Ballet For A Rainy Day

About Last Night

2012-02-24T18:51:00.001-08:00

Well where to begin with this one. I set up this blog because I manage to end up in some bizarre situations. And when I share these with my friends they always say "only you could end up in a situation like that". Never quite sure whether I should be proud of that or not, I mean seven billion people and Im honestly the only one? Hmm well anyway last night was one of these occasions. Usually the situations can be quite traumatic at the time but I can laugh about them afterwards, last nights might take a while longer for me to see the funny side.

So it all begins at Melbourne Airport. I flew in from Tasmania around 7 and had to take a flight on to New Zealand at midnight. Well thats how things should have gone anyway but once at Melbourne I received a text that the flight had been canceled and I had to wait till the next day to take another one.
In all my years of traveling Ive never had a flight canceled before so this was a completely new experience to me and I didn't know what I should do exactly but at least I was in Melbourne where I knew one or two people.

Unfortunately I couldn't get in touch with either of them until my tiny illogical brain had already made the wrong decision. So anyway a bit of background information to help things make sense.
When I was last in Melbourne I "met" this girl, very briefly. I mean I spent like 5 minutes with her and that was enough to realize she was completely insane and I avoided her for the rest of my stay there.
But who should text me last night as Im at Melbourne Airport, yeh you guessed it...asking me if I needed somewhere to stay. Now being well aware what this girl is like I said it was probably not a good idea but she persisted with offers of a bed, a shower, wifi! The weakling I am I started to break, after all I had just stayed in a really noisy hostel in Hobart where I got all of about 2 hours sleep.

So I text her to say it would be nice to stay but really she shouldn't expect anything as I really just wanted to sleep etc etc. And she said thats fine you can do whatever you want here. Okay why not hey! So after traveling to the far far outskirts of Melbourne I thought this isn't too bad, whats the worse that could happen.....

Its quite hard to describe what happened after that without this descending into too much sleaze but it was quite clear the promise of letting me sleep wasn't a genuine one. In fact she wouldn't leave me alone, literally trying to touch me all night. It was both disgusting and surreal, I mean I can imagine these things happening to a girl staying with a guy but never really thought about it the other way round. When I asked her to stop I was met with a barrage of abuse about leading her on and why had I even come over if I wasn't going to sleep with her etc etc - apparently no doesn't mean no if you are a guy.

This was followed by endless questions about why I didn't want to sleep with her, why I didn't like her, who else had I been sleeping with in Melbourne, who else in Australia, who else in the world?! Oh and could she come visit me in England?! (Oh yes please.....you fucking mentalist!)

Somehow I was beginning to feel it would have been a lot better to sleep at the airport, I came very close to leaving - in fact I even said this was almost verging on attempted rape - not something I would say lightly clearly. What was the reaction to this? I had the duvet taken away from me as punishment. So now not only was I stuck in a crazy potential rapist's bed but I was completely freezing.

And then just when you thought things couldn't get worse/more surreal - she starts talking to herself (I swear Im not making this up) in a foreign language. For at least an hour. I think at this point I finally managed to fall asleep only to be woken up by the cold of being blanket less stupidly early where I made the quickest getaway ever. Ever since I have been receiving several txts messages to say what a horrible selfish person I am for refusing to do something I didn't want to do.....

The worse part is something similar has happened before, when I was at University a girl locked me in her front porch and wouldn't let me leave until I promised Id see her again (she's still waiting) which begs the questions - do I just attract psychos or are they normal until they meet me??

So the last weekend I spent in Melbourne I resigned from sex, this time I think I should just resign from interacting with other humans.

Its such a shame as New Zealand really was supposed to be the highlight of the trip, what I had been most looking forward to - but now instead I want to go home and spend a week in a bath full of dettol scrubbing the shame away....

Oh and the punchline to all this? Turns out the airline put everybody up in a free hotel at the airport for the night because of the canceled flight. Sadly I had left the airport before this was announced.....

The Aussie Dream

2012-01-25T05:39:00.000-08:00

How I thought Australia would be:

The reality:

The Second Coming

2012-01-20T22:36:00.000-08:00

I always thought my school was pretty average, I think we all did. I mean we knew it could be a bit rough, after all it took in kids from some pretty bad areas of Manchester but we didn't really think of it as being any different to anywhere else until we went to college and learnt from the other kids that our school actually had something of a reputation. Looking back now I guess the signs were subtly there.

It was a Catholic school you see but no one believed in religion, its just that they happened to be the best school in North Manchester and thus all our parents lied and went to church for a few years in order to convince the authorities we were really Catholics. The strange thing was it was quite fun to go to a school which tried to brainwash all their kids into believing complete nonsense which even as 11 year olds we could see through.

