Hello Old Friends

The big move has happened, during a downpour, no less. The soaking I got while moving loads of stuff out of the old place and into the new has landed me with a cold. So once again, I'm sat at home with my trusty box of tissues, my collection of movies and books, and surrounded by half empty boxes, but with little enough idea of where the rest of my stuff is.

There's an added complication with the new place though. Because right now it's feeling like I'm not just sharing it with L. I've been home from work three days due to separation anxiety with my tissues. And of those 3 days, I've had unannounced visitors on 2. Because L made the horrendous mistake of giving her parents a spare key.

They mean well, I know they do. The first visit was to drop off L's surprise birthday present, a ladder that they left set up at the end of her bed. Today's is to make some adjustments to some dodgy plumbing in the back yard. So it's not like they're dropping in to have lunch in the house, or something. But as a person who is not related to them, and whose own parents would never dream of stopping by a shared house without giving some kind of heads up first, I find it strange. It's especially awkward given that I'm still in my pyjamas today. I mean, I could have been coming out of the shower, or anything.

It makes me a little concerned for the future of the sharing. Because I like my own space, and I like it to stay my own space. I find it a bit strange and off-putting that someone else's parents can - and will - just randomly drop by unannounced, even if we're not home. I'm not saying that they shouldn't visit, far from it. But I'm getting the feeling that sharing with L when her parents are half an hour away is going to be very different to sharing with L when they're half a world away. And I'm not entirely convinced that it's going to work.

Thank god she is planning on getting the keys back off them when our other old London flatmate C comes to visit at the end of the month. Maybe then it will feel more like it's my home, rather than having a sense that I'm just dossing.

The Valley of Decision

It all began with a text message.

Well actually, it didn't, it began long before that, but it went up a gear when I got the message on Saturday.

"Holy crap!!! I just bought a house!!!"

Yep, L has finally found her dream home and managed to buy it on the first try. And when she stopped shaking like a leaf and reality set in, she repeated an offer that was made a long time ago, way back in London, in fact. She asked if I'd consider sharing with her again.

I considered it. I weighed it against my other options. One one side, there's my current flatmate, the bane of my existence and the reason that I now understand the difference between being messy and being dirty. For anyone who's confused, I'm the first one, and she's the second. I never knew how frustrating it must have been for the OCD L to share with my messiness, until I was confronted with someone who was fine with leaving chunks of food in random places in the kitchen, who has yet to learn that bathroom basins need the occasional clean, and that floors don't mop themselves; until I found myself turning into my mother and bitching about doors left wide open and letting the heat out. From another angle, I could scrape together the cash to live alone once more. It would mean writing off my travel plans for the next while, and probably putting off all sorts of other plans as well, but it could probably be done. And then there's sharing with L, someone that I know both can and will drive me nuts on occasion, but will also let me raid both her bookshelves and her DVD collection, will clean up after me in a most considerate way, and will make me laugh.

In the end, the decision was a no brainer, so I called up the property managers of my flat to find out about the logistics of extending my lease long enough to allow L to settle on her house and get herself organised. After a brief misunderstanding where they thought I was wanting to renew for another 12 months - panic stations - it's all organised. All except telling my flatmate.

In a twist, she's been the perfect flatmate since I made the decision. She's emptied bins, replaced toilet rolls and chatted away like she hasn't since I first met her way back in February. And I have to go and spoil all of that. It's going to be awkward, if only because when I go I'm taking all of my furniture with me, and that includes the bed she sleeps in. But what can I do? What else would I want to do?

Now to screw up the courage for the big conversation...Yep. Decisions. They can really make me stressed.

Domestic Bliss

It's a few months now since the decision to get a flatmate. She moved in, and nothing has really been quite the same since. You'd hope I meant that in a good way, but really, no. It's not that we hate each other, or bicker, or anything drastic, really. But there is a chronic incompatibility looming on the horizon, and I don't think she's even noticed it.

She's a nice enough person, I suppose. Quite friendly, not hugely annoying, and keeps very much to herself. In fact most of the time, I'm not entirely sure if she's home or not. I have to peek through cracks or look for light shining under doors to get a sense of whether I'm alone or potentially have company. The general consensus is that it's an odd relationship in the flat. And that was before she started eating all of her meals in her room, as well spending the rest of her time holed up in there. In some respects, I guess she's the perfect flatmate. She pays bills on time, she's quiet, and she never hogs the couch or forces me to watch TV shows I don't like. But although I'm never sure of her current presence or absence, I can usually tell when she's been around.

Now I'm not the greatest with all things housekeeping. I vacuum the carpets once a month if I'm lucky, and do the shower once a quarter. Dishes are washed only when the pile on the sink gets too precarious, or there's a danger of being so many that need washing that they won't fit on the dish drainer. If I remember to change my sheets regularly, and actually have them washed by the time it occurs to me to change them again, I'm doing pretty well. But there are some things that I figure it's only fair to keep on top of when you're sharing. I think it would have been even more important if that sharing involved the use of someone else's things. But no, apparently not.

When I moved into this flat, everything I owned was new. Except my couch. And my kitchen table. And the antique bits and pieces. But you get the picture. The plates had never been eaten off. The sheets had never been slept on. The towels had never been used. The saucepans had never cooked anything. It was all still in quite good shape when she moved in. That can no longer be said about some things. It's to the point where, after helping me out while I was laid up with my back, my mother has been forced to offer me advice on how to get the saucepans back into something like a good condition, after months of things being cooked onto the sides. You can pick which pans she uses most often; they're the ones which are the most filthy outside, to the point that I can't get them clean even with steel wool, and have a soap scum residue inside them. You're supposed to wash pans AFTER cooking, not before.

And I could write it off if it was just pans, even if my pointed scrubbing of pans I haven't used has failed to have an effect (passive aggressive behaviour? perhaps, but direct suggestions for a cleaning roster have failed to have any impact). But being flat out with back pain and seeing your flatmate take the vacuum out for the first time ever, only to do her own room, having never cleaned the shower, never mopped any of the floors, it's getting a little much. I think the final straw came this weekend.

