Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Creative and Witty or Decidedly Weird?

So it's official. The Central Line actually has delays written into its raison d'etre. I'd long suspected, but finally received confirmation this morning.

Uncharacteristically, a train showed up within a couple of minutes of my arrival on the platform at Notting Hill. Even madder, it wasn't jam packed - let's not get carried away here, obviously there were no free seats, but my head actually occupied only its own space, as opposed to that of a stranger's armpit, for once. So we happily trundle along - wonder of wonders, the train doesn't even sit in a tunnel for interminable minutes and then… at Lancaster Gate… an announcement comes over the loudspeaker "ladies and gentlemen due to a service requirement, this train will be held here for one minute." And again at Queensway. "Due to a service requirement this train will be held here for one minute." A service requirement? A service requirement to delay the train? That explains so much.

As I've mentioned before, I am a bit useless at the whole 'constantly on the pull' part of being single. I am not very good at noticing things in general (it's not uncommon for me to arrive home soaking wet and when someone asks if it's raining outside reply "not that I noticed" - and mean it) and so keeping my eyes habitually peeled for the man of my dreams simply requires altogether more concentration than I am capable of. My sister despairs of me. Whenever we are out and I am happily focusing all my energies into boogying to the wrong rhythm and singing along off key, she will grab me, whirl me around with slightly too much violence and hiss "there is a fit guy checking you out!" By the time I have emerged from my shell-shocked panic of "Who? Where? When? … Why?!?" Whoever he was has usually married someone else.

A couple of weeks ago, I reached a new crap-at-pulling low. I was drinking with a mate of mine, when a guy he works with joined us. This guy, on paper, is 100% my ideal man.
Tall, dark and handsome? Check (so sue me for being unoriginal)
Creative and witty? Check (at least I didn't say good sense of humour!)
Slightly wild, a bit of a loose cannon? Check (yes, this is one of my requirements… and you wonder why I am single!)
Decidedly weird? Check (don't look at me like that)
Canadian? Check!
We're all in the bar, some other people join the table, so we all get up to move to a bigger table. I had stashed my coat and bag under the chair opposite me, so when everyone got up, I hovered by the table waiting for everyone to go so that I can lean over and grab my stuff. Mr Right is also a gentleman (forgot to mention that - also swoon-worthy!) so he gestures and says "after you". I explained about my stuff, and Mr Right grabbed it, handed it to me and held on just a second too long after I took it, smiling a (I believe, patented) "you're the only woman in the world" smile. So what did I do? I thanked him and walked away. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand from my mate who works with him that this particular bloke is capable of monogamy for approximately three and a half minutes (usually in a jammed stop elevator) so it's not as though I gave up a chance of true lurve and hand holding through the park and babies, but I didn't even think that at the time. Here was, theoretically, my dream man, and it didn't even cross my mind to go into turbo-charged flirt mode (although goodness knows what that would have entailed).

However, just because I am useless at all this, doesn't mean my sister is. She is a woman on a mission, a pimping-her-sister-out mission. Her latest project works with her. It seems that she has pitched me, undesirable qualities (as only a sibling can) and all, and apparently he has expressed willingness to climb a rock. (In an effort to dissuade her, I once announced that I would only consider rock-climbers.) Last night she brought home a gift from the Project for me (a good start, it must be said)… an eighties teen girl book entitled "My Dream Man". Intriguing. Could this be a Creative and Witty check or a even Decidedly Weird check?

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Michael Kelland Hutchence January 22 1960 - November 22 1997

Where to start?

This time nine years ago, I was working my very first job after finishing school around six months previously. It was a terribly trendy PR firm and I happily pretended to be a character in Absolutely Fabulous while sending new fangled emails to friends and drinking champagne from 10am. That particular morning, I remember having a vague sense of 'something has happened' but for whatever reason had been in a world of my own that morning and hadn't paid much attention to the newspapers that people were reading on the tube. I arrived at work and busied myself with the first order of the day, making a cup of tea, joining the group of PR execs in the kitchen area who were all busy outdoing one another with barbed quips about this scandalous death dominating the headlines. One of the male event organisers caused much hilarity by confidently asserting that this was indeed a well known way to enhance orgasm - prompting everyone else to ask precisely how he knew. I didn't pay masses of attention, until I was headed back to my desk with the cup of tea, when I idly asked someone who they were talking about.

"Michael Hutchence. You know, who's going out with Paula Yates? Singer in that band, err…"

"INXS." I muttered, an indescribable chill sweeping over me.

"Yeah that's it. He's only gone and hung himself. Died yesterday."

I walked slowly back to my desk, telling myself that there was nothing to be upset about. I had thought the hoards crying over Princess Di's death a couple of months before a bit ridiculous - here was a man I had never met, nor was ever likely to, what did his death matter to me? It had nothing to do with me, it wasn't my place to grieve. But seconds later I was sitting at my desk wracked with heaving sobs, feeling acutely the absence of a man so vibrant, so alive, so creative that the world was a palpably duller place without him.

They say that the brightest stars burn out first, and that is the only explanation necessary. In the weeks and months that followed, as tabloid media picked over the gory details and speculated over what caused his death, I could only rage that it didn't matter. A father, son, brother, friend and idol is gone.

Musing for the week

On Monday morning the Central Line was suspended from White City to Leytonstone. So despite its name, it neglected to touch central London whatsoever. Just to add to the fun the Circle Line was taking it easy, clearly easing itself back into work mode after a lazy weekend. We all know the feeling. It was off down to Earls Court, therefore, in the optimistic hope that a District Line train might see fit to take me to work. Clearly, everyone else in West London had had the same thought - who needs a sauna when you've got the District Line? As we all stood on the platform, bravely launching ourselves into the seething mass of humanity on the train, a bloke newly arrived on the platform asked generally of the crowd what was up with the trains. An elderly man, formal in a three piece suit, turned wearily around and replied in a cut glass accent "well they're fucked."
Just Monday morning then.

One of the Sunday supplements carried a feature about women's body image and relationship with food. It seems that we are all verging on annorexic, ridden with guilt and self hatred every time so much as a morsel crosses our lips. Err, who are these women exactly? Presumably they are all hidden away sobbing over lettuce leaves, or have dieted themselves to such teensy proportions that they are invisible to the naked eye, but for goodness sake would everyone please stop tarring us all with the same ridiculous brush? Don't get me wrong, if I were desperately overweight, if my health was at risk, I was hindered from doing things I want to do or people looked nervous when I boarded a plane, then I would worry about it and sort it out. But as a perfectly averaged sized person - neither a bag of bones nor as wide as I am tall - I eat when I am hungry, thoroughly enjoy a good meal, occasionally while away a boring morning at work day dreaming about chocolate but other than that do not give food a moment's thought.

It seems that a particular area of concern is what men think of our percieved wobbly bits. For one thing, I tend to find that most blokes, bless them, are fairly easily pleased and as long as there is a pair of boobs in there somewhere then they are happy enough. And further - I know the male species is regarded as a bit dim from time to time (again, bless them) but surely we should give them credit for already having a vague idea of what to expect? If I have dated a guy a couple of times, and presumably he has looked at me during those times, then why on earth would I worry that he will whip my clothes off and promptly fall over in shock not to discover Kate Moss beneath? Why would I want to date a man who thinks I wear magic clothes?

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Razorlight

After all the pallava of journeying down to the deepest darkest depths of Surrey and paying my 50p to pick up the tickets I am pleased to report that Razorlight were absolutely worth every iota of sleepless deep anxiety.

To be completely honest, I hadn't expected them to be quite so good live. You know those bands that come out with slick, fantastic albums and everyone goes bonkers over them and they win a billion Brits and Q Awards then gradually people realize that they can't cut it live so they rather swiftly swoosh off the face of the planet and no one ever hears of them again until one of them shows up on Celebrity Big Brother? Those bands that, when you hear them live, you are blown away by the talent of of the techs who mixed their album on the studio? Well if I am entirely honest I had a teeny sneaking suspicion that Razorlight might be one of them. The UK is just so saturated with them right now, that cynical me thinks that if someone's promotion team is working that hard, they are trying to squeeze out all the dosh they can from the hype before anyone notices that they can't play for toffee.

However, I stand corrected. Those boys can play - not even in the usual Brit rock/indie girlie boy kind of way - they rock. The show opened with a stunning drum solo - their drummer is phenomenal - then the bass then other guitars kicked in one by one (someone been watching Live Baby Live?!) and we were off to a roller coaster ride of rocking tune after rocking tune. Their instrumentals were spectacular - Johnny's voice one of the strongest I've heard in some time (he held a few notes for a faint-inducing amount of time) they performed overall with an energy and confidence that far outweighs their years.

I am thrilled to finally have a Brit band that I truly love - since James, Blur and Travis (only one of whom are still together and even they've been quiet for some time) I have really struggled to find a home grown band. I think Oasis are the most overrated act since Madonna (who I can't bear) and while I like Franz Ferdinand and Snow Patrol, I am not blown away. Yet, at least - looks like I'll be seeing Snow Patrol in a few weeks so might end up adding them to Claire's hall of fame after all. I am sure that they are thrilled.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Serves Me Right for Cheating on INXS...

There are very few things that truly wind me up. As a general rule, I am of the "meh, it'll figure itself out" school of thought. When I got my passport renewed less than 24 hours before I was due to check in for a flight to Vancouver, my mum was in a deep state of sleepless anxiety, but until the plane actually took off without me on it, I refused to get all that stressed about it. Every time I tell the story of running out of petrol in the middle of bugger all in north Queensland and having no choice but to sleep in the car alone, people gasp and exclaim (okay fine, exclaim might be a bit of an exageration) that I must have been terrified - and looking back, realizing that absolutely no one in the world knew where I was (other than "between Townsville and Brisbane") and my cell phone was with my friend Tony (and therefore a couple of hundred kilometers behind me in McKay) it strikes me that it was a bit worrying. But at the time, I just shrugged and cuddled down on the backseat because what choice did I have?

It's not that I am a terribly mature, evolved, mellow person - I think it comes down to sheer laziness actually. If I can see something to be gained from kicking up a fuss, then I will do so; but if it clearly isn't going to achieve anything then I would rather expend the fuss-energy elsewhere. There are a few exceptions:

1) Truck drivers who signal their preference for going faster by driving three feet behind me and flashing their lights. (Australian truck drivers are the worst - especially those on the Bruce Highway when I am going over the speed limit and there is no where to let them pass.)
2) Doormen at West End clubs (just in general. I unequivocably detest every last one of them - and that's not a generalization, I have pretty much had a run in with every last one of them. The king of those detested by me is currently the pretentious halfwit on the door at Café de Paris who thinks he has the right to comment on other people's appearances - not mine, incidentally - when he thinks it appropriate to gel his hair back in 2006.)
3) South West trains (just in general - I do believe that they slowly suck my soul out every time I have to get on one of their interminably slow/delayed/cancelled excuses for a train service.)

