Two Minutes Happiness

Goodbye Two Minutes Happiness, Momo Freaks Out returns

2006-05-17T10:49:00.000+01:00

I'm afraid that this blog has always felt like a pair of jeans that never quite fit and, huff and puff as I might, always needed the zipper to be done up with a coat hanger.

This blog is now officially closed, and, I'm doing a particularly peculiar thing of resurrecting my old blog, now dead for one year. Partially because I can't be bothered with the effort required in starting a new one. And also just because I wanna. Which is as good a reason as any.

Momo is back in the building.

A night in with Moz

2006-05-16T12:12:00.000+01:00

So, I went and saw Morrissey on Sunday night at the London Palladium.

Incidentally, I had forgotten that my friend Suzie had bought me a ticket. Fortunately, I was saved by a phone call a mere hour beforehand that went a little something like:

“GET DOWN TO THE PALLADIUM NOW, YA FLAMIN’ DRONGO!”

And so I did.

Supported by the rather fab Kristeenyoung, the gig was jumping right till the very end, until the Moz, thinking the sound was bad (as was indicated by him constantly poking his fingers in his ears and wincing "How can you bear this?") hurled off his pink shirt knotted at the waist, made some typically Morrissey-esque statement, viz, "You’re all older than you think you are!" and stalked off stage in a big huff.

Expectantly, we all waited for an encore.

And waited.

And waited.

It was only after the roadies had collected the last rogue plectrum from the stage, clearing the way for, oh, The Boy from Oz or something, that we realised it was all over red rover.

Astonishingly, people even booed. And hissed!

A man in front of me quipped rather philosophically:

“Well, none of us would be here if he wasn’t such a moody old miserable bastard, now would we?”

"By jove, he's right!" exclaimed the maddening hordes (in unison).

And we all went home content in knowing that we'd gotten exactly what we wanted.

A sad night in with the computer and a screen full of memories

2006-04-22T21:09:00.000+01:00

Earlier tonight, I got yet another SchoolFriends.com reminder in my inbox. Apparently, someone I probably had absolutely no interaction with other than possibly laughing at them being stuffed in a rubbish bin by bullies in the schoolground (as oft happened to a particularly unpopular younger cousin of mine, and, dang it, it was funny) had decided to update their details on the website. Just for ca-razy kicks, and the fact I was unprecedentedly bored, I decided to mosey on over and trawl through the Class of '93 roll call of names. Just to see who was there and get the past a-blastin'.

So, I clicked around my former classmates' names, observed who was now married to a property developer, the proud parent of two dogs, and living the dream up on the Gold Coast, did a few other random searches, updated my profile in an attempt to make it seem mildly less twit-like than the one that had sat there for four years for other unprecedentedly bored former classmates to scoff at, and promptly got b-o-r-e-d (e-r).

Since the last time I bothered looking at this site (when I signed up in 2002), it has had added functions, where, for $19.95, the nostalgia-lorn can email a former school friend, completely out of the blue, after an absence of years or a decade or few, with a personal message, viz:

I have always loved you.

Or, for the coy, unimaginative, or clinically brain dead, there's the multiple choice option, dubbed "the easy ice-breaker". The ice-breaker provides a ready-made choice of simple messages tailored by SchoolFriends.com:

The benign:
* I'd love to hear what you're up to now
* I hope life is treating you well

The shamelessly forthright and (potentially) sexually potent:
* It'd be great to meet up again ...

Or, the rather dead-end observation:
* I can't believe how the time has flown!

What's more, beside my name, there was the option to place a banner, should any disinterested party make the grave mistake of not wanting to click and read my profile full of rivetting news of the past 13 years. With this banner, I could gloatingly advise any (or all) of the following tidbits:
* I'm engaged!
* I'm married!
* I just had a baby girl!
* I just had a baby boy!

Or, the decidedly defeated (or hopeful, depending on why you'd choose to broadcast it):
* Just got divorced!
* Single again!

Or, a revelation:
* I'm gay!

After finding there was, alas, no banner for:
* I'm in prison!

Or:
* I'm out of prison!

Or:
* I'm certifiably insane!

Or:
* Die! Motherfuckers! Die!

I did choose one banner to show that, yes, I am thirty and doing just fine:
* I'm a grandparent!

Just for ca-razy controversial kicks. But then I changed my mind, and left the damn thing alone.

Indie kids can't dance

2006-04-17T20:18:00.000+01:00

So, on the night before Good Friday, I found myself in some uber club-slash-rave thing my friend Sambo took me to with a gaggle of her mates. The last time I went to anything vaguely resembling this was in 1997. And my dancing style hasn't evolved much since the "two stomps forward and two stomps back" meets "hands chopping wildly akimbo above my head, to the side, down low, and culminating in great whirling looping loop-to-loops" moves studiously cultivated in my living room before Happy Mondays' music videos when I was 14. So whether it's harking back to 1997 or 1989, I was totally retroid on all six dancefloors, cemented more so by the white and fluorescent green print Excellent! Party Time! tee I bought especially for the occasion.

After a good seven or so hours of this, at 6.30 am, some guy, looking rather dubiously like a Guru Josh "Infinity" flashback in his floppy fisherman's hat and sunglasses, sidled up to me, hurled a bottle of water into one of my chop-chopping loop-to-loop hands, and exclaimed gleefully into my ear:

"Oi! You remind me of Ibiza!!!"

Which, from what I know about the dodgy Spanish clubbing resort, is rather like being told:

"Oi! You remind me of Schoolies' Week!!!"

Still, I kept on stomping and flailing until we were all kicked out into the morning sun an hour later.

At least I wasn't packing a whistle. Or a chupa chup.

End.

On Kingsland Road

2006-04-08T13:53:00.000+01:00

Scampering past the yellow Metropolitan Police sign shouting "MURDER: WE ARE APPEALING FOR WITNESSES*" out the back of my flat, I boarded a bus for a slightly more savory part of town. Coincidentally, on the hunt for a new abode.

As I wasn't sure which stop to get off, I stayed on the lower deck. Usually, I'm on the top deck, with one hand hoisting a Jolly Roger flag and the other feeding Polly a cracker as I pretend to be the captain of a big red pirate ship sailing the seven seas of east London. AHOY!

Anyway, a guy hopped on to the bus, aged anywhere between 17 and 40. I only noticed him when the bus driver boomed:

"YOU ARE NOT TWELVE!"

Bandying about a concession card of some sort, the guy thoughtfully caressed his 5 o'clock shadow and contested:

"Nah, man. I am so twelve."

"Show me your ID," demanded the bus driver.

"What ID? I'm only twelve!" he replied, throwing his non-twelve-year-old manhands in the air.

"Well, what year were you born?"

Quick as a flash, he retorted:

"I dunno, man. 1992 or some shit."

And then the bus driver waved him on.

End.

*Yes, both frighteningly and sadly, a 23-year-old guy was recently stabbed and killed on my council estate, barely even 50 metres from my flat. It happened around 7.20 pm a couple of Fridays ago, still in daylight, with plenty of people around, including me upstairs drinking wine with my housemate. Supposedly it was drugs and gang related, which makes me feel marginally better about my personal safety than if it was a random attack, admittedly. Doing their rounds, the police knocked on my door the other night to ask if I saw or heard anything or recognised his photograph, which I didn't, but putting a face to the horrible yellow signs that are everywhere made me feel sad. Anyway, enough blog fodder about that.

Behold! The greatness to come

2006-04-02T10:55:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I began my detox diet in preparation for being the New Me. In my mind’s eye, the success of which will help me transcend my present unremarkable status to be not only able to fit into size 27 jeans, but will result in unfathomable coolness, allure, and an added 5 cm of height. Slenderizing my thighs and downsizing my arse will undoubtedly lead to an A-type personality expert in many areas from beat-boxing, quantum physics, Italian neo-realist cinema, banjo playing, and kickflipping. In all, I’ll be the greatest 30-year-old child prodigy that ever was.

Day one of the detox consisted of hot water and lemon; carrot juice; a surprisingly tasty health smoothie (apple juice, raspberries, blueberries, soy milk, cottage cheese, flaxseed oil, lecithin granules, and powdered concoction that I must remember isn’t called Soylent Green, but ‘Beyond Greens’, featuring all the green vegetable extracts one could possibly hanker for and more); a handful of almonds; some miso soup; and a salad consisting largely of alfalfa sprouts. This honest to goodness day of frugally righteous eating in the name of detox was peppered with 10 cigarettes … after quitting for a whole entire week. The irony of which hasn’t escape me.

