#bridgetbythebridge

#luckbesoshady

 

Fabulous. Fake. False.

 

I’m quite a lucky lady.

I’m lucky because I have all my skin and all my bones and all my organs in their rightful places. I’m lucky because I have the love of a Few Good Men, a Gorgeous Girl Squad and a Glitter of Gays; all fabulous people that I am lucky to know and with whom I share a bottle Pinot Grigio… or seven. I’m lucky because I live in London, I have a little home, I have good food, I have fresh air and I have Bear. I’m lucky because I work very hard and sometimes am rewarded with little jaunts here and there to learn a little bit more about this comical world in which we play our part. I’m lucky because usually, the places I am fortunate enough to visit are places of architectural artistry, places of cultural curiosity or places of sociological surprise. But luck is always spun on the edge of a coin, so sometimes they are not. #youwinsomeyoulosesome

Las Vegas is a spot in the centre of Nevada that was built from the ground up for one sole purpose, testing the nethermost limits of human excess. I had never been to Las Vegas, nor was I especially desperate to tick Clark County off my Bucket List. I’m more of a museum and Malbec kind of traveller. I’d rather meander in the Met than eyeball an eyesore. I despise all beverages that are blue or hidden under paper umbrellas and I don’t like hotdogs. Armed only with the memory of The Hangover, I had relatively low expectations. Even my blinding talent for childlike optimism was challenged by the glut of gaudy that is on show, 6 nights a week and twice on Saturday in Viva Las Vegas.

End Hunger Now with Auto Title and Payday Loans #theirony

  

Arriving at our hotel, we sped up a four lane driveway into a glass and steel mega-structure built with a fraction of the money that Ma & Pa Kettle have pumped into the One Armed Bandits since the 50’s. The sheer scale of the thing, 4000 rooms, 370,000 square metres and 8.6B dollars to build it, is only the initial horror. Entering into the bubonic bubble, one is overwhelmed by a heady mixture of cigarette smoke and lemon-fresh toilet freshener. Yes, in Las Vegas, you can smoke indoors. #wellsortof

Smoking is permitted indoors, on the gambling floors but you can’t smoke outdoors at a table in a restaurant. But, if said restaurant has machines indoors, you may go indoors to have your cigarette, even if you were previously sitting outdoors. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Las Vegas, where you have to go inside to smoke a cigarette. #murica

Children are also permitted to wander through the gaming floor, when accompanied by a parent, regardless of whether that parent is smoking or not. The kids, the middle-aged and the scooter-bound elderly are forced to walk through the gambling floor that is always strategically placed between reception and the lifts, or betwixt the front door and everything else. Like Daleks, the maniacal machines are ominously omnipresent. They block your path wherever you attempt to go and there are no straight paths from A to B so you can’t avoid them. You are forced, whatever you want to do, to walk through the smoky, flashy, noisy hot mess of the casino, and all the Hot Messes within. So what about the Toilet Freshener?

Naturally, the whole place reeks of cigarettes and stale beer, so they pump it full of synthetic scent to cover the fact that you are basically living in a pub. #notinagoodway

Donny & Marie. Mormons in a Casino. #theirony

 

The fact that on one day, I woke, went about my busy day, went to bed, and then woke the following day before realising I hadn’t actually been outdoors in over 24 hours is an indicator of how vast the places are, how every single need can be met within its walls, how the whole place is devised and constructed specifically to keep you as close to those villainous machines as humanly possible. You couldn’t even walk from your room to breakfast without traversing the smoky, dim lit, klaxoning, blinking gambling floor.

The lack of air messes with your skin as well as your brain; but the atmosphere is the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The all-pervasive pollution comes in multiple, seditious non-olfactory forms.

If the air is polluted with smoke and scent and the fuel dust of a thousand Humvee Limousines, then the space reflected into your eyes is polluted with the constant flickering of tiny lights. It is always either too dark or too bright. There is no natural sunshine reflected indoors, there is only false sunrises and fabricated sunsets. Nowhere was this more irritating than within Caesar’s Palace.

 

Eat a 4000 calorie salad in your activewear #theirony

 

After your brain wrangles the fact that you are in a fake Ancient Rome, you push past giant columns and statues and a fucking chariot and you get to the Forum. Yes, they rebuilt the Forum, presumably just because they could, not because anyone here has any fucking interest in democracy or justice. So there you are, in the middle of a desert, in the False Forum, which now houses a Gap and an H&M and you bend your neck and the sky above you is azure blue. It is dotted with little clouds and emits a sort of half-light, and the whole thing is man-made. You never know if it is daytime or nighttime or if you’ve in fact slipped into a Tardis and are now in Ancient Fucking Rome. Even so, no one minds, because around the corner there are fifty trillion Poker Machines and the buck stops there.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your hard earned cash..

 

But wait, there’s more.

Not only can you visit a fake ancient Rome, you can also learn about it, the culture and history of the gods and their adventures. You can sit under the pretend sky, in the pretend ancient temple, with the pretend columns rising behind you and watch a pretend show featuring animatronic puppets that will jerkily narrate the story of Atlantis. Yes you can, because when you’ve given up all of your money to the gambling Gods, maybe the fake, marionette-told story of a different God will change your luck. #probablyfuckingnot

Palms. Paris. Planet Hollywood. #theirony

  

If you have mistakenly come here for a cultural non-animatronic revelation, fear not, you will be able to enjoy one of EIGHT DIFFERENT Cirque de Soleil shows permanently housed in the hotels of Sin City. Presumably the best way to take an extra dollar from your poor unfortunate gambling guest is to coerce them into watching an acrobatic air show. There is even an adult rated naked version, Zumanity. I expect that as the performers bend their lithe bodies in half you may actually see from whence the eponymous soleil shines. #circusstarfish If naked acrobatics weren’t on your cultural agenda, how about a quick trip around the world?

You could visit Paris, replete with a dwarf Eiffel Tower, a half a Palais du Louvre and a mini Opera Garnier. You could cross the Not Really Brooklyn Bridge, wander through the streets of The Not Really Village and stay in a replica Chrysler Building. You could take in the sites of Venice on a gondola tour of the Grand Canal Shoppes. They are kind of like the original Italian waterway, but with views over Dolce and Gabbana rather than Murano or Burano. In a few years there will even be a little London and an economically essential baby Beijing. All of this created by man to ensure that the 50% of Americans without passports need never actually visit the actual places, especially as gambling is annoyingly regulated in such exotic locales. And even in France, where smoking is still very much au fait, you still cannot smoke indoors. #sacrebleu

And then it was gone..

  

The Vegas I wanted to see, the Vegas of Sammy and Dean and Frank, the Vegas of yesteryear, it does still exist. It is far away from Circus Circus and Flamingo and the Mirage. The Golden Nugget and her ilk sit anachronistically 20 minutes (and 20 years) down the strip in the Old Town. The Rat Pack is gone, only sewer Rats and fanny Packs remain. What was once a town of singing sensations now houses the geriatric gyrations of Britney and Celine and Elton.

Las Vegas, only those very down on their luck need apply.

Kung Hei Fat Choi ... A whole new year and a whole new economy to drain

 

#bridgetandbess

 

 

My maternal grandfather, a very serious man whose mind left our earthly plane long before his physical form ever did, named her Snickles. Its a name that evokes her very specific brand of laughter; a smile that crinkles her eyes and nose, a giggle that leaves her mouth in staccato, a happiness that you definitely observed, but could only ever hear in short, sparkling bursts. #champagnegiggles

Her daughter Squeal, the micro-doppelganger, calls her Mama. Have you ever met a 3 year old that can describe colours as either dark or light? A toddler that knows the difference between lilac and purple? An infant that articulates texture and form and shade with the same facility as she identifies the different personages in the latest series of My Little Pony? She can also point out agapanthus, frangipani and kangaroo paw; she’ll also remind you which is your favourite. A little rainbow unicorn fairy that sees the world through her mothers’ kaleidoscope eyes. #lucyintheskywithdiamonds

Our mother calls her Lizard. They spend hours in each other’s company, living as they do, a handful of metres from each other. She is anything but cold-blooded, though much like her reptilian namesake, she is a woman of few and selected sounds, preferring as she does, to express herself in pictures and images and abstracts and colours. One might argue that her taciturn nature results from being born cadet into our cacaphonic house; her elder sibling had exhausted all the available words (and decibels) before Lizard ever had a chance to learn them.

