Dock this

The London docklands seemed a tiny, perfect concrete adventure playground. Buenos Aires port, once the conduit for a continent's wealth, was reminscent of a couple of scattered building blocks. The Tokyo docks, in their wide inconceivable vastness, lay before us.

Our mission: to collect items shipped from London two months earlier.

Several different subway lines and a monorail that coasts along a riverside deposited us two hours later before the yawning impersonal greyness of DOCKLAND. Giant buildings in the distance loomed like some kind of industrial Mordor. We trudged through sticky humidity, through a landscape not intended for pedestrians. In fact, we were the only ones. Trucks and shiny lorries sped past. We passed large empty parks, tracts of greenery supposed to relieve the desolate wasteland, but in fact making it all the more desperate. Like trying to tackle India's starving children with one bag of doughnuts.

Hours of hunger and thirst staggered by. No friendly bedouins about to toss us a canteen of water. We found ourselves in a dizzying wonderland of multicoloured cargo containers. Memories of The Wire Season 2 flashed before our dilated pupils. Could one of them be filled with dead Ukrainian prostitutes? Chance would be a fine thing. Several attempts to get directions resulted in blank looks or, worse, lengthy, tortuous attempts to answer a question to which it was quickly apparent no-one knew the answer. Awkward silences ensued. In-fighting sparked up. Where would it all end?

And then we found it. Seino Logix. A boxy office wedged in the crevice of a warehouse complex the size of East Anglia. Who were these people? Port handling, cargo collection? Import middlemen? Not sure. We had already paid the shipping company but this was a separate matter, apparently.



Those who have seen Kurosawa's film Ikiru, a critique of Japanese bureaucracy made in 1952, will be surprised that in 2010 the offices look EXACTLY THE SAME. Stacks of papers and dreary resigned facial expressions. There were no computers in 1952 but if there were you can be sure they wouldn't have been changed. Antique IBMs of that nondescript dirty grey colour and gigantic prehistoric monitors. Japan is not the hi-tec paradise envisioned by generations of manga artists. People bustled around fending off all work thrown their way like cartoon ninjas using breakfast trays to repel shuriken stars.

First we were charged US$ 140. More than we'd paid for the shipping. Why? Seino Logix had been kind enough to transport our stuff to their office and issue the paperwork. It's true the paperwork was obscenely copious but printing costs don't really come up to that sum. Well the transportation then - it would have been extremely useful had we not discovered we'd have to transfer it back to Customs ourselves to get it inspected.

Remonstrations and exasperated protests were met with repeated apologies. The Japanese apology, extremely apologetic in tone, actually has "Fuck you" as its rough translation.

Ok, we have to take the stuff that we've paid to have shipped here to Customs ourselves. Fine. It's a hassle, so just give us the stuff and we'll get it over with. No, you can't have the stuff. Why not? You have to go to Customs to get permission. And then come back to get the stuff. And then go back to Customs to get it inspected.

So what are we paying you for?

You'd better pay or we'll torch your boxes of crap and piss on the cinders.

Oh right, sorry.

A whole day passed in toing and froing through the docklands with and without enormous boxes of stuff, convoluted taxis, nowhere to buy food and but a setting sun over a monochrome horizon to elevate the spirit.

Silent labyrinth heralds rebirth

The bewildering whirr of the cicadas assaulted my senses. A Japanese symbol of rebirth, their dentist chair noises made me feel as if I were undergoing some kind of reincarnation operation.

It was my first night and we were hunting in vain and in the darkness for my bike I'd never seen, left in some place on the kibbutz-like university campus by an undefined friend. A guard approached with his torch: were we thieves? We weren't. We trudged away on foot to the apartment we were to stay in for a month. Or tried to.



Much of the area of Mitaka city is a suburban labyrinth of tiny houses with a veiny network of small alleyways bearing a constant stream of bikers and the occasional boxy car. We asked for directions in a faux 7-11 with a chicken logo and after intently studying a map found our destination.

Tokyo addresses are a code of numbers referring to sequentially dwindling areas of importance. Head backwards through this one:

1-29-17 Koganei, Higashicho, Mitaka-shi, Tokyo-to, Japan, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way, The Universe, Infinity

I drew a complex series of lines to represent the route. A tragically-mutilated spider. As we trotted past allotments, the occasional Coca-Cola vending machine, and strange dwellings boxed up and stacked against each other, the SILENCE was oppressive. Where were the people? I imagined scores of locals silently pressed up against screens behind closed walls. The heat and humidity were stifling. It was nothing like anything.

The charmingly noisy streets of Buenos Aires, with a fat man in any direction you look shouting affectionate insults at another fat man. The saturated and bubbling people mash of Thailand. These were all far away now. I slapped at my legs. Small, compact mosquitos feasted on fresh blood.

The apartment was a tiny, stifling cardboard box on stilts. The ceiling and the floor had little to keep them apart. A miniscule toy fan pretended to be doing something in the corner. The bathroom was a machine room with a hose. We lay on a futon gasping in despair. Is this life, I wondered?

The next morning we fled to the university to a splendid campus pad. Reborn in Cicada Land.

Grunt for the Instant Birdie

Sibley House, the location of our modest but fairly (in Tokyo standards) spacious campus apartment, replete with "Japanese style" sliding doors, kitchenette, bathroomcito and large windows, was built in 1957, according to the proud boast of a sign on the façade. The sign makes no mention of when it was renovated. That's because it wasn't. We're not far from the tennis courts, where thousands of rippling youths scream rhythmically in unison. Concealed by dense greenery, it is unclear what they are doing in there. But whatever it is, I'm sure it is less entertaining than the mental images produced by their synchonised grunting.

Much aggressive grunting comes from restaurant staff too. The other day I had my first experience in a rāmen bar, down a Kichijōji side street. Three white-uniformed rāmen ninjas bellowed and stood to attention as I entered. It was lunch hour peak and once I'd sat down at the long bar, every stool was taken. This was not a place for lunchtime socialising. Solo diners sit, bodies contorted and faces parallel to the counter, 2mm from the soup, whereupon they slurp and snort their way through the giant portions at a frankly incredible rate. I tried to order the bountiful chicken my neighbour was ploughing into. They gave me the pork, possibly sniffing my Jewish ancestry. The soup had the kind of moreish comfort quality of pulverised chicken fat. I scarfed down about 3/4 of my portion in the time it took for a complete turnover of the entire restaurant clientele. While I ate I observed the staff dynamic. One hung near the door for no apparent reason. The giant middle one took orders and barked them to the final one, who had a more skivvy-like aspect but a cooler way of carrying himself. He stood above a huge boiling vat with suspended noodle containers. It was about 35º and yet he was cool as wasabi lipgloss. The soothing sound of gushing water was punctuated by spurts as the giant middle ninja sprayed the floor with a gigantic hose. As I stood up I braced myself for the deafening scream.

Speaking of rāmen, I'm addicted to the instant variety. Similar in concept to the Pot Noodle, yet thousands of miles away in distance, you can buy a bewildering variety in the supermarket. I have no idea what any of them are but make my selections based on shape and colour, animal instinct and other arbitrary factors. As a budding physicist delights in his discovery of the boundless possibilities of matter, so am I constantly amazed by the sheer range of things that can be made to appear with the addition of boiling water. Today I opened a bowl-shaped packet to find a yellow polystyrene cube lying seductively atop the dried noodle blocks. Stirfried egg. After the requisite four minutes I peeled back the foil to discover three rice paper discs with a yellow bird cheerily waving hello. Obvious concerns about the nutritionary value of such food barely managed to temper my childlike glee.

The Land of the Rising Barometer

The unbearable stifling humidity of Tokyo is taking me by surprise. Actually it's taken everyone by surprise. A rednosed besuited wag on Saturday afternoon alleged that it has been the hottest summer for 133 years. Other more trusty news sources have backed that up, partly.

Apparently the autumn is shrinking to nothing. Sub-Saharan heat will dissolve rapidly into Antartic cold. The word 'temperate' keeps bobbing up in my memory like a table-tennis ball in a green pond.

I have walked the deserts of the Holy Land. I have moisted the depths of the Thai rainforests. And nothing has come close. Even the gasping exhaust-fuelled February peak of Buenos Aires is like a temperate day in an English garden in comparison to this.

Japanese men dab at their sweaty faces with small, charmingly-designed towels. I have one, blue and white, bought for me by a certain someone.

Women JOG in the NOONDAY SUN in long tracksuit trousers, long sleeves, visors and GLOVES. What the fuck is wrong with these people?

I'm confused. I feel as if I've entered a parallel universe where I'm a 19-year-old Japanese boy from the provinces just starting out at the International Christian University in Mitaka. Living on the campus might have something to do with it. The thick forest hangs outside my window, the cicadas keep their cement mixers and pneumatic drills in motion, their little hard hats occasionally falling to the soft earth and rotting there in the warm soil. The ICU campus is an isolated world in an obscure suburb of Tokyo, a petri dish of wildlife, wild intellectual stimulation and wild times, baby.

Adolescent students arm themselves into brittle factions. Sporty jocks laugh heartily and scream deafeningly, while jumping up and down repeatedly. Girls caked in make up and wearing charmingly-designed shoes (of varying models), charmingly-designed socks (of varying sizes), hair spraying forth in fountains and marvellous hilly eruptions, group together and totter awkwardly around, giggling nervously. American students wait for their moment to amaze other 'gaijin' (foreigners) around them by nonchalantly babbling away in perfect Japanese...

In short, it's a campus. And one quite different from the awkward labyrinth where I spent my own freshman year back in 1999. Now I'm older, larger, less cynical and more... secure? This feels more like the setting of an American college movie, transposed slightly. In any case I can look upon the herd with distance, and enjoy it. Identity crisis aside.

+ 4 YRS

Falling away like a grainy cord binding dangling blurry photos, grains of time grow to immense planet size proportions and I hop through anti-gravity up the ROPE OF SAND...

The Seventh Plague

The only extreme weather conditions these houses are built for is extreme hot. When the hail started we were at first amused by the heavy tapping on the openable plastic roof slats. We ran out into the street and rejoiced, until golfball sized lumps of ice almost concussed someone. We cowered inside. The plastic roof slats groaned and creaked. All of a sudden, like the moment in the horror film when the house's defenses are breached, I saw a huge lump of ice drop straight through the roof and crack against the stone floor of the patio. This was the catalyst. Huge gaps started yawning. Several holes opened. Itay and I took an executive decision - OPEN THE SLATS!

We turned frantically on the long metal poles, and a thick rain of ice clouded vision. All furniture was shifted out of the patio, and we stood at the doorway, watching the huge lumps of ice cloud the floor. Out in the front, two car windscreens had been smashed. Everyone was crowded in doorways, laughing and looking on in amazement.

Afterwards the street was a chaos. The branches and buds from the trees carpeted the pavement. Water overflowed pipes into the road. And everywhere, windows were smashed - house windows, flat windows, car windscreens. One car had 4 huge holes punched in its back window. I interrogated old people. One man said it sometimes happens in San Luis. An old woman said Mendoza. Another old woman who had just slipped over told me she'd been in the city 50 years and never seen anything like it.

Itay was elated. 'I love extreme weather conditions.'
I was temerous. I had honestly thought it was the end of the world.

Pasan el tiempo y la lluvia - fugaz fugaz la vida

Well it's been a while. And now I am writing on a computer without a comma - so I have to use many hyphens or just keep going going going in an endless dribble (no change there I suppose).

