Well hello...

I do apologise, it appears that we've been neglecting this blog and we've failed to regale you with our tales of The Antipodes.

Many things have happened, but I've almost certainly forgotten the ones worth telling you about. Key events have included: Moving out of the glorified bedshit, the arrival and departure of The Parents Wright, the loss of Jessica Byrne to the Northern Hemisphere, birthdays, a passing pinball addiction, a trip to the Whitsundays, AFL games and watching a whole lot of Twin Peaks. Photographic evidence can be found on Flickr.

Now we are staying in Yarraville, think Crouch End but a few more buggys and a few less D-list celebrities. I started a job yesterday, which I am thinking of finishing on Monday, although beggars can't be choosers. I phone old people and force them to do things that they don't want to do to their electricity suppliers and then feel bad about it, although I can't quite bring myself to do it and just end up saying "Errrr, I don't really know what I'm talking about, sorry". I think I'm being paid somewhere in the region of £3.50 an hour, so I might be able to buy myself a packet of crisps at the end of the week, if I'm lucky.

I will be back at a later date with some more nonsense...

T.E.A.M. - Together Everyone Achieves More!

Hello again, our faithful followers!

We have sinned, we have been lazy, but as always we have come crawling back with our tails between our legs here to tell you tales of our life. So much has happened since last we spoke, we will have to spread it over a few updates or something, here is one for now.

Some weeks ago I was beginning to worry heavily about the lack of hours at the bar so I took it upon myself to get a second job via reputable job agency, Gumtree and Partners. I ended up getting a telephone interview ten minutes after applying for a telesales role and after a brief sales patter filled chat about how the job didn't involve selling with a slightly manic sounding chap was told I had the job, and that I was to report for training the following day at the company offices. The training was scheduled to last from 9am through to 4pm which seemed a little excessive but what the hey, hours equal pay. Except I then found out that hours don't equal pay for your training day. Alarm bell number one. I followed the directions to the office that I'd been given and ended up in a delapidated shopping centre, home to an appalling food court and a couple of gift shops scattered amongst a collection of derelict shopfronts. At the top of the escalators I encountered a Turkish looking youth in an illfitting suit loitering outside a nondescript unit with some palm trees outside it that had seen better days. Correctly surmising that he was one of my new colleagues I enquired about his courtsuit attire, only to discover that he had in fact come straight from court on assault and affray charges after getting involved in a fight with a group of children outside his cousin's school involving baseball bats and knuckledusters. It was all OK though apparently as his uncle had enlisted the help of a top notch "bahreetah", which I discovered after some questioning is the Austro-Turkish legal system's equivalent of a UK barrister ("He's like one better than a lawyer but he's not a judge or that, you know?"), and the bahreetah was going to sort it all out and he was going to sue the cops because his dad wasn't well or something. So all's well that ends well.

We were joined presently by a local student who turned up late and smelt faintly of the weeds and we filed in to the office to meet our new employer who for legal reasons I shan't name on this blog. A rather sad looking, slightly portly gent of about 45, he presided gleefully over an office that was about ten foot square, his dirty open collared shirt and loosened estate agent tie perfectly complimenting the tatty collection of Aussie rules football memorabilia strewn across his desk, whilst he proudly demonstrated the "fully modern" spreadsheets that they had to use on their computer systems. "If you click here, twice, then the file will open, it's all there!" he explained helpfully, as we looked on in awe of his technical wizardry. If only I'd known that trick while working as an HR Systems Co-ordinator before I left for the Antipodes, my career may have been very different. I digress. The low ceiling of the unit lent itself nicely to the tainted air of regret and despair that hung bleakly around the smattering of motivational posters sellotaped to the wall (see the title of this entry for an example) alongside (my personal favourite)fanned out groups of photocopied fifty dollar bills haphazardly blutacked above each computer.


Lies.