Aside from that little quirk, I feel positively salubrious. If I keep this up for six weeks, with progressively fewer cigarettes, and a lotta exercise, this She’s All That makeover of mine …

HOT DAMN!

Black cab metres will stop ticking, red buses will stop between stops, the Houses of Parliament will empty, hooded youths will cease their antisocial shenanigans, Greenwich Mean Time will come to a grinding halt, and all 25 zillion CCTV cameras in London town will swivel in my direction. Together, the whole of London, nay Britain, will be gawping and exclaiming to one another in a particularly non-British way:

“HOT DAMN, SHE’S ALL THAT!”

In awe of the wonder that stands before them, a few befuddled souls will wonder aloud how exactly it is that I came to be so fine. Me, I’ll simply whip my Pantene hair from side to side, flash a blinding white smile, wave a manicured hand (holding a celebratory Bacon Double Cheeseburger Deluxe) and shrug:

“Good genes.”

End.

At the Vietnamese restaurant

2006-03-25T15:35:00.000Z

Last night, after wandering around the greengrocer's purchasing assorted vegetables I rarely ever eat (such as radishes) for my pending detox, I had a mad hankering for a tofu stir-fry as I passed Saigon Palace on Hoxton Street and decided to pop in. The restaurant was cavernous, peppered only with three staff - an older woman and two guys in their early 20s watching Coronation Street on a flat-screen TV - and a noisy family of two parents and two girls of about seven and five.

One of the guys leaps up from the television, waves at me and shows me my table.

The woman I assume to be his mother takes my order. I sit and watch as the guy who showed me the table translates Coronation Street in Vietnamese for his friend who eagerly nods, eyes glued to the screen.

At the table next to me, the kids are precocious, in a partially annoying and partially entertaining way. The father is mostly silent, while, in a broad Scottish brogue, the mother engages her daughters in adult-like conversations, mostly concerning foods of the world. Then the conversation turns to theme parks.

"What's Disneyland like, Mum?" says the older girl.

"Oh! It's a horrid plasticky place full of horrid rides and horrid creatures smiling and waving at you. You never want to go there!" she declares.

In my childhood, Disneyland was promised as the no. 1 place we'd visit if we ever won Tattslotto. In spite of myself, I'm astonished and turn to gape at them.

"Yes, it sounds very horrid!" sighs her daughter while even her younger sister nods.

Before the seven-year-old I once was rises and has me running from the building screaming "FREAKS! FREAKS!", she adds:

"Although, I would rather like to go to Hello Kittyland some day ..."

Trailing off, she slyly looks at her mother for some sort of positive reaction. Hitting a brick wall where her mother doesn't show a flicker of interest, she looks out the window and sulks, just briefly.

Continuing the international theme, the younger girl starts talking about a soft kiwi toy her friend at kindergarten has, which makes a noise when you squeeze it.

"And what sort of noise does a kiwi fruit make?" asks the father, perplexed.

The mother, who has endless patience for her daughters' questions, scornfully snaps at her husband: "She means a kiwi bird, YOU TWIT!"

After I've finished my meal, the man that showed me my seat comes over to start chatting to me. He asks me how long I've been in London and what I do. I tell him I'm an editor and mention the publisher I work for.

His face lights up.

"Oh wow! You work with penguins? I LOVE penguins!"

Obviously he's misheard me. But before I can correct him, he's shouting over to his friend in Vietnamese. His friend shouts out "Aaaah!" and claps and waves at me.

The guy looks back at me. "Looking after penguins. That's really great, innit? There's so many problems with the environment ... "

The anti-Disney family on the table next to me are looking on with interest. I smile and nod and ask for the bill, too stuffed with food and drained from listening in to my neighbouring conversations to be bothered explaining. As I walk out all three staff are waving to me and speaking in Vietnamese. Possibly about me and my penguin crusade.

Still kickin'

2006-03-22T12:54:00.000Z

Well, the most momentous thing to happen over the past month or so was me hopping on a long-haul flight to visit the huz. Well, the huz that was the maybe-former-huz but is now the huz again. In transit from frosty ol' Blighty to positively balmy Singapore, I pulled my best Day-to-Night Barbie stunt by wearing a reversible skirt (of which one side could be considered summery) peeling off the layers, and attempting to spritz up the moon tan by pinching my face in the loos, all once I snapped out of the Valium haze (drugs supplied by a workmate who was concerned I wouldn't sleep on the flight and might turn up cranky and have a major spaz-out at the airport, tapping the final nail in the coffin). After the joy of actually seeing T-bone, sans spaz-outs, more joy came when I saw his apartment which was positively palatial compared to ... well ... anything I've ever lived in before.

Of course after splitting up for seven months things were weird and wary, but, aside from that, it was good and happy and decisions were made that yes we want to make it work again. It didn't take me long to decide that I could and will live in Singapore for a bout before moving back to Australia early next year. And it wasn't just the swimming pool in the apartment complex. Next time I'll see him will be Italy in June.

Things are going to be unwieldy for a quite a while longer, as I possibly won't leave London until my contract's done in September, but it's good to know where I'm going.

Walk like a Parisienne

2006-02-19T13:59:00.000Z

I left Ms Miri’s at about 9 this glum old wintry morning, and, wandering along Brick Lane, I passed a man sweeping the street. Not that he was doing so out of the joy of sweeping, or anything, a la those cheerful Cockney characters chim chiminey chim chiminey chim-chim cheroo-ing in Mary Poppins, but because he was being paid to do so. Surprisingly.

As I passed, he piped:

“You right?”

And, because I’ve finally learned that “You right?” means “Top of the mornin’ to ya, wee lassie!” in terse London speak, I didn’t respond anything like, “Well, I do have a slight headache, and my glands are up in my throat a bit,” as I did when first moved here.

“Yeah, I’m right. You right?” I said, a-speakin' his language.

“Yeah. I’m right.”

At that exchange, I nodded to show that I was glad he was right, and I was right and that everything's gonna be alright, like the song, and then he enquired:

“Do you speak French, then?”

In keen interest, I rejoined, “No, do you?”

And he grinned, “No. I just thought you look like you come from Paris or somefink.”

Considering I was wearing the clothes I’d slept in, and, aside from my lurid streak of bubblegum pink lipstick, had the complexion of an iguana especially hard done by in the beauty stakes, it made my glum old wintry day. Although, of course, it could have been my baguette, beret and the fact I was miming walking a poodle in high winds.

Hee-yuk!

2006-02-17T19:46:00.000Z

When I was seventeen, my maths teacher, Mr Edwards, advised that my laugh was like, I quote, “A Morris Minor trying to start on a frosty morning before being over-revved and flooding the engine.”

I can’t recall what prompted Mr Edwards’ address to the class which was by this time singing 'Stutter Rap', dorks, but obviously it was my extreme mirth at the unlikely event of actually finding the cosine on an equilateral triangle. Or something, since it was the death throes of my mathematic career.

A few days ago, I was on a trunk call to T-bone in Singapore when something he said as we were saying goodbye prompted me to laugh rather raucously.

“Oh. My. God,” he said quietly. “I haven’t heard that one in a while.”

“What?” I said, suddenly serious.

After a few seconds silence he blurted:

“CHEVY CHASE! STEVE MARTIN! TVs ALL-TIME FUNNIEST BLOOPERS!!!”

Which, I need to explain, is the Davinci Code-like key to my patented 'Goofy laugh'.

So, while I was laughing my heartiest “HEE-YUK! HEE-YUK!” hee-yuks, he echoed “HEE-YUK! HEE-YUK! HEE-YUK!” back at me, and shouted more things to further unleash the beast.

“AUSTRALIA’S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS! DRUNK COUPLE FALLING OVER INTO THEIR WEDDING CAKE! LITTLE KID GETTING KNOCKED IN THE HEAD WITH A SWING! FAT OLD PERSON STEPPING INTO A BOAT AND CAPSIZING IT!”

All of which, since I evidently have no empathy for drunk wedding couples, little kids’ playground disasters, or fat sea-faring old people, sent me into a Disney character maelstrom of hilarity.

“HEE-YUK! HEE-YUK! HEE-YUK! HEE-YUK!”

Then he ventured, “DOG PISSING IN THE BREAD!”

“What?” I said, “When did a dog piss in the bread?”

“ON NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION, GOOFY!” he bellowed.

