Put it away you fat gut fuck We know who ate the pies Whoever told you that you look great Was simply telling you lies Your beer baby collecting sweat Sunburned wives drunk on wine Hair of the dog on the morning stroll At the beach again, rain or shine
The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.
From To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Today I’m feeling: Happy and relaxed Today I’m grateful for: The second pharmacy I tried that sold me tramadol at a reasonable price compared to the first that wanted almost 3 times as much. It reminded me of the time the same thing that happened in Chiang Mai. Shop around. The best thing about today was: Going to Coffee U for my morning hit. Gui at House suggested going there as it is a friend he trained in Bangkok who runs it. The coffee wasn’t amazing but did the job. Sitting outside was a foreign girl and her small dog. The dog was really pretty so I went and petted her and talked to the girl who sounded east European perhaps. She said the dog was just 5 months old and a cross German Shepherd and random Thai but that she was super friendly and relaxed and was cool with cats and kids. That’s the type of dog I’d like. One day maybe. Also driving around to different parts of Phuket and just relaxing back into it as the maelstrom of Amy, Fern, Pim and Harper spins around me. I’m just the driver so I do my job, enjoying what I can. I ask few questions and just take them where they wish. What was out of your control today and how did you handle it? I was kind of interested to go to a bookshop today but it was too late by the time we’d finished running around. It would’ve been nice to have done something I wanted to do but it’s not that big a deal. I might get a chance tomorrow…and then again I might not. What types of journals do you like to keep? I’ve been keeping things all over the place. In notebooks and online. I’m starting to dig Day One as a journal on my phone as it also has some interesting prompts. I may pay to upgrade and use its speech-to-text ability rather than writing, especially as I end up putting everything online, it’s easier to just cut and paste.
I took this picture because I’m here in Phuket where there are way too many foreign tourists for my liking but it’s still possible to find beautiful places to take pictures and mostly devoid of humanity. As I took this one I pondered what is it that attracts us to the points where land meets the sea.
The law of progress holds that everything now must be better than what was there before. If you want something better, and better, and better, you lose the good. The good is no longer even being measured.
Hanna Arendt
Today I’m feeling: Excited, thoughtful and dizzy Today I’m grateful for: Sunscreen. Thank you for protecting me today when it was impossible to escape the sun. Your smell does make me miss the beach though. The best thing about today was: My long long long ass bike ride to mountains previously unexplored. So much beauty along the way. It’s a paradise. For me, for now. What brand best represents your values? Hmmm…weird question. I don’t know what values brands have. Perhaps they promote themselves with having a particular value… I don’t know. What most folks identify with brands I feel no affinity with at all. To me, brands value one thing and one thing only and that is money. If their products are good then good because they fucking should be!
I took this picture because this magnificent tree stood out after turning back towards the temple from the river at Toeng. So much shade, in my mind I transported it back to our garden and I could sit under it all day.
My biggest lesson in the last year is something I am still in the middle of. I know some of my shortcomings after the situation at CRPAO and the lesson for me is how to deal with something like this again in the future. I am continuing to explore meditation, exercise, journaling and pulling back a little bit.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful to have had many opportunities to smile this week. Driving to Rayong, taking photos on the beach, finding alcohol at the corner shop, meeting Kaew again, tipping Aing, our waitress at Vertigo Too, for her great personality and service, looking out across the Bangkok skyline under a full moon, drinking good beer and laughing with Lekky. Smiling every day with Amy.
T: josh came up to me and asked me why i had been avoiding him lately (cause i kept running off to do marketing work and MIA- that marketing simulation game – stuff). and he said he wished i didn’t, cause he really liked me, and wanted us to hang around together more. i was really surprised when i woke up.
S: I think he does really like you.
T: anyway, what you been up to since last night??? got all my beach stuff, but josh didn’t send an email around about going to the beach – although di wants to go.
S: Man, I’m so jealous. I would rather be anywhere but here right now.
