Goodbye London. Hello bloody freezing Brisbane.

Something happened in the two weeks since I last posted on my blog.

I arrived home. Yes, as in Brisbane. Cold and bloody freezing Brisbane. I find this quite ironic. Only last Friday night I was at Southbank in London, overlooking the Thames, having a few Pimms with Clare and Phil. The sun was out (until about 9:30pm in fact). There were girls wearing sun dresses. I was conscious that my neck was getting burned and I was getting a very bad tan line on my arms. And now here I am back in Brisbane where it’s dark at 5pm and my fingers are so frozen I can hardly type.

Londoners really hate sunny Friday afternoons....

Clare and Phil

To all my friends and family in Brisbane - forgive me for wishing that I was still in London. It’s nothing personal. It’s just that Brisbane does winter really, really badly. Queenslanders refuse to believe that it actually gets cold here. There’s a certain defiance that seems to set in against the cold weather – I WILL continue to wear shorts; I WILL NOT turn on the central heating (generally because no one actually thought to even install it).

Anyway, despite the frozen fingers, at least I am doing some writing, which is more than I can say for what I’ve been up to for the last couple of weeks in London where writing took a major back seat to several other activities, including:

1. Making my credit card smoke. Seriously smoke.

2. Buying loads of stuff at Mimco. Because it is a lot cheaper to buy this great Aussie brand in London than it is right here in Australia. Go figure.

3. Being a real tourist – from the Tate Britain to Westminster Abbey (Kate and Wills were nowhere to be seen) to an awesome street photography exhibition at the Museum of London. I tried to cram in all of those touristy London things that I had not managed to do in the six weeks I was there before I left for Portugal. Which was pretty much everything.

Westminster Abbey with Jason. No sign of Kate or Wills.

4. Climbing on a lion in Trafalgar Square. This is A LOT harder than it looks. Those suckers are really slippery. I opted to simply climb onto the surrounding base instead, thanks to a kind leg up from Jason, but even this was hard. I certainly gave a few passing buses a nice eyeful of my arse.

Slippery little sucker

5. Sampling a wide variety of London nightlife: from seeing Phantom of the Opera, to dancing to bad 80’s music (head banging to Poison did feature; running man did not) in Putney, eating divine pulled pork at Jamie Oliver’s restaurant Barbecoa and catching the wrong night bus home from SoHo at 4am (I can only blame the shots. And Fran. All her fault). It was a little like the craziness of Spain revisited all over again, just without the chocolate churros.

6. One last trip to Twickenham with Fran and Jase – although I had to trade the luxury of the corporate suite for plastic seats and pints of cider this time, it was totally worth it to see England lose to the Barbarians.

With Frannie at Twickenham

7. Burying my toes in the sand on Brighton beach with Janet. Sorry, I mean rocks. Burying my toes in the rocks.

The beach, British style....

I had a bloody good time. But literally no writing made it on to this list. Which means I haven’t touched my novel for near on three weeks. Eeekkk. I’m hoping that the rumour that ‘the longer you leave it, the harder it is to get back into it’ is false. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow morning, my first day back on the writing wagon now that my jetlag-induced delirium has nearly passed. I then have until 4 July to try and polish off this first draft, as well as get my first three chapters to Maggie Alderson.  

I think this is achievable – if only because Dad has finally turned the heating on and I can actually feel my fingers again. Thanks Bill.