiculous. I miss the overcast days windy with scudding cloud, frost, snow, scarves, jackets, train journeys with rain-streaked windows and impossibly hot Virgin Rail coffee. Did you ever hear Ruaridh’s theory about Virgin Rail? The irony that a company called Virgin didn’t own a single train that wasn’t totally screwed… But to clarify things: yes, I will be coming home eventually, and no, I will not further besmirch the good name Sylvester with further immigration to the criminal continent, mentioning no names, Jeremy. Apparently in Borneo, the Orang-utans are known as Sylvesters. I think it means ‘man of the woods’ or similar in Greek and I recently found out that the family motto is ‘I do not degenerate’, which is disturbing in its clarity and bizarre in its outlook. Part of the crest is a crow shot through with an arrow.

For a while it was raining heavily this morning, but somewhere on the other side of the house the sun is coming up. Between the sunrise and the rain clouds there is, for barely a minute, a colour of gold and grey that I have never seen before. Gravity, the speed of light… everything is starting to slip away from me here. Maybe I shouldn’t have stayed – endless indecision, constant regret. I woke up at 7am two days ago and began editing. I went in to work for 11am, worked until 2.30, went home and picked up the edit again. I sat at the computer until half-1 in the morning. Fifteen hours of fighting the computer is unusual, but I never thought I’d be that person. I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss the rain and the cold. I miss football on Saturday afternoons in the pub… even though I remember with lucidity walking around with caution, eyes fixed to the pavement, remind myself to look up once in a while, miserable bus journeys and the same loneliness… and it is late, now, and when I walk out to the car to collect forgotten things the moon writhes in thin cloud, gathering silhouettes in the palm trees that stalk the driveway. The lattice of childhood scars remembered in my tan and I miss my brother. Sunset horses sprinting indigo in the west. Idiot emu no more than prehistoric photo fodder. Flies, flies that flock to you, swarm on your shoulders, buzzbomb your ears. I inhaled one yesterday and yelled in disgust. They drive me crazy – when I walk in the bush between town and our house I am in state of constant cursing misery, flailing my hands over my shoulders and twisting as though this could somehow bring me peace. Misery.

It’s just a bad day. I try to go climbing every day or so at Heiner’s home-built wall. I insist on calling it Schmidt Rock, despite his grimaces. We spent most of an afternoon making new holds from the scraps of wood I found behind Paul’s shed. Circular saw, rotary tool, electric drill, cordless screwdriver, sandpaper, skinned knuckles. Schmidt Rock has gone eco-friendly: this was once a table leg, and now it is a desperate layback; fence posts become slopers, stripped-down drawers are three-finger pockets.

This is all good but there will be no climbing for me for a few days: I have finally fallen victim to some poisonous Australian invertebrate. It was bound to happen eventually, and frankly I’m amazed I had seven months of grace. I am currently sporting a sizeable abscess in my left arm brought on by a bacterial infection of an insect bite: prognosis of lethargy and drowsiness, which is pretty much the same as usual. Rachael sent me out of work yesterday afternoon to wait my turn in Exmouth hospital, two hours of correcting errant crosswords in trashy magazines like Girlfriend and trying not eavesdrop on the man recounting his dilemma to his newly-arrived wife… “So when I took off my underpants in the shower,” he confided in a booming voice, “there was blood everywhere. But that’s not unusual.”

When I finally saw Dr Ted Wai (possible Jedi?) he shook my hand and smiled pleasantly. Then he saw the rash. “Yes,” he said, “yes.”
“Yes?” I replied hopefully.
“Yes, yes.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
"Yes."
Silence. His phone starts to ring. It sounds like ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’. He glares at my arm. He gives me a prescription for some dynamite antibiotics and instructions to scrub the pus out in the shower.

On the way out the man with bleeding underpants is still going strong, though now he sounds a little sad. He has a large moustache. I realise from her look of stunned horror that this woman is not his wife, but an innocent with the simple misfortune to sit down next to him: “It was only when I was towelling myself – down there – that it really started gushing.”

PS. The new glasses have arrived, thanks mum. I'm looking at the world without accumulated diffusion for the first time in a year. It's very bright.

A defensive ball

2007-04-10T18:58:00.000-07:00

Exmouth! We made it, through 1400 kilometres of sand and bitumen, through suicidal kangaroos and deserted coffee stops, through chewed-up mix tapes and off-key singalongs, over-heated engines and driving barefoot.

The first 600 kilometres was easy going – we left Perth in the afternoon and six hours of happy driving landed us in Geraldton for Saturday night. The girl and I asked around for a backpackers. The first two we tried were fully booked, but we were kindly pointed towards a third. It was only once we’d paid our $45 that I started to wonder about the place. It had the shabby, run-down feel of a 1980s B&B… which is not, of course, especially unusual in a backpackers hostel. But not many 1980s B&Bs are full of junkies with dull eyes who gather to watch you unpack your camera equipment. It was only once I found the sticker from the Australian DSS that I realised we’d found ourselves in a halfway house. Geraldton is a village of the damned. We decided to write off the $45 as an insurance premium and flee north into the night. There are hookers in the high street and kids wearing basketball singlets leer at the parked cars. The police drive past with windows wound up like in Godfather.

Another two hours of empty roads on Red Bull and the Cinematic Orchestra took us into lovely Kalbarri just after midnight. We slept soundly in the sand of the empty harbour car park, and the next morning we chipped oysters from the rocks for breakfast. Inday took me to the Murchison river gorges in the morning and all I could think about was Spaghetti Westerns.

Big sandwiches of cheese and tomato – strong coffee – another eight hours of driving. All these towns are deserted and all the petrol stations are staffed by children. The kangaroos have nothing to live for as you approach the tropic of Capricorn – they are suicidally transfixed by headlights. If you are lucky, they just freeze when caught on the roadside in the full beam – when unlucky, they bound across the road to meet your oncoming car. The three- and four-trailer road trains just turn on the windscreen wipers, but Inday’s car has no Roo bars and we were forced into a dozen emergency stops by these marsupial idiots. One lunatic actually managed to jump into the side of the car as we were passing.

We spent Sunday night in Coral Bay, a tiny town built on a successful caravan park and the fact you can snorkel over reef directly from the beach. I have snorkelled before – in Mauritius, on the Great Barrier Reef, in the Whitsundays and Loch Ness – but last week we bought loads of gear and I found myself a prescription mask. I was genuinely surprised by the revelation of actually seeing things. Before, I was bemused by movement and scared of sharks – even in Loch Ness – and now I’m transfixed by colours, motion, variety, humbug fish, inky fish, pearlescent clams, cucumbers, iridescent corals, jellyfish like basketballs, stingrays, fish, fish, fish; I saw a lion fish within five minutes of getting in the water. I finally understand what the fuss is about: swimming in the warm and cold twist of the currents, living inside a nature documentary, constant sunlight and always life, thriving life.

Inday had to pretty much drag me out of the water to finish the last 149 kilometres to Exmouth. It’s a nice wee town, and everyone knows everyone else – supermarket aisles flood to a chorus of “Hello strangers” to people who are not strangers at all. The roads are fringed with Outback earth, the soft red dust, and emus squabble for scraps on suburban lawns. The sunsets are unbelievable.

We’re staying in a backpackers cabin room for the first ten days before moving in with the skipper of the charter boat Inday works on. After the snorkel in Coral Bay I accidentally left my $6 K-Mart flip-flops under the car. By the time we remembered, someone had parked a 4WD car the size of the moon on top of them. Now I’m wearing $3 slabs of foam from the local bargain bin which is a bit like strapping large pats of melted butter to your feet – they are slippery, greasy and offer no protection at all from anything, including grass.

We only had a couple of days to get settled before Inday's first day on the job – but the whale shark season has begun and daily DVDs must be made. On her first day on the water she and the two guides decided to jump in and investigate exactly what would inspire a large shoal of Baitfish to gather together in a defensive ball... you can read that again. The trio were approached within seconds by a bronze whaler shark which looks from Inday’s panicked footage to be about three metres long. Fortunately, they did the right thing, which is to gather together into a defensive ball, so she’s kept both her lovely legs.

The job is filming punters splashing around the huge whale sharks, most of which are 6-8 metres long – but there was a sighting two days ago of a twelve metre specimen, which is just about as big as they get round here. Inday gets back in late afternoon and I edit her footage into a short movie the punters collect the next day. I was working with our whore of a computer till 5.30am the other night – and up again after barely an hour of aching sleep – to finish the first edit... but I’m getting into the swing of it now. The second movie took a third of the time of the first, and I reckon I’ll get it down to one or two hours within a few weeks.

I’m aching to get back in the water but I’ve been crazy-busy sorting out the computer – learning the basics of Photoshop to edit a cover for the discs, making the DVD template and working through the bugs and shortcuts in Adobe Premiere. The computer is set up in our little room and I am tied in with a dozen cables to which I respond but do not understand. The printer is at my feet and tucked behind it lie the stacks of five-hundred DVDs and their five-hundred cases, paper, pamphlets, instructions, clothes, crockery.

I still need to find a job – in a bizarre chain of events I was actually offered work as videographer with another charter company, but neither they nor I had the gear, so I’m back to trawling cafes with a smile and a CV and my crappy flip-flops. Dad told me a couple of years ago that Curriculum Vitae is Latin for ‘The story of one’s life’. I look at mine and I’m really not sure what it says. I feel increasingly unemployable but the longer I go without working the more desperate I am to find work and the less certain I am about what kind of work I want to do. But at least I’m not A London Media Prick any more.

It was odd to pack up my rucksack again after imposing on Jem and Joan for three months. It’s been good to work on their block and incredible to meet a huge extended family who have been unremittingly good to me. I’ve hardly seen them in the last crazy fortnight before we left. It was insane. Swapping cars, taking buses, takeaway coffee… Inday and I spent our last week frantically chasing up printable DVDs… cases for the DVDs… can’t you do those any cheaper? A printer… no, let’s get one that actually prints onto discs… we’ll need a stamp… OK, now labels for the stamp – bigger labels! …why won’t our brand-new computer burn DVDs? Oh, really? …the trainee geek at the shop forget to include the burner… food… petrol… car service… After packing a bare sixth of her wardrobe into the car we just about squeezed in my rucksack, all our new kit and Inday’s diving gear.

Apologies for letting that Top 5 books thing border on violence. I’m especially sorry that I haven’t found some way of barring Tim from posting on the blog. I never wanted to quantify your favourites – I thought it would be enough just to know what they are. Baker – I’ll take a copy of Dan Brown’s Mohammed Code whenever you’re finished with it. It did put some wind in the sails to get a post from a stranger that didn’t concern Viagra, pornography or dogs eating their own poop, but not enough to warrant asking for your Top 5 records. That way madness lies… Imagine the mess! Come
On
Die
Young
Lifted
Or
The
Story
Is
In
The
Soil
Keep
Your
Ear
To
The
Ground
The
Soft
Bulletin
The
Bends
Fight
For
Your
Mind
Radiator
Good
News
For
People
Who
Love
Bad
News
Weezer
Razorlight
Good
Morning
Spider
Spiderland
Ladies
And
Gentlemen
We
Are
Floating
In
Space
Doolittle
Philophobia
Youth
&
Young
Manhood
Up
The
Bracket it’s impossible! So uplifting, these opening chords on Race For The Prize, the crawling Ex-Cowboy, insidious and violent, sinister this machine will not communicate shouting ourselves hoarse:

AND WE’LL ALL FLOAT ON ALRIGHT

because hopefully we will. I’m tired but kinda happy.

PS. Help a sister out - Monica 'Monsta' Metsers is in an online painting competition worth a couple of grand - if you're feeling that way inclined, go to...

http://www.celesteartprize.co.uk/2007/publiconlinevote/artist_6.asp

...and vote for her 'Deserted' - she says that if you like something else better, then you should vote for that instead.

I found a job, about two hours after writing this. I'm now working in the grEAT cafe, and it is rather good, too. I started washing dishes but that lasted about ten minutes - now I'm making salads and pizzas and milkshakes and coffee. The manager is relieved to have someone who is over the age of sixteen and has actually worked in a kitchen before.

Here's a show of how small and social Exmouth is - last Wednesday, Inday and I joined skipper Paul plus his pals to take the charter boat round to her seasonal mooring. There was much in the way of beer and swimming and backflips. One of the tourguides is a chirpy girl called Mel - she is going out with a microlite pilot called Gav, who also works in the local supermarket - "Oh," he says, "you like rock climbing? There's a guy just started with us who likes rock climbing. He's building a wall in his back garden." - "Of course he is," says I, "Who wouldn't? I'll have to meet him." - the next day I go to look for a job - "You can start tonight," says Rachel - I start that night - "Simon," says Rachel, "can you make more crepe batter?" - "Man, this is tough. I go rock climbing - I shouldn't get beaten by flour and milk." - "Oh," she says, "you like rock climbing? My boyfriend likes rock climbing. He's building a wall in the back garden."

Everything is coming together nicely.

We moved out of the backpackers this morning, and into Paul's place tonight. In the ten days that we've been there things have been stolen - first an Esky, from which the thieves first emptied the food - which is somehow more insulting than if they'd taken it complete - then some drinks, some food from the fridges. "Fuck 'em", we said. "they can help themselves to our beer if they really want."

We left bottles full of piss in the fridges. Actual piss, not metaphorical stuff like Tenant's or MacEwan's or Foster's or XXXX.

Serve 'em right.

Sit down and be counted

2007-03-19T17:33:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, The Bob asked his friends for their favourite five books. It generated a month or so of debate/slander between pals and strangers alike, much of it regarding 'If On A Winter's Night PISS OFF PISS OFF PISS OFF'. I think Paul Auster was the top authorial dog, but it might have been Tolkein. I've been chatting with Banks about 'books to read before you die' - we both had lengthy lists but it was interesting and in the spirit of clarity I'm resurrecting the 'Top 5' challenge to ask the same of you chumps.

The good thing about commenting on the blog, rather than email, is that your Top 5s will be out in the open rather than huddled away in the sweaty recesses of The Bob's Gmail account, and he won't be able to diddle the results: I still can't believe that many people read Calvino and actually enjoyed it. So there you have it; depending on how it goes, future weeks may bring about requests for Top 5 films of the 1980s, debut records, cartoon characters, vegetable soups and Scottish bouldering venues. Who knows? Chances are we can leave it at books, which will save the hassle of proving by consensus that the answers are The Goonies, Weezer: Weezer, Wile E. Coyote, leek and potato and Applecross (when it's windy).

In no order:

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
Fiesta, or The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The Proud Highway/Fear And Loathing In America by Hunter S. Thompson

This really hurts. I've had to leave out Phillip Pullman and Roald Dahl; no showing for that sprawling monster House Of Leaves or the ice of The Bell Jar. I've gone with American Psycho but I was THIS close to Lunar Park. Chatwin pushed New York Trilogy out but it was a bloody fight, and scraps of paper are still drifting in the air-con like clowns in a regional Russian circus.

No Great Gatsby!
No Cloud Atlas!
No Walking On Glass!

I'm allowed two books by the Doctor because they are companion volumes of his letters - in the same vein, Lord of the Rings will count for one choice, rather than Fellowship Of The Ring, Two Towers and Return Of The King counting as three. Magazines don't count, Tim, so you're not allowed FHM for November-March. Plays and collections of poems do count. Anthologies do not count because they are a cop-out and you should be accountable, see.

The Bob: if you still have them, email me the old results and I'll add them in somewhere.

Arcade Fire Neon Bible is as mysterious and uplifting and quietly compelling as the night sky over Cornwall I can see satellites an orgasm in the right company morning sea mist on the Western lochs camping out and in the morning drinking tea with friends finding an old scrapbook where there are photos of people you love and they are not aware of the camera.

Inday and me are still bound for Ningaloo. That 'hippy' tourguide job - a seasonal vacancy - was denied me because I do not have permanent residency. Boo! And I could almost manage the 400 metres without getting twinges in my left arm. But the population of Exmouth explodes from 2,500 to 6,000 over the four month whale shark season and there will be work.

A film for Agent Blue - the Japanese movie Versus, regarded by enthusiasts as "...the only film which manages to mix swords, guns, gangsters, zombies, zombies with guns and swords, zombie gangsters with guns and swords, god-like super-beings, martial arts, assassins and police officers into one film set entirely in a forest on a timeline that spans millennia." It's crazy but beautifully shot, and it also features samurai, sniper rifles and tributes to Evil Dead.

Hot Fuzz is out over here soon, and I expect it to be funny, if slightly long... hey Banks, did Ric keep his job? We also watched Thank You For Smoking which is rather clever and tonight we're off to see Blood Diamond at the open air cinema. I like the nights over here. They are mild and pleasant after the broiling by day. I was told with some authority that should you (by which I mean me) come from a cold climate (Scotland) it takes about 18 months for your blood (my blood) to thin to the point where you are (I am) comfortable in a hot climate (Australia). I am still not sure if I'm being taken for a sucker. Professor Barndad will have the answers!

