6 people in the bush

What happens when you take 3 gay men, 2 princesses, and a very open-minded guy, out to the bush for the weekend? Well, surprisingly, lots of very sedate fun!

Damien, Sean, Broc, Richard, Sunita and me, went this past weekend to Leura in the Blue Mountains. Here in Australia, because we don't have our Christmas during the cold time of year, we have this amusing semi-event called Christmas-in-July. Its a chance to do Christmasy things at a time when you can light a fire, cook a roast, and feel all festive. As my little group have all lived in the UK for part of our lives, there is something that draws us to these crisp climates and cosy environments. Besides, we wanted a little holiday, and there is nothing better than a weekend in the Mountains.

I found this incredible place to rent in Leura called the Mountain Ark, and we instantly knew we found our surrogate home. Arriving there late on Friday night, we knew we had struck it lucky. The Ark was stunning, originally designed, so cute and cosy, and so remote and quiet. It was heavenly.

The weekend was divine fun. Is there anything better than going on adventures with your best friends? We did everything one does on a weekend away: drank bucket loads of lovely wine, spent hours cooking a lamb roast, snacked on endless amounts of junk food, watched DVDs, read trashy magazines, went on long walks through picturesque Leura, had giggly lunches in cute cafes, raided the Leura lolly shop, and most importantly relaxed with each other. I think I had a permanent grin on my face, and my sides ached from endless laughter. What a privilege to have such funny, adventurous friends!

Funniest moments: realising you should never send me and Richard to shop together, as we have no self-control and end up with more food than an army could eat in a week; debating over who was going to sleep in the outside studio, and then agreeing we all would so no one would be left out; coming home after lunch in Leura only to discover that Sean had locked our keys inside, and we were trapped outside in the cold! (luckily Richard could break in through the window); Richard's gloopy glue-like potato mash (that was a nightmare to wash up!); watching Broc take more photos of himself than some super-models do in a lifetime; oh, so many moments.

My beautiful mother

I have easily the most incredible mother. Its a big call, as there are no doubt plenty of incredible mothers out there. But I keep being blown away by how generous, loving and accepting she is. And after 5 years of living on the other side of the world to her, its such a gift to now have her in my life again. In fact, the major reason I came home was because it was important to me to spend time with family, and that decision, although difficult for many reasons, has validated itself again and again. Its just so nice to be spoilt now and then. Living in London, without family, one had to develop a hard-skin, a fierce independence, a self-reliance that can be exhausting after a while. So to return and find that I could actually give up a bit of control, and trust that someone else would pick me up if I fell, and do such sweet kind surprising things for me, was just extraordinary. So, it was a wonderful opportunity to give a little back when it was Mum's 60th birthday a few weeks ago. My sister Cath and I organised part of the evening that Mum knew about, and then we organised the first part that she didn't know anything about. The bit she knew about was dinner at a Greek restaurant in Glebe with a few of Mum's friends. The bit she didn't know about was an evening of decadance she had never experienced - to make her feel like the queen she really is. First, we got Dad to get her ready several hours before she expected to. Then, Cath, Demis and I picked her up in a stretch limo, with champagne and a white chocolate cake. We then drove around for an hour, along the Haberfield bay, up to Observatory Hill, across the Harbour Bridge, and then down to Kirribilli point to see the Harbour pre-sunset. It was unspeakably magical. To see my mother come out of our childhood house, agape with awe at seeing this vehicle of luxury in our neighbourhood, and then her almost cry as she saw her kids waiting in surprise in the limo singing happy birthday. And my heart ached with joy to see her and Dad clasping hands, Mum so overcome with emotion and pride and love for her family she could hardly speak. But the fun wasn't over yet. We then drove back over the Harbour Bridge to the Shangri-La Hotel, and took Mum up to the top floor where one of Sydney's best cocktail lounges awaited us. We sat by the window, and watched the sunset over all of Sydney, while we all had cocktails, crab, oysters, and prawns. Hideously expensive, but worth every cent to make Mum feel special. Finally it was time to start the known part of the night, and meet our parent's friends for dinner. By this time I was rather tipsy and so full, but we powered on through more delicious food and wine til we almost ruptured. But it was wonderful fun, and looking at my mother's beautiful face, I was overwhelmed with pride and love for a woman who has taught me the meaning of family, loyalty, and love. I tell you, if I look anywhere near as good as my mother does when I am 60, I will be hugely pleased!

My half year back home

As discussed a few entries previously, I have a thing about anniversaries. Last week it was a year since I left London. Yesterday was 6 months since I arrived back in Sydney. Two rather signficant events in the space of a week... my over-developed sense of nostalgia is in overdrive.

When I first arrived in London, I really didn't like it. I missed home, family, my boyfriend at the time, warmth, seafood, smiles... I just wasn't sure I made the right decision in going to London, particularly when my father developed the need to have a quadruple heart by-pass, and I couldn't get a job for months. It was a miserable time, and I spent much of it on the phone to friends and boyfriend and family, half-living my life in Sydney.