I call her Lou, a shortened version of her childhood moniker, LuLuBear, but only on those all too rare occasions that I am actually, physically with her. Here in print, many years ago, I ordained her the Art-sist-ologer. She’s an Artist, of the very talented, schooled and prizewinning kind. She’s an Astrologer; Squeal’s chart was written mere hours after she exited the womb. But before all that, she was, is, and always will be, my sister.  

 

Bess and I have had more adventures (and wine) together than your typical university sorority. Starting in the early nineties with our exchange years abroad in France and Sweden, for decades now we’ve been two, somewhat large heads of bumbling, bouncing, brown curls rambling their unique route across Europe. We’ve partied in Paris, we’ve snow-walked in Sweden, we’ve eaten in England and dined in Denmark, and on one truly awful day, we brawled in Berlin. #itwasmyfault

 

The good times have certainly trumped the bad. We’ve spent eons on trains together, slept in the tiniest cabin for 11 hours from Paris to Hamburg, laughing hysterically for much of the way. Pre-Smartphone, she drew out, on a piece of paper, the route from our tiny garrotte in Paris’s St Germain to Les Puces (the flea markets); a walk that would take us over two hours, one of dozens she traced so we would discover our new home on foot. #shehatedthemetro 

I’ve seen more lauded paintings than you have; we’ve wandered the corridors of galleries in Berlin, in Stockholm, in London, in Bilbao and bien sûr all the French ones. Not only did I see them, I can also interpret them. I had my very own real life personal audio (and visual) guide. She explained Raphael’s obsession with light and the significance of Manet’s naked (not nude) picnic. Her lessons were heard and understood, lessons I’ve since remembered when I visited other galleries alone. I know that it is nigh on impossible to make money from just knowing about paintings, but she has enriched my life, and many others’. No one can place a value on that. #ormaybetheycan?

 

Years before we embarked on our global adventures, Bess and I shared a little flat in Glebe. I say we shared it but actually we rented it from a large colony of ever-present huntsman spiders. We would take it in turns to kill them. We took it in turns to wake each other up to go for breakfast in the café downstairs. We took it in turns to fetch the wet washing from the Laundromat. We took it in turns to prepare our favourite meal; a variety of cheeses and antipasti spread on a board with a bottle of wine. #lesscookingmoredrinking

It was when we lived in Glebe that one of my favourite treasures was taken from me.

When we were still adolescents, Bess sketched a coffee and a cigarette onto a bus ticket and titled it ‘the best things in life’.  It was a tiny masterpiece I kept in my wallet for over ten years. That picture was stolen, along with my wallet, when I was pick-pocketed one night in a pub. I cared less about losing the cards or the money than I cared about losing that little picture. It was so well imprinted on my memory; I could most likely draw it for you now. #myprecious

  

Today she is a budding textile designer. The next Cath Kidston? Marimekko? Orla Kiely? House of Hackney? Who knows? If talent and determination can make a million, I look forward to a very comfortable retirement. If lifestyle acrobatics juggling a tiny person, a neurotic cattledog, a job and a passion could be remunerated at an hourly rate, she would die richer than us all. Unfortunately for those creative types, reluctantly joining us in the rat race around our world of salaries and timecards and meetings and video conferencing, self-expression and paying for handmade work is out of fashion and out of favour. If it isn’t made in Bangladesh, it is an extravagance not an investment. 

But enough already, she is my bloody sister, not a bloomin’ saint.

 

After reading this, you’ll suspect I’m exaggerating, that no two sisters can genuinely have that much fun together, or be so close. Sure, we’re sisters; we fight, we disagree, we argue and we drive each other batshit crazy. I make her out to be some kind of superhuman Amazonian Goddess; she is beautiful, she is radiant, but she has one tiny flaw (actually two). Bess has miniature gecko hands that can stick to a ceiling. She has two mini-mitts framed by two beautiful brachydachtyly thumbs. They are bespoke knobbly nodules that in their minuscule perfection echo her brachyskelic physiognomy.

 

Very good things do indeed come in small packages.

 

The Artist wears her own creation.

 

 

 

Happy Birthday Lou.

 

 

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#materialgirl

Non, je ne regrette rien - Edith Piaf 1956

#stilllife

#MMXV

For regular readers of my adventures in Playland, you will know that I write an annual wrap up a little earlier than most people. I can’t wait until the veritable end of the year; I’ll be far to busy drinking lukewarm White Wine in the blistering sun over Sydney. So I need to get in early, before people start nicking off to the countryside with their families, before people turn away from social media in favour of their social real lives, before you all get so hyped up on the Sherlock or Downton Christmas specials that little else in life matters.

This annual wrap up usually coincides with the world’s most ridiculous holiday that went viral beyond America and no one knows why, Thanksgiving. So this is my wrap up for 2015, as well as my thank you to all the beautiful ones that made my canvas so colourful.

 

1.21 Gigawatts

 

MMXV kicked off with the hugest of highs, I wasn’t sure how I would ever recover. Me myself and I started the year in my new spiritual home, #bridgetinbeverlyhills. I had managed to exist for 39 years without ever having been to Los Angeles. Considering my obsession with all that is Hollywood, and a life long love with Pretty Woman, it was only fitting that I spend at least half my week in Beverly Hills, staying at the hotel in which Whitney died, and closing out the best week in recent memory with a day at Universal Studios.

I’m still not the biggest fan of America, I think they are all a bit too cheerful, a bit too oblivious, a bit too God-Fearing and not enough actual-real-life fearing; their blind faith in God and Country unsettles my natural sense of unhealthy scepticism. But after a week in Hollywood, one can understand why they do so well; the wholesale manufacture of Fairytales in this sort-of-a-bit-shitty world in which we live is comforting. Comforting like a warm hug from an elderly aunt, comforting like a tepid snifter of Brandy, comforting like an inky blindfold shielding your eyes from the harsh light of reality. No wonder I loved it so much. #bridgetlovesaprincess #bridgetlivesindenial

All geed up on bullshit and fantasy, I returned to London and decided I wanted to be a Ballroom Dancer. Classes were paid for, poor self esteem was overcome and I spent my Tuesday evenings with the former Serbian Idol, Nico. I was actually quite good at it, but the ritual humiliation of being one of the ‘singles’ in the class was more than my fragile confidence could bear.

 

Hever Castle - Anne B's old house

 

The winter thawed (not really, but the calendar said it should have) with the arrival of Mater, Mamacita, The Old Girl, Müttiroo, she of the Katherine Hepburn Up-High-Hairdo, Motherbear. It had been a whole 5 years since she had visited me in Europe and I was so excited to share my 50m2 with her, I immediately left for Brazil. #badtimingisabitch #bridgethasabloodyjobyouknow

Three months with Motherbear was a pleasure in so many ways, but not all the ones you might expect. Sure, having a ready ear to listen when I returned, exhausted and over it from work is a unique joy for someone who has lived alone for as long as I have. Having someone to hang out with on the weekend was also a rare novelty. But it made me especially happy to have the Motherbear hang out in London for Mummy-Daughter Manicures; a habit she has maintained since returning to the Great Southern Land. It was fascinating to hear her recount the miniscule differences between Border Control regulations in NZ, Canada, the UK and of course Australia; The Old Girl loves a bit of cable TV. It was refreshing to not have to wash a shirt, a plate, a glass, a knickers, a bra or on one memorable day, the balcony tiles, for an entire 3 months; she also doesn’t mind coaching the housekeeper on how to improve her life while observing as she bleaches the bath. #alwayslookingafterthelittlepeople

Having mum to play with on the weekends saw us off for weekends to Brighton, Bern and Boleyn’s house in Kent. It was all very relaxing, very civilised, very Pinot Grigio and poached eggs on toast…and then March saw the invasion of the Barbarian Hordes. #bridgetandbess #bridgetandsqueal Did you know that two very independent middle aged women, a mildly batty senior citizen and a stubborn toddler could share two rooms, one bed, one toilet, one couch and one shower? Well now you do.

