My radio station doesn’t need my ears.
My aural receptors are almost sixty years old and not the preferred destination of what my broadcaster has to offer.
If Mark Anthony were around today even he would go elsewhere for ears.
So, who’s ears does my radio station want ?
Who is their ideal listener ?
Firstly, someone who listens to the radio twenty-four hours a day, and, when unable to do so, podcasts.
The ideal listener is someone who listens/podcasts all day, while simultaneously engaging in lively, talkback.
Someone without a job.
Someone without a job who owns a radio or a computer or an mp3 player.
A mother, perhaps, or a retiree ?
Okay, not a retiree. Too old.
Or someone employed in manual labour.
A factory worker, say, or a farmer, sex worker, seamstress, parking inspector.
The professions are out for most of the day - you wouldn’t want a teacher, lawyer, accountant or architect listening to the radio 24/7, would you ?
Secondly, the ideal listener is someone who does not watch television. Unless they are able to watch it on their computer while streaming the radio and podcasting on their mp3 player and engaging in lively talkback.
Thirdly, the ideal listener is someone without a social life.
A person who doesn’t go to the theatre, movies, galleries, the opera or live music events. Unless they are able to enjoy these events while simultaneously listening to the radio or, at least, making a note of all the programmes they have missed in order to podcast and listen later. During their sleep perhaps.
A person with no friends or family, who tunes in to enjoy ersatz conversation and vicarious social engagement.
Above all, this ideal listener is young.
My radio station doesn’t advertise products – other than their own merchandise, their own shows and, in fact, the show you happen to be listening to at the time in case you forgot what it was because you are so very stupid – so, the youth factor is not about product placement.
It’s about the future.
Young people who listen now will listen for life.
(Life being defined as: 0 – 50 years-old).
The ideal listener is a young person – friendless and housebound, unemployed or with a manual job – who is not interested in stations which only play music, interspersed with jaunty DJ’s and ads for products they might want and use.
Students, of course, are exempt.
My radio station cannot be seen to be encouraging that kind of young listener to tune in rather than paying attention in class or studying. My radio station is accountable to the government, and the government has education ‘iss-you’s’.
Students can, therefore, only be ideal listeners for seventeen hours of the day.
Furthermore, this ideal listener with no interest in music stations and presenters their own age does not want to hear programmes with specific topics.
What would be the point of listening to/podcasting that ?
This listener is after a radio experience which projects a general feeling.
A friend.
The ideal listener wants to hear people talking about what they think about other people’s thoughts. Or just what they’re eating/seeing out the window/smelling. They want to hear about traffic jams and what to do with excess lemons.
And laughing.
The ideal listener craves the sound of lots of laughing.
As if there was one absolutely marvellous time being had by everyone in the world.
Except in the two months leading up to Anzac Day.
No laughing then.
Everyone has to be sad together for weeks and weeks, and remember all the old people like me who no longer have a radio station to listen to.

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Gosh ! Two months since I blogged.
Time flies when you’re doing housework.
Not that I haven’t been writing, I have, just not this.
Trying to get The Address Book finished by the end of the month but with the Melbourne Writers’ Festival looming I could be dreaming.
So, I’ve got gigs…
Friday 22nd August and Saturday 23rd August
Beyond Cuisine at Bottega, 74 Bourke Street, Melbourne. Come and have dinner and listen to me, Reg Evans, David Tredinnick and Suzanne Shubart tell you stories. It’s a great idea. We’ve done two runs up at the delightful Wattle Cafe in Hurstbridge and they were really fun. The event starts early - at 5.30 p.m. - so, it’s the perfect way to have dinner, listen to some spoken word, before you tootle off to all the other amazing events on at the festival this year.
Bookings on 1300 7222 11 or check it out online at http://www.mwf.com.au/2008/content/mwf_2008_home.asp?
Thursday August 28th sees me hosting some wild and wiggy idea of Rosemary Cameron’s called
SPEED BOOK CLUB DATING…. What the ?
Although, I have to say the location - Beer Deluxe - sounds promising. From what I gather, this event is a cross between square-dancing, speed dating and trying to connect the dots for people trying to form book clubs in their area, with me shouting out ‘Everybody change !’ at regular intervals. $10 admission includes free drink (singular).
Worth dropping in.
Friday 29th August is the big one - the NED KELLY AWARDS for crime fiction. Always an entertaining evening, although I’m not quite sure of the location this year. Might have to check the mwf website for that one. Not only do all the awards - including the Lifetime Achievement Award - get handed out but there is also a comedy debate. This year’s debaters include a stunning double-bill of sirens in Leigh Redhead and Tara Moss plus Jared Henry, Joel Becker and the fabulous Marele Day (Lambs of God a personal fave, top-read of mine). Now, I know that looks like an uneven number of debaters but I’m sure convenor and patron saint of the Neds, Mr Peter Lawrance, will have all that sorted by 7.15 on the night.
It’s always fun to see pissed writers and even more fun to see pissed crime writers and you don’t have to have anything to do with crime writing to attend this FREE event ! Starts at 7.30 pm - somewhere….
Apart from those events I’ll generally be hanging around the fest in its new location at Fed Square. Definitely going to see Andrew Davies - screen writer extraordinaire, creator of all your favourite BBC costume dramas - David Sedaris - well…durrh - Michelle de Kretser, and Kate Atkinson.
Thursday 25th September - Palladium at Crown Casino
The Annual Essendon Womens Network Great Grand Final Comedy Debate 12noon - 2pm
My favourite event of the year. The mighty Bombers may not be travelling too well at the moment but the signs are extremely good for 2009. This event, however, is always a winner. To debate the topic ‘That footy has got to big for its boots’ we have an absolutely cracking line-up featuring Denise Scott, Steve Alessio, Corinne Grant, Rod Quantock, Lawrence Mooney and Adam Rozenbachs. I’m excited about the legendary number 27, Big Cess coming on board - he’s a very funny man.
This is my 9th year as moderator of this event and lord knows what my costume will be this year… although the ‘boots’ are a clue.
If you haven’t been to this event before you’ve probably heard about it and wished you had. It’s not simply an Essendon event, it’s across all clubs and particularly involving the women’s networks at other clubs. It’s also not just a women’s event - it’s about 50-50 men-women. It’s a great way to treat your staff for a year’s work well done, or to entertain corporate clients.