“Oh yeah!” I responded, before launching back into a manic series of hee-yuks, and the phone call lasted an extra 20 minutes.

In an exchanging care package, he promised to record all of the things that make me laugh, if I promise to record the responding laugh. So yes, the little things.

Feeling a bit too centred

2006-02-13T15:31:00.000Z

News flash:

Okay, I've looked at this at home and the formatting is fine and not all centred right down the page, which is what I was rabbitting on about. There must be a problem with my computer at work. Blah dee blah.

_ _ _ _ _

In case you didn't notice, there is something seriously awry with this template, aside from the general crapness of it being a Blogspot template. If no-one can help me figure out what (please help me figure it out), I might skuttle the blog and start another one, which isn't an entirely bad idea.

Anyone who wants to design me a new blog (nothing special, but better than this) will win an AMAZING prize*!!!!

*TBD.

Punk is dead, dead, DEAD, I tell you!

2006-02-13T11:25:00.000Z

At the recommendation of, oh, almost everyone, I took a jalopy ride out on the Tube to Camden Town on Saturday, famous for assorted things, including its markets. I only needed to walk out of the station before surmising that I had indeed landed in Teenage Junkshop Hell. What, in between all the goth-punk-hippy-raver fusion gear that has been trudged out in every generic shitsville market since, oh, forever or something, I was underwhelmed. Next time (and I'm all about second chances) I'll avoid the hordes and check out the back streets.

But anyway, I think what really irked me about Camden Town was the fact that on four occasions I was referred to as "ma'am" by young men. Four! I actually preferred it when I had hood-wearing hoodlums in dangerous back steets call me "Bitch". Anyhoo, it must have been my lack of crappy goth-punk-hippy-raver fusion clobber that had me signposted as positively geriatric. The first three times (in a noodle shop, while getting coffee, and then while getting another coffee, hence my oldness and need for artificial stimulants to keep me from nodding off at two in the afternoon with a tartan rug on my lap), I chose to ignore it, but the fourth was while I tried to enter through the exit barrier at Camden Town station, cos that's the wild out there kinda geriatric I am. A young man in a purple mohican and leathers stopped me:

"Sorry, ma'am, you can't go in there. You need to go round the other side," he said obligingly.

"MA'AM?! MA'AM?!" I hissed, "So it's all 'Bollocks to the Establishment', eh? You ain't foolin' me with your 'Anarchistic' clothes and hair-do, you fucking toffee-nosed toff! Johnny Rotten would be rolling in his grave if he was dead."

And then I gobbed on him, gave him a Glasgow kiss and pogo-ed over the barrier.

End.

'Vignette' which is a fancy word for 'short sketch' (should a particular Islington bartender be reading)

2006-02-06T12:13:00.000Z

Yeah, so me and Rae-baby were sauntering around Islington yesterday, and happened upon a pub that is hosting a trivia night later this week. Rae approached the barman drying mammoth pint glasses while watching the football on SkyTV.

Rae: Hello! I just wanted to ask about the Trivia Night on Thursday.

Old barman: Oh yes?

Rae: I've got some friends coming, and just want to know if we need to book a table ...

Old barman: So, this Trivia Night is on this Thursday, you say?

Rae: Yep, the poster is out the front.

Old barman: Well, I don't know about a Trivia Night, but we do have a Quiz Night on Thursdays. Is that what you're after?

[Slips on a banana peel, has a cream pie mashed in his face and gets wrenched off stage by a cane to the neck.]

End.

Bah. So it wasn't really all that funny, but perplexing, yes.

The perfect hostess

2006-01-23T18:56:00.000Z

So, I was the perfect hostess at our (early) Australia Day party on Saturday night. At least for a couple of hours. When I knew everyone there. There I was, drinking cheap (but good) Spanish cava, having a dandy old time dressed as Courtney Compagnino from Young Talent Time. I was a perfect eight-year-old singing-dancing dynamo in a high side ponytail single-handedly polishing off all the cheese Twisties a girl dressed as Olivia Newton-John in the Physical filmclip had bought along as an offering of Australianness. I ate them all not out of selfish gluttony and no mind for anyone else who might have felt like a cheddar-flavoured twisty cocktail treat from our homeland, you see, but pure gratitude.

But then, at some point, a whole bunch of unknowns turned up and started playing with the iPod. Right in the crescendo bit at the start of Franz's Take Me Out. Right while I was busting out the best of my YTT moves. That's when The Nasty Streak surfaced. If anything is ever going to surface The Nasty Streak, it will be unknowns messing with the iPod while I'm dancing to it.

"OI! Stop messing with the stereo, you bastards!" I spat, "I can't see any of you LIVING HERE AND OWNING THE STEREO!"

Then, I turned to the three people I was dancing with and loudly announced while wildly pointing around, "I hate every [obscene swearword] here. Except you guys, of course."

Which is often a good way to make friends with strangers in your home. Wildly pointing and calling them obscene names.

Later, after more and more people who had been queuing outside managed to get in, I cornered a young unknown English man rolling something on the Jamie's Italy cookbook that rests atop our microwave.

"YOU CAN'T SMOKE THAT IN MY HOUSE!" I bellowed belligerently. "Unless you give me some."

Obligingly, he handed over the goods and apologised.

Later, paranoid and belligerent, I went into my room and cleverly hid my precious belongings in my chest of drawers beneath my undies and socks. Security sorted, I marched around and glowered as more people who were queuing at our door entered and promptly slipped over the ever-growing beer slick on our living room floor.

"It's slippery, you know!" I scoffed at some soul spread-eagled on the throbbing linoleum dancefloor. "And who do you know here, anyway?"

To the masses who I considered to be looking at me strangely, I would go up and inform: "It is a fancy dress party. These aren't my real clothes. I guess you'd know that if you'd been invited ... and who do you know here, anyway?"

At around 3.00, tired of constantly locking the door and observing to anyone who would listen that we didn't live in a tent, and if we did, I certainly wouldn't be camping in a place where crackheads could come in and steal all the stuff out of my chest of drawers, for Lord's sake; tired of asking people who they were and why were they here; and even more tired of banging on the bathroom door and telling the unknowns inside that they should go home and have sex in their OWN BATHROOM, I retreated to my bedroom with three friends. There, I jammed the door with a broom, jumped into bed and chatted amiably, and waited for the party to be over, ever watchful of the chest of drawers.

So, yes, the perfect hostess.

Fine British customer service

2006-01-12T21:22:00.000Z

So I was in the local Off License (British for 'convenience store', yet no where near as convenient as a proper 7-11, being closed overnight and all), actually it was a different Off License to my usual Off License, and I stood there waiting patiently at the counter with my monster pack of Turkish delight, on account of my insatiable frosty depths of winter sugar/carbohydrates/anything-still-and-dead-enough-for-me-to-get-my-increasingly-pudgy-little-hands-on cravings.

The man behind the counter tapped one pound fifty into the register and then like a modern-day Off-License-tending Nostradamus portended:

"And you want 20 Marlboro lights, love?"

Recoiling at him reading my very mind, I responded, "Yes? How did you know that?"

He chortled, "Aaah, but this is what you always get. You crave these cigarettes, always. ALWAYS. I know you, love!"

Perturbed at this unwarranted insight into my filthy addiction, I protested, "What! I'm quitting! And I hardly ever come in here, anyway."

Animated soothsayer gone and Off License vendor dead stare back, he said flatly, "Yeah. So you want them or not?"

And I peeped, "Yep."

Then, after he handed over my booty, he cackled, "Aaahaahaaa! That Turkish delight is terrible! You won't like it. What you need to try is Turkish delight from Israel. You will love it, love! It's great!"

Then, for emphasis on how entirely shit my Turkish delight was, he grabbed a handy magenta and gold packet of Fry's, flourished it before me, and proclaimed:

"This stuff - rubbish! Fake! But still better than what you bought, love. You must try the divine Israeli Turkish delight!"

"Well, if Israeli Turkish delight is so great, why are you selling me this crappy Turkish delight, then?" I quizzed incisively.

He shrugged, "This is a business, love. You people will buy any miserable thing."

And then waved me off for the next miserable-purchasing customer.

I'm a TV kid

2006-01-09T11:10:00.000Z

Since I last wrote, I've actually been in a better mood. Well, the festive season ending and the return to work put me in a better mood, making me possibly the only person in the history of people working to be happy to return to work after the holidays. But yesterday was the turning point towards true unabated happiness. After a drought of six TV-free months, I bought a TV.

Yes, a TV.

