GODSON

The lovely Gabriel of Perth.
I would travel half way round the world to meet this little man. Oh wait....I did!

NO WORRIES?

Western Australian people are some of the loveliest, most helpful and friendly people I have ever met. Nothing is too much trouble. This is in part due to the extremely laid-back Australian lifestyle, which can be summed up in two very common phrases, used in response to almost anything - 'no worries' and 'no drama'.
Personally I have quite a lot of worries. No internet being one of them. K still has dial- up (?), which is about as useful as giving me a pen and writing paper with which to communicate. Then there is the heat (on average 35 degrees, which means I have a suntan! Nah, just kidding - I'm RED), crawling wildlife (gardens containing poisonous redback spiders and snakes), and flying wildlife (32 mosquito bites and counting).

The TH has taken to all this like a kangaroo to the outback and has been whizzing around barefoot and bare-chested in a whole series of borrowed cars (people are so generous here they lend their cars more readily than New Yorkers would give their best mate a cigarette ). So last week he borrowed a 4-wheel drive Nissan Patrol affair (which looked like it had had a long career as a getaway car in B movies), and we ventured into the outback for 3 days, driving south to Margaret River. Our truck had no air-conditioning (unless you count the passenger door, which was hanging off one hinge), the windscreen wipers didn't work and the spare wheel kept falling off the back. But no worries, because the population is something like one person per 1000 sq miles here, so we saw absolutely nobody for something like 150 kilometres of sparse cacti-covered dustbowl. That is until we stumbled upon a roadside cafe called, aptly, ' The Centre of the Universe'. There was a family sitting silently inside, eating (each other probably), and they all trooped out one by one to take a look at the TH, as clearly they'd never seen anything quite like him before. We got out of there pretty quick. No drama.



By the time we reached Yallingup, I'd forgotten which phobia I was most worried about, having passed through agoraphobia, arachnophobia, thermophobia, ophidiophobia, molysmophobia, levophobia, insectophobia and hodophobia.
No worries. Much.

Something about this area reminds me of California, and more specifically LA. Life would be totally impossible without a car (and this applies to every bit of Australia I've seen yet). There's one main road surrounded by trees and bush with only dirt tracks leading to anything resembling civilisation. The agoraphobia kicked in big time here (all accomodation being called a 'retreat'), so having retreated quite enough already for one week, I insisted we moved on to Margaret River, which at least resembled a village. There we found an apartment (thanks to ultra friendly helpful receptionist at the full hotel) with a real live television and a road with vague traffic sounds nearby. Next day on a Margaret River winery tour. Four vinyards, a cheese farm and chocolate factory later and I'm feeling a little more grounded. To Lake Cave and Mammoth Cave before the long drive back to Fremantle (where K lives), stopping on the way at Busselton to check out the underwater observatory. NOW we're talking. A couple of kilometres walk out to sea on a narrow piece of board in gale force winds (with railings on one side only) to get to the observatory (I'd love to see this pass a Lambeth health and safety test....) The observatory takes you 8 metres underwater to observe whatever sea life happens to be around at the time. No sharks unfortunately, but nevertheless totally brilliant.



There seems to be a readily available rent-a-crowd of the loveliest people in Freo and K did a fantastic job of creating a gorgeous 40th birthday party barbecue for the TH. I hate to stereotype, but in our first four days in Australia we'd been to four barbecues. Just sayin'.....

The quality of life here is amazing it has to be said. There are stars in the sky every night like you'd only normally see far out to sea, and the bird calls from the garden in the morning are those you'd only hear in a zoo back home. But in the centre of Perth on Friday night, was there a jazz gig to be found? Errrrr no. As the next nearest City is Adelaide, a mere 2500 kilometres away, I don't see a busman's holiday happening anytime soon, nor an emigration......

WIFE SWAP

So there's this girl who lives in a high rise in Manhattan. She loves very cold weather and hates the sun, wears black all the time and spends the majority of her spare time on the internet or hanging out drinking in jazz clubs after dark.
In this week's episode, after 3 days spent on planes with very little sleep, she arrives on the edge of the outback where her black clothes are taken from her, she's put in a colourful sarong and bare feet, and dumped on a beach with no shade in 35 degrees.
Her disorientation further increases when she is taken to the house where she is to stay for the next 10 days and there is no alcohol, no air conditioning, no wifi and no broadband connection. Furthermore there is a baby she has no idea how to look after, and no jazz club for miles.
Will she survive? To be continued.........

CONTINENTAL DRIFT

I know, I know - I never write, I never call.....checking in to every which-where-airport-and-place but this blog. So a quick debrief.

Currently sitting in Hong Kong airport (and it's pretty cruisy up top here in the lounge I can tell you...) Other than that, it's exactly like being at home. Any of my homes. The TH and I are sitting opposite each other behind computers and I can see a 'Tie Rack' through the window. This seems to be a fitting situation in which to use the Catster's current favourite word 'Meh!'' But I'm only guessing and it's entirely possible I might have this whole new-cult-word-thing all wrong.....

London for a week. Just lovely to spend quality time with my family of very missed friends, to regularly and randomly crash into old acquaintances in the street, have people laugh at my jokes (because they..errr...get them), and drink at second-home bars where the staff know me and don't need telling 'no fruit' in the gin. Stayed with my lovely tenants/friends who were paradoxically paying me rent whilst putting me up for a few days in my own apartment. (Errrr....you what?! I said they were lovely!)

Took care of lots of UK business with banks, moonlighting Poles (who of course only work by moonlight), phone & insurance companies and freeholders etc. Lovely day with L and Catster and very positive meeting with I in Brighton re. possible work in New York, (also, as always, checked on the Brighton hut - a whole other story, for another time).

Moved to H's wondrous Old St loft for the last few days, ate & drank way too much, revised my babysitting skills (on hitherto complete strangers), explored L's fabulous and long-awaited new gaff, and played about 950 games of Skip-Bo. On Wednesday H's wifi connection went down and the boiler broke. Bah. Lofts huh! So we thought 'F***k this, let's go to another continent!'
Just kiddin'.
Although not about the continent bit, clearly.

Next up - Godson, TH's 40th birthday, our very postponed honeymoon. Tomorrow in Perth.
The 12 hour journey to Hong Kong (I think the first time I've slept on a plane ever), was an upgrade to business class, thanks to dear friend Brian, who got in touch with the lovely J, (who I've not seen for a while, but used to work with at the RFH years ago - when the RFH was veritably swimming in such adorable people - and now works at Heathrow). Thank you a million times J, if you're reading this! J is clearly going under the pseudonym of 'Eddy' these days, as every favour we received in the airport (and there were many), was given to us with a wink and a 'from Eddy'. So I'm presuming that all this loveliness was from J.....
If, instead, it was randomly given by a stranger called Eddy, then that would be very weird.
Very weird indeed.

So. I have no idea what time of day or night it is here (or in NY.) I think it is breakfast time in London, but I am sipping a large g&t just to be on the safe side.
You are, I am sure, gathering from all of this that life could be very much worse.....but to put it in realistic terms that H will definitely understand - it doubtless will be, at some point.