T: how about the panel last night – the wrestler’s wife? what did you think about that??? was it for real?????
S: All completely set up.
T: or did you fall asleep????
S: Wide awake baby.
T: anyway babe, got this meeting – hope it won’t go on for 4 hours like your ones do. mail (male) me……… that was originally a typing error!
T: mailed mel to say i was coming on sunday, and mailed nat to wish her a happy b’day.
What is punk rock? Is it a way of acting or behaving? Is it about music? Or politics? Is it anything to do with THE SEX PISTOLS? Ог CRASS? Is it nihilistic or cynical? Optimistic, introverted or extroverted? Is it far-reaching + powerful? Small + exclusive? What do you think?
Well, when you live in the middle of a rainforest + the only rock around is sticking out of the earth, you start to think about these things. The answer is – it’s all punk rock, innit!
Cos I was sat on the beach trying to get my skin as bronzed as the surfies in the noonday sun (of course this isn’t true because if you have got any brains, you’ve got to cover up from the sun, or stick on your sun factor 15 but a lot of people don’t bother with this until a limb or two has to get cut off, so tell your kids OK!).
Well, I was on the beach checking out the surf (you see in Australia, the water is actually warm enough to go + swim in but you do have to watch out for sharks!) + watching the pelicans flying overhead + I was thinking “Man, this isn’t very punk rock is it?” and then I got to thinking “what is punk rock?” then pretty soon, I thought “Fuck it, let’s go for a swim”.
After that I went to the cafe + contemplated a bit more + I thought all the scantily dressed girls on the beach must be frustrated, cos all the surfies are interested in catching is waves. I checked out the surfies and hell, I saw me a couple of PANTERA t-shirts, a NIRVANA t-shirt and an OFFSPRING one too, so punk rock does exist here at the beach! I talked to one dude but gave up pretty soon, cos he’d never heard of MINOR THREAT, even though he skates!
Of course, this got me back to thinking about what punk rock is + I began to realise that, hey, it’s OK if that dude doesn’t know who Minor Threat is – he’s OK. I later found out he was well into conservation and abhorred racism, which is pretty punk rock for a sixteen-year-old surfie.
Sometimes, it takes me an age to realise the obvious and that I should have listened a bit harder when my best friend said “It’s all punk rock innit!?” So all you folks back in England can be satisfied that rock is alive + well on the other side of the globe + hey, they’ve even got bands here too + some are pretty good but man, it’s difficult to get away from the beach to get to see them sometimes!
Cathy and Libby bring little Reg and tall Gough up and they run around tearing the place apart much to Broni’s dismay so we take them to the beach where Reg’s two-year-old mind had difficulty coping with the prospect of water rushing around his feet and when the wave broke and rushed up the beach engulfing those tiny fleshy toes his eyes looked left at me and a curious look sat on his face – wow, what was that? I’m not sure if I like that or not….. it’s pretty scary…. “Mamee, Mamee!” – that kid will knock all the girls dead, just you wait and see.
They leave even-time and Broni rests exhausted with all the running around and she dreams up ways of making the house child-safe/childproof and of course, we can’t afford anything like that.
A huge thunderstorm breaks slowly, building over the mountains to the west and in the distance flashes radiate in the heavens. Soon strikes head for the ground and more and more frequently (we later discover something like 5000 strikes over about two hours, luckily we are away from it and have the pleasure of being able to watch it and it’s like a movie screen looking out through our window. A spectacular flash starts at one edge of the sky and heads out across the sky seemingly following a cobweb, lasts several seconds as it travels across the web to the other side of the sky, a maze of conductors in the clouds. Unreal!
The slow creeping in of night time is accompanied by ominous bulging dark clouds, blotting out the sun, as they rise over the hill on our horizon. Seemingly engulfing the sky, black shadows billowing, dark eyes sinking low and roll, roll on the night.
The ever-present cicada cacophony crescendoes across the humid valley and suddenly it’s set alight by a blaze of lightning, the flashlights of the gods and we sit and wait and here it comes the rumble.