I haven't been using the cooktop much recently, at least partly because of the depressing state of my pans. But it drove me to the point of action on Saturday. I tried to clean the cooktop, because it was beginning to look like a bio-hazard; baked on sauce, overspill, actual chunks of food. But it wouldn't just wipe down. It required an actual cleaning product. I've never had to use a product to clean a cooktop before, I've always been able to manage it along the way. When I picked up the metal grate that covers the jets and found it was sticky and coated in a thick layer of baked on sludge, I was fuming. It drove me mad, to the point where I actually finished a cleaning job and looked for more - an unheard of phenomenon. I vacuumed. I spot cleaned the carpet. I swept. I mopped. By the time my sister-in-law popped in for a visit, the place was worthy of my mother's stamp of approval. I even changed the tea towels on the kitchen rail - yet another something that seems to fall into my area of responsibility. The flat was gleaming. The stove looked brand new. It was pristine. Then I headed out for dinner.

I was out again tonight. When I got home, there were once again unwashed saucepan lids on the stove. There was also cooked on sauce and a chunk of unidentifiable vegetable. There was also a load of washing that had been sitting in the washing machine all afternoon. Too bad if I needed to use it.

Individually, most of the problems I'm having with this girl aren't major. But the whole package, from the way she acts like she is responsible for inspiring any physical activity I take up - hello, woman, I have 2 prolapsed discs, you think I'm going to be taking up marathon running right now? But you're the only reason I might decide to start an activity? Or wait, you're the one who "inspired" me to take regular walks all summer until my back got screwed up, even though you didn't move in until February? Genius - to her complete inability to realise that you need to clean the kitchen floor when you spill stuff on it, or that pasta sauce will stain white cupboards if you leave it caked on dribbling down the front of them for a week or more, it all adds up and it's all driving me completely insane right now. And I'm at a loss for how to approach the problem in a way that won't blow up in my face, because clearly just leaving it until she notices have absolutely no impact at all.

How do you tell someone that you think they're a slob and that if they don't pull their finger out you're not going to be letting them use your stuff anymore? How do you suggest to a flatmate that the experiment isn't working, and that they should find somewhere else to live when the lease is up for renewal? And how do you bitch and moan to a friend who is about to buy a 4 bedroom house, without any intention of accepting the invitation to share that house?

Because L is about to take the plunge into the real estate market. She wants someone to share her mini-mansion, and I fit the bill quite nicely. She knows I'm fed up with my current living arrangement, she knows we rub along well enough as flat mates - or at least she knows she can put up with my more annoying habits, and that I won't kill her for hers. But I don't think I'm ready to go and live in her house, and that's another conversation that I don't know how to have. That said, I think I have more clues on that one than I do on how to kick out my current flat mate. If I could re-negotiate my rent, I'd be happy enough to stay here on my own. But dear god, something better change soon.

Better the devil you know?

I've known L for quite a few years now. We first met in a dance class back in 2002, I think it was. I shared a flat with her in London. She's an occasional reader of this blog - very occasional - and a regular contributor of inspiration for content. Today's post will be no exception, although she might be surprised to read descriptions of her self that are bound to follow. Because as good a friend as I consider her, there are a few things about her that I would dearly love to change, and I don't just mean her obsession with the idea that she is fat because she doesn't neatly fit what she has come to believe is the perfect body shape. There are reasons why we very rarely discuss politics, and one of those reasons reared it's head today.

In many respects, we have similar backgrounds. Our father's both trained as teachers, although mine left the profession when I was still in primary school. We both went to the local state school before moving on to private secondary schools and then to university. We both know what it's like to be in a family that has to scrimp and save, that there's a difference between something you really want and something you really need. And as long as we avoid certain no-go areas of conversation (religion and politics, the twin minefields of most conversational gambits), we get along like a house on fire. But in those areas, our views are such polarised opposites that conflict is bound to arise, and I find myself compelled to challenge her on how and why she can come from where she has, yet still hold the ideas that she does. At the same time, I'm rational enough to think that there's no doubt she has similar queries about my views.

Anyone who has read this blog more than once over the many years I have been writing it now (I think there's one of you out there...) would know that my own leanings are so far to the left that I'm a virtual socialist. I get fired up about the big issues of social inequality, by prejudice, by ignorance. I admit, ironically, I'm not terribly tolerant of people who don't agree with me on these points. Luckily, L and I were friends long before I discovered her inbuilt prejudices against what she today described as "total scum".

Now don't get me wrong here. There are people in the world who would merit that description a million times over. People who lie, cheat, steal, and plenty more. But I don't think that you deserve the epithet simply for being poor and, if you're lucky, working class. Last time I checked, there wasn't a means test on the right to consider yourself a decent human being. Nor was there any reason to think that because there are people of "reduced means" living in an area, people who get their hands dirty for a living, who may not have had the same chances as you or may not have had the same inclinations as you, that it must be unworthy of your attention. Poverty certainly is no justification for being branded scum. Yet L, an otherwise rational person, is so blinded by her prejudice - and acknowledges it - that she would not consider living in an area where there were such people. Nor would she look at an area that was home to many migrants, a large gay population, or any of a wide ranging variety of groups she is prejudiced against in the abstract sense. She is capable of suspending her judgement when faced with an individual case - I think it comes more from an innate politeness that stops her from giving offence - until she actually knows a person and then is more likely to consider them on their merits. Her judgement is so irrational and arbitrary that her definitions are flexible; the English, for example, are not migrants.

Bearing in mind that this is an intelligent, well-brought up woman living in the twenty-first century. You'd be forgiven for thinking that her views were those of a ninety year old woman back in 1952. Although progressive in some ways, she holds firmly entrenched views that cannot be swayed by any logic, views that, until recently when Tony Abbot's political aspirations saw the culmination of a slow drift to the right in Australian politics, most would be wary of expressing for fear of being considered as almost a fascist. I'm not calling her a fascist - I want to make that perfectly clear - just saying that, as much as I verge on socialism, she verges on fascism, the opposite ends of the political spectrum. I might lightly banter with her on the subject of her prejudices, but I sometimes want to hit her over the head about them, until she sees how far to the right she occasionally gets. I'm sure she feels that same feeling about my leftist, pinkish politics. So we avoid the topic when we're thinking clearly. When we're not, we manage to steer into safer waters soon enough to avoid a storm. But I wonder, sometimes, if that's the right thing to do. Because my understanding is that prejudices should be challenged, especially where they appear illogical. Where people who see the world differently sit quietly by while others grow in bigotry, trouble can brew. Sure, she's my friend, but if I can't challenge my friend, what do I do when I see the same bias in a stranger? Where does it end?