We were provided a script to read which sadly I was unable to steal a copy of as I would've liked to have displayed it here in all its badly typed, nonsensically grammared glory, revelling in its array of (FAKE LAUGH)s and (CONTINUE WITHOUT WAITING FOR RESPONSE)s but you will have tyo imagine it for yourselves I'm afraid. It opened by referring to a mythical letter which we hadn't sent but that we told the client they should have received which should give you some idea of the ethics of the company. Essentially, although we weren't necessarily selling anything (a point estate agent tie man went to great labours to reference as many times as was humanly possible throughout the day) we were ostensibly arranging appointments for someone else to go and sell people a new scheme for gearing their mortgages toward negative equity and financial ruin, sorry, I mean "invest the tax that they would normally pay to the tax man to an investment of their choice".
Another interesting element of the training was that we all had to carefully write on the top of our scripts, "NO ASIANS". Estate Agent Tie explained that this wasn't a racist policy, just that the company they were contracted by for the project didn't really want any Asian people, that's all. He explained that, "If you get an Asian on the phone, a lot of the time you'll be able to tell by the name, but if not then you can often tell by the accent, but if that does happen then just explain that you've called a wrong number, or hang up, whatever". He gave us a quick demonstration of this by doing a non-racist impression of an Asian person in case we'd missed the non-racist point. Court Suit piped up to tell us, in thickly accented English, that the reason they didn't want Asians was probably "because you know they come over here and they buy up all of the houses because they get special mortgages in Asia where they don't have to pay interest so then they can buy all the houses and take over". I pointed out that surely it didn't really matter where they got their mortgages from if they were paying taxes on the house sales and putting money into the local economy, but he didn't seem interested. This continued at length with roleplaying and the like, until the last hour of training where we got to meet some battlescarred veterans of the callcentre who came on shift around 3. We trainees were paired off with a professional each and left to listen to live calls in action, which actually turned out in my case to entail sitting with a grumpy lad from Coventry while he dialled longlists of disconnected numbers from his supermodern Excel spreadsheet, each failure to connect almost visibly paining him as though a little of his soul was wagered on every dialling attempt. Concerned for him, I asked how long he had been working there. "Too long", he replied glumly, "nearly three weeks now". Good times.

Fully trained I headed off to the bar for my evening shift and then returned to the call centre the next morning to put my newfound fileopening skills and non-racist patter into full effect. I took my seat, and went through my list carefully and non-racistly removing any Asian looking names from the list before donning my Britney headmike and unleashing my selling prowess on an unsuspecting suburb of Melbourne. Reading the script exactly as I'd been instructed the (not actually) sales came flooding in; people reacted with delight to my (FAKE LAUGH)s, swooned as I told them of the FANTASIC (sic) investment opportunities that they had been nmissing out on, and cleared their busy schedules to make way for appointments with members of my knowledgable team of advisors who were in their area, but only for the next few days. With each nonsale meaning a crisp nonphotocopied fifty dollar bill in my pocket I thought back to my training yesterday, when I had inwardly scoffed at Estate Agent Tie's claim that you could earn $3,000 a day if you just stuck to the script, and shamed slightly by my cycnicism I leant back in my chair whilst rattling off another appointment made sheet and gave him a knowing wink, throwing a go-getter point in his direction, thinking about how I would soon be able to buy a car, and pay for the lessons to drive it legally.

Sadly of course, this isn't how it went down. In fact I limply dropped myself into a chair, stared forlornly at the tatty photocopied cash, hated myself with every fibre of my being before phoning up a confused sounding woman who explained that she couldn't have received the letter that we'd never sent her because, "I've been in hospital. For about seven months. I had a complete nervous breakdown apparently. In the hospital". I apologised for troubling her, told her it was nothing to worry about and that I hoped she felt better. The guy next to me asked me what had happened on the call and I explained at which point he laughed in my face while looking a bit disappointed and told me that she was perfect and that I should have pushed the appointment through. Thouroughly disheartened and disillusioned the rest of the morning dragged along in bullet time, an endless list of numbers dialled, speaking to people who clearly had better things to do on a Saturday morning than speak to a dejected sleep deprived chap from London about mortgages, or were certifiably insane. Lunchtime afforded a ten minute cigarette break, which on our return from we were reprimanded (but not in a reprimanding way obviously) for being late back from. "OK team, keep going, keep hitiing those sales, we can all make a lot of money this afternoon, you're all doing great! Just to remind you though, the break is ten minutes break, not fifteen. I'll let it go this time, but remember that next time". Le sigh. The afternoon was as interminable as the morning and I was genuinely considering walking out as the two thousandth person hung up on me, but somehow I made it through the day having racked up a grand total of zero appointments made, a record equalled only by my wages for that and the previous days, an equally round zero dollars. Hurrah!

A talk with the manager of the bar resulted in me being given an additional role in the kitchens of the bar, meaning that the next shift at the call centre was devoid of yours truly's presence and I have since resolved to never darken a call centre door again. Horrid business.

in passing...

A brief update for those who care or those that ended up here accidentally. We came very close to getting evicted from our flat, but life is vaguely back on track and our name is still above the glorified bedsit's door. I feel it would be wrong to say that it's something we're overjoyed about because I've been to bigger toilets, but it's nice not to have a big red cross against your name. So fear not, any/all fan mail can still be received.

I just wanted to list all the things that have annoyed me recently:

- It was a joy to see that they do have Nandos over here, but an absolutely travesty to learn that they don't do bottomless drinks. Thus losing Nandos' USP.