And that is pretty much it.

Having said all of that, I am currently in a deep state of sleepless anxiety (although to be fair, given that it's 11.42am my boss wouldn't be thrilled if I was in a state of sleepful anxiety) due to panicy high jinx over getting hold of tickets for this evening's Razorlight concert at Wembley. I bought them off Ebay (a brilliantly selfish Christmas present for my sister as I get to go with her!) on Saturday. I did not - pay attention, because this is important - sign in to PayPal to pay for them, because I couldn't remember the password. Instead I put in my card number and address and waited patiently for the tickets to arrive. I fully accept that I should have paid more attention to the receipt when it was emailed to me, but you don't usually, do you? I glanced over it, it all looked fine and that was that… except that it turns out that Ebay or PayPal obviously recognised my email address or card number or something - because they added the transaction to my PayPal acount - which has as a postal address my parents' down in Surrey. Which is where the tickets are now. I frantically email mum to get our neighbour who has a key to our post box's number, hoping that she can get the tickets and I will send a courier down to pick them up… except that the neighbour isn't home. Most likely to stop me dancing around the office screeching and tearing my hair out, Emma suggested that I take a half day's holiday and go and get them myself. So that is all fine. Until mum emails to remind me that the sorting office in Horsley shuts at 12.30pm… which is less than an hour away and as it's at least an hour and a half's journey (on buggering bollocksing fuckwit South West trains) I am unlikely to make it. I've phoned the sorting office and the man there promised to take the tickets across the road to the post office in Bishopsmead Parade, which is open until 6 and this is going to cost me 50p. I plan to invoice PayPal.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

The Soul Mate Train

So I did actually have a point by bringing up my lively love life. I am not entirely sure right now what it was at the time, but upon further musing - assisted by the fact that I am currently re reading Around the World in 80 Dates by Jennifer Cox - I have been thinking about the idea of soul mates. To me, the concept of dating as a fun activity, and the actual search for Mr Claire are two entirely different things. Dating is a) a reason to get dressed up for a midweek evening, b) an excuse to unleash any untried stories or anecdotes on an unsuspecting member of the male species who in return buys me food to shut me up and c) possibly spending time with a potentially interesting, potential (see how I take nothing for granted?!) new friend. So that's that: it's fun, something I miss in London hence the (as yet un-executed) match.com plan.

I've always had this sense (for absolutely no reason whatsoever) though, that dating and flirting and all that nonsense doesn't in fact have all that much to do with Mr Claire - for the past however many years, I have been working on the assumption that he'll just wander into my life somehow, hopefully we'll get on quite well, and that will be that. I do feel as though if I have to go to all sorts of contortions and effort and panic to find him or get him to notice me - surely I will have to keep all those sorts of contortions and effort and panic up throughout our relationship and surely that will be a bit knackering?

However, given my famously varied taste and attention span of an insect, what he will be like, look like… I have absolutely no clue. I don't even know if I will recognise him, to be honest, I am rather hoping he'll be wearing a badge or something. Of course, what he will be like (or presumably already is like even though I don't know him yet - if he hasn't been born yet I might be in trouble) leads me to my next pondering subject: is there only one of him? I don't think so - if I can quite cheerfully have spent 23 years in love with six (at any given time) members of INXS, I can't imagine that there is only one real life man for me.

So what do I do if more than one shows up at a time (hopefully both wearing their badges)? If we all have a number of potential soulmates, are some of them more soul matey than others? Is it a case of there is one or two head soul mates and possibly a few henchmen who will keep you warm until the head bloke is legal/divorced/out of prison or are there different soul mates for different stages of your life?

Ahh - now that, leads me on to tomorrow's subject (please try not to fall over and hurt yourselves as you bounce in anticipation.)

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

The United Dates of Claire

I am fairly sure that it was a quotation from someone like Tallulah Bankhead or Marylin Monroe, probably not the most ideal romantic role model, but one that seemed perfect for the "I'll be fabulous any minute now" me that I was at around age 19. She said something to the effect of, rather than searching for that one suitable man, you should go out of your way to date as many unsuitable men as possible. Seemed like a clever enough plan to me. I couldn't - indeed, still can't - think of anything worse than reaching old age and sitting around wringing my hands wailing "what if?" and "if only!" - so it made sense that in order to avoid settling down and always wondering what else was out there, I would make sure that by the time I settled down, I would not only knew what else was out there, but would have dated them all just to make sure. Nearly 10 years later, I have indeed worked my way through plenty of unsuitable - though fun - blokes, and a few lovely but not quite ones.

There was Nicholas, the engineer whose firm I temped at, who talked about sausages a lot. I don't mean that in some dodgy metaphorical way - he was French, and literally liked to discuss various types of sausages. I invited him to a party at my flat and, giddy with his acceptance, forgot to plan the party until the night before when my then flatmate and I frantically rang round everyone we had ever met begging them to cancel their plans and come to our 'party' instead. It worked, and Nicholas and I had a somewhat lopsided - due to his full leg cast following a rugby injury - encounter on my front doorstep. After a couple of dates I bored of the sausage talk and soon after met Andy who was born on the same day as Jon Farriss - in fact, it hit me a while ago that in addition to Andy, I've also dated a bloke called Jon, an Aussie bloke (okay, a few Aussie blokes) and a drummer - it seems that I am unconciously Dr Frankenstein-like trying to build myself a Mr Farriss the Youngest. In the continuing absence of the real one showing up on my doorstep to declare undying love, I fear that I might next have to go after a bloke with a penchant for wearing sparkly trousers. Then there were the two actors, best mates, who thought it hilarious to constantly badger my flatmate and I for a foursome - we once called their bluff to see how they'd react and after a few bottles of wine spent a few minutes half heartedly snogging before I and one of the blokes got bored of the whole thing so went to my room to have a chat while the other two got on with it in the living room.

This was all before I left London for the first time. In the next few years, I learned that Canadian men are very flattering - sometimes confusingly so. A bloke I was head over heels with patiently sat me down to tell me how amazing I was rather too many times before I realized that this was his Canadian way of dumping me (poor bloke - can you imagine how his heart must have sank each time I gaily replied "well thanks, you're not so bad yourself. I'll call you later then!") Americans are quite brilliantly - although not always romantically - straightforward: "so I am really not in a place for a relationship right now, but you're pretty hot so I'll take you out a few times before I stop calling - how do you feel about that?" (Answer: "err, okay") Italians predictably romantic yet chauvinist (it seems that my eyes are like stars but, like all women, I can't drive) and Australians not only straightforward but somewhat impatient ("I've been talking to you for 5 minutes now - do you want to root or not?" - direct quote, by the way).

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Champagne Confusion

The rest of the weekend passed without masses to report. Saturday afternoon brought a wander round Portobello Market and a few beers with Aussie Mate, as he was headed back Down Under the following day. Of all the wonders of Portobello Road, the one stall that caught his attention was a bizarre collection of ancient cameras - those massive ones with wooden frames and accordion like sides. This was interesting, as, if you’ll cast your mind back to my Oz trip (I assume that you all have every detail memorized, yes?) you might recall that I spent a very diverting couple of hours at the weirdest museum I have ever been to in my life - it was a village of cottages in the middle of nowhere, just off the Bruce Highway, most of which housed random masses of old-ish appliances - radios and refrigerators for example. I am beginning to think that a fascination for old, mechanical, well, crap really, is a particularly Antipodean preoccupation. Intriguing.

On Monday night, Al, newly off the plane from Hong Kong, and I kicked off my birthday a few hours early with a bottle of champagne in the terrace bar of Ruby Blue. Lovely to see her. I’d barely sobered up from that when Laura woke me on my birthday morning with champagne and croissants - I have a great sister - and the day only got better from there as I spent most of it polishing off the chocolate things from Marks & Spencer that I’d brought in, then ended up with dinner at my one of my favourite restaurants (Kettners in Soho). It was there that I broke the news to Laura that I’ve decided I am going to give match.com a go. It’s not that I am looking for Mr Right, more that I enjoy dating, which as an activity is somewhat generally scarce in London. Worst case scenario, I figure, I will be able to freshen up my store of nightmare date stories. Unfortunately she misheard me and thought I said I was going to Hong Kong (an understandable misunderstanding given the context of drinking with Al the previous night) so started to have a go at me for fleeing the country yet again and was quite relieved to hear that I am simply planning on pimping myself on the internet. I think it’ll be a giggle - watch this space, and all that.

The next couple of days were spent under a veil of phlegm from a nasty head cold so not much to report (certainly nothing that anyone would like to read) so thus ends a week in the life of Claire. Actually I have just realized that I started with Tuesday the previous week, so I shared that I had a cold for no good reason, apologies for that.

Yellow Zeds and Elbow Wars

Most of Thursday night I think I have already spoken about in more than enough detail. After the concert, Laura, Sarah and I decided to go and meet up with Aussie Mate for a few bevies. Walking from the Empire to the tube station, we annoyingly attracted the attention of some irritating bloke who appeared to be of the opinion that following us making lewd faces was the most effective route to our hearts - we ducked into a shop to lose him and made it to the tube, and then the posh hotel, without further drama. The lobby of the posh hotel isn’t easy to describe - it’s every so trendy, all minimalist white and instead of the usual clusters of sofas you find in hotel lobbies, there are weird seat type formations - it is difficult to ascertain whether they are meant to be sat in or admired like art - randomly scattered around. Aussie Mate texted to say that he wasn’t far from the hotel, so we chose a restoration style (although electric blue) chaise type thing that we were fairly confident was meant to be sat in - although we perched gingerly just in case - to wait for him.

I suddenly noticed a stunning, scarily sophisticated woman reclining in a bright yellow Z shaped chair, and watched in interest because surely if anyone could rise from the low yellow Z with dignity it would be her. I was more than slightly disappointed to learn moments later, that it was in fact beyond her. It was like that new Dove commercial in which the perfectly normal looking woman is made up then photographed, then the photos touched up until she looks like a supermodel - while I do appreciate the point the ad is making, that that level of perfection is only an illusion, on the other hand I like thinking that the potential for perfection exists out there. I have no interest in attaining it, but I like to think it’s there.