On that entirely too serious note, I should probably explain the context of the statement. She has been looking to buy a house, so we were doing the rounds of the open houses today and found ourselves in an area that she was probably less familiar than she might have been. "I guess it's not likely that complete scum live around here, is it," she observed, leaving the rest of us spluttering. No, we assured her. The ones poor enough to fit her definition of scum would not be able to afford to live in the area. They, like her blogger friend, would be forced to rent something a little further out of the city, on the wrong side of the upside down river that messily divides Melbourne's suburbs from each other.

I don't think she'll be buying the house in question, but no doubt she'll end up with something in a similar area. And I can't help but think that the cafes that line the streets where she will live will be filled with a certain type of person, someone who goes out on the weekend to sit with a chai latte and read the newspaper, smugly congratulating themselves on being able to afford to boost property prices to the point where a person earning an above average wage can't get a loan to buy a vacant block of land on the fringes of the city, let alone afford to build a house on it. Patting themselves on the back because they have been fortunate to escape the "scum" of the city, even though the parts of Melbourne where they live were for decades the slums where the scum thrived. And I wonder at the vagaries of a world where two people who have so much in common can find themselves on opposite sides of a fence, staring across a yawning divide that neither one is prepared to cross; the Yarra river of ethical and political debate, and I wonder if I find myself on the right or the wrong side, and if there is any way to make her see that the world is a richer place on this side.

Peace, out

My guest has departed the scene and I have my flat back to myself once again. It's a true luxury that I hadn't really appreciated until I kept having to curl myself up on the 2-seater couch, rather than stretching full length on the 3-seater as my visitor did every night (side note: I'm quite a bit taller than her...so how come she always claimed the longer seat?). Two days after Christmas, Guest and I set off on a road trip to Sydney, along with a recently-returned L. That all 3 of us survived the road trip is a testament to the power of biting your tongue, turning the other cheek, and simply walking away when necessary. Because as much fun as Guest was in my flat, she became even more so on the road - and that was travelling in separate cars.

It seemed that nothing L or I did was going to get her pleased about the route and itinerary we had planned for the road. She wasn't happy with the hours spent wandering Raymond Island looking for koalas, until she'd seen enough to make both L and I over-tired and grumpy. She made the almost fatal error of disagreeing with L's pronouncement that the light was gone for photography. If there's one thing (other than Excel spreadsheets) that L can be counted an authority on, it's photography. Guest, with her small point-and-shoot camera that she needed to pull the lens out of by hand to take a photo, ought to have known better than to question the knowledge of the person who was clearly better equipped. When we declared that we were tired and hungry, we were declared to be 'boring'. I notice that we weren't so boring when we gave in to her demand that, since it was her birthday, she was claiming the big bed in a room on it's own while we were in bunks next door. To be honest, I think at least part of the reason for giving in was to escape from her for a few hours.

So there we were, the next day, apparently managing to get her back up again by selfishly refusing to veer across oncoming traffic on a blind corner so she could take a photograph of coastline that looked remarkably similar to what we looked at all day. Things improved a little once we got the part where we - rather, I, as the one who had travelled the coastline as a little tacker on family holidays - had decided stops could safely be made. But even there, having been told that we couldn't see her gesturing out her window, given that we were in a car travelling in front of her and all, she took the credit for "suggesting" various stops. But we gritted our teeth and soldiered on to Bateman's Bay. It was unfortunate that our hotel had also been chosen by several schoolies age kids, who were partying it up in a few rooms. It was equally unfortunate that I was angry enough from earlier events that the kids bore the brunt of it; Guest certainly wasn't prepared to do anything other than moan about the noise, and L wasn't ever going to act on any annoyance she felt. Fuelled by days of pent up frustration, I thumped on the door and put the fear of God - or worse, his mother - into a teenage boy, and frightened an older man hanging out with a few teenage girls into actually acting on his promise to call a taxi. I was figuring we'd need the sleep to maintain the calm the next day.

The last stretch of driving, between Bateman's Bay and Sydney, seemed to me to offer only a few good stopping points - the major one being a minor diversion to Jervis Bay. Before we set off from our hotel, I dutifully informed Guest of the plan, only to have her tell me that she was planning on stopping at any beauty spots on the way through, whether we did or not. Stuck in traffic almost the entire way, I couldn't help but enjoy the thought that the roads stayed stubbornly distant from the coast until the Jervis Bay turn off.

We managed to lose her going through the barriers into the national park, and, in spite of catching her at various points ('Why are you eating lunch in the car park? You should go for a walk and carry your lunch in with you.' 'We saw your car parked there and were waiting for you, we thought you might not have eaten.' 'Oh, shame. You must take a walk through there. I'm off to Cave Beach, see you there.') didn't see her again until New Year's Eve, when frantic texts all morning were more insistent that we be at the park I'd found out about by 9am.

To be honest, I was kind of dreading spending a day with her by that point. But L and I agreed that we would go - although it was 9:30 before we even got up, having "forgotten" to set our alarms - and wait it out. L established herself in a bunker and proceeded to roast in the 36 degree heat. I attempted to steal a little of the shade that Guest had herself borrowed from the neighbouring Irishmen, but kept being told to move myself further down as the shadows shifted throughout the day. Heaven forbid that she should have to shift herself to the other side of me and inconvenience herself in any way.