Got to catch you up with the events of the recent past, drop by saccharine drop.


LA FAMA DE MARINEROS

Just hitchhoke 12 hours and 1000 kms from El Calafate in the South of Argentina to Comodoro Rivadavia also in the South because the country is so enormous. Hutchhiggled with a truck driver called Fernando who would've been 28 yesterday if he hadn't forgotten his own birthday and who has been driving trucks since he was not joking 12 YEARS OLD but might well now change his job - significant in the context of 3 generations driving trucks in his family which began with his grandfather in the 20's (the truckdriving not the family) - because his wife chucked him out the house a few weeks ago on account of being tired that F is never at home and the general reputation of truckdrivers - family in every town that is (la fama de marineros he put it) which he admitted was partly true though he loves his wife and 3 little kids and her throwing him out was perhaps a conscious gambit to make him see things more clearly i.e. what is important because she called him 3 days ago inviting him back and now he understands how much she has suffered in the 10 years they have been together and the last while apart has been tough for him losing the desire to eat the ability to sleep and the compulsion to smoke (cold turkey from 5 packs a day) consequently when he picked me up on the outskirts of El Calafate and I tearfully said goodbye to my trusty and temporary dog Maya Fernando had been driving for 3 days without sleeping though seemed pretty compus though at times he went serious downtime like I think fish when they sleep but don't sleep just sort of drift all this he told me throughout a 12 hour journey through the IMMEASURABLE FLAT EMPTINESS of Patagonia from broad sunny day to bloodbath sunset to star stapled night a 12 hour journey consisting of 2 hours guitar playing 20 mins composing a hate letter to Blunt about his You're Beautiful song 4 hours sleeping 2 hours staring in silence 30 minutes translating a Metallica song into Spanish for F and the rest chatting about all the above and much much more and when he deposited me on a dusty layby (Labi?) opposite a service station in Comodoro Rivadavia I stood and shivered and felt moved by this peep through a glassy night into someone's life as Fernando roared off at last back to his wife and family.


SEÑOR SUBJUNCTIVO MEETS TARZAN

Someone today thought I was Spanish AFTER hearing me speak - a major achievement.

This notwithstanding the fact that 3 people have accused me of speaking Tarzan Spanish. After all the work I put into using the subjunctive!

People raised by monkeys and the English cannot normally comprehend the subjunctive mood. I've decided to start using it in English by altering my volume:

It's not possible that Hitler LIKED marmalade.

He's moving the wheelbarrow so that you DON'T HURT yourself when you climax.

In GRAMMAR: THE MOVIE Señor Subjunctivo is a translucent figure - the bastard son of Mother Tongue - forever twisted and gibbering in the shadow of his half-brother Juandicativo.


HATE LETTER TO BLUNT

Dear Mr. Blunt

You might be happy to know that I have heard your song played repeatedly in some of the most isolated parts of the world. But you shouldn't be. Actually you should be ashamed and embarrassed because the song represents an insult to the human brain and irrefutable proof of your hateful and aberrant taste.

Just because you saw a girl in a bar who you wanted to fuck and couldn't doesn't mean you have to whine about it in appalling clichés.

If I were you I would be unable to show my face in public. The enormous success of the song worldwide gives me less faith in humanity than the creation and proliferation of atomic weapons.

I can only pray that the song was a deliberate cold-hearted bid for fame and money and that you do not believe it has any artistic merit.

Get fucked
Prawn D. Subsidio esq.


THE SEA AT NIGHT JUST DEFINED

We swung round the bed and I noticed a strange quivering greyness by the side of the road. I peered to discern what it was and my heart gaped a split of horror. The sea lay there, threatening me with its enormity. I felt chastened and shakened. It had been a glimpse into the cold animal fear of Infinity, which is the most human of creations.


WHAT YOU NEED TO DANCE THE BAMBA

A bit of style;

Another little thing.

(Up up)


ICY SPIDERS

Hatchhawking the 120 kms from El Bolson to Bariloche should have been easy.

Walked hours with backpack and Carlos the Valencian with one of those funny Spanishy lisps to the service station at the exit of the town.

Many truck drivers said no.

Eventually a toothless farmer travelling with toothless wife, toothless daughter and toothless baby motioned us up on top of the cab.

We put our stuff in the back with sheep sand and climbed up 4m high on top of the truck.

Exhilerating - the icy wind froze our bones but the snow covered mountains were alive and gloriously present.

Stopped - we're here. 75kms not Bariloche. The Toothless family had arrived at their destination which happened to be in the middle of nowhere.

Cursing hoisted bags and walked, folorn thumbs out to one passing car every 10 minutes.

A 4x4 with an open back screeched to a halt and we delighted climbed aboard. Drank máte, ate biscuits.

He screamed off round the mountains bends covered with treacherous ice.

The police stopped him and told him to slow down. He slammed his foot down.

Fear started like a pissy trickle: the bends were bendy and the ice was icy. Serious drop to our left.

Wheels locked. Car spinning 360 degrees all over the road. The tops of trees over the drop approaching, metal barrier flimsy.

He wrestled the car to a halt in the silence. We are touching the barrier side on.

I hadn't spilt the máte. The gentleman was bloodless. We continued to the lakes.

Lunatic Schemes and English Dreams

WHAT IS TO COME?

Itay is now in Buenos Aires and we are full throttle looking for cash, Holocaust survivors and a German translator for a lunatic mission to the end of the Earth. We have CECILIA, Argentine filmmaker and possibly a top English sound technician who shall not be named until he fully plants his steiner of ale down on the project table. I cannot give you all the details now - I don't want to spoil it! I've told the fishermen not to say anything either.

Madcap project number one - What is to Come - has caused me to split my blog efforts. See the dedicated project blog at www.getjealous.com/whatistocome.


TWO MUSIC REVIEWS 1: FRANZ FERDINAND

'Too British' said Diego, 26 when I asked him if he had enjoyed the concert. What does that mean? 'Too perfect,' he replied. 'There was nothing missing, and I like things missing.'

We were outside the Luna Park in the aftermath of Franz Ferdinand's preliminary assault on Buenos Aires. Of course the real show for them would be supporting the mighty U2 in front of 100,000+ at the River Plate Stadium, but here was a chance to see the Archdukes of British pop-rock in a more intimate setting.

And the Luna Park, opened in 1934 as a boxing ring and thereafter scene of many a high profile gig, not least the final episode of Maradona's TV series, is just that. It's like a warm, friendly barn. But perhaps that was just the vibe of the crowd. Profile: vast majority in their 20s with a smattering of kids, older yuppies and the occasional old rocker; pockets of goths seasoned with a punk or two; a strong gay contingent and a healthy dash of extranjeros. Before the show people milled around chatting and smoking in a cocktail party atmosphere.

The band exploded onto the stage at 10 o'clock, a stylish and wonderful sight in front of a Lichtensteinesque pop art banner showing a woman, hand to mouth, calling out 'FRANZ FERDINAND' in a roomy speech bubble. The four, plus extras, were impeccably dressed, and each brought a very definite personality to the stage.

Alex Kapronos, lead singer and rhythm guitar, clad in tight red shirt and black velvet trousers with red pinstripes, appears a combination of David Bowie and a young Michael Caine. Straight-backed, tall and blond, he stalked around the stage imperiously. Nicholas McCarthy (lead guitar and piano) had a muppet-like zeal about him, while bassist Bob Hardy was like a fuzzy blond bear, a tranquil counterpoint to the frenetic energy of the other two. Drummer Paul Thompson was a Beatlesy mop of hair at the back bouncing around.

Also bouncing around were the crowd. In Britain serious 'moshing' is reserved for heavy metal concerts, but crashing around in a churning mass of headbangers holding up fists with first and fourth fingers extended in the Universal Rock Sign Language for 'Awesome', I realised that Argentina is truly a nation of rockers.

Kapronos tried 'Muchas Gracias' and 'Que Tal' and then resorted to English barely discernable even to the English speakers in the crowd. He introduced the band one by one halfway through over a thrumming groove, repeatedly bellowing 'Do – you – want – to – know – his – NAME?' until even the more reserved spectators were yelling 'YES! YES!' with childish glee.

When the inevitable global smash hit 'Take Me Out' was played on the hour mark, the backdrop changed to 4 stately pointillist portraits like Warhol in monochrome. The band really stepped up a gear. Warming up the crowd with an expert touch, they dipped their heads and guitars frequently into the ocean of grasping hands.

Franz Ferdinand are more a band of the groove than the virtuosic solo. At times they cut to one musician following the riff, to be joined one by one by the other band members until the whole unit thumped it out together. If there is one criticism it is that the sound was overloaded, so much so that at times the song was lost in distortion. But this might have been the effect they were going for, being a band of body music rather than head.

They played for a solid hour and a half with a ten minute break. The finale was a breathtaking odyssey of peaks and troughs. At one point no fewer than three people were drumming at the same kit, electrified by strobe lighting, while Kapronos and McCarthy raced around the stage holding their guitars aloft and standing up above the people urging them on. When they finally wound up the last number, the crowd were left panting while the band members performed a neat bow together. Visually arresting, entertaining, stylish and with body to boot. Too British perhaps, but can you really have too much of a good thing?


SUBTE

The BA subway-metro-tube is called the Subte and is a bustling marketplace of blind people selling marker pens and demonstrating their use on a cd, little girls selling stickers that they place on every passenger's lap before coming back round to deal with any buyers, folklorica musicians from Salta playing tiny banjos and panpipes, at least one fantastic sax and piano (full size, don't ask me how) duo, beggars, wisecrackers, lone men selling Computer magazines, biographies of the Argentine Presidents, pharmaceuticals, glasses cases, marker pens, newspapers, cakes and biscuits, marker pens, keyrings pocket torches penknives batteries plug adaptors sweets chocolate school textbooks stickers with voices worn out through years of hawking to a stripped wooden gurgle that scrapes through the endless babbling mash of commuters.


TWO MUSIC REVIEWS 2: MEDESKI MARTIN AND WOOD

Groove Clawing, Pipe Squeaking and Tube Blowing – Jazz at its Freshest

The NY Jazz Trio stormed the Teatro Gran Rex for the Buenos Aires jazz festival showing us vibrant professionalism at its peak.

No-one was expecting this at a jazz gig. Ten minutes after the New York trio had finished their encore the floor lights were up in the Gran Rex but the capacity crowd had refused to disperse. They were very much still there, and producing an insane ruckus. Rhythmic clapping, whooping and the traditional Argentine crowd tune that is chanted in such situations and which can be roughly translated as 'Give us more! Give us more! Give us more!'.

How could they refuse? Medeski, Martin and Wood, contemporary jazz legends, came back on stage blinking in sincere surprise at the feral appreciation of the crowd. They took up their positions and started funking a flagship number when something truly extraordinary happened. Chris Wood, tall angular bassist, disconnected his double bass from its moorings and planted it on the lip of the stage plucking mikeless with his hands clawing a groove. Band leader Billy Martin was next, emerging from his fortress of a kit with his hand shoved up a bizarre percussive pipe that produced a variety of farmyard squeaking noises. Finally John Medeski appeared from behind his banks of keys with a handheld melodica keyboard that he powered through a long rubber tube curling into his mouth like a Arabian hookah pipe.