Well, I say I have no interest in attaining perfection - but I was interested to learn whether or not I would be able to rise from the yellow Z with dignity, so as Ms Sophistication had vacated it in her disappointingly ungainly manner, I skipped across the shiny white floor to launch myself into the challenge. It was only once I was wedged into a Z shape myself that I discovered the crux of the challenge - from the angle we’d been watching, we couldn’t tell that the leg rest of the chair was significantly higher than the seat of it. Naturally just as I realized that I was trapped in a position appropriate for a genealogical examination, the sliding front doors opened and Aussie Mate and his colleagues arrived. Aussie Mate was preoccupied - one of the blokes he’s travelling with is in a pretty bad way with a leg injury so had to be pretty much carried up to his room, poor bloke - so Aussie Mate just waved and shook his head in pity at my predicament before disappearing into the purple and silver lifts. However another one of their colleagues quite purposefully strode across the lobby and promptly lay down in what I can only describe as a human sized guitar case. That particular structure I am fairly sure was intended as decoration, but as this bloke doesn’t seem to be one for following rules and regulations, it apparently didn’t bother him and he passed a what appeared to be a happy few moments lying alone in a huge guitar case before popping up again and heading to the private residents’ bar. I’d like to think that it was a show of lying in weird objects solidarity with me but as my feet were somewhat blocking my line of vision I couldn’t be sure. Aussie Mate returned, I was rescued from my yellow prison, and we all retired to the swanky private bar where we drank lots and blethered nonsense until we were kicked out in the wee hours. This time, I managed not to physically maim any of Aussie Mate’s colleagues, although I did make a face at one (nope, no idea what possessed me either), and both waltzed with and informed that his moustache makes him look French, another. I suspect that Aussie Mate might not invite me to drink with him again.

Friday night, youngest brother Paul came up to London from his university in Wales, so he, Laura and I headed to our local club on Ken Church Street where somehow I managed to persuade the bouncer to let Laura and I in for free. We huddled in a corner and passed the evening drinking cocktails, occasionally doing impressions of various family members dancing and taking stupid pictures of each other on our phones. We had a brief excursion to the dance floor, during which I got into an elbow scuffle with a would be seducer of one of a group of girls dancing near us. Why, oh why, do English men think that hovering near the object of a their desire is all they need to do? I think it must be a bizarre form of fear of rejection - if they never get close enough, you can never be sure that it’s you they are hovering near so can never tell them to go away. The girl wasn’t aware of his presence whatsoever, so all he succeeded in doing was irritating me and therefore getting a few swift jabs to the ribs with my elbow (naturally followed by a wide eyed gasp “oh I am so sorry! I am so clumsy! Now bugger off.”) for his trouble.

Friday, October 20, 2006

A Week in the Life

A lot of the blogs I have been reading lately seem to be more diary like than the random waffling of thoughts that fills mine, so here goes with a diary blog of the last week or so:

Monday I went to a screenwriters seminar in Soho. Quite a good one - I haven't yet found a regular writing group that lives up to the ABCs in Vancouver, so am dipping in and out of various groups and organizations in the hopes of making up for that. It was a talk on thrillers. Nothing desperately groundbreaking, but enough to flick a light on in my brain with regards to the thriller I have had rattling around in my brain for over a year now. I snuck out early and found a pub quiet enough to scribble out the story before the batteries in my brain went out again.

Tuesday, Nick and I went for drinks at Ruby Cube off Leicester Square. Over tacos, other assorted starters and plenty of alcohol we caught up - we hadn't seen each other since his round-the-world trip and my a-bit-of-Australia trip over the summer. Nick recommends Mongolia as a great unknown holiday destination - he says it's gorgeous, well prepared for tourists and yet no one goes there so it is also empty. It is one of the least travelled to countries on earth, which strikes me as a reason to go in itself. We then wandered over to a nearby posh hotel to meet up with a bloke I got to be mates with during my Australia trip, who was in town with work and turned out to be just headed out for dinner with his collegues. I stood on the foot of one of his collegues who was very gracious, and having inflicted some slight bodily harm, we left them to it and went to the bar that used to be Mezzo and is exactly the same now except it is no longer called Mezzo and doesn't seem to have unisex loos any more.

Couple more beers, then Nick (he's a trainee lawyer) had to call it a night, so I wandered off to meet my sister. Found her leaning up against the Trocadero, drunk as a skunk, eating chips. By this point Aussie Mate was finished dinner so I helped Laura finish the chips and we headed back through Soho to his posh hotel. Somewhere on Wardour Street, she decided that I wasn't spruced up enough to go to the posh hotel (in all fairness, my make up had, as it is wont to do, evaporated by 10.30am - honestly I could trowel the stuff on and it still somehow, err, slides off before I have had my third cup of tea of a morning) so she whipped out her make up bag. I decided that I looked quite gorgeous enough thank you very much (I must be the only person who gets beer goggles for myself) so I ran away and she chased me through Soho brandishing a blusher brush.

We made it to the posh hotel, were quite entertained when two smart blokes were turned away from the bar then Laura and I were welcomed in without comment (obviously the blusher helped then - she caught me.) After a fun chat which involved informing Aussie Mate of the various attributes of men of the Commonwealth, something of a specialist subject for my sister and I (we feel we owe it to Queen and Country) we decided to make a move and were staggered to realize that it was 4.30am. A mere five hours later I was sitting at my desk praying for the Apocolypse. Seventeen cups of tea later, it was 5.30pm and time to drag my comatose yet still slightly drunk carcass home to recover with virtuous salad (one positive point about feeling as though toxins are literally oozing out of every pore is that I crave health food) and crap tv.

As usual I've written a War and Peace, so will pick up tomorrow...

The Crowd 'Aint Pretty During the Show ;)

I would describe the overall attitude of the British fans, diehard and casual alike, before this show as… pragmatic. Which is an odd word to use for rock fans but somehow apt. Essentially, people seem to have been thinking that while they'd prefer to see Michael, as that isn't an option then INXS is better than no INXS so here they were. Which I can understand - bear in mind that Rockstar wasn't really shown here so most people don't know JD from Adam - and think is fair enough really. To me, anyone who says that a band begin and end with their frontman displays a shallow understanding of rock music and the dynamics of a band. Michael Hutchence was a phenomenal frontman, one of the best that ever lived, but he was also one sixth of a phenomenal band and that band is still around. Having said that though, it is inevitable that a great frontman does… set the tone, for want of a clearer phrase, particularly for a live performance. With that in mind, one of the things I have adored watching develop over the past year is not simply INXS with some bloke ably standing in for Michael, but a fully evolved and newly reinvigorated band that exists proudly within the legacy yet is exciting in and of itself too. One of the London Reviews - the Evening Standard - mentioned JD's "likeable weirdness" which does hit the nail on the head a bit - there is a real playful, slighty (maybe even more than slightly) bonkers, enthusiasm to him that is clearly infectious and creates a brilliantly fun abandon on stage. It isn't better than the shows with Michael, of course it's not, but neither is it worse, it is unique and fantastic and all in all, hats off to the Canadian weirdo. I have most definitely become a JD fan this year, and while of course I would jump at the chance to somehow see them with Michael in concert again, even if that was an option I would still chose to see the JD-ified INXS too. And it seems that as of Thursday night, plenty of British fans agree with me.

Just about every time I see INXS, I figure that I was incredibly lucky to be at a special concert where they are somehow especially on fire, one of those once in a life time phenomenal shows in which the band hit the climax of their genius. Then I see them again, think the same thing, and slowly realize that it's no one off fluke but just the way INXS play, every night. Shepherds Bush was absolutely no exception but for me what really made this gig was the crowd. The atmosphere was out of this world. From the opening, err, twiddle (the technical musical term, I believe) of harmonica on Suicide Blonde the crowd went bonkers and didn't regain sanity until probably some time Friday afternoon. There were a lot of blokes in the crowd, the most I've seen in a while (at an INXS concert that is, I don't mean to suggest that I live in a nunnery or anything) so possibly somewhat fuelled by sheer testosterone there was an absolute wild ferocity to the screaming, stomping and singing along that seemed to take even the band by surprise. The Shepherds Bush Empire started life, I believe, as a music hall, so it has four tiers - the floor in front of the stage, then three balconies stretching upwards. During Mystify, I turned around to see a couple of thousand people, the top level must have been a good two and a half storeys above the stage, each and every one with their hands above their heads clapping along. At times the place just about rattled with the vibrations of the dancing and stomping.

My sister, she of the chronic piss taking, was right at the forefront of the rabble bellowing at Tim during Never Tear Us Apart - although later on the tube she asked why we were bullying him so, surely it is up to him when he plays the fucking riff? When finally, an emotional band dragged themselves onstage and the lights went up, there was an almost palpable air of utter stunnedness, a loud, unspoken "holy fuck. That was INXS, then."

Sunday, October 15, 2006

We'd have been better off just keeping walking

Right. Despite somehow being persuaded to go clubbing last night with my sister and our brother I did manage to crash out enough to get my brain back from the cleaner's so here we go with a proper recap.

Such is my penchant for jumping on planes to see INXS in concert (hey, everyone needs a hobby) that on Thursday it was the first time in many years, I actually had to work on the day of an INXS concert. Well, I say work - I had to be present in an office on the day of an INXS concert. Luckily, a colleague (another crazy lifelong fan) and I, much to the unadulterated joy of all those who sit near us, declared the Thursday INXS day. It was such a success that we are thinking of petitioning the Queen to have it made a bank holiday. So after irritating the hell out of everyone by boogying around and generally squeeing all day, at 5.29 on the dot I shot out of the office like a demented cannonball, all but vaulted the ticket barrier then threw myself on the floor, kicking and screeching "MOOOOOVVVVEEEEEEEE" at the interminably dawdling Circle Line, finally arriving at my flat a sweating, crazed, shadow of my former self. My lovely friend Sarah (many years ago we solemnly decided that we could only continue our friendship because she was in love with Michael and I was in love with Jon, therefore there would be no tearing each other's hair out in undignified fits of competition) arrived, we flagged a taxi and jauntily informed him that we needed to get to the Shepherds Bush Empire and we needed to be there by 10am this morning then the queue started forming, please.

"I can see you're in a hurry love" the driver commented. "You forgot to get dressed."

Tutting at his impertinence but inside quite pleased to receive confirmation that I was suitably attired to breathe the same air as INXS, I turned to Sarah and launched into a story on some minutiae of my life that I am sure had her on the edge of her seat. Gesticulating wildly and acting out all the characters as I am wont to do, I suddenly realized out of the corner of my eye that we were still on Kensington Road. This wasn't quite right at all. Amongst my many and mostly useless talents, I happen to somehow be a human A-Z when it comes to London's streets. I stun and amaze friends and family with my encyclopaedic knowledge of traffic hotspots and dodgy one way systems, and the Live Baby Live commentary drives me bonkers when one of them (Garry I think) mentions that they picked up the police escort on the way to Wembley at Hammersmith because why weren't they on the A40? It was Saturday afternoon, who in their right mind went to Wembley via the A306?? So I wasn't best pleased when our taxi pulled onto Hammersmith roundabout because it's not the right way to Shepherds Bush either. Emma was texting from inside the venue, Laura was standing outside - and Sarah and I were in fucking Hammersmith… pulling up at the Palais.

