Wollongong

I am on my travels! I have a back pack (borrowed) and everything. First stop on my trip is Wollongong, which everyone has told me is horrible. I rather like it. I've been here three days and have probably exhausted all it has to offer but as a city goes it's quite pleasant. A bit 'twinned with Felixstowe' but nice enough. I am staying in a youth hostel. Pushing the definition of youth to it's outer limits but enabling me to see a lot of the country on a budget (I slightly over shot on the Gold Coast trip). I've had a room to myself for most of the stay but last night I was joined by an 18 year old called...something. I instantly forgot her name. 

She is here because she is going to University in Wollongong and didn't get in to student accommodation. So she is living in a youth hostel. She's is from a place called 'Young' which I have never heard of and it has a population of 800 people. She told me last night that she was unsettled by Wollongong as it was so big and there were 'so many cars and people'. You can walk the length of Wollongong in about 20 minutes and there are about four cars. 

Bless her. You had to feel for her. She asked me how you make friends at University. Whilst giving her the advice of 'Talk to everyone and then spend the next four years avoiding all the 'friends' you made in the first two weeks' I realised that she was two when I went to university. Me giving her advice on what to do would be like some hip cat from the 70s telling me to make friends at University by 'going on a peace march' or 'go to a sit in'. I have no idea how university works today. For all I know they sit around on facebook, cyber bullying each other before rushing off to a flash mob. I am no more equipped to give advise on University than I am on space travel. 

However since arriving in Australia I have been required to make new friends. Something which I have been moderately successful in and so I gave her the following advice; "Say yes to everything." You may end up doing some really strange things (which I have) but you might meet people along the way who you really like (which I have). 

Whilst in Wollongong I have tried in vain to walk the ring track around Mount Keira. On Saturday I went to find the path and got astonishingly lost. Australian's don't really go in for signage. Then I saw some people who were in walking gear getting out of their car and parking up. So I followed them. They were not walking the ring road. They were climbing the mountain. And on a pretty off piste route too. They had hiking boots and poles and stuff. I had trainers and my handbag. I followed them all the way to the top. I had to. I had no idea of the way down. 

Today I printed off a better map and set off. I walked about 40 feet in to the trail and there was a huge fence. No explanation, no alternative route, so I walked back. Although I have not seen the fabulous views from the viewing platforms that are dotted around the ring track I have seen a lot of the housing estate which lies beneath Mount Keira. I have admired the broken glass scattered in the subway you have to walk through to get there and I have delighted in the lack of pavements on the suburban roads. The Mountain is there but there is no way to it. 

Or no roads that I can find. Speaking from past experience there will be a huge signposted extravaganza about 3 foot away from where I was. The road will be lined with cable cars and helpful guides but I will be just out of reach. Then when I talk to people they will crease their brow in an all too familiar look of confusion and say 'You couldn't find the mountain? That Mountain there?" 

I'll shake my head 

Then they'll continue to question me 'You took the fairy dust lane road right?"

Shake of head

"Oh so you went the Princes Highway?"

No

"Oh. Well that is strange. We're there all the time aren't we?"
Well good for you. Perhaps you should draw the maps. 
I did however find the beach. 

Bye Bye Bondi

Well six weeks just flew by. I no longer live in Bondi, sob sob. The unit I lived in is now sold and I am on my travels. 
When I moved in I saw it as somewhere to be for six weeks whilst I got myself sorted in Sydney. I didn't expect to love it as much as I did and also make two really good friends out of my flatmates. I hadn't lived in a shared house for ages but living with those two made me realise how much fun it can be. I will have very happy memories of merrily slagging off Big Brother whilst Mike had a fire on the BBQ. 
Bondi itself is fantastic and I would highly recommend anyone to live there. This post is going to be mainly photos I'm afraid. 

When I first came back to Sydney I thought maybe I would try and live on the North Shore which is where I lived before. I am so glad I went to Bondi, an area I didn't really know. A lot about Sydney has changed ($5 for a coffee. $5.) and I am glad I started afresh rather than try and pick up where I left off. I loved being near the beach and loved the whole lifestyle of just wandering around and writing. I landed on my feet and was really lucky. 

I also loved the number of little cafes dotted around Bondi, who didn't mind if you sat there all day writing. Or if they did mind, didn't say anything. 

I will miss Bondi hugely but now I am off on my travels for a month......

