All the Way There and Back Again.

I'm cold. So very, very cold. This is perhaps unsurprising as I'm back in the UK where it is currently Autumn. It was Bob's thirtieth last Friday. Having succesfully wrangled a visa he will be remaining in the antipodes for the forseeable, which came as a massive relief to him as the thought of returning home came across as appealing as a bucket of cold sick.  According to the grapevine he has nothing but luck since I left, which lends credence to the oft floated theory that I am in some way jinxed or cursed (I really wish I hadn't peed on that gypsy woman all those years ago). The other day I received a birthday request from the man himself for another blog post, to act as a sort of conclusion to my previous witless ramblings,  hence why I am now putting fingers to keyboard for the first time in over a month.

The plane ride back took even longer than anticipated due to bad weather over London (I know. Who'd of thunk it?).  I was again flying with China Airlines and again I really cannot say I was that impressed with them.  However, I did make aeroplane fwends with a Swedish girl called Magda which helped alleviate the tedium somewhat. The first week or so was spent catching up with friends and family.  Got to see our Rosie's flat, help our Alice move into her new house and finally met little Ethan, my cousin Lindsey's new born. I also visited my mam. She's still dead, but other than that, she's fine.

Following that initial flurry of activity I have settled into a bit of a routine. I get up, send out around half a dozen job applications, work on either my writing or drawing, do some exercise and then just potter round for the rest of the day. It's not an especially bad mode of existence, but I'm feeling somewhat understimulated and I am very aware of the very real possibility of slipping into bad habits. My younger brother Josh - unemployed for the past year, days spent watching YouTube videos of strange men eating sticks of deodorant,  his get up and go having got up and gone - acts as a sort of Jacob Marley figure, warning me to take heed of the dangers of slipping into sloth and apathy. Unfortunately with the economy being on its arse at the minute, I may well be living like this a while yet.

Do I miss Australia? Of course I do. As I've written before, it's a great place and I genuinely regret that I didn't see more of it.  I also miss meeting new people and making new friends (though what I don't miss is striking up a friendship with someone and then them moving on a few days later, something I found to be an utter ball ache). That said, by the time I left I was ready to come back, I was becoming conscious that I was missing key moments in the lives of my loved ones and was finding it harder to ignore the desire to have a place I could call my own. Plus else the possibility of two drunk people loudly fucking in my room has now dropped to zero percent*, which is nice.

As mentioned earlier, it was Bob's birthday on the 5th, which meant that it was mine the day after. It was my thirtieth, which I'm told, being a round number and that, has a much greater signifigance than, say, my twenty sixth.  Had a much quieter one than last year, which involved me being borderline sexually assaulted by a transvestite, denied entry to a bar as I'd had more than a thimbleful of booze prior to my arrival and then being lectured by a hobo about how it was the fault of the blacks and the gays or possibly just the gay blacks. When I was younger I used to dread birthdays and would be in a foul mood in the days before and after them. Generally speaking I've made my peace with them now. My main objection was that I felt that I hadn't done enough with my life and that it was just plain rude that time kept plodding forward despite the fact that I hadn't yet had the Great British Novel published, been wooed by a green skinned space babe from the planet Sex or flown to the moon. I still haven't done any of those things, but I've had many more limited, but no less worthwhile experiences, not least of  which is the last year I've spent travelling around a foreign country with one of me best mates.  It does occur that I'm entering my third decade with no job, no romantic prospects and no home.  But these are things that are easily resolved, once I've got a bit of traction. Currently working on a few things that'll hopefully see the light of day sometime next year, though I can't imagine that I'll be updating this blog again as it's now served its purpose.  Thank you for reading and take care of yourself. I'm off for a pint.

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton

* That is, unless we're being literal and assume that one of the drunk people could be me. Then there's about a 0.015 chance of it happening.

Davey Denton Went to Sea, Silver Buckles on His Knee

All things must come to an end.  I've come full circle and am currently sat in the Blue Parrot waiting for the shuttle bus to the airport.