"You did say the Hammersmith Palais, right love?"

Like a soap opera widow throwing herself into an open grave, I nose dived on the taxi floor and screeched "NNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Shepherds Bush EEEMMMPPIIIIIIIIIIIIIRRREE!!!"

It was at this point that I desperately texted Emma to beg her to spread eagle in her spot (stage Tim, not far from the front) to save some space for us, and she quite rightly replied that if she was going to spread eagle for anyone at an INXS concert, it wouldn't be me. Sarah clicked her fingers in front of my face to distract me and avert impending cabbie-cide. A while later we pulled up at the Empire, and made it inside to meet a grateful Emma who was desperately holding back the hoards and nearly sinking into the splits. Alcohol was procured, and all was right with the world.

Friday, October 13, 2006

The Commonwealth Rocks the Empire

Wow. Where to start.

Right now I am aching, bruised, hungover, and have utterly lost my voice. Everything is just as it should be the morning (okay fine, it's 3pm) after INXS blew the fucking roof of the Shepherds Bush Empire.

I posted a few months ago that by the time they got to London they would walk on stage, the whole place would simply combust, and that would be that. And, that is more or less precisely what happened last night. I long ago ran out of new adjectives to describe INXS playing live so apologies for most likely repeating myself: it was superb. My sister, who has never been an INXS fan, and indeed has mercilessly taken the chronic piss out of my obsession for many years now, was dragged along last night, and a few songs in, she turned to me and said "I get it now."

The only word I can use (and indeed did this morning in an ill advised phone call to Hong Kong from my mobile - can't wait until that bill comes in!) to describe the atmosphere in the crowd is feral. It was absolutely wild - the stomping, screaming, singing along and constant moshing (the most cardio I've had in, err, years probably) was phenomenal to be a part of and I was thrilled that London thusly did INXS proud. We just about drowned JD out at points, even during songs not your usual singalong ones - Suicide Blonde stands out, for example - and during Devils Party, Hungry, Never Let You Go and Pretty Vegas off Switch which is not even released in the UK until Monday.

Billions more to say that will have to wait until my brain defragments a bit, but for now - welcome back to Blighty boys, don't be strangers.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Underground Overground

Underground Overground
This morning, the tube was particularly hellish. It is a curious sensation not having one iota of personal space in a crowd of grumpy strangers; it is indeed a sweaty sensation. It is a sensation that makes me want to beg the person next to me to set my toes on fire because the distraction would be a welcome respite from the hell I am experiencing. This morning, it was fractionally even worse than usual, because for the first time this year I have broken out the boots and sweater winter attire which doesn't do much for the old sweat situation. So I tried to take my sweater off (don't panic, I had another top on underneath) but due to the space situation only managed to hike it up around my armpits before getting stuck. So I remained, wearing my sweater like one of those 80s hoods around my neck and shoulders and tried to look like it was a deliberate fashion statement. It was at this point that I saw JD Fortune on the tube. Luckily in the interests of me not screaming, fainting or accidentally nibbling on him a bit, it wasn't really him, but a picture of him accompanying an interview with him in this morning's Metro. So I contorted, still with my sweater snugly hugging me just above my boobs, sweat still pouring down my face, to read the interview over some bloke's shoulder. Unfortunately, Mr Fortune, as he is wont to do, made some witty comment and I quite inadvertantly snorted with laughter, rather startling the bloke who was unknowingly sharing his paper with me. At this point, one of my Ipod earphones fell out, dangling just in front of the bloke's head and giving him a good blast of INXS. I don't really blame him for the somewhat judgemental look that he gave me.

Re emerging back into the world at St Paul's tube station minutes later, my mobile bleeped. Chuffed that someone clearly loved me enough to ring me at such an ungodly hour, I listened to my voicemail... to hear no less than 16 voicemails from people telling me to get the Metro.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Beauty Drop Out

It’s not a case of not being a vain at all. Like everyone else, I prefer to look okay than not: I do manage to shower and dress fairly regularly, straighten my hair on occasion and once or twice have even been known to fix up my make up in between work and evening. It is simply that, in a list of everything I plan, or mean, or think about doing in a week - from work and going out, to a grocery shop, some ironing, reading all the Sunday papers, replying to all the emails and phone messages I am perpetually woefully behind with - it is inevitable that some things don’t make the final cut. And generally, beauty things, that general polishing and hair-harvesting stuff that is expected of woman, particularly women of my age and lifestyle, are amongst those told that they are just not right for my life, this week. Don’t worry, I am not going all European on you, even I can manage whip round with a razor in the shower, I mean more the detail stuff. The stuff with scary names, like exfoliating and, err, buffing.

So it was with some trepidation yesterday morning that I set off on a mission. A mission that involved the chopping of split ends and the pouring of hot wax on my face - both of which sound, to me, like punishment for treason. Actually making an appointment for a haircut on a Saturday afternoon is way too much like organization for me, so I hopefully wandered up Kensington Church Street where there are about a gazillion salons, to see if there was someone who could fit me in. Four salons later, I felt terribly sheepish about my presumption and was resigning myself to another week of a haircut that wouldn’t look out of place on a sheepdog, when a young man shoved a flier in my face. Usually, fliers handed out in central London involve either learning to speak English or friendly Russian girls with whips, both of which I am pretty much set for, so I was all set to chuck it in the bin when something caught my eye: “haircut - £10!” Result! I thought. Now, even I am aware that the only people who can get a decent haircut in central London for £10 are seven year old boys, but as all I wanted was a trim rather than anything done to the style, I figured that it was safe enough. Off I trotted to the address on the flier. An illustrious salon, as it turned out, decorated in the style of the Beauty School Dropout sequence from Grease stained with 30 odd years of chain smoking. Lined above the mirrors were those old fashioned space helmet like hair dryers which I believe were once used to set perms and possibly blue rinses. The mirrors were, naturally, ringed with light bulbs which set off the swirly seventies wallpaper and cracked linoleum nicely and the whole place had a sort of yellow tinge, like a Polaroid photograph taken in 1982. Inspiring. Even more inspiring were the three stylists sitting glumly on the customer chairs: one swinging idly in circles putting me in mind of a caged animal, the other two staring at the floor, all three looking for all the world like extras in a East European movie. At a funeral. So naturally I gaily waved my flier and, hoping that it didn’t come out like a cruel joke, asked if they could fit me in. They could. The stylist who’d been swinging in circles stood up, revealing himself to be the lovechild of a Soho rent boy and a bloodhound, stared at me and my hair as though he might cry, then sighed and beckoned me to the shadowy back where there were four stained sinks and mismatching chairs. I made for one of them, he snapped that that one was broken, I had to sit in this one. I obeyed. You might have thought that at this point I’d be some what concerned as to what this man planned to do with my hair. Especially as he hadn’t asked what I wanted, or even properly looked at it (it was in a ponytail when I walked in) but at this stage I was thoroughly enjoying the bizarre experience and figured I could always buy a wig if absolutely necessary. Yes I know, sometimes I agree I should be slightly more vain.

Luckily for all he planned to do very little. He washed it - I don’t mean to sound high maintenance, but the scalp massage promised by the flier was somewhat desultory - then when it was combed out wet, he scowled at it, snipped approximately three times and informed me that I was done.
“Errr, what about drying it?” I asked.
“That’s £5 extra.”
I don’t think so. It wasn’t the extra money that I objected to, £15 for a haircut is still hardly breaking the bank, it was the fact that he’d waited until my hair was sopping wet before springing this on me. It was like a plumber showing up at my house, pulling the cistern to pieces then announcing that it would cost more to put it back together. He got my hair wet, he could bloody well dry it. My argument however, fell on deaf ears. I especially didn’t feel that the plumber analogy was appreciated. Eventually I resorted to pointing at the miserable day outside and, omitting that I leave for work every morning in life with hair wet from the shower, announced that I would most likely come down with pneumonia or pleurisy or something.
“Fine, you can use the hair dryer.” He shrugged.
Err, I can? He took it out of the drawer and slammed it on the counter next to me, then took his own seat and resumed his swinging in circles. As I don’t even own a blow drier, it is safe to assume that I probably didn’t impress the three stylists who watched - two curious, one furious - me dry my hair with a sniffing attempt at dignity. I paid my £10 and when he asked for a tip suggested that he don’t have his customers dry their own hair, then emerged back into 2006 with precisely identical looking hair. If you were to show a before and after picture of this haircut, you could hold a competition to judge which was which.

Despite the entertainment value of the hair cut, I decided to splash out on a proper place, with employees who wouldn’t shout at me, for my eyebrow shape. I have rather a lot more hair, therefore more margin for error, than I have eyebrows. My eyebrows were duly shaped and I headed off down Ken High Street for a bit of shopping. Utterly forgetting just how sensitive my skin is. So sensitive, that whenever I wax anything (I’ll just leave what to your imagination) my skin swells, reddens, and even bruises for hours. And so I moseyed the shops of High Street Kensington looking like the Elephant Man. With a sheepdog’s hair cut.

Lucky I am not that vain, then.

Friday, September 22, 2006

The Home Stretch...

Okay, so I lied about being completely done with Australia. I was thinking like those personal trainers who enthusiastically squeal: "two more to go! … two… one… okay two more now… two… one… last two!" because if they actually admitted that you had to do six more sit ups you'd punch their lights out and go for a little nap.

When we last left me, I was scuttling out of the posh hotel near the Opera House in Sydney pretending not to be an obsessed stalker-fan but instead an invisible statue - to the odd look of the friendly receptionist blokey. Crap - obviously not all that invisible, then.

There are good sides and bad sides to meeting people via the internet. In common with the way I generally arrive at work and for most social events (unless there is food involved) I was fairly late to this whole online sociability; until about a year ago I used the internet for research and for keeping in touch with people I have actually met. Last summer though, having sworn absolutely not to watch, I was gutted every time I missed Rockstar:INXS. It became something of a spectator sport for people to find me, generally in a bar on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays (bear in mind I was in Canada at the time, no idea when it was shown in other countries), suddenly glance at my watch at approximately 10pm, slap my hand on my forehead and shout "bugger!" But, I managed to keep up to date with what was going on once I stumbled across the fan message boards. Between the brilliant Spoiler Crew who attended tapings and faithfully wrote up all that happened and the fans who discussed every broadcast moment in great detail, I was probably more comprehensively informed than most viewers. I couldn't have picked JD out of a line up, but I knew that he was the man for the job - evil Mark Burnett editing be damned. Over time, I found myself logging on, not just to find out what had happened on the latest episode I missed, but also to see what Junkyard Messiah or LAX Guy or Kylie thought of it, and thusly I was sucked into the weird and wonderful world of the internet.