The crowd were trendily dressed and largely bearded and male. Jazz. The only beard on stage was of scraggly haired Billy Martin, who had managed barely more than 'Muchas Gracias' into the mike but sang in español for a Cuban salsa number, which was the first time Medeski played the baby grand piano at the back of the set. The mix was rich and full, coming principally from the range of keys that were occasionally used with a plucking jazz guitar sound. MMW did their lunatic versions of the mainstay styles and rhythms, touring through an organ drawl trip waltz that homaged Kind of Blue, Ray Charles-esque rhythm and blues, shuffling backbeats, breakbeat electronica and even a soft jazz version of Hendrix's Hey Joe, but each track held its atmospheric aesthetic intact, and their personality came through in their versatility. The show stopper was Chris Wood, who provided a more intense groove on electric but always impressed more with his acrobatics on the upright bass.

Having played for two hours in their respective zones of their stage, the unforeseen finale saw them in a row at the front of the stage, bobbing in unison. They played a cheery blues that with the thick bass, the squeaky whooping of the pipe and the tinny melodica sounded so fresh and divine that one would have liked to throw up two spoons, a cat and a toy car to see what they could come up with. This last feat felt like something they had improvised as a special treat for a particularly deserving audience, and the audience stood or sat, heads bobbing, mouths open at the compulsive synchrony of three musicians at the peak who are tight as they could be after fifteen years, without having lost any of the electricity that has deservedly made them into contemporary legends. It was breathtaking. The crowd were overawed, with those who could not contain their whooping (I confess) shushed angrily by those who puritanically wanted to hear every note. The roaring continued after the trio had left the stage, but when they came back on to bow a final farewell, everyone knew that they couldn't ask for one drop more.

(published in the Buenos Aires Herald)


DECISIONS

I have decided to miss the one year deadline to claim my return flight to London. This is not purely out of dedication to the travel blog. It is born out of a selection of good opportunities, madcap schemes, a raw animal fear of returning to the murky whirlpool of London, a wish to claim the irreality of 'travelling' as a species of real life.

I know that to all of you at home it must seem like I'm having such a good time that I am never going to come back. This is partly true - I am stimulated, growing stronger in my selected areas, freer perhaps, but- this does not change the fact that I love you and miss you all, family and friends. Painfully sometimes. Come and visit me. US$500 from Spain.

I also miss London, green and merrie Englande, seen now through soft focus. At times I feel like an alcoholic Catholic priest dying of malaria in one of Graham Greene's colonial outposts. And the roses just aren't the same. Here they are wild scraggly things, like dogs in a desert. Skin and bone. I deliriously recall the fat buttery things weighing down bushes in an English garden.

¡Cómo me gustaría saber tu piropo preferido!

CHANGE OF PERSONNEL

So Ana Cláudia went back to Brasil taking her maracas and her irrepressible loveliness with her and Pablo vanished in the night in the general direction of Ecuador with his tranquil charm and ipod and the Americans Pat & Tony with whom I had enjoyed the puppet party (c.f. blogpost Tengo un cocodrilo) turned up on our doorstep at 9am clutching their rucksacks, considerably ravaged from two months working as farm labourers and hitching round Argentina, much like a latter day Lenny and George. Patrick set about baking bread and Tony began a serious spell of TV watching that would last some days. He was like a starving man given free license in the Harrods Food Hall.

We have now succeeded in capturing Chilean Italo, who has long hair and a flute, and a German photographer called Katia. We maintain the even gender balance and the musical aspect. We will also improve Spanish listening comprehension markedley because the Chilean accent is gloopy and impenetrable.


ACCENTS

I can now recognise the Columbian accent - a melifluous walk in long grass. The Ecuadorian is low and twisted, and the Chilean like trying to have a staring match on the teacups at the funfair. Mexicans mocking, and Argentines like Italians. Sometimes I am told I have an Italian accent, which I hold as an improvement.


HUMAN FETCH AND ANIMAL PIROPOS

Reading in the Plaza Republico de México surrounded by the leafy and succulent area of Belgrano with its preponderance of large houses and Renault Clios, I slowly became aware of a bizarre scene in front of me: a man was playing fetch with his son. In my life I have seen fetch played with perhaps 500 dogs of various breeds, a handful of cats and even with one particularly talented rabbit. But I have never before seen it played with a human being. Nevertheless the boy, who appeared to be around 12 years of age, seemed to be having a whale of a time. He was running backwards and forwards collecting the stick with a big eager grin plastered on his face. I wondered if he was retarded. His panting adrenaline-fuelled smile made me wish I exercised occasionally, in the same nebulous way one might wish to travel to other galaxies. I read my book, occasionally glancing up at the incongruous tableau. Does treating your son like a Labrador amount to child cruelty? Perhaps it would do us all some good to be more In Touch with our Animal Side.

Argentine men are well in touch with their animal side, especially in the Buenos Aires summer. The season is a hot brick on your forehead, a stroll through the desert in a suit of armor, a smoggy well of screeching days and relentless nights. While waiting for the storm to break, people stagger around flustered and gasping, hot blooded and exuding pheromones. Argentine men are renowned for being pushy at the best of times, but at the height of the summer the flow of piropos is like a flood of treacle in the streets.

I am being slowly initiated into the world of the Piropo. A piropo is a chat-up line. Points given for originality, humor and persistence. Piropos can be used anywhere, but are most usually fired at women in the street. Thick skin is a necessity for the piropero. Unless he is a virtuoso, 95% of women will walk on by. But the 5% who smile make it all worthwhile.

In San Telmo’s buzzing Plaza Dorrego, Josh and I sat on a low wall playing chess and practicing piropos. He mostly stuck with his old favorite:

How I would bite you like a grandpa with no teeth.

This engendered quite a few laughs, especially because Argentine chicas just don’t expect piropos from gringos. I tried a lyrical number:

How your eyes mix with my soul.

The sublime poetry was lost on my audience. At this point Francis arrived. Have you ever seen dust motes in a streak of sunlight? They continue swirling around until they find a surface to cling to. Establish a base in Plaza Dorrego, and all the motes collect around you. Francis was first. He is from Angola and speaks 5 languages. His style of piropo was rather aggressive:

Hola! Hola! Hola! Hola! Hola! Hola!

This usually resulted in a disturbed look and a quickening of pace. More chess was played, more beer was drunk and before we knew it we were surrounded by a mass of Argentines, Chileans, Brazilians and Dutch. Every group of females that walked by was subjected to a cacophonic torrent of piropos, ranging from the simplicity of Francis’ approach to the postmodern:

How I would love to know your favorite piropo.

In England the only men who give comments to girls in the street are madmen and construction workers. Yet in Buenos Aires all men do it, from builders to businessmen. And how do the women feel about it? That depends on the tone and quality of the piropo. If done with a smile, everything can be acceptable. Even playing fetch with a 12 year old boy.

After sitting awhile in the Belgrano plaza I finally realized the father and son weren’t playing fetch at all. They were actually having a competition to see who could throw the stick the farthest. This looks very similar to fetch when you only see the turns of one person. And thus is it possible that a dog playing fetch is just curious to see how far his owner can throw a stick. Give those animals some credit.

Errata

Jeanette's name is actually spelt with two 'n's. Jneanette. And she doesn't come from OHIO, she comes from IOWA. Or was it Idaho? Ah, who fucking cares.

Porteño Hothouses in the Screaming Summer

VIENE QUEMANDO LA BRISA

Yesterday was hot. Today it is 35 degrees, but yesterday was hot. People stood gasping at the foot of buildings. Even the pollution couldn't stir. Walking past offices gusts of air conditioning reared up against the stagnant heat, thought better of it and returned to their marble staircases. I felt like I was wading through hot sand. Sweat poured from every orifice and immediately evaporated. The city is a desert at times like this, the cloying mass of people insufferable. Everywhere you look people are rising battered bottles to their lips, sweat coated throats scraping to absorb the vanished liquid.


CRIMSON BLEATINGS

At the stroke of midnight on 24-5 December Buenos Aires erupts in fireworks. From the ninth floor I saw them. You could pick out the posher areas from the grandeur of the flares. Every year at least 30 children lose their noses. But my, was it pretty!

Argentine New Year's Eve usually consists of a family dinner followed by dancing in the streets.

I went to a cosy little flat in the centre, ate hake and drank viciously strong caipiroskas, caipirissimas and caipirwipers mixed up by Ana Cláudia and Fabiano from Brasil. We stumbled out into the heavy night and onto a private bar called 878, in a large house behind a locked door. I took something small and square and brightly coloured and the balloons started to look like marshmallows. Finally I could fit through the tiny door into the exquisite garden! Jeanette and Columbian Harry fell asleep frozen in snogging position. A Canadian cured me of the hiccups with a clever spoon and cup trick. I forced myself out into the open as the world was whirling around me. We tried to go to a factory party but I couldn't bring myself to enter anywhere with gates. I watched trees sucking up life from the soil and spraying it into the sky. Golden butterflies assailed my senses. The sun awoke roaring and poured its molten lava onto a windless city scarred with debris. What few cars buzzed the streets driven by wired clones. And 2006 will hold more exultation and pain, weeping pails of laughter, bright peals of bitter tears. As long as we taste the extremes, we know we're ALIVE-


MI CASA ES SUE'S CASA

San Telmo is the Hackney of Buenos Aires. Incidentally an entreprising graffiteur has painted the words 'Malos Aires' in strategic points around the city. Very witty I think, though a trifle negative. The barrio is filled with tango dancers, street musicians, artisan fairs, cheap parrillas (grills upon which the famous meat is slapped by lean greasy men while you sit at a plastic tablecloth dipping hard bread into chimichurri) and old crumbling town houses with high ceilings and open courtyards.

One of these crumbling houses has become mine for the next two months, along with Jeanette from Ohio, Ana Clàudia from Brasilia and Pablo from Ecuador. Personnel subject to change. It is a house to fall in love with, leaning up against cracked walls weeping and licking the paint. The spacious airy living room (buenos aires) yawns out onto a long and narrow balcony. Original Argentine art adorns every wall. Sombreros are scattered in every cranny. And the crowning splendour is the roof splayed wide in a huge terrace. The bedrooms enter onto an open air courtyard, so you can be doused in warm summer rain journeying from bathroom to kitchen.


LA FIESTA

Our house warming party consisted of 4 people (most of them over 50) until about 1am when 200 people I had never met arrived bearing cachassa and wide grins. One of the crazy Irish amigos turned up with sad tales of cocaine and whiskey addiction driving his group asunder. Mara sparkled exquisitely. I played guitar in the gorgeous rain gushing through the open middle of the house. Tourists chatted in Spanish for 10 minutes before realising they were both American. Argentines played folk melodies and collapsed in hallways. I'd like to think every South American country was represented. All readers are invited to the next one. Simply present a printout of this blogpost to guarantee entry to the VIP area (my room. It's a little bit dark but I like it like that).

I feel a real resident now. And I can understand 75% of what most people say (as long as they have subtitles flashing across their crotches). All I need now is 4 or 5 pedigree dogs, some plastic surgery and a therapist.

Seasoning

TO THE KIKES

Happy celebration of the lasting properties of kosher oil in times of strife (and the one time we managed to fuck over the big dominating empire) by lighting candles on the days we remember and eating 5 or 6 slightly cold glutinous doughnuts at one sitting out of a combination of sugar addiction and a need to express somehow the inexpressible intricacies of a cultural identity divested of any substantial religious belief (or is that just me?), while pretending the festival is a little bit more important than it is just so we don't feel too left out of the Christmas thing. I've always preferred Pesach, much more glamorous, and who can beat a whole platter of symbolic foods and the visitation of a dead prophet midway through dinner?