The FWOTY - the Football Woman of the Year - award is also announced and presented at this event. Past winners have included: Caroline Wilson, Edna Daniher, Eileen Chatfield, Beverly Knight and Beverley O’Connor, and Terry Bracks.
Book often, book early !
www.essendonfc.com.au
Radiothon on Triple R starts this week - time to renew your subscription to the world’s greatest radio station.
Tomorrow Melbourne bids farewell to Chick Ratten. Every musician in Melbourne will tip their hat to the lovable, gravel-voiced, jazz-hating, rock dog and shed a tear at his untimely passing. We all owe him for his unstinting support of live music in this town and we’ll all miss that familiar growl and wicked grin. Vale Chickster.

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On the long way home from the other side of the world to find my former addresses and the meaning of ‘home’ my path wrenched me from the loving arms of Ireland and pitched me into the steaming cauldron of tropical Malaysia.
Six weeks at Annaghmakerrig, County Monaghan, had dulled my edge.
My last two addresses were in Ipoh, north of Kuala Lumpur, and I was dreading the journey.
I tried to chicken out of the whole thing and head straight home but I couldn’t afford to changes horses in mid-stream.
No concrete plans, no idea of how I was going to get to where I needed to go. I had a hotel booked on arrival in Singapore and the same hotel booked on the eve of my departure. How I would manage what happened in between was a mystery.
I had a vague idea you could get to Ipoh by train. I had an even vaguer idea that this journey would take between 7 and 8 hours.
I was freaking out.
What if the train broke down and there was no air-con ?
I would die in the heat.
I don’t do heat well.
I’m a take me to Tasmania/ let’s do the Antarctic kind of girl.
I was SCARED.
It was so hot on arrival in Singapore at 7 p.m. I was even more scared.
My hotel room, by contrast, was freezing.
It was like sleeping in the frozen food aisle at Safeway. Waves of frosty air fanning out over the thin blankets.
By the morning I had a cold.
I was up at 5.30 a.m. because the train to Ipoh left at 7.40 a.m. and the story was, the journey would take TEN HOURS.
I nicked a bacon and egg sarnie from my complimentary breakfast – no idea whether there would be food on this trip. Wore as thin clothing as possible, with a light wrap, just in case.
First class was comfortable and I was seated opposite an Aussie couple from Perth.
Everything was going to be all right.
Their mobile phone, unlike mine, was working.
Then the air-con came on and it was delicious and cool.
Quite cool, in fact.
Cold.
Frosty.
It was feckin’ freezing !
The morning’s rivers of sweat snap froze on my skin.
I shivered for TEN HOURS stopping-all-stations.
The only relief was to go to the buffet car, which was sweltering, suffocating, my worst nightmare.
I spent the ten hours alternately freezing, frying, freezing, frying.
The worst part was knowing that I would have to do the whole thing all over again twenty-four hours later on the return trip.
Well, they wouldn’t get me this time.
At the night-market in Ipoh I bought a jacket from a second-hand store for 10 ringgit.
It was as gold as a reclining Buddha, and just as fat.
Sorted.
For some reason, the return trip took ELEVEN HOURS.
I missed out on 1st class, so, steerage it was.
Travelling backwards, sharing a seat with the world’s fattest man.
Could things get any worse ?
Well, yes, as it happens, they could.
Suddenly the video screen springs to life and begins showing, first, a Robin Williams film – sending me screaming for my i-pod – then, wait for it, for my very many sins, they start showing
GLADIATOR !!!!!
Am I not suffering enough ?
Do they have to send in Rusty Crowe in all his twitching, wooden puppet glory to torment me with his tight-lipped Oscar-bamboozling style ?
The air-con in steerage wasn’t as bad as in 1st. Or maybe the friction between my corpulent neighbour’s huge arse and my thigh was counteracting the frost. In any case I had to get away from Rusty and mini-Brando Phoenix fast.
Across the clanking steel plates connecting the carriages, where the wind blows hot and foul, I blundered, on my way towards the hell’s kitchen of the buffet car.
Since 7 a.m. that morning I had eaten a one-egg omelette, a fairy cake and a stale Danish. It was now 7 p.m. and I had another 4 hours on the train.
The cans of ‘Kickapoo Joy Juice’ looked tempting enough to risk.
When Campbell MacComas and I used to perform Loveletters my character used to confess to having had too much of ‘the old kickapoo joy juice’ and I thought she was just using a euphemism for booze. Turns out it’s a product.
Well, maybe it was a saying which they turned into a product.
I buy rice.
Can’t go wrong with rice.
So many palm trees out the window.
Eleven hours of palm trees.
Someone in the buffet car asks what time we get in to Singapore.
‘8.15’ says a smartly dressed woman.
‘8.15 !’ I splutter. ‘You mean we get to the border at 8.15.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Then Singapore at 8.45.’
‘Are you including the hour we have to spend at the border check-point ?’ I ask.
She smiles at me politely.
On the way up, it took an hour to travel from Singapore station to Woodlands checkpoint, on the border with Malaysia – everyone drives very slowly and carefully in Singapore, everyone is very law-abiding.
At the border check-point we were told to take just our passports and leave everything else on the train. We queued for immigration and pressed our thumbs on the infra-red thumb I.D. check to see if we were wanted criminals.
Then we waited for about forty minutes while the border police went through the train - and everything we had left behind, presumably - with a fine tooth comb. Then, these boys in navy-blue with their guns on their hips and wise-cracking smiles on their dials waited until they were good and ready to let us back on board.
To kill time I went to use the proper toilet.
They have both male and female toilets on the train but everyone uses the Ladies.
‘Hey ! Buddy ! The sign on the door shows a guy in a dress ! Oh. Right. You are a guy in a dress. My mistake.’
In the platform toilet there was a poster on the wall with a cartoon asking people not to ‘squat on the sitting toilets’. The last frame showed a woman (well, of course, it would be) with her leg stuck in the bowl and she’s hopping mad.
I took a photo of this poster to show the folks back home and then I saw another sign. A warning not to use unauthorised cameras or videos anywhere in this building.
There was another sign on the platform with a cartoon of a man being shot at close range but I wasn’t quite sure why, as the sign was in Malay.