Outside, the sky is smudged with platypi, with longships and matadors, swans, dinosaurs, rockets. The sails dissolve in the sun and drift away, away.

Thou art a villain

2007-03-09T17:13:00.000-08:00

I have it on good authority that my last blog was rubbish - thanks, Tim, for letting me know - and that I am absolutely not allowed to write about climbing again. Which is a shame, because I was feeling very pleased with myself for getting free entry to the Hangout after setting a new route. Named after some cartoon from some website from some link that someone sent me, 'I AM STILL AFRAID OF VELOCIRAPTORS' is Aussie grade 19 and no-one - including me - has climbed it first time yet, which makes me very happy. But you don't want to know about that, do you? So never mind.

This is the plan, comrades - lovely girlfriend Inday and I are heading north up the coast to a place called Ningaloo Reef at the start of April. Inday has landed a job working onboard the tourist charter boats as videographer, filming the punters splashing around the annual whale shark migration. These bus-sized monsters pass Ningaloo every year between April and July, quaffing plankton and sea gubbins, coated with remoras and trailed by an entourage of other marine life. They look amazing. We'll be staying barely a hundred kilometres from the Tropic of Capricorn in a small town called Exmouth which is famous for not having a wet season; I'll share the editing and film the days Inday can't, and I'm looking for a job for me, too - the best bet cropped up yesterday with an eco-resort looking for tour guides. Tim will be pleased to know that they did everything short of specify 'hippy' on the vacancy notice. Part of the interview is a 400-metre swimming 'test', so I'm trying to get down to the beach every day and practice, practice...

Yesterday morning, while drinking coffee in Inday's kitchen:

"Dad, what's that game where you flip things down?"
"Othello?" It's been thirty years but Dennis still has a broad Yorkshire accent.
"Othello, that's it. We should play that. Did you ever read the play?"
"No," I said. "Not that one."
"Call yourself a literature student? Hah!"

We drink coffee.

"What was the phrase in there?"
"Which phrase?"
"You know, that phrase. 'The beast... the beast with two backs'. That's it. 'The beast with two backs'. What does that mean again?"

I never before this moment appreciated the meaning of 'my blood froze in my veins'.

"Umm, I'm not sure."
"Oh, come on! 'The beast with two backs'! It's in Othello. 'The beast with two backs'. Isn't that what Othello says when he's angry, Dad? 'The beast with two backs'?"

Dennis is silent and I am winking frantically at Inday.

"I think it's when he's angry. He says 'The beast with two backs'... Why are you looking at me like that, babe? What? 'The beast with two backs'... and you call yourself a literature student... 'The beast with two backs'. 'The beast with two backs... two backs'..."

Inday is struck with a sudden look of horror and she stops talking. Dennis has still not said anything. We leave.

Othello 1,1:

IAGO I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.
BRABANTIO Thou art a villain.

New music! Modest Mouse and Arcade Fire have both released astonishing new albums, and that idiot Banks has finally got around to putting up new songs on 'My Friend Otto', and not before time, too.

Yesterday I found a small scorpion. I put him in an old coffee jar and called him Boris but he didn't do much so I let him go.

The paving is going well in the back garden.

You jam your toe into a pocket

2007-02-28T16:15:00.000-08:00

I was looking through threadbare shirts in a charity shop when I became aware of a presence behind me. I turned around to see a small man looking at me. He had a funny half-smile and was holding t-shirts on old wire hangers. He waited politely until I had fully turned to face him.

Then he started blinking rapidly. "Hello," he said, eventually.
"Umm. Hello."
"It is very hot today."
"Yes. Yes it is."
He latched onto my accent. "Oh," he said. "Where are you from?"
"Well," I replied, "sort of England and sort of Scotland."
He beamed at me. "It is very cold in Scotland."
"... ... Yes. Yes it is."
"And it snows in England."
"Yes, sometimes."
"Not like here!"
"No."
"Because here it is sunny."
"Yes."

His smile flickered, and he turned quickly and began hanging the shirts on the rack. I waited politely, then started edging away towards the books.

"Does it snow in Scotland, too?" He was quiet, as if talking privately to the shirts.
"Umm, yes. More than England."

He fell silent. I was browsing paperbacks before he spoke again. Perhaps two minutes had passed and he was sweating.

"Glasgow Rangers. Well. They're a good team, aren't they! They play football... or soccer." He seemed pleased about all of this.
"Yes, " I said. "Celtic are good too."

There was a sudden horror in his eyes. He had got it wrong, badly, and we both knew it. He grinned awkwardly - apologetically - and went back to colour-coordinating his shirts. I couldn't help thinking that there is probably an old Rangers top kicking around somewhere in the shop, discarded years ago by a Scottish backpacker.

Yesterday I went climbing down at Blackwall Reach. This is the same Swan River cliff Inday and I were jumping off - I met a couple of the regulars from the climbing wall and donned my swimming trunks for my first try at not-so-deep water soloing* (an abridged rock-climbing glossary is included below for the gravitationally-challenged). We started with the traverse along the base of the cliff, in the roof that overhangs high tide. The rock is limestone, riddled with monos* and pockets* and extremely sharp crimps*. There is much in the way of BS/E* poo from the doves and gulls that huddle in the windbreaks. The traverse is about twenty metres across, and I fell in twice. After the first fall my arms were so pumped* I couldn't close my fist. At the end of the traverse you have to solo the cliff to get to the path. We collected our gear and walked over to the cave area, where there is a spectacular (but easy) dyno* for a prow of rock that overhangs by three or four metres. The jump itself is quite easy but the swing out from the rock is wild. When stable, you jam your toe into a pocket, pull up for a good handle and haul yourself up to the top. Mike filmed the whole thing - if I can work out how, I'll put the video up, as well as my failed attempt to climb the underside of the prow (another dunking in the Swan) and my first (and never to-be-repeated) ascent/descent of a totally new climb, 'Toothbrush' at tentative Aussie grade 16*. It was good climbing, though I've scratched and bloodied my arms, legs, back, hands. Yesterday was also the first day of rain in Perth since I've been here; two months of scorching sunshine and we pick the first day of rain, wind, and temperatures below 30 oC to splash about in the river wearing nothing but trunks and rockboots.

For anyone who has not yet discovered the joy of rocks:

Deep water solo - Climbing without ropes because your landing is cushioned by water, usually the sea. Done in everything from swimmies to drysuits, depending on where you climb. Some lunatic Canadian called Trotter is planning on combining deep-water-soloing with base-jumping because he wants to climb over thirty metres.

Mono/mono-doight - Adapted from the French for 'single-finger', a mono is any hold that will only take one finger. Obviously. This also pretty much guarantees a break/tear/sprain/dislocation/partial amputation if you take fall on a mono and don't act quickly; also giving a new and immediate meaning to the idea of 'pulling your finger out' when in a hurry.

Crimp - A minging hold such as a tiny ledge onto which you can only fit the ends of the top digits of your fingers; which will, if your entire body weight is being suspended by said hold, create an inverse arch between the first and second digits, leading to pain, cursing, and much enthusiasm for a decent pocket...

...pocket - Another kind of hold, hollow and two/three/four fingers/hand size, loved by climbers because it is hopefully quite good and you can hold onto it for a while before conceding you should probably try to finish the climb. The biggest pockets are called jugs. The Antichrist of all climbing holds is the Sloper.

BS/E - Invented yesterday by Chris, the BS scale refers to the amount of Bird Shit on any given route. 'E' is Extreme - a lot of Bird Shit.

Pumped - Whereby the extreme and relatively unusual strain of using the muscles in your forearms causes them to flood with lactic acid. Your arms become taut, numb, laced with previously unknown veins and hard to do things with - until normal service is resumed. On any tough climb, being pumped is a good excuse for falling off. As in: "Man, I got pumped towards the top. That's why I fell off, you know."

Dyno - Short for 'dynamic', regarding any move that involves leaving the rock face either significantly or entirely to secure the next hold. This typically means using good holds to jump upwards because the next hold is not reachable any other way.

Grade - I will ignore, for the moment, the fact that there are dozens of different grading systems that concur, disagree, contradict, confirm and ridicule each other and focus only on the Australian system, which is - in typically Australian fashion - very straightforward. It is numbered from 1 to (currently) 34 where 1 means you are lying on a bed and 34 means you are one of the dozen best climbers in the world - congratulations! I'm pushing for grade 20 at the moment. Grades are a matter of constant debate depending on how you climb. For example, I climb two attempts from three a nice, reachy grade 19 involving a big dyno and very wide moves on good holds. Chris is quite a lot smaller than me and he can't climb the big moves. He can, however, climb a grade 19 on the other side of the hall which I fall off every time because he can hold the tiny crimps and my legs are too long for a crucial move where you jam your knee into a crack in the wall. It's just how it goes. This also leads to speculation and sniffy comments such as:

"Well, all I'm saying is I think it's tough for the grade."
"That's an 18? That's not an 18. That's a 17, maybe 17/18."
"Man, did they change the holds and keep the same grade or something?"
"Oh, it's very easy for a 21 you know. The easiest 21 on the wall."
"She just climbed 27? Holy shit."

We watched 'The Last King of Scotland' last night. It is an exceptional movie. See it.

Your stupid knees bent running whopper

2007-02-26T16:47:00.000-08:00

Tubthumping time, comrades: the pigdogs are trying to restrict photography in a public place - citing, for a change, 'national security':

"...the UK Government are about to propose restrictions on photography in public places which would make street photography and documentary photography against the law. There are several moves promoting the requirement of 'ID' cards to permit photographers to operate in a public place. It is a fundamental right of a UK citizen to use a camera in a public place, and indeed there is no right to privacy when in a public place. These moves have developed from paranoia and only promote suspicion towards genuine people following their hobby or profession."

If this is important to you: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Photography/

Smash and bash

2007-02-25T18:38:00.000-08:00

There are African women wearing dresses of coloured dots and spots, the kid with a skateboard strapped to his back, another in his hands and he kickflips the third over the kerb, the man with the cowboy hat and belt buckle and turtle head his hands shake with age and illness, fatty smells of the fast food staff sharing a cigarette because Smoke if you got 'em, man, and schoolgirls you can already see which ones will be pretty, scattered reflections of jet plane against the towerbloc which is two sets of people in boxes but these will stay to answer phones and faxes and these will fly on away, away instead to Toronto, Tokyo, Tahiti, London El Salvatore, the back of her head all smiling and shy as she calls her lover, the back of his head as he chews on a sandwich and is desperately in love with the pigeons that squabble at his feet, electric wheelchair whining with high speed and running down the careless, squinting in the morning sun, window cleaner with pasta salad boxes and chamois cloth, All Sports, Bar & Bistro, Australia Australia but you, Scotsman, are proud of being broken. Teenagers mistake confusion for misery and dress in black and pierce lips, noses, necks because their parents never did and their friends always will with laugh aloud humping the lampost, police car, jewellery store, pork pie hats of tweed and black filed beneath with pansexual Japanese; you are fighting a peace for the security of war, war, SHOOTING STARS let's take it literal. War, war, gutshot: when we strike there will be no warning. Her shoes ripple on the flag like stones on ice the song whipping along the railway tracks, the short skirts, the gang of men in suits walk the street in a scene so Resevoir Dogs it must be rehearsed they daydream practice in their cubicles while they manage accounts or sell things, men in suits in company cars with air conditioning and so never feel the wind in their $100 haircuts, the cars stacked along the freeway, relentless broken mirror in the last evening sun still hot so the buildings are on two sides a refuge. Plaster saints, plaster Jesus, Francis, Nicoli, Anthony, standing and standing and sitting and kneeling, evacuation to the desert but when you live in the desert there is nothing to do except walk to the sea. Billy Lee's Cafe at Chinese New Year smash and bash of cymbal and drum, the dragons nod again to lord buddha, the scrapping for cabbage strung to the drainpipe, snapping of eyelids and ear and lip, jump and crouch and shake and can't hear a thing, stretchy bus sings the whale song on the corners, pnuematics, suspension, brakes, mulch bleached white in the sun, the ants a full inch long, the big ones nearer inch and a half and mean to boot, skies blue and black with distant lightning, piano plays soft chords, distant chords... and if all we have is NOW then I'm not sure I can wait.

I hate James Kelman

2007-02-18T18:51:00.000-08:00

I hate James Kelman and 'You Have To Be Careful In The Land Of The Free' is turning into my personal Vietnam. It goes on forever, I never get any closer to the end and I take absolutely no pleasure at all from reading it. It sucks at your soul, like watching Jordan and Gavin playing pool. It sits by my bed and radiates malevolence. I look for any excuse to avoid reading more of it. I read 'Generation X' in one sitting on the flight from Sydney. I read 'Fellowship of the Ring' inside four hours. But I've been reading the Kelman since November and I can't manage more than a dozen pages without getting... edgy. I also lapped up 'number9dream' by David Mitchell - if you haven't read any of his books yet, you should do so immediately. Like right now. 'Ghostwritten', 'number9dream' and 'Cloud Atlas' are simply astonishing pieces of work, especially 'Ghostwritten', 'number9dream' and 'Cloud Atlas'. I understand 'Black Swan Green' is just as good - that's on the hit-list once I've finished 'The History Of The World'. I've only just reached the Neanderthals, but's it's already fascinating stuff.

Little of substance to report. I've been looking for work, badly, and cooking occasional soup. I spend time in the garden, laying paving slabs and avoiding hornets. Jem and I have extended the patio around the vegetable patch. Working in the garden was a real chore when I was a kid - I quite enjoy it now. We mulched the plants by the back door, and already there are pumpkins pushing up through the woodchip. The meat ants have taken a beating in the driveway and the bonfire stack grows a new wing every with passing weekend. It's going to be a cracker once the fire ban is lifted. We cleared the rotten wood from up by the gate and found cockroaches, geckos, hissing crickets, huntsman spiders with legspan like a Slint CD...

Explosions In The Sky! Triple J radio is exactly what public broadcast should sound like, this is what you should hear when you turn on Radio 1 at home. A judgement call, but I'm making it. What is the point of playing exactly what the commercial stations play? Dross, trash, nothing. Public radio should be a forum for the things the commercials won't touch with a ten-foot clown pole, the new bands, new music, no matter how esoteric or unlistenable it might be. This is public service:

You made friends with ugly people so you'd stand out in a crowd
You were screaming at your mum and I was punching your dad
I said you must be a girl with shoes like that she said you know me well
You're only nineteen you don't need a boyfriend you're only nineteen
All this depends on the shoulders and bends we could be anyone have done anything I'm trying to trust you but I just don't know where you've been
What the sea wants the sea will have
Cos then she might be happy no longer lonely and I could take her out for pretty much free
Marilyn Monroe never married Henry Miller BUT IF SHE DID she might have felt like a woman instead of like a picture in a magazine
Colours and colours and colours and
I sailed a wild wild sea I climbed a tall tall mountain I met an old old man beneath a weeping willow tree
In the morning I can smell you on my pillow I need to know you won't get wrung out in the wash
You can't fool me, Dennis
Here we go again
A-wooooOOOOOOooooo
I like giants especially girl giants because all girls feel big sometimes regardless of their size
We busted out of class
Satan satan satan satan satan satan satan said DANCE!
And we'll all float on OK don't worry even if things wind up a bit too heavy we'll all float on OK
Ba-da ba ba DA da da da da!

Yeah so this week I have mostly been listening to The Fratellis and The Long Blondes and a Modest Mouse concert I taped off the radio. I'm climbing, trying to push my grade to 20 with some good stuff at the Hangout and a work experience kid with walleye follows you around talking and talking and talking. New climbing shoes: I'm never going back to lace-ups. Dips and crunches and cutting down on the beer, slinging paving slabs by the fingertips and sand everywhere. The hornets catch spiders and pump them full of venom. The spider is paralysed, bunched up and still twitching, dragged back to the burrow and injected with eggs. The larvae are incubated by the paralysed spider, and will eventually eat it, slowly.

Coincidentally, this is pretty much the fate I wish upon James Kelman every time I pick up his stinking book.

Check out the new links: cousin Jules did the snakes for 'Snakes On A Plane!' amongst many others - cousin Janey has published her first novel 'Gabbra's Song' - Iain 'Grumpy Old Bastard' Maloney has got some new and old writing up on The Watcher On The Quay - chum Banks' best music yet at My Friend Otto especially 'What Are You Looking At' - plus lots of Scottish bouldering news at Stone Country.

Hmmm. I have just noticed there are lots of names with 'J's in my family... Jules, Janey, Janet, Jayden, Jasmine, Jeremy, Jarrad, Justin, Joan, John, June, and there will certainly be more. But rather more disturbingly, and certainly more immediately, I have also just noticed that there are several very small ants in my coffee.

