Winter Wonder.

Dear Melbourne,

Today is the first day of summer as I was reminded by the facebook update from the University of Melbourne. HA! Tell that to Norwich. Tell that to the Northern Hemisphere! For half the world it is the first day of winter. So much for summer vacation plans Unimelbs, it's all about rugging up and sipping on mulled wine over here.

It's terribly confusing. Not as confusing as it might have been last year when there had already been a lot of snow by the start of December. But still, my head can't get around it and I have to conciously have a 'season awareness' or the opposite thing comes out frequently in conversation, especially when people are talking about months. This is amusing of course, but a little impractical.

Anyways for the first time in many years I have an Advent Calendar! It's really rather adorable. One window open and 24 to go.

x

White Wine in The Sun (Tim Minchin)

So I cried today but in the best way you can:



It's so very beautiful and there is a truth to it that kicks you right in the chest.

x

Triangles.

Tea

Dear Melbourne,

When I said I would get better at writing letters I was being optimistic - I have four aerograms sitting on my desk, with names on the front and they aren't written and aren't even addressed!

There has been much business and much tea.

(My big, fat red mug from the supermarket)

But I do think of you often. Everyday in fact - not in that awful homesick pit that you sometimes end up on but the little lovely things that get taken for granted. Some top thoughts about you Melbourne on a daily basis and why I love you so:

1. Trams.
2. Good cafes everywhere.
3. Tap water quality.
4. My favourite bookshop.
5. People knowing who Crowded House; Paul Kelly and the Wiggles are.
6. Being close to the beach.
7. The people I know.

That's seven to go with for now, but there are of course many more.

I will write. I promise. If only because number 7 deserves to be number 1!

Love T.

Fireworks.

when i was small we walked up the hill to the university
it was cold and the damp got into our gloves

while there was colour in our cheeks and in torchlight
the darkness surrounded and leaked onto our path

the hedges lined the steady climb of other people
wellies and hats; coats buttoned up high with white grins
of anticpation -  a town in the mood for a show

you had seen it before, thought it was time enough
i was perhaps five after all and needed to see -

- oooooooooh aaaaaaaaah -
                            - oooooooooh aaaaaaaaah -

but i needed to be - a little ball curled around your boots
where my ears had fallen off into the smoky grass

so we backed down to the houses from shots in the sky
the distant bangs echoing into our steaming kitchen

Eventually moving to a country where such things
are illegal.

10.11pm

Just so you know, I am drowning out the bad guitar playing from the kitchen upstairs with John Farnham.

St. Pancras Station.

So in St. Pancras there is a statue which is rather massive and twee of couple saying goodbye (nay, farewell!) he looks has a displaced backpack and she has not very nice shoes - anyways much, much more interesting is the base on which they are standing - it is this gorgeously itricate bronze of all sorts of people that have used and still continue to use the railway. Michelle and I both liked the bored looking men.

You must excuse the flash/non-flash thing as we were in a hurry to catch head down to the river. Anyways it is called 'The Meeting Place and is by Paul Day. [The view of the couple here is totally unrealistic as you can't GET that high to see that unless you are on a cherry picker!]

There are also some Olympic rings, in case you forget.

And for some reason we didn't see the cute little Betjeman statue so next time.

Pages of England

Dear Melbourne,

Sometimes I do wonder if I would love England as much as I do if I had lived here right through and not spent more of my life living on the opposite side of the world. And I am not meaning socio-economic and politics and all that stuff but that imaginative sense that you develop about places as you grow older.

Me, most of that came from reading. I went to a lecture (read: gate-crashed) last night by Gillian Leathy about Children's Literature Translation and she made a terribly interesting point that while we consider Children's Fiction to be "international" precious few contemporary stories are being translated into English from different countries and the flow goes all the way back the other way - mostly English books from England. This is both good and bad - and I feel this happens sans translation in Australia. Famous Five? Any Enid Blyton is terrifically English as is the majority of our classic fiction for younger readers. It's true that writers like Melina Marchetta, John Marsden and Jackie French produce fabulous localised fiction but for some reason Australia does not have that same accessibility on the page. Of course the world view of England through these pages is idealistic and far from reality in many cases.