Taking no chances, I stowed my camera, got back in the queue and kept my immodest, sexy-as-all-get-out, sweaty-haired, uncovered head down.
On the return journey there were two checks: one at Jahor Baru – leaving Malaysia – and one, again, at Woodlands – entering Singapore.
I was prepared for this stop.
I was taking everthing with me this time. There would be no sneaky rifling through my luggage on the train. If they wanted to check it they could do it in front of me.
Oh, yes, smart me.
So, I’m walking across the platform towards security, pulling my hand luggage and bags, when I remember.
The Buddha-gold jacket.
Oh. My. God.
The one I bought last night at the second hand store in the night market in Ipoh.
Oh. My. God.
What if the previous owner was a druggie – user or dealer ?
What if the dogs smell something ?
What was the name of that bloody woman ? Simone Corby ? Sherelle Corby ? Shebeen ? Anyway, her. What if that happens to me ?
All this time worrying about stuff being planted in my luggage and whether I should shrink wrap my case or not, and I blithely bring a risky item of clothing in with me MYSELF !
The dogs will sniff it out and then it will be
‘Drop the jacket ! Drop the jacket ! Step away from the jacket ! Assume the position !’
And there will be a circle of guns pointed at my head…..
My heart is pounding.
They’ll know.
I’ve got guilty written all over my forehead.
I stand behind the yellow line and await my fate.
‘Beware the flipper’ says the sign on the plastic gate.
Oh, I’m bewary all right.
It flips and I’m through to the nice lady with the Brahmin caste mark on her forehead.
‘You are only staying one day ?’ she asks, incredulous and suspicious.
‘Y-yes,’ I stammer. ‘I fly back home tomorrow.’
She looks at me, looks at the passport, looks at me, flicks through the passport, holds the passport up to compare me to the photo, me, passport, me, passport.
Okay !!! I’ve looked better ! I’ve just been watching Gladiator ! You try that on an empty stomach after ten and half hours of train travel.
She brings the stamp down on the page and I’m through.
To the x-ray belt.
Everything out of the case.
Gold jacket looming.
If they check my camera and see the shot of the toilet-squatting poster I’m in more trouble than the woman with her leg stuck in the shit.
But I’m not.
When we disembark at Singapore I leave the Buddha jacket in the luggage rack and scuttle towards the exit before the cleaners notice and try to force it on me.
Safely back at the Frozen Food Aisle hotel, I get an up-grade to a ritzy suite on the 17th floor where I order a burger and a Guinness and say goodbye to the last three months.
Time to go home.

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The hotel staff are Spanish.
The waitresses are from the Eastern Bloc.
The Russian car-hire man has never heard of County Monaghan and asks me to spell it.
My Thai drink waitress doesn’t know what Angostura Bitters are.
Welcome to Ireland.
The only verbal exchange I’ve had which matched my expectations was when I hopped on a Dublin tour bus, asked the fare and a thick Irish brogue sang back at me “That’ll be one hundred euros”.
I was so deloighted (sic) I almost handed over the money.

It’s all so disappointing.
The sameness.
Everywhere.
I’ve already whinged about the ubiquitous bubble-writing: this is a whinge about first impressions.
Anyone who has stayed in a high class Sydney hotel will have noticed that they are pretty much staffed by Asian-Australians. My hotel at Heathrow was fully staffed by Indians and Pakistanis. Now, here in Ireland, it’s Spanish people.
This is NOT a racist complaint.
Nor is it a complaint about standards.
Communication difficulties notwithstanding, the standards have all been impeccable.
It’s about the expectations of international travel.
About wanting things to be as different as you were hoping they would be.
All the insane people visiting China this year for a smog-choked extravaganza of sporting advertisements, will probably be anticipating a Chinese kind of experience, yeah ?
If they arrive to find their Chinese hotels fully staffed by Italians or Swedish people won’t they feel a bit gypped ? If the hotel restaurant is a Greek Taverna won’t they feel weird ?
Ditto the forthcoming Empire Games in India.
You’d be looking forward to the traditional Indian hospitality I enjoyed at Heathrow wouldn’t you?
Would you buy a ticket to India if you thought all the hotels and services were staffed by Inuit or – goddammit - Queenslanders !

Can you tell that I’ve been on the road too long ?
I’m starting to whine like an American.

My journey’s end sees me finally here in paradise.
At the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig.
Yes, it’s not a name which springs immediately to mind. And it’s not easy to get to.
Hire car or bus, hire car or bus ?
By now I had accumulated the baggage of the Shah of Persia minus the services of the requisite number of baggage handlers.
The idea of a car-boot was tempting.
The idea of wrangling two suitcases, a large carton of merchandise (books and CDs for my Prisoner personal appearance – more on that at another time), handbags, camera, tickets, passport etc., repulsive.
If I could just get the stuff on to the bus, however, I would be all right and it would be a much more relaxing trip.
I deliberated for two days in my Dublin hotel while I tried to squeeze information regarding either service out of internet and phone.
Frustrated beyond words and knowing I had leave the next day, I took a 10 euro taxi ride directly to the Dublin bus station.
Okay, it was 8 pm on a Sunday night, but the bus station was still full of people queuing and catching buses, but no visible staff.
The information booth and all the ticket counters were closed.
There were stands with photocopied (yes, photocopied) schedules for all the different routes. Full to bursting they were, with every possible way out of Dublin.
Except Route 177 to Monaghan.
Mine.
I finally got hold of a schedule via an e-mail the next morning from a friend ‘on the mainland’ and bit the bullet.
Dragged the baggage single-handedly (note to self: must dye hair grey and walk with a cane) and successfully on to the bus.
I’d spent the morning pounding the streets of Dublin trying to buy re-charge for my latest in a line of 5 simcards for my mobile.
The ever-so-well-known Lebara company simcard works in Ireland but you can’t buy top-up for it in Ireland. And you can’t top it up on the net unless you have a UK-issued credit card.
If anything was to go wrong on this bus-trip I was mobile-less.
Always an uneasy feeling when you’re travelling to parts unknown.
The two-hour bus-ride introduced me to a new phenomenon: Irish talk-back radio.
As repugnant as all talk-back radio, encompassing the nauseatingly familiar line-up of tired-old-chestnut topics, the same brain-numbing repetition of the station’s telephone, SMS and e-mail details, the same strident/outraged/congratulatory/condemning/whingeing tones – but in Irish accents !
