Right now I’m on the couch in front of the fire, waiting for my undies to dry.  Shower-time came, you see, at which point I discovered I am out of clean knickers, so I washed some in the shower (ah! how it reminds me of the days at Honeycroft after Cartridge busted the washing machine by washing her Northern hot brick in it…) and they are now draped decoratively over Wilbur the stoneware wombat, who lives on top of the fireplace.  The crotch is covering his face, and his ears are sticking out through the leg-holes – kind of looks like he just wandered into them by accident.  Most undignified…

I’m a touch frustrated at being committed to two weeks in the cafe, because I’m really hankering to see people.  I feel like I haven’t yet had the chance to pick up properly back here because I desperately want to reconnect with my friends – but then, I need the money, so it works both ways I suppose… And fuck it, it’s damn good barista training as well – gonna be a baptism by fire though, Jesus Christ!  Good luck customers, I say, make sure you bring a good book and plenty of water.

Kingdom of Fear is an awesome book so far.  Sort of a diatribe on the failings of the American nation, written by a particularly opinionated American, not long after September 11.  It’s anecdotes from Thompson’s earlier life, mixed in with some from his recent life, and it makes for interesting reading.  He goes of on these angry rants all the time, and then apologizes and returns to the point – but only briefly, before another rant comes along.  Good stuff, I recommend.  Oh, and it’s studded with brilliant photos from the early years, full of Timothy Leary and Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and characters like that.  What a life this man led!

Next day…

Alright, it’s the next day and I’m annoyed!  I’m meant to be taking over from Mum’s business partner Mike next week, which basically involves making the coffee and running the floor and the cash register.  It’s a complicated job, and the only way I’m going to learn is by doing it.  It’s going to be stressful at times, but I pride myself on being good under pressure, and I figure the first day will be hell, and then there’s nowhere to go but up.  Mum’s on my back about going in to spend time learning with Mike, so I went in (again) this morning to do what he does, while he’s there, during the busy morning period.  Unfortunately the busy morning period never eventuated, but I just kept making coffees and getting people to taste them, and I seem to be doing OK.  But every time I got even the slightest bit behind, or fucked up a drink, or just generally wasn’t perfect, Mike just took over.  He literally ELBOWED me out of the way on a few occasions.  And this isn’t even when it’s busy!  There’s three customers waiting for coffee, and I’m doing the first two, and he just starts on the third – Christ! There’s only one machine, and he cannot bring himself to fucking well let me take control of it, even for a few hours.  I just want him to fuck off to Europe and let me do my thing.  No one elbows me out of the fucking way, fucking fucker.  So I left.  I thought, ‘fuck you you fucker, fucking fuck!’ and I made an excuse to Mum about meeting Kate in town at midday and pissed off.  So that’s my morning.

On a more positive note, last night was the first class in my short course at NIDA.  God that school it beautiful – the facilities are extraordinary.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly glad I went to London, no regrets at all, but sigh! Nonetheless, I think London will have a greater punch when the stakes are high.  The course is going to be great I think, the teacher seems very well connected and enthusiastic and experienced, and there are only five of us in the class, so plenty of camera time.  I’m relieved – it should be $500 well spent, and I may well learn A LOT and get some scenes for a showreel.  Thumbs up all round – pat on the back to me.

It’s raining with a vengeance at the moment, which I quite enjoy really.  None of this ‘I won’t rain, as such, I’ll just be wet. The damp won’t come from anywhere in particular, it’ll just be.‘  I like my rain to be proud of its wetness.  Come out and say “I am water, and I have chosen to fall from the sky!”  And that’s what this rain is doing.  Thumbs up all round – pat on the back to the rain.

Wow, I feel better.  I sat down in a state of angry resentment, and here I am, all pleased about the weather!  Publiiiiiiiiiiiish!

Right, so, been a while.  Not great at the whole ‘blogging on a daily basis’ caper, but hey, I’m new to the game of airing my deepest darkest thoughts and secrets on a public forum, so cut me some slack.  Meanwhile, I adore the fact that I’m asking forgiveness in the assumption that anyone even noticed, let alone cared, whether or not anything new was appearing on my page…ha!