But still, Sydney does nothing well if not new years. The fireworks spectacular shook a by now very drunk guest lose from her boring friends, and we parted shortly after midnight. She hasn't been heard from directly since. There have been no thank yous for having put her up in my flat for a week, for having clothed her when she moaned about the cold, for feeding her (not just while she was in the flat either, but also supplying her with breakfast and lunch for the whole road trip). There was no acknowledgement of the planning that went into the trip, for finding our New Years spot, for L and I standing guard over our patch of ground while she and the others wandered down to the railing for the best possible view of the 9 o'clock fireworks. The only reason I know she made it home safely is because she posted on Facebook that she'd had a great night. I haven't posted a new status since; for all she knows, L and I ended up in the Harbour when passengers surged to get on the one and only ferry that arrived around 1:30am. Clearly, I am no longer of any use to her.

L and I made our way back to Melbourne over 2 days. They were largely peaceful days, once L managed to navigate us back to where we'd parked the car (it was at her brother's place; given the trouble she had getting us there in the first place, I should have known I'd need more specific directions from the concierge at the hotel to get us there). The early days of the new year were enough to wipe out the unpleasantness of the last days of the old year. Until I got home and found the wodge of ginger hair still stuck on the drain of my shower, the dusting of talcum over the floor, the screwed up mess of bedding in the spare room. And as it all came crashing back into my memory, I was able to take a deep breath and let it all go. Because no way in hell is she going to be crossing the threshold of any place I'm staying ever again. As if thank you was so hard to say.

Irony has a name

This week has been a teensy bit surreal. Not sure where it came from, why it came, or how, but I wish it would go away. Because out of the blue, for no real reason, I'm suddenly missing London.

Yep, that's right. The weather in Melbourne turns nice, I get myself set up in a great flat, I pick up my new car tomorrow and I'm in a job that I actually quite like, with the prospect of some financial security looming, and suddenly I'm missing the grey, grim life that I led for the past 2 years. Go figure.

I first noticed it last Friday, after a night out with work people. Maybe it was because it was the first night out with them that I'd had, a night where nobody I knew was driving, where I stumbled home in the wee sma's, not having to sneak around fearful of waking anyone, or hoping that there was nobody deciding that I'd slept enough. Maybe it's down to the looming thesis deadline that's evoking memories of late nights in London, or perhaps it was the arrival of some London-related mail. I know I triggered it properly by downloading the latest episodes of Spooks, and reminiscing about all the times that I've run through the Bakerloo platforms at Charing Cross Station, just like Lucas et al were doing in the most recent, trying to pick where they were filming, and getting excited when I recognised it, just like I used to do with Australian films when homesickness started to bite back in London.

Or perhaps it's really all down to L's announcement that she is definitely coming back to Melbourne at the end of this year. It's truly the end of an era once she gets back. Sure, I've still got friends there, there are still people who I would visit if I was to go back. But she is the only one that I knew over there that I also knew here before I left. And when she comes back, it is almost certain to mean that I am here for good as well. And much as I'm loving being back in Melbourne - and don't get me wrong, I love this city like no other - I'm missing some of the freedom of being over there.

Over there I didn't get nightly phone calls from my mother. I didn't feel sit around doing nothing, because it's next to impossible to pin anyone down without booking them months in advance. I was out and about, doing things on whims without having to justify it to anybody. There is a freedom to living on the other side of the world to what you consider your real life, and I miss that. I miss the adventure of wandering a city that is older than my country, older than I can contemplate, where you turn the corner and suddenly you're looking at something that pre-dates not only your own country, but the one you're standing in as well. The twists and turns, the people.

I never thought I would come back here and wax lyrical about London. Maybe it's the realisation that I really can't move back there that has set me off. I don't think I would move back. But I would pick up huge chunks of it and move them here if I could. I think I understand what it was that made the colonialists attempt to reconstruct England in Australia, at least to a certain extent. I'm glad they did.

Actually, I think I know what has set me off. It's the realisation that both of my brothers are deserting the family Christmas, leaving me defenceless on Annual Family Fight Day. I can see their point; it's the first time I've been home for the festive season since 2008, so it's about time I shouldered some of the burden. It feels strange and slightly wrong to be once again contemplating a hot Christmas, let alone one at home but without half my family around.

It's frustrating to think of just how homesick I was before I made the decision to move back here, only to find that I'm missing London now. I had thought I was settled, but it seems I've been kidding myself, at least a little. I'm not really. It's nice to have a home, it's nice to be home, but damn I love to travel. Guess I'll just have to get down to planning another little adventure...

On the dock of the bay

I like San Francisco. There are no two ways about it. The only thing I can come up with that is wrong with the city - it's insanely steep hills - are also something that adds to its character, meaning that the 'fault' is pretty much nullified. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of Melbourne. There are the street cars - including an old Melbourne W-class, still in its green and yellow livery from the days of the Met - the enormous expanse of water that fails to yield a single city surf beach, the local love of good food and music, the central shopping strip that is strangely reminiscent of Bourke St, and the glitzy neighbouring city that overshadows it all.

But there is one thing San Francisco has that Melbourne can't even pretend to lay claim to: The Bush Man. Although the name suggests there is only one, apparently, there are a few of them scattered around the city. Some, I've been told, even work in concert. The deal is this: take one homeless man, seated on the ground holding a branch that passes for a bush in front of his face. Place him near an object of street furniture, whether it be a bin, a seat, a light, anything will do as long as it's enough to register the object. To those looking directly at him, he will be obvious and will probably seem a little bit nuts. To those like L, who are absorbed in looking everywhere else, however, he will be invisible, just like all the other homeless beggars on the street who are ignored every day as a matter of survival for many city dwellers. He takes advantage of this invisibility to scare the living crap out of the unsuspecting. He suddenly thrusts aside his "bush" and yells, or simply thrusts the branch into the path of the passersby, having picked his mark carefully as someone who has not seen him, for maximum effect.

The result is hilarious for those who have noticed him (often by being given a fright themselves). It's like a hidden camera exercise. Only the tin beside him, for those who appreciated his efforts to amuse them to give him a little something back, gives away the fact that he is a genuine vagrant, not some actor with make up giving him the bad dentistry and worn out wardrobe of someone living rough. His wide grin suggests that he enjoys his job a lot.

The Bush Man has become a bit of a local celebrity. Tourists can even buy t-shirts that proclaim "I had the $^%£ scared out of me by the Bush Man". But it masks what is a large and growing problem, as far as I can see. Yes, he is doing something to support himself. It's a simple enough ruse that gives enjoyment - and fright - to many. But I have seen as many, if not more, beggars on the streets of American cities than I have seen anywhere else. In one of the world's richest nations, there are many who go without.