Today is the Thursday of the rest of your life

2007-02-05T17:59:00.000-08:00

"Have fun," grins Neil. "Mind the sharks."
"Har-har," I sneer.
"We will," says Inday.
"What?!"
"Bull sharks," she says casually. "Two of them sighted in the river."
"They're quite small, aren't they?"
"Three or four metres, something like that."
"But they wouldn't attack us, right?"
"Second most aggressive shark, after the tiger shark."
"Aww, come on. They won't like large splashes."
"They're attracted to large splashes."
"But not up river. Fresh water."
"It's a tidal river. They don't feed until evening."
I look at my watch. "It's six o'clock."
"Yeah, around then."

Cliff-jumping is fun. So yeah, I'm staying in Perth. I was having several second thoughts about leaving... then found out it was free to change the date of my ticket after all... so I'll be here a little longer. A lot longer. I like it here. I like the people, I like working in the orchard, and the weather is almost passable once the sun has set. I'm climbing at least once a week again and feeling good about it (managed that running-jumping climb from last week - not sure how). The next thing to do is find a job: I've sent some begging letters to a camera company, which was quite disheartening - I thought I'd left the desperate cold-calling behind me, but I'd rather do camera work than bar work. Time will probably make that decision for me.

Jeremy works for Legal Aid, a government body that provides legal support for those who need it. He sent me this article the other day. It's an astounding first in Australian law:

"SYDNEY(AAP) - A seven-year-old boy was at the center of a Parramatta, NSW courtroom drama yesterday when he challenged a court ruling over who should have custody of him. The boy has a history of being beaten by his parents and the judge initially awarded custody to his aunt, in keeping with child custody law and regulations requiring that family unity be maintained to the best degree possible.

The boy surprised the court when he proclaimed that his aunt beat him more than his parents and he adamantly refused to live with her. When the judge then suggested that he live with his grandparents, the boy cried out that they had also beaten him on occasion. After considering the remainder of the immediate family and learning that domestic violence was apparently a way of life among them, the judge took the unprecedented step of allowing the boy himself to propose who should have custody of him.

After two recesses to check legal references and confer with child welfare officials, the judge granted temporary custody to the English Cricket Team, whom the boy firmly believes are incapable of beating anyone."

All the sweeter after thrashing Australia last week. But we'll probably lose to the Kiwis today, which will save us a drubbing in the final. Funny thing, though - last week, in my infinite wisdom, I was ranting to Jeremy that the best thing the ECB could do now would be to fill the squad with young players who could get blooded - and bloodied - at international level. At least they might be hungry to win a game... then Bhopra, Nixon, Loye, Joyce, and Plunkett come out and actually play cricket. And win or lose, a contest is all we've really wanted since November.

If anyone is planning on applying to the BBC for a job, my advice is to be extremely sarcastic on the application form and also drink as much as possible while writing it.

'Welcome to Perth: A City For People'

2007-01-28T15:41:00.000-08:00

...as opposed to the other kind, I presume. For so says the sign above the freeway into central Perth. Jeremy made some excuse about fifteen years of urban housing development but I think he knows it must be the lamest city slogan in the world.

Perth is much like other big cities at five to eight on a Monday morning. There are commuters stunned with sleep and wired into iPods, street cleaners reading the paper, monks in McDonalds and a crowd of Aborigines who cackle and hawk barefoot on the road out of town. As far as this non-Australian can tell, there are three main divisions of Aborgines - these last have fallen between the cracks and rot their brains with petrol and drink. Next are those who make didgeridoos and paint pictures or busk in the street with chalk on the face and beard and belly, a photo opportunity for a gold coin donation. And the last, perhaps the luckiest, are those in the far North whose lands have the good fortune to be without minerals worth mining. They have shut out the Western world and live pretty much as they have for fifty-thousand years. Survey suggests Aborigines spend an average of twenty minutes a day lookng for food. Which is probably on average what we spend in the supermarket queue. I'm on thin ice.

I got back from my jaunt around the Southern forests and had just time enough to recover before the Buck's Show - starting in the morning with paintball, eight-a-side over five grounds and ten games. Those things hurt, but fortunately head shots don't count, so you just wipe the paint from your visor and keep running. You are not supposed to shoot surrendered/shot participants, but everyone did. Mick the Buck copped a thrashing, but he made an easy target with the bunny ears above his helmet. I shot someone in the hand from about fifty metres away and I was very pleased. Mick's prospective brother-in-law was there, a soldier who scared us all with tales of having his jaw broken whilst on war games - in the army they use frozen paintballs. Then I accidentally shot him four times in the groin from about a metre away, but he shouldn't have snuck up on me like that.

Happy, bruised, and in some cases bleeding, we retired for the afternoon to cousin Richie's house (though technically almost everyone I've met out West is a cousin - there really are two-hundred of them) and fell asleep watching beach cricket. The twins - who are almost feral, and proud of it - turned up later in the afternoon with a metre of pressed ham, a motorized spit and four tonnes of ice. We started drinking. There were about twenty of us by the time the topless barmaids turned up, and I spent some of the evening talking to Nicki about her media studies course while the stripper did unspeakable things with unspeakable things. I put myself to bed pretty early, and Shane the soldier starting pulling Titan's tail. Titan is an English Mastiff with a head the size of a soccer ball. He was soft as butter until the tail-pulling started. "If he does that again, you can bite him," says Richie. Titan looked at Shane very carefully, and you could see the cogs turning: "You is lucky Richie is around mister, else I woulda ate you a long time ago."

I woke up the next day with a screaming hangover, fur on my teeth and stuffing from the pressed ham all over my jeans. I hope to god it was stuffing, anyway. Richie, The 'Phonz and myself headed back over to Jem and Joan's place for her birthday party and a tooth of the shark that bit us. One fantastic beef curry later and Richie put himself to bed, there was much in the way of rough and tumble on the kid's bouncy castle and my hangover hung around like an unwanted British house-guest. In the evening Jem and myself laid a nice spot of patio paving with much help from six-year old Jayden. Jayden keeps threatening me with biting things - snakes, mainly, but also spiders, mosquitoes and octopi. "Again?!" I cried. "The snake bit me again? Man, I don't know if I can take any more bites." Jayden lowers his voice to a conspiratol whisper. "It's OK, Uncle Simon," he says. "I'm pretending."

Mid-week I went climbing with cousin Jasmine, who is a boxing champion and frighteningly good at climbing for a first-timer; I managed some nice reachy 18s including a fanastic dyno. Next time I'm going to try the climb where the last move involves running up the slab and jumping for the last hold. The rest of the week I just sweltered in the sun or cowered under the air-con. 40oC and above is simply not funny. Nothing can be done. The hottest UK temperature ever recorded stands at 38.5oC - on Friday, Australia Day, national drinking day, it was 43oC. We found a shady spot under a tree by the river and settled in with the coolers, beer, wine, barbeque sausages and water fights. Me and Bambi threw Angela in the river but she got what she deserved.

It's a good day, a day for almost everyone; some Aborigines refer to it as 'Invasion Day'. It's not as though Australians are shy about being being Australian, Lord knows, but Australia Day is a fantastic display on national pride - the same generally happy attitude as a rock festival, but without cheap amphetamines and emo kids. The Triple J Hottest One Hundred starts at ten in the morning, and I carried my little radio all over the foreshore to hear the countdown. Augie March was Number 1, which was pretty good, but the fools missed out on The Pipettes, The Fratellis, M. Ward, Old Man River, The Veils, Mew... further proof that democracy does not work. The fireworks were pretty good but nothing compared to the lightning storm miles behind it. A few of us stayed the night at Vanessa's place - the next morning Jem and Joan picked us up for Mick and Kerry's wedding and it started all over again. With a family of two hundred, there is a wedding or a birthday party virtually every day of the year. The priest was a cheerful soul who may have missed his vocation as a stand-up comedian - at Butlins - and the reception was suitably social, winding up with a boogie to Bon Jovi at the Mobydisc and a hapless DJ who may have been on work experience. It occurred to me that he was a bit like Luke Skywalker in the first two Star Wars movies, grasping blindly for the Force but unable to channel it anywhere constructive. I was so pleased with this simile that I told everyone, often: "When the apprentice is ready, the Master will appear."

And Godfather III - "Just when I think I'm out, they drag me back in..." No respite on Sunday, as Jared turned thirteen. Another barbeque, more beer (though not for him), and then some doubles pool where I finally got my revenge on Australia. This was two days after Paul Collingwood announced in the pre-match press conference that "England are now playing for pride", go on to win the toss on a decent wicket and are promptly skittled for 111 runs which Australia knock off with nine wickets to spare, leading to calls from the press to send them back to England because everyone who paid for the day/night match only got to see the 'day' part... I've also got Jeremy's English/Australian identity crisis figured out. He doesn't so much sit on the fence as jump from one side to the other. Fortunately, he is pretty good at pool and Team England meted out a sound thrashing to the Aussies, and not before time, too.

Back in the orchard we spent a happy evening running retriculation pipe to irrigate the lemon trees, water cold and clear and good from a hundred and twenty feet down, and the sky turned orange and rippled with lightning. The storm lasted for seven hours. Seven hours. The thunder woke me again at four am or so, and idiot dog Aloo was going crazy in the garden. The air is oppressive but there was not enough rain to clear the cobwebs - this morning the eastern sky was pink.

Now I am in central Perth, bound for the museum. I hear they a have a meteorite. Coffee first, mind you. I'm off to the movies tonight, cliff-jumping on Wednesday, rock-climbing on Thursday, and home soon thereafter. Before Christmas I was really eager to go home. My time with the Roses in A.C.T., the Zuads in Coffs Harbour and everyone in W.A. has changed things. All good people, and barely a backpacker in sight. But I remain unemployed (and possibly unemployable) and I need to get back to Blighty.

"Lightning she is just a flash, but the thunder she rolls on..."

ABV%

2007-01-08T21:48:00.000-08:00

At Byron Bay bustop I briskly booted Brook back on the bus to Brisbane. Hang on, thinks I, looking through the bleating ranks of backpackers and outraged Greyhound drivers... that looks much like my cousin Anna's friend Chi, but surely not! ...but that, I mused further, looks much like my cousin Anna. None of us had been very aware of the others' travel plans - it turns out that Anna plus pals were meeting Kate and Kees (other cousin and her very tall fiance) for breakfast at Aquarius backpackers, which was discovered on further inspection to be a stone's throw from my own hostel. They had been in Byron Bay for two days without either of us knowing. After a brief breakfast reunion (at least we all made good on our Christmas promise not to go years without seeing each other again - it took only the first six days of 2007) I had to flee on the Greyhound to Coffs Harbour. I didn't gawp quite so much at the giant prawn, this time. I had a hangover and it still makes me nervous.

The staff at Aussietel hostel remembered me, but I had forgotten about the punch they drink. There are no good pubs so they run a $6 bucks all-you-can-drink night swilling a mix of orange juice and Goon, with vodka to take the edge off. It is called 'Heartburn' because of what happens approximately ninety minutes after you start drinking it. Last November we all played cards but this time the staff were too busy flirting with American girls to drink with anyone else, identical American girls with identical American fringes and American teeth and smoking cigarettes like schoolgirls in the pub, elbow on the table and hand in the air, loose wrist and coffin nail loose in the first two fingers, bored and stupid, oblivious and given already to fat come age nineteen. So instead I got pissed playing 'Circle of Death' with two groups of Irish travellers. It is a very simple game known also as 'Four Kings', and under this name James Shannon may recall with well-earned shame a night in Aberdeen when he pulled the fourth King and drank something horrible poured into his mouth from the first floor window. This version is less extreme but quicker. The Irish groups mined a rich seam of personal history to stitch each other up during the ever-dangerous I HAVE NEVER round... classics including "I have never gone out dressed entirely in red, including a hat..." "I have never believed there was a restaurant at the top of Mt. Everest..." and the evergreen "I have never been discovered by my Dad face-down in the flowerbed with my car parked lengthwise in the road, blocking traffic."

I was only in Aussietel for a night before escaping into the Coffs hinterland to stay with my Mum's cousin Simon, his wife Anni and their children Oliver and Zianna. I stayed for two nights, drinking as much of Simon's homebrew as possible, eating homemade pickle and swimming in the local creeks, ice-cold and utterly clear. We laid a nice spot of turf and saw an echidna. For a garden Simon and Anni have 60 acres of rainforest. The heat is tangible, and after the rainstorms clouds of steam drifted out from the path. I climbed a strangler fig and was very nervous about the ticks and the leeches that wait on the branches. Cicadas in the trees, leaf-tailed geckos dozing on the side of the house, a goanna in the driveway. Oliver and Zianna taught me how to play Monopoly and promptly beat me at it. I existed another couple of turns on charity with Oliver waiving twelve-hundred pounds of Pall Mall rent before shame overtook me and I retired to the homebrew.

The flight from Coffs to Sydney was fine, but the queue at the domestic terminal was a horror. I took one look at the mobs of people and knew enough to settle in for the long haul, but it still took over an hour to shuffle twenty metres to the check-in desk. The Australians around me didn't know what to do; they are used to efficiency and things working properly, and they were becoming panicked and unstable. I realised that this is one of the things that makes Britain great: we have experience enough not to lift an eyebrow when life goes awry, when it goes pear-shaped, when bureacracy or stupidity stand in the way of common sense and reason... "Bloody weather, eh? Bloody buses... bloody Ken Livingstone, eh? Eh?"
"Look here, chum. Let us never talk to one another again, and stare straight ahead instead with no smiling."

I don't think the woman in the queue ahead of me knew much about Ken Livingstone. She was having a heated argument across the top of her zimmer frame, yelling at the girl at the counter, who took the abuse with a practised service industry CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT smile-for-the-airport-tv-reality-show-smile plastered across her teeth like Vaseline. When I finally made it to the counter she seemed bored and contemptuous in her too-much make-up. "I think today would have been a good day to pull a sickie," says I with much in the way of an empathetic smile, jerking a wry thumb over my shoulder at a fat man who keeps shouting something indistinct about "Hurry up!"
The girl laughs, she laughs, "It's an experiment. We're deliberately trying everyone's patience to discover the breaking point."
"Not me," I said. "I'm British."

After finally checking-in I had nine hours to kill before boarding, so I took the train into Sydney and went to the cinema. Things get a bit hazy about now. I went to see Marie Antionette. At least, I think I did... I must have bought a ticket, because the stub is still in my wallet, and I seem to recall exploring the bowels of the cinema and finding a cobwebby room marked SCREEN 18 but after that things go blank and uncomfortable, and the next thing I remember for certain is waking on the street outside as if from a deep sleep. According to my watch, slightly more than two hours had passed, and I felt curiously cheated, but I couldn't say for certain that I actually watched anything resembling a movie.

Back at the airport the queues had died down but the checkout girl had gone too, so I had a beer by myself and boarded for Perth. The size of Australia starts to make sense when you travel six hours to cross from one coast to another. Off the top of my head that's roughly how long it took to fly from London to the skies over Egypt. At nine kilometres high we chase the sunset east across the outback, nine kilometres up and the horizon darkens into a dull rainbow, the clouds pink and grey, gutted salmon, dirt tracks that run straight for dozens of kilometres and sometimes cross smaller tracks and trails that stretch away to nowhere much. There are fields, I suppose, or rather massive tracts of scrub and sand in geometric shapes, fenced-in for reasons I will never understand. When the sun drops further the sporadic waterholes are reflected red, bright studs in the murk, and I think I can tell different layers of atmosphere, split apart in gigantic arcs.

It is dark only for a little while, and then we land in Perth. Cousin Jeremy rescued me from the airport and poured beer into me. This was to become a regular pattern over the next few days. He and Joan live in a lemon orchard with dogs and bull ants. These first are called Tooky and Aloo, and they are dumb and try to dig big holes under the house. The second are a menace, ants a full inch long that bite and sting. Jem copped a sting through his shirt and the mark is still going strong after five days. Joan can cook just about anything and I've been making up for two months of malnutrition with Burmese curries and fried rice.

We've been talking about a lot of family history. I suppose one of the reasons I haven't written in so long is because I'm still trying to digest it all... some things I knew but didn't understand and many more that I had no idea of - much to do with World War II, and I'm finally just beginning to grasp the size of the thing, to attach some meaning to it other than feeling guilty if I forget the minute's silence on Armistice day. It is too big for most of us, I think, those of us who were never affected by it directly. I don't know what to say. Well, I do, but I'm not writing it here.

Joan is Burmese and her family in Western Australia number about 200 in three generations. It's even more complicated than the Sylvester clan. Her daughter Vanessa and boyfriend Neil threw a barbeque on Friday night - a dozen people coming and going and eating and drinking, a great night out in Perth. Bacardi 151 is 75.5% alcohol. We went to 'The Aberdeen', which was much better than the actual Aberdeen, and drank a lot of tequila and rum and bourbon and the next day I stood accused of being a pimp and spontaneously starting a taxi singalong of 'Turn around bright eyes', both of which I deny. We watched The Simpsons until the wee smalls, and I recovered with six hours of Scrubs. It was too hot to move. Temperatures at the weekend were pushing 40oC, impossible heat, impossible to do anything except sit, drink water, try not to exert any energy. Joan's other daughter Kathy threw a birthday party and I topped up the ABV% in my blood with Jack Daniels and 'Death By Chocolate' and staggered home at one. Birthday parties for young and old, ride-on mowers, chicken curries, ants, heat.