A TEEEEEEEE VEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I still haven't recovered from the joy of it all.

Knowing the TV would be heavy and technologically complex, I lured D, a young man I know (who is possibly tiring of me intermittently landing on his sofa for a fix of SkyTV) with the promise of any beverage four pounds or under if he carried it home and then tuned it for me. So, in the miserable rain, D trudged and I positively levitated with the joys of anticipation out to Argos, a chain store unique in the fact that you don't get to fondle, kick and lie on any of the wares like you do at your regular Kmart-style chain store pre-purchase. Instead, you note numbers down from an in-store catalogue, give the cashier the money, and then wait in a queue for your number to be called and goods to be delivered, somewhat like buying Hungarian salami at the Safeway deli. Except the only real similarity is that you get a number. Notably, someone once told me they saw Jarvis Cocker there buying an iron. At Argos. Not the Safeway deli.

So, me and D perused the catalogue, found that the two cheapest televisions were unavailable, so I got the third cheapest, a £69 14” Alba DVD/TV combo, otherwise known as The Entertainment Supercentre. As D lugged the 15-kilogram box through the still-miserable rain, I skipped ahead helpfully shouting commands and requests such as:

“Mind the filthy Dickensian puddle!” and

“Careful of the rabid mangy East End dog poo!” and

“Take your jacket off and put it over the TV box in case the rain seeps through!”

Anyway, D kept complaining about the box being awkward and heavy, so we stopped off in Hoxton Square for his £4-drink-on-me pitstop. After a long couple of hours drinking half-price margaritas, eating chocolate cake and entirely exceeding the £4 allowance I'd decreed, I pilfered a TV guide from one of the communal newspapers, my week's social activities spread across fourteen pages. Later, when the TV was tuned and perched atop my specially purchased coffee table from Ikea, my bedroom was transformed into what I like to call 'The Entertainment Supercentre Superdome'. Angels sang, harps peeled, and there I was watching 'Top of the Pops'.

Later, I mopped the drool from my chin, applied a math-o-mat to my eyeballs to regain their circular shape, and found that D had absconded from my fine company. I couldn't recall if it was during 'Celebrity Big Brother' at 8 or the BBC late news at 10.35.

Possibly, I'll never leave The Entertaiment Supercentre Superdome ever again.

No, not a hint of bitterness

2005-12-29T18:47:00.000Z

So, Christmas in my part of East London was spent in reverence of the Greek god Dionysius. It was depraved, debauched, and the less said about it the better. The only festive photographs to escape my censorship clutches are on Flickr.

For New Year's Eve, well, I hope to spend it in front of a television (yet to be purchased) ignoring its very existence, hoping everyone is having a really rotten time, and avoiding stewing on the fact that it is my seventh wedding anniversary and I am now separated and 30 and losing my once-were dashing young chipmunk looks. Either that or I'll obliterate myself and go hit on hot 20-25 year olds to try to prove my worth (as a once-were dashing young chipmunk meets Mrs Robinson). Yes, 2005 was a total motherfucker of a year for me, and I look forward to waking up to 2006. Which, I assume, can only be better.

Happy new year!

I can't change, I can't change

2005-12-11T20:09:00.000Z

Last night, my friend Amy put on a spread of canapes and really good champagne (direct from a weekender loading up the family sedan in Francais) for a gaggle of us Australian girls working for the frosty bird. Of course, we all got ridiculously drunk and (for no reason in particular) started calling one another by our last names in sentences starting with 'Oi!' But the best thing was watching music videos, something I miss since I am frighteningly sans a television. After lots of ridiculous Beastie Boys imitations, whereby I mused, "I wish I could always move in slow-mo and only ever be seen through a fish-eye lense!" and demanded that we act out our Beastie moves in the tea room on Monday, on came The Verve's 'Bittersweet Symphony'.

Agog at the screen, G shouted:

"Golden Fried Chicken!!!"

"OMG!" I agreed in annoying acronym, "Dad's Hair Salon!!!"

"Hoxton ElectroVision!!!!" she zinged.

"Pie and mash with the wretched viscous gravy shop!!!" I flung back, stodgily.

And, as we embarked on a good old "And I'm a million different people from one day to the next ..." sing along, G and I marvelled that this acclaimed continuous-shot music video was filmed on Hoxton Street, starting at our street, the one with Golden Fried Chicken on the corner.

Cool.

In other news:

Friday night is the company Christmas party at the Imperial War Museum. The theme is Bond, James Bond. I am wondering if turning up in a satin sheet, false lashes peeling off like eyebrow bound caterpillars, and rumpled hair a la a Bond girl post-Bond shag will have me - for better or for worse - forever labelled: 'That slapper who showed up to the Christmas party at the Imperial War Museum in a satin sheet'.

Stranger danger

2005-12-05T19:26:00.000Z

Well, the night started well. I was out and had a quiet couple of glasses of wine with friends over a curry, then went to meet R-baby at a bar in Soho where she was dj for part of the eve. I bought another drink, talked to some randoms about how lovely my hat was, THEN ever-so-wisely left my glass on the bar, wandered off for a while, had some more of my drink, danced a bit, started feeling very strange, danced some more, had yet some more of my drink, felt very very strange, lurched into the dj booth, sat down, passed out, and woke up three hours later to R playing 'Back In Black' before spontaneously vomitting into my own (formerly) lovely hat.

"Someone spiked my drink" sounds so fifties-Doris-Day-movie, but, unless I've developed an unlikely intolerence for a two-and-a-half glasses of red wine, I think that's what happened in this, my living 'How Will You Feel Tomorrow?'* ad.

End.

*Australian National Drug and Alcohol Offensive ads aimed at teenagers in the early 90s which my friends and I, entirely missing the point, used to laugh at, regularly hooting such utterances as:

"HAHAHAHAHAHA! That's what YOU looked like after you drank all that cooking sherry stashed in your childhood Mickey Mouse vacuum flask, pashed Blah Blah after leaping out of a tree (all the while aiming to land on his better-looking, more pash-enticing best friend), and then vomitted all over your shoes. HAHAHAAHAHAHAH!"

Post script: I came back to this one thinking it needed more excitement, or to be somehow punchier at least. But really, everything falls flat after you've spewed in your own hat.

Hola!

2005-11-28T22:12:00.001Z

I just got back from a whirlwind four-and-a-bit days in Barcelona, thanks to a birthday prez from my housemate G and the joys of budget airlines.

Highlights were many, including: food, food, FOOD; good friends; amazing architecture; a vegetarian luncheon with a fabulous lady in rock; misspent evenings that stretched out to 15 hours on and on and on the town; pit-stops in bars, each one cooler than the previous; chorizo and pink cava (champagne) before noon; ambling around the dreamy paved streets; flamenco hip-hop at the Apolo Bar; hot chocolate that amounted to hot liquid heaven; more good-looking people than you can poke a stick (let alone an entire forest) at; the Gaudi park; an awesome video art exhibition at the CaixaForum, Video Times 1965-2005; and a homeless man silently sidling up to light my cigarette in the street before settling down in a doorway to sing I Just Called to Say I Love You in Spanish.

I love Barcelona.

There goes the neighbourhood

2005-11-19T22:52:00.000Z

Late this afternoon, I was kicking around the deserted precinct of Petticoat Lane in my beloved hoodie with the big B on it when a group of young hoodlums (also in hoodies, being hoodlums and all) sauntered right up to me in the middle of the road. Stopping before me, one of them sneered: "The 'B' stands for Bitch ..."

Thankful for his erudite observation, I retorted: "Uh-uh, dear chap. I do believe you'll find that the 'B' stands for 'Bite my arse, ____ face.'"

And then I headbutted, glassed and stabbed the li'l scamp 15 times for such an intrusion.

Except, as I didn't really want that treatment in return (quite the norm in these parts, depicted like so in this particular favourite track of mine), the only thing that got bitten was my tongue as I averted my gaze immediately forward and walked on like nothing had happened, taking refuge amongst the damask and broderie anglaise of yet another textiles shop.

I can't lie. London can be a very scary place, particularly in the east, and very often in broad daylight. The fact that the other week I considered a man chasing another man down the road while furiously whirling an iron bar above his head to be not all that abnormal is testimony to this*.

On Wednesday, I'm starting kickboxing with my friend Barb. And I'm going to invest in a personal alarm. Either that or the 'Mr T in your pocket' keyring I spotted in the shops today. I pity the fool who comes up against that.