That this man is able to hide in plain sight suggests something about the collective consciousness of society when it comes to the down and outs around us. It is too easy to pretend that they are not there. The gratefulness of some beggars when you simply acknowledge their existence by shaking your head when they ask for money can be heartbreaking. I can't - and won't - give money to people begging on the street, if only for the security reasons I had drilled into me when I was younger (never reveal where you keep your cash, how much of it you have, or make it more accessible for someone who may or may not be able to overpower you), but I always feel terrible for walking by people who are obviously in distress. Yet the vast majority of people don't even notice that they're there. So well done to the Bush Man for taking the initiative and calling some attention to himself, if nothing else.

Troubled times

Approaching the half way point of the epic road trip, there are several problems that have reared their ugly heads. If I'm honest, I should have foreseen at least 2 of them. The rest? Well, nobody has perfect foresight, but hindsight is 20-20. Hopefully, I'll be able to avoid making the same mistakes again in the future. And some of the problems are beyond my control, so I just have to resign myself to dealing with them and moving on.

See, there are few things worse on a road trip - or any long trip, for that matter - than being sick. And so far on this one, I've had a cold that turned me into a travelling snot block between Boston, Philadelphia and Washington. And then, as we pulled into Chicago - snot free at last - I realised that I'd done something to my back. Something that made walking extremely painful. Potentially, something caused by driving through the storm from hell the night before - that's what I'm blaming. It's mostly eased up now, after experiencing Chicago largely by bus rather than the usual method of transport for L and I in cities - foot. But now, every time I have a long drive, every time the bed isn't just perfect, it twinges. I have to be extremely careful carrying my enormous pack, and I hate not being able to just throw it around. But physical impairment pales in comparison to some of the other problems.

Because whilst driving through some of the flattest, dullest scenery that America has to off in its northern states - thanks Iowa and Nebraska - L has become sulky. She's bored. And this has uncovered a fundamental difference in our travelling philosophies that was masked while we were jetting around Europe. She's all about the destination. And I mean ALL. The journey itself? Well to her, that's just the prelude where you plan what you're going to do when you get there, so anything that takes longer than reading the Lonely Planet is just wasted. Whereas I - the instigator of the road trip - am quite well able to cope with long stretches where there is very little to see. I'm not sure if it was my early training, taking long car journeys up through Australia's eastern seaboard, or if I'm just taking the Baroque view of things, where the journey is almost more important than the destination, but either way, I cope better. And by the end of a long day, where I have done the bulk of the planning and almost all of the navigation, since L struggles with map reading on the go, we're both niggly. And things get said. Like the bit where, after the longest day on the road that we will have, we were pulling into a budget hotel in Sioux City.

It was getting dark quickly, we'd missed a couple of turns and had to back track. All day I had been asked questions that I didn't know that answers to, that I couldn't know the answers to, never having been to any of the places before. And when she cruised into the car park - or what we thought was the car park - and asked what I thought was an idiotic question before accelerating so I couldn't see where to navigate her (because I have to tell her where to go, she not being used to or comfortable in unfamiliar places), I snapped. I told her to slow down, to stop asking me things I couldn't know, to take a look for herself. And we barely talked for the rest of the night. We unpacked the car in complete silence, she threw her stuff onto the bed (always the best bed...I don't know how she does it), and we went to dinner without her doing more than nodding. Last night was hardly better when I informed her that spending an hour at Mt Rushmore (which I knew would turn into 2 hours if I agreed to 1 - I know her photographic habits too well to rely on estimates of time to see places), at the expense of a couple of places further down that I really wanted to see, on a day when we will be spending around 8 hours in a car, that just so happens to be my 30th birthday, is not something I'm prepared to do. Sure, we'll be stopping there. We will see it. But she knew going in that this wasn't going to be an easy trip. And I think she underestimated just how much road time we'd be logging, and just how unprepared for long boring stretches she would be.

But not all of the problems relate to her (although her tendency to open the curtains before we're fully dressed, regardless of the outlook - or in-look - has caused me some anxious moments, as has her drifting and abrupt driving style). Perhaps the biggest problem is that I am fast running out of money. Boston and Washington DC sucked up too much of my cash and I'm now in the unenviable position of looking like I'm barely going to make it into the 3rd week of the trip before it's all gone. And when it's gone, there is no more. I have no resources to tap into. So how I'm going to pay my share of the car extras is beyond me. Although part of that is also caused by L and her insistence that she be put on as an extra driver, even though she refuses to drive in any of the cities and only does a few hours in the morning when we're in the country, or the evening when we've left a city that morning. Bam, there goes $145 of my carefully planned budget.

That's not to say that I'm not enjoying the trip, though. As I type this, I'm sitting in Custer, with a view of the Black Hills on the other side of town. Today sees us heading through the Wild West, towards Cody, and then Yellowstone. I'm loving what I've seen so far. I just wish there weren't niggles and worries to get in the way. And I've resolved never to do a road trip with L ever again.

Dazed and confused

I'm currently propped up in bed in a Chicago hotel room. I'm trying very hard to move nothing other than my finger right now, because I've done something to my back. I'm not certain when, or how, but I know that it wasn't there yesterday morning when we left the middle-of-nowhere place we were forced to stop in thanks to a combination of traffic jams and horrendous weather (think three hour lines of cars to get across the Canada-US border, followed by a storm with rain so heavy that I was driving at 20 miles an hour down a freeway, still barely able to see, and not even being overtaken). But it was there when the time came to lift my bags out of the car.