Jeremy has lent me his Ute - 'pick-up', for those at home - and I am roaming the Southern Forests at the moment. I drove straight through to Albany, stayed a night in a hostel trying to catch the eye of an attractive bookworm but getting too hooked into 'number9dream' to make any progress, drove along the coast to Denmark, stopping at Gap - not what you think - nothing to do with sweatshops - photos to follow (next stop the Antarctic) - and stayed the night in a hostel with six Irish boys who just the day before had crashed and written off their brand-new-second-hand jeep and were still trying to work out who to blame, drove on along the highway and found my way to Elephant Rocks. Which is amazing. Massive granite boulders, smoothed over by the sea, grouped knee-deep in the ocean, a herd of elephants marching out to some hidden gravesite way under the water. My photos won't do it justice but the similarity is uncanny, magnificent, awe-inspiring. So then I climbed on them. Amazing friction on the feet, nice landings in the sea or on the sand, and passersby who know nothing about climbing to cheer the easiest moves. I climbed my highest top-out, too, I think maybe six or seven metres. It was pretty easy, to be honest, about 4c/5a with a 5b move near the top where a gnarly little flower has taken root in the only good handhold. I'm looking forward to getting back into regular climbing.

Today I've driven all over the Southern Forests, ancient Karri trees, hot sun, tiger stripe roads, craning my neck to identify the roadkill
that comes and goes
and never knows
what hit it
bugs tip-tap bouncing
on my windscreen
on to Margaret River where all the hostels were fully-booked so I raced up the highway to Dunsborough before the reception closed. Then I wrote all this, mainly to call a halt to the harrassment I've endured for not updating the blog before now. Jesus, what am I? Your prancing monkey? In fact, no-one is to answer that, especially Jeremy, Tim, Mike, Bob, my Mum, Baker and his pseudonyms, or anyone else.

I'll probably head back up the coast to Perth tomorrow. On Saturday I'm going paintballing as part of a Buck's night (which is exactly the same as a Stag's night except the Australians have to rename everything to compensate for their inferiority complex about being so dismal at things like cricket and not being English anymore). Not sure what happens after that. I've been making noises about moving back at the start of February and my cash has now gone. But I am getting very nervous about jobs. I've been looking for work over the internet for about six weeks now and the only job I was interested in the man at the agency couldn't be buggered writing back about.

"...poker chips..."

2006-12-31T16:10:00.000-08:00

The hostel looks like a war zone this morning. An explosion in a badly-managed brewery. There are ribbons of paper towels strewn and pasted upon every surface. Broken and intact bottles are stacked on patio tiles slick with spilt beer and spirits. They ran out of mugs and started drinking from saucepans - they ran out of saucepans and drank Goon straight from the inner plastic bags. This is known as 'Spanking the Goon'. The plates have been smashed, the toilets flooded and the fridges ransacked. Something exploded in a microwave. Cigarette butts are stick to the walls upon which they were extinguished hours ago. There are one or two dazed survivors crouched over coffee cups, trembling hands, trying to spark lighters that will never work again. There is - I am not making this up - someone in the car park playing mournful scales on a harmonica as though he has survived another night in the trenches... put that light out, Private...

About six o'clock last night I went for a swim at Byron Bay main beach. The clouds had drawn over and the beach was almost deserted. The water is warmer than the air and the waves are thin and flat. I showered, went round to the YHA to have a drink with Louis from Quebec. Two Brazilian girls from his room were drinking champagne from plastic pint glasses; class is global. I went back to my backpackers and heated up yesterday's bolognese - had a couple of beers with Martin and Marlina - a samba band with much in the way of headgear and facepaint stormed by the back gate trailed by a procession of hippies protesting everything from overfishing to the evils of holiday lets. I danced along with them for a while and the policemen took my beer away. I bumped into Brook and Ina from my dorm and danced the samba with them for a while, then went back to the hostel to fill a thermos with rum and coke - Havana Club, naturally - and grab my hipflask. An African band took over from the samba and the hippies, then a reggae band. The singer has a fat head. Marijuana coils in the air, bottles turning ankles underfoot, coffee, kids with fairy wings, digeridoo that hum and spin and all drone behind my ear... the bells, a woman in a top hat counts down from "10 - 9 - 8"... sporadic fireworks, whooping and yelling, hugging of strangers. This year must be better than the last - I have said that every year for the last six years. Brook and I decide that we're going to be amongst the first to swim in the Southern Pacific in 2007 - skinny dipping at ten past midnight, she's afraid of sharks. There are no sharks in Yorkshire and she's convinced they hunt at night. The tide is coming in and our clothes are soaked. We change at the hostel and go back to the beach to rescue Ina from a mob of rabid Canadians with greasy skin and shaking with the cold sweats. Brook swallowed too much sea water. She starts vomiting in the public toilets. Ina and I cajole her back to the hostel where she locks herself in the shower and pukes bile into the plughole. We get the door open and make her drink water. I've sobered up after barely the first hour of sitting under the shower but Brook keeps mewling something about sleeping under a waterfall. Dealing with drunk people is probably good practice for children. They are equally sly, stubborn and untroubled by reason. I get to bed about three.

This is 2007. It's funny how the days go by - "ticked off on calenders, counted down like poker chips staked against birthdays, anniversaries, new jobs, holidays..." The last days of 2006 were a lot better than the few hundred that went before them. From the Bondi Beachouse I wound up in the A.C.T. caving with my cousins on Christmas Eve and being savaged by mosquitoes. Christmas Day was just as odd - there were phonecalls and presents and a lengthy game of Jenga in which Ali introduced me to the 'J-move', where any layer that has two blocks on the sides seperated by a central gap can still be used; firmly slide one of the edge pieces into the gap in the middle and then remove the now-superfluous block from the other side. It's tricky but I've seen it done... fortunately someone else spilt the tower before I had to test it for myself. We went for a Christmas Day walk in the Orora Valley that shares the dual distinctions of being both home to the most populous kangaroo population and the coldest mean temperature in Australia. You should see the 'roos scatter before a rugby ball. They can't play at all.

At 6am on Boxing Day cousin Ali and I went climbing at Baroomba, a granite crag in the A.C.T.. It's a thigh-crunching trek to the top of the climb, where we dropped off our bags and jam sandwiches and scrambled down the side of the cliff. This was my first multi-pitch 'trad' climb, and this is how it works: Ali climbs first with a harness full of safety gear. He places these stoppers into cracks in the rock and then clips his rope into them before climbing onward and upward. I belay him from underneath, paying out the rope as he climbs. After thirty or so metres (roughly one 'pitch') he ties himself into the rock and I climb up as he belays from above, collecting the safety gear as I go. When I reach the same safety point, I give him his gear back and the process is repeated until we hit the top. We did two climbs run together - 'Denethor' into 'Ivory Coast' - four pitches totalling 120 metres of granite slab climbing. The hardest, crux move is at the start of the first pitch; the second pitch is an easy scramble; the third pitch begins with a revolting crack climb that bloodied the mosquito bites on the back of my hands; and the fourth pitch is a monster. I'd said on the first pitch that I didn't like the hollow noises made by the layered slabs of granite - it sounds as though they will detach at any moment and slide you down the cliff, complete with the safety gear. When I said this, Ali just chuckled to himself. On the fourth pitch, 'Ivory Coast', I found out why. It starts with a tricky traverse to reach the bottom of a huge flake, a massive shield of this layered stuff. It's about ten metres of really good climbing up this edge as the booms, knocks and creaks vibrate and echo obscenely throughout the entire layer. It was only when we reached the top that Ali told me about the old man he'd met earlier in the year:
"What did you climb?" asked the man.
"'Ivory Coast'," says Ali.
"Is that still there?" replies the man, startled. "I thought that fell off years ago."

Jam sandwiches have never tasted so good.

Anna's friend Chi taught us how roll our own sushi for lunch - the sticky rice seems the tricky part but I'm rapidly getting hooked on sushi and I need to learn to how make it. And oh, but so many happy moments thrown out by the difficulties and differences in English and Japanese. At one point Chi asked me, "Simon, do you have a-" and wiggled her little finger at me. When almost everyone had finished crying with laughter we established that the gesture in Japanese means 'girlfriend', and not quite how we understand it in the UK. Culture shock? You have no idea.

Cousins and fiances and friends disappeared on the 28th and I stayed overnight in the Canberra YHA. In a double whammy of bad things, I left a CD full of photos in an internet cafe (pictures of Christmas and climbing to follow when Ali has sent me a replacement!) and had my iPod stolen from the hostel. They've been over the CCTV with no luck. My travel insurance only pays $100 per item with a $50 excess, so that's not good at all. No more Mogwai, no more Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, no more Arcade Fire, no more Sleater-Kinney, no more Arab Strap. I am not pleased. There's always Triple J - taking a radio with you is the best of whatever poor advice I could offer anyone else on the move. The flight from Sydney to Byron was uneventful - on the bus between airport and town three women in front of me were muttering and whispering important things about the woman sitting in the front of the bus, who seems to have been a Big Brother winner or something else I don't care about.

Since arriving in Byron I've finished 'Flashman's Lady' by George MacDonald Fraser (author of the excellent MacAuslan saga), 'Ice Station Zebra' by Alistair Maclean (for the fifth time), and a repeat of 'Lunar Park' by Bret Easton Ellis which I stole from the Bondi hostel and is, on the second reading, better written, incredibly sadder and much more frightening than I found it the first time round. It is a genuinely disturbing novel. So then I swapped it for 'Generation X' by Douglas Coupland but first I have to finish James Kelman 'You Have To Be Careful In The Land Of The Free'. I put this up before but no-one acknowledged it and it still makes me laugh, so - how many James Kelmans does it take to change a lightbulb? Three. It takes three James Kelmans to change a lightbulb. To change a lightbulb, it takes three James Kelmans.

I made that up.

Laugh, you Philistines!

Right, that's it. I've got better things to do than hang around here having my best made up joke ignored because only Dan and Iain and Bob know who James Kelman is and they didn't find it funny the first time anyway.

I somehow thought that this would make an amusing picture. I was dreadfully, horribly mistaken. This was dubbed 'Brokeback Simon' and I was called Ennis for the next three days. There's more Christmas pictures if you check cousin Anna's blog in my Links.

Some poor bastard in a Santa suit

2006-12-24T02:52:00.000-08:00

My dorm in the the Beachouse YHA has seen more than a fair share of crazies in the ten days I've been in Bondi. There was an Italian guy with a diamond nose stud and a hair dryer, an Australian kid who wheeled tracks of sand from his BMX all over the room, a German man who has been making daily trips to the airport for two weeks in the hope of a last-minute cancellation to fly him home for Christmas, and Simon from New Zealand. Simon is 48, works on a submarine base in Adelaide and is rather special. He has saved two months of holiday to come to Bondi, but he doesn't surf or sunbathe. He comes to the hostel so he can "save money to actualise in my pension." This phrase crops up quite often. Most of the time he seems to be expressing his internal monologue but then making a conversation of it with whoever is unlucky enough to have heard. The actual holiday seem to consist of going to a rugby club to eat roast dinners for $8 bucks. He reminds me of the 'Meaning of Liff', in which words are ascribed to things that have a meaning but no name. Simon from New Zealand reminds me of 'the kind of family that go to the beach and sit in the car with the windows rolled up, reading newspapers'. He was about to ask reception to swap rooms because the clasp on his locker had a slight ding which could "damage the design, create a structural weakness, you see. I want to keep my passport in there, and I can't very well do that if it has a structural weakness, can I? Not my passport." He was getting quite agitated, and it seemed for the best that I swapped lockers with him before things got out of hand. Then he started to fret about sleeping on the top bunk. "You're going tomorrow, you say?" I confirmed that this was indeed the case. "Hmmm. And Alfonso is going the day after?" Again, I agreed with him. "So the question, then, is should I take your bed tomorrow or wait another day and take his bed?" He looked at me for several moments with watery eyes before I realised he wasn't being rhetorical. I looked at my bed, and then at Alfonso's. Alfonso had his nose buried in a German novel and hadn't said a word since I came in and interrupted Simon lecturing him on the dangers of driving in Australia. The really curious thing is that Alfonso is Spanish and can't read German. I looked again at the beds. "Does it matter?" I asked. Simon looked at both beds, and at me, and at both beds, and seemed a little crestfallen. "No," he said. "I suppose not, if you're going to be like that."

I arrived from Katoomba about ten days ago. Checking in ahead of me was Louis from Quebec. He has a big afro and works as a computer graphics artist. Like so many of us out here, he's reached a dead end and has taken some time out to think things through. I hope he manages it better than me. We ended up in the same dorm room with Alfonso, who is on another surfing holiday. He has surfed his way round America - both north and south - Europe and North Africa. This is pretty much the only time except in Cairns and with the Coral Trekker crew at Airlie Beach that I've fallen into regular company with people I like. I've taught them how to play El Presidente, which anyone worth talking to will tell you is the best drinking game of all time. We speak a lot of French and drink a lot of VB.

The surfing is OK - Bondi has regular waves and on sunny days the beaches are crowded with topless girls. There was a man with a ponytail at the top of the cliff taking pictures with a long lens and a tripod. It's better in the wind and the rain, when the sea is rough and the beach is deserted. I've done some surfing with a longboard but the waves are big and I am amateur - fighting the swell to get into a decent surfing spot is tougher than falling off the wave is worth. I ended up using a bodyboard instead and having much more fun. Having decided 'one more' would finish me for the night, I immediately saw a cracker chasing down and rearing up towards me - paddling frantically, the wave picks me up - tide and gravity, the wave breaks - I raced towards the beach and the wave doesn't die, it builds every time and breaks again, twice, three times, four times to deposit me at high speed on the beach and leave me laughing out loud in the sand. A total fluke, yes... but the best wave I will ever catch.

I've done the last of my meagre Christmas shopping in Westfields mall at Bondi Junction, where some poor bastard in a Santa suit sweats out another shift of yelling kids. There are pet shops with animals in the windows where people AWWWW and OHHHH at the sleeping tumble of a dozen kittens or the puppies that fall over and can't work out why. There is cheap sushi for lunch, local cricket on the way home and pasta bolognese for my dinner. It's a bit of a party hostel but not quite my cup of English. I mostly just sit on the big sofas and read. The only time I've gone out I was forbidden entry in the Bondi Hotel on the grounds of intoxication. I would like to point out that I'd drunk a liver-threatening, socially disreputable four beers. That's four beers. Four. Alfonso had drunk two bottles of wine and Louis was pickled on rum and jetlag and we were in the company of a Norwegian and two 18-year old Canadians who had been drinking all afternoon; but the bouncer picked on me. I was mortified. He realised almost immediately that he was wrong, but he couldn't back down any more than he could look me in the eye. A bouncer's IQ shrinks to match his collar size come the weekend. We stood by the queue for ten minutes haranguing the security and warning all passers-by that they weren't allowed into the Bondi Hotel if they were intoxicated. It was funny to everyone except the bouncer, and eventually the manager came out with a wounded expression and asked us to go away. I went back to the hostel. Four beers.

There is bookshelf for free exchange in the hostel. I've been able to thin out some of the dross I've been carrying and read another half-dozen books in the last ten days. Out of desperation I read some Dean Koontz horror novel. I was 450 pages through before I realised that I'd already read it when I was fifteen. Things improved - I caught up on 'Empire of the sun' which is an extraordinary novel, much better than the rest of Ballard's work. But Paul Di Fillippo's 'Steampunk trilogy' was utter tosh and made me quite angry... then one of the interminable 'Dune' prequels... then a 'Da Vinci Code' style money-spinning spin-off... then some detective nonsense. Americans have forgotten how to write detective fiction - I blame Hollywood. DISCUSS. And Paul Auster doesn't count, Bob.

Yesterday I caught the Greyhound from Sydney to Canberra. When I woke up and sat up, Simon from New Zealand stuck his head over the edge of the top bunk. "You're going today, aren't you?" It was 6am, he was fully dressed and gave no impression of having slept at all. "Can I have your bunk when you've gone?" I looked at him, upside down, and the rising sun glinted off his massive bald head. On the bus I was sitting next to kid in a Spiderman suit who wouldn't stop fidgeting. Three and a half hours of kicking my ankles when he missed the chair in front of him. The only salvation was listening to Mogwai and watching the face of the poor bugger in front... 'Ex-cowboy'! Take that, Spiderman! His head implodes, leaving only a fine mist and stunned passengers.