- For the first two and a half months of us living in the glorified bedsit we didn't have a cooker, we received $150 in compensation this week. That isn't even enough for a sausage roll.

- I am now so desperate for a job I've been applying to become a car-washer and still I receive nothing back.

- The guy downstairs left his front gate open, revealing a washing room that seemed to glow ethereally, he's recently moved out and clearly doesn't use it. We are left to lug our smelly garments to the dingy alcove that calls itself a Launderette on Smith Street (think Hackney before it was cool and just full of the mentally ill, but on the up and about to become mildly cool. I was on Smith Street the other day and there was the woman sat at the bus stop, everyone that walked past she bellowed "HELLO!" to and every man that walked past she screeched "YOU'RE MY PERFECT MAN!". Incredible stuff, but I digress)

- I just looked at the cinema listings and 'Fish Tank' is a new release. I could've sworn I went to see it at least 4 years ago.

Anyway, onwards and upwards...

can I have your attention please?

On Monday night we were feeling exceptionally bored and in need of an injection of fun in our lives. With next to no money and all our friends and associates about 10,000 miles away, we realised that the chances of us finding something/anything to do were painfully low. So we decided to embark on some online karaoke. Our local Woolworths (yes, we're shopping there again now) has a killer deal on red wine, so we spent our remaining pennies on three bottles of that and consumed it all throughout the evening. An hour or so into our singalongs and at the reasonable time of 11:30pm one of our neighbours began beating at our door, a cacophony of thudding resonated through our bedsit and drowned out our harmonies. We paused for a moment and then continued with our wine and tuneful whining. In all our drunken glory we took their protests as encouragement to make even more of din. Our night took us on a journey through much of Eminem's back catalogue to Miley Cyrus, then Snow Patrol and back to Eminem. The buzzer started ringing at roughly 3am, it was the police and they wanted to talk to us about some complaints they'd received about our allegeded party. It turns out the police are really nice here, so we thus continued. Josh skated off down the streets in search of more wine, but returned only with a beige Ralph Lauren baseball cap he'd stolen from a kebab shop. Then came the Cranberries and Biggie and it wasn't until Slipknot that our neighbour returned once again, with all his banging and thudding. Josh opened the door as I hid in bed, pretending to be asleep. Our neighbour shouted "Shut up! Just shut up!" many times, whilst waving his open palm in Josh's face. We then decided bed might be a wise option.

You can find our karaoke attempts here:

When we woke up the following day we then realised we should probably leave our house, so that our neighbours wouldn't be able to confront us about our wildly inappropriate and juvenile behaviour. So we walked all the way to Thornbury and caught the tram into town. Our overwhelming fear of confrontation led us to believe that we probably shouldn't go home that evening, so we found an internet cafe and searched for cheap hotels in the Melbourne area. We booked a room and breathed a sigh of relief. The next day, with clearer heads and much less of the all encompassing sense of idiocy, lunacy and regret that comes with a hangover we decided to bite the bullet and return home. We surreptitiously climbed the stairs and found a six pack of rather nice beer (or so I'm told, I don't drink beer) and a note attached on our doormat. The note read:

Neighbours,

I am not in favour of grudges nor walking on egg shells. I am willing to admit to being imperfectly human and conclude that last night our worlds unhappily collided when we were both being somewhat very intolerable.

One of the few things I've learnt about Life of any value in twenty-eight years is that it's too short for holding a dagger in your hand longer than necessary.

Apologies, Peace & Respect

A huge relief, met with a small amount of wonder as to whether we are actually living next door to Pete Doherty.

Apologies, Peace & Respect,

Frances xx

Strange overtones...

pictures from our time at the museum, which features somewhere in this post

First and foremost I feel obliged to conclude the story of the found bag which began in Josh's previous post. As anyone with an inkling of common sense would have gathered from the misplaced 'sexting' and concerned calls from the owner's Mother, this was a situation that would only continue to increase in it's weirdness. Finally the owner phoned, he was alive and well and staying in a 'lovely' hotel in St Kilda, he asked Josh to come on down for some dancing and dining as a way of saying thank you for saving his belongings. When this offer was politely declined he then asked if Josh could phone around a few of his friend (helpfully providing names) and find him some weed. He proclaimed many times that he "really, really wanted to meet" Josh, which Josh took this to mean he was pleased to hear his stuff was safe and was looking forward to being reunited with it. They arranged to meet up, but he failed to get in contact.