Gold Coast

I went for a three day jolly on the Gold Coast. I went to Surfers Paradise which is, according to everyone I spoke to, a bit like Magaluf. I really liked it. The Gold Coast's slogan is 'Beautiful One Day, Perfect the Next' and I agreed. A bit too many people walking around in not enough clothing but you can learn to live with these things. 
Sadly the thing I was most excited about was sleeping in a double bed. An actual bed. For the last 7 weeks I've been on an airbed. A very comfortable double airbed but I was acutely aware that every time I turned over it sounded like I was having a very loud and celebratory bowel explosion. Or a light wrestle with an elephant. I fully intended to make the most of having a proper bed to myself and planned to sleep at least eleven hours a day. Inevitably this meant I was up and ready to go by 7am every morning. 
I can't say I did anything of cultural significance whilst I was there. I went to the beach a lot. Saw dead jellyfish, didn't go in the sea in case their living relatives were still there. I did however miss a super storm in Sydney. The worst storm to hit in ooooh a long time apparently. I sat in 28 degree heat with my balcony doors wide open whilst I watched the news report on flooded stations, people trapped in cars and the terrible damage the storm had caused. Then a picture of my friends house came on the television. The house that I had been staying in the previous day. 
A tree had landed on her neighbours car. She sent me this picture. 

No one was hurt, don't worry. My helpful comment was 'who the hell do you call to deal with that?' We concluded you would have to call your insurance company. 
In the meantime I was enjoying this:

I also survived the plane journey there and back. I'm not going to say I enjoyed it but I survived without drugs. On the second flight I was distracted by a rather large lady who had to share my seat, she had her own but there was 'spillage'. 
On arrival back in Sydney I had expected it to look like a post apocalyptic nightmare. It didn't. Everything had been cleared away and everything looked exactly the same. Apart from the big hole in the ground outside my friends house. 
Oh and I also saw the world's saddest smoke alarm. 

The Best Money I Ever Spent

"What's the best money you've ever spent?" People never say to me. 

"Why it's the UK pound",  I don't reply."Gold, shiny and the envy of the world. Plus I contribute to the rebounding British economy." 

Then we don't laugh, as this whole conversation is fictional. 

However I have made some spectacular purchases of late and so I am going to tell you about them, like it or not. 

Obviously I am forced to say my house. But in my case I do genuinely love my house. Small but perfectly formed and decorated as though a slightly twee old lady has gone nuts in a junk shop. I love it. I also love that I've rented it out and it's helping me fund my adventures. 

On a slightly less grand scale a couple of years ago I impulse bought a pac-a -mac from Primark. It cost me ten pounds and I estimate I have worn it six hundred thousand times. As I have only been alive 12661 days (thanks google) I have spent a lot of time taking this coat on and off. Now not only does this raincoat pack away nice and small, allowing me to slip it to my bag and take it with me everywhere, it is also an attractive black so goes with everything. Oh and it's covered in pictures of ducks and has a hood so enormous it covers my entire face, forcing me to tighten the woggles either side of the hood so it frames my face like this. 

It's pretty fetching. However it sits besides me as I write now and I have worn it several times on this trip as Sydney rain is insane. I've only been caught out once when I was stranded a good 15 minute walk away from home and the skies started to empty. My trusty cagoule was at home and so I popped to the dollar shop and purchased a child's rain poncho. A light blue one, designed to be worn on log flumes. I draped myself in the flowing plastic and marched home. I recognised the looks of respect I got. I'd seen them many times before when wearing my cagoule. 

On a side note until a couple of years ago I would have called my duck coat a 'cagoule' pronounced 'Kaggle'. However when I referred to it as that I was asked to repeat myself several times before they would ask 'Do you mean KA goooooooooole?" I didn't mean that, I meant 'kaggle' but it made me self-concious and I began to think I might be saying it wrong. Having had many years of merriment laughing at someone who referred to 'Cack he' rather than 'Khaki' I started calling it a rain coat instead. I stick by 'kaggle' though. 

My other amazing purchase has been a sleeping bag. Not just any sleeping bag, a fleece sleeping bag. It was $10 from K-mart and I believe they are still available. When I packed to come to Australia I didn't bring many clothes (still managed to have 30kg of luggage though so I assume they were lead lined). I'd just chucked a few things in, lobbed a couple of cardigans on top and thought 'Oh well it's 18 degrees at the moment I'll be fine until it warms up." To be fair 18 degrees is warm, I've been on SUMMER holidays where 18 degrees was the high and I swam, played on the beach and went a lovely blue colour. 

Reader I was freezing. Not a bit chilly, not a touch on the cold side, I was baltic. Rigid with cold. Particularly at night. Of course I had to lie. I couldn't say that I'd packed for winter and arrived with a couple of pairs of flip flops and light cardigan. I had bought my Ugg boots but they were thrown in to a bin on the street after I spent a while in a cafe going 'what is that horrific smell? Has someone trodden in dog shit?" then traced the smell back to my Ugg boots which had been soaked (see above for rain detail) and dried a dozen times. But with my fleece sleeping bag I was toasty and warm. I even woke up a couple of times in the night boiling to death, which is the dream. It's too hot to use it now but it's coming back to the UK with me. 