I had friends in London, and I made acquaintances fairly quickly, and life was very pleasant after a while, but I just didn't feel settled. Things changed 6 months on. I met Debbie in a club. Sean met Damien, and the two of them met me. I met Philippa. Life suddenly became spectacular. Suddenly the fact that I didn't love my job didn't matter. I stopped worrying about my ambitions and life plan and what I wasn't achieving. And I had a brilliant time. I had the time of my life. My 'London experience' became everything my wildly optimistic dreams hoped it would be. We partied and laughed and explored and cried and had dramas and danced and danced and danced. And then something unexpected happened. In the midst of falling in love with my friends, I fell in utter love with London.

That dirty grimey cold super-fast expensive city, became glamorous and exciting and full of promise and varied and beautiful. And you know what, London loved me. It was my home, and although it had its faults, it was my home.

In March of 2002, 9 months after arriving in London, I went to Sydney for a friends wedding. It was a symbolic return (me and my bloody symbolism...) as it was originally going to be my permanent return: I had come to London only expecting to stay for 9 months. But London had sunk her laced claws into me, and I willingly submitted. I had decided to stay a little longer in London, and so return home had became just a trip to Sydney.

And I had a brilliant time. I loved seeing my friends and family, visiting my old haunts, eating as much seafood and fresh thai as I could... I started to waver... maybe I should return to Sydney, why was I in London so far from it all?

But by the end of that visit, I had come to a realisation. I loved Sydney. It held so much for me. But those things wouldn't change. Right now, my destiny and joy lay in London, and so I would return. And I would stop living with my feet in both countries, and firmly and deliberately place both my feet in London, and give it all I had, in the hope it would in return give me all it had.

So the next four years ensued. And there were times I wanted to wring London's neck, when I would gladly have left in a huff, never to return. But then I would leap onto the back of a red double-decker Routemaster, good ol' route 38, and hold on for my dear life, whilst I gazed in never abating wonder at the glorious architecture, and stately homes, the myriad streets and shops and bars and museums that I would never fully finish exploring. And I would smile, and shiver slightly with the thrilling knowledge that I was part of the worlds most exciting city, that I knew her, and loved her despite her faults, or perhaps because of them.

Anyway, the point of this arduous stroll through nostalgia-ville, is that I had been hoping that my return to Sydney would have a similar trajectory: that I would return, feel unsettled for 6 months, and then POW! things would change. Not sure what I was expecting, but as the 6 month mark was yesterday, I keep waiting for that life-altering moment when I feel that same thrill of belonging and of hope.

Well, the hope at least I do feel. The promise of Spring can make hope blossom out of anything, and this will be my first Spring in Sydney in 5 years. And there are enough new and exciting things happening to make me feel hopeful and excited about the near future. So, perhaps its just a matter of time, before the sense of belonging in Sydney returns.

Skiing with the boys

One of the amusing aspects of working in a team where I am the only women, is that when, like a few weeks ago, your company rewards your team with a weekend away in the snow, I have to spend a weekend with 15 very nice, but geeky, men.

Luckily, my intense training after 5 years of being best friends with a large group of gay men has prepared me for this challenge, and I am quite used to being the only woman in a room. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I quite enjoy it. Oh, I do love my women, of course, but men are just so much fun. Even geeky ones.

It was a very pleasant weekend, not as wild as one might imagine it could be, but very amusing and relaxing. Lots of lovely meals and beer and board games and funny chats. Lovely.

The skiing was another story. I am not the most graceful creature in the universe, as my nearest and dearest will attest. If there is something to bump into, break, trip over or drop, I'll do it. So putting me on skiis hurtling down a mountain would not be the kind of thing you readily do, if you cared for me that is. But surprisingly, I did quite well! Of course, I did fall over quite a few times, and my bruises were large and colourful, but I also traversed quite a bit of the mountain, and managed to look vaguely graceful and adept.

I was in a world of pain though on the Monday after we got back. Every muscle in my body was screeching with anger at what they had endured, and even breathing was uncomfortable. But it was nothing a few days of moaning wouldn't solve. tee hee.

One year anniversary

Yesterday was my one year anniversary that I left London.

It really stunned me into humble silence when it occurred to me yesterday. It was also the 37th birthday of Christian Slater. You would have had to know me as a very odd 14 year old girl to understand the significance of this... but I'll just say that I tend to form symbolic attachments to things, and at 14 when I was lonely and poetic and full of dreams, I created a quasi-imaginary friend in the shape of an average movie star who happened to move me in a film. 14 years later, outside a London theatre, I stood in front of Christian Slater, who had just performed in 'One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest', and I contemplated telling him the degree to which my minor obsession defined me as a child, but I wisely giggled to myself, stayed silent, got a photo taken with him, and went home to my normal life.

The coincidences of my life, as many a blog entry in my past details, always seemed to suggest I was on the right path. They represented a beacon of assurance, an encouraging clue guiding me further along the winding path. So when my travel agent arranged my London departure and the start of my odyssey, it seemed movingly right that my departure should coincide with the date I actually used to celebrate as a child. It symbolised for me the culmination of all my youthful passion, belief in magic, in purpose and extraordinariness. I transposed all these values onto the imaginary shoulders of my make-believe Christian Slater... I was an odd child. For three years I celebrated this date as a teenager, until I turned 17, and discovered real-life boys.