So the next day we went with Jess off to the Melbourne Museum for taxidermy-based visual treats and funnily enough an exhibit on 'Mental Illness'. Our time at the museum was drawing to a close, Josh had work to goto soon and then his phone rang. It was bag-owner and he was nearby in Fitzroy, he wanted Josh to meet him at 7-11. Both Jess and I agreed that we should accompany Josh on this excursion and so we followed. We waited outside 7-11 and there was still no sign of bag-owner, so we gave up all hope and Josh handed the bag over to me to take to the Police Station as he was heading to work. Then as if by magic bag-owner called again. He was outside another 7-11 drinking coffee with his friends. We raced up Smith Street to find him and lo and behold there he was outside 7-11 drinking coffee with his friends. It just so happened that his friends were the homeless people who walk up and down and around Fitzroy all day everyday begging for money and had just the day before called me and Josh "tight cunts" . Bag-owner raced over to Josh and demanded a hug, exclaiming "NO! Hug me properly". Josh handed the bag over to which bag-owner replied "Oh, you brought the bag? I didn't even want it. You can have it as an introduction to Australia! I just really wanted to meet you...". Josh then pointed towards Jess and I and muttered something about his girlfriend. Bag-owner didn't seem too pleased "What?! You're straight? That's so weird, straight is so weird". He then went onto tell us that British people are too cold and reserved and we should be more like Australians, more like him. He also said Josh was a typically intelligent Aquarius and just raised an eyebrow when I said I was a Virgo in reply to his question. Bag-owner also attempted to introduce us to his friend, we said "Hi!" and all she said was "I'm an aboriginal!". This was all getting increasingly more odd and Josh was going to be late for work so we all jumped into a taxi to escape the situation. Jess and I got out about 5 minutes down the road and went for Tacos. On my way home from aforementioned delicious tacos I stopped off in Woolworths to get Josh some dinner because I am a wonderful person and to my astonishment I am met with "OIIIIIIIII!!!!!! MISS!!!!!!!! COME HERE!!!!!!!!!! I KNOW YOUR NAME!!!!!!!! COME HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I KNOW YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I KNOW HER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!..." It was the friend of bag-owner from earlier and it was pretty scary. The further I ran the more muffled her abuse became. I haven't been to Woolworths since.

it's been a long time, i shouldn't have left you!

Word. It's been eighteen days (allowing for time differences etc) since we last updated the internet phenomenon which is fast becoming known as too easy. Sorry about that, but someone forgot to mention to Australia that unlimited broadband access packages are a Very Good Thing, and as a result we are stuck with a paltry 25GB limit per month, after which our service is traffic shaped within an inch of its life, and we can't do anything. We are now back, alive, and kicking. So. What's been going on?

1. The Great Ocean Road is great.

Laura and Marc came down to visit us, (our first guests in chez miniscule) which was very nice. They had roadtripped down from the Golden Coast to see us in Melbourne, the cultural capital of the ay you ess, and after a few days of hanging out in the city we busted out on a road trip to see the sea. It was very lovely, achingly picturesque, with plenty of dramatic looking beaches and trees and other such to drive past. We stopped off on the first day at a place called the beach with no horses where Laura and I had an epic surf competition which I totally won, but I sportingly allowed her to pose with me in the victory photo anyway:


Charley noticeable by absence

Having shown Marc and Laura what it meant to be a surflord we jumped back in the car and drove on down to Apollo Bay where we pitched tents in a campsite, and played some cricket. Frances proved to be very good, I on the other hand managed to lose the ball on my first attempt at batting, pitching it at full toss into a bunch of bushes on the edge of a cliff. Half an hour later I emerged battered but unbowed from a confusion of twigs and thorns with the ball proudly clasped in my trembling hand and play was resumed. We went to town for fish and chips later, the portions were too small and the chips substandard but the fish was nice. On our return we played some Uno, and then went to bed. The next day we got up early and drove up to the twelve apostles which is a collection of rocks in the sea that look like this:


Pedants please note that we know that not all twelve are visible here. National Geographic blog is next door.

On our way back to Melle Melb we encountered some vicious looking koalas being gazed out by a group of old people who solemnly informed us it was very rare to see them awake and eating in the wild, as if somehow we didn't deserve to see such a thing. We pointed at them, and I mimicked the mating calls they seemed to be making like Terry Nutkins in his prime which brought some odd stares from the bears above our heads. Fight or flight kicked in, and heeding Marc's warning that they might attack we headed back to the car, deftly avoiding a Steve Irwining in the process, leaving an enraged collection of marsupials for the next unwary travellers to stumble upon and no doubt meet a grisly end. There were some intense clouds to be seen on the road back, soundtracked by a collection of the finest pop punk, and finally we were back in the city which we for now call home, where we promptly got stuck in traffic for an hour and then it chucked down with rain. Good times.