More of the same.
The radio was blaring full-blast on the coach so I reached for my trusty i-pod.
Neneh Cherry, James Brown and Jimmy Vaughan saved my life for a while.
I was grooving along to ‘Gravity’ and ‘Goliath’ and starting to feel really relaxed when, just like my mobile, the i-pod ran out of pop.
Irish talk-back it was. All - the - way - to - Monaghan.
Hauled the bags off the bus at my destination and looked around for a cab rank.
My hosts here at the TGC had told me grab a Hackney (what ? horse-drawn ? I can’t wait !) cab and that all the cab drivers knew their way out here.
No cab-rank, the nice Irish girl at the tea stand informed me, but only after she had got me to repeat the question five times in my queer little accent.
The baize notice-board near the toilets, however, was studded with plenty of cab drivers’ cards.
No mobile….
Public phone !!!!!????
I can safely say it’s been some years since I’ve used a pay phone.
Apparently they prefer UK-issued credit cards….
I had a few euros.
All the cab drivers with cards had answer phones and there was no way for them to call me back.
5 euros later ‘Mr T’ answered. I told him, in a cutionary tone, where I wanted to go, in case he had to be home for dinner or to pick up the kids or wanted to watch Neighbours. Considerate, me.
He said he’d be there straight away.
‘Mr T’ sounded Italian…
He wasn’t.
Or if he was, he was of the big, black, African, mo-fo variety of Italian. The ones with the big, wide, winning smiles.
We cruised out of the station and I told him once more where I wanted to go.
Ann-agh-ma-ke-rrig.
We pulled over and he pulled out his GPS tracker.
Ohhh… no, I said. If you don’t know where it is, I’m not driving around the countryside helping you to look for it while the meter runs into the red.
No, no, he said, spell it out for me.
Ten trying minutes of ‘a- as in apple’, ‘n - no, not m, n…’ later I snapped, ‘Just give me the thing. I’ll tap it in !’
The ‘thing’ kept stopping after the first five letters and ‘predicting’ street names in Monaghan.
No mobile.
Laptop in one of the suitcases.
No known wi-fi zone anyway.
Hungry.
Thirsty.
Starting to panic for the first time on this trip.
He’s decided to drive me to his base to get directions.
He’s only lived here six years.
Holy Mary, Mother of God ! Why me ?
I feel sick.
I feel hot.
My feet are all swollen.
This is Ireland !
It’s supposed to be cold and rainy !
I wanna go to MacDonalds !!!!
Not to eat, you fool !
To use the wi-fi !! To top-up my phone !!! To get help !
I am sunk as low as it gets.
That salvation should lie beneath the golden arches.
He’s back with the information.
He’s looking confident.
We’re off.
At speed.
Doing 90 through the hedgerows and byways as I scrabble for the seatbelt socket.
‘Don’t want you to get fined,’ I lie, shoving my fist through the back of my seat, scraping my forearm, ricocheting around in the back seat as we swerve past tractors.
Twenty k’s or so later, at the little town of Newbliss, we stop for further directions.
‘Oh, yes,’ lilts the voice through the window. ‘It’s just op the road a moile or two, you cahn’t miss’t. You go op over there, past a lovely little lake, it is. Oh, it is lovvlee, you cahn’t miss it. And you take a turn up a little lane and away on up to the big house on the hill.’
Ah, now, you see if it had been he who had taken my order for a soda, lime and bitters last night, I would have been so content.
On we plunged, past the ‘lovvlee lake’ (it was) and away on up to the house.
‘Tis a miracle !’ I cried as the beautiful buildings and exquisite gardens of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre swung into view.
‘It is !’ hallelujah’d my driver.
Both of us SO relieved to have made it.
He kept apologising for the ’inconvenience, madame’ and I kept congratulating him for getting us there.
It was as if we had discovered America together.
I shook my new friend Thomas’s hand warmly after he unloaded the baggage and charged me 40 euros (about 80 bucks !) for our wild ride.
I stood outside the big stone house, in the full sunshine, listened to the birds singing, gazed out across the loch, past all that green, and breathed in the scent of freshly mown grass.
I’d made it.
I walked away from my pile of baggage, without a care.
I knew I could just leave it there and nothing would happen to it.
The release from the necessity of keeping one hand at all times on each piece of your luggage, of maintaining a vice-like grip on your handbag, was overwhelming.
Muscles in my neck and shoulders started to ‘ping !’ loose.
I walked, unshackled, weightless, towards the house.

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Everyone else I know is flying Ryanair to Ireland.
I know I’m not but I can’t remember the name of my airline.
It’s the local one that begins with a ‘c’, I keep saying.
When I do finally land in Dublin and see all the big green planes of Aer Lingus I realise my mistake….
Landing in Dublin was a distant concept when the alarm went off in my hermetically sealed, over-air-conditioned cell of a hotel room at 4.30 am.
The noise from the gambling machines and children’s play area just outside my inward facing window had kept me awake until after 1 am. I felt raw and puffy and cranky.
Re-packed the cases for the twentieth time this month and prayed the big one weighed a little less after my expensive trip to the post office yesterday.
The sun was forcing its way back up again as I spent another 4 quid on the Hotel Hopper to Terminal (never a more apt description) One.
I swear I gave the bus-driver a tenner but he gives me change of 5.
I’m flying BMI. That’s the one.
They calculate your air-fare on your weight divided by the weight of your suitcases multiplied by the distance you’re about to travel.
The smiling hostess icon on the Express Check-in screen informs me that my departure is from Gate 80 which is
A HALF HOUR WALK away….
Thiry minutes of brisk walking is ten minutes more than the recommended amount required for fitness and weight maintenance and usually doesn’t involve dragging two suitcases, plus a 2k handbag slung across your chest and your puffer jacket draggin on the floor.
And even if it meant that I would burn off all the overpriced apalling red wine I’ve been guzzling lately, at 5.45 a.m. I am not in the mood.
What about a bus ?
The Air France flight from Paris to Germany involved a fifteen minute BUS-RIDE from the terminal to the plane…
A HALF HOUR WALK !!!!!?
I set off with a heavy heart and a heavy load.