A particular highlight for me…

The Little Squeal, who was sleeping on her Pink Princess Bed at the foot of mine, stood up one night in terror, asking her mother “what was that rattling noise?” Her mother, The Art-sist-ologer, was wearing earplugs to defend against said noise and didn’t answer her curious mite. I did wake up, and explained to the innocent little’un, that yes, ladies, even ones who have nail polish, can snore too. #bridgetbreathes

Other adventures included the consecutive wanderings west, to Paris and Salies and the following weekend to Stockholm. In both cases, Squeal was subjected to people who didn’t use ‘her words’, Motherbear was subjected to the culinary roulette that is Europe and I was subjected to far too many hours in an airport without enough loyalty status points to bring them to the lounge. We all had a fabulous time, then Big Al and AG showed up and seeing 6 people sitting in my living room having dinner really did make me feel like home had travelled 17,000KM; seeing all my people, all together, doing our things, on the other side of the world felt very odd. #therewasnobbq

 

#bridgetbeatspeopleup

 

Everyone left, I was alone again, and wondering why I was subjecting myself to the humiliation of dance lessons with a man (not Nico, a new teacher) I wanted to spontaneously combust every time he spoke. One night, I made a decision. I knew I needed a change. The rest of that Herculean trial is documented here so I won’t repeat it, only digitise it: 7 months, 3 dress sizes, one busted knee, one dodgy hip, one skinned patella induced trip to Guys hospital, 7 bleeding knuckles, 40kg bench, 20 push-ups and 90kg dead lift. You should also acknowledge that 7 months ago, I wouldn’t have known what any of that meant. I’ve lost a pound of flesh and gained a vernacular.

 

I’ve also gained an encyclopaedic knowledge of Theatre; standing ovation to The Critique. She whisks me off to see this and that; I rarely ask questions, I just show up. Planning in advance for a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-girl like me is limited to what I do for a living. On the weekend, just give me a time and a dress code and I’m there, there with bells on and a Pinot in its theatre-rules-enforced plastic cup. #bridgetbytheboards

A couple of highlights from the limelights this year; James McAvoy in the Ruling Class, Bradley Cooper in The Elephant Man, BC in Hamlet twice, Romola Garai in Measure for Measure, Damon Albarn’s wonder.land and my favourite, I can sing the whole thing now, Minchin’s Matilda...twice. Living in London, going to the theatre doesn’t feel so much like a luxury as an obligation; we’re English, we have to uphold our birthright for sitting in overheated spaces, panting in frustration and ignoring the fleshed pressed against us. The Theatre; the Thinking Woman’s Tube. #theystillhaventfiguredouttheaircon  

While my life may have seen a few ‘Famous’s” in MMXV, it is the people I see everyday that fill my days with sequins and starshine, unicorns and rainbows, love and laughter. #yesitsthatgood #notherearenodrugs

 

Because I spend the most time with them, I’ll begin with the team of very patient individuals that have that unique privilege of my human form as the Amazonian Tyrant guiding their careers. The Duchess, Semi and  #ashtag have been my constant companions through thick and thin. The Body, the BFF with whom I now share a desk, and Miss Jones are the formidable duo who walk that fine line between laughing at my increasingly unhinged antics and wishing I worked in a different postcode. A special mention for The Kaiser of Kool, a man so beautiful, so perfect, I’m not sure why he dares to look upon something like me, something with skin marked by sun and a soul besmirched by sadness. #willheturntostone

We’ll continue with the beautiful ones, Louis XIV, Braveheart, Sunshine and Dazzle. Beautiful men, beautiful souls, the shiny cheerleaders that dance me out of my depressions, forever proffering a Flute to flutter away the nagging obsession, the flagging motivation and the gagging inebriation. They are fabulous, they are friends, they are a female fantasy.

There are also the girls; the ones who know how to use Tinder instead of Grindr. New Girl and The Tequila Sister, my adopted London Ladies. Always available for ‘a drink’ after work, a drink that is invariably seven. #thatswhytheyputitinbottles

There are those earthy French ones I visit all the time; a small family that will imminently add two more. My Famille Far Far Away, so close in nature to my actual family that we even achieved the over-the-dinner-table-fat-insult during a memorable lunchtime in Provence. Fortunately they ply me with pate and Pinot, so all is very quickly forgiven.

I cannot close without a penultimate word of gratitude for Bear, that strong and sensitive man who is my constant headache. He is the Fighting Apollo to my Warrior Artemis, Stable Mark to my Wobbly Bridget, Wicked Dr Frankenstein who has handcrafted his very own wailing monster.  

And Finally, the biggest thank you of MMXV is proffered south to the First Family of Fruitcakedom.

UPAD, Big Al, AG, Giggle and the rest. They visit, they cheer and remind me of my very deep roots, roots buried far below the red clay and sandstone of Sydney. The Art-Sist-ologer, she of the golden-thumbs and Little Squeal; waking me up every Saturday at sparrow’s fart to show me the latest Frozen toy. #hangoversandprincesses The SmartArse, His MotherChef, Sapphire and Smack; always keeping me true, never letting me forget my own story, reminding me of what it is to be one of us. #sarcastic Motherbear LX, carrying the burden of two parents, living her own melodramas, but always listening to mine, loving and supporting her growing brood, inspiring us all. 

Thank you to all of you who read this. I do it for fun; your comments and criticisms are making me a stronger, sassier, swearier writer. I long for the day when I might just have the courage to do it full time.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.  #bridgetbuggersoff #bridgetbythebeach #bridgetbytheharbourbridge #mumlooknoswearing

 

See you soon Sydney.

#mySydney

 

 

(I started writing this before any of the drama in Sydney began)

Shortly before I flew to Australia, a colleague at work asked me the following, ‘if your family were in London, would you prefer your Christmas to be cold or hot?’ Without hesitation I answered…’hot, of course hot’.

 

For the majority of the Christian world, Christmas is celebrated in semi-darkness; by the light of a burning log fire, drenched in mulled wine and stuffed with fruity Christmas cake. For those of us born south of the equator, Christmas is an altogether different affair. There are no Christmas specials on television, there are no ironic Christmas Jumpers and every family devises their own unique explanation for how Santa breaks into a nation of houses devoid of the requisite chimneys. #magickeyring

The last time my mother cooked a traditional hot meal for Christmas Day I was still at school. When the temperature is hovering in the high twenties, lighting an oven is a Bikram Yoga style torture and thus, we rarely extended the preparation of heated food beyond the grilling of bacon for pre-dawn breakfast. Christmas Day lunch at our house involves kilos of prawns*, Balmain Bugs and the myriad salads that each of the aunties have prepared the night before. There’s always enough cheese to see through the New Year and icy cold White Wine.  When you think you can eat no more, there is the ritual fight over the Cadbury Favourites as everyone tries their darnedest to get a hold of the Flake (why is there only ever one), feed the Whites to the toddlers, outstretched hands like the beaks of so many seagulls, and the dilemma over whether or not to feed the Turkish Delights to the Dog. #ischocolatereallypoison

Other southern British relatives do the hot roast dinner on Christmas Eve, profiting from the late afternoon ‘southerly’^ to cool their overheated kitchens. But I challenge any passionate devotee of a Yorkshire pudding to drown one in gravy and nibble away while the mercury rises. The gluttonous satisfaction of eating a hot roast meal dwindles somewhat when you’ve just got out of a pool and can’t walk past a hot oven without your shoulders tingling with the needles third-degree sunburn.

I do love my Christmas at home, surrounded by family, most especially now that there are little people who share my childlike obsession with Disney Princesses. #partofyourworld I enjoy the dusks on the deck, wine chilled with ice cubes sweating the hot glass, jokes, piss-takes and the cacophony of cicadas as the sun sets red and low over the western desert.

There is not a whole lot else to love about Sydney these days.