It was fun though because we could ask our religion teacher and the priest awkward questions they didn't have answers to - one priest walked out of a meeting with our class and swore never to returning, branding us "dirty dogs" as he went. Well they had given us one instruction before we went in, do not ask the priest any questions about sex. I mean come on, thats just asking for trouble.

The other great thing about Catholic school was the amount of time we spent learning songs that praised God rather than learning stupid useful stuff. You would think God would have better things to do than listen to some school kids in Manchester singing to him, but our teachers thought otherwise and so once a week we would all crowd into the assembly hall and sing about how much we love him and how great he is and how he has to cause natural disasters and wars and diseases as a way of letting us know we're clearly not singing enough for him. Or that we were out of tune. Possibly both. Anyway we really did learn some cool songs about crucifixion and what have you.

Im presuming the lyrics to this song were rhetorical but this is the only line I can still remember after all these years for reasons that shall be explained....

Anyway. When we weren't learning about how we would all some day go to hell or singing to the God who would send us there we would have to deal with surviving dinner time. You see there wasn't a great deal to do in our dinner hour when we were in the junior years as the football pitches were out of bounds and so the main activity was to avoid getting beaten up by the rough kids or, when things got desperately boring, to play "stampede".

Stampede wasn't really a game if Im honest, more an attempt to bring as much chaos and injury to others in as quick a time as possible. The rules were simple, a few of the kids would go round the playground spreading a rumour that said stampede was about to take place. Then at a set time they would shot "STAMPEDE!" as loud as possible and all hell would break lose.

It was like the beginning of A Hard Day's Night, except rather than being screaming kids chasing The Beatles we were just screaming kids running for our lives. The aim of the game was to not fall over and be crushed, causing this to happen to one of our poor dinner ladies meant bonus points.

The fact we would risk our own lives and those of our classmates (and dinner ladies) for a few minutes of excitement show you just how dull things could be. Which may go someway towards explaining the events of that day, a day our singing of hymns and hours spent learning about the bible and the life of Jesus were finally put to practical use.

The day we crucified one of our own.

Clearly feeling "stampede" was getting a bit boring and predictable some of the older boys had liberated some masking tape from the stock cupboards. Now if you ask me when one liberates masking tape it doesn't necessarily mean one will use it to crucify a fellow school mate, but after you spend much of your school life learning that Jesus did it to save us and that the Romans were just doing what God wished...well you'd sort of feel the school were hypocrites if they tried to punish you for doing the same.

Next of course they needed a victim. There happened to be a boy in my class perfect for such an occasion...if anyone could be except Jesus. Bad luck seemed to follow him around. He wasn't the most unpopular kid but he was the centre of a lot of our classes jokes and managed to get himself into ridiculous situations almost daily.

Poor kid didn't see them coming. It just summed up his luck that everyone could see some demented looking boys with masking tape coming a mile away, but not he. They grabbed him, put masking tape over his mouth and carried him over to the nearest tree which, as if to make the scene more poignant, was on a raised bank in the corner of the playground.

Imagine for a moment that you are the one tied to a tree in the playground in front of at least 100 other children. Naturally you'd expect someone to help you, maybe one of your friends....guess again. To be fair no one tried to free Jesus from the cross, peer pressure is a powerful thing.

Its not like we did nothing anyway, for a few minutes everyone stood there in silence not sure what to make of what they were witnessing. Once the events sank in we did the only thing we knew to do in such a situation and that was to sing. To sing to our Lord. And everyone did. The school had been teaching us the relevant song for years, we just had to amend the lyrics slightly

After that day singing the song in assembly took on a whole new enthusiasm, which the new words which created some confusion. As for he victim, the teachers came and rescued him after no more than about 20mins. Im pretty sure he's fine today, although to be honest I haven't seen him since they took him away to that hospital.

And that was Catholic school.

*Tear rolls down cheek*

Ballet For A Rainy Day

2012-01-14T23:40:00.000-08:00

You know I can't quite decide what I miss most about home, I get homesick quite often. I miss Chico obviously and UK TV - you really do appreciate the BBC so much more once you have watched foreign TV stations. What I really miss though is the rain.

Ive always loved the rain, its pretty strange I guess as most people seem to hate the rain. Especially in the UK where it rains a lot, the stereotype about the English constantly complaining about the weather is completely true.

That just makes me think they are strange though - I mean where were they born Manchester or California? You'd think they'd be used to it by now. Plus they don't really know what they are talking about, they think they want somewhere hot until they actually go somewhere hot and then they complain that its too hot. Ive never complained about the rain, I love the rain I think its the most beautiful thing in the world and it always reminds me of home no matter where I am.

It makes the most industrial of cities like Manchester look so much more beautiful and romantic when it starts to rain. And look at films, you have the admit it makes a scene more dramatic and powerful - look at the last scene of Blade Runner and the famous line "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain". Wouldn't quite have the same effect if the sun was shining instead.