2. THEE CHIZ.

I have been working in a bar for a while now. One of the legal requirements for this course of action over here is a certification that proves you have attended a course on the basic tenets of the Responsible Service of Alcohol. Getting this certificate is annoyingly costly and also involves getting up early in the morning, two of my least favourite things. I did mine finally on Saturday, under the tutelage of a man called Andrew Chisholm who I found to be interesting and slightly disturbing in equal measure. The general idea of the RSA is to tell you that if someone is too drunk to serve, you shouldn't serve them, and that if anyone is too young to be drinking then the same rule applies, and if you break either of these rules, Very Bad Things will happen. Knowing this before I went I was curious to see how a three and a half hour session was necessary to get these points across. As it turns out, this much time is essential because Andrew "The Chiz" Chisholm is a disturbed man with no real concept of sticking to the point. He is an exnightclub owner with a chequered past, who has friends in the real police and who now works for a government agency going around nightclubs and asking people for the ID, handing out fines to all and sundry for infractions of their license etc. He did his best to point out that he wasn't a stick-in-the-mud by informing us that, "I've probably fallen off more chairs than most of you, been more drunk than everyone in this room put together, I've run nightclubs in the eighties, like Miami Vice on the Gold Coast, I've got a lot of money, I have a bigger car than most people here, my car goes at 3,000 miles an hour, I drive a magic helicopter with laserguns" etc etc etc. He carried on in a similar vein for the next few hours, neglecting to talk much about the Responsible Service of Alcohol, preferring to talk about his friends and his holidays, his kids, his mates in the police, punctuated by sporadic embarrassing attempts to flirt with a young course attendee by the name of Emily and stories about the dangers of drink driving, most of which ended with someone flashing a badge or a revolver and the words "what do you wanna do?". Personal highlights included:

"Hands up anyone here who takes heroin. No-one? Well, some people do. It doesn't mean we all have to do it. Some people choose to get intoxicated and get out of control. We don't all have to do that either."

"Look. We've got sexual predators making out with kids within three metres of their parents. If they're going to do that then what are they going to do in a nightclub? What's to stop them hiding behind a pillar, talking to a girl, they get her out to the car and then it's over? She's dead."

"Children are the greatest gift you will ever have. But if my daughter ever thought about taking drugs I would nail her hand to a table. Because that's what an addiction to heroin is like."

"My daughter isn't old enough to have a boyfriend yet but when she is and she brings a guy home I'm going to be there, polishing my revolver. *makes hand gesture to illustrate* And I'll be like, 'what's your name? Benjamin? I'm going to have to call you Ben because it's easier to engrave it on the bullet that way, if I call you Benjamin I'll need a 9mm extended shell.'"

"I was drinking in a rooftop bar when a guy drops a bottle off the roof. My mate, a copper pulls his badge, goes to the guy and says, 'I'm arresting you'. The guy goes *puts on stupid voice* 'what for?', my mate goes 'Attempted murder. I saw you drop that bottle, it nearly hit this woman, now, what do you wanna do?'. Guy got fifteen years. The thing you have to remember is even if he hadn't nearly hit anyone then there would've been broken glass around and if a kid falls over in the street they might cut their hands so yeah, what do you wanna do?"

"I was in Italy, yeah, that's right, I ski. A lot. But I was out there and there was this girl, and then there were these guys, they tried giving me some shit, you know what they're like, anyway, one of them pulls a blade on me so I just look at him and I go, 'look mate, before we do this I just want you to know that the girl over there is my sister, so once we go, I'm not gonna stop.' Guy puts his blade away, then starts apologising. Emotive facts. You have to use them."

"Three goth kids outside Flinders Street Station, some meathead comes up to them, clearly intoxicated and starts giving them hassle, goes 'what are you guys meant to be? Vampires? Ha ha!', so I walk over and square up to him, look him in the eye and I just go 'Well mate, I guess you should just think of me as a vampire lover' and he goes 'yeah? what are you gonna do about it??' then this huge guy behind me looks at him as well and goes "i'm a vampire lover too' and he just bricked it and left. Then I put the kids in a taxi and I was going to ask them why they had to dress like that but then I thought, no wait, why should they have to dress like me? What is normal? If that's the way things go then Adolf Hitler is definitely going to come back, that's not what we need."


"Me and my mates we're out getting hammered, proper gone, my mate says he's going to drive home. I'm like, 'look, we're both rich people, I've got a lot of money, you've got a lot of money, so let's get a hotel for the night'. Ends up with five of us in a hotel room, I ended up sleeping in the bath. I was going to sleep on the bed, I said to my mate, 'You know, you sleep under the covers, I'll sleep on top of them' but he was all like 'nah mate, I don't want it getting out that I slept with the Chiz' so yeah, what are you gonna do?"

After three hours of this he gave us all the answers to the (open book) test, we spent five minutes doing the test and that was that, and I am now legal to serve. What do you wanna do?