 

Christmas Dinner at our place..

 

 

 

The Kids Table..

 

 

I lost a few Facebook friends this past year for writing about Australia’s decline under her current leadership. I shed a few more for talking so openly about feminism and how the sexualisation of young girls is contributing to a rising culture of violence against women. I copped a lecture from a neighbour for being pro-choice, pro-marriage equality and “pro-if I can’t believe in Mermaids then I’m sorry but your dude who rose from the dead is dubious at best”…and most satisfactorily, only because they would go on to lose; I fought with Scots about nationalism. 

I also spent a good chunk of my summer holiday refuting the notion that Islamic Terrorism had landed in a chocolate café in Sydney. That cost me a few mates and possibly two cousins. #Icantbetheonlyone

I suspect Russell Brand does not have all the answers; perhaps if he belonged to a minority group who’d fought to the death for the right to vote, he might not be so cavalier on the subject. I am sure most officials elected to govern compromise their integrity at some point or another to win over the vocal majority in their electorate. I lament the current trend for quoting social media as a source of absolute truth, especially now that the ‘enemy’ has successfully manipulated the medium to disseminate their own violent propaganda.

Most of all I despise old men in suits that own the lion-share of all the messages that reach the eyes and ears of the wider public. Headlines designed only to breed hatred, insecurity and ignorance, tawdry, incorrect headlines that grab the attention of the misinformed and the ill educated. Which is why I was unsurprised that the Sydney Siege took place behind the windows into Channel 7’s Sunrise studio. ∞

One idiot, one psychotic, delusional madman took it upon himself to teach the world a lesson for his own aggrandisement and tabloid glory. He knew that if he appropriated the name and badge of Public Enemy Number 1, he’d get his name up in lights. Such a desperate shame that two others had to die so one moron could achieve his 15 minutes. The litany of untruths, suppositions and errors that were subsequently vomited upon the people climbed to the very highest levels; the Prime Minister issuing retractions of incorrect statements made at his press conference was a memorable low point.

My Sydney, the Sydney that nursed me through the ups and downs of 30 years on earth has changed so much I barely recognise her. The water still flows in through the Heads, the Tower marks the spot where I tripped and fell in my first ever pair of High Heels and every thirty minutes, the Manly Ferry makes its way into Circular Quay. But the people have changed. Australians have picked sides; they’re either battening down their hatches in preparation for an invasion, or a vocal few, like the word warriors of Get Up are shouting against the heavy tide of bullshit, begging to be heard. 

Singular viewpoints and dissenters and change-agents and individuals are not so welcome in this Sydney of nodding sheep.

 

Work of Art..

 

 

 

Frequent visitors to these pages will already know the Art-sis-tologer. She is an earthy thoughtful Green to my fiery thoughtless Red. Named after the Queen, she is my sister, a trained astrologer and an ever evolving artist; her latest creative incarnation, and there have been many, is as Textile Designer. Completing her first year at Sydney’s Fashion Design School, her final assignment of the year was to design her version of the ancient French fabric known as a Toile de Jouy. The theme was Australiana. 

Rather than paste bikinis, Opera Houses and surfboards onto white cloth, she showcased the Sydney that we know, the Sydney that I love, My Sydney. Ibis birds stealing your chips in the park, colour-coded Wheelie bins lining the streets and the quad-engine jets that fly just overhead as they come in to land…every five minutes. The centrepiece is a sketch of an inner Sydney pub, tiled walls wrapped around a post-war façade, depicting the drinking houses that are cornerstones of a city that spends it’s evenings sharing stories and cold drinks in the sun.

A City built by criminals, by ne’er-do-wells, by chancers and by thieves. A State that forged her economic and industrial progress upon the backs of those who came from afar, escaping the dictators and the psychopaths that local boys had died to defeat. A Country ruled by a man who was not born in Australia and whose media ally is a former Australian who was adopted by the US so he could sell more newspapers.

 

It is a good thing then that we still have a sense of humour.

 

 

Not sure who the "clients" are...is it a brothel?

 

 

 

 

 

*The police are called in to manage the traffic jam around Pyrmont as Sydney’s Fish Market opens for 36 straight hours over Christmas Eve in response to the overwhelming demand for every imaginable sea creature

^The cooling breeze of the Southerly Change blows through Sydney of a late afternoon, often followed by a thunderstorm dumping rain guaranteed to render the ensuing morning as sticky as a skiers groin

∞ The studio faces out onto a public space much like the Today Show in NYC

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#stilllife

#materialgirl

Non, je ne regrette rien - Edith Piaf 1956

Fixing a Hole - The Beatles 1967

#stilllife

Louis XIV, dear friend and reigning Monarch of the 17^th Arrondissement, recently visited me in London for a wonderful weekend of food, fun and frolic. He likes to visit London, eat all my Number 5 Waitrose Mature Cheddar and then return home to take advantage of the comparatively free French healthcare and have his arteries unclogged. When he took a short reprieve from cheddar munching during our dinner at the recently opened Mondrian Hotel at Sea Containers, Louis said something that has since been etched on my conscience.

‘Paris is like a museum. It is beautiful, but it hasn’t changed for 100 years’

As a former resident and a lifelong obsessive of the City of Lights, this phrase struck me as perhaps the most pertinent words of truth I’ve heard emanate from Louis’s non-cheddar filled mouth. He, French but not Parisian, is a little less in love with Paris these days. Museums, walls lined with objéts d’art are places one visits for a few hours, maybe even a day, but they aren’t places where one resides. All artifice, all dust cloths and glass display cases, one can’t actually live one’s life with vigour and energy and passion and errant limbs and life-force...one doesn’t live in a museum.

Since I left Paris in March of this year, I’ve been back just three times; a work trip for less than 72 hours and twice more for pleasure, on each occasion having been invited to a friend’s party. In total, I’ve spent 6 nights in a city I called home for well over 6 years. It should actually have been seven nights, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t because ancient things in museums are worth a lot of money and people steal them. Ancient things like the copper in the cables over the train lines between Calais and Paris.

 

Sacré Coeur and the Palais Garnier

Have you ever spent 6 hours in a train that only moved for 2? Have you ever wondered how much piss and shizzle can be poured into a train toilet before it starts to bubble and froth and stench and…well anyway, the answer is about two hours worth. Have you ever wondered how long a French person will sit in a closed space without the right to light up a cigarette? Less time than it takes to block a toilet. #bridgetalmostbarfed

This isn’t the first time that I’ve been stranded on a Eurostar because an opportunistic thief had cut the cables over Lille. The little buggers pinch the copper out of electrically charged train lines. Evidently the copper is even more valuable than, I don’t know, a beating heart?

As I mentioned, this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. The copper gets pinched all the time, the lines aren’t fenced in, lying out in the Normand sun, poaching with the sunflowers, the canola and the bones of a billion dead boys.  On this particular occasion, 8 trains were affected and we’re all getting free return tickets. That is 8 angry crowds of 750 people and at an average of  £150 per ticket, Eurostar will be shelling out a million pounds; money that will be reimbursed by the SNCF who are responsible for maintaining the lines. 

How much do you think it would cost to build fences to prevent people cutting out the copper? Call me crazy, but if French politicians spent as much time maintaining infrastructure as they do maintaining wives, mistresses and high-class sex-workers, the French might want to stay in France? Or maybe they don’t like razor wire fences drawing harsh lines across the bellevues of Normandy? 

After a few choice remarks for the unfortunate folk who work for Eurostar and a decent morning’s sleep, it was time to reacquaint myself with the boulevards, the baguettes and the Beaujolais. #bridgetbythebrasserie

 

The Louvre. A museum.

 

 

Paris, the only city in Europe that remained intact after the Second World War eviscerated the others, is really very, very beautiful. If you’ve seen a movie featuring Paris, you’ll be familiar with the twinkling lights along the Champs Elysees*, the glass domed, tricolore spiked roof of the Grand Palais, the long boats floating up and down the Seine and my personal favourite, the white domes of Sacré Coeur up on the hill. Apart from a handful of notable exceptions^, the entire place was built a century ago. All the buildings are the same design, built from the same stone and only a few are over 6 stories.  Wrap around balconies are reserved for the 1^st and 5^th floors. 