So not terribly lavish purchases. Most of my money is going on feeding a terrible Freddo the Frog addiction. These chocolately treats now come in popping candy flavour and I refuse to tell you how many I am getting through, let's just say they are 4 for $2 in Coles and I am in there most days. What I need to do is eat a pine lime flavour one. A treat so unutterably foul it once nearly caused involuntary public vomiting. I can only assume that someone was once using some industrial strength toilet cleaner and thought that they should try and capture the smell and taste in a tiny chocolate bar. Either that or I accidentally ate a car air freshener. That was the worse money I ever spent. That or any money I have ever given to Greater Anglia Train Company. 

Book club

I went to a book group the other day. We read 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. I was the only person in the group (and from the reaction I got, possibly the world) who hadn't read it before. Having read it I am now certain that racism is a bad thing. 

I found that a funny joke. 

The rest of the book group didn't. I'm not sure if I can go back again. 

What I enjoy and find amusing about book groups and to an extent English lessons at school is the level of detail you have to go in to. The majority of the time you just read a book and think either 'I liked that' or 'I didn't like that'. Throw a book group or an English teacher in there and it turns in to a full on exploration in to the author's psyche. It's the literary equivalent of a 14 year old girl explaining a crush to her best friend. 

"Then he touched my hand; which I think means he wants to marry me." "Then he asked if I wanted a water. What do you think that means?" 

In most cases the answer to these questions is "no" and "nothing". 

I know that books have sub text. I know that detail makes the book. I also know that occasionally it just is what it is. 

As you sit there picking a book to pieces someone will inevitably ask 'Do you think that the setting is important to the book." And everyone will turn to the text and go 'Oh yes, definitely - the moors reflect his character' or 'the sterile environment shows that he is separated from the real world' and you nod along but there's a bit of you that thinks 'Yeah, maybe or maybe that's just where it's set.'

 I had two years with an English teacher reading Jane Eyre (a book I now loathe by the way) and banging on about the 'symmetry of nature'. You couldn't read a paragraph without her reflecting on how the constant driving rain reflected Jane's despair or Mr Rochester's sorrow. We all dutifully wrote this down and regurgitated it in our exams but there was always a bit of me that thought 'maybe it's always raining because it's Yorkshire. It rains a lot there.' 

I suppose the questions are meant to make you think more deeply about the text. To make you examine the motives of the characters and discover meaning. I certainly found the book club enjoyable and I do quite like the fact that there are no wrong answers. If you can make an argument for it then no one can prove you wrong. Unless the author is sat there then you can claim what you want. I would just love it if the author was sat there and occasionally could chip in and say 'Where did you get that from?'

Oh and as a blatant plug, my book is out now. Feel free to discuss it in book groups. I can tell you now it's set in London as I know the city and Tess gets the bus everywhere as she doesn't have a car, not because it symbolises her being carried through life on pre-determined routes. Although now I think about it that's rather good. Scrap my previous explanation, that's exactly why she gets the bus everywhere. 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Joy-Depression-Laura-Sleep-ebook/dp/B00NHB65W6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411379935&sr=8-1&keywords=the+joy+of+depression 

Home, home on the ?

This adventure has meant that there has had to be many changes in my life. This is no bad thing and I think I have taken most of them in my stride. However there was one thing that was slightly bothering me: living with other people. 

I have lived on my own for seven years and I love it. Love everything about it. It's great. Everyone should do it. Ignore the fact there's not enough housing stock, grab a tent and live in a ditch - you'll love it. Now obviously I have lived with people before. It is unusual for a toddler to live independently. After I left home I lived in various flatshares and enjoyed them before buying my own place when I was twenty seven.

I rented my flat out in July and for six weeks I stayed with my parents, friends and siblings. It was very pleasant. A perfect reintroduction in to living with people again. But I knew that when I got to Sydney I was going to have to live with strangers and that would mean something else I've not done in a while...flat hunting. 

Most of the flathunting I've done has been for a flat, this time I was going to have to scope out flatmates as well. Luckily I was staying with very nice friends so I didn't have to take the first thing I saw, which was just as well. There's a lot of freaks out there. 

Some of the places I saw were just badly described in the ads. "Near public transport!" translation: as the crow flies it's half a mile to a bus stop. If you don't fly like a crow then it's a 40 minute jog. I'd placed an ad on a flatsharing website saying what I was looking for (a short term let of around 2 months). One woman called me. She sounded very excited. She felt she had just what I was looking for. I met her at 9 on a Sunday morning, heavy with jet lag. She made me a cup of tea and then told me that she was really looking for someone who could stay long term. 'Oh well', I thought 'I got a cup of tea out of it.' Then she suggested that I may like to stay with her parents, so drove me there. Her parents were well in to their 90s and were using their house as a furniture warehouse. I said I'd think about it and she gave me a lift in to the city. She was actually very sweet and I'm sure would have been nice to live with long term. Short term - well I wasn't going to live with her parents. 

