a little distraction

The fatal shore

Jesus.

The ongoing media coverage along with stories we've been hearing from contacts in the region affected by the earthquake and ensuing tsunamis makes the situation sound like hell on earth.

An acquaintance of my Dad's, who was holidaying in the region with his family, has reported that he found his daughter's body but that his wife and mother are still missing. This is a common scenario. It's beyond comprehension.

Darp has written eloquent commentary on why there was no early warning system in place and MrLefty provides ongoing coverage.

Of course, the situation could get even nastier for people who've already lost so much. The Age reports that many rich countries are being slow to lend a hand. It's hard to judge how much impact an individual donation could have but, in case anyone's thinking about sending some of their Christmas money, links are here and here.

Now, go and give your nearest loved one a big hug and tell them how much they rock and how happy they make you.

I'm headed for Glasgow tonight for New Year's Eve so I'll wish you all a very safe and happy New Year. See you in 2005!

Letter

To the person that alerted my beloved Melbourne Lefty's employers to his blog thus forcing him to shut up shop and remove his archives,

You are a total fucktard. Also - karma's a bitch! Watch out!

Sincerely,

Carrie

Christmas Wishlist

• World peace
• An iPod
• A puppy

That'll do for now.

I'm audi!

Leaving on a jet plane!

Been up since 3am because I was too excited to sleep and over-caffienated!

Posts may be infrequent over the next month (ha! for a change!) but I'll try and update with pictures from my trip.

I am so excited! See y'all on the other side!

Edit: Nearly forgot, Melbourne bloggers, enjoy the shindig tonight!

1 day - Family

So, I’ve been thinking way too much about going home. To the point where I’ve even caught myself obsessing over the perfect outfit to wear on the plane. Now, I’ve been on a lot of long haul flights and my favourite way to cope with them involves alcohol, sleeping tablets, and total oblivion so my usual outfit checklist goes along the lines of: Are the garments droolproof? If a blanket falls off my passed out form, will I end up unexpectedly displaying my arse crack or cleavage to my fellow passengers?

Then a vision of the perfect plane wear garment came to me while I was flicking through NW. A funky knitted poncho! I could carry it in my little case and casually throw it on when it’s cold. It’s like a blanket you can wear! And so totally fashionable right now! An image of me sauntering off the plane at Heathrow, fresh from 3 days lying by the pool in Dubai, and looking trendy for my re-entry into British society came into my head. I imagined walking out with my little wheely case and seeing my parents faces…

That’s where my fantasy evaporated. Because, in this reality, my loving parents reaction to me trying to look cool would provide them with the biggest laugh they’ve had all year. My Dad would probably whip out his camera and photograph me wearing a poncho and bring it out at family gatherings for the REST OF MY LIFE.

Because that’s what my family’s like. There’s no pretension, there’s merciless teasing, there’s a lot of love, and I go through my day to day life always feeling like something’s missing and it will be great, even for a short period of time, to have that piece back.

My god, I am SUCH a sap. Just wait for the upcoming blog entry, ‘I’ve been staying with my parents for a WEEK and I’m going to lose my mind if I get nagged about drinking too much Diet Coke ONE MORE TIME’, to return things to normal.

2 days - Our kid

There’s a four year age gap between my brother and I which, apparently, explains the vicious relationship we had growing up. The hair pulling, hitting the other with a GOLF CLUB (Tom, you are a little turd - don’t think I’ve forgotten!), telling Mum on each other constantly, the I hate you!’s, the bitching, the fighting, the jealousy, the girly ‘kick your sister, run like mad, and lock yourself in the bathroom’ manoeuvre. Man, we had some good scraps.

And yet, at some point over the last few years our feelings changed and, while the sibling banter and occasional fights mildly persist, he turned from this total pain in my ass into my best mate. And I turned from the hormonal bitch queen into a good friend for him as well. It was very bizarre – I think boffins attribute it to that magical process called ‘growing up and getting the hell over yourself’.