TO THE CRISPIES

Happy birthday to your saviour. Christmas in Argentina is not quite the hurricane of commercialism that it is in England. I imagine that's because they have much less money to spend on useless crap. It's frankly glorious for me to be able to walk into a shop, café or restaurant and not be subjected to the same 14 Christmas songs as every year that aren't even any good anyway. Out here people have their Xmas dinner on Christmas Eve, often an asado (Gaucho style barbeque) with present opening at midnight. The day itself is usually a chilled affair with immediate family. I told many Argentines that English people tend to go out and get trashed in the pub on the 24th, then get up really early, eat a 6 hour lunch and drink constantly before falling asleep in front of the TV.


TO THE ZOROASTRIANS

I am not sure quite what you do to celebrate the death of Zarathustra on Zarathosht Diso (26 December), but I hope it involves presents and that you get nice ones. I'd also like to register my delight at how many Z's your religion involves. I've always thought a lack of Z's to be a terrible shortcoming in most religions today.


TO OTHER FAITHS AND ATHEISTS

Look, just eat the turkey, okay? Who's going to know? And if there's a shadowy presence lurking by the doughnut bowl, who'll raise the alarm? Not I. I too have seen Darkness's gory visage and know. Plus there's more than enough to go round.


EL AÑO NUEVO

Amazingly, omitting that little wiggly line on the N changes 'new year' to 'new anus'. Having just been informed by my marketing people of the recent success of a face transplant in Paris, I hope that 2006 may finally see a successful anus transplant in Rome. I also hope that none of you be the guinea pig. Though they probably have more advanced ways of doing keyhole surgery these days.

Tengo un cocodrilo en mi bolsillo

It was the same night as the puppet party that my bag was stolen from under my nose by an urchin selling Jesus cards in a restaurant called Hipopótamo next to the infamous Parque Lezama that forms the boundary between culturally happening and slowly gentrifying San Telmo and the rough and ready streets of La Boca. The only night I have seen fog in Buenos Aires, hanging like a dream over the hilly park, griddled with paths and studded with bizarre classical statues. My bag contained all my books and notebooks, numbers and letters and writings worthless to no-one but me and future scholars. I would like to hope that the penniless kid who nicked it was prompted by the contents to commence a life of letters but it is far more likely that the contents ended the night garnishing one of the numerous piles of rubbish propping up lampposts in every corner of the slippery city.

I was very upset, but the puppet party was the perfect antidote. Set in a courtyard deep in Boca territory, the partiers were a brightly coloured selection of street performers, clowns and puppet masters who put on a great show among heckles and crates of Quilmes beer. There was some bad onstage chemistry between compere straight man and clown wearing a toaster in front of his face. A complex war story involving a soldier running slow motion armed with a large elongated chicken was particularly entertaining. When the sun started smacking the city with its cheery hammer I was wandering in a stupor with an American clutching my guitar. On a previous night in the same area I had been accosted by a wiry old man who yabbered at me in dense Porteño slang and showed me his (possibly artificial) gun while asking 'Estoy ladrón? Estoy ladrón? (Am I a thief?)'. I think he was just looking for love, but I had none to give.

Un Manga de Boludos

SOME MEAT INFORMATION

Vacío, which also means 'empty' is a flank steak and my current favourite.

Asado, no translation, is a kind of barbeque where the meat is cooked for a long time over smouldering coals to ensure it is cooked all the way through leaving it tender as a lover's caress on a Spring morning.

Lomo, or loin steak, is a popular choice, sometimes snuggled under a blanket of ham and cheese (sorry mum). Lomito is the same but thinner.

Morcilla is a squidgy blood sausage delicious when mashed onto crusty bread. It has the gutsy consistency of intestine and the rough charm of a peasant farmer slapping your ass as you mount his donkey.

Tira de Asado are short ribs (not a medical condition). Tenacity required when penetrating fat to the juiciness within. Just like everything.


WHAT WERE YOU SAYING?

My lovely friends Portia and Itay left Buenos Aires to pursue the elixir of eternal youth in the Patagonian mountains. Portia gave me an early birthday present of a new bag and a bottle of champagne - I had trouble deciding which one to drink and which one to put things in! I was extremely grateful for the new bag as the French Exchange style rucksack inherited from Jazmin had entered the final phase of zip dementia. It was painful to dispose of such a trusted and long-serving slave, but sometimes loved ones are better off 'put out to pasture' to save them bothering themselves and others (sorry mum).

I am hoping to move hostels and find an apartment soon, but leaving The End of The World (TM) is bizarrely difficult, like reading the works of Samuel Beckett in a public toilet.

Teaching English in businesses means sitting around chatting about football and politics while being overly pedantic. So nice when one's job is also one's hobby. A plastic cup of ludicrously strong & sweet coffee lubricates. One of my students is indescribably boring. I just fix my mind on what I'm going to earn out of the conversation, which reminds me of being at a cocktail party with media executives.

I went to a party in an exquisite house. The people were painfully overcool and the DJ operated in a different time zone. Balloons manipulated the wind in their bid to escape the confines of the roof garden.

I feel scattered but vaguely stationary. The weather is the black and pleasant hammer of moistness. When eating you need an entire toilet roll to absorb the sweat.


BOCA JUNIORS 2 2 UNIVERSIDAD CATOLICO

I have never been so high up at a football match. People pinioned themselves to the fences to see better. Boca were terribly shit in the first half. In the second half they scored and the stadium become a whirling maelstrom. Then the Chilean Catholics retaliated with two goals, and their 15 or so fans bounced around obnoxiously waving for some reason a French flag. I learnt some nice phrases like la concha de tu madre and hijo de puta. The man next to us was like a puta machine, bellowing it every 15 seconds and soaking half the stadium with a high powered jet of saliva.


CON PACIENCA Y SALIVA EL ELEFANTE SE COGE EL HORMIGA

With patience and saliva the elephant fucks the ant. This well known Argentine phrase says more than a little about national priorities, as well as conjuring up some hideous mental images.

Can you believe the Falklands happened?

SAVE THE BABIES

The tyre was still rolling past us down the deserted street when the police collared them. Pulled their car round in a U, and waded out of it the way fat men do. Three boys, non-specific adolescent age. Mara pulled me over to a good spot right next to them to watch. I was appalled- in England we usually just emulate the badly traumatised and deeply sociopathic; edging by looking slanted up through furtive eyes to decipher what's happening. 'Are we just going to watch!' I asked with the thrill of the fairground. 'We have to support them,' she said. Two more people had marched up and taken position as well, the dreadlocked woman standing defiant arms folded. I realised we weren't watching but taking part.

Bizarre really, for me anyway. I'm usually on the side of the adults in England, despite barely being one myself. Can that be true? After all my youth work? But in Argentina with its tender wounds of military junta and highly corrupt police force, we had to be there to look out for the kids.

The Officer McClusky figure sidled up to 'You cannot mess with me' dreadlocked woman and attempted to justify himself.
'Did you see what happened?'
'I just got here.'
'They were rolling a tyre down the road, it could have caused an accident.'
'They're just children, leave them alone.'

Four more police cars appeared, presumably out of boredom. Mara called out 'Hey - they're just kids playing!' A warning and the kids were sent on their way through the chaos of the squadron cars. Before they went they turned to us and saluted. 'Ciao chicos!' People power against the draconian security forces. I felt like a Paris student in 1968, it was breathtaking.


END OF THE WORLD AND SUPERPANCHO WONDERLAND

In its favour it has jazz chequered flooring, an ingenious mural showing a continuation of the room into a parlour filled with sophisticated cocktail-drinking silhouettes, and a free pool table. Against it, the bathrooms are an enduring symbol of urban squalor, the kitchen a theme park for cockroaches where the cutlery drawer typically contains just one dirty teaspoon and there is no cosy lounge area. On the first day I arrived with a trio of Ozzie girls I'd met in Santiago, I intended to leave the hostel at once.

I had a nap at 5pm and woke up at midnight to the sound of severe racousness echoing in the gymhall acoustics of Downstairs. Drawn like a dung beetle to a pile of steaming ordure, I happened down to find an exuberant and chatty mélange of Israelis, French-Canadians, Chileans, the inevitable English and many more. Before long I'd been introduced to the local 24 hour shop where decent wine can be bought for 50 English pence and large bottles of beer for 80p. Soon after that I brought down my guitar and unwittingly lit a powder keg of enthusiasm. I decided to stay at the End of the World for a while.

Another night I found myself at a festival of Balkan music at the Armenian Institute, and then all of a sudden (in the immortal words of Jonathan Richman) I was dancing in a lesbian bar . We emerged into the sunshine and dined extravagantly on Superpancho hotdogs (effectively free at 1 peso 25 each) and beer at our local 24h pancho house. Opera Bay is a superclub built to emulate the Sydney Opera House, with a wide open portion overlooking the spectacular mouth of the estuary, betoothed with sparkling skyscrapers. And when Susannah the brazileña tried to make me understand the word 'tile' in Portuguese as we walked down the street, I turned to look at her mime on a wall. I began to walk again and collided forcefully with a large metal box. For a few days one cheek was permanently rouged and my nose resembled that of Robert de Niro in Raging Bull.

The hostel is situated in San Telmo, a neighbourhood of Buenos Aires close to Downtown whose mention inspires a look of disgust on the faces of middle aged Jewish women (naturally I am beginning to insinuate myself into the network). It is an historic area with narrow cobbled streets and good bars peeking out from behind enormous piles of festering rubbish.


SANTIAGO IN A BLUR

I had flown straight from New Zealand to Santiago, Chile. I found a converted mansion in which to stay, called the Casa Roja. I played much guitar with large groups of Argentians, and met a lovely Uruguaya called Evelyn with a killer wrist on the ping pong table. 4 hours Spanish lessons with an española called Ahinoa ['Hey what's that girl's name?' 'Ahinoa.' 'Yes, I know that's why I asked you.' etc] fed me some much hungered for culinary vocabulary and pulled me through some juicy prepositions.

The culture shock was thrumming on the streets. Not only had I jumped from Western to Latino, from 1st world to 3rd, but from depopulated NZ with its vistas and mountains and inalienable relationship with the land, to a big dirty South American city with curtains of smog and millions of people. I loved it, of course. Everywhere were people lounging and chatting. Everywhere were couples really going for it in the street. Everywhere were stupendously gorgeous and exotic looking women. I could live with this, I decided.