Just a slow mover tonight as we sit in the still night air, in anticipation, eyes ready and expectant.
The low clouds are near touchable if only we could climb. They fly past, like ghostly apparitions, out to sea, speeding to their fate.
Here on earth it is still though, as flashes become more frequent and rumbles come that quicker. And then, as at a switch is hit, the cool wind arrives from the south and you know, then you know it’s only a matter of time.
Sure enough, big globs of water slowly descend and bounce on the dry ground. And more, until a downpour which disappears as quick as it started and its traces a mere dampness and a smell fresher than mountain air.
The storm continues over – ever brighter and spectacular to its gazers.
Cobwebs of bolts, like battling swordsmen, steel and scrape the skies.
Once again we are wowed by nature and its many wonders. We are also humbled and consider our place in this world.
13th Apr 2021 – I really did marvel at the scale of storms in Australia. The whole sky just seemed bigger than in England and was a blue I’d rarely seen before. Why the sky seems bigger I’m not sure, perhaps the lack of hedgerows and maybe the knowledge that in Australia, over the hill in the distance are just more hills yet in England, over the hill is likely to be another town. Maybe the unfamiliarity with the stars. I remember having to relearn my understanding of direction as the sun now sat in a different part of the sky than I was used to. I got lost often whenever I was driving around at first. That’s fine though – I love being lost.
Out this window, through the vertical blinds, the insect screen, through the sun reflector and beyond our verandah and garden, the houses descend into the small valley and up the other side pushing for position with all the green rainforest, palms, ferns, gums and bamboo.
The rooftops visible in the sway of wet green leaves, where the crickets hang out buzzing around, their insane chatter carrying through the air – thousands of singing messages – here comes rain, here comes sun.
Grey and black clouds dominate the horizon, the air dank and still in my windowed vision, all quiet and anticipatory.
But now it’s time to leave this paradisiacal view and head out over the hill that we live on and down past the beach to the bustling village, buzzing with it’s human insects going about their merry way.
Out of our door the humid air clings shirt to skin and push push push the legs up the hill, short but dramatic, to meet the dirt track through the forest between scattered dwellings.
The crickets see your approach and snap into sudden silence as you pass the tall broken barked trees they inhabit(shh, here he comes!). The air drips moisture from the leaves high above, the ones that touch the sky. Odd insects buzz around often looking for some cool fresh blood to suck on – be quick, flick of the wrists – the Australian wave.
As the hill flats out and you begin to descend the other side, through the trees and buildings, the roar of the ocean beckons you forward, waving all the time. At the end of the road, the bottom of the hill, the sea stands before you far and wide and at it’s edge the crashing glory of the white crested waves, dotted with wet-suited bodies waiting on the big one.
Skirt the beach along the main road where traffic piles up because in this town pedestrians get right of way and that upsets the hoon element in their flash cars, boom box stereos blasting. The crowds are bustling from beach to shop to cafe and not much else. Young bronzed blondes hang round in threes, hanging out, being cool, playing the games of teenagers on the lookout for love, and I’m sure the surfers aren’t interested because they’re thinking about a different sex wax entirely and so the girls get themselves more beautiful and scantily clad in effort to swoon some dude away from his board but they’re still only interested in catching waves and so it goes on, this place a hot bed of sexual frustration. Maybe?!
The pace is slow and what the hell, there’s no hurry, those waves keep coming. These tough old legs carry me back home where, on the telephone wire to our house I spot something odd hanging on and its kinda long and thin and has four thin long double jointed legs and it’s a praying mantis – as long as your forearm and thicker than a hotdog. I hope that sucker doesn’t spot the gap under our front door!
Back up the Central Coast on Tuesday for another job interview for Broni at a private hospital set in beautiful surroundings all landscaped in with the bushland, just a two minute walk to the shiny blue lake and a ten minute drive to the beach, wow! If we could live up here it’d be cool! Its a bit of a fogey area but there are some better spots to live nearer the beach so I could practice being a beach bum, learn to surf and write great novels based on old surf folklore!