And that’s before I get to the Baggage Check-in.
A surly young man who refuses eye contact snaps the elastic tape barrier back, beckons me in, and mutters something about having to check the weight of my bag.
So, I wait.
What he means is, I have to put the bag up on to the scales.
Rolling I can do, lifting needs help. It’s not forthcoming.
5.9k over the limit.
Back out through the aisles of elastic tape I lumber. Back to the licence-to-print-money Cashier’s Desk.
Nobody home.
It’s 5.58. Maybe they don’t come on ’til 6.
Oi ! I’ve got a HALF HOUR WALK to do. I’ll need to set out soon !
And there’d better be a caff at the other end ‘cos I ain’t ‘ad’ny breakfast yet, init.
I’m even thinking in English now !
A yoo-hoo yields nothing.
Five minutes later a woman drifts in, doesn’t look at me, charges me 7 pounds a kilo excess, tries to print the receipt for me to take to her surly colleague back at Baggage but the maching breaks down and she has to take the lid off and stick a biro in it, init.
35 pounds stirling.
I should be grateful.
Germany to Paris cost me 85 euros.
I am a woman travelling for 3 months with the barest possible minimum of clothing.
I, the Imelda of Melbourne, am travelling with one pair of trainers (on my feet) and one pair of boots !
I deserve some kind of medal !!!
Not maltreatment by BMI excess-weight nazis.
Back to surly, non-weighing, weight-checker.
On to surly Baggage Check-in proper.
Incomprehensible accent even to a good ear like mine.
I have to ask her to repeat several key questions a couple of times without sounding too much like Marjorie Dawes from Little Britain.
Will I remove the old labels, she asks me through lips of tightly-drawn string.
I give it a go but they’re stuck fast and only get more stucker as I pull.
Do you have any scissors ? I ask.
No, do you have any scissors ? she snaps back. Or any other sharp objects.
No ! Because if I did I would use them to CUT OFF THESE LABELS you dopey twat. I think. To myself.
She stares at me, all open-mouthed disbelief, waiting for me to morph into Edwina Scissorhands.
I glare back at her like a petulant child and say firmly,
‘Can’t’.
We part, mortal enemies For Life.
And then.
My HALF HOUR WALK begins.
Will I eat here, where there is a caff ?
Or will I do the walk and hope for the best ?
With the words of my favourite Eddie Izzard routine - ‘Well, there must have been a canteen on the Death Star, musn’t there ?’ -ringing in my ears, I charge ahead to Security.
By now I have learned not to wear an underwired bra, so, I make it through the gate without a good and proper frisking before breakfast.
An electronic sign looms immediately ahead.
‘Gate 80 - 10 minutes’
It’s like the South-Eastern Freeway.
‘Warrigal Road - 40 minutes’
‘Toorak Road - delays’
Ten minutes ?
So.
Not a HALF HOUR WALK ?
Or did my exchange with Mrs Bitchface Baggage Hag count as 20 ?
Ten minutes ?!
I can do that.
In fact, I can stop for breakfast right here and now.
I start to feel really good, until I realise I have NO MONEY LEFT because the thieving, crooked bus driver fleeced me of my last fiver.
Chip-and-pin it is then, because, Lord knows, cash or no cash, you need a credit card to buy breakfast at Heathrow.
After my Bacon and Egg Toastie and mug of beige swill I’m ready to take on the world and its wife.
The ten minute walk goes by like 5, and I’m standing at a T-intersection in front of another sign.
There’s an arrow pointing left below the words:
‘GATES 70-78′
and an arrow pointing right below the words:
‘GATES 82-90′.
Can youpick what’s wrong with the sign ?
‘Excuse me,’ I say to the top of a desk, ‘there are two gates missing and I need one of them’.
‘No, no,’ says the desk. ‘Through that door. Gate 80 through that door.’
But.
‘I know. I know.’
Through the door to Gate 80, Brigadoon, into a lounge full of green chairs.
We are going to Ireland.
It’s 6.15 by now and an Irish voice is shouting over the P.A. that my 7 am flight to Dublin is boarding NOW and that everyone should just be getting a very big move on, if you don’t mind.
No-one moves from the green chairs.
A woman doing a customer survey for BMI Airlines with a woman opposite me, looks towards the ceiling and makes disapproving noises and reassures us all that this is indeed Gate 80 and that that announcement is just so wrong it’s embarassing.
Oh, Miss ! Pick me ! Pick me to answer your survey !
Please !
I know ALL the answers !
They’re not the answers you want to hear but it’ll fill up your sheet.
Sensing my eagerness, perhaps, she tries to slip away but the security door has snapped shut and we are all TRAPPED FOR EVER in the ghostly gate-lounge on the green chairs listening to piped misinformation.
Irish jokes aside, it’s almost funny.
Almost.
Half an hour later, safely on the plane, the captain announces that there will be a slight delay of HALF AN HOUR due to traffic out of Heathrow.
The rest of the crew, perhaps, doing the HALF HOUR WALK ?

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I’ve been motoring through Nether Wallop, Middle Wallop and A Clip Across The Ear – known to its more groovy residents as Sock It To Me.
A town called Abbot’s Ann…?
So…there was an abbot with someone called Ann at his disposal and the locals built a town for her ?
What then to make of the hamlet of Little Ann ?
Was she Ann’d Over ?
Oh, yes, droll, me.
On the long trail from Cardiff to my last port of call in Andover, by way of the not-so-scarey-after-all Severn Bridge.
(Hard to know how high above the water one is with all that low-lying smog…er…fog).
Motoring, like Toad, along the highways and byways of Somerset and Wiltshire and Hampshire.
A flash of setting sun on the Great White Horse, and yet, nowhere to stop for the photo opportunity.
So un-American.
Hedgerows.
Miles of hedgerows.
So many bustles (see Stairway to Heaven).
Speed signs read 50 and 40 and 30.
50 ? I don’t know whether to slow down or speed up.
(Miles, Jane, it’s miles, and you’re doing 80k !)
No stopping and no overtaking on English hedgerows.
You’re stuck behind someone like me, you’re stuck there ‘til bathtime.
Ah, Bath…..
The untold joy of Bath !
I knew I wanted to go to there but wasn’t sure why.
Something about taking the waters….
I tried to book a stopover but the prices were too steep.