The symmetry, the uniformity and the muted colour palette make for a beautiful canvas upon which to daub the long brown hair and oversized scarves of the parisiennes… and the black smog of a trillion scooters. The canvas, much like the unsmiling face of Mona at the Louvre, is static. In France, still, static, inert, unchanging, classic...they are all euphemisms for beautiful. 

Think of the most famous French designers and you’ll get my point.

Gaultier. In a museum.

 

Gaultier has been churning out a version of the mariniére for three decades. Don’t believe me? Go check out the exhibition in Melbourne where an entire room is dedicated to blue and white striped remixes of the same original T-shirt. A T-shirt that the French Navy has been wearing since the little man led them into battle against Wellington. (Did you know, the original had 27 stripes, one for each of Napoleon’s victories…Wellington would just need one gigantic stripe, more is not always more Nappy man!)

Coco Chanel wore a black dress every day for about 50 years and we’ve been wearing them ever since. Black dresses, bouclé suits, camellias and velvet-strung-pearls have been the staples of Chanel since the thirties. White collared, pony-tailed and gloved, the house of Coco’s current chief, Herr Lagerfeld, has been wearing a version of the same Dandy suit for almost as long.

LV monogrammed cases, Hermés retina-searing tangerine totes and Moncler’s vile v-covered valises are all stuck in a time when people paid other people to carry their luggage. A time when they were placed in dedicated wooden luggage racks, not hurled into the undercarriage of an aircraft. They are emblems of an era that, like La Belle Epoque, has gone the way of the Dodo. Unless one of the Grand Maisons is making a 4-wheel drive roll-on case, that ways less than a tube of toothpaste, most people aren’t interested.

And thus begins the lament of the today’s Frenchman.

 

The hustle and bustle of modern times is leading to the gradual extinction of artisanal trades and entrepreneurs. In a few years there will be no one to hand-cobble shoes, no one to whittle your clothespins and no one to French your lamb shanks; it will all have been outsourced to Slovakia just like Renault, Citroen and Peugeot. #quellehorreur

People the world over visit Paris for a few days to gape and gawp at her inert beauty. They meander through the corridors of castles and galleries and avenues in awe. But the tourists don’t live there, they take their photos and then they all go home…just as I did today. 

I’m going home to London where St Paul’s Dome and The Tower’s Turrets compete for skyline supremacy with The Gherkin and The Cheese-Grater. I’m going home to London where I have a choice between hand sliced cheese at the market or the convenience of home-delivered whatever I feel like. I’m going home to London where taxi drivers invented their own app, twice, to compete with the onslaught of Über. I’m going home to a city that is moving forward; where there’s enough space for me to move around without breaking the porcelain. A city where we all looked at the Poppies, we remembered why they were there, but then they were taken away to make space for new memories.    

 

Poppies. Midway through the moving installation.

 

 

London isn’t perfect, far from it. London is overcrowded and over-polluted and overstuffed with crappy clothes from Swedish chain stores. But it is moving. Like ballet, and ballroom and running dogs and babies learning to walk; moving is my kind of beautiful.

 

 

 

*Did you know that means Elysian Fields…as in, heaven for ancient Romans? Well now you do. 

^Each built by a recent president, you can identify the phallic column of Valery Giscard-D’Estaing’s Tour Montparnasse, George Pompidou’s ridiculous Gallery, Mitterrand’s Pyramid at the Louvre and Chirac’s giant pot-plant, the Quai Branly Museum

#sunshineandrainbows

 

 

 

I once lost a pair of diamond earrings. 

I’m born in April so diamonds are my birthstone and I have a very tolerant mother who continues to buy me jewellery even after I repeatedly lose it. Interestingly, while I’ve lost one (or both) of each of the three pairs of diamond earrings Motherbear the Tolerant has gifted me over the four decades I have been alive; I’ve never lost any of the silver she gifted, that is, silver gifted in a pale blue box. #touchwood 

Might I venture Motherbear, after so much silver, it might be time for you to gift me some diamonds in a blue box? Or better still, men of the world, it might be time for one of you to grow a pair, knock on the door of the Material Mansion and proffer a blue-boxed morsel of petrified carbon? Only in the name of science of course… #agirlcandream 

Musings on diamonds aside, my very obsessive-compulsive nature means that I rarely lose anything. I can’t sit in a restaurant without my handbag rested on my feet; a strap looped over my leg ensuring it can’t be snatched. When I run, I shove my iPhone in one of my C-Cups and a 20-pound note in the other. The phone is my music and map; the cash is another symptom of my anxiety. I might get hit by a bicycle and need to take a cab home, or bribe someone to assist me, or most likely, I might have a desperate craving for a Grande Iced Latte when I get home. #idoexpectthespanishinquisition 

It isn’t that I am so very desperately attached to my personal belongings, my accoutrements are rarely worth more than a 3 course meal, more that I just hate the inconvenience of losing something. I once had my wallet stolen from a busy Sydney pub; it took me months to reapply for all the necessary cards and I couldn’t possibly bring myself to shop without earning loyalty points of some kind or another. #thehorror 

Several years later, I was once mugged early in the morning as I ran in Paris. The inconvenience of reporting the theft to the police of the 18^th arrondissement left me with an inconvenient lack of faith that a French policeman had ever caught the perpetrator of a crime. #toomuchpaperwork #notenoughsherlock I also became morbidly terrified of running past the metro station where the incident occurred and rather inconveniently became aware that my then boyfriend cared less about his girlfriend’s early morning jogging safety that he did about this early morning slumber.

As such, I’ve come to repeat my little OCD mantra on every single occasion I venture beyond my little flat by the bridge; wallet-keys-phone. Every single time I walk outside, I repeat that little triplet to myself verifying that I have on my person the 3 items I require to move about in this busy world.

Imagine then, my abject terror, my crippling panic, my melodramatic reaction, when one of my holy trinity was removed from my person, not by a thief, but by someone I love. #papadontpreach

Regular visitors to these pages, or those I wrote when resident of La Belle Republique, will be familiar with the 5 people I refer to as my French Family. The Belloncles are the very generous folk who welcomed a large, wild, savage and unconscionably loud Australian teenager into their countryside home 20 odd years ago. I lived with them for a year, in a small village bordering Basque Country and Bearn, a small house where they instructed me in the fine arts of consuming petrified ducks, of imbibing Madiron and of aspirating my R’s.*

The 15^th of August is one of the most sacred holidays in France; the Sainte Marie celebrates the Assumption of the Virgin. While no one has ever, ever assumed that I was a virgin, my Christian name is a derivative of Marie; and so, the 15^th of August is my Feast Day. Outside of France this is wholly insignificant, within France this means I get presents… and a public holiday in high summer; a good as an excuse an any to go and visit the Belloncles.

Spending an extended weekend in the South of France might sound all romantic and idyllic and cinematic but my reality is very different. They are, despite the lack of genetic evidence, a family like any other. They are not Fassbender and Hiddleston and McAvoy shirtless in the sunlight proffering grapes and cold pink wine and … but I digress. I have a French brother who takes the piss out of me when I make mistakes, I have to hide behind trees to smoke and Papa and I spend hours debating the decaying morals of modern society. I do however enjoy the respite of precious hours wandering with my Maman, grocery shopping at the local markets. 

I must also mention that they are all fabulous cooks and have a wine cellar bigger than my current London residence. Day 1 was Cote de Boeuf with Pessac, Day 2 was Magret de Canard with St Estephe and Day 3 was Scallops with Risotto and Jurancon…I suppose it’s bearable. It’s bearable because I have an iPhone and a reliable 3G connection. Or at least it was bearable until the fateful morn of August 14^th 2014; the day Papa took away my phone.