So I’m home, back in the land of Oz, bathing in a sea of Milo, Granitas, Bonds trackies, Mamee Noodles (oddly enough), triple j, Sakata, old friends, and sunshine!  It’s fucking cold outside but the sun is shining, and with conviction!  There’s no denying it’s great to be back – I miss the London gang something shocking but I belong here.  This place smells different, the air feels different – better, basically. 

So tomorrow I head down to Albion Park to pick up the new ve-hicle – and a huge welcome will she recieve upon her arrival in her knew home! Not only does she already have a B-E-A-utiful studded crown keyring to be presented as a welcome gift, but the whole village will possibly turn out to smash a bottle of champagne across her bow.  What a spectacle!  As a tribute to my uncle, and to the memory of the Spirit, whose glorious lines and maroonness shall live forever in our hearts and minds, Queeno Baleno von Blandenburg shall be known simply as ‘the Sovereign’.  Possibly ‘the Sov’ for short.  As a further gift I am looking seriously at some beige sheepskin seat covers – or failing that possibly official Sydney Swans ones???

Books – just finished Slaughterhouse 5 by Vonnegut.  I’d recommend it, a story told all out of order but in a pleasant and non-confusing way.  I love the idea that we have control over time as if it were a movie that we can fast-forward and rewind at will.  Running out of time scares the hell out of me, and in a stupidly counterproductive way the fear makes me want to stop and examine every single moment, so as not to let it disappear without me noticing.  It makes me never want to do anything!  Maybe that’s a good sign – maybe it shows that I’m enjoying life enough to want to hold on to every moment as it goes by.  If that’s the case then bring on the Tralfamadorian concept of time!  That way, I can waste time doing things with gay abandon, and just come back and relive the bits I want to whenever I feel like it!  Good plan!

Next I’m going to attack Kingdom of Fear, Hunter S. Thompson’s autobiography – he’s awesome.  I reckon he’d be up there amongst the most irritating people ever born, especially if you were unfortunate enough to be a friend of his.  But then, it seems his friends were all pains in the arse too – birds of a feather I guess.  What an incredible life though, if only for the benefit of us lot reading about him X number of years down the track…  I think I’d prefer to be interested in my life while living it and be eternally boring to the future of the human race rather than the other way around – although saying that, I plan to be interesting to myself and to the people of the future so ner!

Having a bit of trouble shaking the travel bug – I think it’s because I’m at home.  And I don’t just mean Australia but home home.  Even though I can do anything I want here – no real responsibilities or rules – there is something claustrophobic about living in your Mum’s house.  The Sov will make it easier, and I plan to piss off ASAP and rejoin my life, assuming I still have one…  But never mind, life will trundle forward and something will come of it provided I keep attempting to change it! 

Well then, off to bed, is it?  Night night all!

So, that’s my rant.  The justice system has so many cracks.  I guess it comes with being human – there is no such thing as an impartial jury.  Everyone is influenced by their emotions and those of the people around them.  In a country town in the US, where children have been murdered, a goth teenager has no hope of a fair trial, no hope at all.

It’s over now, promise.

So, two weeks and three days left until I jet off to another new life!  I’m stupidly excited, and luckily moments of fear and doubt are few and far between – and when they come they are easily dispelled by the techno music coming from next door, or the dogshit minefield on the footpath outside, or the sewage stench coming out of the kitchen sink, or the irritating northern accents on the telly, or the lack of rice crackers, or the pubes on the toilet seat.  Any one of these elements, amongst many others, easily prevents any great deal of regret from surfacing.  I will, however, miss the people I’ve found over here – there’s no escaping that.  And strangely enough, going home is scary.  I’m starting life all over again, in what will in effect be a strange place.  It’s not as if I can return to an old life, I really do have to start again, but I’m so excited it’s crazy! 

I’m also irrationally excited about going on an A380.  My dad had a go in the Qantas simulator and he said it basically flew itself, and was impossible to stall.  HOW COOL IS THAT!  That means that any old drunk fool could get me to Sydney, and provided a wing doesn’t fall off it’s pretty much like Light Rail!  Not to mention that everything inside will be all state of the art.  I am kind of imagining that I’ll have my own room with couches and champagne, which is obviously a fraction unrealistic even for an A380, but this is a plane that’s so big that needs winglets just to keep the wings short enough to fit into an airport.  The wingspan needed to get it off the ground without winglets would be too big to fit in a hangar, or to park at a normal terminal gate.  That is cool! 