As I say, there are good sides and bad sides; and I was lucky to experience the good side on my last day in Oz (actually throughout the trip, but I am telling the story of my last day in Oz right now.) One of my favourite things about travelling alone is meeting and spending time with people who, through geography, age, lifestyle and a million other factors, I would likely never otherwise stumble across. And that is just how I spent that last day: with a group of people from all over the place, all of whom I liked very much and none of whom I would have been particularly likely to meet in any other circumstances. We all 'knew' one another from the very message board on which the brilliant Spoiler Crew posted their Spoilers, which has since evolved into something of an INXS fan board. So a Brit, an Australian, a Canadian and an American all walked into a bar… no, it just sounds like a joke, we in fact walked from Bondi Beach to Bronte in the pouring rain and gale-force winds, blethering away like old friends, and watched some dolphins fishing. The one local amongst us then suggested an appropriately named bar - the Dolphin - to thaw out and tame our wind strewn afros, so we duly retired to the upstairs lounge huddled around a welcome fire where I sampled my first… second, third and fourth… Victoria Bitter. It was a very pleasant afternoon.

Earlier that morning, I'd received a text from a bloke I slightly knew from Vancouver who was working at the time in Sydney and who I'd planned to meet for a drink that evening. He had to cancel due to work, so rather than spend my last night Down Under aimlessly wandering the rain-soaked streets of Sydney, I decided to accompany the Canadian and the American (the Australian had other plans) to Luna Park on the off chance that there might be one ticket for that evening's sold out concert for scrounging…

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Hey Good Lookin'

Have you ever had a brief musical obsession that you wouldn't admit to anyone? I do occasionally - I get a particular song or artist, not my usual taste, normally charty pop (Uncle Kracker was one, and Angel by Shaggy another) constantly in my head and I don't always manage to stop myself before squealing 'my soo-oongg!!' and pogo-ing up and down a bit when it comes on the radio. I have that at the moment with Sandi Thom - not the Punk Rocker one, although I admit that I did bop along to it on the radio from time to time, but her new one - the one about the bloke making all the promises to be a perfect bloke and she doesn't quite believe him? I am sorry but I just love it. Specifically, I have one line from it incessantly in my head "you'll be my supersonic lover and you won't steal the covers" - but hold on a second… supersonic? Faster than the speed of sound? Is that a good thing? Sounds a bit, umm… rattling to me. Or would it be too quick to even notice? I don't know if I fancy that. Unless, as I am wont to do, I have misheard the lyric a bit. I do that all the time. I used to cheerfully sing along to the old Take That song "wash your back, wash your back, wash your back for gooood" and Macy Gray "I wear goggles when you're not there" (which, for Macy Gray might not be all that beyond the realms of possibility.) When I was in sixth form, the sixth formers used to take it in turns to pick the tape - yes tape - to play on the bus on the way home from school. When it was my turn, I - hold on to your hats, this might shock you - would pick Elegantly Wasted. Until one day, a stroppy little runt of a first year objected. The bus fell silent. I stared down at her in the manner of the blokey handing out gruel when Oliver Twist asked for some more and tightly requested more information to support her rejection.
"It's got rude words in in" she squeaked. "I don't want to hear them."
"What rude words?" I demanded, to the sound of the bus holding its breath in terror.
"I don't want to say" bravely she replied, although I was satisfied to note a tremor of fear in her voice, and she was speaking from under a seat at this point.
Eventually, I beat, err, got it out of her, that the song she objected to was I'm Just a Man. She thought that the line was "my willy's strong."

Anyway, this is just random musings and absolutely nothing to do with what I want to say today.

It was fairly late at night, after another feast had been consumed, all thirty of us sitting by the light of candles jammed into just-finished wine bottles in the gardens of our castle in Tuscany, that the talk turned to storytelling. I don't know whether it is evidence of ancient Celtic heritage, or simply the result of old friends consuming vast quantities of alcohol, but story telling is a hallmark of any event with the Glasgow crowd, and the Tuscany holiday was no exception. We heard about the time Uncle J (names censored to protect the innocent) was convinced that he could sleep standing up, like a horse, if only he was well supported enough. D duly stuffed him into a wardrobe packed in snugly with blankets and pillows, and he lasted around 10 minutes before begging to be let out. Then another 10 minutes while D stood outside the wardrobe killing himself laughing. We heard about the time they went camping in the pouring rain - the kind of rain that appears as though someone has just tipped a bucket over the world and soaks you right through to your bones. This being the days long before anyone thought of attaching tents to the ground sheets, when they pitched their tent (admittedly in the dark) it was on such bumpy ground that the ground sheet dipped in the middle causing a torrent of muddy slush to shoot through the centre of the tent. They had to stick their sleeping bags on either bank of their self made river and wave forlornly at one another. So cold were they that one of them (neither would admit to it) came up with the idea of heating their cans of beer on the gas stove - just to have some warmth. The stove promptly ran out of gas before they could heat their baked beans - so they ate cold beans and drank warm beer. While sitting on the sopping banks of their self made river.

However. None of the stories caused quite so much hilarity as the one about the time when Uncle J was fired for not being attired in a fit state for the Glasgow public to be faced with. He wore a tie decorated with parachutes. He wore dark blue velvet trousers, so flared as to appear as though he wore two small skirts around his knees. A purple shirt - edged with cream, and a beige cord jacket. And naturally, this was topped off with a pale Scottish person's attempt at an afro (I actually have one of those every morning before wrangling my locks with copious amounts of smoothing serum.) The job was to involve turning up at people's doorsteps to read their gas meters, and Uncle J's boss thought that he would frighten the housewives of Glasgow so he was sent home. Over 30 years later, he is still indignant.
"See, the thing about the seventies" he explained to us rapt history students. "Is that it wasn't about whether you were good looking or not, or skinny or not, it was whether or not you had the gear."

Interesting thought. On one hand, it is probably a good thing that these days it is rare to think that wearing a tie dotted with parachutes is a good idea, but on the other, it seems as though the 'look' of the naughties is less about your gear - with there being so many varied looks out there to chose from - but about your looks. The worrying amounts of people - men and women - undertaking plastic surgery or drastic diets to conform to the 'look' of the naughties might not find it so easy to fall about laughing over their physical fashion faux pas in 30 years. Decades of Botox might well mean that they might be laughing, but no one would know; and decades of near anorexia will likely mean that they won't be here in 30 years to laugh at anything. Suddenly wearing a parachute tie doesn't seem so bad.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Mateless in London

This morning something startling happened. I was, as usual, squished into the sardine tin cesspool of doom sometimes referred to as the Circle Line, engrossed in my Ipod and pretending I was somewhere - anywhere - else, when I suddenly noticed a bloke had caught my eye and smiled at me. Not in a flirtatious kind of way - he was a good bit older than me - just in a friendly kind of way. A silent "hi". I was astounded. By lifting my head from where it was moulded, altogether too intimately, in a stranger's armpit, I glanced around to see if there was someone familiar to the Friendly Bloke smiling back at him. Nope. I mentally checked whether I was, once again, absent mindedly dancing to my Ipod (which does often motivate strangers to smile at me, in a somewhat pitying and slightly frightened kind of way). Nope. I looked back at the Friendly Bloke, but, having utterly befuddled me, he had gone back to his paper.

I was befuddled partially because that is my natural state at 8.39am, but also because that never, but never, happens on the London Underground. Or even in London, overground. Occasionally, when the tube, yet again, stops for no particular reason in a tunnel, people will catch each other's eyes in a common-irritation-eye-rolling-'typical' sort of way that Londoners do so well, but a random smile of friendliness? Never. I think that I am especially aware of just how isolated and - on the surface at least - glum Londoners appear, because I have just returned from Australia, where people grin away at each other all day. In all fairness, they do so in the sunshine and the knowledge that they could pop to the ocean for a quick swim or surf after work, which would make anyone smile; but, sardine tin tubes, crappy weather and distinct lack of ocean aside, London isn't all that bad - surely it deserves a smile or two?

It isn't just isolation from random strangers that London lacks - it is, in my experience at least, a lot more difficult to be social, full stop. Possibly because many commutes are so marathon-like, working hours so long, there is so much choice available, somehow keeping in touch with people - not to mention meeting anyone new - is a full time job. When I am in Vancouver, I hardly ever think conciously of having a social life - it just happens. Everyone somehow finds each other after work or at the weekend and we figure out something to do; but here, just arranging for a couple of us to get together for a drink involves dragging out diaries, negotiating over locations, and eventually settling on something early in 2007. There is definitely a bit of "I'm busier than you" one upmanship to contend with, which doesn't help, that Canadians just don't bother with. The first time I had a party in Vancouver, I was shocked when everyone I phoned to invite said either "sound's great, I'll be there" or "sorry, I can't make it". Yes or no, completely clear. No "well I'll have to see what I am up to…" or "I'll let you know closer to the time…" or "who else is going to be there?" Then, when everyone who said they would actually showed up at the exact time I invited them for you could have knocked me over with a feather. And not just because I had generously sampled a few pints of the punch I made in case I'd accidentally poisoned it.

I don't really know what my point is here, except to throw myself on the ground and wail like a two year old "I want to go back to Vancouver!!!" I think I am suffering from the post travelling blues a bit this week (they always hit just as the jet lag abates) so am down on London and up on… every where else really.

As a random mention - because no one would recognize that this was my blog otherwise - mention of the band that my grandma calls "inks", I am gutted about the Europe cancellation! It is so unlike them - I cannot think of another gig that INXS have cancelled, never mind three weeks of them - poor Tim must be in a bad way. I did notice him wincing a bit in Sydney, and a couple of friends who were at the Hobart and Melbourne concerts this weekend said that it was almost uncomfortable to watch him so clearly in pain. They did say that the concerts were phenomenal otherwise, so roll on Shepherds Bush!

Sunday, September 17, 2006

From Sydney to London (almost)

And so to Sydney and my final destination on my Australia trip. It was with heavy heart that I parked for the last time outside my hotel - I'd decided to throw the boat out with the nice Holiday Inn in Old Sydney - and dragged the luggage containing the filthy rags that remained of my clothing upstairs to my room.

There is something incredibly exhilarating about driving into a strange city of the stature of Sydney with absolutely no idea of where I am going. Knowing that at any moment I might stumble across something that I would recognise, somehow unfeasibly, from images from the other side of the world, is exciting; and sure enough I shortly spied some signs for the Harbour Bridge. Figuring that as I'd heard of it, it was a good place to head as any, I duly followed the signs and was disconcerted to find them, a short while later, evaporated. What I realized - I might as well admit that it was much, much later - was that, in looking for the Harbour Bridge, I'd driven over it without seeing it. I was now on a road for Manly and, as I'd heard of it I figured that it was a good place to head as any. However moments later, those signs too disappeared and I found myself on a highway, heading out of the city with alarming swiftness, in the direction of Newcastle. Newcastle! I've already been there! In panic, I turned the car resolutely around and steeled myself for another run at Sydney.