I think secretly the British like the rain, its just they like to complain even more. The rain is what gives us our character and is a big factor in our humour and our culture.
Most people like to go on holiday to somewhere where its hot and doesn't rain much but a lot of the time I try and do the opposite - one of my favourite places to visit is Bergen in Norway because it rains so much, its something stupid like 260 days of the year. I guess that might be a bit overkill, but when you're in a place like Perth you really wish they could do some sort of weather exchange - keep the heat but add the rain, that would make this place so much better.

Anyway there was a point to this post and it is tattoos. For years Ive been saying Id like to get a tattoo and if I did it would be a homage to the God of rain which I've made up in my mind. Perhaps one exists, but not in the form i wish to celebrate it with - which would be a tattoo of the BBCs weather icon for a rainy day.

Naturally. Ive never got this done though out of cowardliness and indecision over whether to accompany said tattoo with some rain related song lyrics as a further offering to the Rain God. Ive been thinking about it a lot recently because I feel like theres no place in the world more in need of the Rain Gods attention as Perth right now. Perhaps its my lack of an offering which is the problem. An offering in the form of a tattoo. We'll see.....

* I should point out I wouldn't actually use this picture as a reference for the tattoo artist to copy, more likely the actual BBC icon - Found Here

Chico vs Spain

2012-01-13T08:06:00.000-08:00

There are two things you should know about Chico. Firstly, when he was a kitten he was shot with an air rifle and became known to the local vets as the "miracle kitten" for somehow surviving against the odds.

Secondly, he hates the Spanish. Its my fault I guess for bringing Spain into his life. A few years ago I was seeing a girl from Spain who was living in Manchester teaching Spanish. Now, for those who have never been to Spain, you have to understand that the Spanish don't exactly feel as warm towards cats as civilised countries do. In fact if you see cats out there they are nearly always feral. Somehow the girl I was seeing had developed a very strong fear of cats and so was now going out with her own worst enemy; me, The Lord Protector of Cats. Naturally. Well I probably should have sensed this would be a disaster but my love of cats is matched only by my weakness for foreign girls and so I foolishly thought I could balance the two. For a while this worked out pretty well, whenever she came round I would simply put Chico out of the house. This one time though she had clearly decided it was about time she grew up and got over here ridiculous fear.

Poor poor Chico, innocently sleeping on my bed had no idea he was a merely a pawn in this game. Enter the Spaniard.

"I can move him you know, if you're scared"

"No..no, its fine. I must get over my fear. I wish to stroke him"

Now for you and me this obviously doesn't sound like too big a challenge right? Now imagine that thing you are about to stroke isn't the cutest cat in all of England but rather your worst fear. I understood how hard this must be, it would be like me stroking a rat or a French person. Not something I could just do easily, I tried to reason with her.

"Do you really have to use Chico to get over your fear? I mean there are plenty of other cats you can stroke..."

"Ce ce, but I have to get over my fear NOW! I will just stroke him a little bit, it'll be okay"

So once more into the breach did she go, as if in slow motion she approached Chico who by now sensing her presence had awoken from his slumber.

What happened next I think surprised all three of us, Chico sat there with that look cats have when they know they are about to be stroked....

Im guessing his fur didn't feel quite as soft and cuddly as she had expected as the minute she touched him she let out an almighty scream

As you can imagine this took Chico rather by surprise and he leapt about 10 yards into the air and then started to run while still in the air stopping only to give me a look as if to say 'you sir are worse than Hitler'. And so I had one tramautised Spaniard and one tramautised cat with a Spanish name.

There you might think the story would end. And for the Spaniard I guess it did she went on her merry way back to Spain, her hatred/fear of cats still in tact. For Chico though things weren't so easy. The incident seemed to have triggered some sort of nervous breakdown which manifested itself in him using my bed and every other object as a toilet. It got so bad we had to take him to see the vet...

"Has he been through any stressful events recently?"

"Erm.., well there was an altercation"

"An altercation?"

"He was emotionally abused by a mad Spaniard"

Well the vet tactfully decided not to probe too much into the ins and outs of what this actually meant but instead gave the poor cat some drugs to help calm him down.

So that is how Chico became a junkie and came to hate the Spanish. How I came to hate the Spanish shall have to wait for another time......

*Actual picture of me and Chico. I swear I wasn't trying to molest him, he's just funny like that...

In The Beginning

2012-01-13T00:50:00.000-08:00

Well I had wanted to make a serious blog about traveling and stuff and using wordpress (so it would look all serious and stuff) but it just wasn't happening so Ive started this instead.
Hopefully a more light hearted one than was originally planned, complete with my own artistic masterpieces. Despite being pretty computer literate I am currently a bit of a retarded reptile when it comes to blogging, so please bare with me...