Cousins Ali, Anna and Kate, Kate's finace Kees and Anna's Japanese friend Chi met me at the station. We just about packed everything into the Red Dragon, Ali's long-suffering van. It reminded me in spirit of the Millenium Falcon back in London. You can tell immediately when you're in a van with character, and the grinding noises coming from the Dragon were neither a surprise nor a disappointment. We made our way to the supermarket and spent $500 on food and drink. Ali is an instructor for the outdoor adventure charity Outward Bound, and we're all staying on the company compound for Christmas. There is kangaroo shit everywhere and it's fantastic to be out of the city, out of a hostel, staying with people I know. The mosquitos are phenomenal. I couldn't sleep for the whining, the droning in my ears. It's the first time I've regretted owning a three-season sleeping bag. Impossibly hot underneath, savagely bitten above. I tried counting the bites the next morning but gave up after finding more than fifty on my left hand; it was only once we went swimming in the mighty Murray river (waist deep) that the others saw my back - I've probably got about three or four hundred bites on my back, shoulders, arms and chest. I've got bites on my fingers and the palms of my hands. Typing all this seems to have finally triggered a vicious itching, and my hands feel like they're on fire.

It's a strange Christmas Eve. Last year Ruaridh and I drove from London to Inverness in seven and a half hours. This year I was caving in Wee Jasper. Gravel roads and dead wombats is a bit different from the M6 Toll and the A9. It's about a forty-metre abseil into the first cave, and confused bats are silent against the sunlight. The abseiling was good, dropping down into total darkness. We crawled and climbed and walked for an hour or so. Some of the rock shapes are incredible, including an absolutely unbelievable profile of Elvis Presley (photo to follow). The caves that are riddled with tunnels and chutes. It is dry at the moment but some of the shapes conjure up the waters that carved them... and even down here, even forty metres underground, even in the middle of nowhere in Wee Jasper, 'Ronald loves Marcie' and 'Steve loves Susan'.

I haven't said anything about the cricket. My friend Ali has said it better than I could - the following was in response to my sarcastic comment last week that I was looking forward to the start of the Ashes...

"...I too can't wait for the Ashes. I think we've got a really good chance of holding on to the urn. Our bowlers are ruthless and operate as a fearsome team, while our batsmen are tenacious and sell their wickets dearly.

We've generally ironed out sweep shots and cheap strokes, now using them only at opportune moments. Our selection is perfect: thankfully certain players have had over a year without cricket, meaning they are well rested in order to play to their best ability. Our young spinner I hear will be left out of the first two tests, which is an excellent decision given the reason above and the coach's description of him as 'the best drinks carrier' in the world. The Aussies won't be able to carry drinks in anything like the fashion he does.

Best of all, this England side is now ruthless and, having seized a lead, will never squander it but press home their advantage, quashing all Aussie resistance.

It's going to be great."

Ain't it just?

Happy Christmas, people. I hope things is good where you are.

Quakers for World Peace

2006-12-10T17:56:00.000-08:00

There was a demonstration earlier outside the Carrington Hotel. Women are standing around in combative poses, sheltered from the sun by rainbow umbrellas and hoisting high a fearsome six-foot banner insisting that 'Quakers for World Peace!!'. There are two of them.

They helped me realise what disturbs me about this place. Unless I've made a horrendous mistake - and no, you're right, it's not likely - then nobody in Katoomba ever blinks. Not the Quakers. Not the busker with his small head and wiry hair and eyes that are pale and have no pupil. Not the kids with sneers and piercings. Not the Buddhist monk in his orange robes, who seemed so confused. And certainly not the man advertising his classes in Chinese Swordsmanship... it's The Midwich Cuckoos. They patrol the streets without blinking, and duck with no purpose into shops where nothing is ever sold. Katoomba has all its business on the main, steep street. There is a shop called 'Electrical Furniture, & Bedding'. Mark the position of the comma and make of it what you will. I certainly have.

The place is a devil to walk around - much like Bristol, actually - but at least it's stretching my calves back into shape. I did the walk along the Federal Pass again, but decided to run it. In my flip-flops. There was much in the way of stubbed toes and elbowing of fat tourists. They have cheated the 900 Giant Stairs by taking the cable car and puffing their way along the forest floor.

Late on Monday I had booked a day of abseiling and canyoning with 'High'n'Wild'. That night the weather finally changed. After three days of scorching sun we were caught on the fringes of a distant overnight thunderstorm, and I could see the flickers of distant lightning on the horizon. By the next morning a shroud of mist had rolled in, thick and wet. It was the respite I had been waiting for. I turned up hungover and with anorak at the pick-up point and discovered, to my surprise, to be the only one on the course. The day before had eleven punters and the day after had seven - I just fluked it. The guide was a decent guy and we agreed to miss out the abseiling and spend the morning climbing on fantastic sandstone at Mt. Victoria. I did five climbs of 25 metres - a grade 10 which I could have done in carpet slippers, three 15s and a 16. None of it was very difficult but I'm out of shape. Miss my bouldering. This business with the ropes is all very well, but I miss the focus of Me VS. Gravity and remembering how to make your fingers work. After lunch we went to the Empress Canyon. Canyoning is gorgewalking, abseiling, swimming and scrambling in narrow winding gulleys shrouded with ferns and fallen branches. After an hour of wending a way through the cold waters the route finishes with a thirty-metre abseil down a waterfall and a bone-crunching trek back to the car. There are worse ways to spend $140 bucks.

This hostel is pretty good. Most of the travellers here are outdoors-type, and the lounge is full of weary people by evening time, tired out by hiking and climbing. We drink beer, and read, and play pool or boardgames. Two German lads went out into the drenching mist in their raincoats to play the giant chess in the garden. They chased a stalemate for forty minutes and the fog boils upwards under the lights. There is a cheery woman, I think from France - a divorcee, almost certainly - with a boyish haircut that suits her perfectly but she seems sad when she thinks no-one is looking. Belgians or Canadians with pimples. White girls who haven't worked out that white girls should never wear their hair in dreadlocks. An Australian is camping in the garden. He was told to wait two or three days for his visa to go and work in the movies in San Diego, and has now been waiting for two or three months.

A billboard on a church near the hostel has a picture of the bible and suggests that you 'Meet the author before you read the book'. I can spot at least two problems with this, but it is part of a bigger picture, a recurring trend in curious attempts by the churches of Australia to entice new followers: a hoarding in Townsville told me that 'God doesn't want shares in your life, just a controlling interest'. Hmmmm. The Father, the Son and the Vice-President. In Wollongong there was a poster of a brand new pair of boxer shorts and the question, emblazoned across them in bold type, was, 'Which would you prefer for Christmas?' Firstly, there was nothing offered in exchange against the underwear, and secondly - assuming that joining the Church was the alternative in mind - this is a very dangerous question when addressed to anyone whose wardrobe is as tattered as mine. Quite frankly, I need the pants.

I'm back in Sydney now, after another two hours on the train opposite a tubby girl in plaits who wouldn't stop farting. I've checked in to the YHA at Bondi Beach, and the fog has dissolved into thin sea haze. Tonight there is a BBQ on the roof and tomorrow I'll try and remember how to surf. This place has a decent computer - I've backdated some photos all the way to 'Tom Waits...', and for good measure, I've included below the very first picture I took in Australia, jetlagged sunrise 4am wide-awake from the seventeenth floor of the five-star Sydney Shangri-La, a shoddy self portrait and for my brother's delectation, the sand-surfing girl.

*******************************************************************

"Why won't you leave me be?"
"That's an interesting question, Lenny. The most common theories about supernatural appearances suggest that, when the incident cannot be attributed to individual psychosis, a ghostly manifestation is generated by worldly matters left incomplete. Revenge, you see, or unrequited love. The need for acknowledgement, and so forth."
"Mr Rosicky, why have you got a moustache?"
It was true. Mr Rosicky had grown a luxuriant walrus moustache since he had been dead.
"Well, why not? Didn't you know that hair keeps growing after you've died?"
There was a pause. Leonard studied the growth.
"You mean that," Leonard gestured accusingly at the dense moustache, "is an accident?"
Mr Rosicky became defensive.
"A man needs a hobby! Besides, don't you think it makes me look younger?"
"Well... you're dead, Mr Rosicky."

Flushed

2006-12-09T03:10:00.000-08:00

Katoomba seems a decent sort of place. I went for a long walk today down from Echo Point through Federal Pass and up all 900 of the burning-muscle Giant Stairs. I was sweating like a footballer in a tax office by the time I reached the top. At every junction I had to stand aside for the people who seemed to think the stairs would be better approached downwards, rather than up. I had a short conversation in French with a Jacques Tati-type and then an old Japanese man didn't quite grasp how far down the stairs went. In fact I think he called me a liar, but I bet he ends up spending the night down there.

The Three Sisters at Echo Point. For a sense of scale you might be able to make out the people on the viewing platform top-left.

Katoomba Falls

I walked back past suburban gardens, where Jack Russell terriers hide in the beads of overgrown grass and watch with inky eyes. Still filmed in sweat, I went into a cafe near my hostel. I checked my watch - 3pm. Good timing: "Just how happy is the Happy Hour?" I asked the man behind the counter. He stared at me through goldfish glasses as though I'd just proudly announced selling his daughter to the gypsies. It's a fair cop. She'll be in Russia by now. I sat on the balcony, and poured my beer too fast. It foamed up over the table. Thinking quickly, and not wanting a lap full of beer, I flicked it all over the edge of the table. It was unfortunate that there were people sitting on the patio underneath the balcony; I heard some exclamations of disgust and beat a chuckling retreat to a safer spot.

The hostel is fairly decent, an Art Deco oddity built halfway down a steep hill with the railway station at the top and Echo Point at the bottom. We are situated just across from the ambitiously titled 'Palais Royale'. The place is full of children who run and scream and play the pinball. Every flat footstep thuds through the parquet flooring and up the sofas. The rabble of kids were playing the giant outdoor chess with three teams, taking it in strict turns regardless of who was black or white. I've been playing the best pool of my life with no-one around to see it.

There has also been an unfortunate incident with my hipflask. The ink has been washed out of my pocket notebook by Jim Beam. On the plus side, it was quite new and I hadn't written much, and the ink is now flushed into pretty patterns throughout the book, and it smells of bourbon. All in all it's a good result, but I think next time I'll remember to cap the flask if I'm going to set about falling asleep while drinking it on my bunk.

I'm considering a day rock climbing tomorrow or on Monday, though it's expensive and I'm horribly out of shape. I also might try 'canyoning', though I've yet to find out what it involves. I managed the medium-grade bushwalk in my flip-flops in about two-thirds of the suggested time today, and I don't want to buy walking boots.

I sat and watched a local cricket match for a while. It was much better than the test matches. I saw about forty runs and three wickets in the first six overs. I think I recognised Trevor Somney running in to bowl.

The corner of the ceiling.

2006-12-07T22:33:00.000-08:00

I'm in a really filthy mood, very irritable, furious, combinations of things have me ready to commit murder. I left Sydney for Wollongong but was unable to meet former flatmate - the hostel turned out to be University accomodation and I spent two days walking the town, staring at breezeblocks or throwing things at the roaches that chased across the floor. A grinning man watched me eat my dinner and I was convinced he was about to take out a knife. I went to see two Japanese movies in Sydney - 'Ghost Train' scared me senseless though it wasn't especially good and 'Neighbour No.13' was exceptional stuff. I saw 'Borat' and the new Bond and found them both highly unsatisfactory. Either they showed the reels in the wrong order or there was some very dubious editing going on in the poker scene. Grinding teeth and clenched fists! It makes no sense to do things like this. (Though keep an eye peeled for second/half/not-quite-sure-what cousin Julian Sylvester's contribution to 'Casino Royale' - he's an animal wrangler in L.A., I guess he must have supplied the cobra and the mongoose.) England once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and all the Aussies gloated. In the supermarket today people did the unspeakable and hemmed me in to different aisles. I get horrible claustrophobia in supermarkets but this was worse than normal - it was like a concerted effort to deliberately trap me in Breads or Biscuits. Every time I approached a deserted area people would spring from nowhere with bad haircuts and hats and loud voices and fill the spaces around me. I was hemmed in by two women who ignored me utterly as I gestured for escape - one reported back on some gossip and the second dislocated her jaw in disbelief, an anaconda preparing to swallow some miscellaneous rodent. Flycatchers and grubby children. Banged on the hip by a basket - "Oh, sorry, was I in your way?" I was turned over again at the book exchange. I sold fourteen paperbacks for only $30 dollars, but I need to shed the weight. He had me and he knew it, smug in his bristly moustache and creaking chair. 'Underworld': 800 pages of proper good literatoor, boiling down to "America - hey, how about it? Eyyyy." I've read 'Of Mice And Men', 'Things Fall Apart', 'Lolita', and several others I can't even remember though I've sat here a full minute racking my brains for the names. I'm now in the YHA in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. No sooner had I unpacked but I was turfed out of my bunk by a shifty guy with Marty Feldman eyes who claims to have been sleeping there all week. I pointed out that all the other bunks had dirty sheets and this was the only one stripped to the mattress; he looked at the corner of the ceiling and muttered things about the cleaners and some mysterious daytrip. I no longer feel like a millionaire after checking my bank balance in Sterling rather than Aussie dollars. A man on the train divided his time between yelling at girls and sitting sobbing. It's too hot. I need a shower. I don't know what to do. People keep sending me spam emails for Viagra. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! have prevented murder today.

Balls

2006-12-01T21:12:00.000-08:00

Six men in Italian football shirts are playing keepy-ups in a narrow alley. The one with big curly hair loses control and the ball rattles against the metal chairs outside the cafe.

A woman crosses the road without looking. In her left hand she carries a cardboard cup full of steaming coffee, and in her right she holds a pastry. She wears a shawl that totally covers her shoulders. She has a fake third arm in a green plastercast slung around her neck.

I pass two builders on the Darlinghurst Road, their workboots white with plaster. The one with dark eyes has a dense beard, but it will never be thick enough to fully disguise the Nazi 'SS' tattoo on his neck.

Sitting in a doorway outside Kings Cross station, an old man with an immaculate dinner jacket sucks on a roll-up, one leg bent, the other spilling onto the pavement. His hair is thin, and white, and gelled up in the manner of Frank Sinatra.

In a successful effort to save money I have done virtually nothing in the last three days but read and write and drink gallons of free coffee. I've only managed about thirty pages of 'Underworld' but all of 'Kiss The Girls', ''48', 'With No One As Witness' and 200 pages of Jasper Fforde's 'The Fourth Bear' which I bought about three hours ago. I have also bought some brightly coloured juggling balls for $5.50. There has been a lot of thunder and a little rain and I turned Amon Tobin up very very very loud. Rhino Jockey!

Sydney sunset...

PS. A moment of peculiar conversation: I was just about to go up the stairs to the roof terrace with a cup of tea when I was accosted by the elderly housekeeper. She looks fierce. "In my country," she says sternly, "you cannot do this. You get shot." She puts a finger to her head in the style of Travis Bickle and flexes her thumb several times. I am a little startled by this change in her behaviour. Any contact with her prior to this moment was limited to smiles and friendly "Good mornings". What have I done wrong? How have I upset her? What would get me shot? Not the cup of tea, surely... I've already drunk a dozen cups on the roof. She gestures angrily at my pocket. My iPod? Holy shit! She must know about the Bon Jovi! Who told her? How did she find out?! Then I realise she is pointing at my shorts, those scabby camouflage cut-offs I wear nonstop between June and October. "They take you from the road, they take you into the jungle, and-" the ominous thumb flexes again in slow motion, a vigilante hammer crashing down upon the puny scales of justice. She stares at me, the hoover pack strapped to her back, electrical cable trailing down the hall, a domestic Ghostbuster.

I nod politely. I've been nodding politely for a minute now, edging for the stairs. What's gone wrong? Nodding politely has always worked for me in the past. Why won't she let me be?

It turns out she's from Ecuador.

"The computer has just killed the engine..."

2006-11-27T14:40:00.000-08:00

This is the strangest internet cafe I have ever been in. It is dark and the lighting is restricted to a few dim uplighters and the sign behind the desk that says 'STARZONE'. The computers are very large and the chairs are those red leather monsters that adjust at every possible junction and swing wildly when you sit down. There is raised bank of monitors on the far wall and the sum effect is that of the base for an underground spy ring. The keyboard is illuminated only by the light of the computer screen. It is cool down here, off the street and away from the crowds. Too hot today, and sunny again after two days of overcast rainclouds that threatened but never broke. I miss the rain and the fog and the wind.