After only three more trips back and forth across the Harbour Bridge (each time paying the toll), I finally noticed it and managed to get myself orientated, found the hotel and passed the rest of the afternoon at the Maritime Museum then wandering about Darling Harbour. The Maritime Museum I liked a lot, although I didn't find it quite as clearly set out as I might have hoped. Had I not been reading some history of Australia at the time, I don't know that I would have been able to make the connections from one display to the next. I actually found the more recent history the most arresting: I'd heard of course of the £5 and £10 fares offered to Brits in the 1960s in order to fill up the Commonwealth a bit. In fact, my mum's family had been due to be such "ten pound Poms" in 1968, until my Grandpa took TB and the trip had to be cancelled. Strange thought: had they gone I would be - well I wouldn't be me as it's likely that with my mum in Melbourne and my dad in Kirkintilloch, that they'd never have met. However I hadn't realized just how many of those sent out were children. Some teenagers who asked to be sponsored under Big Brother schemes in order to achieve a life that they knew they never would in the UK; but some were orphans, sent out on a four week voyage by sea from (mostly) London's orphanages with no idea of where they were going - and no idea that they wouldn't be back. There is an entire generation of Australians who haven't seen England since childhood but perhaps understandably still consider it home.


That evening I met up with one of a new generation of Brits populating Down Under: those who head out for the obligatory gap year back packing stint and never get around to leaving. I do believe actually, that they are unknowingly part of a great swopping scheme: that for every person I went to school with who's never made it back, there is another Aussie sharing a two bedroom flat with twelve other Aussies in Earls Court (I have never understood exactly why they squish themselves in en masse like that: are they afraid of us?) After a nice visit with the friend of my sister's (and the 12 other Brits he shelters with) I wandered down to the Quay to have a look at the Opera House and Harbour Bridge (which is rather more recognisable by night, and by foot). On my way back, Sydney's streets, for the third time that day, all jumped up and moved around, so, for the third time that day, I lost my bearings. Luckily I spied a hotel nearby and dashed in to ask at the reception for directions. I hadn't even looked at the name of the hotel (it had started to rain again - that weekend, Sydney endured more rain than it has seen in 120 years) but as I waited at reception for the friendly bloke to unfold a map, I noticed on some hotel stationary that it was the very hotel at which - as plenty of Superfans had confidently asserted - INXS habitually stay at while in Sydney. Immediately paranoidly convinced that Tony would put me on his infamous - if alleged - list of let's say over-enthusiastic fans, I darted furtively around looking for all the world more like a stalker than two minutes previously when I'd been perfectly legitimately asking for directions. Luckily there was no sign of any rockstars or their suspicious security, and the friendly bloke eventually found me hiding behind a pillar and gave me the map on which he had helpfully highlighted the route back to my own hotel.

Driving Up a Mountain

And so my - at the time - last Oz INXS concert rolled on. For the first time, I was not in the sweaty mass at the front vying desperately for a brief eye-fuck from JD. Which, by the way, I never get. He smiles, flirts and acknowledges plenty of people, but I - possibly through virtue of being brunette - appear to be invisible to the lanky legged one. Maybe because I call him the lanky legged one. Or, possibly because he can sense that, despite living in Vancouver for two years, I think Kraft Dinner foul and the only time I tried to play hockey I nearly brained myself with my own stick. Indeed, despite my standard chat up technique to the boys of Canuckshire being to ask them, with wide eyed innocence, just who exactly Wayne Gretzky is, I usually snoozed off before they were quite finished explaining so still don't fully know. Just on the off chance he ever stumbles across this blog, may I just say JD, may I just state for the record, that I love Keiths? In fact, I spent the best part of the 2001-2002 school year happily ensconced in the Cambie pub forming such a close and intimate relationship with Mr Keith that I now call him Al? Just keep that in mind for Shepherds Bush, please. Eh.


Just for a change, I digress. Being out of said sweaty mass, I had the interesting opportunity of observing the concert experience rather than being in the thick of it. That's not to say that you can't be in the thick of the experience from far away from the stage - I have plenty of back of Wembley and Earls Court experiences to attest to that - but that, as I'd seen the show so many times by this point, I could chose to notice things that I might not have otherwise. For example, instead of just staring dreamily into Jon's baby blues, I could appreciate what a clockwork rhythm unto itself is the relationship between him and his fantastic drum tech. Normally during a show Tod is so unobtrusive that that it is as rare to notice him as to catch a glimpse of a near extinct creature, like a platypus. Not that I would compare Tod to a platypus in any other way. At Newcastle, I had the perspective to watch as he crouched in readiness, handing things to Jon, moving his microphone back and forth and I am sure doing a multitude of other things I am too ignorant to see, but that keeps the driving beat that is the foundation of an INXS show moving smoothly. Equally I could see Lindsay, with the focus of a sniper on a starter block, poised holding either a guitar or saxophone ready to hand it to Kirk at the precise correct moment. I thought I saw him playing the guitar at one point, but he later explained that he'd been tuning it - the concentration required to do that during a show is mind boggling. There was a slight sound distortion at one point, when the bass seemed to be turned up, but 13 and a couple of other blokes I didn't recognize darted about for a couple of seconds and then I no longer thought that Garry was going to blow my face off. In my crew love fest, I even managed momentarily not to hate Jen, the woman whose job it is to help undress JD. Although he evidently takes responsibility for his footwear himself as he decided, inexplicably, to change his shoes halfway through the show. It took him about three songs to do so; with an almost feminine multi-tasking ability, he somehow managed not to miss a note or a beat of performance as he laced up a new pair of boots. Footwear issues aside, there was again that edgy vibe to the performance that was in evidence in Brisbane. One of the things I have always loved about INXS is that, despite their great success, they've never been one of those slick, mass-zeitgeist grabbing, can-do-no-wrong relatively bland (in my opinion) superbands like U2 or Coldplay. You almost feel as though they might spectacularly fall on their faces at any moment, and even though they never do, it's one of the things that make their live shows so exciting. I actually thought that this might literally happen in Newcastle, as JD (in the second pair of shoes) jumped up on a speaker and just for a second wobbled alarmingly backwards. My heat leapt into my mouth and I found myself, quite involuntarily, poised like a starting runner with my arms held out. Because, whenever 6"2 of Canadian lands on me from a great height, I am more than capable of catching them, twirling them merrily above my head and launching them back from whence they came with a cheery wave. Luckily, in the interests of me not being squished like a fly, JD regained his balance and disaster was averted.


The following day, my destination was the Blue Mountains and Katoomba. The western view from Katoomba particularly interested me, as for a good 25 years after the first penal colony was established on what is now Sydney, no one saw it. For an entire generation, as far as they were concerned, the country ended to the west with the mountain range. They had just about built the Harbour Bridge and started shooting Home and Away before a particularly determined group of explorers - Gregory Blaxland, William Charles Wentworth and William Lawson (thanks again to Bill Bryson - in fact, just assume that everything I know, about everything, I learned from him) - finally managed to scale the dense foliage and presumably uttered something along the lines of "well bugger me", when they caught sight of a bloody great huge country lying before them. Sadly however, I was denied the opportunity to recreate that moment after sitting in traffic for three hours to reach Katoomba, because the rain was so thick that I couldn't see a bloody thing.


So much of what I experienced in Australia was the exact opposite of what I expected - although I suppose that its very up-side-down-ness was to be expected. I had expected to shoot, in a mere few hours, from Cairns to Brisbane on a major motorway peppered consistently with motels and beach resorts, and I imagined Katoomba as a sleepy little mountain town. In fact, it has strip malls and is reached, at speed (traffic permitting) by a three lane highway. Despite this, it appear that there is little in the way of indoor activities on offer in Katoomba - grumpily staring out at the battering rain, I admitted the reality that I'd spent hours climbing a mountain in order to watch Neighbours in a motel room.


You know the way that siblings can infuriate you in a way that no one else ever quite achieves? That is precisely my experience with the Three Sisters, the famous rock formation that theoretically one can see from near Katoomba. In the morning, further grumpy from a shower with a large spider, just as I had travelled far enough back down in the direction of Sydney to not feasibly be able to turn back, the rain suddenly stopped and the sun broke through the clouds. Somewhere, on the wind, I could swear that I faintly heard "nyah, nyah, you caa-aan't see us!"

Aye, Aye, Pet

The Newcastle concert, I'd had no intention of going to. I will fully admit that it had vaguely crossed my mind that I just might find myself scrounging a ticket to one of the sold out shows while I was in Sydney, but I hadn't even heard of Newcastle, New South Wales until I was cheerfully heading down the winding highway heading for Sydney when I heard a local radio announcer announce excitedly that INXS would be playing there that night. At that moment, in need of fuel for both the car and myself, I spied a sign for Newcastle and figured I might as well turn off in search of petrol and tea. The main road leading into the city promptly evaporated and I wound, for over an hour, through sleepy residential streets, mindlessly turning every once in a while and idly wondering how much of the population of Newcastle was formed by tourists like myself who had turned off the highway and never found their way out again. Despite the many inarguably wonderful things about the Land Down Under, clearly labelling streets and intersections is sadly not one of them.

All of this is a pathetic attempt to excuse myself for being drawn, inexorably, towards the Newcastle Entertainment Centre and the INXS concert. Deep, deep down, I think I know that had I really wanted to get out of Newcastle that day, I could have managed it.


I began to regret my impromptu decision when, moments after purchasing my ticket, I ran into the dreaded Superfan Number 1. Superfan Number 1 is a startlingly tall, chain smoking American, in her mid 50s. A formidable female who sounds like Mariella Frostrup doing Scarlett O'Hara, she is retired and evidently well heeled enough to have travelled to 18 INXS concerts on the North American leg, 11 on this Australian leg and plans to hit Europe next month. Which on one hand I think is brilliant: if you have the time and money and little makes you happier than watching INXS in concert, then why not? - but unfortunately Superfan No 1 is one of those strange fans that indulge in a weird competitiveness and determination to have some kind of acknowledgement from the band and other fans that they are the biggest and bestest fan that there is. She claims a number of inside connections (which may well be real for all I know), just happens to manage to stay in the same hotel as the band wherever she is, and has an infamous and enduring obsession with J.D.'s feet. Meeting her for the first time back in Cairns, and knowing nothing of her reputation, I had agreed to give her a lift up to Kuranda as we had room in our car for one more and she was otherwise stuck. I liked her well enough that night, she seemed like a good laugh, but I came to regret my good Samaritan offer the following night on the way to Townsville when she picked a mystifying (no pun intended) fight with one of my travelling companions and - clearly forgetting that she had no way of getting to the venue without us - accused us of hanging around with her to use her for her contacts and 'access' to the band.


