Return to Oz. Sans notebook.

This jumble of words has been a long time in the offing. Apologies to all who have had to suffer the indignity of waking up heart in mouth after a night of fitful dream filled sleep, imagining stories of theft, overly sentimental reviews of films, stories of absolutely nothing - in short, searching in vain for a new Vamoosh post on a social network, only to discover one’s subconscious cried out in vain.

I like to wait until content's no longer relevant before writing; think of me as the Radio One of blogs. So with that in mind – here’s this year’s time down under. (I have also lost my notebook so it’s not that funny – all the witty OZ stuff was in the notebook that I lost – thank shiz it’s not another blog about me and my possessions ey, ey?)

Four months anywhere is a good length of time. Four months in Adelaide is a length of time. Besides my slightly ridiculous love affair with the Central Markets – and fierce distaste for the Garden of Unearthly Delights, or rather, what has clearly trampled on a quite spectacular Fringe venue (the Garden of Unearthly Delights maybe five, ten years ago) it was a gentle four months of wine, The Wire, sulks, mosquitoes and cough inducing laughing fits. I lived in two houses, one in the Forest of Dreams and one in Mitcham, ‘posh Adelaide’ in a large house on my own, with a silent Possum, and hobbit home and a stash of pirate DVDs. But less of that – and more of the Forest.

The Forest Of Dreams – Hurtle Square to your TomTom Crew – so named in the 80s by a German Artist who was commissioned to make art for one of the many CBD city squares* and plonked large wrought iron letters stating The, Forest, Of, Dreams on each corner of the centre of the square (traffic lights). I lived in Of. Dreams housed a Barn Owl, I had a nice clamber on Forest in the early hours of my 25th year and The and I really didn’t get on. It was quite a magical place, 56 Hurtle Sq, with a porch and some quite wonderful people. I whiled away many hours going ‘Woah I’m going to miss having a porch back in Scotland.’ I’m back in Scotland, I don’t miss having a porch here.

I spent some time in Melbourne, Gemma lent me a bike. It was cooler in Melbourne in March than one would presume, so I wore my skinny jeans and fell off the bike mid dismount several times. I also cycled roughly 5kms to Brunswick Street – the best place in Melbourne – with a hand drawn map. Reciting over and over in my head that bit in that Baz Luhrmann Sunscreen high school leavers’ message style rap, (rap?**) where he says, ‘do something everyday that scares you’ and tried to keep my brain from replacing ‘scares’ with ‘kills’. I did not cycle any such distance alone again.

I spent several days in Sydney. I nearly killed my friend Jeremy and may or may have not aided and abetted his premature leave from full time employment. What? No, he resigned…*** But I did spend four blissful hours dancing to badly rehashed house with many of Sydney’s gay Sunday night partiers, and was told at 25, yeah, I am getting too old to dance until 5AM.

Oh and I worked at a festival. He was inspired, she was funny, that was woooooah look out for that. Fuzz found fodder to laugh at me the day after shows besides their hilarious content almost every time. I'm still not sure what they were thinking and that made mine and Emma's day.




*Someone told me this once. I can’t remember who or if it’s true.
**Someone told me this. I can’t remember who, or if it’s true.
***Someone told me this. I can’t remember who...