*And, as I'm typing this, a loon on crack or some other joyous substance has leapt onto the grass in front of my flat (aka "The Ghetto Green") screaming, with two policemen in hot pursuit. There was a tussel and he's now run off again, deeper into the estate. Great.

Some play on words about being bitten by the Big Apple

2005-11-14T12:21:00.001Z

Well, New York totally won me over. Even after walking 2.5 hours from W51st street to the Lower East Side, without a map, getting completely lost, without a map, winding up under the Williamsburg Bridge, without a map, down by an express way, without a map, down by some river, without a map, and having to run like a motherfucker, without a map, all once I realised I was some kid in lurid tights wandering luridly on the wrong side of the tracks, without a map.

Eventually, I got back to where I wanted to go, and, still mapless, purchased more NY threads in three hours than is humanly decent.

Catching up with Kdunk and Eliot and their friends Keith and Julie was a joy, joy, joy. We ate congee, over which Eliot observed:

“Your accent must be all over the place right now.”

And, with a Cockney chimneysweep's lilt, my native Mildurian twang coo-ing out from the billabong, and a Tokyo-ite's tentative grasp on the English language, I responded:

“No, not at all.”

Sitting on a train and having Kdunk step onto the carriage and walk straight up to me - entirely unplanned, well, save for the fact we were meeting on the other side of town 20 minutes later - was Matrix bizarro incorporated. And a joy.

Anyway, since I can't possibly fall in love with a place without deciding I must live there, seemingly, I am planning how to move there next September, once I'm done with this UK thing. Even for a couple of months. Visas are slippery slopes to negotiate, but there are internships and things, and I don't mind being a 30-year-old intern in some vaguely publishing-related field, like loan-sharking or pizza delivery. Still, 'The 30-year-old Intern' does seem like an unfortunate comedy script starring that Deuce Bigalow guy.

O! My glamorous life. NYC edition.

2005-11-11T14:48:00.000Z

Unexpectedly, for you more than me, I am presently in New York City. Last Thursday morning my company decided they'd like nothing more than to send me and a designer and a photographer on a top secret mission to Grand Central Terminal. In my seedy post-birthday state I grumbled on the timing, "But I'm meant to see the White Stripes next week, " I grumbled.

Helpfully, a colleague gave me a jaunty slap across the face and barked, "PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER, DEAR GIRL, THIS IS NEW YORK CITY WE'RE TALKING ABOUT!"

And so I've been here since Monday. A friend took my ticket to the Stripes.

Aside from vagrants and terminal-bound railroad employees, I may be the only person (aside from my colleagues) in the history of the universe to spend three days in Grand Central without actually taking a train anywhere. Though I did get to do all sorts of wonderful things, such as enter the information booth, go down secret stairways, walk through the arched windows, and drive a locomotive simulator used to test engineers. Alas, I didn't succeed in de-railing it into the virtual Hudson River, no matter how hard I tried.

I interviewed about 10,000 people, including staff and commuters. Or at least 30. I was berated by an English Professor from the University of Michigan for not knowing where Ann Arbor was, and, still, not even knowing if I've now spelt it correctly. And, in a news stand, I thrust my dictaphone at Tolga Safer and Oliver Phelps, two young actors who were in the most recent Harry Potter film. They were very amiable, answered all my questions, and, at the end of it all, I helpfully directed them toward a cup of tea.

But now, it's my one and only day off and I'm a loon for nerding it up on the internet. I'm going to Williamsburg and the Lower East Side, because, from what I can tell from Superfuture and assorted sources such as my housemate, that's where hipsters like me go. And tonight I am most fortunate to once again meet my esteemed Brooklyn cobbers KDunk and Eliot.

HOORAY!

A big non-hooray on the fact I need to get up at 4.30am to fly out tomorrow, but hey.

Stashin' (unsuccessful pun on 'dashing') at 30

2005-11-05T16:37:00.000Z

So, at work on my birthday last Wednesday, I was there standing in front of everyone, unwrapping a succession of teensily wrapped gifties and making appropriate gestures of thanks with a little ingratiating observation on each. So, after the chocolates, lip gloss and eyeshadow, indicating that everyone has been watching me shamelessly:

a) Scoff my head with Mars Bars around 4 pm each day, and

b) Apply make-up at my workstation every twenty-two seconds (nothing at all to do with the passably hot, well-dressed designer that sits six workstations away or anything)

I got to the coin purse, which was essentially a decapitated teddy bear, dangling on a chain:

"Oh!" I exclaimed, flourishing the head to the assembly, like Delvene Delaney in the Sale of the Century giftshop.

"This is just perfect for keeping my stash ..."

And that, unfortunately, was where my throat choked up.

With 'stash' hanging in the air and twenty new workmates looking at me in various states of freeze-frame mortification, three seconds too late, I valiantly spurted out:

"OF!"

And then, turning shades of red, blue and tangerine, I spluttered:

"COINS!"

Thankfully, one of the nice guys in the department drew attention away from me while I quietly choked in cardiac arrest by saying:

"Good call, people! For my birthday I want a purse for my stash ...

OF ...

COINS ...

too!"

So that's me turning 30*.

*Disclaimer: I don't look it.

National Lampoon's UK Vacation

2005-11-01T16:37:00.000Z

So, in a premature celebration of my birthday, I headed out on a three-day road trip with my chum Andy last Friday. We hired an automobile and drove cross-country (well, on the M40 motorway, not through fields and rambling brooks as 'cross-country' might deceptively suggest. It was, in fact, 'across the country'). Onward ho we went to Bristol via Oxford and Bath, the home of ancient Roman baths (with some statues rather tackily tacked on in the 1880s, I was disappointed to discover, especially after keying up so many artfully framed photographs of the baths 'tween Julius Caesar's decidedly stocky legs). Bath is also the setting of Jane Austen's post-humously published Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Me, I thought the Jane Austen museum looked like a cheap and tawdry Georgian money-spinner. So, in lieu of looking inside, I photographed myself chatting to the rather ramshackle “Jane” mannequin perched out the front, which is my kind of tourism, really.

After steaming along backroads through glorious All Creatures Great and Small-style hedgerows and counting only two road kills - a mouse and a swallow - we happily found ourselves in the biggest shit-hole on earth, a seaside resort called Weston-Super-Mare (best said in a booming WWF-style voice). I was entirely bursting with glee to find that it was grey, drizzly and downright squally as the Brits stoically ate their ice cream on the pier, determined to have a bloody good time.

Later, after going to a pub in Bristol and being asked, “Do ye fancy a chip butty do ye?” and having me say “Pardon? Excuse me?” about five times, only to have the publican's missus cheerily bellow: “A CHIP SANDWICH! WITH CHIPS IN IT. DO YE WANT ONE?! WE ALWAYS EAT EM AFTER THE FOOTBALL!” as she pointed at the telly and the football, in its closing footbally throes.

Nah, I didn't want one, thanks.

Later, the pub dog, a mangy little Jack Russell terrier deceptively snuggled up to a little ginger kitten, bared its teeth at me when I tried to take its photograph.

“DON'T TAKE HIS PHOTO!!!” The Publican himself shouted.

“WHY NOT? RELIGIOUS REASONS?!” I shouted back.

“NO! HE DON'T LIKE PEOPLE. HE'LL BITE YE FINGER OFF!”

Then he pointed his own (perfectly intact) finger at the wall with an A4 print-out of someone posing in with a bloody dog-mauled hand, emblazoned with a cute little caption saying “Careful, he'll bite!”

I never quite determined whether or not the snuggled-up ginger kitty was alive or a carcass.

Later, we got hopelessly drunk at another pub on apple cider dubbed 'Exhibitionist', two of which Andy skolled on a dare by some Welsh rugby players from Cardiff.

“NEVILLE! NEVILLE! NEVILLE!” they chanted as he threw it back.

“No, no. My name's Andy!” Andy replied plaintively between skols.

“NEVILLE! NEVILLE! NEVILLE!” they continued.

Then, we all sang the Rolf Harris hit parade and, when we got back to our lodgings, I gracefully vomited.

End.

Random things to make Londoners snigger at the quaint little Australian

2005-10-21T14:27:00.002+01:00

Or:

How to be truly vile-slash-plain-weird without even meaning it

Over lunch:

“Jason Donovan was a spunk.”

Which, when translated into England English, is akin to saying “Jason Donovan was a jizz.”

And, pushing home the theme:

“Oh, yes, Jason Donovan, in his time, was very very spunky!”