So I wasn't thrilled to see her. The feeling appeared to be mutual, as she looked me up and down slowly and growled that she didn't think I was coming to this show. Suddenly feeling inexplicably guilty, I muttered that it was a last minute decision, and Superfan proceeded to regale me with tales of the fun she had been having hanging out with the band at every concert since she'd seen me last. Gritting my teeth to avoid rising to the bait, I commented that I was glad her long trip (from the East Coast of the U.S.) had been worth it and futilely tried to compete with stories of kayaking with dolphins, snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef and spending time with old friends in Brisbane that I'd busied myself with… but she was off again.

"Yeah, I guess because I travelled the farthest it was kind of like I deserved partying with them." She grinned evilly.

"Umm…" I began - damnit, I'd risen - "I think that the U.K. is farther, actually." In all fairness, what the precise mileage is I have no idea, but having grown up with the notion that Australia is 'the other side of the world' I felt fairly confident in my assertion.

"Yeah, I don't think so." With a flick of ash she dismissed me, leaving me standing in the lobby slowly digesting the fact that I was on the opposite side of the world (or thereabouts) in a town I'd had no intention of visiting, arguing the circumference of the globe with a woman who has publicly announced her intention to steal the shoes of a Canadian man over 20 years her junior.


My night got worse when I realized that the entire venue was seated - which meant I would have to actually watch the whole thing on my own. I'd been planning on meeting up with Mini Superfan, a very sweet and very young girl (I don't mean to suggest that she's 6 or anything - probably early twenties) who'd never been out of her home state before embarking on this trip to catch every Oz date on the tour. She'd been part of our crew in Townsville and Brisbane, is pleasingly slightly bonkers, and I liked her very much. She and Superfan Number 1 had fallen out in Cairns over some confusion over travel arrangements, so it was with some dismay that I noted they had evidently made up since Brisbane, and were joined into one Superfan monster - which meant I wouldn't have a buddy that evening after all. So I took my seat in a side row of four - stuck in the corner next to three people who were clearly together and clearly not interested in making a friend. After sitting quietly and glumly for a few minutes, I spied Tony - he of the drumstick-ESP fame - in the wings and called over to him. I wanted to thank him for looking after my cell phone for a few days the previous week (long story - don't ask) and we chatted briefly. When I returned to my seat, the woman sitting next to me turned to me and abruptly announced that she knew Tony too.

"Oh?" I replied, glad that someone was taking pity on Norma No-Mates me and talking to me. "How so?"

"He used to do my security." Huh. Given that Tony is the go-to man for A list security in Australia, I took a second look at her, but still didn't recognize her. I tried another tack.

"Is this your first INXS concert?" She and her friend exchanged a look, and replied, in a voice heavy with inexplicable meaning, that no, this was not her first INXS concert. Nothing about her demeanour invited further conversation, so I returned to sitting quietly and glumly waiting for the show to start.


With equal abruptness, she suddenly spoke again.

"I suppose you just follow the band all the time?" She demanded.

"Err, no, not exact --" I began, but shooting me a look I can only imagine faced the first flappers to daringly show their ankles and very clearly said something to the effect of "you're no better than you ought to be", she very firmly turned her back on me.


Huh. Suddenly realizing the somewhat astounding conclusion she'd jumped to based on the (admittedly, now I think about it, damning) evidence of my being alone, talking to Tony and wearing a somewhat low cut top (every other one was dirty, honest!) - I was torn. In the same way that you are furious when a builder wolf whistles you and gutted if he doesn't, I was simultaneously insulted that she thought I had so little respect for myself that I would tour the world as the sex-toy of a rockstar 82% likely to be married or as good as, and 18% likely to wear dodgy Canadian-man jeans, and utterly thrilled that she seemed to think I could.

Namesakes and Drop-bears

It has always astounded me to consider the mind-boggling creativity, imagination and foresight that prompted the first explorers of the New World to say "hmmm, wonder what's at the other end of that Atlantic ocean. Think I'll just go and find out." Or those who - admittedly, not always by choice - went from the gentle, hospitable climate and wildlife that would hardly ever kill or maim you on purpose of Great Britain, and settled in the unwelcoming, barely fertile and almost incredibly dangerous territory of Australia - and yet, when they got there, could not think up a new name for the place. I always picture the Scots who staggered to shore after weeks of battling the raging, towering waves and furious winds of the Atlantic saying "does this not look just like where we came from? We didn't turn around by accident did we? No? Well we'll just call it Scotland then. New Scotland - no, tell you what, we'll make it sound a wee bit posher: Nova Scotia." At least that makes some sense - the lush fertile farmlands and craggy hills and coastline of Nova Scotia (especially around the staggeringly original New Glasgow - which is actually prettier than old Glasgow, even if the nightlife doesn't quite live up) are, aesthetically at least, not unlike Scotland. But who on earth rocked up in the world's largest and most spectacular natural harbour, caught sight of scorched scrublands, golden sands, palm trees, hazy blue mountains and the odd kangaroo and went "does this remind anyone else of South Wales?" Well I know who - it was one of the greatest explorers of all time and popularly although not entirely accurately decorated discover of Australia, Captain Cook - I just can't fathom why.


When it wasn't "New Wherever-they'd-just-left", the pioneers of the Commonwealth were very keen on naming things after themselves: thus I pulled up and rested my head for the night in Port Macquarie. Lochlan Macquarie was governor of Sydney (the third if memory of my visit to the Sydney museum serves) in the mid 19th century, and could be credited for turning the fortunes of the ailing and remote outpost of the British Empire into the flourishing, affluent country we wish it was still a case of nicking a couple of cucumber plants or a book on Tobago (actual crimes of two of the prisoners on the First Fleet, according to Bill Bryson's Down Under) to get to move to today. Macquarie's big accomplishment, in addition to popularising the name "Australia" for the new colony (thanks again, Bill B) was his fair and long sighted treatment of convicts: as soon as their sentences were up, he allowed them land to farm and the right to trade; thus creating productive citizens out of sullen and, I wouldn't imagine, particularly helpful prisoners. Sadly however, Macquarie's generosity did not extend to those Australians who had inhabited the country for the staggering amount of time of approximately 60,000 years. And that is just the length of time we can be relatively sure of: there is no guarantee that it isn't longer - either way, the Australian Aborigine people are by far the oldest continuing human culture. While the Romans, the Greeks, the Celts, the Turks all civilised and ruled the known world, then one by one were defeated and died out, the Aborigines quietly and continuously inhabited their remote and famously inhospitable outpost of the globe. So remote in fact, that for a time in Europe, it was considered mythical, and stories abounded of a wild and fantastical land - Terra Australis Incognita - populated with almost unimaginable creatures of dragon-like ferocity and bizarre means of moving… a bit like, you know, crocodiles and kangaroos. This is, however, no thanks to Lochlan Macquarie (amongst, to be fair, many others - I just noticed him as I was staying in his Port). He bestowed upon his men the right to shoot any group of Aborigines greater than six: no matter that there might just be seven of them hanging about together, going for a walk maybe - greater than six and British soldiers could legitimately and lawfully murder them. It is one of the starkest examples of the treatment of native peoples by the cuckoo-like Europeans who showed up in the land they had inhabited for - in this case - tens of thousands of years and told them to bugger off.


I have so much more to say about Aborigines - from their almost inhuman feat of showing up in Australia in the first place (the continent has been an island during the entire duration of human existence) to the horrors of the Lost Generation which continued, incredibly, into the 1970s - but all of that deserves an entry to itself.


It was fairly late in the evening when I arrived at Port Macquarie. I couldn't see much of it due to the darkness at that hour, which is probably fine as it isn't meant to be especially picturesque. Indeed, it was founded, very deliberately, to be harsh - Governor Macquarie set it up as a penal settlement to house those convicts who he didn't feel deserve the rehabilitation he offered to some, and those he deemed to find Sydney life too easy. And indeed, the locals I encountered in the local pub I ventured to for dinner certainly seemed of a fairly tough sort. I got chatting to the bloke behind the bar - a slightly nervous slip of a kid from Surrey, and in due course, a crowd of guys sitting up at the bar took pleasure in indulging in that great Australian pastime: frightening the Pommie tourists. I was too quick for them though, I already knew all about drop-bears, thank you very much… but when they casually stated that I'd been lucky to avoid the famously hungry crocs at one of the places I mentioned I'd gone for a walk on my own, I hesitated before laughing nervously. Then I realized that we were talking about a city centre park - the Botanical Gardens in Brisbane, to be exact, where a few nights previously, the INXS concert had been held. "And in other news, 10,000 INXS fans were devoured whole by the crocodiles who inhabit the Riverstage park. Members of the band attempted to placate them with the remains of a chocolate cake bearing the imprint of a Canadian arse, and Kirk Pengilly, 48, of New South Wales, heroically bopped a few on the head with an empty champagne bottle…" I rolled my eyes and informed them that not all Poms were that gullible, then walked back to the motel stamping hard all they way to keep away the blood thirsty land-turtles that the area is famous for.

Tall Poppies and Choppy Waves

You don't know what you've got 'till it's gone. With tragic irony, that evening Anna, Jack and I went out to dinner, and as I told them about my trip to Australia Zoo, we ended up discussing what a shame it was that, despite his great popularity abroad, Australians themselves did not seem to be big fans of Steve Irwin. We wondered if, with his mullet and his 'crikey's he was such an unabashed stereotype that they were a bit embarrassed that he was their unofficial ambassador in the US, or, if it was simply a case of that syndrome that certainly exists in other cultures but seems to be particularly prevalent in Australia, of bashing those who've made good. For whatever reason, we had all found that mentioning Steve Irwin to people generally prompted an eye rolling and an 'oh him - we're not all like that, you know.'


The following morning, just as I crossed the border into New South Wales, I was scanning through radio stations when I heard a newsreader somberly announce that a wildlife expert and conservationalist had been killed. The name was not yet going to be released, as close family had not been informed. Vaguely assuming it was likely to be someone I'd never heard of, I reached out to flick the dial in search of some music, and my hand literally froze when the reader specified that the tragedy had happened off the coast of Port Douglas. I knew exactly who had been filming off the coast of Port Douglas that day, as his colleague had told me as I stroked the back of a 10 day old alligator. I actually heard myself sigh "no!" out loud, and had to pull off at the next layby as a rush of tears momentarily blurred my vision. It is curious, that genuine sorrow that it is possible to feel for someone who had absolutely no idea that they touched your life. You feel as though you have no right to grieve - your feelings are of course nothing compared to those of their family and friends - and indeed I impatiently brushed away the tears and laughed at myself for being such an idiot.