Lemme tell you some stuff about the Uni Finalist: he is kind, he is hilarious, he plays the guitar better than anyone else I know (in person, anyway), he has the coolest taste in music on the planet and kindly patronises me by letting me think I am even half as groovy as he is, he is very sensitive and the ladies just love him, he is too smart for his own good, he wrote a novella when he was TWELVE which I was so jealous of that I told him it was crap (I’m so sorry!), and he gets as excited as I do about the prospect of watching The Muppet Christmas Carol every year.

He and I have been working on many very exciting plans for Christmas. Our favourite is the one we’ve spent the most time discussing: Slayerfest 2004. Wherein Tom and I will sit on our arses and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer for about 16 hours straight while drinking lager and reminiscing about Channel 7’s scheduling of Buffy back in the day which meant it was on ridiculously late on school nights that, after falling asleep at random intervals in the day after one viewing, he was forbidden to stay up to watch it so he was at the mercy of his evil 17 year old sister to tape it. Or, if he was feeling daring, he would stuff a pillow in his bed, sneak downstairs, and furtively lie on the floor in front of the coffee table to watch it with me. Good times.

I just wish we lived closer but, like with K & G and The Grils, when someone gets you and really loves you, you don’t always need to.

3 days - The Grils

Many of my close friends now I either first met during my early days as a retail hag, during the drunken first few weeks of university, or, way back in 1992 when I started high school back home.

My group of girlfriends from high school in Stortford are the dirtiest, funniest, sexiest, most supportive, kind, and hilarious group of women I know. We are forever The Grils – a stupid nickname bestowed by a New Zealander photo booth operator in Newquay who misspelt ‘The Essex Girls’ and bestowed on us the title of ‘The Essex Grils’. We dropped the ‘Essex’ part as only half of the group are true Essex girls (our school was on the Hertfordshire and Essex border) and, back home, coming from Essex has very negative connotations. Think of every blonde joke you ever heard, substitute the phrase ‘Essex girl’ for the word ‘blonde’ and you’re on track imagining the sort of crap you get.

Therefore, The Grils. Every tribe needs a name. We used to get accused way back when of having our own language and we still do. It’s juvenile and silly and it basically involves putting Gril in front of words e.g. Griliant, Griltastic, Grilgasmic, but, by god, it cracks us up every time.

When I visited home for the first time in 1999 it was strange and off putting. While I’d been gone, everyone had gone through A Levels and Sixth Form together but, following an outrageous, drunken, hilarious fortnight in Gran Canaria, I felt like I’d been there the whole time. Our shared history is now one of the strongest things binding me to England.

I’m not there. I haven’t been there for longer than I was there but I get let in on every in joke, every heart ache, every dirty night out on the town, and every piece of gossip from our home town. When I was going through a very bad time last year and shutting out everyone around me, I still poured my heart out in long emails to them and they got me through a crisis from 10,000 miles away. These are good, strong, wise women.
I still get emails, drunken text messages and, once in a blue moon, a Griliant visitor. I’ve been luck enough to get visits from Fonz, The Wind, Elmo, and Hedgee who proved to me the old cliché that absence does make the heart grow fonder.

The ten of us are heading up to Glasgow for Hogmanay which will possibly lead to us whipping out the Tena Ladies lest we wet ourselves with excitement. I think at first I’m going to be overwhelmed by all the Oestrogen and stressing out about the politically incorrect debauchery (“STOP pinching that poor waiter’s arse!” “You CAN’T ask him what he’s got on under his kilt!” “For fuck’s sake! I am not doing THAT”) but, as always, within about half an hour I’ll feel as if I’ve been there all along and, as always, those bad, bad Grils will successfully encourage me to misbehave. Damn, it’s been a while.

The Grils, I am loving YOW. See you soon.

4 days - London

Well, this is best done quickly and in list format or I will write pages of boring crap about how much I totally heart London and have done ever since I was old enough to get the train in on my own and go exploring. So, here’s my list of things to see and do in London.