With time running out, we've tried to fit in as much as possible in the time remaining.  First stop after Byron Bay was the rather twee sounding Rainbow Beach and from there Fraser Island which - the literature tells me - is the largest sand island in the world.  The guide was pretty useless if truth be told, grunting inaudibly, gesturing vaguely towards some dunes and then wandering off to sit by himself.  Luckily everybody else in the tour group was really canny and met some really nice people.  Of course, we had to pull together in order to combat the ever present threat of the dingo packs that live there.  At one point I left the group to make use of the local amenities (Fraser Island being almost completely undeveloped it's advisable to take advantage of public loos and the like on the rare occasion that you come across them).  Preoccupied as I was with my bladder I very, very nearly walked straight into a dingo which was idling on the path.  There was a second of disconnect as it was kind of hard to reconcile the rather handsome dog in front of me with the very real danger these things can be.  Thankfully it didn't seem particularly interested on eating my face and was content to let me shuffle off in the opposite direction.  The island itself is very pretty and well worth seeing.  True to form the second I tried to take a photo of something my camera lens jammed with sand and is now unusable.

After that we took the overnight bus up to Airlie Beach and then took a yacht out to the Whitsundays.  For almost as long as I've known him, Bob has been going on about how he would love to own a boat, so this was a real high light for him.  We weren't just sat there either, but were expected to participate in the hoisting, grinding, tying etc (I can now confirm that pulling up a 450kg sail is hard work.  Who knew?).  On the last day the weather turned and became blustery and choppy meaning that we pelted back to port, spray in our faces and the ship at a 75 degree tilt.  Fantastic stuff, although because I can't resist the obvious reference, I did have the below song running through my head the entire time:

When we weren't boating around on the boat with all the boat people we were diving and snorkeling the great barrier reef (Well, I did.  Because Bob had asthma as a child they wouldn't let him dive, which understandably narked him a bit).  In the end I didn't punch a turtle.  I was going to, I really was. While snorkeling I came across one asleep on the ocean floor.  However my fists of fury were stayed by the fact that they are some of the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen.  Plus they eat jellyfish, which I both hate and fear.  So I left it be and instead paddled off to taunt some clown fish.

Was rather surprised when we returned to the Blue Parrot to find that there were people here that we actually know.  I was also slightly surprised to find Ollie here, the lad who took over my job at DealBoard, and find that he'd quit after four weeks as he thought that the job was all kinds of bullshit.  This was slightly gratifying as I did wonder if I was being slightly precious about the whole thing.  Being back in Sydney meant that we were also able to meet up with Erin and Tia again, which I'm really glad for.  There was also a guy named Jim there.  I've not met him before, but he seemed canny.

There is, of course, a sadness in leaving, but there's a joy in returning home.  Goodbye Australia.  You are a beautiful country, filled with many beautiful people.  I've had some hard times here, but they've been tempered by the good times, which will provide me with happy memories that will stay with me for the rest of my life.  Your telly's a bit crap though.

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton

Wish You Were Here

I'm now approaching the end of my journey.  Two weeks from now I'll be sat on a plane, watching reruns of Friends and wishing murder on the screaming baby two rows in front of me.

However I'm still here for the moment and hope to make the most of my time here.  This has been greatly facilitated by the return of my travelling companion Sir Robert of Walker who apparently had a whale of a time sticking fence posts in the ground around Griffith.

I enjoyed the Byron Bay writers festival, although as I'm still waiting for my tax refund I could only afford to attend one day.  Although I hadn't heard of any of the panelists or their work, the talks were lively and interesting.  The festival site also had sculptures scattered around and was sited on one of the prettiest beaches I've seen in my life.

Beyond that I've mainly been exploring the town and enjoying the sunshine.  It must be said that if you're going to be kicking your heels and doing very little, there can't be many worse places to do this than Byron Bay.  It really is a beautiful part of the world.  I went for a run up to the lighthouse the other day.  As I wheezed up the hill I glanced to my right and slowed to a stop.  The ocean was alive with hundreds of dolphins dicking around, doing there dolphin things.  Two whales also swam past, side by side, presumably dee in whale conversation (which is just like normal conversation, except its reeeeaaaalllllyyyyyy sssslllllloooooooooooow).

This indolence isn't going to last..  We're off to Fraser Island via Rainbow Beach tomorrow, where we will camp under the stars and drink the cheapest, nastiest wine that can be found.  Then it's on up to the Whitsundays, where Bob can live out his long standing fantasy of working on a boat and I can live out my long standing fantasy of punching a sea turtle in the face.

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton

Here's Looking at You Kid

Just a quick one to say congratulation to my cousin Lindsay and her husband Ian who are now celebrating the birth of their first child, a wee boy.  This feels like the first news that I've recieved from the motherland that hasn't been prefaced by the words "it's probably best if your sitting down" so I am, of course, made up.  I've seen pictures and the teeny tiny bugger is lovely.  I'll bring him back a cuddly koala.  Or possibly porn.  Kids like porn.

