Entries from May 2006 ↓

Despite me telling most of you 2 months ago about my travel plans, it is now officially announced at work that i’ll be taking 3 months off at the start of June to swan around Western Europe. Details at this stage are sketchy (i’ve got at least 3 weeks to plan everything, heaps of time right?) but here’s a rough guide that I wrote on a napkin last night:
Starting in Paris on 3rd of June I’ll make my way down the west coast of France to the D-Day beaches in Normandy, Brittany, Bordeaux wineries and Biarritz surf beaches.

Then i’ll make a mad dash through Bilbao for the Guggenheim Musem, Lisbon and onto Lagos to meet up Fi and some mates for the middle of June.

Post-Lagos i’m headed to Madrid for a short stay and then taking a flight back to London for a week including Ascot Races, the O2 Wireless Festival in Hyde Park (Massive Attack, DJ Shadow, Flaming Lips and Pharrell) and Roger Waters playing Dark Side of the Moon in all its glory at the same venue a week later.

I’ll then return to the Southern coast of Spain slowly making my way up to Valencia for the Benicassim festival (Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, Babyshambles, Placebo and lots of dance crap) in late July to meet up with Fi and some more mates. Essentially a Glastonbury set on the beach in much better weather.

After Valencia i’ll continue north up the coast towards Barcelona and then onto SE France to Nice, Monaco and the Cote d’Azur.

Early August i’ll meet Verity in Italy and then jet off to Croatia for a cruise around the islands and coast.

August is hazy at this stage but will most likely consist of some Italian slumming (at this stage i’ll be broke) and somehow making my way back to London for an inglorious return to work.

In the meantime Fi is moving in with Kate Mac, Jules and Reusse (which worries me a lot) for two months and then will move back into our current house at the start of August. Thankfully another couple are moving back to Oz and we get to stay in our beautiful house.

I’m off to Brussels with Verity and Carl this weekend for some outlandish drinking behaviour and then have 3 weeks of preparation before departure. Life is moving very fast at the moment.

Comments:

Ross (May 11th, 2006 at 12:07 pm)
Do you need people to carry your bags—Mum and I have decided we’re available! Do you move back into the same room at wandsworth?

Campbell (May 11th, 2006 at 12:21 pm)
We’re moving up in the world - to the top floor that is. We are trading having our own entrance and the clothes washer for a 4th floor balcony with views across to North and East London, less street noise and less storage space.

Sarah (May 12th, 2006 at 3:11 am)
Oh…..the youth of today!!!

A selection of videos spanning Australia, UK and Europe. No membership card required.

Seems like about 74 days since we were back in the sunny land of Oz, we had schmoozed with Ian Brown and Noel Gallagher at Heathrow as we queued up for our sojourn to more familiar shores. I knew I was on my way to my real home when I heard Paul Kelly, Gangajang, Daryl Braithwaite and Powderfinger played in succession on our Qantas flight – pity Australia produces such crap music! The take-off brought a smile to our faces, the flight over the top of Afghanistan kept us awake and the knowledge that we were 1 hour away from Tullamarine shed all our fatigue (or relegated it to a later time). When we got to the terminal only my parents had arrived, which obviously meant that Fiona’s parents didn’t love her or so she reasoned. We got in at about 6am and the day didn’t stop there. After the emotional reunion with the family, I was escorted back to the house to be fed – apparently I was pale and too skinny. No sh*t – I live in London, it’s like fashionable over there.
Like a camel, I had now stored enough food in the stomach for the next year ahead, I was due to take part in Dave Mckells bucks party, which at that time of the day involved 9 holes of golf. I had an atrocious 6 holes, a dazzling 7th and then had to rush off mid-round to get myself to the church on time. Thankfully not for my own wedding, but for Anna Peters and Maxy, one of Fi’s mates from school. The wedding was held at St Andrews in Brighton and was our first chance to catch up with most of the Brighton crew. The wedding was perfect and the reception even better. We all headed into the GPO building in the city where we were greeted by rows of waiters serving cocktails and an abundance of nibblies including 5 types of oysters. The venue was spectacular, beautiful views over the sunny Melbourne city and modernistic interiors. All the girls were pissed off that they would never top this (the first wedding in their school year). After plying ourselves with numerous cocktails and a remarkably good Czech bottled beer, we made a rush towards our dining seats, if only to make sure we didn’t fall over under the cloud of booze (I completely talk up my drinking ability by the way). Here we were treated to a beautiful 3 course meal and shared lots of laughs with a few fellow Londoners and close friends. Rumors abound that I also danced the night away and eventually fell asleep standing up. Untrue of course.