But even as an adult, the values I celebrated then are still worth celebrating. It seemed so poetically right that my departure from my London home should start that day. I was setting off for unknown adventures, fulfilling a dream I had harboured most of my life: to explore, to discover, to take bold steps into strange worlds. It was horribly difficult to leave London, a step i still am not totally adjusted to, but the vision that drove me was real, and warranted.

My travels were not in the end everything I thought they would be. Oh, they were incredible, I saw glorious things and had wonderful adventures. But I don't think I found what I was looking for. I am not entirely sure what it was I was looking for, but I just thought I would know it when I found it. I cut my travels short in the end, I just couldn't bear roughing it in Africa any longer, I missed family, and friends, and a sense of home. Little did I realise that my homecoming would in many ways be harder than the travels I was enduring.

Its been almost 6 months that I have been back now. And its been exactly one year I began this journey. What is it about anniversaries us as humans treasure so? I guess there is some primal urge in us to pay homage to symbols of meaning. And a year on, I pay homage to the fire that drove me from my comfortable life in London, and set me off by myself into the world, and to a new life on the other side of the planet. I didn't find the Answers I thought I needed, but I did realise one important thing. On that bloody mountain in Africa, I learnt about acceptance, patience, and humility. I may not have perfectly manifested those values yet, but I am at least aware that it is what I need to do. So perhaps, a year on, 14 years on, these can now be the values I celebrate, and aspire to, every August 18th.

Clay pigeons and magical creatures

What an extraordinary day today has been!

The day began with an 11am beer on a large boat on the harbour. That heralded a fairly interesting start. It swiftly followed with the most surprising activity I have ever partaken in: laser clay pigeon shooting! Imagine proper rifles that have been remodelled on the inside to shoot laser pulses. Then imagine small fluoro disks that were flung out from the boat by a mechanical sling. And then imagine five people at a time shooting this disk with laser rifles from the edge of the boat in the harbour near Taronga Zoo. A scoreboard above us was able to record whether we had each hit the 'pigeon', thereby turning it into a competition. It was extraordinary: one second I'm drinking champagne with strawberries on a boat, the next I look like a redneck roo shooter.

And that wasn't all. After the skeet shooting, we then played a game of golf over the edge of the boat as well. We had to fit a floating flag with a golf ball, while a man in a rubber dingy scooped up the floating balls. Extraordinary! I have to say, I suspected there would be activities on this team day out, but never would I have guessed either activity!

Lunch was a smorgasboard of smoked salmon, prawns and oysters... the wine and champagne flowed... the winter day was hot and idyllic. I could not have asked for a better day.

Except, it was then capped by a perfect night. I went to the Cirque du Soleil show of Varekai, and I am in awe at how they continually manage to exceed expectations. Somehow, those shows always send me off into a reverie of fantasy and painful beauty. I yearn to be a magical creature that can fly and is impossibly wild and lovely. I ache with the glory of the music and the grace and the super-human prowess of it all. Aah, what a night.

And hilariously, I knew half the audience! Well, 6 anyway... turns out Optus was sponsoring the event, and as I do a lot of work with Optus, I recognised loads of people, plus bumped into Tamzin and Vesa (for the second time randomly in a week!). Well, as I always say, coincidences usually are a sign you are on the right path...

So now I stumble into bed, spent after a glorious day. Who would have thought that a day could contain both rifles and trapeze acts? Extraordinary!

Living alone

Here are my thoughts on living alone, now that I have been doing so for about 3 months:
1. I love walking around naked. It doesn't matter that almost every wall of my flat is made of glass or mirror. Let the large Navy vessels full of seamen see me if they wish. I love walking around naked.
2. I am not a great singer. But goodness its fun trying. I actually make myself giggle with how bad I am. And that is just great fun.
3. TV is your friend. When you are used to partners or friends to chat to when you are home, living alone can be awfully silent if you don't accept the TV as a surrogate friend. I have the added (bad) habit of using the Sleep function on my TV: I set it to turn off in 3o minutes, so I have the lulling noise of late night television to send me to sleep each night.
4. Cooking for one is a pain in the ass. You either have to invite someone over, or cook with the intention of having the left-overs for lunch or dinner the next day. It can make for a not very entertaining palate, which for me, is quite dire. So, I eat out a lot, or have friends over, or try to cook meals I don't mind eating a few times a week.
5. As a continuation of the previous point, I waste a lot of food. I do my occasional supermarket shop, buy a packet of this, a bunch of that, but then find that my one cooked meal at home a week doesn't use up all the ingredients, and by the time I get around to cooking another meal that requires those ingredients, they have gone off. I end up throwing away perfectly good food. It drives me insane.
6. I think I am learning patience and humility, hopefully. Not sure why living alone might aid in this, but it does.
7. I love my home. For the first time ever, my home is my home. I put up whatever photos I want, I arrange the furniture how I want, I can leave my shoes and handbags in the corridor without feeling guilt... I answer to no-one (except my mother, who somehow still can sense if I haven't tidied up, but oh well, that's what mothers do) and I truly am mad about that sense of solidarity and freedom.