But either way, sitting here gives me a good view of the morning show that L puts on. If I didn't know better, I'd think it was just to provoke me. But I know better. I know that the fact we are in a first floor hotel room, with the windows open, curtains wide apart and cars and buildings all around us with prime views into our room is not enough to stop L from emerging from the bathroom wrapped only in a towel, shower cap still on her head, for some unfathomable reason. It's not enough to keep her from stepping out of the shower without a top on and standing in front of the window as she looks for something. Because it didn't stop her from stripping down to her flesh coloured singlet top before she went in, it never stopped her from essentially flashing the people up top on London buses from the windows of our old flat, and no doubt it won't keep her from putting on a show any time there is a window - because she likes natural light. And right now, there's plenty of that streaming through the windows. Luckily, it's Sunday morning. There aren't that many people out and about. Well, not compared to last night, at any rate. So I had better get on with getting myself organised for our day out and about in Chicago. But one thing's for certain: as I do that, I'm getting dressed in the bathroom.

Washington Burning

I've been in the US for almost a week now, and I've never seen such extremes. The rich and poor are pretty sharply divided here, and it's not by geography. If nothing else, it's the levels of bitterness that seem to mark them out. And as a white woman travelling here, I seem to come in for my share of the bitterness. Because the poor are predominantly black or Latino. In the course of three days in Washington, I have been abused because I didn't respond to being called "white girl" by someone in a wheel chair who, I realised a few seconds too late, was asking me to open the door. I might have felt a whole lot worse about that had I not been laden with around 30kg of bags at the time, and barely able to walk myself. The other time was when L and I were walking through the apparently safe, upper class streets of Foggy Bottom, where we were yelled at across the street by a down and out drunk, who screamed that we were "white hos".

It's not restricted to race, or even locals though. Wandering the paths of Arlington Cemetery, a beautiful peaceful place the sheer scale of which is overwhelming, we came across a group of French teenagers on a school trip. I thought it was a strange place to take a school group, but as a way of getting across the nature of America's militarism, and the respect in which they hold the armed forces here, I guess there are few better places to go than a monument to the fallen that not only overlooks the national capital (not to mention the Capitol), but is within the grounds of a vanquished foe of the Union from the civil war. some of the French boys had outpaced their teachers and, when they didn't get a response to their question (in French) asking if we understood them, proceeded to follow us along the path with the continuous stream of filthy gutter slang that would have had their mothers washing their mouths out with soap, if not cuffing them across the back of the head. Because we do understand French, we just didn't realise they were talking to us when they asked.

But there you have Washington in summary; beautiful monuments and stunning settings, with the constant background hum that something isn't quite as full of pomp and circumstance as the politicians and public servants would like to believe. I guess it's like Canberra, but on a grander scale. And so are the social problems. Because everything in America is bigger than it is anywhere else, it stands to reason that the social and racial divides should be no different.

Forfeits

I got back from my annual Christmas/New Year trip to pretend that I'm not an orphan yesterday. Flatmate L and I were in New York. First impression is that I can't really give a first impression of a place that seems to familiar; after seeing it in so many TV shows, movies, clips, books, the geography of the place is so familiar, the accents, the lifestyle, everything about it seemed like I'd been there before. It was a great trip. And now, I have to pay the price of that.

The most obvious cost is that I'm jet lagged. Not nearly as badly as the last time I went home - I feel like I could be awake until at least 3 pm. But the tiredness isn't the true cost of the jet lag. It's a little more complicated than that. See, L is, in some ways at least, superhuman. She doesn't need to sleep, or that's what she's convinced herself. So, she doesn't. All during the trip, I experienced the joy of being woken up when she decided it was time. And today, she felt that I had slept enough, deciding to try the subtle method of turning on the TV, which is right over my bedroom. Except she turned it onto a music video channel - her favourite viewing selection, if Friends isn't available - and now we will have Lady Gaga running on high repeat for the rest of the afternoon. Now don't get me wrong, I like a good music video as much as the next person. Unless the next person is L, because she has something of an obsession with them. But after the first hour, the repetition drives me insane. And I was proud that I managed to get through our trip away without killing her, so I'd like to keep that record intact. Not likely when Gaga is telling me that he can't read her poker face.

Of course, the other penalty is that I have to head back to work tomorrow to pay for it all. And for the first time since August, I won't be on reduced hours. Welcome to 2010. There's a whole month of working full weeks until the almost full pay kicks back in. And I'm so excited about the full pay that it was easy to forget about the extra time at work. Not that we work so hard in the first place - it's still a lighter load than any full time job I did back in Australia. But the first week back after a break is always tough. It feels like a month. And that's when it's a short week. The tricks of the calendar make this a full week. Joy. Well, I guess I did spend nearly every penny I earned - and a few that I didn't, thanks to the wonders of credit cards - so here we are, back with me needing to work.

But then I think back to being in New York. To sitting on a distinctly lopsided boat while fireworks went off next to the Statue of Liberty for midnight, and it suddenly seems worth it. Because at the end of the day, I'll still pay almost any penalty in order to travel. I just reserve the right to bitch about it when I get back.

Nutty matters

The squirrel sat on the roof of the shed and looked at me, almost daring me to blink. Half asleep, I stared back before shaking myself out of my reverie. I moved to take out some bread. When I looked out the window again, the squirrel had moved. In the seconds I hadn't been looking, he - because it's almost always a he, in my mind - had darted from the shed to the brick fence that separated the two large gardens behind my building. In summer, he'd be camouflaged there but now, in the Autumn, he was still visible. He twitched his tail at me.

I weighed up opening the window and throwing out some of the nuts that we keep on the bench for Charlie and Lottie, our squirrel neighbours, but decided it would take too much time. Instead, I put my bread in the toaster and began to ready my other breakfast things. Yoghurt, juice, Vegemite.

The toast seemed to take forever. I moved back to the window, but the squirrel - Charlie, Lottie, or just a random visitor - had vanished. The toast popped and I sighed as I noticed that, yet again, the toaster had spat it out too soon. Instead of the crisp golden brown, it was white and patchy. That's what you get when you buy the £10 kettle-and-toaster combo, I guess.

The flat was quiet as I sat down at the kitchen table to eat my toast, book in hand. A movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. The squirrel was back, playing hide and seek with me, apparently. Either that or statues. As I turned back to my book, I heard childish voices in my head; "What's the time Mr Wolf?" Breakfast time, I answered them, chomping down on a soggy piece of toast and getting absorbed in my book. Twenty minutes later I looked up at the clock in a panic. I was late. Again.