The next day was Dad’s birthday and in true Australian fashion we had a BBQ under the dying sun with the family and our old next door neighbours, Lindsay (Heir Flatt) and Carol. As is custom, the old neighbours forced multiple litres of rouge down our throats and we had a good laugh. Mum cooked up a storm. My favourite dish was jetlag – yummy. Cue sleep for 12 hours. The difference between the pound and dollar was illustrated to us when we caught a taxi home from the city to my home for £10. That amount wouldn’t get me to the end of my street over here!

Being back in Australia gave me the opportunity to get back into some of the activities you really miss in the UK – reading The Age from front to back, going for a kick of the footy with my dog, watching the Fox Football channel all day, taking my Nan for breakfast at the local shops and getting sunburnt in really odd configurations on my body. Yes – I got severly burnt one day playing golf, I looked like a right Pom. I hadn’t planned to play any golf while back in town, but managed about 8 games in the end, including one at Moonah Links, home of the Australian Open (not a cheap round, thanks parents!). I’d also planned to steer clear of computers, but ended up breaking both Fi’s parents and my own parents’ PC’s while doing my routine yearly maintenance. Happy days in front of the monitor.

Being back in Melbourne was a kind of strange feeling. Completely different to living there and taking time off from work. Now I felt like a tourist and wanted to go and see all the sites. We wandered into Melbourne city one day for a stroll around. The emptiness of the place even at lunchtime was striking. It felt like a rural town compared to the rat race of London, which is a very good thing. We met Fiona’s Dad for a look at his new offices and some lunch and then strolled along Southbank up to Federation Square (Melbourne’s millenium project, for our non-domestic viewers). We even squeezed in a visit to the War Memorial for some emotional remeniscing and great views over the city.

Sass and Scott offered a chauffered drive to Kennett River near Lorne, that I couldn’t possibly pass up, even if it was with my sister. Scott’s family owns a house down next to the beach and I decided to teach them a lesson in Monopoly (you have to actually go the places on the board before you become any good at this game, local knowledge). Unfortunately amongst other liquids consumed that night was half a bottle of Vickers gin (not a good idea) and I felt sorry for myself in the morning. Quelling the pain was a big Aussie breakfast as we watched the sun rise and a Koala sleeping at the end of the patio (I even took a photo – how sad). The day got better and better, we polished off some fish and chips overlooking Lorne bay (and polished off our hangovers) and made our way back to Melbourne to witness a mauling handed down by Geelong Football Club to Carlton in the company of Fiona and her sadly Carlton-mad family. I felt really bad for those losers. At least Fiona and her family now had consolation in the form of a new puppy, a beautiful little Golden Retriever called Jasmine that they picked up whilst we were back. I think we took more photos of the dog than our own families and friends. Respect.

David and Laura had their big day at St Peter’s (guess) in Bentleigh followed by a reception at the Savoy in Brighton near the end of our trip. Big Dave couldn’t wipe the smile off his face, it was beautiful to watch, congrats guys. The pressure is on now – I guess when Jenny and Ant get married then we are logically next in line!

Finally, we caught up with some of our old London crew (Tam, Ben, Jade, Lucas, Steele and Julia) at Tam and Ben’s new house which is very swish and full of gadgets (and bunnies) of course. The trip was capped off with a repeat of last year’s going away bash – i.e. Jason and Josh were last to leave again, we had a weeks worth of leftovers again, Dad had to be restrained from making a speech again and like the rest of the holiday it all went far too quickly AGAIN. Thanks everyone for making our return so much fun. It was short, but so is the time before we are back to do it all over again.

OK, its taken me a while, but I have finally updated our adventures in a three-part series below, imaginatively titled:
Chapter 1: Pre-Australia

Chapter 2: Australia

Chapter 3: Post-Australia

Comments:

Jules Clark (May 5th, 2006 at 4:48 pm)
Well played. As a virgin viewer of this blog I am amazed at the abundance (and dare I say quality) of content and absolute lack of photo authorisation on this site. there are a couple of absolute crackers…a few of the grinder in particular that I have been looking at on a friday arvo at work that crack me up…nye brings back some of the momory that was lost…so well played sir. But I do have one Q tho big fella, it seems to be missing a few of your bday present photos…please explain, maybe they’re buried somewhere? As reuss would say - you know what I’m talking about.