EL ACENTO PORTEÑO

I am learning Spanish, but inevitably the Buenos Aires bastard of the Argentine variant. 'LL' and 'Y' are pronounced 'SH' instead of 'Y' in Spain-Spanish, and there's a different groovy informal 'you' form. It's quite a sexy little spin off, also used in Montevideo, as Evelyn the Uruguaya taught me. The pronunciation is Italianate and highly dramatic. All sorts of plosive squirting noises are employed as conversational enhancers. Taxi drivers are hilarious. An affectionate BA greeting:

¡Che boludo! - Hey asshole! (use with discretion)


OVERTURES OF GREASE AND HANDSLAPS

I am putting out mucilaginous tentacles to find food. I have put up signs offering lecciones privadas con profesor recibido en la universidad de Cambridge. In life I have barely started to abuse my Educational Privilege. I attended a meeting of the Jewish gay, lesbian and transexual club to find contacts. The room was full of men ranging from upper youth to lower old age. I brought Itai and Jeanette from my hostel; Jeanette was thrilled to be the only female, and not Jewish at that. We mingled and watched 3 fairly arresting Israeli short films on gay themes. In one a scorned woman fakes a coma to stop her lover leaving the country. Another had a large-eared teenage boy exploring his sexuality by orchestrating meetings between other men on his computer. I chatted voraciously, working the room with an empanada in one hand and a plastic cup of diet coke in the other. Received a few potential leads. Then I attended Conversation Club at Hillel House, Jewish student hangout and pulled out a bunch of flyers. I searched myself for shame and found none.


BA OVERVIEW

There is a glut of dogs in prime pedigree, being walked ten at a time by dog walkers who are some of the highest paid workers in the city. I saw someone tie up a bundle of dogs outside his flat and go inside, presumably for a nap or to watch TV for a few hours. Cushy work. An enormous muzzled hound cocked his head at me to say 'I could do this man's work, and you'd only have to pay me marrowbone.' Or he might have been assessing my nutritional value.

I have made good friends round the pool table. I am platonically sharing a room with a crazy Portia from Blackpool. There are some people, like the camp and ebullient Pablo & Ivan double act from Chile, who appear to live at the hostel indefinitely. I might have sunk into that state of being, at least for now. My boss (for my 4-6 hours teaching a week) is a loquacious entity named Sandy 'La Teacher', who talked continuously through my interview without inhalation only to say after an hour 'so you didn't ask about money' not that I hadn't been waiting for a nanosecond pause to introduce the subject.

The coffee is excellent, and the unbridled carnivorousness of the nation is only matched by how eagerly they all smoke in every space, public, private, children and old people welcome. I experienced an election, when the whole city was closed down. My private lessons were a good opportunity to grill a variety of people about politics. The broad leftist only-credible-option Peron party got in again, but there were significant gains from a pro-business magnate called Macri.

Graffiti is more political. Music is more political. People have more style and finesse, even those working in McDonalds. People my age are forced by financial necessity to live either with their parents or in bunkbedded dorms. But food and drink is cheap and plentiful, and music crashes into the smog refracted sunlight of each new day.

Newly Zealous and the Penetration of the West

LIVING ON MY OWN

My campervan weeks passed in a dream of endless valleys, rushing ice rivers and various Germans. I read and thought a lot, drank cups of tea out of plastic cup with van perched atop vertiginous point after point. I skydove in Queenstown.

New Zealand has carved a touristic niche for itself in the arena of extreme sports and gymnastic pasttimes (not to mention Lord of the bloody Rings). Queenstown is a whole town built upon the obscene money travellers spend hurling themselves off cliffs tied to elastic, canyon swings, gliders, parachutes. Cross the bridge and be undershot by dozens of jetboats and rafts in a space of minutes. Hear screams from the surrounding sky. The town looks to a cliff up which scales a cable car. Naturally there is a bungy jump from the cable car.

I decided to spend much of my remaining cash on a skydive. I was driven out to the N-Zone skydive ranch. The van was full of Swede, with a pinch of Ozzie and English. We sat in the blinding sun as two ladles of Swede went up and came down.

Then it was us: myself, Mr. Xtreem Sportz Ozzie, and English girl. We donned our suits and were taught how to hang out of the plane door before jumping (make yourself into banana, open arms when tapped). We were introduced to the people who would strap themselves to us for the jump. I was thrilled to receive an enormous Serb by the name of Sasa. We all crammed into a tiny metal tube with wings. I sat between Sasa´s legs, according to ancient custom.

The plane flew up through mountains dusted with icing sugar. All around a vague cloud layer the sky was brilliant blue blinding. I felt fear for the first time, and grateful to be enveloped by titanic Serbian limbs. Sasa attached us together and I put on hat, gloves and goggles. The door opened and I was suddenly hanging out. Then it was chaos.

They say you never remember the first ten seconds. The brain can´t understand what is happening - and who can blame it? The world was everwhere, mountains flashing and jerking lake. Rolling and diving and my face making an elastic bid to return to the plane. Sasa tapped me several times before I realised what that meant and splayed my arms, hugging the mass of air below me. Exhileration, rush, narcotic! I screamed for a bit before deciding there was no point. Freefall was 50 seconds but passed in a triangular vortex. Then the cord went and we were yanked frozen still.

Nothing can replicate the silence and peace then. After the psychotic scream of air, we were stationary hanging in the sky. The bulging meniscus of the world curved up around in a wall-eyed oval. A plumline in a snowglobe. The harness was giving me a groinal heimlich manoeuvre but all I could do was gibber:

This is ins-ane. This iss ins-ane. Unh. It´s beauti...ful. Ins-ane.

The lake stretched blue, the mountains bobbed. Tiny white dots grazed in the field. Our shadow became apparent, drawing circles on the green. Everything grew larger. We lifted legs and swooped in, hit the ground running. Absurd and wonderful; epiphanic. I stuttered with adrenaline. Cut a sun-starched slice of that moment.


ABBA´S DEATH DAY AND SHANA TOVA

Before I left Wellington Miri thoughtfully gave me a yahtzeit memorial candle to commemorate my dad´s Hebrew death date. 2 lunar years on I sat on the beach near Nelson with a wide angle of sea and sky. I chatted to something resembling my father and looked at my life through his eyes. I sensed pride and vicarious enjoyment of my adventuring, with a definite underlay of career-related concern. I thought about his life and his aspirations, thoughts and feelings, all now residing purely in the memory of others. Vicarious is the word. I ate cheese and Thai red curry paste sandwiches; I´m sure he wouldn´t have objected to food at his own memorial service.

Rosh Hashana followed soon after and was saturated with memories of him and years of standing by him in Shul. He was always so happy to have Renato and me next to him in Shul. It was perhaps his high point of fatherhood, the time when he felt he had succeeded, when so often he thought he´d failed. It made me sad because I am not a Jew in his ideal. He was hardly Mr. Halacha but he tried, and crucially, believed it was right to do so. I can´t believe that, at least not now. He felt it so strongly, beating his chest during Avinu Malkeinu his passion was tangible. My Judaism will always be symbolised by the image of my father, I think it is often the way - God of my fathers. But I am pulled away from appeasing his memory by my confusion. This gives me a profound sense of guilt at this time of the year. I don´t want this to detract from using the memory of my father as a source of love and joy. Perhaps that takes time.

I went to a shul in Christchurch (ironically) containing approximately 15 people, most of whom were octagenarians. On the request of the Rabbi I attempted to blow the shofar on the bimah but all that emerged was a pathetic squeak. A 75 year old shoved me aside and trumpeted energetically. Despite all my best intentions, I failed to secure a lunch invitation.


BOOKS

Amused and elated by absurdity of The Master and Margarita. Been drinking Margaritas to enter the holy spirit.

Blown away by family interrelations in The Corrections.

Book of Fame by Lloyd Jones chronicles lyrically the rabidly successful tour of the UK by the 1905 New Zealand rugby team: the first All Blacks. I´m no rugby fan but they were legends. Poetic exploration of their knowledge of space and national selfhood.


JAEGER BOMBS

Simply take a glass of red bull and a shot glass filled with jaegermeister. Add the jaeger, glass n all, to the red bull. Neck immediately. Highly popular in NZ. Drives you mental. I was treated to several of these by an American firefighter called Mike who was about to go to Antartica and was spending up his US government money. Thank you Uncle Sam. A Tanzanian called Messenjah with his name on his jacket was also part of our troupe, along with a couple of Icelandic females. Messenjah had effusive theories about positive attitude, cf. Stand up for your Rights.


NZ CHIPS

come in binbag size portions. I used a litre of vinegar.


RIGGERS

of ale are 2 litre bottles that are obscenely cheap and refillable. God bless New Zealand.


SQUANDOR: THE LAST INDIAN LAWYER

On my last night in the van I slept by the sea with wild wind buffeting and a demonic spread of stars. I woke up to seals basking on the rocks.

Dempsey was high on life, or possibly something else. We played guitar and drank beer on the ferry to the North Island, and formed a little family with a gym teacher and sex shop attendant, a guy with lots of piercings, and a hoary old singer songwriter from Oz. There was also a heavily tattooed man who hitches up and down NZ on a permanent basis. Positive things that Dempsey repeatedly said:

This is all just a big advincha
Kids are so out there and on to it
It´s so amazing that you just walk into a pub and then walk out in a different place
Life is a great advincha
etc advincha advincha etc

I helped Lissa move by driving a fun bus belonging to Miri´s family. The tyre almost exploded shortly after we almost plummeted off a cliff. Plumes of black smoke rose from the tyre. Lissa limped around on a sprained ankle and fell over a few times.

For my last party night, we ate strips of meat at a Mongolian BBQ. Then I started buying tequilas. The bitterenders, ie. myself, Claire and Sam, bought party pills. Party pills are totally legal herbal highs that people of any age can buy in 24h shops in NZ, and they are extraordinarily good. We danced to Blondie and croony classics in a club called Indigo and babbled to everyone on the smoking balcony. Sam and I swayed for an hour. The barman foolishly served us absinthe. Of course we were there till the bitter end. We were effusively thanking the barman and the DJ for everything when I noticed that only the barman was clear, while the rest of the world was in soft focus. I explained this to him lengthily, drawing comparisons with the presentation of the Love Interest in early episodes of Star Trek. We emerged into the street and sat on a floating jetty watching the sun rise dazzling. The water pink-rippled magnificently. Wellington is a stunning place.

I was very sad to leave Lissa and all my new gorgeous friends. I had fallen in love with Wellington life but the date line beckoned. New Zealand was a lovely warm bath and I was becoming prunelike. I left Wellington at 6pm on Monday and arrived in Santiago at 1pm on the same day. What a head fuck.

Kiwi Capital and Campervan Collaterol

TEA AND DEAD SHEEP

Apologies dear reader for the warp and weft of my narrative. We are all but poor loomsters in country cottages circa 1814.

As I type, I am living in a campervan. I spent a few days ensconced in a carpark in Nelson. Now, that might not sound like a New Zealand idyll, perched on a granite head with black waves pummelling the coast and slightly deformed people waddling around on stilts, but Nelson is a gorgeous sunsoaked place. I have left Nelson now in search of that monstrous idyll. After all, as the great Jonny Berliner once said:

There's nothing like stopping on a country lane simply to make a cup of tea and when your kitchen is your back seat there's no finer cuppa.

And he should know - he lived in a bus for much longer. Anyway to this end, I stopped at a viewpoint called Something Saddle. And there they were, the Southern Alps on the horizon, white caps sparkling in the sunlight. I drank tea and ate biscuits, and scowled, manfully. More on this later.

But now, I beg you to travel back with me but a menstrual period. You are standing on a pile of dead sheep in Auckland staring paranoiac upwards, when you see a tiny grey specklet berthed in the sky. But wait - it is growing! Could it be - one of those metal monsters that have conquered the clouds? And on it, obsessively reading My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok, eating a gargantuan chocolate muffin and totally ignoring the view, is that.... Lemuel Gulliver? No, it's Yorick the pastor. No it's Amy Earhart. Oh, no, it's.. oh fuck it.