• - Have a curry down Brick Lane with the Grils.
  - St Martin’s Lane.
  - Eat at Pizza on the Park. Mmmm.
  - Ride the London Eye.
  - Top Shop, Oxford Circus.
  - H & M, Oxford Circus.
  - Covent Garden.
  - Hyde Park.
  - Kensington High St.
  - Liverpool St Station.
  - Harrods.
  - Harvey Nichols.
  - Liberty’s beauty hall.
  - The Tate Modern
  - The SCIENCE MUSEUM!!!
  - The V & A (Best. Gift Shop. EVER)

I’m salivating already and I haven’t even started on all the little places that I can’t remember the names of; I just remember the nearest tube station and vague landmarks which I’m going to seek out. But that’s the fun of it. It’s the same feeling I get when I’m showing friends around Melbourne, the little thrill you get from seeing your home through the fresh eyes of a tourist.

4 short days.

5 days - My hometown

“Most nights we used to mess around in the park around the corner from my house. I lived in Hertfordshire, but I might just as well have lived in any suburb in England: it was that sort of suburb, and that sort of park – three minutes away from home, right across the road from a little row of shops (a VG supermarket, a newsagent, an off-licence). There was nothing around that could help you get your geographical bearings; if the shops were open (and they closed at five-thirty, and one o’clock on Thursday’s, and all day Sunday), you could go into the newsagent’s and look for a local newspaper, but even that might not give you much of a clue.”

From 'High Fidelity' by Nick Hornby

I first read High Fidelity when I was about 15 and, when I read the passage quoted above, I was shocked at how accurately Hornby encapsulated an English adolescence. In the above passage he perfectly describes the park where my girlfriends and I used to go and meet the local lads every night at a park we creatively called “The Bench”. So named for the small wooden bench which was a nice place to sit and smoke a fag or two (to “impress” the boys), or skull some Strongbow cider/20-20/Pink Lady on a Friday night if no-one else was having a snog on it. We thought we were so sophisticated and cool – we were, in hindsight, complete shitbags but the illicit drinking, smoking, and snogging boys felt so grown up and, besides, there wasn’t much else to do on a Friday night.

Bishop’s Stortford is a small market town in Hertfordshire about half an hour out of London. It is a very pretty town but has, according to friends and family still living there, really changed since I left. I mean, there’s now a cinema and a McDonalds – which, I think, were partly put in to give teenagers something, other than hanging around park benches, to do. And Posh and Becks live in the next village which isn’t too much of a shock as she did grow up in Harlow which is about 10 minutes drive from Stortford. One day I must dig out and scan my program from a Harlow Playhouse production which featured a young Victoria Adams and her lovely mid 90’s hair. Heh.

My parents don’t live there anymore. They now live to the west of London which will mean a homecoming to a town I really don’t know at all. Not that I mind, nearly everyone I grew up with has left Bishop’s Stortford. When I speak to my friends from school they’re pleased they got away and I think, in hindsight, if I’d stayed in England I probably would be too. But I’m looking forward to going back for a few reasons:

Potential to run into high school nemesis who is now fat (ha!) and, I’m sorry to be so shallow, brag about fabulous life in sunny Australia and my handsome, totally fictitious, surfer boyfriend.
There is a crossroads near my school which has a pub on each corner and I always wanted to have a night out where I had a pint in every single pub.
Can go back to high school and see favourite teachers and marvel, once again, at my high school uniform – a fetching ANKLE LENGTH brown kilt. How any of us got any wearing that I do not know.
Visit Beckingham Palace.
See firsthand the corporate corruption.
- Experience trivia night at the local, one of the only pubs which served us when we were underage which the girls have remained loyal to, with the fabulous “Bored Housewives”.

6 days - K & G

Nine months ago one of my best friends, Kai, moved to Glasgow to be with her fiancée, G, and I have missed her so very much.