This, then, is Sydney, by route of the worst Greyhound so far. We were only about twenty minutes out of Coffs Harbour when it broke down, cruising at 90kmph when the engine cut out and the driver coasted into the side of the road. "Not to worry!" he called into the back, "the computer has just killed the engine." Not to worry?! Quite frankly, I'm not sure I've ever been as worried as I was after this statement. Had he just made a sweeping precis of technological progress for all of Western society? The Matrix? Self-awareness? A microchip assassin, by means of a foreign hacker? HAL 2000? It turns out the onboard computer has some mechanical cut-off switch. If the computer goes, so does the engine and this is a regular occurrence. No-one else seemed very worried. Being broken down for a few hours means being stationery and therefore actually getting some sleep. Sleeping in the bus seats is all but impossible. A yoga master would struggle. Looking back along the aisle, a series of heads, hands and legs spill across the armrests at strange and distorted angles. No-one gets much rest. I curled across both seats with my head on the armrest and my legs wedged under the chair in front. It did little good. Arriving into Sydney Central the next morning in fug of grey confusion, I collected my rucksack and simply walked for a little while. When the cobwebs were gone, I got out the map in Lonely Planet, growled, turned around and walked directly back to Central.

After the spaghetti map of the London Underground the Sydney system is a cinch. I took the doubledecker tube to Kings Cross (I know!) and started my week at Eva's Backpackers. It is expensive and four-fifths full of hearty Germans who all seem to know each other but breakfast is free and the showers are hot. In the last two days I have been climbing, badly, wandered around Paddy's Markets where porters try to hit you in the ankles with their blue trolleys, gone to the opera house, the botanical gardens, the art gallery, the gallery of contemporary art, Taronga zoo and the movies. At the opera house they were frantically preparing for the Australian Idol final. Strolling casually through the outdoor-media-event-mayhem that I know so well, I spotted a Jimmy Jib and felt some peculiar twinges. It took me a nervous moment to work out that this was from familiarity rather than nostalgia.

Taken while walking in the Rocks.

The zoo was generally quite good. They have an extensive breeding program of endangered animals which is the only justification for zoos, ever: they have two of the last thirty Sumatran Tigers in the world. On the other hand, the newly acquired sun bears were pacing back and forward in miserable laps. It's always a weird one. The echidnas seemed happy enough, and I'm always pleased to come across a new animal - the fishing cat is a large cat that catches fish. They also had the marsupial carnivore, the aptly-named spotted-tailed quoll, and bored chimpanzees chasing a lizard into the concrete moat. There is a pen full of kangaroos who were sitting around in the manner of dejected winos outside national banks. Broken. But then the turtles with cracked and damaged shells, repaired with fibreglass until they heal. Zoos always leave me feeling mixed up. Taronga also had one of the few undrugged koala bears in the country. It's a little known fact that koalas are actually omniverous - that the vast majority eat gum leaves and become stoned only adds to their appeal for the tourist market. When the toxins have been flushed from the gut, a koala can become extremely vicious. If there is no eucalyptus available they crave meat and in desperate times have been known to attack bushrangers and tourists. Like I say, this is not at all common, and the Australian media keep it quiet when these attacks do happen; in Taronga this adult female was perfectly disguised within the bamboo enclosure. You could see the bloody carcass of some small rodent spread out against the back corner of the cage. Only when a small child got too close to the window did it drop from the mesh ceiling and slam against the plateglass with a peculiar yowling noise. Flecks of saliva sprayed against the window. The child screamed and spun away while the koala continued to snarl and scratch. Yelling, the father dragged his daughter away and just as quickly the bear dropped back down and disappeared into the long grass.

Does anyone find this as depressing as I do?

I have seen more films at the cinema since being in Australia than in recent times in London. I saw Children Of Man in Brisbane, and the ending was a cheat. It's otherwise pretty good, though it has been classed in totally the wrong genre... you can't show armed police openly beating Asians on the streets on London and claim to have made a dystopian sci-fi. In Coffs Harbour I saw The Prestige, which is so obviously riddled with twists that it's hard not to see them coming - young Chris Nolan, already hoist by his own petard... I don't actually know what that phrase means, and hopefully I'll never find out. And last night I saw the second Jackass film and cried with laughter.

All these films have made a welcome respite from the cricket... I settled down, bated breath, to watch the first ball on the first day. Big Steve Harmison, tracing his run-up like he's about to rob a bank, ball in hand, nervous Australians, racing in and pow! Wide. So wide that it ends up not with a scrambling keeper but safely in Flintoff's hands in second slip. Second slip. Not first slip, but second. Martin Jenkins wrote that it was probably for the best that Flintoff got the ball as soon as possible, but that wasn't really what I had in mind. I watched the entire first day. I watched most of the second day. I watched Strauss top-edge and Cookie caught at slip. I couldn't watch the hatrick ball. I had to go back out to Muttonbird Island and listen to the first Weezer album. Couldn't take it any more. I invest so much faith in them and every time they let me down. No more cricket for me this winter - even in the unlikely event that we start to win a session or take a wicket. I should have known better. Fortunately,there have been no Australians around to gloat; the Germans asked me to explain the rules but I've fallen into that trap too many times and I bluntly refused. They started to get shirty with me, argumentative and resentful; I had to escape through an open window before things got out of hand.

I'm now at a loose end in Sydney. I've walked dozens of kilometres in the last two days doing touristy things and there is little left to do for free. My hostel is always full but never busy, and the rooftop terrace is the only safe place.

The view from the hostel roof

I'm writing quite a lot. In the dusk, fat furry bats scud between the highrise towers. Kings Cross is quite seedy and smells like Soho. I saw a woman carrying a little dog wrapped up in tartan. An old man was walking slowly because he deliberately, precisely placed his stick on the grimy cross between the paving slabs before taking his next step. There are sullen Chinese girls in baseball caps. Later, I see the woman again in a cafe by the road. Her tiny dog is trying to look dignified while sitting on his tartan blanket, laid out neatly on the pavement.

...and a quick postscript: I went to the Qantas office to work out precisely what I can do with my return ticket, and everything they told me in Brisbane was a horrible lie. I dealt with an absolute monster called Mandy. I didn't get a smile out of her until I left, and then, looking back over my shoulder, I realised that she had filed her teeth into points. One of the few maxims I have any time for is 'necessity is the mother of invention' (just look what happened to Red Dwarf when they could afford computer graphics), and having my options restricted by Mandy Khan actually brought me to realise that is both cheaper and easier for me to go to New Zealand first, in the New Year, then come back to Australia to impose on Jem and Joan on the west coast, and finally fly out from Perth...

I also swapped Bruce Chatwin's 'What Am I Doing Here' and a collection of Christopher Landon's novels - 'Ice Cold In Alex' was excellent stuff; 'Dead Men Rise Up Never' and 'Shadow Of Time' much more pedestrian - for 'Underworld' by Don DeLillo. It's a behemoth of a book which I've started three times and always given up on with the excuse that I had better things to do with my life. Now, however, I don't.

Tomorrow I book my NZ flights...

...and a second postscript: no, I don't. It is too close to Christmas and I have left it all too late. The return ticket costs a fortune that I can't afford to spend. I will do some rapid thinking over much coffee.

Check out the new links - rediscovered when sweeping out my inbox. Baker supplied Death Clock - Bob Porter discovered Disappointment.com, which is the blog Steph has waited her whole life for. The new explorers, the conquistadors pre-space exploration will all stake their claims on the internet. Archaeology is dying, a finite science - the internet is all that is left. We make our own archaeology from here on down.

Tom Waits for no man

2006-11-20T22:47:00.000-08:00

The Southern Pacific Ocean is alive with white horses. A ferocious wind is storming from the East across the sea and tearing into Muttonbird Island. Huge waves topped with foam are hammering at the rocks, throwing up white explosions of spray, the wind so vicious that all you can hear is a ROOOAAARR in your ears. The heathers and scrubs wave like an audience. You can lean forward into the wind without falling and be young again. I like this place. Huge waves, implacable, ancient, the big swell of thousands of miles. The next thing to happen across the horizon is New Zealand. Despite the spray and haze I can just about make out the most Easterly lighthouse in Australia and the hooks of white shearwaters that fly in the troughs of the waves. I thought a lot about time and erosion and stayed out long enough to hurt my ears before turning back to Coff's Harbour. It's a gentle stroll through the marina back to the hostel. Lots of blue boats are for sale, and on Jetty Beach the wind has sculpted peculiar craters from the day's footprints. The Fisherman's Co-op serves the best fish'n'chips I've ever eaten for less than the price of a pint.

Back on the buses... the ride on the Greyhound from Byron Bay was fairly typical - the second half of a film you wouldn't normally be able to pay me to watch and broken suspension. For some reason every Greyhound in Australia has a dodgy gearbox. Unless I've actually been on the same bus every time, but this seems quite unlikely. You can hear the driver swearing and wrestling with the gearstick, fighting for second in his sunglasses and knee-high socks. Curiously, only Japanese schoolgirls and Australian drivers wear these socks, and I don't know why. We also passed a perplexingly large prawn on the roof of a restaurant, pictures of which shall be posted as soon as I have the facility to do so.

Byron Bay was quite relaxing, though I had the misfortune of having my visit coincide with the start of 'Schoolies' week, when the high school kids finish their term and run riot all over the East Coast, roaming in feral packs with shopping trolleys full of beer. It's a little bit like the annual A-level invasion of Newquay, but a more apt comparison would be all of the dark things from your worst nightmares coming to life and spilling around in the streets outside your house, pawing at the windows and shouting. I swapped my pulp fiction anthology for a book about Aboriginal archaeology and drank buckets of cheap red wine. Four litre boxes that cost about three pounds (dubbed 'Goon') appeal to the wallet of the budget backpacker but I've had some stinking hangovers in the last week. Much like my treasured holiday in Trevone Bay, it's best to clear the head with an early morning dip in the sea. A saltwater enema for the brains. I went bodyboarding with some guys from my dorm quite often, though we seldom had really good waves. I'll save my surfing for Bondi Beach.

Ex-London flatmate Bronwyn is back in Australia with a posse of her pals and a drunken week in Byron. I met up with them a couple of times and drank too much, laughing a great deal when the kids with big hair tried to chat them up. I even wound up in a nightclub last night. There were people much younger than me and they were dancing, and laughing, and having fun. Laugh while you can, you poor fools! Everyone knows you can't have fun in a nightclub, and you have to sit glowering in the corner, nursing a single beer all night long and snarling at any attractive seventeen-year old girls who try to talk to you. I had a cracking barbeque up at Bron's palatial holiday villa and walked home in the evening. It took me slightly over an hour to get back to the hostel, magical in twilight but unnerving in the dark... especially as I had my first encounter with a snake, and at rather closer quarters than I would have preferred. Walking along the pavement in almost pitch black, ducking the trees that fringe the road, a car approached from behind - and caught in the headlamps about three feet away from me was a the twist and coil of a little snake. They come out to take the last of the heat from the tarmac. It was only about a foot or so long, but I was about to tread straight on the bastard. I took a wide detour and walked a little brisker. I was quite shaken until I had some more Goon. The first mug is awful but after that it gets surprisingly easy to drink.

If anyone is feeling generous then go and help out a struggling publication called Smoke: a London peculiar. It's a nice little magazine looking at the weirder sides to our esteemed and spotless capital; and what's more you'll find a short short story by yours truly in the latest edition. It's only about 500 words long but actually having something printed has put some wind in the sails, nonetheless. Thanks to Uncle Rich for the tip. I had a coffee this afternoon in a little place near the beach, and was surprised when they played 'Ol 55 by Tom Waits. I've been listening to him all afternoon. "I suppose I borrowed your unofficial national anthem for this song... but don't worry. I'll give it back when I'm done...

'Waltzing Matilda... you'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me...'"

A good old mooch

2006-11-13T18:09:00.000-08:00

Next stop: Byron Bay. I barely made it off the bus in time. Only three hours from Bris Vegas when I was expecting another marathon on the Greyhound. Four nights in Brisbane? Maybe five. There wasn't much to do. I shared a dorm with a Scottish girl called Jo and two Chinese girls who had pushed their beds together and refused to come out. Jo and I wandered the Queensland Museum for a while. Lots of buttons to push. We saw the Ashes urn, but somewhat disappointingly the crocodile feature (a rocking tin boat) was OUT OF ORDER.

Jo disappeared to Melbourne the next morning - I had a mooch around town and bought some new climbing shoes. Did you know 'mooching' used to be a criminal offence in days gone by? The equivalent of 'Loitering with intent'. You could wind up in the Farringdon House Of Detention for having a good old mooch, and quite possibly sent to Australia. Quite right, too. I wandered the games arcade for a while. It was full of mostly Asian young men intent on pixellated violence. Two guys in tandem on a disco-dancing machine, hopping, tapping on the flashing arrows to rack up 144 consecutive correct moves before I get bored and move on. A girl on a drum machine is hammering out a flawless beat to an 80s metal song. Lots of guns, lots of steering wheels, zombies and commandos, aliens, motorcycles.

Walking around the town centre, and I have seen all of these shops before; most before leaving London. I buy a Big Issue from a man with a mullet and short shorts busy harassing the customers outside Borders. The magazine costs $4, which most people pay with a $5 note - his bag full of errant $1 coins has been thoughtfully buried under a pile of clothes and things across the street. He makes a half-hearted gesture at getting my change but we both know I won't push him. I ask him instead for directions, but he denies all knowledge of the second-hand bookstore I've been directed towards by the receptionist. I find it thirty seconds later, heralded by a giant sign that says BOOKS. I am struck later by the thought that the man with the mullet may have been sarcastic.

It turns out that Charles Leakey, the great bookselling brigand of Inverness, has a doppelganger in Brisbane. I got absolutely raped at the book exchange. He only gave me $3 for two books! I should have kept 'The Songlines', but I swapped it for 'What Am I Doing Here', also by Bruce Chatwin. The other exchange was a battered but entertaining book of Australian short stories from the 1970s called 'Taste Of Cockroach', complete with schoolboy annotations in the margins. I've since swapped 'Bonfire of the Vanities' which is amongst the least satisfying books I've ever read for a collection of pulp fiction to match the two I left in a box in a garage in Inverness. The Big Issue is much better here than at home.

I spent Monday night at the Cliffs at Kangaroo Point in the company of the Queensland University of Technology climbing club. After a warm-up and starting to break in the new climbing boots (size 6 - I normally wear 9.5 sneakers...) I only just climbed 'Pterodactyl' at Aussie grade 18. I don't know what that is in British standards, but it was 20 metres high, gritty, greasy and much tougher than it looked. I'm out of shape and fell off the wall several times. Near the top I had to actually look at my hands to make the fingers work properly, to focus on specific instructions: "Hold on to that... let go of this now..." The kids broke me, but I went back on Tuesday to another climbing club where I managed 'Pass the Bosh!' at 16 and 'Vegemite' 17. The instructor reckons that 'Pterodactyl' is actually grade 20, but since I found them all equally difficult I have drawn the conclusions that the Australian grading system is as hopelessly flawed as every other grading system everywhere in the world. On the way back to the hostel I stumbled across an amateur circus group practicing their skills which was good value for a half hour of nursing my scrapes and aches; and then on the high street I came across a horrible, horrible display acted out by perverse animatronic marsupials. It was grim. The essential story, as far as I could ascertain, was that Wombat can't get a role in the nativity, but during the casting process he is first lynched by the stage manager koala and then sacked for the terrible transvestism of his Mary. There were possums fornicating in the wings.

Jo and the Chinese girls were replaced by two burly Irishmen who may have been very interesting people. It's a shame that any scintillating conversation was foiled by the first one being asleep for three days and the second being utterly indecipherable. I just nodded and smiled a lot. Back away slowly... maintain eye contact... that's the important thing... I bought a small map of the world and drank a lot of coffee while looking at it. This may have been a mistake. There are a lot of places I want to see but no easy way of linking them with a multiple stop round-the-world ticket, which is the cheap option. I'm trying to wrangle my existing return ticket via Singapore into something more worthwhile, but Qantas are proving difficult. I blew their tiny minds, man... they were so used to businessmen in business suits seeking business class that they didn't know how to deal with a backpacker in flip-flops and a smile. "A smile?!" I hear you cry. "Surely no?!" Fear not, friends! I didn't mean it. Like I said, too much coffee. I had to grin or my face went numb. The waitresses all know my order and call me 'honey'.

Byron Bay seems quite pleasant, and I'll be staying here for the next few nights.

Songlines

2006-11-11T23:10:00.000-08:00

I missed the bus by two minutes. In the taxi from Airlie Beach, there are dust devils in the fields but the air at Proserpine airport is hot and still, no scraps of whirling bark, no dancing cigarette ends. John the barman serves ice beer in polystyrene coolers and thinks England will win the Ashes. The place is almost deserted, just a girl in a red summer dress taking her bags back from the taxi driver. This is the set of an arty short film.