He said he was doing it for my own good, he said it would help me relax, he said I needed to sleep; he said I was on holidays and should stop working. I wasn’t really paying attention to anything he said, I was laser focussed on the shiny little white oblong in his right hand. I wanted my phone back, without it I was only half a person. #firstworldproblems #shallowIknow

At first I felt lost; literally… I didn’t have a GPS enabled map in my pocket. Then I felt lost figuratively, what if something happened to Mum, or anyone in Australia? How would they be able to reach me? Worse still, how would anyone know if anything happened to me? What if a spider bit me? What if I drowned in duck fat? What if Fassbender kidnapped me?^ 

After dealing with the fact that I was very much off the grid, I realised how much I rely on my phone to conduct the business of my every average day. 

How will I wake up if one of the 3 alarms doesn’t shock me into consciousness at 5.30am? How will I know what the time is ever? How will I know when to eat? How will I know what to wear unless BBC Weather tells me how cold it will be? How do I know if it is a fancy knickers day without my horoscope? How will I remember to buy the red dress in the John Lewis window if I don’t take a photo of it? 

Then there are the less than everyday uses for handheld connected devices.

Indulging in a bit of typical French country cuisine, my brother opened his vintage American Mrs Fields cookbook and we baked cookies. I translated the English recipes while he stirred and let me lick his spoon. #thatisyourdirtymindnotmine How on earth was I meant to know what an American cup of butter was in grams without my friendly conversion app, Vert? Later that day, walking through Biarritz we didn’t know when the fireworks started. Deprived of Google, we actually had to just wait! During one of the midday meals, someone asked a question, to which I didn’t know the answer…without my phone I had to accept that I just didn’t know and would live the remainder of my life in ignorance of the year of Henri of Navarre’s death.

Beyond trivial information, there is the vital. #IsharethereforeIam 

Does anyone know where I was if I don’t check in on Foursquare? Does anyone care that we drove to San Sebastian (in Spain) to watch Valencia compete in the International fireworks festival if I didn’t share a photo? Does anyone know that I ate if I didn’t Instagram the aforementioned Cote de Boeuf? Did anyone even notice I was gone?

Rather than bore you with a lengthy lecture about the role of technology and the demise of human interaction in the 21^st century, a lecture I am now well versed in after rehearsing it daily with Papa, I will say only that I was eventually given back the phone.

I counted up the unread emails, the unseen texts and the fact that for an entire 2 working days I was unreachable. I reflected on the sense of unease, the fear and the deafening silence. I read an entire book in less than four days, I slept in past 9am, and my eyes have regained some of their sparkle. I looked into the sky and saw sunshine and rainbows.

 

I also had my iPad.

 

San Sebastian..sunshine and rainbows

 

 

 

*In French, R’s are aspirated, which is the very fancy linguistic term for rolling spit in the back of your throat. The resultant effect is that when a man utters a word like chéri, it doesn’t sound like a small red stone fruit, it sounds like a man just breathed sex into your earhole

 

^Just so I could Instagram him sleeping!

 

 

#godsaveourgraciousbridget

 

 

 

Who knew that something I’d vehemently resisted for so very long could ultimately render me so happy? And I’m not talking about hot wax hair removal or duckfat poached potatoes.

Seven months ago, my life, as I knew it, ended. Unfortunate things happened to me and I’m not accustomed to things happening to me. I generally make unfortunate things happen to other people. I’m also not accustomed to being quiet about stuff either, preferring, in all matters related to my lives personal and professional, to scream it from the rooftops… or write about it and publish it on a searchable, public blog. But anyway, shit happens, it happened to me, I wasn’t sure I’d see it through to the other side.

Now, here we are, a little over half a year later and I am as happy as a large-eyed, large-thighed, single woman of a certain age could expect to be… maybe even a little more. #yesreally

I never wanted to live in London. I never wanted to admit defeat, to admit that Paris had won and I had lost. I never wanted to become just another pasty Australian backpacker who never went home, who was still pretending to be a free and easy, unattached, leather-faced, drunk roaming the continent in Thai-fisherman pants and sharing a studio in Earl’s Court with 7 other people. I wanted to be special, I wanted to be unique, and I very much liked being one of only a handful of Australians in Paris; I wanted it to stay that way.

But, Fassbender is still oblivious to my existence, gut-wrenching proof, and a painful, daily reminder that you don’t always get what you want. #justoncewouldbeheaven So here I am in London Town, and I bloody love it.

There is a lot to hate about London. Clutching your lower stomach in agony, legs crossed and teeth clenched as you queue for a bladder-bursting pee, the tube, which is, to all intents and purposes, the seventh circle of human-crushing hell and the rain, which isn’t so much rain as it is moisture hanging between the sky and the earth, held in perfect, gravity-defying suspension, until I need to walk somewhere on the day I’ve forgotten my brolly.

The queues, the tube, the rain, counterbalanced with everything that is joyful about living in London means that getting a little wet, a little hot or a little urinary tract infection is a small price to pay for the tidal rhythms of the Thames humming me to sleep in the evening.

After 7 years suffocating in stapled, photocopied, registered posted, bureaucratic France, the first thing that revolutionised my existence, was that in London, everything is so bloody easy. I signed up for electricity, water, council tax, Sky, TV license and home insurance online, in a grand total of 60 minutes. No letters were written, no passport copies were required, and no registered posting of anything at all, just my name, my bank details and hey presto, every month they take my money. The capacity to organise one’s personal administration without ever having to interact with another human soul cannot be underestimated or underappreciated. Most especially given that persons working in such establishments are generally unhelpful, unfriendly and unqualified to do much more than open envelopes and stamp. #computersaysno

After I’d paid all the bills (she does indeed work hard for the money), it was time to spend some serious cash. It was time to go shopping; it was time to hand over the credit card… without ever having to leave the house. In London, one can order pretty much anything one desires and some-other-one will bring it to your house, avoiding the inconvenience of wasting hours in confined, un-airconditioned spaces filled with oozing children and troupes of meandering, disaffected, un-parented youths. I furnished my house in an hour, no yellow caddies, no big blue bags and no meatballs to distract me. Even so, most life-altering on the retail front are the establishments owned and operated by JLP.

The John Lewis Partnership is a network of magical places where an olive-green aproned or shirted person improves your world, like a unicorn, or gastric-banding, or Fassbender in Shame. A person whose sole purpose for being is to make your life happier. A person who knows the specifics of the products they are selling, a person who doesn’t grunt a direction, but physically accompanies you to the place you need to be. They are magical beings with a special talent for lightening the wallets of all those who unwittingly approach. Which is why I’ve taken to shopping at John Lewis and Waitrose online. #homedeliveredpinotgrigio 

When not divesting one’s income, one can walk, one can promenade, and one can parade. The city is actually designed for people to be able to get from one place to another place on foot. There are parks where one can lie on the grass and admire (or critique) passersby. There are footpaths that allow for more than Two Gossiping Parisiennes to walk abreast. There are pedestrian crossings and painted warnings on the road reminding you to look left or look right before you jaywalk. Cars, cycles, cabs, caddies and double-decker buses coexist in a space largely free of ear-splitting, honking klaxons. I am well aware that there is a simmering, mutual disrespect for everyone on the road, but at least it’s quiet. I don’t miss the loud, Latin cacophony of Paris, where crossing, even at a light, is a dance with the devil in the pale moonlight. #guessthesong 

I do miss my friends in Paris, I miss them almost as much as I miss Sapphire, Smack and Squeal back in Sydney. Thankfully, I’ve been warmheartedly welcomed by other London friends. Some I knew from before, others I’ve become reacquainted with and one, I actually went to school with! #BMGS #thatlongago

There are the fruits, a Banana Bunch led by Tartan Tom who helped me build my Swedish bed. The Tequila Sister, who takes time out from her very posh, White Company life in Berkshire to drink wine with me in the grotty underbelly of St Giles. Never fear, she brings anti-bacterial handwash with her. Zorba the Greek, a foodie and a father (and a Cypriot, not a Greek) takes time away from his photogenic family to listen to me moan about the world. And finally The Critique, my new theatre buddy, someone I knew, but not really, who may just be the only other person in Christendom who loves shows and bonnets and Cumberbatch as much as I do.