Which is akin to saying “Jason Donovan was, in his time, very very jizzy ... like an ectoplasmic explosion, even.”

Earlier, at the sandwich bar:

“I'll have tasty cheese, please.”

Which is akin to saying “I'll have delicious cheese, please.”

Apparently it's “cheddar”, which may or may not taste good. No assessment has been made on its tastiness.

And from Miri, in her studio:

“My pants got soaking, they've been wet all day.”

Which is akin to saying …

Er …

Well.

“Pants” apparently means underpants, not trousers.

The voices behind my head

2005-10-14T10:58:00.000+01:00

Australians, they're everywhere - particularly in Australia, I find, but also in London.

I went and saw The Drones the other night at Garage in Islington, with some Australians, Em, Adam and Andy. While negotiating the drop zone that is the Old Street escalators, racing for a nouthbound train that, due to signal failures, was announced as the last of the evening (at 7.30 pm), I juggled my cone of chips, brolly, and hurtled down my journey to the centre of the earth while eloquently mumbling to no one in particular:

“Christ! If I run any faster, I'm gonna go a gutsa!”

And then, right in my ear, was an Australian voice:

“That'd be a cracker!”

I thought something weird was going on with the space-time continuum and it was one of the voices ahead flipping back at me in some metaphysical wormhole. But no. It was just some random Australian dude I hadn't noticed riding pillion on my backpack and, though I can't be sure, possibly eating some of my chips, the mug.

Later, at the bar, I was fixing my hair in the mirror behind the booze because, plainly, I'm vain and will seek out any reflective surface at all times. There was a sigh.

“You're fiiine. Help me with this foreign money, will ya?”

And it was another random Australian, like a wee puzzled drunken possum on my shoulder, thrusting coins at me. I snorted at his misguided request for financial advice, but obligingly picked out £3.20 for his beer and sent him on his merry way, pocketing a pound* for my Samaritan duties.

*Well, I thought about it.

Hangin' ten in the emotional wringer

2005-10-11T14:54:00.000+01:00

When life throws me curveballs and I don't know how to deal, I find it helpful to concentrate on my appearance. There is nothing quite like staring hard in the mirror, trying on skinny jeans and skimpy swimsuits, and standing in warm light to scour for split ends to make the bigger things in life seem all the more insurmountable.

On that note: I turn 30 in three weeks precisely.

Not that I'm getting all weird about it or anything. Like, it's not as if I'm waking up in the middle of the night and completely flipping the hell out, wondering which drain my winsome youth has slipped down to make way for those crow's feet clawing my eyes, ever so gently, or anything. But I have decided to start lying about my age. I'm going to tell people I'm 40 and wait for compliments about how gobsmackingly young I look.

Genius!

Speaking of which, do check out two of my mates' totally genius Flickr sites*. Aside from their brilliant holiday snaps to Barcelona and NYC and neighbourhoodly places in our neighbourhood, if you dig and dig, you'll even see photos of me. And my crow's feet.

There's Miri.

www.flickr.com/photos/rollingtheberries

She's got many wonderful photos, including one of me and my new Adidas sneakers. A present to myself for my 30th birthday. Just need a matching tracksuit.

And Gilly. My housemate.

www.flickr.com/photos/gillian_lee

You'll see all her truly awesome Lomos, including me in our housewarming party, looking rather ...

relaxed.

Yeah, go on. Go on, young people and your winsome youth. Go on, old people and your crow's feet. Go on, go look at photos of me. Stare long and hard. It'll help.

*For some reason I can't do links at the mo.

Random story from Bangkok

2005-10-06T12:18:00.000+01:00

Courtesy of T-bone:

[Walking down a Bangkok street and spotting some guy he recognised]

T-bone: [All happy to actually recognise someone] G'day! You look familiar. Do I know you, mate?

Random guy: I hope not!

T-bone: [Outraged] What the fuck's that supposed to mean?!?!? That's a shitty thing to say.

Random guy: [Shrugs]

T-bone: [Accusingly] Did you go to Mentone Grammar?!?!

Random guy: Nope.

T-bone: Did we work together?!?!

Random guy: [Shakes head]

T-bone: Well, how do I know you, then?!?

Random guy: [Walking off] You'll figure it out.

And so T-bone was left all puffy chested and ready for a random punch-up on the street with some random obnoxious guy. Infuriated, he assumed it must have been non-work, non-high school nemesis he'd forgotten about. Or a disgruntled client.

Later, he realised it was some blond-haired blue-eyed bogan toolbag from last season's Big Brother.

HAHAAHAHAHAHA!

On the buses

2005-10-03T10:32:00.000+01:00

And, so, anyway, I was on the bus the other day, the top deck, steaming down Clerkenwell Road on my way home from work. Just as the battery ran flat on my iPod I saw a wine glass fly through the air and, before I had a chance to wonder if indeed I was in an especially upmarket (on account of the vino) wild west saloon bar, there was an almighty

SMASH!!!!

on the floor.

The very drunk Jamaican dude who took it upon himself to throw the glass toddled over to the stairwell, stepping over the glass. Taking a moment to blearily group us together, he addressed the top deck.

“I would clean it, you know.”

[Accusing stares from all of the top deck]

“But you know I'm not gonna.”

[Accusing stares continue]

“But the reason I'm not gonna ... ”

[Shrugs in a lovable comical fashion]

“ ... is I haven't got a broom, mon!”

And then the whole top deck, we laughed riotously. And then stopped abruptly to stare stonily out the window. After all, this is London.

A couple of stops later, a young Chav in Fubu furiously hurled the remainder of the glass out the door onto the street, screaming something that went a little like:

“GWAAARKRKRKR!”

Sporadic update

2005-09-21T16:20:00.000+01:00

Well, far too much has been going on: visitors, 3 bottles of French champagne in two nights, parties, crash landings, dropping the ball, meeting Sydney blog identites in my local, daggy dancing to INXS in the livingroom, watching neighbours who had really ought to close their curtains ... and I've sorta lost interest in recording it.

Again.

In the interim, I have bought some nice pairs of stockings and have my eye on some canvas Nikes. After all, I never can do with too many pairs of white shoes.

Back in black ... and white

2005-09-10T00:47:00.000+01:00

Well, I got the job at the sea-faring bird in a tux, otherwise known as only the most famous publishing house in the world. No more piffling over pounds and tearing my hair out at the cost of my chicken tikka roll for lunch. Not that I'll be earning lots of money, just some money. Or money per se.

Better still, two departments were grappling over little ol' me. I had TWO job offers this morning, two! I would go into it more, but I refuse to write anything incriminating about work.

Must've been my Chanel violet mascara (lower lashes only) that I whip on like a beast of late, purchased in Tokyo when I could actually afford to be so frivolous ... sorta. And the fact I entered each interview doing the caterpillar to 'There's No Stopping Us' which may or may not have appeared on the Breakdance soundtrack.

I can be an egomaniac, I'm allowed. It's the only way toward regaining a sense of enormous well being. Mentally overwrought is not my colour.

Yep.

Project Editor. P____guin.

Me!!!!

Start Tuesday.

I also have three new friends, all made from the office temping I did this week: Morgan, a fellow Melburnian with amazing freckles living in neighbouring Bethnal Green ; Paul, a shy English boy in a sweet little indie band I'm going to see play in Camden next Thursday night; Lilly, a gorgeous English girl trained in security who tells me all about wild times at Ascot and doing any manner of wretched things in the back of a Rolls Royce. I was shocked, mortified and aghast ... then and asked if I could come along next time.

Oh. And my friend handsome Nick from Heathrow is coming back to London to visit for two days. I will be most pleased to see young Nick.

Stuff n' nonsense

2005-09-05T22:22:00.000+01:00

Oh, I've been up to a lot. Things have changed now that I'm in the new apartment. The Gill and Momo Uber Pad totally rules: we had the rulingest housewarming party on Friday night (considering I have no London friends yet, save for random people I keep chatting to in the street, a thousand people - largely a Melbourne tribe - turned up. At least a thousand), we partied like it was 1999, except, like, 2005, and my hair is neither troll-doll spikey nor dyed Fudge magenta, like it was for two weeks at the end of 1999 (after a home-bleaching disaster).

Urk.

Speaking of nothing at all related, I went to a fantastic boutique launch last Tuesday, run by Gill's friend Geoffrey, and, on account of my outfit, was photographed for a magazine called Disordered. I can't help it, I must show off. Anyhoo, that snapped (pun completely intended) me out of my freaked out "What the fuck am I doing here?" depressive bubble. For all the most trivial ludicrious reasons like having someone think I was impressive enough to photograph ... hopefully not for the wrong end of a 'Hot or Not?' barometer.