Flying over Brisbane, the sun is such that I can track the shadow of our plane across the thumbprint of the city suburbs. A cluster of cricket fields, town planner blueprints for successful living. I arrive into the heart of a Saturday night that would sadden Tom Waits and puts Cardiff to shame. The sullen taxi driver hates his job and himself and me. A chatty receptionist at the labyrinthine Palace backpackers points me towards the cliffs at Kangaroo Point. It's a thirty-minute walk but I get in some legitimate climbing for the first time in a month - good, hard traverses, and a 5C-ish problem that I'll go back to tomorrow. The drill holes from the dynamite are still struck through the rock, a hundred years old, thick with chalk and shiny from the polishing weight of hundreds of boulderers.

The cliffs have been made readily available for climbers by the city council, who installed massive floodlights along the entire 500-metre stretch. At the top of the cliff they have rooted concrete pillars for top roping and drainpipes for safe belaying. The above photo - rather good, I think - is of a guy called Nick. He used to manage pubs in London but prefers life in Brisbane. He uses an auto-belay device because he never has any climbing partners on a Saturday night.

I'm not feeling so good. I've just finished Bruce Chatwin's 'The Songlines'. I bought it on a whim from the Airlie Beach book exchange in part-exchange for 'Lullaby'. It had an interesting cover. He is a travel writer. He travels Australia in the company of a first-generation Australian-Russian called Arkady who facilitates his meetings with the Aboriginals, who, in turn, gradually and often reluctantly - often by his own inference - explain about the Songlines, a network of trails that riddle Australia in a mix of creationism, territorial assertion and spiritual belonging. The ancestors walked these lines. As they walked, they sang aloud the things that were around them - and by doing so, called these things into existence.

It's a bit too much to take in. It's not that I believe it so much as I am shaken by the Aboriginal faith in it.

I read the extracts from Chatwin's notebooks drinking beer in the bar under the hostel. His account of the Tower of Babel left me shaking. I sat trembling on my barstool under the weight of thought and could not continue reading for several minutes. He died at the age of 49. I am very tired.

I've added some photos of the Coral Trekker from a couple of blogs ago. Tim, that middle yard arm is not far shy of 20 metres, you shyster.

Lumps of rock

2006-11-10T16:57:00.000-08:00

I've finished my second and final week with Barefoot Cruises. They've had good value from me. This afternoon I'm flying out of Airlie Beach for Brisbane where I'll kill a couple of days before meeting Bronwyn in Byron Bay next week. After these last two weeks I have a sudden sense that I need to hurry my travels along. Very strange but very clear, this feeling that I'm on the run from something grim.

This last week at sea has been more of the same - the sailing, when it is actually sailing, is very fine - my favourite job is hanging upside from the mizzen boom to furl the sails and fix the covers. At Nara inlet we moored by old Aboriginal caves. There are eight or nine spots in the inlet but only one is available to the public, a heavy overhang where chrysali dangle between 8,000 year old paintings of turtles and hammerhead sharks. It is massively underwhelming, and the marsh flies are a menace. I cut my feet very badly on the oyster shells at the beach. They are cemented into the rock by some mysterious chemical reaction between salt water and fresh that welds everything together in concrete. I've been limping ever since - Barefoot by name and nature, a bloody smear in my flip-flops.

The passengers are all chumps. I haven't felt this antisocial since the Snow Goose. We had a 'yachtsman' in his Musto sailing cap who couldn't tie knots. A family of wholesome and healthy Canadians... dad Scott would stand and silently watch us at work. It was disquieting, this intense observation during the most innocuous tasks... Amy chopping carrots, me cleaning the heads, Spencer on the brass... just... watching. And there was Dave, a retired factory owner who had political views slightly to the right of Robert Kilroy-Silk and may well be wanted for a quiet chat in Nuremberg. His wife was petrified of East Europe and said at least once every day "Now I'm not a racist but-"... I avoid all of them whenever possible. Very few of them are aware of the wheelhouse roof and this is my refuge, rocking with the tide, cold can of beer, drum beat goes knock-knock-BANG from the halyard block on the mizzen mast. When the lamps are out, the skies are full of light. There are quick moments I could stay here forever.

I can't stay here forever. My hands are wrinkled with dishwater, slick with bubbles. I clean the tupperware mugs with the same three identical motions. The GPS sytem is directly above the sink, and as I scrub and rinse I stare down the seconds of GMT glowing in the corner of the screen. It is 10.36am at home, and the greasy spoon by Greenwich market will still be recovering from the morning trade, wiping clean the hooked rings of spilt tea and sweeping along the crumbs from bacon rolls. There will be children anxious to sit in the front seat of the DLR, and never mind the chewing gum. People will be drinking coffee and tasteless water fountain water all over Britain, tired from computer screens or phone calls or last night's television or this morning's Metro or meetings where maybe something was achieved after all... The Canadian twins are bickering in high, healthy voices about who will sing melody in their self-appointed country music recital. I'm desperately trying to calculate if I have enough battery power to make it through The Soft Bulletin. If not then sitting on the far end of the bowsprit' should be sufficiently distant to muffle them. Too late!
"Don't sit under the apple tree...
with anyone else but me...
anyone else but me...
anyone else but me...
you're my l-o-v-e..."

It is quiet, and sad. The time at home is 10.41am. Grey suds conjure a map of Africa in the dishwater. Captain Bob is talking about the stars, the Seven Sisters. Orion is upside down so the sword belt is a business tie.

After dinner, Bob is in his cups and cheerful. He makes up his mind, takes a deep breath, and orders the passengers outside. He turns out the lights and unties the boat hook. He carefully dips it in the millpond waters of Nara inlet - and the sea is suddenly alive with bright green phophorescence! Iridescent, luminescent, radical, crazy light! Agitated algae reacting with disapproval to the new tumult in calm waters make a silhouette of everything that rattles them. Fish are bright green as they come to investigate the boat hook. No-one but me wanted to swim but this was too special to miss. I jumped in from the wheelhouse roof in my pants and didn't bother with a stinger suit. Under water, it is white-green and not black. The light is electric, constant and strong to my swimming, a thick halo of phosphorescence, alive to every movement, diving down, treading water, swimming round the boat. The sea is warm but I am scared of crocodiles and after ten minutes I climb up the anchor chain and over the jackstay, back to my shorts and beers.

These crazy skies, these billion stars, all that dead cold life... Over the hill, the moon is starting to rise through thin cloud and the reflected light boils up in an inferno like the Do-Lung Bridge in Apocalypse Now. I know who's in charge here. I see a shooting star almost every night, and almost every night I make the same wish. Lying on the wheelhouse roof, rolling onto my belly to look again at the myriad dots of phosphorescence, I am caught between the two infinities. Just drifting between the tiny things and the big. They are both mindless and impossible, and I am thick with life, but they are perfect and I am humble. The storm is gathering. The radio said so. Thirty miles away, lightning illuminates vast walls of cloud.
"Best to batten down 'em hatches," says Bob over his can of pre-mixed rum'n'coke. "It's gonna be a wet one."
"But," quavers Susan from Nimby-under-Punting, "surely the boat doesn't leak in the rain?"
Captain Bob eyes her, happily. "Yeah, she does," he grins. "Oh, fuck yeah."

I slept on deck anyway. The rain woke me about two and I didn't sleep so much after that. I just got wetter and angrier.
"Come on, Australia! Is this the best you've got?!" I've slept in worse than this, wetter, colder. This is nothing. I woke the passengers, shouting at the sky. The first job of the day is bailing out the dinghy. Shin-deep in rainwater, rain pouring down, standing in a dinghy floating in the sea. Ridiculous. Too slow for breakfast. The yachtsman used the last of the hot water for shaving, so no coffee. Feeling a little hysterical. Making beds and cleaning toilets. Back to Airlie Beach, back to the hostel and the backpackers, classed as a number in a Queensland Tourist Office statistical report.

The lodge next to ours is full of Australian kids on a surfing tour. The are made of sinew and muscle, dreadlocks and first beards. Troy is performing with poi, doused with kerosene and lit from a cigarette. The Swedish guys offered him meths instead of kerosene. Apparently they don't think they can drink any more but they don't want to throw it away.
"It's a bit heavy, it makes your eyes stream. You want some?"
No, son, I don't. Away with you. Troy's girlfriend turns up the John Butler concert on the radio and Troy whirls the fire brands round his head, demonic in the dark, twisting spine and bent at the knee, stamping dancing jumping up and the fire ROAAAAARS in each quick arc. When I see him the next morning his left arm is stuck in a new plastercast.

And what do I wish for, these wasteful wishes with every shooting star, every lump of rock? I'm not telling. The time at home is 2.23am, and you are all asleep or drunk or on drugs.

I'm sick in my guts of this place. I need to flee. This is the first time I've ever wanted to catch a flight. Roll on Brisbane.

Burn-out

2006-10-24T23:19:00.000-07:00

Avast, lubbers! I'm back on dry land at Airlie Beach after my first week at sea. I certainly won't stick the full term with Barefoot Cruises, a quick decision made on the back of inside information that at least two of my six weeks were to be spent washing dishes on a motor boat. No issue with the hard work - lord alone knows I've scrubbed my fair share of toilets in the last seven days - but you buy the ticket, take the ride - and I agreed to the sailing. And what sailing we've done has been fantastic. The Coral Trekker is an old Norwegian fishing trawler that has been through a dozen incarnations on an eighty-year journey from the fjords to the reef. She is now kitted out for fourteen passengers and six-day trips around the Whitsundays, a cluster of seventy-four idyllic islands thick with coral sand and crystal seas. Sea eagles snatch at fish and our breakfast in Tongue Bay is interrupted by the gentle old turtles that come to have a look at the boat. Stingrays fizz in the shallows of blinding silica sand at Whitehaven Beach. At the Pinnacles there are white-tipped reef sharks and metre-wide giant clams. Sea worms, brainless transparent tubes punctuated with orange spheres... Groupers and wrasse the size of Graeme Marshall... the snorkelling is good, even without my glasses.

I sleep on the deck, trying to stare out the rabbit in the moon. The mindless satellites, the rock'n'roll shooting stars, Elliot Smith... crash and burn, you poor crazy bastard. My day starts at 6, or earlier if woken by Captain Bob, who dangles an oily rag in my face until I spit into consciousness. Bob is a Whitsunday legend with a thick grey beard down to his navel. He has sailed these islands for thirty years and skippered Coral Trekker for the last nine. He is surly, mean and balding under his sailors cap. He insists that I fold paper towels four times, and unfold each dirty face to gain a possible thirty-six uses from each towel. His wisdom is a fount - "Simon," he growls through his whiskers, "there ain't nothin' worse than a fuckin' jellyfish." Except, I presume, the other things which nothing is worse than, a list that swells every day and to date includes "...a fuckin' shark... a fuckin' saltie... an Irishman on the fuckin' ocean... a warm fuckin' tinny... a hose on the fuckin' pontoon... a fuckin' mouse in the fuckin' drain pipe...". And a 'mouse' is not what you're thinking. He refers to morning and afternoon tea as morning and afternoon "Smoke-o", which is actually totally irrelevant because he smokes foul roll-ups incessantly and reeks of tobacco. The smell is so strong that it has different characteristics be he sailing, sleeping, or indeed smoking. A blunt knife can be "ridden all the way to China" and a good meal would "wake a brown dog". I no longer make any attempt to decipher or even pretend to understand these cryptic asides which he refuses to repeat and on occasion denies ever having said at all. He knows an awful lot about the sea, takes good care of the toilet pumps and seems to find the passengers physically nauseating.

The other deck hand is Spencer, a genial Canadian planning quick escape to university while working under the subterfuge of staying with Barefoot for the next two years. He and I and the ship's cook Amy ready breakfast, heating huge kettles on the gas stove. After a couple of coffees, Spence and me weigh the anchor - all sixty metres of it - swab the deck, scrub the heads (toilets), polish the day's brass, vinegar the varnish and fill the fridges. All this is done around the day's activites, which depend totally on the weather. Snorkelling, or walks on Hook Island - some of the passengers might go scuba-diving. On the good days I get to clamber up in the rigging, unfurling the square sails. There are three yards across the mast - the tallest, the t'gallant, is about thirty-odd metres from the sea. Or rather more pertinently, from the deck: Spencer spent last summer crewing a tallship round the Pacific, and usually waits until we are hard at work in the rigging before telling me the horror story about the girl who slipped, fell, and broke 60% of the bones in her skeleton. I'm well over the fear now. The course and the topsail don't even feel that high anymore, and if we stop for a swim I jump in from the course yard. The square sails are quite pleasing. I like the immediacy of pulling a rope and having something happen at the other end. Coral Trekker is riddled with ropes - after six days I'm only just getting the hang of them all.

The Coral Trekker - we jump in from the first and second yards.

This is me hard at work on the t'gallant. Bob wouldn't let us take a radio up.

The passengers so far have been a mixed bag. We've had squabbling, whining English honeymooners, four German scuba divers who had accidentally booked the wrong boat and spoke no English and a Jehovah's Witness minister who did not laugh at all when he told me that before he was ordained he used to work in Futures and I said it sounded to me like he still did.

Deathly, endless silence...

..check out The Veils 'Advice for your mothers to be': "No man alive has earned the right to save me..."

I think another week here and I'll push on to Byron Bay.

The Greyhound from Noosa to Airlie Beach was pretty grim. The suspension was badly broken and I didn't sleep for more than two hours on the seventeen-hour overnight trip. To put that into perspective, if Ruaridh and I were driving for seventeen hours, we could drive from London to Inverness and back and halfway back again. Assuming, of course, that either of us had the money for petrol. Did you ever pay me back for that? I can't remember. Noosa itself was pretty much what I've come to expect from the Sunshine Coast - amazing beaches, beautiful forest, koalas getting high on the gum leaves, girls sunbathing, mango smoothies, and this same inescapable feeling that I'm on a conveyor belt.

The hostel at Noosa was nothing short of astonishing. There was a guy in my dorm, camper than a row of tents... he insisted on showing everyone in the room individually just how badly he'd burned his arse at the nudist beach. The South Korean couple were horrified and left immediately in shocked silence. The evening entertainment for the two nights I was there was almost beyond belief. For reasons that remain unclear, the bar is a haven for the local hip-hop burnouts who were, at their nadir, breakdancing without irony to 'Eye Of The Tiger'. I couldn't believe my eyes. 'Eight Mile' in the 80s, and the other backpackers stood in a baying circle, cheering for the blood. I felt like I was in 'The Office: Down Under'. The locals were wearing bandanas. They took pity on me and tried to drag me over to their table, but no fear, my friends! I fought them off! I made hissing noises and grabbed at their ankles. They soon let me be with my book and my beer, and glared at me with wounded distrust from across the dancefloor. I left the next morning, and I won't go back.

I read pretty much everywhere - at the bar, on the beach, on the bus... what goes around comes around: in the great karma of the backpacker book exchange, I swapped 'Grapes Of Wrath' (in which I found uncanny parallels between picking fruit in California and working as a camera assistant in London) for 'Ghostwritten' by David Mitchell. The woman in the shop was dismissive. The fool read the first half of 'Cloud Atlas' but gave up without finishing the best book of this century. I raced through 'Ghostwritten' which is superb and swapped it back for 'Bonfire Of The Vanities' which is OK - Wolfe is far better a journalist than a novelist - and swapped it for 'Lullaby' by Chuck Palahniuk which is so-far rather irritating. I think it'll take him a long, long time to write his way out of 'Fight Club'.

"No shirts, no shoes..."

He built his house on sand...

2006-10-23T00:06:00.000-07:00

Things have been moving quite swiftly since leaving Airlie Beach. I was browsing in the Worst Book Exchange In The World, uhming and ahing over a massive but dismal selection of 1970s science fiction paperbacks. Most of the books had exclamations in the title - my personal favourites included 'Sea serpents!', 'What a lovely Sunday!' and the underrated classic 'Caution! Flammable!'. After trawling the entire shop I eventually happened upon a tattered copy of 'The Grapes Of Wrath' - which will keep me busy, although it broke my heart to part with 'The Kandy-Koloured Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby'. A poor exchange, but I haven't the space to hump these books around. Baker - the HST letters will soon be slowly enroute to you.

The bookshop notice board had a typically flung-together shower of adverts and memos - always worth a nose - one caught my eye. "Wanted," it said, "volunteers for a square-rigger sailing cruise company." I chased this advert up - starting Saturday, I'll be spending six days at a time for the next six weeks learning 'marlin spike' sailing in the Whitsundays. It's a tough break, I realise, all that sailing and snorkelling in exchange for cooking and muscle - but I think I'll be able to handle it. Funnily enough, the company is one that we filmed for the DVD - Barefoot Cruises - a fact that certainly aided my supplication. The boats are beautiful - I have already filmed on two of the three in their fleet - grand old sailing ships, with a maximum of a dozen punters per trip. The cruises are priced well out of the range of most backpackers, so I'll also get a well-earned break from the gap year/college dropout/sabbatical East Coast 18-30 flip-flop new tattoo cheaper-by-the-pitcher Sydney-or-bust bullshit... of which I've had more than my fair share in the last few days.