I downed the last of my juice, rinsed my dishes and put them in the dishwasher. Standing over the sink, I noticed that the squirrel was back on the roof of the shed, almost at my eye level. He seemed to be laughing at my sudden haste. I made a snap decision. I was already late, so why not?

I wrenched the window open - it's a stretch to make it across the bench and still have enough leverage to manage the large, heavy sash; a stretch too far for the shorter Flatmate C. Opening the bag of nuts, I threw a few out one by one, watching them land in the leaf litter of the courtyard below. The squirrel looked at me and if he'd had eyebrows, he would have cocked one. Clearly, he was not to be bought off with nuts. I shrugged a shoulder and slammed the window closed again before dashing downstairs and into the bathroom for a lightning quick shower.

Later in the morning, I sat at my desk in the misery of a sore throat and ear ache. "Toughen up," came the email from Flatmate L. "It's all a question of mind over matter." Maybe she's right. Then again, maybe she's not. I wonder if the squirrel has eaten the nuts yet. It's tempting to head home and check, but instead I stay at my desk and throw back a couple of paracetamols. The throat and ear improve, but I'm still curious about the squirrel.

Whatever Anonymous

I have a flatmate in need of an intervention. Maybe both of them do. Either that, or it’s time I got out and got a life. They’re both in extreme states right now, brought about by their own foolish actions. They each have a dependency situation that is coming to a head and will cause them pain in the not too distant future. Their uppers of choice vary, but the result is still the same: they’re both exhausted, and unable to stop themselves from going back for more.

Take L, as the first example. She’s just discovered what I can only call the joys of a night out drinking, at the age of 35. It was never going to end well, really. For 30 years barely a drop of alcohol passed her lips. By all accounts, her mother virtually insisted that she have a drink of some sort at her 21st birthday party; everyone knew better than to expect her to be ‘merry’ by the time her 30th rolled around. Now here we are, five years later, and she has come under the influence of her work friends who are the typical residents of London – verging on liver failure thanks to the lifestyle that is expected of all and sundry in the city and its surrounds. She goes out for dinner during the week, like this week and, because her tolerance is so low and she never learnt the coping tools that the rest of us picked up when we were young enough not to suffer from hang overs, she gets drunk. She never believed me that she was feeling the effects of alcohol, until recently. She still insists, the morning after, that she’s not drunk. She’s just tired, dehydrated, has a headache. But the last couple of sessions have seen her bleary eyed and chugging water. My personal favourite was the night she nearly fell down the stairs, giggling as she saved herself.

Part of the reason it hits her so hard, though, is the reason she needs an intervention. The woman doesn’t sleep. She insists that the smallest thing wakes her up, that it always has. But lately her exhaustion has been so deep that I’ve been able to bang around the flat at 3 a.m. and not disturb her. Her four hours of sleep are deep, but not enough to replenish her. I spent a fortnight of barely sleeping in the lead up to the end of this semester, studying until the wee sma’s, culminating in a memorable night of 2 hours sleep. I still looked more alert and awake than she did. I was the one pulling her back from stepping out in front of cars, in spite of being so exhausted myself that I was mainlining caffeine and hallucinating that walls were rippling. Maybe she has that problem too. Maybe that explains why she walks into the walls to often I've started comparing her to the ball in a pinball machine. I’m tempted to tie her to her bed and force her to sleep, because she won’t stop driving herself and I’m getting the feeling that collapse is imminent.

C has a slightly different problem. Her addiction is to Shoreditch. It’s like a vortex, sucking her in a couple of nights a week. The eye of the storm is her boyfriend, a cheerful Irishman who lives up to the reputation of his countrymen for putting away booze. C, in contrast, is a petite Japanese girl with a lower tolerance for it than even L. I’ve seen her literally legless, before, being carried out of a party with the kind of jelly legs that are usually seen in cartoons when someone has been hit over the head with an anvil. She staggered in at 4 a.m. this morning and woke with red eyes, exhausted. She’s off out again tonight, and probably tomorrow as well. Right now, I think she’s single-handedly keeping Nurofen in business. Just like an alcoholic, she goes to Shoreditch for one or two, planning on hitting just the one bar. She emerges hours later having done the rounds of any number of haunts, but few clear memories of which ones. It’s not even that she’s drinking too much – she’s sworn off mojitos, now – it’s more that she’s also just not sleeping. In her case, the intervention would be removal from her boyfriend, the enabler to end all enablers given that he works in Shoreditch. He leads her into the Twilight Zone of its bars, and they emerge later having lost several hours without knowing where.

Her intervention is coming though, whether she wants it or not. The boy is off to Thailand very soon, and they won’t be seeing each other again until Christmas, when they meet at her family’s place in Indonesia. Her liver will have time to regenerate, if it's given the chance. But December is party month. It won’t have a hope.

And then there’s me. I probably need my own intervention right now. It’s to pry me away from the flat. I’ve got an invitation to the party C will be at tonight. It’s the 30th birthday of a mutual friend. There will be loads of people there, it’s an 80s themed dress up. And I should go. I know I should. But somehow, I just can’t muster the enthusiasm to go and be the sober person in the room. And I can’t bring myself to go and spend my hard earned on booze. I’m becoming a stick in the mud. And what’s worse, I like it. Someone get a crow bar and pry my fingers loose from the door frame. It’s the only way to get me out and about tonight.

Bitch and Moan

I should blog. I ought to blog. There should be plenty for me to write about. I am, after all, on leave from work and in a city with so much to offer that I could never tire of it. That's all true, it is. I'm a single girl, with plenty of friends she can call on and no ties to hold her back.

Except that I do have ties. They may not have held me back today, but they're still there. Of course, they're not an excuse I could possibly use for the fact that I'm in the process of following up my busy day of housework with an equally busy day of sitting on my butt. Nor do they excuse the way I've been wondering all day what modern housewives without kids get up to all day - how the hell do they fill their time, given that there's only so much you can give to vacuuming, mopping, washing clothes and dishes, and I've done it all in one day? But they do offer something to explain me using one of my much loved leave days in cleaning the flat (it was my turn, really, given that I hadn't done any housework since before I went home for two weeks. Or even further back, since before I went to Norway).