Side note: I said "rotter" to someone the other day as in "the rotters!" and he looked at me like I was mad. I am positive that this is from the Famous Five books or perhaps The Scarlett Pimpernel; The Young Ones or Vicar of Dibley or Stephen Fry and completely "English!" It was quite hilarious.

So anyways, the point being (eventually) that perhaps I love England because it was not a reality, or it was a distanced reality filtered through dappled sunlight, regency bonnets and Victorian Christmases. Then again it might be that whole colonial thing, Melbourne, my dearest they have a Poetry Library here in Royal Festival Hall. We seem to reverse migrate back here to the seemingly cultural hub of the world don't we? When in reality we have so much of it at home. Hmmmm. Interesting thought perhaps.

But then you know, you see this scene and there you go.

You couldn't be anywhere else.

Love

Tils x

But I Couldn't find a Banksy Not Anywhere There.

So there is this little spot near Waterloo Station that is an ever-chaning canvas for the city. I love the idea of a gallery space such as this as it is contastantly shifting and reinventing itself and at the same time there is this gorgeous layering of what has been before.

I think it will also be interesting to visit it when it is shivery and wet and the colours are shiny with the cold. There is a warmth to the concrete when there is the sun glancing into the tunnel from each end.

The Background?

Well if you had the option to set a sunny view that included this lovely lampost from Embankment Bridge that included St. Paul's and not one but two buses wouldn't you?

--

You mightn't if you knew how annoying getting a palette together for this blog has become.

GREY, BLUE AND POTENTIALLY GREEN. WHY ENGLAND WHY!?

London Calling.

Views from Embankment bridge! Walking across from Embankment/Charing Cross side towards Waterloo. First trip into London this time round.

So. Here. We. Go!

Lift off! Launch!


Just about a month has passed since we left Melbourne and it is only now I find I have any inclination at all to blog about anything. There is something so disruptive about moving that it takes the energy out of you to do anything else but live.

You might however be pleasantly surprised that I have been taking photos AND have uploaded these to the computer and the one post I have written was written in the fall out of arriving. So bear with a little more and things will start popping up. There will be enough tags/labels for a cloud and soon enough this baby will start to take shape. It will be very pretty, mine always are.

One of the first things I did when I arrived at UEA was to buy aerograms. I haven't written any. To anyone. So please don't feel neglected. Apologies and love and know dearest Melbourne that I think about you every day, especially since my homepage is still the BOM!!

It’s All Worth it.

Flying is not a favourite pastime of many people. This is terribly surprising isn’t it considering how much fun being cooped up for a seemingly interminable period can be? Even more when you consider how incredibly fulfilling waiting around in queues that don’t move anywhere can be good for the soul! Oh and as for being delayed and having to sit in an increasingly hot plane with broken air conditioning – it’s a party, it really is. And the best part when they finally decide to de-plane (new phrase you must incorporate into your vocab from now on) is that you have a lovely trek all the way through arrivals and back through flight transfer security. Zowie! You know, it’s really amazing really that people don’t do this more often. Because the result that you end up spaced out, jet-lagged and aching all over makes it all worth it.

Well actually it is the friendly familiar faces in the crowd in Arrivals that do – ones that have sat around for six hours in Heathrow as the hotline and internet neglected to inform them that the flight was delayed – those ones. And the ones that wait up with the keys and the ones that drink tea in a toasty flat, and the ones coming down to London for the weekend. Those are the ones that make it all worth it.

Even hauling over 30kgs in luggage up the four flights of stairs at Victoria tube station to find that the National Rail services don’t depart to where we need to go after 9pm; even when we go outside into a cold London that has settled into a night under a steady drizzle; even when we stand on bus for 45mins as it puts around the south circular, even when we disembark to no taxi rank; even when the cabbie we flank down doesn’t have the area knowledge; even when we arrive and fall into white sheets on a date that doesn’t feel right and at a time too late. Is it all worth it? Totally!