I left Airlie Beach on the overnight Greyhound to Hervey Bay - arriving at 9am or so, I checked in and signed up for a three-day-two-night wham-bam tour of Fraser Island. Fraser Island is one of Australia's most popular tourist attractions, but I tried to keep an open mind nonetheless. I was thrown together with a further six backpackers from my hostel and we embarked on our mission the next day... I was 'Grandfather Simon' by lunchtime. Four Swedes, two Swiss and me - the oldest by a good six years, and therefore the only one legally allowed to drive the car - the island can be travelled only by 4-wheel drive. Fraser Island is made entirely of sand, on which evolution has somehow seen fit to develop mangrove swamps, dense rainforest, perched lakes and a multitude of fresh water springs. On sand. I want to be entirely clear on this point. Not mud, or rock, but sand. So much sand that for its 125km length multiplied by 25km width multiplied by however deep the damn' thing is, there is supposedly more sand in this island than the Sahara. Sand, I tells you, and sand again: the main road is the beach, with a speed limit of 80kmph. Craziness abounds - the landrovers and landcruisers roar along Seventy Five Mile Beach at top speeds, fishtailing wildly in previous wheel ruts and turning suddenly between the dunes to access the inside of the island.

Seventy Five Mile Beach - the main road on
Fraser Island. Jordan - your suggestions
on a postcard.

Offshore, the surf is constant and looks incredible - it's a shame that the sea is lethal, shot through with undertows and rife with Tiger Sharks. All the good swimming is to be had inland. Lake Wabby is the most incredible place I have ever seen. The geography of the place is baffling. A half-hour walk through the bush from the beach brings the keen traveller to the lakeside, surrounded on three sides by dense forest and on the fourth by a towering sand dune. If you climb to the top of this dune the contrast is even more spectacular - desert runs five miles inland and bang into the lake. We got lucky - there was an Australian family who lent us their sand boards to surf the dune. Marine ply, curved to fit and plastered in surf wax, 30 metres down and straight into the warm waters. Incredible.

Dune surfing...

Nice Australian girl who lent us the boards...

Yours truly with a perfect splash down that
nearly lost me both my sunglasses and all
sensation below the neck.

We camped on the beach - BBQ on the gas stove, rubbish locked away for fear of dingos. There is much worry about these dingos. Though they number only 200, they are the purest of the species left in the wild, and in recent years their natural hunting techniques have been eroded by a dependence on the detritus from campsites. Chalk another one up to humanity. I think we've 'won', by now. I emailed the editor of the Australian climbing magazine 'Rock' with my worries about the prevalence of spiders while bouldering - she replied that most climbers simply scrubbed them away, which seems a bit queer to me. She wants to print my letter and open a debate - I hope I'm around to see the results. I realise that spiders are hardly endangered - especially in Australia - but it's almost a matter of principle.

Sand makes the camping difficult. You're not supposed to camp on any vegetation - it's all that holds the dunes away from the road. The weather whipped up on the second morning, and there was no shelter in which to cook. I had to throw away formative scrambled eggs because the gas stove wouldn't stay alight. Sam Hesling is probably shaking his head in despair at this, but Sam, you don't understand. There is no shelter, Sam, none at all. I couldn't cook under the car - the tents were no good - coolers are bad windbreaks. It's sand, Sam, sand, and there's nothing you can do about it. Sand.

Anyway... back to Hervey Bay... we kept the deposit on the car, which is good - the two Swiss kids took it for a joyride on the beach last night. Underage, drunk, uninsured, high tide, in the dark: coming to a cinema near you soon. Here tonight and off to Noosa tomorrow before returning north to Airlie Beach and Barefoot Cruises. I think I'll go for a another look at the shop selling trinkets. In the window they have an impressive display of novelty pencil sharpeners, including the Sydney Opera House, which is to be expected, and London Bridge, which is not. Other examples included tractors, skulls, double-decker buses, spinning wheels, the World Trade Centre (1966-200, apparently), a stove, a telephone, a barn, a toilet, a tank, a howitzer, a Stealth Bomber, a lunar landing module, the Pantheon, the Scales of Justice, and - my personal favourite - a golfer, nursing an erection.

Roadkill

2006-10-15T17:01:00.000-07:00

Any faint hopes that the demolition gang would start either late or not at all at the weekend were brutally crushed at 6.30am. Fortunately, I was already awake by this time, thanks in most part to my fellow dormers, three lads from Miscellaneous in the Home Counties. I went out for a few beers with two paediatric nurses and some grimly serious gym teacher - we invented life stories for the covers band - returning about 1am I tripped over Suspect no.1 passed out lengthways across the doormat outside our dorm. I tried to wake him - he was having none of it. I left him to his catatonia and moved inside. Suspect no.2 was comatose across his bed, head wedged firmly against the wall. There was an unconscious girl laying crosswise on top of him. Everyone was fully dressed. Suspect no.3 was also in a vegetative state, but - and here's the rub - making the most extraordinary noises I have ever heard in my life. Until now, I thought Calum Carr had the worst snore in the world. I have on occasion been forced through sleeplessness to rise, cross the room barefoot and beat him solidly in the head with a pillow in a vain attempt to make him stop. Suspect no.3 was in a different league of nocturnal noise-making altogether. His snores - I am not exaggerating - noticeably increased in volume over about ten minutes until the point where he woke himself up. With his own snoring. He choked, snorted, raised his head, looked directly me, said something along the lines of "Snargllfush" and crashed back to his pillow. Within a minute, the noise had begun again. It is quiet to start, like the distant approach of a dirt bike from over the hill, but soon reaches incredible volumes before the perpetrator rouses himself again from this horrific slumber. Calum, you have something to learn from this boy.

This performance was repeated several times before I finally fell asleep - and woke me again at 6am. I watched another full cycle in stunned disbelief. The only thing missing was Sir David Attenborough crouched beside this slumbering behomoth, talking in hushed tones about the regurgitative processes involved or the eco-system evolving from his socks. Neither was Suspect no.3 the only irritating animal in the dorm that night - I found myself the victim to the repeated attacks of the common bed bug. The little savages had a field day on my legs, a lamb to the slaughter. How do they survive without backpacker shanks? I was itching to get the hell out of Townsville.

The ferry for Magnetic Island is a sedate affair, and - the frantic, queue-jumping arrival at the terminal aside - the island itself is a very laid-back affair. The kind of place that students with Guevara posters and bad beards or middle-aged housewives heavily into their yoga might refer to as 'chilled'. They are, of course, scum, though their point is clear. I spent two happy days on the beaches here, and tore my fingers open on the granite. There are boulders everywhere - the island is covered, riddled, scattered with bizarre totemic structures that appear man-made but are clearly formed by the accidental tumble of ten thousand years. The climbing was pretty good with nice sandy landings and some hair-rasing top-outs. I found a fair bit categorically impossible, and entered into the state of the hard-done-to boulderer when confronted by the chalky hand-holds of a previous climber who is evidently better than me. I spent a huge amount of time glaring in quiet fury and confusion at handprints two feet higher up the wall than I could manage. Weasels.

The hostel was good and free of vermin, and I spent my nights drinking beer and reading in a quiet bar. Early to rise this morning, and back onto the Greyhound for the five hour trip to Airlie Beach. It wasn't too bad, but I'm getting the first suspicions that I will be ready to kill someone by the time Sydney rolls around the corner. The Greyhound is all very well, but the monotony is becoming oppressive and I have now seen the Jennifer Aniston chick-flick 'Rumour Has It' no fewer than three times.

Everyone on the bus will die, if - by some horrible, unhappy accident - that becomes four times.

We stop in the most bizarre places - garages, black with oil - sugar cane railway stations - hairdressers - public toilets - cinemas. For a short while today we drove a red dirt road that splits the railway from dusty back lots. There are cattle in identical fields, birds of prey wheeling by the roads. A wombat, roadkill on the verge, spread out like a fireside rug. Jennifer Aniston, roadkill on the verge...

Airlie Beach itself is a ten-minute walk from one end to the other. It's a bit like Perranporth, although the weather is a little better. The heat is oppressive. I'm considering a three-day sailing trip round the Whitsundays - I didn't see so much of these islands when we shot through here the first time, sporting a camera and a mindless trigger finger. I've said it before, but it remains true - the Campos effect - digital is a lazy medium and quantity inevitably replaces quality. This is truth. Selah.

...in a rueful manner

2006-10-12T18:21:00.000-07:00

Townsville is almost exactly as exotic as it sounds. But who needs an alarm clock when your dorm is directly adjacent to a demolition site? They keep that particular nugget quiet on the fucking brochure, I assure you. Australian weather being what it is, the gang starts the big crane at 6.30am. But hell, why not? I can kill a day in Townsville, surely... please god. Are you there, god? Talk to me, god?

Picture the scene: I'm trying to find the path to climb Castle Hill. Rock boots, chalk and water safely stashed in my day-bag. It's already pushing 30 degrees at half-past ten, and I wander around the suburbs for a happy half-hour before seeing someone to ask the way. He sucks at his teeth in a rueful manner, and I know exactly what is coming next. I've done it myself to hapless tourists in London. The man grins. "Castle Hill, eh? No, no, no. I wouldn't do that without a car, mate, I really wouldn't." No, of course you wouldn't. Silly me. I mean, why would you have a 300m hill bang in the middle of your town with a clearly visible lookout post and no-doubt a plethora of stunning panoramic views of the Sunshine Coast but make it accessible only by a winding 4 mile road? He has a twisted smile. I'm not staying in Townsville much longer. Tomorrow I'm catching the ferry to Magnetic Island where I've booked into a hostel for the weekend. There should be some accessible climbing on the beaches there - I've seen the pictures. It sounds a real haven from the East coast backpacker rendering line... "After you get used to the smell of rendering fat, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it!"

My hostel is cheap and cheerful, full of surly blonde German girls who are difficult to talk to. I stayed in last night - a good change from 'Drink or die' Cairns. Pasta bolognese is rapidly becoming a staple diet. Over here, Woolworths is like Tescos, except the meat racks are one-third packed with diced hearts of various descriptions: stir-fry beef heart. Casserole lamb heart. Cubed pig heart. The troubling thing is that it looks identical in texture to the regular stuff - but costs half as much. I have a grim fascination with these hearts. I keep prodding them through the plastic and getting odd stares from other customers. Fear, fear.

Spiders, skinks and Greyhounds

2006-10-10T22:47:00.000-07:00

Cairns is rapidly wearing thin. While sunny, it is full of cheerful and bronzed bodies by the massive communal swimming pool. In rain, the place suddenly resembles nothing so much as Freshers Week in a grim northern town, boom and bust on the back of some obscure industry. Every bar runs nightly wet T-shirt competitions and national flag body-painting... there are drinks deals and much school-disco style dancing to the tune of covers bands. I haven't seen a Pied Piper yet, but I'm sure he's kicking around somewhere, drinking fizzy beer and leering at the girls. I wasn't much keen on Freshers Week the first (two) times I tried it, and the rest of the East Coast is starting to sound fairly similar from the jungle drums that beat along the backpacker trail. I've bought a Greyhound bus pass - $330 for unlimited stops covering the thousands of kilometres between Cairns and Sydney. I'm leaving tomorrow for Townsville and Magnetic Island, on which there is supposed to be some decent bouldering.

Trying not to break my ankles at Trinity Beach. V1? 5b?

I went out to Trinity Beach yesterday and scared myself with some low climbs over ankle-breaking landings. Amazing friction on the rock - I lost a lot of skin, but this is normal. I'm going to sell T-shirts to climbing walls with my new slogan: 'Bouldering. Because who needs fingertips?'

A life of crime is beckoning...

The climbing is right down on the beach, and partly covered at high tide. Quick lunch of bread and cheese with huge grey waves pounding spray against the granite. It was quiet. The rocks were full of tiny striped skinks basking beside smashed bottles. The tiniest dents in the rock are pasted over with minute spiders webs. I was paranoiacally careful to avoid these, partly from the point of ecological preservation, but mostly from Sylvester preservation. I don't care what species they were, I'm convinced virtually everything on this continent is going to have a go at killing me eventually... not least the locals when we retain the Ashes.

I won't be sorry to leave Cairns - there was a small gang of us here at Gilligans, but Resh has flown home, Sarah and Eliza have pushed on to New Zealand and Michael is two days ahead of me on the Greyhound heading south. Gilligans is a backpacker processing machine - whereas the place I've booked in Townsville seems ramshackle, disorganised and a lot more fun.

"How wonderful it is for children!"

2006-10-08T18:26:00.000-07:00

This is the first time in two weeks I've had any time at all to write a goddamn' thing - the job is finally done, and good riddance. A typical day meant rising at 6am, a quick breakfast and shooting by 8, then filming throughout the day. We were often still on the go at 10pm. It's a horrible non-stop drib-drab way to film, and I'm exhausted. Still... it's done. The others have taken the kit and will soon be airborne. I shared a taxi from Cairns airport and in about an hour I'm booking into my hostel.

Cairns is hot, stinking hot, and this is just the end of winter. I still shudder thinking about the heat in London mid-July. This does not bode well for January. It all seemed pleasant enough to begin with - when we landed in Sydney International two weeks ago, it was dull-grey and overcast, spitting with rain. I felt quite at home. We sailed through customs, arrived at our hotel, unpacked the kit and the camera was rolling about two hours after we landed. We raced around Sydney far too quickly for me to take it all in, but it seems a fine city and I'm looking forward to returning. While in New South Wales we spent a couple of days in the Hunter Valley vinyards... took a sunset flight over the Blue Mountains but missed the sun... stayed in a wilderness lodge and failed miserably to catch yabbies... and everywhere the talk was of expense accounts, luxury spa treatments, dress codes for dinner... the horror... the horror. I would turn up at cocktail hour in my camo shorts, microphone slung over one shoulder and tripod on the other. The idea of paying through the nose to experience the bush, the wilderness - it was all a lie, a veneer, massively sanitised and utterly sterile. Kangaroos with a second-generation Pavlovian response to feeding time, and cockatoos that try to wrestle the bacon from your plate.

I sound ungrateful. Maybe I am. But it seemed sheer hypocrisy to film beautiful Queensland beaches and advocate swimming to families while standing yards from the sign warning of the recent spate of crocodile sightings. Gushing on about how "Wonderful it is for children!" but failing to mention the emergency bottles of vinegar kept on the beaches to neutralise jellyfish stings. It is a long ride from Cape Tribulation to the hospital, and all the longer when your legs are on fire.

OK, I am ungrateful. "Everything looks perfect from far away"... and things are feeling brighter already. It wasn't all bad. Out of business hours, talking to Australian (and more often foreign) waiters, travellers, drivers, barmaids, rangers: these people have the marrow. They have all the good stuff. The highlight while actually filming was taking the waterproof camera onto a catamaran to shoot a sailing lesson. Those things are fast. I was out on one hull, filming the presenter dangling from the trapeze, shroud in one hand and camera in the other. She hated it, and I remember feeling quite smug. A precious and precocious self-styled princess with a laugh like a chisel... engh-huh-huh. Engh-huh-huh. A ridiculous Aussie ocker accent that would probably have seen her lynched in certain parts of the Northern Territories. Engh-huh-huh.

I'm still not entirely convinced I'm here. It's a bit surreal. Aboriginal man with skate-wear and bicycle, weaving lazy loops and lines and figures-of-eight in a train station car park, hawking phlegm onto the road. Walking alone through Maitland on AFL final day, and the shop shutters close as I pass. Saturday, 3pm, and I feel like Clint Eastwood riding into an oppressed mining town. Crocodiles smiling crocodile smiles in the mangrove swamps. A distraction so the marsh flies can chew on my leg: this is an eco-system evolving. Spiders the size of walnuts. A cassowary chick - there are fewer cassowaries than Giant Pandas. More than 100 species of plant depend on cassowary digestion to germinate. But then the three-course dinners with expensive food I don't recognise and wine I am supposed to agree on. I fell asleep at dinner for the first four nights. And throughout it all, that laugh - engh-huh-huh. Fat tourists with fat ankles and knee socks, bodies like massive poached eggs.

I'll probably feel better in a few days when I've caught up on two weeks of sleep in six-person hostel dorms... Cairns seems good but I don't think I'll stay long. I'm going to head slowly South - hopefully find a ride-share somewhere. I still need to get my license back. I had my wallet stolen by some scheming junkie reprobate about five days before leaving. He picked a fight with me and his pal picked my pocket while I was distracted. Getting out of London felt unbelievably good.

No climbing yet. The rocks that I've seen look fine, but we've usually been going past them at 80 kmph on the way to interview some prick about his restaurant. I'm starting to get some spite back inside me, which is good. I have been sad and tired this year, but I can feel my bile building again. I've filled most of a notebook just since leaving London. I'm already sure I'm not going back to camera assisting. Every day I can put between me and that fawning subservience is a good day.

I'm going for a plate of noodles and a beer. After that, I have absolutely no idea what happens next.