I can admit to feeling odd and up and down, my life is positively freaky, man, but I'm going with it.

Kinda.

In my profile, I advised Piers, the photographer, that I was indeed:

"Half Japanese/Finnish. Mum and Dad met on a harpooning adventure somewhere near Norway."

Earlier, some fellow (who, quite obviously was on a slippery streak of something bad ... or maybe very good) sidled up to me with a sidelong look and queried - for a reason that was completely unclear - if I was Japanese/Finnish. To which I responded:

"Mate! I'm some Australian mongrel, what the hell would I know about where I come from?" And that of course gave me my big idea to respond to Piers in such a wayward way.

Heeheeheeee!

I'm a spaz.

In other news, more interviews, interviews, interviews (still at the big black and white bird with a penchant for frostbite) and now some dogsbody temp work in an office to get me by.

Flippers crossed.

Access all areas

2005-08-29T23:30:00.000+01:00

Access all areas: 1

Okay, so on Friday, I went to the Tate Modern and saw the amazing Frida Kahlo exhibition. Amaaaazing. Afterwards, I sauntered around other parts of the gallery, and found my favourite installation, Robert Smithson's Mirror Vortex.

The Mirror Vortex, as its name suggests, is essentially a vortex of mirrors. When you dip your head over, all while maintaining a respectable distance from the rope marked 'Do Not Cross', you can see yourself from at least 25 zillion trillion angles. At least. Anyway, while I worked out my most dubious angles to be viewed from (spanning 180 to 270 degrees; a necessary George Michael-style footnote to my press-kit), I heard someone bleat:

"Madam! Madam!"

All rather urgently.

Intrigued with my own image, I didn't think anything of it.

Then, I had a tap on my shoulder.

"Huh?" I replied, extracting my head from the chatty company of myself repeated 25 zillion trillion times over.

It was gallery staffmember in a big orange jacket. Security, actually.

"Madam, you are climbing on the exhibit. Please step away."

And me, an abashed modern-art Narcissus, mumbled: "Sorry, I was intrigued. I got to see myself from 25 zillion trillion angles. At least."

Then, I scuttled into another installation, a room, actually, where I got to observe myself on four television monitors, all while I negotiated a big white cube. Naturally, this kept me intrigued for 10 minutes longer than most normal patrons. At least.

Access all areas: 2

Today, I was rather hung over, after a friend's birthday drinks (well, Nath's birthday. SeaPea and Robbie B: he's drinking well!). Gill and I decided to meet up with our friend Miri at Hyde Park. So, we caught a red double-decker bus. Miri said she was at Marble Arch. We were in the general vicinity, saw an arch made possibly of marble and alighted. As we ambled along, we noticed a bunch of people coming out of a gate. I started walking in.

A bobby (hat and all) leapt in front of me:

"Sorry, can't I go in there?!" I said, surprised.

"No, madam, you may not!" he replied.

"How come? Our friend's in there?"

"Really?! Well, you can't come in this way," he chuckled, calmly blocking me as I craned my neck around.

"This is Hyde Park, isn't it?" Gill said.

Now the policeman and his policeman mate were cackling.

"Look at that razor wire!" one hooted.

"Look at those great bloomin' barbs and cameras!" the other one double-hooted.

"Yes?" Gill and I said.

"In England, our parks are public. Anyone can enjoy them!" explained the second officer. "This is not Hyde Park."

"Well, where are we, then?!" I exclaimed.

"Buckingham Palace," he replied rather flatly ... before laughing and, I believe, pointing at us.

Oh.

"Now, I need your names," said the first officer. "Where are you ladies from? Australia, I gather?"

"Yeah, Melbourne!" I cheered.

"No, New Zealand!" hissed Gill, all subterfuge.

"I take it parks are pretty tough in Melbourne, are they?" he smirked, again pointing at the wire, barbs and surveillance cameras.

"Very!" I lied.

"Do you really need our names?" Gill asked.

"Yes, it's to go in my book of stupid questions," he replied, bandying about an imaginary book.

Only after we insisted "Well, where is it, then?" did they point us in the direction of Hyde Park, up the road and around the corner.

Oh, how we laughed jolly laughs about our little security breach and counted ourselves lucky for not being gunned down in cold blood, or having the rabied gnashing hounds - well, corgis - set upon us. Such is the sign o' the times.

Ho ho ho!

Beatnik-esque

2005-08-23T10:54:00.000+01:00

I wish I didn't own all that crazy Nihongo-purchased colour or throw out my black ballet slippers (admittedly, they did get wet a few times in typhoon downpours teamed with waterproof 'socks' I'd wrangled together out of plastic supermarket bags, and they did have a hint of eau du mildew about them) because, far out, my new look for the pending London winter is so going to be Beatnik Momo. In my to-be neighbourhood Shoreditch on Sunday I saw a willowy girl in black leggings, tunic and slippers and, upon stuffing another McVities Jaffa Cake in my gob, I remarked a glowing, full-mouthed and rather disgusting: "I scho wanna be 'er".

As we continued ambling toward Hoxton Square, me in a hung-over and intensely grumpy state, sniffed in a mood of envious inadequacy to Gill, "Hmmmn, there are lots of hipsters around here, aren't there?"

And Gill responded, "Yes. You'll see lots of conceptual haircuts."

Immediately as we turned the corner (and this really better fits cinema than my inept ramblings) was a pouty young man posturing his conceptual haircut like Philip Oakley from The Human League meets Depeche Mode down by A Flock of Seagulls.

Leggings, black, and a conceptual haircut are so on the cards right now. After a job (I must wait 3 weeks to find out about the Penguin gig, I've assaulted a few recruitment agencies for freelance gear in the meantime).

I'm opening comments. Feel free to go forth and squander.

Random shout out #1

2005-08-22T12:22:00.000+01:00

Surprisingly, to those not in the know, I am, alas, a neglectful friend. It suddenly occurred to me now that I forgot to send my Oz care/thank you packages to two of my good girlfriends in Japan, Eri 1 and Eri 2. Yes, out of 12.5 million people in central Tokyo, I chose to have two friends with the same name requiring a numerical suffix.

So, if anyone is really keen on a couple of sweet young pen pals and is just itching to send out packets of totemo kawaii Tiny Teddies* on my behalf, get in touch, Sleuth.

*By Tiny Teddies I really do mean the dinkum bite-sized treat. After I wrote this, I became suspicious that ‘Tiny Teddy’ could be jive talk for something completely different, but I’ve now done my research and, after being entertained for a good half hour or so, seemingly it isn’t. Maybe it should be.

Strewth ...

2005-08-18T12:43:00.000+01:00

So, I went to this information session full of foreigners, like me, to sort out their bank accounts. Half of them were Australians, the rest were South African, save for a couple of girls from Latvia. One young man was like watching Joe Mangel incarnate, who is, of course, my favourite Neighbours character, ever. Young ocker Joe would randomly address the entire room of 25 people, all under the guise of talking to the disinterested South African skater-punk slouched next to him.

“I got meself a job at the Walkabout, mate, I couldn’t stand working in one of those pokey Pommy pubs!”

Which is, naturally, why you would come all the way to England to work … in a pub that’s exactly the same as the one at home. Exactly the same, that is, if your local had boomerangs on the walls and ‘Caution: Crocodiles in Pool Table’ signs. And I hope it doesn’t.

Then:

“Yeah, it’s time to start workin’. I spent the past three weeks in Amsterdam! They were the best bloody three weeks of my life …”

I tried to beat him to the punchline, well, at least mouthed it to myself, like a total nut case.

“But I can’t remember them!”

Boom-boom!

Later, as the NatWest bank representative collected our application forms that we’d spent half an hour painstakingly completing, she joked:

“Now, if anyone has been silly enough to select a password that’s rude, please let me know now because you’ll have to change it.”

After everyone tittered and guffawed that no one could be so stupid, there was a lull of silence.

Then, Joe piped up rather sheepishly, (if he were an especially loud, obnoxious lovably moronic merino):

“Sorry, love, I’ll be needing a new form then!”

He did.