We came back home to find a regret letter from Newcastle hospital so that has cut our options down even more, so we’re wondering whether to stay here or go to the Central Coast. In our typical ‘we’ve got no money, let’s go spend it’ style we head out to Indian, still not as good as in England, and get drunk and stoned before crashing out.
Up and at them in the morning and off to the beach again, well, why not? Back down to Cronulla Beach again, there’s a bit of a breeze blowing through our hair and keeping the temperature down a touch, though the sun is scorching through our milk screen. The water is freezing to first touch and it takes us an age to get in to our knees but once that far the ferocity of the water crashes up to our hips before dashing back out again preparing for another attack. Once in it gets better and moving around keeps you warm.
The surf is really up today what with the wind and the tide, waves crash down and throw people five and ten feet backwards and then attempts to suck them back out again. Oh, the majesty of nature and it’s terrific forces, stuck in it’s vortex is like an honour but also a danger, Broni heads out, too rough for her liking, she prefers the gentle lapping of a quiet sandswept beach somewhere. Me, with my new waterwings want to be engulfed in the whitewash of crashing wild water, actually I didn’t really want to be engulfed in it but had no choice when jumping into a wave that crest over my head and then pushed up onto the beach leaving me reeling and writhing in the white foam til the power subsided and I’m left stranded and dishevelled on the sand, wary of more imminent attacks, I get up and orient myself and dive back in, struck by some quirky madness and excitable energy.
People line up and anticipate the waves, a big gasp as someone shouts here comes a big one, spotted about twenty metres out and ominously shadowing the closer crests, as it draws up it’s power from below, your feet are sucked from under you and you realise you have to start swimming inland to catch the wave, but all you see below you is a couple of inches of water and sand, the bulk of water sucked up into the wave that is now over your back and you jump and catch the wave and propelled forwards and then left to scramble to your feet in the whitewash water, a twenty foot section of snowy H20.
As you stand you realise you’ve been sucked across the beach and have to swim along the beach to start again or get out to catch breath but getting out is not so easy with the regular suck at your feet and crash of the waves to knock you down. Back out to warm up and burn in the sun. Awesome.
The two images in this post made me laugh. I know exactly how this kid was feeling.
So after that event we took timeout to recover for a couple of days, but now we’re bugged and have to get a water fix and go up to the pool where I’m improving in speed and stamina, racing Broni and nearly matching, soon beat her! Now half the length of the pool under water, somersaults and handstands, I think it remarkable that just a few months ago I couldn’t swim at all and now I’ve conquered a fear of mine and turned it totally around into something I love and enjoy, what’s next on the agenda?
Ok, we pretty much decide to go and live on the Central Coast and make plans to go and look at houses next week and get some addresses to check out and find something near a beach yeah? We get our first decent Indian meal on Saturday night when we go out with Cathy and I’m starting to feel more relaxed, not so concerned with my internal emotions but more at one with my surroundings, more able to face up to the problems that will come my way and deal with them in an intelligent manner (but i can crack any minute!)
So things are good and on this beautiful Sunday morning I phone up Mark, the guy out of Farm of Tongues that I met last week and have a cool talk with him with some contacts and some possibilities for making some noise in the future with people he knows, he’s going to stay in touch and sounded really pleased to hear from me which makes me feel good that I took the chance to speak to him.
Things are coming together for me and Broni after our long long holiday, who knows maybe get some cheap hack job that’ll get me some money coming in so I can afford all those things I’d like to buy, surfboard, skateboard, mountain bikes, amps, noise machines and a million other things I’d like to get involved in.
Cool, cool, fuckin cool, everything’s cool. Let me finish with my dream I had which was that I was talking to Chrissy and seemed sad and I asked her for a hug and she sensed my worry over the wedding and she said not to worry and that I was marrying the most wonderful girl in the world and then I woke up and held Broni close to me and kissed her, kissed for our humble beginnings, kissed her for today and kissed her for the future.