Now, Kai and I are real pretty but we ain’t too bright some of the time and we forgot to confer with each other before booking our respective flights home and, as such, have managed to fix it so that there is only one day that we manage to be in the same country which is the day after I arrive in London. Super!

This means that she and I have one day to catch up on wine drinking, gossip, wedding planning (hers), bridesmaid dresses (mine), boy talk, shoe shopping, Robbie Williams DVD watching, yelling “Assshooooole!” at the slightest provocation, and cheese eating. Mmm, cheese. Did I mention cheese yesterday?

We have to try and get a table at Fifteen to stalk Jamie Oliver so that we may thank him for the Portugese custard tart recipe that happily distracted us last year when we were both attempting to study and work full time without having a nervous breakdown as I coped with a break up and she adjusted to G living in Glasgow.

We have to fit in a session for discussing how we ended up living on the opposite side of the globe to our friends and family.

We have to go to the Oxford Circus Top Shop. We have to confiscate each other’s credit cards before entering the Oxford Circus Top Shop.

We have to eat the bumper pack of Cheezels, which I have already placed on top of my suitcase for her, in the traditional fashion – putting them on our fingers and eating them one-by-one while watching Kath & Kim and drinking a bottle glass of Riesling.

So many things we want to do. So little time. It doesn’t matter though, really. We could end up sitting on my parent’s sofa the whole time but simply planning all the things we want to do on our Day Of FUN during random MSN conversations over the last couple of months has sustained us both through times when we’ve missed each other and our homes. I’m grateful I get to see her at all.

We have to try really hard not to have a sook when I take her and G to the airport less than 24 hours after seeing them for the first time in nine months. We have to not dwell on the fact that we won’t see each other again for a further six months. We’ll have to say goodbye as we do at the end of every phone call:

“See you next week!”

Denial is good.

7 days - Food

One of my colleagues went on a trip to Sydney and arrived back in the office today with, as expressly directed by the customer service team, a massive box of Krispy Kreme donuts. Now, I’ve heard a lot about the magic that, supposedly, is the Krispy Kreme donut so I pounced on the box, gave my donut-bringing colleague a hug for her stellar work, grabbed a donut with frosting AND festive green, red, and white sprinkles, and headed back to my desk to enjoy.

The damn donut made me homesick.

Krispy Kreme donuts taste exactly like Marks & Spencer’s “Yum Yum” donut twisty thing. Goddamn, I miss those cakes.

Good thing I’m heading home (via 3 days in Dubai) in 7 days. Didn’t I tell you already? Oh man! Finally! People whose eyes won’t glaze over when I mention how EXCITED I am to be going home. Well, they might but I can’t see so I’ll crap on oblivious. I’m going home! I haven’t been home for four and a half years! I’m going to be there for three and a half weeks!

So, for the next 7 days, I’m presenting a list of things I’m looking forward to seeing and doing when I get home. Starting, prompted by Breakfast and the Homesick Donut, with FOOD.

Oh, I love food. I have been exercising like a fiend* for the last month trying to lose the 10 kilograms which seem to have taken up permanent residency on my arse in the past year because I am trying to clear up some “room” for the weight I am inevitably going to stack on once I’ve hit Tesco and the Marks and Spencer’s food hall in search of my childhood comfort foods:

- Scampi flavoured fries. By the bucketload, please.
- Deep fried scampi
- Pickled Onion Monster Munch
- Boost chocolate bars
- Elderflower mineral water (so much better than it sounds)
- M & S Yum Yum donut twisty things
- QUORN! SWEET SWEET QUORN!
- M & S Potato Waffles

Bring. It. On. Man, I haven’t even started on pub food or Pizza Express yet…

* For me, “exercising like a fiend” means tramping around the local park for half an hour, twice a week, listening to the Garden State soundtrack and, quite possibly, burning off extra calories by thinking dirty thoughts about Zach Braff.