Such is my magnetic pull that even New Girl, seemingly unable to face life in Paris without me, actually moved to London. She’s a role model to us all, giving up cohabitation with a very delicious Frenchman to advance her career…and sit with me while I drink. 

But the revelation, the one I’d never expected and the one that makes me smile the most, is The AusHoles.

The AusHoles, a bawdy antipodal trio made up of #bridgetbythebridge, feisty woman of wicked tongue, Sunshine, a dancing and singing man with whom I once brewed very weak American coffee and The SexGineer*, a man descended from the heights of the Blue Mountains, the only person who shared a classroom with me in high school and who is, after 20 years adrift, a part of my life today. 

Individually, we are three professionals doing our very best to make it (or fake it), in this very big city. We are three who share a heritage under a Sydney sun. We are three who didn’t arrive in our twenties with a backpack to pull beers in Clapham, we are three who flew here on purpose, to create a life and to discover a world beyond the bleach and the beach. That alone, that single minded ambition, that desire to be different, that is what makes us special.

We also talk about sex and drink way too much wine; but we’re still special. #TheAusholes #LondonIloveyou

Even my bridge is happy!

 

*Very much like a Sex God, only much better at helping you drive your technology

#bucketlist

 

To the best of my knowledge, I’m not about to drop off the mortal coil, to the best of my knowledge, the bountiful thighs will keep carrying me forward for some time to come, to the best of my knowledge, the ticker is not quite so saturated in Pinot Grigio as to stop beating time long enough for me to raise another glass. But, you can never be too prepared. #worstcasescenario

So I have a bucket list. 

For the uninitiated, a bucket list is an inventory of everything you want to do before you die. It is also a yawningly average movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. I’d suggest that the first item you add to your bucket list is to skip the movie and get onto jotting down your own. 

You might be one of those hippie, gluten-free, hemp t-shirt wearing types who thinks that you should live each day to the fullest, that you should live each day like it was your last, that you should live in the moment…you think all that and won’t eat gluten.

I’m not one of those people.

I’m the girl who eats all the gluten, with salted butter and a side of fries. I’m the girl who panics, who checks she’s locked the door eight times before leaving, who switches off every appliance before a weekend away in case the kettle spontaneously combusts and short circuits the living room lamps. I’m the girl who wakes up in the middle of the night to check emails and won’t turn her phone off at night in case crisis strikes in Australia. To misquote Monty Python, I expect the Spanish Inquisition. I’m the girl who has not boarded an aircraft in eight years without texting her mother the flight number as she boards …and texts her again when she lands*. I’m that girl. I’m the girl with a bucket list.

 

Thanks in equal measures to the scope of my employment and the generosity of friends; I’ve ticked a few off my list already.

The call to prayer in Istanbul, that fountain in Central Park where all the romcom kisses happen, the Florentine glory of Botticelli’s Venus and Michelangelo’s David, Bouillabaisse in Marseille, Jane Austen’s house in Chawton, a henna tattoo and drinking cold champagne in Champagne. I’ve also seen a play starring Judi Dench, danced with delight while Madonna strutted her stuff on stage above me (twice) and I didn’t throw in the towel when it all went to hell in a hand basket late last year.

Still to check off is Prague, Uluru and that big Jesus statue in Rio. There’s also a bunch more that relate to food; eat a lobster roll in Maine, eat a wichety grub, drink Absinthe and cook a Turducken. There’s even more linked to books or movies; go to Prince Edward Island and see if I can get hitched to Gilbert Blythe, visit Scarlett’s Tara in Georgia and relive The Lover in Vietnam. 

There’s also an appendix that is totally unrealistic but one must always strive for excellence; shag Fassbender, marry Hiddleston, snog McAvoy (he’s married) and be fit enough to wear an Hervé Leger bandage dress with patent red Louboutin pumps…in public. #alienfoot #aforementionedthighs #notlikely

 

Astounding...and a bit sneezy.

 

Then there was Provence.

Olives, pink wine, tomatoes, thyme, oregano (pronounced oh-REG-ern-oe), electric blue skies, burnt red terracotta tiled roofs and cottony, lavender scented fields beckoning you to lay down in the hazy, purple pom-poms. No wonder everyone from Brangelina to Bono spend half their year in Provence; the parched square of earth just North of the Mediterranean sea is a micro-geography of all that sings of summer and sunshine. 

That movie with Kevin Kline and Meg Ryan, Le Chateau de ma mere, Colin Firth jumping in a lake in Love Actually, Manon des Sources, that really bad movie with Russell Crowe, they’re all set in Provence. I’d dreamt of wandering through a vibrant purple field, my hands running along the soft buds of fragrant lavender…and Colin Firth sauntering towards me all damp and sweaty proffering a handful of deep fried gluten.

Everything that is beautiful, everything that is colourful, everything that is tasty; it all comes from Provence. That’s why everyone makes movies there; the place is paradise on earth, it is fantasy come brilliantly to life.

I’m really lucky to have my Maman. My French host-mother has heard me bang on about Provence for as long as she’s known me so I was not entirely surprised when, on a busy Tuesday at work, she sent an email with flight details and dates; she and the family were going to Provence for the week, would I like to come along. #willcolinbethere I would even overcome the terror of flying in an aircraft not much bigger than a London bus and spend barely enough time to reset my brain to French.

 

Flavour.

 

I ate tomato salad, made from tomatoes that had been harvested at the adjacent farm. You’ve never tasted a tomato until you’ve tasted one that has been allowed to ripen in the sun, rather than under a fluorescent lamp. We ate sweet melons with salty ham and all of it was delicious. But none of it was quite as spectacular as the lavender.

Lavender reminds me of my Gramma. Like most of her generation, in the dark times before flatpacked Swedish furniture, she thought it important to have her ancient drawers perfumed with scented paper. That paper was often laced with lavender and while I never really understood the point, the smell always reminds me of kneeling next to her dresser.

My father died relatively young, he wanted to do and see so much but never had enough time. My Papa, with whom I spent Father’s Day drenched in sunshine and Rosé, has seen a little bit more of the globe than most, but has never been to England, an omission I’m determined to correct.

I may not be tracing out the same journey as many of you, I may not have sought the same life that many of you treasure and hold dear, but I have my list, I have my memories, I have my experiences and I’ve seen the lavender fields of Provence flowering in the sun. 

 

And I eat gluten.

 

Intoxicating...

 

*Much to her chagrin, regardless of what time it is in Australia #motherbearloveshergirl #motherbeardoesntloveherOCDquiteasmuch

 

 

#Iamyouareweare

I am never so acutely aware of how much my fellow countrymen travel than when I sit in the departure lounge at London Heathrow. I’ve been very fortunate to avoid spending too much time in this rabbit warren of travelling hell, but now I am resident at Her Majesty’s pleasure, I can expect to while away many an evening sitting in the overcrowded and underwatered circular oubliette of Terminal 3.

As you look into reddened faces, as your eaves drop in on every nasal vowel, every rising inflection and every Struth, you come to the realisation that a stupid number of Australians spend a stupid number of dollars to sit for a stupid number of hours inside a floating aluminium bird. I’ve heard it said, calm down Microchef, that Kiwis are the most widely travelled nation on earth. I don’t dare refute it, I don’t want 3 million tongue-poking Hakas up in my grill, but might I suggest that the number is proportionate to the population. If 2 million Kiwis went to London, that’s two thirds of their population gone. If 5 million Aussies went to London, that’s barely a fifth, like if we lost Western Australia…so insignificant it may not even be missed.

Either way, there are a lot of us, floating about on these interminable flights, flights during which all respect of personal space, personal noises and personal odours are flung out the portholes at 40,000 feet.

Long-haul travel affords a special kind of human interaction; somewhere between brotherly affection and taxi-driver courtesy is longhaul human intimacy. When you are sitting next to someone for longer than most men can maintain a relationship with a woman, you’d expect you might chitchat, you might share first names; you might smile uncomfortably as you dig around each other’s muffin tops for your seatbelt. You might expect that, and you’d be disappointed.* The number of times I’ve done this, I’ve barely exchanged a good evening with the person, or persons, jammed in beside me. But a few hours after take-off it is perfectly within the realms of long haul etiquette to straddle that same person’s sleeping face because you’ve waited 5 hours to pee. 