Park life

2005-08-16T19:57:00.000+01:00

Well, today I decided to postpone my jaunt to the bank as thinking about opening a UK bank account without any UK deposits was entirely too much. Rather, I went to the park, in this instance named Turnham Green. I even listened to Blur to get into the mood until I decided it was entirely too twee even for me, nowadays, and so I scrolled down to the Bronx, like a total bad-ass. In the park it was me, a cone of hot chips and my friend Peter Stuyvesant. Peter was fine company , in a strange fast-burning-patented-by-Janeane-Garofalo-in-Romy-and-Michele kind of way, until I bothered flipping the pack and he advised in a haughtily accented bold print: "I do say, smoking ages your skin prematurely … and you are almost thirty, dear."

Give or take a few phrases.

In a fit of outrage, I kicked Peter out into the green, confusing the young children playing soccer … only to fetch him again a few minutes later. After all, five pounds can buy you a car in Australian dollars.

At the park I made the fascinating anthropological observation (which I promptly noted in my field book) that Australian women wear pregnancy FAR better than English women. Loud and proud linea nigra lines and post-very-recently-pregnant bellies in crop tops were something I really didn’t feel like seeing ... and probably never will feel like seeing. And then there was the woman who insisted on shoving her baby away from her down the path a la the Battleship Potemkin. I considered screaming "STOP, THE BABY!" in Russian, but refrained. Permanently erased from my memory (soon, I hope) was the 70-year-old man sunbaking his paunch in the milky sunshine wearing nothing but black jockey briefs.

Effectively, this mise-en-scene down in the park further prompted me to avoid pregnancy … at least for the next six months*.

HAHAHAHAHAhahahahahaHAHAhahahHAAAAA!

Oh dear.

Ha.

But really, the worst thing was it put me off my chips. So I fed them to the pigeons in strict defiance of the nearby sign that commanded 'DO NOT FEED THE PIGEONS'.

Everyone has been friendly to me so far, except for the gleaming speedball-eyed skinhead with an inordinately hairy back who decided to interrupt me enjoying the witty captions in the NME at Sainsburys by coming up and screaming “FUCK!” in my face before collecting a blue plastic basket to load up on his nightly aperitif of orange juice and Ajax, I presume.

And that made two people in my day in dire need of a gluggy tub of Nad’s.

End.

*Timbob is off to Bangkok tomorrow for the next six months. He'll be living far cheaper than I shall. I must stop obsessing about money.

Now I'm in London

2005-08-15T16:19:00.000+01:00

I feel a bit weird writing a weblog after so melodramatically dumping the internet a short three months ago. I feel like a shady imposter. Whatever.

Right. I'm in London now and rather jetlagged, still. The 20-hour flight sucked arse. That's all I can be bothered saying. Or, really, it sucked ectoplasm as I seem to have an unlimited supply, it's not in a Ghostbuster-logoed vacuum on my back, it's in my nostrils and throat and it's truly disgusting. When booking my flight, I ordered vegetarian meals so I would be fed first. Big mistake. Everyone else got chocolates and passionfruit custard, while I got something that looked like a sago pudding from 1952 and no bloomin' chocolates only sultanas. I don't care if I grew up in Australia's dried fruit capital, I bloody hate sultanas. Unless they're in hot cross buns. And they weren't.

So, at Heathrow, a rather astonishingly handsome young man named Nick who works as an account executive at C________ (where I wanted to work when I wanted to work in advertising) was listening in to me talking to some old people about my plans (well, basically me bragging about my Penguin interview) and, even though he had about four backpacks of his own, he came up struck a conversation, and said he'd help me get my unmanageable two suitcases, laptop bag and backpack into town. It didn't strike me at all as odd at the time (which was 5.30 in the morning - an odd enough time in itself - and after a 20-hour flight), but now in retrospect it seems a bit strange that he was being so helpful. It couldn't have been my inherent hotness, considering the ectoplasm, my vacant dead-stare, stringy hair and eau du clamminess. Maybe he has a book he wants published. Or he's a psycho-killer, partial to older women with headcolds. He did have a hint of the Christian Bales about him.

Anyhoo, we, meaning Nick and I, spoke loudly on the Tube, as is the way of people who have no sleep and are excited about their travels. A South African girl tried to join our conversation, but we couldn't understand what she was saying for much of the time, so nodded politely. I know that's rude, but I'm just being honest. At the incorrect guidance of a Tube employee, we disembarked at the wrong station, clambered up a mile-long escalator like the one at Parliament Station in Melbourne, only 10,000 times more terrifying, ended up in the middle of roundabouts, climbing wrought-iron fences, rapscallioning our way across ring-roads, hiding from cavalcades of police, and, finally, temporarily marooned in a cordoned-off statue of the Duke of Wellington. Naturally, this prompted me to ask: "Do you like the band, Shihad?" before entering into my long bragging tale about interviewing Shihad and associated tales. I even stopped to retrieve my three picks from my purse (in the aforementioned backpack).

Then, finally, after two hours of misadventuring, we got to the Sheraton, where I was staying. Then, Nick jumped in a cab and went to his hostel. And that was it. Naturally. But I am seeing him tomorrow to spend about 50 pounds on beer as thanks for his good deeds. So, yes, Nick is my new friend. It's a shame he's going to Portugal on Wednesday and then going home... I'll hook him up with anyone willing to date a hot 22 year old with a great job ... yeah, why not?

My new housemate-to-be is Gilly-baby. We met in Shoreditch yesterday, which will be our new home as of August 31st. We walked past the place that will be our new flat and walked into the gym across the road that will be our new gym. Shoreditch is gnarly as, like all the best bits of Fitzroy and Prahran and Collingwood and the best alleyways in the city all rolled into one. Timbob gave me a book of Banksy to read on the plane, and I spotted a number of Banksy's works there. In Shoreditch.

As Gill and I walked along the middle of some narrow street beside a council estate, a horn started blaring and some brakes ground to a halt behind us. It was a woman in cornrows and loads of gold jewellery gesticulating wildly:

Lady in car: [rolling down windows, waggling a long finger at me] "HEY YOU!"

Me: [leaping off the road] "Yes! Sorry, I'll move!"

Lady: "No, not that! Now, is they stockings or tights you're wearing, love?"

Me: "Um, I dunno ... they're pantihose."

Lady: "What? So you're not wearing suspenders?"

Me: "No."

Lady: "Oh. You're missing out. What you mean to tell me is that you're wearing tights. Tights sounds better than pantihose. You know that now, don't you?"

Me: "Um ... yes. Thanks."

Lady: "Well, I just had to say something cos I appreciate the fact you went to the effort to coordinate your tights with your shoelaces AND your lipstick. I'm impressed by that."

Me: [I didn't go to that effort] "Oh. Good!"

[Now it seemed the lady was about to hoon away. There was an uncomfortable pause. Then she continued.]

Lady: "Where'd you get 'em then? Those tights?"

Me: "From Tokyo."

Lady: "Of course you did, didn't you? You cheeky thing!"

Me: [Nodding and smiling like a lovable scamp to fit the 'cheeky thing' mould.]

Lady: Right, then. Sorry to gob on! See you later!"

Me: "Bye!"

And then she drove off, leaving a confused Gill and I in her little red Ford Escort dust.

So, yes, in light of the odd and tumultuous events that are my life of late, presently I'm happy to be in London. I keep looking around and thinking "COOL! I'M IN LONDON!" then I'll suddenly feel sad about where I'm not. Still, it's going to be an adventure. I'm very nervous about my interview and very nervous at the rate pounds sterling seem to be disappearing from my purse. It'll work out.

End ... for now.

So what's this Blogspot guff look like, then?

2005-08-09T03:54:00.000+01:00

Okay, here I am, and here is my new weblog. This is how it looks if I write dialogue:

Me: How does it look, Samone?

Me again: Well, it looks a bit crap-sor, but it will do, Samone. I mean, this shit is free. That erudite observation said and done, from now on I'm going to avoid swearing in print, after all, swearing in print is for whores and sailors, of which I am neither.

Me: You reckon? What about Liam Gallagher, he swears in print, doesn't he?

Me again: Of course I meant to say 'swearing in print is for whores, sailors and Liam Gallagher'.

Me: So you're not Liam Gallagher?

Me again: No. For the record, I have never fronted a successful Brit Pop band with my brother Noel ... I don't even have a brother. If I did, he'd probably have a fashionable 70s name like 'Jason' or 'Justin' or 'Jinxy', my parents would never have chosen a name like 'Noel'. Admittedly, I have been known to say the words 'What's the story, morning glory?' as a greeting, but never in song, and I certainly take immense pride in maintaining two distinctly separate eyebrows.

End.