I could not, however, resist a little peek.
As soon as I drove in off the interminable M’s I fell for the city’s Georgian charms.
I came over all Pride and Prejudice.
Oh, Mr D’Arcy ! I simply must buy a fridge magnet with your – or is that Colin Firth’s ? – face on it !
Parked the vehicle with ease at the top of the magnificent Great Pulteney Street and hopped on an open-topped, double-dekker bus for a guided tour around the magnificent burgh.
Whiled away a whole hour in the blazing sun listening to ambient, crystal-shop music, interspersed with wry commentary on the headphones.
Did you know they built a castle on a hill overlooking the town just to give it a bit of gravitas ? Not a real castle, just an edifice. It’s known as Sham Castle.
My kind of town.
I wish one of my addresses had been in Bath. I would have justified at least a week there.
But, no, it was back to the schedule and on to Andover.
I spent the night in Salisbury – a stone’s throw from the Henge.
So close I had to drop by the next day and pay my respects to the Druids.
(You just never know who the real Gods/Special-Invisible-Friends might be….)
Is it before Amesbury or after ? I wondered aloud….
Oh, look ! There it is !
No.
A pedestrian walkway over the A303.
Look at all those big white stones… must be getting close !
Sheep.
Finally, there it was.
And it was so…Spinal Tap small…
I knew you couldn’t actually wander around the stones, that there was a fence and a walkway.
Should have known it would cost.
About $15.
Shopped for trashy souvenirs instead – Stonehenge socks, a miniature Stonehenge just like Spinal Tap, a pencil with a henge on the end – and took photos through the fence.
Decided to visit the lesser-known Woodhenge, a couple of miles down the road.
There it is ! I cried.
No.
Wooden sound baffles on the A303.
No, there !
No…. Those are clearly someone’s stumps for a new house. Like you’ve seen on ‘Grand Design’.
But there’s a carpark….
And a sign….
‘Welcome to the Woodhenge…. Bronze Age c.2000BC.
The concrete posts…”
Ah-hah…
“….mark the position of the original timbers, evidence for which was obtained by excavation.”
So….
Concrete-henge.
Concentric circles of concrete posts with different coloured tops, plus a small clump of what looked like left-over concrete – or is it an old rock ? - just near the middle.
No-one about. (No, really ?).
I take many self-timed shots of me among the buttercups and the …wood…concrete…henge.
A sudden urgency reminds me that the closest toilet is away across the paddocks and the tour buses and the retail outlets of the fancy-pants henge that boasts its own road-sign.
I walk towards my car but then curiosity about the clump of left-over concrete gets the better of me.
What’s that got to do with the henge ?
I move in for a closer look.
It looks like a gravestone.
No mention of what, or who, lies beneath, but there’s a tiny bunch of buttercups fastened with intent amongst the clotted stones.
Lying askew on the grass next to the slab is a small wooden cross with a union jack pin and a remembrance ribbon attached.
The wood at the base of the cross is frayed, like it was planted before and has come loose.
The wind began to pick up through the concrete.
Back to the open road.
Poop-poop !
view photos on my Facebook site at:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=573908245

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May Day ! May Day !
I pulled out of Paris on the Eurostar and glanced at the station clock.
It said 9.11
Hurtling towards the Channel Tunnel, white knuckles gripping the armrest of my window seat.
Window seat ? Point ?
The rational and the irrational going at it hammer and tongs in my frontal lobe, stomach doing cartwheels.
Why did I get on this train ?
Which is worse, I ask myself, 36 thousand feet up or a couple of thousand feet down?
Nothing but empty sky between you and the ground or a huge body of water and hundreds of tons of ocean floor bearing down on you ?
Blocked ears from being in a pressurised metal tube hurtling through the sky or blocked ears from being in a metal tube far too deep underground ?
No escape from either….
Unless you stop thinking about it and read the paper.
Ah, here comes breakfast.
I was in first class and assured that breakfast was ‘compris’, so, I hadn’t bothered to buy my last genuine croissant or brioche at the Gare du Nord. Not even a café crème.
Which, in hindsight, was a mistake.
Breakfast was just like on a plane – only worse.
Cold, stale croissant, which - like all souvenirs of Paris – was probably made in China. Aeroplane coffee with France’s favourite milk – UHT.
(In case I haven’t mentioned this before, the French all drink long-life milk. Not sure why. No-one seems to have an explanation).
I ate like a woman who is about to die in a train accident.
Had seconds.
‘How long do we actually spend in the tunnel ?’ I asked the beautiful Christine, ‘cabin supervisor’.
About twenty minutes.
Oh. Well, that’s manageable, I thought.
‘And do your ears hurt ?’ I asked.
‘Not when you’re in the tunnel,’ she said. ‘But later, quite a lot.’
Aaaaagggghhhhh !!!!!!
I want to get off this train !
I have very sensitive ears ! I’m an artiste ! I need my ears for my important work of listening to myself talk and sing ! I don’t want to have any pain !
I decided not to ask if anyone had ever had a heart attack brought on by the pressure of being underground in the tunnel.
Twenty minutes, I kept saying. I can time that.
Maybe if I go to the toilet now – which by the way I would really like to do – I won’t even notice us going in to the tunnel because there won’t be any lights on in there.
Excellent idea. Even though I was fully loaded up with the breakfast tray I manoeuvred my way out of the seat, squeezed past the trolley and into the loo.
Was I just imagining that everyone was staring at me ?
Or were all their eyes popping out of their heads with fear.
Once in the loo I suddenly thought, well, yes I might not notice the fact that we’re in the tunnel because there’s no windows in here, but what about the excruciating pain in my ears !!!
Back past the trolley, back under my breakfast tray.
We seemed to still be in the country.
Oceans of non-drought-stricken green, punctuated with those annoying psychedelic yellow fields of canola were swishing past the window.
An occasional tunnel and you thought, here we go ! This is it ! And your ears popped and everything…But then you were out the other end and surrounded by more greens.
My ticket said – depart Paris 9.15, arrive Ashford 10.05.
Forty-five minutes minus the twenty in the tunnel - we should be in it by now.
I take another look at the ticket. Maybe it’s ‘arrive 1.05’ – as in p.m. ? 4 hours of suspense. It was gonna kill me !
Then suddenly the train began to slow, ever so slightly.