Wonderful audience, thanks for your patience, time has come to resume transmission. After almost two months of slogging it out at work, we have finally neared the end of our Australian hangover (inflicted by all you bastards). For at least a month we were the official old married couple, having only left the house on a handful of occasions and having an average bedtime of 7pm.
Summer is on its way though and having endured the harshest of conditions for 8 months, Europe starts to come alive. We’ve just come back from a long weekend in the Lakes District – home of the Derwent pencil, Beatrix Potter (wrote some kids book apparently) and you guessed it, lots of beautiful lakes. It’s been lovely to slouch around the Lakes, eating lots of traditional English fayre, breathing in the fresh Cumbrian air and generally slacking on the couch in front of some movies.

The weekend before last was spent in Stockholm, home to lots of blonde people and presumably tennis supporters. Our tour guide for the weekend was Kristi, whose parents are Swedish, who can speak fluent Swedish (debatable!), but has never set a foot in the country. Kristi’s eyes lit up as soon as we hit the tarmac and we couldn’t help but get caught up in her excitement. Scandinavia is a tantalising place – the wonder of the Northern lights and vast cold lands. Stockholm didn’t dissapoint. After making Kristi translate every billboard from the airport to the city we found ourselves in Stockholm’s old town. Gamla Stan is a little isle in the heart of the city with inviting café’s, restaurants and of course homeware stores (saw hundreds of these shops lining the streets and only one Ikea). We spent most of our time here gorging on traditional Swedish pastries. Stockholm is an archipelago (I knew year 10 Geography would come in handy one day) made up of 14 main islands, part of greater Stockholm’s 24,000 islands! We did a boat trip and rode some bikes around the main island attraction Djurgarden, which has a huge parkland surrounding some residential areas, a circus, and a few of the big museums. Even at this time of the year, a lot of the waterways were covered in ice. We stopped off at the Vasa Museum which is a huge 17th centure boat that was recovered from the bottom of the Stockholm harbour. Sodamalm is the bohemian centre of Stockholm and after dragging the girls on a 10 mile walk across the width of the island, we reached some local markets where we had a quick browse around and inevitably devoured more traditional Swedish cake. Next on the tourist agenda was the Absolut Ice Bar where we paid £10 for a shot of Vodka! It was a good laugh though, especially watching everyone smack their head on the highly transparent glass viewing window outside. Takes some great marketing to make you pay £10 and stand in a freezer for 45 minutes, bravo. As much as we wanted to taste the reknowned Stockholm night-life, we couldn’t really afford to, this place is seriously expensive. Can’t wait to check out some more Scandinavia.

Going back a further couple of weeks was the traditional Cambridge v Oxford boat race. We met a bunch of mates at a local pub in Putney and proceeded to write ourselves off (not the best idea on a Sunday). I saw 10 seconds of the race, which was enough of a distraction from the drinking. My head hit the pillow at about 4pm. Rowing is fun.

What else have we been up to:

Briefly caught up with cousin Quentin and his fiancee Kristy in SOHO for far too many beers on a school night.

Came very close to seeing Wolfmother at the Camden Crawl, a bunch of gigs spanning 4pm to 4am throughout Camden. The queue for Worlfmother was 300 metres long and the venue was tiny, no luck there!

Caught up with Scott (my sisters boyfriend) and Glenn (Scott’s brother) for our annual get together while they attend a few trade shows throughout Europe. Went to a very cool restaurant called Busaba just off Oxford St.

Went to Richmond Park with Kate Mac for the afternoon a few weeks ago. Richmond is on the fringes of London and has some beautiful river side pubs and a huge park with roaming packs of deer. London is full of suprises.

I was gifted a visit to Leiths Cooking School (they write a bunch of cooking bibles which are big over here) because one of my workmates organised a holiday on the same day he was due to redeem his cooking gift voucher received from work for his Birthday (Thanks Julian!). Despite teaming up with some freaky American guy who worked as a freelancer “taking pictures of nature spirits”, had a great time cooking up salads, panfried swordfish and an awesome rhubarb dessert that would almost rival Mum’s, almost.