DORKLAND TO SMELLINGTON IN ONE EASY CHAPTER

I flew from Auckland to Wellington the next day.


FOR ANARCHISTS THEY'RE EXTREMELY WELL ORGANISED

Wellington is scattered over a series of bays, with a ridiculous system of gorgeous hills, a plentitude of sea everywhere, and brain-defying connections between the disparate suburbs. I didn't know there were still Anarchists but the movement is alive and Wellington. I went to an Anarchist stronghold for a free Spanish lesson from Jose. I made myself a cup of tea and deposited 40c in the food donation box. I'm not sure if the Spanish lesson was actually free or if I'd just failed to find the Spanish lesson donation box.

I read some leaflets about why your vote doesn't make a difference. I believe in their communal enterprise, and they were all very environmentally sound, but do we have to do away with Democracy? I find election campaigns so entertaining.

I was in good time for the New Zealand election. Lissa & Co. were extremely absorbed, and I couldn't help but be the same. I watched a leaders' debate. Owing to proportional representation, quite a few ridiculous parties get a look in. A short square odious guy called Rodney Hide leads the 'scrap all bureaucracy' party. Someone out of a 70s cop show spoke for the 'scrap all immigrants' party. The leader of the oppostion National Party was wormlike and chemistry teacheresque. He had an Anglo-American accent lilt rather like Lloyd Grossman. And imperious throughout was the matriarch Helen Clark.


WELLINGTON TIMES

Borrowed a lovely group of friends from Lissa. Lissa is in fantastic shape, and has a great new feller by the name of Russco. Won $40 at poker. Saw a great klezma band. Got drunk repeatedly at a place called Chow's with fantastic cocktails. Played a lot of Scrabble. Tried some NZ party pills (legal). I didn't think they'd had any effect on me then I realised with a start that I was standing on a balcony chewing my lip and babbling about Shakespeare to anyone who'd listen. Ate disgustingly good blueberry muffins in a cafe with a high opinion of itself. Spent a rustic weekend eating in Palmerston North with Bob & Helen Chong. Made some obscene cocktails with Lissa's blender and a variety of foodstuffs. Spilled a galaxy of red wine on her carpet. Played a ferocious game of ping pong with Russco.


MAKARACOSMIC

Drive but five minutes in any direction from Wellington and you will find a stunning bay. Makara, for example, is a particularly special beachy bay rocky headland place. It contains dinousaur egg rocks, an elephant's graveyard of driftwood, the sea swooshing on gravel, and, up extremely high, some gun battlements from the War that point far far out to the serene and endless blue of the sea. They were created with the aim of foiling an invasion. Apparently Hitler had intended at one point to invade New Zealand in order to tap its natural resources. But that doesn't limit the incongruity of those battlements so high and far from anything, in the middle of farmland and sheep atop a dizzying cliff. We played frisbee with a piece of a bread for a surprisingly long time.


RAIN

Quintessential Kiwi film, a touch sepia sentimental but highly well acted and atmospheric. Apparently sums up the collective Kiwi childhood holiday experience. But why kill the kid?


TALES FROM THE OPEN ROAD

Arrived in Wanaka under a canopy of misty rain. Last night I parked at the bottom of the enormous glacial Haast valley with snowy mountains standing guard. The radio doesn't work so I talk to myself and sing incessantly. I think I might be too far gone to host passengers now even if I found some.

I met a Dutchie driving round the South island sleeping in the back of his car. He prefers to park up in country lanes, eschewing cities. Whereas I love 'em. My favourite place is right in the seedy middle of a town, round the back of a restaurant in a residentially deserted carpark. This is the real me, I feel. I have resorted to licking cutlery clean - is this a backward step?

When I'm stumbling around these human settlements people peer at me as if to say 'What a solipsist!'. I just calmly say to them 'I might be a solipsist but at least I exist.' But at this point they have vanished, or never were there, at least at that time, in this place, in that form.


And yes, what if I did play in an Irish band with a mean fiddler and a barnstorming banjo (not to mention the frollicking flautist and beneficent bodhran)? No-one was fooled into thinking I was Irish, even when I started bragging loudly about my staying power. But I chimed in all the same on my guitar, though why it was making a chiming sound is beyond me. Whiskey in the Jar, Danny Boy, D A G D A G D A A G went the chords for every song but FUCK! was it exhilarating, especially when ol' Fran or Jesse on the fiddle led up the tempo and the whole pub was stamping and singing. Some of my contributions were I Will Survive and By the Rivers of Babylon, which were played with degrees of accompaniment. I figured Irish pub songs and Gospel are both indicative of hope in the face of cultural hegemony, no?


The West Coast is sheer drama. Black crags, a monstrous sea, terrifying cliffs and pancake rocks. Sorry, what? Did you say Pancake Rocks? Yes, they were a part of the early Imperial Government's attempts to 'breakfast this shitty little island up, what!' (Colonel Arthur Dagenham IV, Redbridge Balloon Corps). These limestonically layered piles of pancakes are riven by whamples of hard grey water into a multilevelled system of coarse tunnels through which the water surges to -POP!- up out of blowholes. Geologists don't know quite how the pancake stacks were formed, but for me the real mystery is how the Maori name for the area Panakaiki (meaning 'springs in the rock' and referring to the blowholes) sounds so bloody similar to 'pancake'? Only time will tell.


Abel Tasman was okay but once you've seen one dazzlingly gorgeous untrammelled beach in a cove with blue green water delicately playing among the silt you've seen them all.


I ran over a couple of hobbits today. They're quite difficult to see. First I knew was when I heard someone screaming 'Fek!' in an unconvincing Irish accent and then - bdm! bdm!. Though apparently they're a pest for the farmers.

Speaking of roadkill - if I collected all the dead possums (possa?) I have seen and stitched them together I could carpet Greenland.


For the past 2 days I have seen a glacier a day. I am hoping to maintain this excellent record. I saw the Fox Glacier (mint flavoured) and the Franz Josef Glacier which is similar to Franz Ferdinand only less rock-based. I saw quite a few tourists with bad cases of terminal face. Not a pretty sight. Foolishly I walked to Franz Josef in only a fluffy bra and lacey panties. My heels were a nightmare on those large chunks of rock.

But my favourite place so far has been the enchanted forest just next to Fox Glacier. I had never believed in fairies until one nicked my wallet. But the leaning trees carpeted with moss and the little murmuring creeks were enough to soothe my loss.

Hawro Darwin

THE KIWI: FLIGHTLESS, YET LAYER OF DISPROPORTIONATELY ENORMOUS EGG

Travelling is a metaphor for life, and that was a metaphor for travelling. What on earth have I been doing for the last four weeks? I have been in New Zealand though I have barely seen any of it, being camped out in Lissa's bunker-like lounge on a futon. It might be said I have ghost-written an informal fact book for boys for a leading New Zealand author under a pseudonym (his not mine). Though it might be said that I have merely collected facts into organic heaps and piled them up against his shed.

In Wellington, this overwhelmingly trendy city with cloistered and fecund music scene and proliferation of anarchists/barefoot types wandering the pavements, I received great respect from locals for getting a job in Tupelow, a bar so trendy you need a bloodhound and radar system to even find it. However they could only give me one shift every six months so I'm forced to pass them by.

But first I need to return to Australia.


TO BRISBANITY AND BEYOND

Ten minutes before the bus to Brisbane I realised with horror that the pouch with all my extremely important papery things was still behind the desk at the hostel.

I leapt into a taxi and barked at the driver.

'ALL RIGHT SOLDIER - WE GOT EIGHT GODDAMN MINUTES TO GET TO BEACHES AND BACK. IF WE MAKE IT, YOU'RE A HERO. IF WE DON'T, I'M GOING TO ADMINISTER YOU A SUPPOSITORY - WITH THE BARREL OF MY AK47!'

He gave me a firm salute, passion and provenance bursting through the veins of his neck. Seven and a half minutes later the cab screeched into the bus bay. I shot the driver in the back of the neck. Poor bastard knew too much.

Brisbanic contained chillified cocktails in funksome bar the Press Club, garnished by giant cogs and elaborate light fittings. Superclub FAMILY has four floors. It pumps some kind of house through the bottom three. The top level resembles a space pod with breaky tunes and a Tim Burton ice bar. We bonded with Justin and Whassername. Justin was convinced I was an undercover cop. Before long we were all gyrating on a podium amid diverging washing lines of laser light. Spent a while curled in a gazebo drinking gin and tonic. The song You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To is not addressed to 11 people with whom you are sharing a dorm.

There is something of London about Brisbane, and I don't just mean the concrete South Bank replete with art galley and theatre complex. Damn - I like it! Hannah bought a green hat. In the art gallery a film concerning the meticulous destruction of a supermarket warehouse was hypnotic. They were working intently, psychopathically. The camera's slow pan revealed at least three ways to destroy toilet paper, as well as some people diligently pulling down shelves and chipping away at the bricks beyond.


EVOLUTION AND OTHER FACTORS

A deadpan voice above a spiral beard belonging to Dwayne informed us that Elke's Backpackers had mislaid our room reservation. This was at 2am. Eventually we shacked up in the TV room, to be woken by a stream of people gawping through the french windows.

Darwin is small and hot, rednecked but charming. It was great to get back into the heat and all the lack of socks that entails. We feasted on steak. Darwin's nightlife consists of a fantastic market with every food on the planet. A stall called Roadkill served us skewers of crocodile, camel and kangaroo. I think the retching was due to the quality of the meat, not the incongruity of the animals. Aboriginal bands cavorted and belly dancers shook their collective booty. A stargazer sold constellations. On the beach the sun splashed the sky with unset raspberry jelly. Cheap flip flops gauged symmetrical chunks out of my feet.


PRACTICAL PARK PRATTLING

We cruised national parks Kakadu and Litchfield in a rental car with a rental tent. After setting fire to the car on its first journey (nothing permanent) we reached a campsite and realised our grave error. Entire civilisations of mosquitos were born and died on our non-repellented bodies. They love the fleshy bit at the back of the upper arm. My skin was carpeted with thick clusters of red welts. You could barely hear anything above the sound of buzzbombing. We walked five minutes to the toilet block to get water for pasta. While we were there some bastard completely rearranged the layout of the entire campsite. For over an hour we wandered through bracken holding a pan full of water. Our lantern sputtered out. Eventually a drunken Ozzie took pity on us and used Common Sense to find our site.

I had to do all the driving (except for a few unnamed sections) but the car was automatic which gave me a feeling of great power. The roads were mostly deserted which meant we could travel at interstellar speeds. The landscape was reddish and desertesque with endless scrubby trees and terrifying rock behemoths propping up the sky. It was seriously hot. The fizzy jubes flowed freely through our systems manifested in a manic gleam of the eye. Cathedral termite mounds towered cathedral-like. The Moreno Wetlands were obscenely wet. Thousands of whistling ducks stood in groups as if at a community meeting to discuss how wet the wetlands were. They whistled and whooped, and the Aboriginals' favourite magpie geese honked. Jabaru cranes probed. I got the car stuck on a concrete breezeblock. As I edged back and forth to get it off, brain-crumbling scrapes made me fear for my deposit. At the campsite we kept the water boiling and the mosquitos melted away with only the psychotic braille on my arm to confound the blind. The intoxicated moonlight spilled into the tent like frozen vodka and milk.