So, now that I have alienated any of my readers who aren’t interested in forensics or aviation, I’m thinking I might toddle off to beddy-byes.  I’m so hungry all the time at the moment I am thinking I’ve got some kind of syndrome.  You know that one where they have to padlock the fridge and cupboards closed to keep the kids out?  Where they have violent tantrums if they don’t get their food and are enormous by the time they’re six?  I think I have that.  So maybe I’ll go get a snack before I go to sleep, just for good measure.

Night night loves!

Fuck dating in general – maybe I should just marry Neil…

I’m still having a crisis of indecision by the way, but the worst is almost over I think – I think the decision is just about made.  I quite simply do not want to be here anymore.

So I’m in London, holed up in my shitty little room where my light fitting used to drip water onto my bed and I can hear the man next door hoiking into his garden.  East London has got to be one of the most revolting places on earth, really.  At least warzones have an excuse for being crap places to live – east London is just crap because it can’t be arsed to be nice.  Add to this the facts that my life is going nowhere, I’m always poor, and I can’t seem to find a guy who’s willing to not be a prick for more than a couple of months at a time and you have a recipe for self-harm.

At three o’clock this morning I found myself in the city being chased by a cockney man in a truck for stealing 2 pints of milk from the doorway of an office building, arm in arm with a cityboy called NEIL (who works as an insurance broker, insuring other insurance companies) who I had met and snogged 45 minutes earlier.  We had to return the milk in the end.  What the fuck am I doing with my life?  It’s shameful! I don’t even like it here but for some reason I can’t quite bring myself to leave.  I’m scared that I’m losing my Australianness – using words like ‘snog’ and ‘shag’ (and no, I did not shag Neil the insurance broker) and phrases like ‘I’m not bothered’ and ‘it was well good’.  I must say though, linguistically speaking, the word ‘twat’ is the best thing to ever come out of the UK.

I feel like I’ve committed myself to a million things over here, and I always say that I wouldn’t dream of staying in England forever, that I always want to end up back in Australia, but the longer I stay the harder it is to extract myself.  I commit myself to people and phone contracts and leases and all this bollocks (another example of British linguistic genius) and rather than making me feel comfortable and at home here, it makes me stir crazy.  In a couple of weeks time I’ve committed myself to a day’s work running through central London wearing nothing but a branded scarf and a flesh-coloured cat-suit.  That’s how desperate I am to do something invigorating, even if it’s heinous for everyone around me.  Those poor people…

Until recently I thought I had something that was worth staying for, but he’s just a stupid boy who wouldn’t notice if his prick was sewn onto the back of his head, and definitely not worth being at the centre of any life changing decisions.  Obviously if anyone who actually knows me reads this they’ll know who I’m talking about – the number one dick-up of my life so far (pun intended). 

In the midst of all the angst I’m independent and unafraid of any actual physical paths that my life might take, which makes a change from 5 years ago – hell, 1 year ago.  I never believed I could be so money hungry though – people who say that money can’t buy happiness clearly aren’t unemployed in London during a recession – in fact they’re probably minted, just too stupid to spend their cash on something worthwhile.

Anyhoo, hereby ends the first blog.  I’m listening to Life on Mars? and it makes me happy.

It’s a God awful small affair
To the girl with the mousey hair
But her mummy is yelling, “No!”
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is no where to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she’s hooked to the silver screen
But the film is a sadd’ning bore
For she’s lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on

Sailors
Fighting in the dance hall
Oh man!
Look at those cavemen go
It’s the freakiest show
Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man!
Wonder if he’ll ever know
He’s in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

It’s on America’s tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
‘Cause Lennon’s on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns
But the film is a sadd’ning bore
‘Cause I wrote it ten times or more
It’s about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on

Sailors
Fighting in the dance hall
Oh man!
Look at those cavemen go
It’s the freakiest show
Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man!
Wonder if he’ll ever know
He’s in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?