3. The Found Bag Mystery
On my way to work yesterday I went past a little grassy are by the house that we've lovingly christened the Grassy Knoll. There are a couple of benches there and on one of them someone's bag had been tipped out and left. I had a look and saw there were some notebooks and a phone etc so I thought the best thing to do was to take the bag with me to work and see if I could find some way of tracking the owner down when I was finished. I got it home last night and should confess that under the possibly false pretext of trying to find some details of my quarry with which to reunite him with his property I ended up reading the guy's diary. Probably shouldn't have but I'm a curious guy, what do you wanna do? It was full of weird clippings from magazines and detailed a variety of slightly melncholic tales about having come to Melbourne recently from Sydney to study art therapy, allusions to a woman he had been going out with but hadn't worked out etc but no details so I charged his phone and went from there. Three texts in there, one from a "TTAAYYLLOORR" (names changed to protect the innocent) saying:

"can we cuddle one nite"

So I think this is probably a good person to try after calls to "mum" and "Brother" have gone unanswered. I call them and get a strange sounding Asian man. I explain that I'm not whoever they were expecting, but that I'd found the phone etc, and was trying to find out who it belonged to. He denied any knowledge of who it might be and then hung up which I thought was odd. About five minutes later another text from the same guy comes through saying:

"I want u to *ahem* my *ahem* bareback again...and *ahem* inside me...*ahemming* each others *ahem*"

Despite knowing that his friend doesn't have the phone, and that I'm tracking him down, that's his response?? Anyway, I go through ringing every number in the phone and bar a couple of old friends from Sydney who had no idea where he might be staying every call was pretty much the same; a collection of men saying that they'd only really met once and that they wished me luck. One guy was a bit more upfront saying that he'd only spoken to mystery man on an internet site once. I asked which one and found out that mystery man is a fan of manhunt.com. Frances and I were starting to get a bit weirded out by this point, fearing that I had in fact picked up a bag of vital evidence from a potential crime scene and that what I had were the last personal effects of a murder victim. I turned the phone off last night having told everyone on it that if they heard from him to tell him to get in touch. Woke up today to a missed call from his mother. I called her back and she explained that he is bi-polar and hasn't been taking his medication, he says he's OK but they're not entirely sure really, that she appreciated us taking the time to help etc and that she had emailed him telling him to get in touch so left the phone on again. The next thing I know a get a message on his phone from one of the guys from Sydney who'd seemed quite concerned and helpful last night saying:

"Hey mister Hope u got everything back alright. hey wats josh like, he sounded pretty hot"

WTF??????? If he doesn't call soon to claim his phone it's going to the police station, I don't understand how trying to do a nice thing can end up getting you embroiled in some bizarre underworld of swingers but I think I'm going to take Frances' advice and just never do anything ever again.

the perfect blend

Like most people who grew up in England throughout the 90s I spent my tea-times in the company of soggy fishfingers and Anne Haddy. Neighbours was something that unified me with the young rapscallions I called classmates and remained a constant talking point until we all decided that hanging out in the park smoking was the path we'd chosen. Then I ended up (briefly) at University and Neighbours was in my life once again. Morning lectures never really were my thing, especially when they were pitted against a 1pm rising-time closely followed by a bowl of cereal and the 'House of Trouser' - all while still in my dressing gown.

Basically, what I mean is Neighbours is a goddamn British Institution, except it's not even British, it's filmed right here in Melbourne Town and today Josh and I went to Ramsay Street. We arrived for our bus right about on time and realised that our tour guide probably wasn't going to be our friend when she aggressively told us to throw our cigarettes in the bin. The others in our group were, as Josh kindly put it "proper mouth-breathers" and, of course, every single one of them was English. Conor (The Irish One, remember him?) greeted us as warmly as any out-of-work actor would and we drove off to the Neighbours set.

Initially we had a peak at Erinsborough High, which was quite frankly unspectacular, but the mouth-breathers were clicking away with their pearly pink digital cameras. Then Lassiters and the Car Lot followed and the piece de resistance was left until last - THE ACTUAL STREET. Unfortunately that too left us both a little heartbroken; it's an actual street where REAL PEOPLE live (NOT HAROLD OR MADGE OR PAUL OR ZEKE) and it's miniscule. They have security monitoring the houses, so no light-fingered fans feel it's possible to walk away with The Kennedy's front gate or Lou's geraniums. I suppose they say never meet your idols for a reason.

under de sea!

This update brought to you by Sebastian from the Little Mermaid. For no real reason.

