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A new year, a new start. That's the popular refrain, anyway, but I don't believe it happens. I'm not trying to say that people never change; on the contrary, people are in constant flux and every day we experience things and have interactions with others that leave an impression on us. But I've never seen anyone decide that they will better themselves in some specific way - usually by swearing off a vice or two - from the first of January that hasn't forgotten all about it by about the tenth. Like Churchill said: all improvement is change. But he never mentioned that change is omnipresent and gradual, and boundaries are mostly imaginary. After the heavenly smell of spent fireworks wafts away, life skips onwards from the first page of the new calendar much as it did on the way off the last page of the old one - which in my case is drunkenly, surrounded by strangers, and with no clear picture of what's ahead.
Having said all that, there have been some major life changes in a short space of time both for myself and for my friend and verbal sparring partner Mitchell. We live in Australia now, for one thing. I couldn't have said that a month ago. Or, more accurately, I couldn't have said it a month and two days ago.
We checked out of YHA Sydney Central on the second day of the new year to burden another household of family friends with our carrier bags of dirty laundry and our thirst for all their beer. The few nights we spent at the wonderful hospitality of Pam, Bob and Ben were our last in Sydney; the next great change of the new year was to be from Sydney, New South Wales over to Melbourne, Victoria. During our last few days we said farewell to our recently acquired good friends James - who is due in Melbourne any time now and will hopefully be meeting us soon - and Andrea - who is off to surf in Bali for a few weeks before returning to Austria, and whom we probably won't see for a while. Since it was also Andrea's birthday we splashed out on a trip to one of a chain of Max Brenner cafes. Think the Starbucks of chocolate. By that I mean they're an overpriced, pretentious syndicate found in every Australian city, meticulously designed to look casual and accessible, and you leave them feeling nauseous. But credit where it's due, they serve good product. I wanted to get a chocolate pizza, which is a pizza on which chocolate serves as the tomato base, pecans are used in place of peppers, slithers of strawberry take the role of salami, and you get gum disease instead of a heart attack. For financial reasons I had to make do with a bowl of dipping chocolate and a banana, and a spicy Mexican drinking chocolate which, though tasty, was served in a Max Brenner hug mug without handles and molded to fit comfortably in the well of your clasped hands. I could appreciate the twee, cosy cuteness of it if I was tucked up inside on a December day in northern England, but it was thirty degrees outside so I felt like a retard. Mitch ate a chocolate cake in about three bites and his only complaint was that there wasn't enough. The portion was fine; the man who ate it is a monster.
It was at our new hosts' pad that I made another life-alteration for the new year. As most people reading this blog will know* I have spent practically my entire adult life sporting some wicked dreadlocks. I have friends - and I mean very close friends - who have never seen me without a scalp full of natty ropes. Early in 2011 I made the decision to buy a pair of clippers and make myself look like a normal member of society. There were a number of reasons, and despite what people seem to assume the heat wasn't one of them, and nor was trying to find a job. The real reasons were more disgusting, and more compelling: mainly A) that the tips of all my shirt collars (are they called the tips? The folds? The creases? The crests?) used to get really dirty really fast, which didn't matter when I was wearing them because you couldn't see the backs of the collars through the curtain of dreads, but nevertheless it was a phenomenon I'd never been happy about. And B) since swimming at Bondi Beach on Christmas day they'd started to smell really funky - almost exactly like old hair soaked in seawater. I'd swam in the sea before while I had dreads, but for whatever reason this time they reacted. Seriously, the smell was keeping me awake some nights. They had to go. Now I can easily slip a vest over my head or wear a hat that doesn't have red, green and yellow stripes all over it. I can dip in the pool or stand out in the rain fearlessly. I still have them, in a plastic bag, waiting for a fitting disposal. If anyone out there wants one tell me why in fifty-words or less. If your entry is selected by our panel you will be contacted with further instructions.
On our last day in Sydney we parted from our generous hosts, leaving them to look after Mitch's surfboard as a guarantee that they're not completely rid of us yet. We took a trip to the city for the last time (for now). And since we had all our stuff with us I was carrying my camera; so after nearly a month on the doorstep of some of the world's most iconic architecture I finally got around to taking a few snaps. I say we had all our stuff with us, but in fact when we first arrived in the city that day we checked our big holdalls in at the train station. If the shock of reading that last sentence just caused you to spit your mouthful of tea all over your computer monitor, don't worry. It's only because England has the worst public transport of any country I've ever been to. And I've been to f***ing Bulgaria. As well as a luggage check-in service for long-distance train journeys here's another lesson British Rail, Virgin Trains, GNER and whoever else can learn from the Aussies: double decker trains. Double the number of passengers you can carry without increasing the number of carriages by having an upstairs and a downstairs. You've figured it out with buses and planes; make the next leap. And hey, while you're building these new trains, cushion both sides of the back rests on the seats and put them on a pivot so that people can decide which way they face.
So maybe it's more of a novelty than a transport revolution, but this is still one of my favourite features of Sydney trains. Especially when you're with a companion with whom the best configuration is face-to-face, rather than sat next to each other; touching thighs, brushing hands across the armrest, turning your head to chat and finding yourselves gazing at each other from so close a distance that you can't see the whole of each other's faces without moving your eyes. On a Sydney train, simply find two rows of unoccupied seats (not hard when the train's not overcrowded because you have an extra deck) and move the backrest of one of them so that they're now facing each other. In practice it's not perfect; imagine a typical train seating layout with all the backrests removed completely and think about how close together the benches are. I doesn't matter when everyone faces the same way and nobody competes for legroom, but two people can't sit directly opposite without interlocking their legs like the teeth of a pair of gears, and I can't think of anyone I'm intimate enough with to travel like that.
So I was pretty impressed with Australia's trains. Then we caught the sleeper from Sydney to Melbourne. I don't want to bring down my blog with negativity, so I won't harp on about this squeeking bathtub on rails. I'll just say that whatever they choose to call it, it's pretty clear that it's been designed to be impossible to sleep on. So far the closest I've come to misery on this adventure has been the eleven hours I spent grinding in and out of semi-consciousness on this rickety b******. Luckily for the trip back up Mitchell still has his prize three day car-hire, which we couldn't claim during January's peak season. If I had to take the sleeper train back up northwards I'd be forced to take some hard drugs before the journey, and ideally I want to save that for a nice beach somewhere in Queensland (which are all currently being relocated a few hundred miles further inland, for ease of access).
There's lots to say about Melbourne already, but since we're probably going to be here for a while there's no rush. This update goes out to beautiful Sydney, capital of Australia (whatever the textbooks say), and all the wonderful people we've met there, whether it was for the first time, or just for the first time in a long time. Don't breathe easy yet, city. We will return!
*unless it gets super famous and hordes of people I've never met start reading it
- comments
Brendan hi josh, RE: dreads uncle rich said he'll have the lot of you.'cos god knows he needs all the help he can get in that department!!!