Well, are you feeling festive on the first of the Christmas month? I’m sure confused because Christmas time normally means cold days, long nights and sifting around with the heating on. I’m currently running around in t-shirt and jeans and mostly less than that! Not much snow forecast in Sydney for Christmas I don’t suppose.
Anyway, after coming back from cousin Jan’s we attempted to park the car in the garage and scraped the front, taking off some paint, which we thought might cost us some to repair if they pick up on it when we return it on Tuesday. Oh well, nothing we could do about it.
After all the excitement of the beach on Sunday we had to get Broni into the city for a job interview, it turned out to be a bit of a waste of time as it was pretty much earmarked for someone else and they were just going through the motions of interviewing people anyway. It was interview practice anyway, for her interview in Newcastle, which is where we headed after that, this road will be as familiar to me as the Poole-London motorway soon, at least this road is a sight prettier.
We hoped to hit the beach but the weather turned from boiling hot sunshine to a dull mist by the time we got there. As we drove through I figured Newcastle seemed like a cool place to live, not too far away from Sydney and a little more relaxed than there. We planned to stay with Broni’s friend Christa and after bumming around town for a bit we went to her house, a Victorian looking terrace house about a hundred yards from the beach (lots of beaches here!).
Inside, the house just blew me away, it was huge, kinda deceptive from the outside cos it looked kinda squashed in there, though it did remind me of something out of Chelsea, London. So, inside Christa shows us around. The ceilings are high which give the impression of space, the floors polished wood, furniture sparse and functional, all clean and tidy, as we go we get to meet the rest of the household, Michael, who actually owns the place, he’s a doctor,Jim, who’s also a doctor and practicing surfing, so we agreed to get down to the beach sometime in the future, and Cathy who’s a physio and gave me that deja vu feeling that I’d seen her somewhere before. Christa is an occupational therapist, so everyone in the house is well paid and they’re having a ball, quite prepared though they were to share their good fortune with their friends.
The house goes down one floor to the kitchen and a bedroom and outside into a yard where Michael and Jim were making some mighty fine home brew (checked some they’d made earlier and it was good). Upstairs to more bedrooms and bathroom that included a spa bath and a shower that hung down in the middle of the bath with at least a seven inch head. Through another bedroom that lead out onto a front verandah that was shut off with big yellow storm doors, and upstairs again to an attic room that just about had a view of the beach left between the buildings that had recently been constructed. What an amazing place to live and incredibly cheaply too, these guys had really fallen on their feet. They all made us feel really comfortable and relaxed.
After much chat, me, Broni and Christa headed into town, in what was a dull rainy old night, though still warm enough for only a shirt, we hit the Thai restaurant and deluged ourselves with red curries and satay sauces. The pace in the whole town seemed really comfortable and more to my liking compared with Sydney, so we hope that Broni goes well in her interview, in fact Jim’s girlfriend is a speech pathologist at another hospital and gave us some inside information which could mean well for Broni, let’s hope so.
Off to bed, Broni sits up and revises, especially in light of this new information, and when she eventually turns out the light we lay awake for sometime before hitting snoozeland.
Bright and early risers with much on our minds, fingers crossed and all that, we say our farewells and thanks to our new friends and drive up to the hospital, which is set around beautiful bushland, the birds screaming mad messages at the edge of the car park.
Broni comes out about an hour later with a big smile, knowing she’s done well and in with a chance, now the desperate wait ’til they get in touch and advise us. We grab a local paper with houses for rent and other jobs for me advertised, let’s force our luck, hey?
We drive up to Peter and Paula’s house, which is another stylish house with an incredible view over the beach and the town, must cost a fortune to live up here. They feed us, Peter decides to help out by painting the scrape in the car, unfortunately it doesn’t work too well in the short time we have to fix it and he comes up with this hail’ brained scheme of covering the car in dirt and mud which he then proceeds to do, a little bit of oxide thrown in for good measure, we have to dash to get back to Sydney in time but on the way we start to feel guilty and stop quickly at a jet wash and hose off the offending dirt, leaving just a small trace of oxide near the scrape.