Getting ready to leave Brisbane.  Wasn't especially impressed with the place initially, but I'm gradually coming round to its charms.  Unfortunately, as I'm currently skint I haven't been able to get the most out of the place and have been entertaining myself doing low cost activities such as going yo art galleries, long walks along the riverbank and chasing after pigeons. I was accosted by a drunk the other day who was under the impression yjay I was the devil - a perfectly reasonable assumption as I was wearing a red hoodie at the time.  After determining that I am not, in fact, Beexlebub, he was kind enough to share with me the secret to finding peace with the universe, which was nice of him (In case your wondering, you squint at the sunset and listen to the voices in your head). In other news my camera, which broke for no apparent reason a few month ago has now fixed itself for no apparent reason.  I will therefore be able to bore people with even more photos of bridges and rocks and shit.

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know

Before I left England, I had in my mind a list of some of the places that I wanted to see while I was over here.  One of those places was Byron Bay, which I finally staggered into late last Sunday.

Getting here was quite a mission.  A wise man would have checked the journey time before booking accomodation at the other end.  A wise man would have seen that, due to the rather stately speed of Australia's trains, it took thirteen hours to travel from Sydney to Casino, the nearest station.  A wise man would have then booked the overnight train, leaving himself plenty of time to get to the station for departure, saving himself a nights accomodation and letting him find his hostel at the other end during daylight hours. I am not a wise man.  I am a tit who almost missed his train through sleeping in and had to peg it to central station carrying a full backpack with no socks on my feet.  Thirteen hours is a good while to spend on a train.  I passed the time by pretending that I was on the Hogwarts Express.  Then I remembered that I'm a grown man, and so instead passed the time by pretending that I was on my way to a workplace synergy conference, where I would get too drunk and end up having shameful, mutually unfulfilling sex with Margaret, the horsey faced woman from my office, before returning home to a wife I can't even stand to be in the same room as any more. Then I tried to get some sleep.

Byron itself is a very nice, attractive seaside town.  It obviously makes it's money from tourists,but is nowhere near as crass as Cairns, that other stop off on the back packer trail.  The beach here was voted the sexiest in the world, ahead of such big names as Bondi, Malibu and Skegness, though the overall sexiness probably dropped a few points when I waddled onto it with my shit hair and permanently running nose.  I have a vague ambition to try surfing at some point, but the constant rain has put me off the idea a bit (I realise that water from the sky shouldn't really be a deterrent for an activity that involves jumping into the sea, but there you go).

The hostel I'm staying at is teaming with Goddamn Hippies.  Which is fine, though I myself do not make a particularly good hippy, I suspect I'm too uptight.  It's pleasant enough though and has all the amenities you could want and even some you might not, like digeridoo lessons.

In the interest of interest I took a day trip up to Nimbin.  Nimbin, for those that don't know, is a small village a few miles outside of Lismore.  The place was dying a slow death when students held the Aquarius Festival.  Since then it's found a new lease of life as a haven for Goddamn Hippies and is Australia's unofficial weed capital.  The inhabitants seem a fairly politically active bunch, but only about Marijuana legalisation.  Marijuana is, of course, as illegal there as it is everywhere else in the country, but if one where inclined to partake of the herb one wouldn't find it especially hard to get hold of and I must have been approached by dealers a dozen times in the twenty minutes it took me to walk down the main street.  After a little while it became slightly irritating and so ducked into the Museum of Nimbin which was cool enough, but rather appropriately slightly unfocused and rambling.  Also - and I'm not sure if this is worth mentioning - but there was a lot of three legged dogs around.  I counted at least three in the two hours I spent in this community of a few hundred people.  By way of contrast I counted exactly zero in the six months plus I spent in the teeming metropolis of Sydney.  I don't want to be casting aspersions here, but I think... *looks around to make sure no-one else is listening and drops voice*... I think the hippies might be eating them.

Tomorrow I head on up to Brisbane.  The Splendor in the Grass Festival kicks off in Byron this weekend and as such there is no room at the inn.  I am therefore clearing out of town for the duration of the cool alternative music festival, but shall be returning in a weeks time for the more cerebral delights of the annual writers festival.  This probably says more about me than I'm willing to admit.

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton.

P.S.  I have received news from Bob.  Having gone through weeks of negotiations with our former employes in Queensland, they have now agreed to sign him off for seven days a week he's legally entitled to as opposed to the five they originally gave us. With the additional days we worked in Tasmania this puts him a few days shy of the 88 he needs to extend his visa.  Whether he's still going to fly all the way to Griffith and then fly back again a few days later remains to be seen, but it seems likely that I will be seeing him again before I leave.