My lovely hosts in Hildesheim, Ben and Sabina, had related to me a horror story of being stuck in the chunnel on the Eurostar. The train had ground to a halt, all the lights went out, people were screaming and crying. Another train had to be summoned to pull it back out again…and….
The train was definitely slowing.
Oh. My. God.
What was worse than hurtling towards the chunnel ?
Hurtling towards it only to stop just inside it or….half….way…
We were definitely in the chunnel now.
Moving along at a steady pace.
It was kind of quiet.
Gee, The Guardian was running some good stories that day.
You could ask me anything about the local council elections and the battle for the job as Mayor of London and I could tell you everything.
And, just as suddenly, we were out the other end.
And my ears weren’t hurting.
They didn’t even pop.
It was a totally painless experience.
Apart from the breakfast.

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Twenty years and twenty kilos ago Paris could be a little dangerous for a single woman like moi
‘Don’t make eye-contact,’ my French friends would warn. ‘Don’t smile’.
I’m invisible now.
It’s a great way to travel.
Lucky to get anyone’s attention, frankly.
It took a while for the old Paris magic to kick in.
On previous, more salubrious visits I’ve cabbed in from the airport or caught the train direct from Calais to the Gare du Nord.
The architecture never failed to score a direct hit, right between the eyes.
An exquisite, elegant, romantic city with turrets and slate roofs and real French windows with balconies.
Wide tree-lined boulevards, art-nouveaux Metro signs, rows of cane chairs outside café after café.
Wow.
Ca me fait a bout de souffle.
This time around, in the city of love, I feel like I came in through the servants’ entrance.
I caught the train in from Charles de Gaulle airport to the Gare de L’Est and waited for the show to begin.
I don’t need to be in Paris. I took three days here - between the rigours of Germany and the ongoing work in England - because I wanted to.
It’s a luxury I can’t afford but I was too close to forgo the pleasure.
Le Bourget, Drancy, the suburban stations rolled past the window of the RER.
No magic happening.
Droves of Naomi Campbells, Macy Grays, Fela Koutis and Kofi Anans got on board.
I seemed to be the only trailer-trash going to town.
I kept my eyes fixed on the window.
Waiting.
The world-wide association of bubble-writers, it seems, has wreaked its usual toneless, boring havoc on one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
The taggers (great concept in AFL: rubbish with a spray-can) hard at it, systematically erasing all traces of individuality in every town, city and hamlet.
From Broady to Clichy, Frankston to Frankfurt, Melbourne to Milan, every available wall, railway siding and rooftop is covered in bubble-writing.
AND IT ALL LOOKS THE SAME.
There is not one trace of individuality on display. No shred of protest.
No-one, it seems, imagines that perhaps copperplate might be an option. Or even hieroglyphics.
Nup.
Just tubular block caps in the dozen colours available at the local equivalent of Bunnings.
Just wanna look like the other bruvvers, init.
Big fan of Banksie , me. The graffiti genius. Love yer work.
But bubble-writers ?
Bor-ring !
I want to apply for an Arts Council grant to initiate a
GLOBAL DAY OF RAMPANT INDIVIDUALITY.
Everyone gets a tin of paint and a roller and is allowed to paint over all the bubble-writing around them.
A day on which we can restore the individuality of each city.
Erase the glum, prosaic, UNIFORMITY of the world-wide bubble-writing scourge.
Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t give a tinker’s that bubble-writers deface property or appear to be engaging in anti-social, anti-private ownership rights.
I care that it’s so TOTALLY LACKING IN IMAGINATION !!!!
Just writing your name ?
What’s THAT about ?
France led the world in freedom, liberty, egalite, democracy. They smashed the monarchy and stood up for the poor in a revolutionary fight to the death. They built monuments to their achievements.
So, the most revolutionary thing you can think of to do today is write your name/number/tag/signature on a wall ?
Sacre bleu, fair suck of the sav, bloody hell !
How DULL AND UNIMAGINATIVE.
Paris rolls past the window of the train and I could be anywhere.
It’s only when I finally lug my case (which just cost me 86 euros in excess to bring back from Germany even though I hadn’t put anything extra in it) unassisted, up three flights of Metro stairs and emerge onto the beautiful Boulevarde Richard Lenoir and gaze towards the Colonne de Juillet flying high above the centre of the Place de la Bastille that the magic finally happens.
I’m in Paris.
And it’s raining.
And it will keep on raining all the time I’m here.
Even after I finally succumb and buy a ‘Paris, Je t’aime’ souvenir umbrella, it keeps raining.
I don’t care.
I’m sitting here with a 2.50 euro bottle of 2006 Bordeaux and thinking about tomorrow, and how I will ride my ‘velib’ bike all over town and drink in the unique gorgeousness that is Paris.

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Germany is very punk.
Leather jackets, buzz-cuts and lank pony-tails … and that’s just the women.
Boom Boom. No, but seriously folks…
I scandalised the good French citizens of Toulouse last week by eating a croissant ON THE STREET, OUT OF A PAPER BAG and wearing my home-made, reversible, long-sleeved tee-shirt, fashionably INSIDE OUT !
True dinks.
A woman passed me on the street then double-backed for a second, gob-smacked squiz.
A young woman.
She brought friends with her for the 2nd circuit.
In Germany I might as well be someone’s nana.
Deutschland is very…sort of… how you say in your country ?… white supremacist.
Almost British. Circa 1978.
Nose-rings, bovver boots and black everywhere.
More black clothes per square metre than the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts Opening Night party.
Young German women seem to be seriously height-challenged.
The world-wide, battery-chicken-nurtured tendency to giant children and large breasts seems to have passed rural Germany by.
Drifts of short girls with faces caked in goth-style white pancake and industrial strength mascara, piercings, Fudge overkill on the blue, green or yellow streaked hair – stiffened and layered like Cilla Black on crack – torn stockings and Chucks.
Converse must be making a fortune in Rhineland.
Converse and steel-capped cothurni ROOL OKAY.
Maybe I’m getting this impression because I’m doing so much train travel ?
Maybe the autobahns are jammed with BMW’s and Fow Vays (that’s VW’s for those of you playing at home) full of fashionistas ?
But where do they go when they park and get out ?
The parts of Germany I’ve been seeing have been quiet.