And it's a much repeated refrain for me. I'm broke. Again. And it's only the middle of the month. My ever shrinking pay packet has shrunk to the point where it doesn't even see me through the first half of the month anymore. In the three years and one day that I've lived in London, I've managed to go backwards. Not just a little backwards; that could be understood, given the amount of travel I do. No, I've raced back to be where I was at before I finished uni. The first time around. In 2001.

But I'm still somehow better off than some. I at least appreciate the opportunities that are out there, and grab them when I can. L announced the other day that she doesn't think she's going to get through her to-do list because she has too much to do at work. I felt like slapping her. Here am I, trying desperately to figure out a way to get to tick off just one more thing on my list but knowing that unless my trend is reversed in a hurry it's not going to happen. There she is, in a secure job that is paid roughly three times better than me - and that's base rate, without allowing for all the extra hours she does - won't get through her want-list because of work? What did she move to the UK for, then? To work? She doesn't understand why it makes me so angry to see her wasting her chances. Clearly, she doesn't empathise with the sense of powerless fury that overtakes me when I hear such a pathetic excuse for putting off your life. If I was in her situation, there's a good chance I'd still be broke. But what a beautiful time I'd be having in the meantime.

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night
But ah my foes and oh my friends
It gives a lovely light.
Edna St Vincent Millay

He who tires of London

I've spent the last couple of days as a London tourist and it's brought home a few things to me. One is the obvious one; I love London, but I hate tourists. I know, I am technically a tourist myself, especially as I stroll around town with L and her guidebook. But I like to think I'm not the sort of tourist who stops in the middle of a crowded footpath to study their map, who stands aimlessly in the best viewing angle of any major attraction, helpfully blocking everyone else's photo opportunity. I like to think that I'm considerate and don't make a mess of the place for other people. That's what I tell myself, anyway, even as I do the kind of stop-and-spin maneuver outside the Tate that drives me insane on Oxford St. 

But I do love London in all its gobsmackingly beautiful corners, its stories, the fact that so many people have lived here and left their mark on the world. We found the street my ancestors lived in in Shoreditch today, on our way to a museum. It's a quaint old street full of warehouses, underneath an overhead train line. I'm pretty sure the train line was put through after my ancestors had made the mad dash for the Victorian goldfields, however, so it wasn't entirely the same. Other addresses I have for other ancestors were helpfully obliterated by the Luftwaffe, like so much of London.

Which brings me to something else I began to appreciate more today; London is old. Luftwaffe, yeah, not that long ago, in the grand scheme of things. The Victorian era building I live in? Also, not terribly old, but getting closer. The oldest shop in London, still trading, built in the sixteenth century, during the reign of Elizabeth I? Yeah, now we're talking. Hidden gems are everywhere in London. And most of the time, you'd never know they were there. I love taking the time to either wander for myself, or do a walking tour and be shown these tidbits, the remnants of a different city. There's something to be said for the first time you turn a corner and find a building that was old before your ancestors were shipped out of their homeland to a new social experiment on the other side of the world. The shock of the distance they travelled and the space they found when they got there must have almost killed them. 

Because for all its grandeur, London is not big. My feet are telling me otherwise at the moment, but I have essentially walked the length of London today, in a not very direct line, then headed back to the centre. From London Bridge to Shoreditch, then back into the centre for Covent Garden and Holborn. That's just today. Yesterday was the circuitous rambles around Hampstead Heath and Highgate cemetery. I've found corners of London that I never saw before. For all that it isn't big geographically, the denseness of the place means that you can never see it all. I doubt anyone ever does get to know every inch it, except perhaps the cabbies who have 'the knowledge'.

I almost envy them the years they spend exploring and memorising the nooks and crannies of the city. It must be an amazing experience to know so much. No wonder there are some who double as tour guides. One day, I'll test them out for myself. Until then, though, I've got to get back to plotting where I'll walk my legs off (hopefully literally, if I keep this up) on tomorrow's outing. Samuel Johnson was right, afterall: When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

It's amazing how combinations of factors can bring out the silliness. I've just spent a couple of hours on the couch with L watching some quality girlie DVDs. Well, one B-Grade chick flick starring Mandy Moore, at any rate, so we could ogle Matthew Goode. 

L and I have very different styles when we're forced to share a couch (too much washing drying in the living room means limited TV viewing positions). I'm quite happy with the whole each having half a couch in which to do as we please. But that doesn't seem to work for L. She slowly spreads until she occupies every inch of space that isn't taken up by my butt. Sometimes, like tonight, she will angle for this to include my hip, my shoulder, any part of me that is still long enough for her to prop part of her on. Sometimes I'm willing to put up with it, for the sake of peace so I can watch the movie. But tonight, I'd seen the movie before and it was chosen more for its man-candy than it's genius plot line, so I wasn't surrendering without a fight.

Clearly, neither of us has been getting enough sleep, because the silliness was in full flight. At one point I was described as a snuggle point. I'm not sure what that means; I'm not sure I want to, to be honest. But apparently, I'm comfortable as a pillow, as well. Inevitably, I started poking her. It didn't degenerate into some fantasy image for teenage boys, but pillows were thrown at each other. Neither of us was wearing skimpy pyjamas, though, so it's OK. 

It did - strangely - remind me of our last trip together, in Norway. That trip is the reason I was making certain that we were having separate beds when we head to New York. We ended up having to share a double. I know I'm no picnic to share a bed with. I apparently have a habit of rolling over with a dead arm and nearly braining whoever is next to me. Quite a few people have told me this. I've only connected with one person - sorry Lou - but the fear of god has been put into a few others at different times. But I've never done what L did to me. The bed was in an alcove, climbed into from one side and up against walls on the other three. I was soundly sleeping on the wall side, pushed as far against it as I could go thanks to L having similar bed tactics to the ones she employs on the couch. I woke up to find a pair of hands in the small of my back attempting to push me out of bed. Of course, there was nowhere for me to go except into the wall, in spite of my protests and attempts to wake her. It was uncomfortable enough that I'm determined to never be in the same position again - in every sense of that expression.

But I got my own back tonight. L ended up off the couch. So all's fair.

God we need to get a life.