Hello, Josh here, bringing you the latest missive from the conjoined minds behind Too Easy. Today we were supposed to be going to see the Neighbours set on a tour of Ramsay Street, home of the popular soap opera. We got up early and set off with our little hearts full of dreams of meeting "Dr" Karl Kennedy, but when we got to the designated meeting point we were placed in an emotional quandary. Apparently the tour was overbooked by one, and the person who was causing the overbooking was leaving Australia the next day so we were asked if we would mind going on another day to allow this poor wretch her one chance to realise her lifetime ambition of going to see Toadfish and the rest of the gang. Faced with such a tough choice we did the only thing we could really do, which was laugh heartily in the face of the booking staff and tell them to send her packing. Not really, dear readers; we said yes, and left the premises with tickets to go tomorrow instead and some (frankly desultory) merchandising bribes in our bags.

Left with the prospect of a potentially endless chasm of day to fill we went and sated our hunger for international cuisine with a hastily scoffed Nandos chicken meal before heading off cheerily to the local aquarium which (for those of you unschooled in its wonders) is a tiptop fish hostel in the middle of town. They have a fantastic array of undersea dwellers (Hi, Sebastian!) who are all a great deal more active than the apathetic denizens of the zoo down the road. Particularly outstanding were the penguins and the rays:







We took a trip on a glassbottomed boat which was interesting although slightly marred by having to share a very small boat with the second coming of Veruca Salt and her intensely dense little brother, but we did come very close to touching some very large fish and the guide, Katarina, was informative. We also got to hold a ray's tooth which is just a giant grinding flat molar. Well, I was impressed anyway.

We left after that and headed home for baked eggs and pasta sauce, a new delicacy which we have been forced to create due to the continuing nonarrival of our replacement hob, and now we sit updating the internet with our news and photos of the day.

What have you guys been up to anyway? Let us know.

Peace, love, empathy,

J.

Josie Long, I love you...

The Melbourne Comedy Festival has begun, so last night we went to see Josie Long's first performance of her show 'Be Honourable'. She was wonderful; waxing lyrical and anecdotal about Nye Bevan, Billy Bragg and those people who post pictures on Flickr of all the food they make and eat. We both left the show feeling a little bit in love with her, accompanied with her self-made zine/programme that she dishes out to anyone who has the sense to go and see her. It was utterly refreshing to see someone who is so genuinely obsessed with life and other people's opinions on absolutely anything and everything. Essentially she embodies everything I'd like to be myself; charming, witty, warm, engaging, enchanting, erudite and bizarrely enough I find it impossible to hate her. I just want her to go for picnics with me and skip around in the sunshine, drawing whimsical pictures of iconic Socialists whilst discussing Sleater-Kinney and fad diets in equal measure.

Ps. Can someone give me a job please?

if you are a jellyfish, don't read this article.

oh i do like to be beside the seaside. unless the seaside happens to be strewn with the bloated bodies of a million halfdead jellyfish, their vile moronic forms making a dip into the crystal waters all but impossible for anyone without a deathwish. what is the point of jellyfish anyway? if your entire premise is to aimlessly float around the ocean without even the dignity of some sort of propulsive arrangement, causing misery and pain to anything unfortunate enough to invade your personal space then you seem like a pretty sorry excuse for a lifeform in my book. can a being with an apparent lack of sentience be considered to have "personal" space? in conclusion what i think i'm trying to say is that i hate jellyfish. because they are rub.
the second peeve of the beach would be the fact that whenever we go there i manage to get sand in my earphones meraning the bass distorts to an intolerable level, so have spent the last few days listening to a cacophonous din because i can't afford to keep buying new ones. also rub.
the sun was out which was nice, but seeing as i appear to be venting spleen i would like to posit the opinion (can one do that?) that the sun is a glowing ball of death cancer, and i hated it on principle; smug and selfsatisfiedly spewing its unbidden uv haterays on us whenever it likes. mega rub, the sun is a loser.

zoo easy

hello,

today we went to melbourne zoo which was actually quite a lovely day, despite the zoo traditionally being a fairly miserable place. i'm not a vegetarian, never have been, never will be, i think it's tantamount to some kind of mentalist breakdown, but that said the idea of animals looking forlorn in cages hasn't been my thing either so for a while i was pretty anti-zoo, but when we went to berlin zoo i kind of got over it.

the weather has been exceptionally warm today (and continues to be even now at the ungodly hour of 01:32) so all of the animals were being exceptionally lazy. can't blame them really i suppose but when you've paid $24 you expect a little more bang for your buck or whatever it is that people say. essentially animals in hot weather could be more entertaining that's all. we're all hot you know? anyway, mr jason and mr s jason joined effy, j tho and the senior mixologist for a wander around on the hunt for primates and red pandas, and a very nice time was had by all. i had to leave early to go and do some work which was tedious, i missed out on seeing pelicans and lions and tigers, oh my! but even so it was a very nice day, and the airconditioning on the train home was a delight. i apologise for the rubbish nature of this update, perhaps you should revel instead in frances' lovely pictures of the events aforementioned (click through to see more from the day):











tomorrow we will be going to the beach. if you want to come then you can but i doubt you will.