Off On Me Todd

Finally I have finished at DealBoard.  It's not the hardest job I've ever done, the people there were pleasant enough, but I have never been so embarrassed to have my name associated with a company.  I have shaved off the penance beard that I grew during my time there and now feel able to greet the sunrise with words other than "fuck my life".  In one of those things that remind you that, despite it's ludicrous size, Australia is in some ways quite a small country, my position is being taken over by Ollie - one of the Brummie lads who was staying with us at the Blue Parrot.  Out of courtesy I did actually email him when I saw he was interviewing for the role, letting him know how bad the company is at what it does (how bad, you ask? * stretches arms out as far as they can go* This bad), but the guy needs the money so can't fault him for taking it.

We were out in a place called Croydon last week for Tia's birthday.  Bob, who knows her better than I, was charged with present buying.  He got her a sky diving trip - which is quite easily the most ostentatious thing I've bought for someone who is, essentially, a casual acquaintance. Also went out to Newtown mid week at the request of Erin, who was joined by Louisa, a girl we'd met last year, and Caitlin - a girl that Bob knows previously from Canada and who he seems to believe is his nemesis - though she showed no signs of reciprocating this antipathy.

Bob is still questing for additional farm work.  At one point it looked like his work was going to put him in touch with a farmer in the hunter valley who would sign him off for the days he needed without him actually having to turn up.  Unfortunately this fell through and he's going to have to get his hands dirty again.  He's managed to secure a tree planting, tending gig at a place called Griffith.  He's flying out there via chartered aircraft a week on Monday (cue flying doctors theme tune).

As I've only got five weeks left I won't be going with him.  Instead I'm heading north tomorrow, up towards Byron Bay for a couple of days.  After that, don't really know, but I suspect Brisbane for a week or so before back to Byron (assuming I like the place) for their yearly writer's festival.  Bob may or may not be joining me again, depending on how soon he gets the days needed.

This is a bit of a concern in that, as I've noted previously, I can be cripplingly shy and sometimes it helps to have someone like Bob around who has verbal diarhea.  Primarily though, the only real bummer, is that he's me best mate and it would have been nice to see more of the country with him by me side.

Never mind.  13 hour train journey tomorrow.  I shall buy a bumper colouring book and a big pack of jellies to make the time pass quicker.

Love and  Fishes 

Dave Denton

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

The cold that will not die still lingers.  I estimate that at this point my body is 90% snot and whatever the purpley grey stuff I've been coughing up is.  I also haven't been sleeping much.  One of my roomates has a mechanical monkey that only comes out at night to throw crackers at an indian guy and it keeps me awake with its incessant robot chirping.*

It's July 4th.  A day when Amercans everywhere eat barbecue, drink beer and try and pretend that demanding people pay taxes was the worst thing the British Empire ever did.  Of course anglo-australian relations have never really deterioated into the shooting each other in the face stage, our dfferences primarily being articulated through cricket sledging and Mel Gibson killing us in films of varying quality.  As such the big thing here was the fnal day of the State of Orgin series.   I was hoping for a New South Wales win, this being the state where I currently live and have spent the most time.  Unfortunately Queensland won again, making this the seventh series in a row - which'd depress, except I don't have any real emotional investment.

I've handed in my resignation at my job.  This was earlier than I planned, but more than one person has commented that it was making me seriously unhappy.  At the end of the day  got tired of being made to feel like a complete dickhead every time I answered the phone and being paid peanuts for the privelige.  Luckily it's the end of the tax year here so I am, theoretically, going to receive a large(ish) wad of cash as soon as I can be boshed to fill out the appropriate forms.

Me and Bob met up with Erin down Newtown, who has just finished various exams.  It was nice to see her again as we only saw her for a few minutes at Tia's tea party thingummy.  

Went and saw Prometheus by wor Ridley the other day.  There's potentially a very good, intelligent film there.  Unfortunately it's hidden behind a slightly stupid film where earth's top scientists prod alien hell beasts to see what happens and a ripped Lord Voldemort beats up a young guy in old guy make up... because...because... *film makers shrug and distracts audience with tentacled vagina monster*

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton

P.S. Happy birthday to wor fatha who patiently endured my drunken ramblings when I finally manage to ring him, and congratulations in advance to Alice, the littlest sistah, who is graduating shortly.

* I am aware that this is probably something I imagined as I lay sprawled across the border of the waking world and dreams, but part of me really hopes it wasn't