The only other time I have actually cried at the passing of someone I had never met, was for another great Australian, one also sadly under-esteemed by his countrymen during his lifetime. It was 1997. I had finished my A levels the previous summer, and was working as a junior PR assistant in a very trendy PR firm in Soho. By the time I arrived at work, the salacious rumours and jokes about auto-erotic asphyxiation were already circulating - not having read a newspaper that morning, I had no idea who they were talking about, and don't know how to explain the momentary crippling stunnedness I felt when someone finally mentioned his name. Now, at 27, I would like to think that I would put a stop to the conversation, that I would humble everyone by reminding them that a father, brother, friend had been lost; but as a relatively shy 19 year old, I nodded and laughed hollowly along with everyone then refused to explain why, ten minutes later, I was sitting at my desk wracked with heaving sobs.


They say never to speak ill of the dead, and I suppose it is not unnatural to fully learn to appreciate someone once they are gone; but as I listened to the outpourings of tributes and grief for the remainder of my time in Australia, I couldn't help but think it sad that Steve, like Michael, was not around to witness the impact that they had clearly made on their own country. Impact that, for one reason or another, was rarely expressed during their lifetimes.


Back in the Melbourne Girls' hotel in Brisbane, in the wee hours of Saturday morning, someone had invited a few blokes who were hanging out on a nearby balcony to visit us. I don't think that any of us fancied them, it was just entertaining to see if they would actually leave their comfortable balcony and traipse around hotel corridors at four o'clock in the morning looking for us. Duly, they found us. However, when they asked what we'd been up to that evening and we told them we'd been at an INXS concert, one of them grimaced and muttered something to the effect of them being nothing without Michael. And you know what? That is an opinion I certainly don't agree with, but I do believe that people are entitled to it. I don't think that they can call themselves INXS fans - rather, they're Michael Hutchence fans, which is perfectly valid, and it is just a shame for them that they are missing out now. But when one of the Melbourne Girls challenged him: so, how many concerts did you see with Michael? How many albums do you have? You had tickets for that last tour, right? His response was 'uuuhhhh…' So he wasn't a Michael Hutchence fan at all, just some idiot who thought it cool to cannonize someone after his passing, when he had never supported him during his lifetime. How sad and horribly pointless. We chucked them out and left them to traipse hotel corridors at ten past four in the morning looking for their own room.


One last vent, then I am done with bashing Tall Poppy Syndrome and its hypocritical posthumous retraction (well come on, I had to find something I didn't like about Australia): a couple of days later, a Sydney newspaper snidely referred to the "INXS tribute show" happening that evening at Luna Park - so, presumably, AC/DC have been a tribute show for the past 30 odd years? Is every band with a line up that varies from the original - therefore just about every band that there is, the Stones, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, to name a couple - a tribute act, or only those with a replaced lead singer? Do tell, Sydney Morning Herald.


Right, I am done and off to Byron Bay for my disastrous surfing lesson. Let's just say that despite our common affection for saxophone players who wear funky shoes, Layne Beachley I am not. I will say, that when the surfboard is safe and still on the sand, I am brilliant. I can shoot from lying on my front to crouching to standing in a smooth and fetching manner, then balance almost lazily, wind in my hair and often mentally outrunning a Great White or two. I might, in fact, be the only surfer for whom waves actually ruin the experience. To be fair to myself, which I always like to be, my instructor did say that, due to an impending storm, the sea was particularly choppy and not surfer friendly, which is what I am going to blame for the fact that in two hours, I stood up for a grand total of about 7 seconds, and more than once managed to bash myself on the nose with the board. I was eminently happy when the lesson was cut short by an hour (and my nose was eminently grateful to be spared further punishment) when the heavens opened.


My only regret was that I didn't manage to spend as much time as I'd planned moseying about the shops at Byron, due to the unappetising reality of dashing from one to the other under lashings of rain. Instead I went back to the car, pointed it yet again south, with the intention of hitting Port Macquarie by nightfall.

Creatures in Captivity

The following morning I struggled awake resisting the urge to screech to the heavens "put me out of my misery! Take me now!" (all that shouting would have hurt my poor head), struggled into some clothes and very large, very dark sunglasses, and headed off to meet the Melbourne girls for breakfast. They had just a couple of hours before they were due to return, appropriately enough given their moniker, to Melbourne.


The previous morning, before I'd met everyone at the Botanical Gardens, I'd had a bit of a wander around Anna's neighbourhood, so I thought I had my bearings and could easily enough walk to the hotel (we'd finished the previous night at their hotel with a bottle of vodka - 'nuff said). Anna lives on the north side of the river that snakes up through Brisbane, turns a U bend under the famous Storey Bridge and then heads back out towards the sea. The hotel, I was fairly sure, was just on the south side of the U bend, right next to the bridge, so - I carefully deduced - I could walk along the sea walk (a floating pathway that rather thrillingly bobs up and down when boats pass) and under the bridge and hey presto I'd be there. Panicked by texts that said "we're hungry" and "our plane takes off in two hours!", when I got to the other side of the bridge and saw no sign of the hotel, I jumped into a taxi and asked him to take me to the hotel.

"But --" he began.

But I insisted and he shrugged. He drove up the road, maybe 10 or 15 metres to a spot where he could pull a U turn, and, as we drove back down, on the exact same spot from which I had just stepped into the taxi, stood the Melbourne girls waiting for me. I know my hangover was bad, but I really hope I hadn't been standing right next to them when I hailed the taxi. Which charged me $5, by the way.


And so to breakfast, where we went over the previous night in detail, confirmed that yes indeed, Jon is a bit lovely; and I believe that I might have promised - bollocks to returning to London - that I would come to the Melbourne concerts. They are happening tonight, as I write, from London. Sigh. The girls very kindly gave me a Tim pic meaning that I now only have to wrestle Garry to the ground and empty his pockets before I have a full set (catching pics during a show is not going to happen for me - as I've said before I couldn't catch a guitar if it was thrown at me.) Then the Melbourne girls were off, and I was left to my own devices in Brisbane. It is odd the things that occur to you to do, alone and hungover in a strange city. Anna and Jack, I should point out, weren't just randomly ignoring me - they were on a walk to commemorate a local aboriginal man (which I will write more about when I have finished the trip itself it's a fascinating story) - they'd invited me to join them on the 30k walk and I had politely and vehemently declined. I wandered into the casino, out of random curiosity, and was startled to find it buzzing at 12pm on a Saturday; indeed it seemed more like 12am on a Saturday. With the complete lack of natural light it might well have been pitch dark outside and the people hunched, captivated, over pokies (which just sounds a bit rude if you ask me, but then I am not Australian) and around card tables had a night time air to them. The only other time in my life I have been in a casino (it's just not something that interests me at all) was the Mandalay Bay Casino in Vegas - for an INXS concert. If I develop a gambling problem one day, I will know who to blame. It is ironic actually, that INXS keep leading me towards ringing, flashing slot machines, because establishments such as the very one I was in, are popularly blamed for killing off the "pub rock" scene of the seventies and early eighties which was their original stomping ground. It's said that pub rock is slowly returning in Australia - and, when I was in Sydney, I did walk down a street in which all three pubs had bands playing (they were covers bands and mostly a bit crap, but I suppose they have to start somewhere) - and I do hope so. There is a creepy soullessness, not to mention an isolation - a slot machine is hardly a group effort, after all - to these places, that strikes me as curiously un-Australian.


I hadn't played any of the machines in Vegas, I kept meaning to as I dashed past as it felt like I should, being in Vegas and all, but had never gotten around to it, so I decided to rectify that now. I chucked in a dollar, pulled the lever and waited, wondering what was going to happen. Pictures flashed up and rattling sound announced the arrival of ten dollar coins. Rather pleased with this gambling lark, I wandered back out into the sunshine and bought a smoothie and a Brisbane fridge magnet with my winnings. The rest of the day brought a lovely wander around the shopping area (surprisingly posh shops - I hadn't expected to be able to shop for Ralph Lauren in Brisbane, but had my bank balance been amenable, I would have!) and a return the Botanical Gardens to see them in daylight, and sunshine. Lovely.


The following day, after watching the Brisbane River of Fire (a spectacular fireworks display) from Anna and Jack's balcony, and a gorgeous dinner (cooked very impressively by the lovely Jack), I set off to visit Australia Zoo. Ever since I spent a summer marooned in Massachusetts after being deported from Canada (the first time) and happily whiled away the evenings watching Crocodile Hunter with my then 11 year old cousin, I have been a huge Steve Irwin fan and have wanted to visit his zoo. I think that reptiles, in particular crocodiles, are brilliant: they are just so mysterious, and ancient and weird and… and… cool. Don't get me wrong, if an iguana was to walk into this room right now I would scream and run away (and also wonder where it had come from) but, from a distance, I like them very much. Steve Irwin, I also like very much: anyone with that evident passion, drive and utterly uncool enthusiastic zest for life is okay in my book. So, great guy, great creatures outweighed the slightly soul destroying realization that, having come this far, I had to drive north back up the Bruce Highway - from where I'd just come. I dealt with it, and duly arrived at Australia Zoo a couple of hours later.


I absolutely loved it. Some people had warned me that it was a bit over commercial and crass, but, while there certainly were plenty of pictures of the man himself and 'crikey' logos around, I didn't find that it bothered me at all. I loved that it had a sense of an animal sanctuary rather than a zoo - the enclosures were well camouflaged and very often the keepers were right in them, caring for and interacting with the creatures, thus avoiding that isolated captivity that is so uncomfortable to witness in other zoos. From my admittedly entirely ignorant observation, the animals seemed to have plenty of room - in stark contrast to that horrible tiger cage barely bigger than the room from which I type that makes me feel ill at London Zoo. I loved as well the continuous drumming of education - every where you turned, there were workshops and talks with little kids clustered around, goggle eyed, as a staff member lectured, explained and demonstrated. You literally could not possibly walk away without learning something: did you know, as a random example, that the only pure bred dingos left exist only in captivity? I headed for the exit, and on the way I passed a staff member holding a baby alligator along his forearm. It was, he informed me, 10 days old. Both his mum and dad were together at Australia Zoo, and this little chap would grow to around 12 or 14 feet long. As I stroked his back (the alligator, not the staff member) a couple of other visitors approached and asked where Steve was. The reply was that he was up at Port Douglas doing some filming. Apparently he's only at Australia Zoo doing the crocodile show on public holidays. Driving away a few moments later, I made a mental note that if I could possibly schedule my next Brisbane trip over a public holiday, I would do so in order to catch the man in action.