sleep for a while and speak no words

I present you with a list of some things that I have learnt about Australians and Australia since arriving in Australia:

1) Absolutely no one seems to be able to drive probably. No matter what, night or day, whether you're walking down the street or simply lying in bed, you will hear/see a car zoom past and then the shrill, shrill noise of those ever-screeching brakes. Think bandits with ripped tea-towels-masquerading-as-bandanas standing and shrieking through sunroofs and out of windows as paint-less cars go vroom vroom vrooming at inhuman speeds leaving behind a mini-sandstorm.

2) The streets aren't lit at night; I'm from London, the very idea of this is so stupid it's obscene to me. Maybe I'm too quick to suspect anyone who walks past me of a life of crime, but demz de wayz i wos raiized. Just the other night I was admiring a pair of criminally overpriced ankle-boots in a shop window when from the shadows a lurking-lairy drunkard appeared both shouting and scaring me, simultaneously.

3) They don't sell pickle; there is certainly a wide array of chutney and no shortage of ketchup, just no Branston or Branston-replica. This is much more Josh's qualm than mine, but I'm sure they sell Vegemite in Tescos these days, where's the love?

4) The television is terrible; so bad in fact that I've resorted to buying a British IP address so I can get my fill of Jonathan Ross et al on iPlayer. I hadn't watched Eastenders properly since the days of Steve Owen (we're talking 2002 here), but now I'm behaving like an obsessed fanatic. I tried to like Australian television, I really did. I thought I could grow to like 'So you think you can dance, Australia?', but it's presented by Izzy from Neighbours (you know the one with perma-flaired nostrils) for god-sake.

Then there was the commercial for a wonder hoover, which then became a lengthy film, this is something I just can't tolerate.

5) Healthcare isn't free; forgive my ignorance, but for a long time I had assumed Australia was of the having a National Health Service school. I was ill-informed and wrong. See my previous post for my tale. Throughout my encounter with the doctor he kept on asking me questions along the lines of "do you have job?", "does your boyfriend have a job?", "when did you last have a job?" etc. I UNDERSTAND THAT I HAVE TO PAY FOR YOU TO PRETEND YOU KNOW WHAT IS WRONG ME AND I HAVE THE MONEY TO GIVE YOU. OK!

man about town

tonight i saw a man at the bar that i am working in. he walked past me with a slightly limby gait, and then announced too himself, "i am so fucking cool". he wasn't, he had big flesh tunnels and bad clothes, but i was rather taken with his attitude. good work that man.

and the winner isn't...

We held an 'Oscars Party' in our glorified bedsit on Monday night. We had streamers, party poppers and gold stars strewn across the floor (a move I soon came to regret) and Josh adorned the wall with our very own Oscar. I drank my first glass of the horrendously sweet Passion Pop (a more glamourous Passionfruit version of Lambrini). And we all booed and hissed when Colin Firth didn't win.

Unfortunately I woke up the next day with tonsillitis and a spider bite resembling a gunshot wound. I applied for roughly 40 jobs from my sickbed, but not a word back. I went to see the doctor this morning, he charged me $80 to tell me I had tonsillitis and a spider bite resembling a gunshot wound and send me off with some penicillin. Daylight robbery, I tell thee!

We are going to try and find a cheap frisbee and then run around Fitzroy Gardens for the remainder of our day (wounds permitting).

our house is very small,
it has bunting on the wall,
and when the fish in the fridge goes off,
it doesn't smell too nice at all,

today we went to the pictures,
to see a single man,
not actually a lonely gent,
but a film, you understand,

colin firth was in it,
and he was very good,
i thought for a few seconds,
we would see nick hoult's manhood,

but in fact we didn't,
it was all very tastefully done,
although having said that,
there's a lot of c.f's bum

this afternoon was stormy,
it rained and rained and rained,
tomorrow might be similar,
ie pretty much the same,

i prefer it sunny,
but i don't control the weather,
if i could i'd make lots of money,
and be considered very clever.

thankyou.

greetings

A brief hello because I haven't thought this through at all yet:

There's been some incredible storm action in Melbourne today, which bring an entirely new meaning to my interpretation of 'extreme weather conditions' and the mother of all spiders is waiting for me outside my front door.

We've just returned to our glorified bedsit after a visit to the cinema to see Colin Firth look exceptionally dapper in 'A Single Man'. It was unfortunately marred by an audience of idiots laughing inappropriately and Josh's salty popcorn.

More to come soon, I expect...