To Blood on the Tracks we drove to Yellow Water Billabong at 5am. Dawn rusted the sky. Three boatloads of tourists had made it. A Kiwi woman spoke through a PA about crocodiles and birds. We saw plenty of both. Crocodiles are my favourite. Though preening eagles aren't bad. A guy in front had a camera like a rocket launcher, and kept demanding we go back to look at kingfishers. Not another bloody kingfisher. The sun rose and mist shagpiled the saturated plains. I wanted to see an archer fish spit at an insect but they were all off fighting in that senseless war against the shrews. I asked if anyone had a baby to throw to the crocodiles and received a stony silence.


OLD MEN FALL AND A BRECHTIAN FAREWELL

The main campsite of ghost town Pine Creek was locked up and deserted. A small chalk board bore the message 'Gone fishin. Back soon'. Perfect. Fortunately a small site next to the Shell petrol station was open, and crammed with old men positively ejaculating out of campervans. We drove into the corner next to the road and set up shop. We dined extravagantly on steak and mash with onion mushroom gravy and drank extravagantly on red wine. The old men peered at us from behind their fish.

Litchfield had stunning waterfalls in which to swim and frolic. A secret warm rockpool at Wangi Falls was particularly frolicsome. We camped within earshot of Wangi's roar. Our neighbours were long-term itinerants. So many Australians sell up house and board campervans to travel the country. Incomprehensible distances are part of the culture, and campervans a beautiful way to manage them. I would love to do that - outward on the great red roads, self-sufficient and able to eat at a moment's notice. I feel my great skills as mechanic would stand me in good stead.

Darwin Arts Festival was ON. The Threepenny Opera was packed out. The set was thrilling. The actors stood around barking their lines with several seconds delay between each. What is it about the Australian accent? Perhaps I'm slightly prejudiced but the sound of those nasal syllables embarrassing the stage makes me laugh out loud. Sorry. We were forced to escape early to eat pizza. Hannah flew off to the States via Fiji and Mexico, and I mournfully watched Aboriginal dance shows and drank vodka with Irish people.


9 INCHES OF DEMOLITION AND THE END OF AN ERA

Brendan and Gin were overexcited about the Nine Inch Nails concert. They donned a panorama of make-up and monochrome clothes. Fritzi took me to dine with a House of Germans. This reaffirmed my love for the Teutonic people, most of whom have by now infiltrated my family. A Demolition Party was rocking Tamarama.

So they tell me: these houses are/were the last vestige of the neighbourhood's former beatnik character, but finally the siege has been successful. They too will now meet the demolition ball, thus heralding Tamarama Beach's complete gentrification into Yuppie Parquet Floor & Slate Fireplace Land.

I celebrated this highly symbolic occasion by shamelessly booze-scavenging. I found a suspicious premixed caramelly drink in a fridge and guzzled it before delightedley securing a rogue bottle of white wine. I met several assorted beatniks and Teri, a documentary producer, who kindly gave me fruit salad.

Sunday's Opera House gleamed like enamel against polished blue tile. With Lissa's friends Paula and Caroline I quaffed wine and cheese like a newly released prisoner. At home Brendan and Gin were still relishing the 9 inches. I watched some grisly videos and chatted long with Brendo. Nice way to finale.

Sydney Poitier and Fraser Crane

THE MAN WITH NO EARS AND INNOVATIVE COCKTAILS

Brendon and his housemate Gin held up a sign 'The Man With No Ears' so I could recognise them at the airport. All three of us had ears, fine ones, so the sign must have been a homage to a fictional entity, or some kind of grisly summons. Gorgeous and welcoming like the hot winter sun, B and G swept me to breakfast where the enormity of Australian portion sizes became apparent.

The waiter used a forklift truck to deliver the toast.

I eagerly ran into the bathroom to watch water swirling down the plughole in the opposite direction, but I'd forgotten which way it swirls at home. I think one of them is anti-clockwise and the other is clockwise, but it could be the opposite. People in Sydney wear large sunglasses, and Brendon is no exception.

I gorgeously met Hannah, last seen (by me) in Vientiane, Laos, 6 weeks before. I found her and Emma where I'd left them - hungover and sleep-deprived. They'd been peddling vibrators at the Sexpo festival over the last few days. Hannah and I celebrated our reunion with obscene cocktails in the 'W' trendy and expensive hotel - warehouse chic. Each cocktail had an essay devoted to it on the menu, containing phrases like forbidden marriage and gesture of hyssop.

We upheld the backpacker ethos by checking into a split level studio room with an expensive minibar that sirenously beckoned us. Thus born was the cocktail LaBambert - half whiskey, half vodka and double ginger ale. The 'W' bar would have added a circumference of forsythia but some people know when to stop.

I spent a few days in Sydney wandering about. Hannah and I continued our mission to spend a year's traveller's budget in a few days (venison was involved). The harbour shoots with shards of sun. The shade reminds chillingly of winter, but all this changes, sure as the Global Market. Brendon introduced me to the Canon of Heavy Metal, particularly Marilyn Manson who has a malleable and munificent face. I saw several videos of impromptu operations being carried out by the Nine Inch Nails. We ate shnitzels the size of antelopes in a true German tavern. I decided to hop on a plane to Byron Bay with Hannah and Emma. Why not?


CALCULATED HATS

Byron Bay is a hippie hangout, crawling with aging Israelis and ubercool travellers with calculated hats who discuss the structural aspects of each guitarric specimen in studiously loud voices. The Arts Factory is a hostel/centre for organic growth run by travellers who work for accommodation. One behatted acid freak excitedly explained the meaning of this: 'This place is ours, man, I mean, this place is ours.' I accept his point but did he have to be so irritating? The beach is crystal expanse, a plain of frolics. German Johannes drunkenly bewailed female obstinacy in the abhorrent club Cheeky Monkeys. He had been blanked by all surrounding women for trying too eagerly to massage their hands. 'They don't know how good I am at massage,' he moaned. I urged him to engage in at least superficial pleasantry before leaping to the massage stage. The next day with a Scottish girl called Emma we hired a car and gunned the windy roads to Nimbin.


PERFORMANCE POETRY WORLD CUP QUARTER FINALS

Colourful small town Nimbin is famous because you can get a wide range of psychotropic drugs there within 40 seconds from an assortment of hippies representing both sides: intellectual bourgeoisie and down-and-out beatnikdom. Like everything else in our commoditised culture this enclave of ostensibly radical ideas has become a tourist attraction, to be gawped at by passers-by who feed the community by buying weak hash cookies and overpriced 'organic hydro' (hello, yes). We caught the Performance Poetry World Cup Quarter Finals at the Rainbow Cafe!

To the taste of angostura bitters we entered upon a berobed woman of stature poesising a wet dream. She was the compere. We watched 9 contestants. One man read a poem about Jesus visiting him. Apart from his shaven headed girlfriend forming a crucifix behind him, the performative element was undermined by his murmured drone and hooded glare. Another man called Brian or Mark (or possibly Robert) blew everyone away: a fluid poem about summer days with a rhyme scheme almost worthy of Eminem but more regular, and pictures painted of stone skimming and breathless delight in nature - phwoar. One act was a trio: halfly skinhead halfly punked-yellow woman swirls arms and shouts sex in the shower; older continentally beautiful woman stands eyes closed at other mike muttering sensually in Portuguese; dreaded hippy stereotype sits on stage and plays haunting yet faintly ridiculous guitar. First glance had my self-conscious critical hackles flaring but the interplay and their sheer absorption caught me up in a trance, and it worked. Now that's what I came for! We also came for mushrooms but the mushroom people had moved on when we emerged from the crazy-painted shim-sham bright-eyed world of hippy untouchability into the darkened puddle of night.


BRIEFS AND BONDAGE

Hannah, Emma and I shoveled ourselves with bags onto the street at 3am to wait a worrying time in the silent road until a bus arrived like Jean Claude van Damme popping out of the rubberised ether in Timecop to puke a grumblingly officious (I told you) and grizzled driver. He did us a big favour and let us on his bus. Thanks, you old bastard.

Hervey Bay; starched in sunlight and rather like a beachside retirement town. Actually it is a beachside retirement town. We got to Beaches hostel in time for a Fraser Island briefing. Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world, is mostly accessed by backpackers in groups and 4x4s arranged by hostels. That's what we did, and were therefore part of a group of 9 travelling in the same truck. There were three groups of nine going out at the same time from Beaches so we suddenly had an extended group of temporary friends.

Each group put together a food list and booze list for the next three days. Our group was very proud that we bought double the booze of the other two groups put together. This included 16 litres of wine for some reason. Hannah & I also wisely bought some sparklers and face paints. Scouts say: Be prepared.

That night Beaches threw a party for us including drunken physical challenges. I'd have felt like I was back at uni if I'd ever actually done that stuff at uni. The Ozzie backpacker scene is like a big campus. The birthday boy Sean frequently tried to snog me and then played a whale song on his banjo (not a euphemism). Hannah and I escaped and hit the beach where stars gaped and cold sand beckoned.


GROUP KANGAROO, OR PERHAPS DINGO

Dominic from Ireland surprised everyone at the pre-Fraser bonding party by being able to pick up a piece of paper from the floor without using his hands. This Houdini-like flexibility had been unknown to him up to then. The only other person who could do it was a gymnast who could also bend both arms backwards, which she did on a table to drunken roars of appreciation. At the start I understood barely 30% of the words Dominic said, but it was a steep learning curve. A berocca addict, and all round bouncy fellow. Damien and Aine completed the Irish trio, and then we had Kelly and Mike from America, who were travelling together despite their intense mutual hatred. Gary from Blackpool was a wonderfully mental driver. And finally there was Hannah, Emma and myeself who were the demonic impetus behind the excessive alcohol buying.

The potent aroma of a dead stingray permeated the dock. I befriended a local fisherman and he showed me his bream. Romping Rhonda (name trademark Hannah Lambert) with large shoes and an expansive midriff ran tirelessly to and from the ferry when it arrived. The sea alongside was peppered with constellations of sun shrapnel.

And then the island - the largest sand isle in the world! Have I mentioned that? I drove on the endless beach alongside the roaring slapping sea that we couldn't swim in because of the sharks. I drove the van through a crevice which scared everyone and scored a '9' from a passerby. Not understanding Dominic's Irish accent I unwittingly affirmed that I was an experienced surfer. We stopped at a barnacled shipwreck and took photos. Then we decided to go to the campsite and drink. We played bizarre drinking games and Hannah and I produced the sparklers. I was having difficulty speaking. 'Sentences are fucked!' I declared post-structurally. I whipped out my tiny guitar and thrashed obsessively for a thick crowd of drunken people. And don't they always go crazy for Don't Look Back in Anger?

The next day we hit the Champagne Pools. They are actually like champagne! Waves crash over the rocks into pools, and fizz up like a natural jacuzzi. From Indian Head, a high point, we saw whales frolicking in the sea. Drinking games involved face paints. Everyone crashed down to the beach where a dazzling canopy of stars loomed. I've never seen a sky like it. Rings and clouds, and the milky way like a cummerbund across an boundless besuited belly.

A Vietnam Sandwich

OZZIE WRAPAROUND (1)

In Australia time seems to move more slowly, creakily negotiating the vast spaces. People in minor bureaucratic positions are even more officious than in England, perhaps in an attempt to impose petty order on this unwieldy terrain. The urinals all have flush chains. After Asia it was a shock to see so many white people who all speak English (of sorts). Another shock was the price of everything. I had become accustomed to splendour, which is difficult to forget.