The big towns seem, spookily… like Adelaide….. cue Twilight Zone theme.
Train travel in Germany, however, I have to say, gets the Big Tick.
I had so looked forward to train travel in Europe, but the French TGV(very-fast-train) left a lot to be desired.
The German ICE – Inter-City Express – on the other hand is sensational.
Those big trains whoosh, almost silently, into the stations like Great White Pointer sharks. The doors buzz open and you enter a world of very clean, beautifully catered, very fast and efficient, comfortable train travel.
In first class they serve you in your seat – meals, booze, the lot.
On one of my Hildesheim to Braunschweig runs there was a party of women who had taken the ICE hospitality a glass too far.
Lord knows how many cities they’d been through but by 11.30 on this particular morning they were pissed and raucous.
A lot of shouting and flirting with starled, sixty-year-olds was going down.
I WISH I knew what the occasion was.
My money was on a beauticians’ bonding weekend.
That’s one of the many drawbacks to a lack of fluency in the local language. You can make yourself understood at the rail counter or in the cake shop (thank God ! just point that fat finger again, Jane), but you can’t get the entire gist of something like these wild gals.
And you can’t engage in the random conversations which are the staple of travel.
Which is a pity.
The best I’ve managed has been the odd joke with a newsagent or waitress. But the laughter sprang from relief that we understood each other to the extent of seeing the mild humour in a situation.
It dissipated quickly.
At the bus-stop in the little town of Dinklar, outside Hildesheim, I seemed to always catch the bus to and from town with a sprightly looking woman of about sixty. (Yes, almost my age).
I couldn’t help noticing her because she was always immaculately fitted out in my favourite colours. Full length black leather coat, striking red scarf. Red and black bomber jacket, black stilettos and leather pants.
She was very slim, immaculately made up and had long, greying, blonde hair piled into a neat roll on her head.
She knew everyone.
People on motor-bikes and tractors waved ‘Halloo !’ to her.
She automatically tried to strike up a conversation with me, and her frustration was palpable when I, the only other passenger at the bus-stop, didn’t speak German. She loved a chat and I’d ruined her day.
I knew just how she felt.
On yet another train from Hildesheim to Hannover a young man in the seat across the aisle from me suddenly leaned over and let forth a stream of German too quickly for me to grasp.
I trotted out my usual, pathetic, ‘Ich kann nicht Deutsch sprechen – sorry’ (can NEVER remember the German word for ‘sorry’. Maybe John Howard was German…).
To which he immediately replied,
‘Oh, okay, but do you have a pen I can borrow ?’
Sure I did.
‘Ich bin eine shriftstellerin’ init.
(The German word for ‘writer’ is suitably long and sibilant).
He wrote for such a long time with my ‘Kugelschreiber’ that I was beginning to wonder if perhaps he was a ‘shriftsteller’ too.
I also began to wonder if (a) he was ever going to give it back to me and (b) if there would be any ink left in it when he did.
He eventually did (a) and I felt more confident of (b).
He asked me where I was from and whether I was on holiday and I suddenly found myself having a lengthy conversation with a stranger. My first since the beginning of this trip.
He was a singer from Hannover, he told me. The choir he was in was off on a tour of Venezuela the following day.
I told him a bit about my book and answered his many questions about Australia – he plans to visit us soon.
We had such a lively conversation that I felt compelled to ask him how come he spoke such good English.
He grew up in Hannover, he said, but he was born in Afghanistan to an Afghani father and a German mother. There was a UN school where he lived and he opted to learn English.
We rabbited on until the train pulled into Hannover but when we parted I couldn’t help but regret the number of other interesting conversations I might have had in the three countries I’ve visited so far.
Sartre said ‘L’enfer, c’est les autres’, but maybe he didn’t get out of Paris enough.
I’ll make enquiries when I lob at the ‘Deux Magots’ tomorrow.

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So, I can ask where the toilet is in three different languages now and that’s got to be useful.
The ‘servicios, por favor ?’ in Spain, ‘ou est les toilettes ?’ in France and ‘vo ist die toilette ?’ in Germany.
When a girl’s gotta go, a girl’s gotta learn the lingo.
This morning on the TGV – le very fast train - from Lyon to the Charles De Gaulle airport and my flight to Germany, I didn’t need the lingo I just needed to find one of those drawings of a person in a skirt.
It was a two-storey train with the loos, buffet car and mobile phone area on the upper level.
Signs everywhere ask you, in the politest possible French terms, not to disturb your fellow train travellers with your mobile phone. There is a picture of a mobile and the words ‘Cabine Silence’ written next to it.
Your boring, shouted exchanges about stocks, bonds, soup recipes and what you really think of Auntie Jan must be carried out in the noisy space between carriages, where they belong.
The buffet car was packed and the loo occupied so I sat on the comfy couch provided on the upper level and watched fogbound France rush by the window.
An elderly man emerged from the Ladies some minutes later with a sheepish look on his face and ‘Sprung !’ blazoned across his forehead.
Entering the Ladies with proprietorial hauteur my foot felt something underfoot.
Paper towel perhaps ? Tissues ?
I looked down to see a black leather wallet stuffed with euros.
Had to be his.
There is always that moment of ‘finders keepers’ - which passes quickly when you place yourself in the loser’s position – Ladies loo defiler or not.
But where to find him on this huge train jammed with strangers ?
His flustered, beige-suited image was still fresh in my mind’s eye.
May as well start with the buffet car.
Spotted him straightaway and tapped him on the arm.
Instant recoil.
Made worse by my clumsy attempt at asking him in French if he’d just been in the toilet.
And ! Using the familiar ‘tu’ !
His face was a flurry of - ‘is it an offence to use the Ladies ?’
- ‘what does this weird creature want ?’
- ‘is she from the police ?’
- ‘what will I tell my wife ?’

But mostly, ‘Go away, infidel’.
I asked him again if perhaps he had lost something.
Relief. Patting of pockets.
I proffer the wallet and all the blood drains from his poor old French face as he clasps my hand in gratitude.
Didn’t stop him having just a tiny peek to see if all the dough was still there.
Then we do ‘merci’s and the ‘de rien’s and go our separate ways.
Full deposit in the karma bank please.
I may need it on the small plane I’m flying in through rain clouds to Germany…

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