The strangest one was in Paddington. A very nice area close to the city. The woman sounded normal on the phone. Sadly in person she was insane. She showed me the 'furnished' room (a heavily stained matresses in a damp room). She explained that she worked from home so she would prefer it if I never cooked (smells). She then asked me how often I showered (enough) and how long it took me to dry my hair. This information was so she could fairly divide the electricity bill. Again I smiled and said I'd let her know. 

Just as I was losing the will to live a flatshare appeared in Bondi. They wanted someone to take a room for five weeks. Could I see it that night? You bet your arse I could. Great location, huge flat, nice flatmates (I checked that they had no hairdrying rules - they don't). Done! I moved in last Saturday. 

After October - I think I may head off round the south coast for a bit. Who knows? But for now I am content with this. 

I had an afternoon swim in the outdoor pool yesterday. 

Before you get too envious - I had to get out as I went purple with cold. But in a couple of weeks I'll be back there. 

Time Travelling

I have arrived. The eagle has landed etc etc other metaphors for arriving in a country without the plane bursting in to flames (it happens). The flight was actually OK. I was on one of those Qantas airbuses and it was enormous. I was also out of my skull on a cocktail of prescription (not necessarily my prescriptions) drugs which made the whole thing a lot more palatable. I was even relaxed enough to take a quick nap on the floor of Dubai airport. Never let it be said I don’t travel in style.

I had somehow managed to get in an early boarding row so was one of the first on the enormous plane. As it filled up the seats next to me remained empty and so I’d managed to convince myself that I was going to have a whole row of seats to myself. I was of course being ridiculous. This never happens. You are always rammed in and convince yourself that the flight is full then on a wander to the toilet you see about 20 rows of seats that have one person stretched out along all three seats. Your reaction to seeing this varies depending on whereabouts in the flight you are. Early on you tend to think “Oh I wonder how they managed that”. Later on “I’m going to wake them up and ask them how they did that and then tell them that it would be nice if they shared their good fortune around and we all took turns at sleeping horizontally”. 14 hours in and you are standing over them weeping.

The empty seats next to me were filled about 2 seconds before the doors closed. They were filled by a strange couple who were having a domestic. They were terrifying. I stood up to let her in and the first/only thing she said was ‘is this all your stuff?’. This was in reference to the full up over head locker. I replied that my bag was under the seat in front. She ignored me and got in her seat, her scary husband sat next to her and we all sat in silence. I listened to the people behind me bond, they were practically arranging to come to each other weddings. I even began to envy the people sat next to the child going mental. Then scary man broke the silence. By calling his wife an f***ing b***h. Her response to this was to hand him an inflight magazine and say ‘Oh look we went there’. I shut my eyes and listened to him detail the plans for their divorce, whilst she smiled and laughed as if she was at a dinner party. Luckily at that point my fake sleep turned into real sleep and I was spared their weirdness. When I woke up they had their arms round each other and were watching the Big Bang Theory. They then started whispering sweet nothings to each other. I pretended to sleep again.

I could only assume they were one of those ghastly couples who thrive on tension and make up sex. You’ll be as thrilled as I was to hear they were in the same seats all the way to Sydney.

I had planned to try and sleep at the correct times so that I would arrive early morning in Sydney and then power through till the evening. Of course my plans failed and I awoke at about 11pm Thursday night all ready for a 5-30am landing. I prepared myself for jetlag/death.  I’ve only ever had jetlag badly twice. Once when I actually thought I was going to die and the other slightly more amusing version where I couldn’t stay awake. I would be mid sentence and then wake up three hours later glued to the carpet by my own drool. This continued for a week. The only thing that made it more amusing was that the two people I was living with got exactly the same thing. At any given moment there was the chance that one of us would just collapse in a heap and pass out for a couple of days.

This time I got a strange kind of jet lag. The type where I decided that I was a higher evolved human. I managed to not only change time zones but also evolutionary stages. I got to a point where I didn’t need sleep or food. Inevitably this had to come to an end and it did in spectacular style on Sunday evening. I assumed I was out of the danger zone of jetlag and was enjoying my new evolutionary life as a thetan and so decided that I would try out a church in the city for it’s Sunday evening service. I think it was nice. I think I spoke to people. I got hit by the truck of tiredness about 10 seconds in to the service. I had to keep pretending to pray so I could shut my eyes. Then I had to keep jerking myself awake so I didn’t go in to a coma and fall off my chair. I got an attack of the involuntary head dips. Where you think you’re fine and then suddenly your head jerks back up and you realise it’s slowly been sinking towards your knees. I think I was drooling. I realised that I wasn’t a thetan and I was also very, very cold. I got home somehow and put on all the clothes I own, borrowed a onesie and went to bed, shivering. Only to wake up at 3am boiling. Oh jet lag you cruel mistress.