HOI AN FLUSH

Last night in Hoi An. It's been gorgeous, full of experience. Lots of stories, some that I can't even fathom. Seems crazy to have a story without a suicide bomber these days. I feel like an idiot - but these chances are so fleeting and must be grasped. From one ridiculous experience to a really rather beautiful one. From a great non-realised romance with the cutest Vietnamese girl [her accent and the way she laughed the words 'no' and 'maybe', and never said yes just the Vietnamese grunted 'ugh' (sp?), and threw her head back bashful to the audience when we said goodbye] to an abortive homo dalliance. And kisses in the street. Love runs parallel, never quite touching, always visibly staining the street with its syrupy ooze. I am DRIVEN by these things. Is this the time for self-indulgence?

I lost my camera in Hoi An, with 300 photos of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. I have drawn minature sketches of all the ones I remember. I passed through Hue in an afternoon.


HIGH HANOI

I received a pen and a drink from a lovely London family atop the City View cafe in Hanoi against the lake stretched out darkly sparkling. The man had once been arrested with some friends for being Irish and loud on the tube. The woman was beautiful and had a theory that the world's terror atrocities were following their family around the Globe (there was some substantiation for this, which I won't go into right now). Their littlest daughter was very cute and clever and loved watermelon and riding camels, and the eldest was teetering on the brink of adolescent bashfulness. We drank beer and breathed in the crazy city, astoundingly alive far below us like the bottom of the cave in Raiders of the Lost Ark.


MONEY AND STREETS

Hanoi was running around ripped off. Sometimes I am gullible as a hungry puppy. An irritating hotel and an obscenely extravagant flight to Hong Kong brought about by my lack of forward planning. An overpriced day trip to Halong Bay was deafeningly misorganised. On the good side, fantastic beef noodles at a street cafe where no-one spoke English. I love sitting on those tiny plastic stools amidst sweat guzzled streets and Viets huddled round endlessly chatting and drinking beer with ice and smoking White Horse. I LOVE IT! The memory of the streets hits me like a wave, and the taste of the soup inhaled with voices and people and warmth. America has used chemical warfare. No other country has used nuclear weapons in war. In the concerted effort to prevent other countries from developing nuclear technology we are like the members of a very smug club. We have it but you can't. Or, we have it so you can't. The big question is, though the US has used and uses hideous means to conquer the world ideologically and financially, do I want their mission to be successful? It has been enormously refreshing to be in Vietnam, a country that seems to work without the gush of Americanised culture that's inescapable in the West. There is poverty and corruption, inefficiency. Healthcare is all but unaffordable to the average person. Nonetheless the culture is strikingly warm, friendly, community based. Families look after each other, which might be the result of poverty and the lack of a welfare state as much as indiginous cultural differences. Does our welfare state come after our individualism or does it inculcate it? Do they advance together? In a replica ethnic longhouse in the grounds of the Vietnam Ethnology Museum I drank tea and chatted with Dat. He was rather happy with the Government but wanted more cash and the ability to travel. It will come eventually, I'm fairly sure, along with living alone and plastic surgery.


TWO THOUSAND STUBBY ISLANDS ALONE IN THE SEA

En route to Halong Bay (with a bunch of people who had paid less than me) we stopped off at a tourist warehouse with 30 other buses. Whiteys swarmed, buying diet coke and smoking fags in the scorching heat. Disabled people sold bits of cloth. The free lunch was lousy. I ate it next to Vung, a Vietnamese girl with pointy shoes who I'd chatted with on the bus. She was about to go to Reading for a month, the poor thing. Several others at the table ate in surly silence. Hung out with two French bombes, Oriane and Valentine, for the day and they laughed at my French. Sitting aft of the boat in the sun silently roaming an inescapable canopy of bluest sky and everywhere around craggly knobbles sprouted out of the sea like mushrooms after a storm. Two thousand islands, some cut away underneath, some stretching out towards their siblings; some adrift, alone, pensive.

Into a grotto lit up with multicoloured lights like Disneyland. Too majestic to ruin, but they did their best by installing penguin-shaped bins in every crevice. Hundreds of tourists traipsed through and tour guides bellowed an assortment of languages. The walls were stone jellyfish, soaked with cold condensation.

I didn't pay to see another cave, even though it starred in a James Bond film and a French flick Indochine. People live in between the islands on house boats. Surreal in the midst of this natural beauty, little plastic prefabs topped with TV antennae. A school floats, funded by the UK government. I took credit for that. Someone had to!

I was sad to part with Valentine and Oriane. I put so much of myself into these transient relationships. As soon as people feel at ease with me I can't help working into them like the ocean into a fissure of rock. But all the while I am working them into me and I feel it so strongly.

Travelling solo is both wonderful and difficult - I always craved a weird poetic ideal of solitude yet I NEED companionship. And when I have it I want to escape. Some people are never happy. When I'm alone my deranged imagination starts to feed on itself, which is entertaining at first, but irritating after a while.


NEW CENTURY

The calculating crooks at my hotel were one step ahead of me again. All ready to confront them for overcharging me for the Halong Bay day trip, when I was greeted by the sight of someone playing my guitar in the lobby. But.. that was in my room! And is that my bag over there? Yes, it was. Some vague 'problem' with the 'room' had forced them to stuff all my things into various pockets of my bag. THE WRONG POCKETS! Don't these scurrying misfits know that there's an order to things? I was whisked away by bike to their 'other hotel' and put in a vast warehouse type room with cracked mock antique furniture and hammer horror light fittings. The shower was an abbattoir. I bumped into Jakob, my hirsute Canadian friend. We drank in an overpriced shithole called Funky Monkey and met two Ukranian girls who took us to a club that was new and closed. Then, in a superclub called New Century, drinks were astronomical and thousands of pineapple slices had been used as decoration. Bouncers wearing orange boiler suits (each with their own number) prevented me from taking a drink onto the dancefloor and from eating the pineapple. One of the Ukranians expected me to buy her drinks so I ran away upstairs and played pool on a balcony with some guys from Dorset while a bouncer told me I was handsome and offered advice on which shots to play. When the club closed, my bag had magically transported from one locker to another one. I asked the guard to saw a woman in half as his next trick, but this was misinterpreted and I decided to leave Vietnam forthwith.


MIXED BALLS

And what about Hong Kong? Have you ever seen such a craven crowd of skyscrapers? People slosh at the bottom like rainwater in a gutter. Flash storms combined with many short people holding umbrellas on crowded strips of street is bad for my head. Hotness and wetness, and an occasional unexplainable belt of cold air that passes through the city like an angel of mercy.

I had mixed ball soup in a Chinese cafe with condensation coating the front window. I was greeted with frank hostility by the waiters, which I rather liked (do you ever feel like you could use a beating?). Somehow a bit of chilli made it into my eye causing me to weep like a baby. I felt the eyes of everyone on me, like a monkey on drugs. I dabbed with a tissue and soldiered on with the mixed balls, some of which were brown, some white, and some inscrutable grey.

I walked three hours when I arrived in Hong Kong, disbelieving at the difference in room prices from Vietnam. Rooms were 15 pounds - 15 pounds! Can you imagine? I hadn't paid more than 50p for 3 months. Eventually I found the cheapest room in the city at HK$100 (about 8 pounds). It was approximately 2 x 1 metre, with a bathroom that you couldn't sit down in owing to a crisis of width. It was impossible to turn around in the 'shower area' between sink and toilet. There was no floor in the room, it was all taken up by a bed that sagged and groaned under aeons of filth. Wombfully I loved it.

'What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability.' (The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami)

I sat in the Peninsular Hotel blowing any difference in room prices I had scored on gin and tonic, listening to unobtrusive jazz and breaking the dress code. The next day at the peak of Hong Kong, overlooking the dizzying bay furred with fantastic protrusions, I met Ruth, a psychiatric nurse from Stoke. It's very difficult to meet people in Hong Kong - there is no backpacker guesthouse scene, and big cities impose anonymity. Ruth was feeling much the same so we descended on the ridiculous peak tram and drank bizarre chinese wine cocktails in a subterranean bar airconditioned to freeze the eyeballs.

AC's friend Alex, who lives in Hong Kong, let me stay at his stunning apartment with a panoramic view of the sci-fi city. Alex is relaxed and charming. Jane is down to earth classy. And my fellow (though more long-term) freeloader, Sophie, moved to Spain in order to learn flamenco and make clothes. It was warm and nice being welcomed into their place. Alex and I managed to have a conversation about Pol Pot and the Cultural Revolution as a violent expression of the Hippie revolution in America within about 10 minutes. Brilliant. We all left together, they to a dinner party. I met Ruth and ate won ton noodles in a thronging eatery. Lang Kui Fong is a street with an unusual gradient, packed with people drinking beer out of yard glasses on straps round their necks. We met Alex & co in an ex-pat bar called Feather Boa which is rather like the Bennets' parlour in Pride and Prejudice as seen through a twisted mirror. The size of the cocktails defied belief, and my capacity for reason. I discussed religion and marriage with Alex and a small posh man, young and married and awfully pleased about it all. Small pictures of dogs and things grinned from paisley walls. My vision blurred. Ex-pats bobbed and weaved. I eventually made it back and decided judiciously to have a one hour nap before leaving for the airport at 05:30 to catch my flight to Sydney.

I slept soundly and woke up 45 minutes after my plane had departed. I crashed in on sleeping Jane and Alex to announce my folly and then scarpered off to the airport berating myself intensely during the hour journey. 'Why am I so STUPID' was the mantra, accommpanied by slapping of own face and occasional punch to temple. I was convinced I'd be charged for a whole new ticket, and that the rest of my tickets would be cancelled. And I was supposed to be meeting Hannah in Sydney that night. And Brendon was supposed to be picking me up from the airport.

But the Qantas desk lady didn't even seem to hear my muttered story about severe stomach problems. Nor did she seem to smell the margarita crust that had formed around me. She simply changed me onto the night flight, no charge. I felt tears of relief welling up. I wanted to fall at her feet and offer her my eternal soul, but I didn't want to get locked in a customs bin for 24 hours. And partly I felt I should have been punished for my stupidity. I didn't deserve to be awarded the winning raffle ticket. So I resolved to spend the 12 hours until my flight in the airport, as a sort of purgatory. Hannah emailed saying she couldn't meet that night anyway and Bren offered to pick me up the next morning. Plus HK airport is a shimmering wonderland filled with nymphs and goodies. Am a lucky bitch or what?


12 HOURS IN HK AIRPORT

Ate bowl after bowl of noodle soup;
Bought item after item from Pacific Cafe for 15 min internet slot you get with each;
Read;
Played guitar and attracted large crowd of Chinese who gave me biscuits;
Napped;
Stared into middle distance with runway transit eyes


OZZIE WRAPAROUND (2)

And now Australia. Filled with campervans and friendly people (though there are many people who are painted-friendly shells filled with hate. I know that's true everywhere but their accent gives them a strained intensity that terrifies me).

What have I done in this enormous country over the last three weeks? Did I rescue Hannah from the pouch of evil Professor Wallaroo? Did we save the human race from eradication by a horrific biotoxin with only a can opener and a boomerang? To find out, tune in next week to rrrrrrope of sssssand!