Wandering the globe, wandering from snow to sand, wandering from bonjour to kia ora I’m amazed by what I see, I’m enthralled with what I learn and I genuinely relish the difference. I draw in deep the aromas of cuisines laced with ingredients I cannot pronounce. I listen acutely and actively to the words of languages I’ve never heard, trying, fruitlessly, to discern a syllable or a sound that I might understand. I stare up into the glassy towers of fabled buildings I never expected to see. I drink in the ripples of rivers that slice through cities I’d only imagined. I move about the world and I am in awe.

Call me a leftie, pinko, hipster, faux-liberal, bobo, dreamer, or anything else of your choosing. I was appalled to learn that England’s equivalent of Pauline Hanson has won the majority in the European election. Nigel Farage is a special kind of man; special inasmuch as I’d like to inflict a special kind of pain on such a privileged white man who has made a living out of propagating ignorance and prejudice, primarily among the already ignorant and prejudiced. France’s First Lady of unqualified facts achieved a similarly disappointing win over the French electorate.

Why all the nationalism? Why all the prejudice? Why all the rhetoric? Why all the purple bloody rosettes? #whynotredwhiteorblue #leavemysuffragettesalone

Denying globalisation or the free movement of humanity is about as fruitful as non-alcoholic wine. Expecting your economy to grow if your population doesn’t is mathematically impossible. Expecting each little country in Europe to prevail in solitude and compete with the new civilisations to the east or the south reeks only of pre-war nostalgia.

In an age when men can pick up guns and shoot women because they aren’t offering up their vaginas like free commuter newspapers I wonder why people care about immigration.

In an age when modern governments of modern countries send people offshore for ‘processing’ or state sanctioned torture I wonder why voting people don’t recognise how fortunate they are to be able to vote.

In an age when mining and missile companies influence environmental policy, I wonder why anyone would be so concerned over the nationality or religion or sexuality of a person breathing in filthy, carbon monoxide laden, hot air.   

In an age when so many people can’t or won’t look after their own children, I wonder why a voting person should care about whether someone else chooses reasonably to abort one. 

I wonder what will happen next. I wonder what new tragedy will have to smite Europe to unite us the way the last one did. #ddaysixtyyearson

I wonder.

How far we've come. Still a long way to go.

 

 

*An exception to the rule I am aware of one very lucky Kiwi who met the Norwegian man she now shares a life with on a long haul flight between the UK and NZ. I should be so lucky…

 

 

#sevenyearhangover

I’ve had hangovers. I’ve likely had more hangovers than you’ve had hot dinners. 

After careful consideration I’ve concluded that I was born without that part of your brain that stops your hand connecting with a glass and raising it to your lips. The part of your brain that activates when you’ve drunk so much that you can no longer see your fingers or feel your mouth.

I usually wake up in the small hours of the morning and scoff a handful of Nurofen. A few hours later, when the alarm pierces my brain, I stand up, suck down a carton of orange juice and eat as many slices of vegemite toast as required to get one down that will stay down. And that could be as many as six…

Even so, nothing I’ve ever inflicted upon myself compares with this prevailing sense of awakening from the longest night. The feeling that my eyes, heavy with fatigue and filth, are blistering each time I blink into the sunshine. I’m exhausted from waking too early, determined to cram as much into each day as I can, all the while ignoring the shadow of the last seven years spent lounging, overindulging, consuming, and all for no good reason.

That’s how it feels; that’s how it feels moving to London after seven years in Paris, it feels like a hangover. It feels like I was forcing a slow-release gluttonous feast upon myself, a feast that felt good at the time, which was a hellafun while I gorged, but knowing that ultimately, it was doing me more harm than good. #denialissomuchmorefun 

Paris was a beautiful dream that had powered my adolescent ambition. I’d imagined myself dawdling along cobbled quays, my hand draped through the arm of a man who wore a scarf nonchalantly and heterosexually. I’d dreamt I’d wake up every morning and trace a slick of liquid eyeliner across my lids, then tie an Hermes scarf to my black leather handbag for no obvious reason, but secretly knowing it would flutter in the breeze as I darted across a busy intersection mirroring my fleeting steps in silk. I’d speak nasally and throatily, as I seductively pronounced words that sounded better than yours because they were en français.

Then I woke up.

I woke up to the inevitable reality that I was never going to be French much less française. I didn’t know how to seduce, I know only how to aggress and affront. I didn’t dawdle; I stomped, with purpose, at speed. My eyeliner appears to have been painted on by my 2-year-old niece and I am about as mysterious as Duplo™. Essentially, I am available only in primary colours and any moron can figure out how to use me.   

Reluctantly, I accepted that it was time for me to leave.

In a week, I packed my bags. In a day, two very fit men packed the 52 boxes in my furnished flat; 52 boxes that I accumulated in the short time since I arrived in Europe with a single suitcase. The eve of my departure, my friends packed any remaining voids in my circulatory system with the innards of some 15 bottles of champagne. Then, on the last Sunday, I stumbled; or rather I fell, into the train that propelled me under the channel to where I was rightfully meant to be.

I was meant to be in London. #pastywhiteskin #cumberbitch #hiddlestoner #yorkshirepuddingissalvation

In London people stand on the right of the escalator because there’s a sign that says one must. In Paris that same sign would serve as an impromptu ashtray or used chewing gum receptacle. In London, the cars stop when they approach pedestrian crossings allowing pedestrians to cross. In Paris cars stop only for large flat obstacles like limestone walls or national monuments. In London men allow women to walk into a lift first, an act passed from parent to child that we know as manners. In Paris manners interfere with the French prerogative for self-preservation.

Paris was my lover, not my friend. She never loved me as much as I loved and admired her. In London, I’ve found myself again. My salty tears of regret have been washed away by the salty tides of the Thames. 

I live on the South side of the river because the Sowf is where the people who aren’t named Arabella or Beatrice or Hamish or Benedict live. Unless you are intimately connected to landed gentry you live under the river, away from posh palaces and pony parades. I’ve extended my pride in hailing from the wrong side of the tracks a step further by opting for the east rather than the west. There’s no point in denying my roots, I am far more comfortable living with the people who have just one Christian name and no Roman numeral suffixes. One block behind me is Jamaica Road and the post-modern beginnings of the council estates. #thejasmineallen #innit

Every day I wake up, I dress, I shower, I brew coffee and I smear vegemite over a slice of toasted bread. I do all of this in a small flat that has all of its walls and no portion of the ceiling missing. I do all of this without hearing a single sound from any of the surrounding flats. I do all of this in peace and quiet. I live in Europe’s biggest city and I hear nothing but seagulls.

Every day I walk the length of Southbank to my place of work. I work in St Giles, a notorious corner of London once the epicentre of London’s syphilis epidemic. Rather ironic that someone who is to all intents and purposes celibate should spend her days in the company of promiscuous phantoms of brothels.

Still, my twice-daily walk along the river has afforded me the time to reflect on what I am, what I’ve been and what I want.

Yesterday I went on a blind date hastily organised with the aide of an app on my iPhone. My iPhone and I, lubricated with an ice-cold bottle of Pinot Grigio can accomplish just about anything. I have access to all the facts, to the pixelated faces of my family back in Sydney, the gallery of actorly studs I stash in Pinterest, the mappy thing that tells me which bus to catch and the endless stream of communications that allow me to do my job. A job I love.

The Pinot Grigio ensures I can do all of this and smile.

I smile as I cross the bridge that joins my office to my home. I smile as I sit alone in the dark at one of London’s myriad theatres. I smile as I force my way through the cornucopia of Borough Market to the little cheddar place I like. I smile as I lick the sparkling cider that spills over the lip of a pint. I smile at James, our concierge, whose clipped greeting reminds me that someone here knows (and cares) I’ve made it home. I smile.

And that, my very tolerant friends, is the not-so-secret story of #bridgetbythebridge

 

Scouring for skeletons or seashells?