Gunning for home, hitting 140 on the flat, that’s k’s now, not mph ok, we break the sound barrier and arrive with a half hour to spare, run in and pay and run out again straight to the train station and onto a train where we sit back and relax.
We get some beer and wine and celebrate the night away, exhausted after these five free days, free to drive anywhere anytime and boy, did we, nearly a thousand k’s.
Well, that’s as much excitement as I could stand these days so I’ve spent the next two calming myself down a bit. And today, I’m gloriously happy, content with life and my long term buddy, Broni, and happy at all the fun I’m due to have, come and get me!
25th Mar 2021 – I remember none of this except the scrape on the car. I’m thinking it’s a good job I wrote it down but then wondering if I haven’t bothered to remember it much because I wrote it down? It is a lot of beers ago now though.
Searching for images to use for some of these posts throws out some really nice old old pictures. 1924 or 1994 – it’s all getting old these days.
We make today a special day (oh, very holy) and decide to head to the beach for the first time in this fair land. We look forward to it all day but its about 4 o’clock by the time we get there, heading south to Cronulla, through the bushy suburbs of the city to what seems like the outskirts.
My eyes are stuck to the windows of the train, our usual journey into the city is lined with factories and industry and where it is suburban all the houses are visible, but here all you can see is trees with the odd corners of houses sticking out or braking the skyline. Some houses are built on steep embankments above small tree infested valleys, stilts sticking out of the floor of the construction, going down twenty, forty feet til finding ground to support from.
Over a bridge over a river with a peninsula in the foreground standing high, along the waters edge, small boat buildings and above, up the windy steps, huge houses nestle in the bush, the wealthy cats must hang out there.
Cronulla, last stop on the line, this train terminates. It’s a blistering hot day but the cool breeze is blowing off the sea to the station and we follow our noses to the beach, past a hardcore record shop where skaters hang out outside listening to the music blasting away, what more could you want? It briefly reminded me of Black Flag coming from Redondo Beach, but with a blink my mind was captured by the sight of the beach, beautiful warm yellow sand in a tiny cove lined by slippery slimy rocks which went off one way round the corner and out of sight and the other leading to the main beach, apparently the longest stretch of sand in the area.
We walked round, past ocean baths, swimming pools built into the rocks and watered by the ocean, a safe swim and if you go to the ocean edge of the pool the wave will bash up against the side and over your head. We carried on, to our left, blocks of flats towered on the small cliff but trailed off as we walked round the corner and the sand started again. We laughed and played like kids in the sand and remembered the times we used to go down to the beach after work, with John, when we lived in England, it being a similar time of day (despite the lateness the sun was still high and hot).
We ventured into the water, very slowly, it was freezing to our little hot bodies, slowly letting it envelope us, but after a few metres the waves became bigger and we didn’t have much choice about getting wet. Once in though it began to feel warm, our bodies adjusting. We watched the other kids body surfing, catching a wave and swimming with it and we attempted to imitate them with little success at first but after a while I caught a wave and frightened myself as I was riding this wave, my head was in front of it and all I could see in front of me was bare sand, no water! I was flying along about two feet above the ground, but the wave broke and cushioned my fall to the sand and I got up, huge grin and back out to try it again.
The next time though we were both stood awkwardly and we got dumped, I went under for about five seconds and all I could see was the white wave all around me, when will I come up!? I found Broni and she got hit bad, dragged along the sand on her back and tumbled into a somersault, she retired hurt and slightly embarrassed, but it did make us realise the power of the water.
I went back in and the waves grew stronger and stronger, one minute the water was knocking round your ankles, the next it was too deep to touch the bottom, big waves which we would never see in England, I managed a couple more rides before getting out and drying in the sun as it slowly set over the other side of Australia.
1994ever 