Part 2 - Jingo unchained

The new guy, whom we shall call Jonny (for that was his name) had never considered himself racist. But there was something that grated about taking orders from Asians with a limited command of English. Being the new guy though meant everyone felt entitled to boss him around and deny him the privilege of using the spray guns. You could see this behaviour as the result of Balram's autocratic management style, the more experienced employees desperately grasping any shred of self-respect they could by elevating themselves above the others in informal authority. Jonny had never been especially patriotic, feeling the line between patriotism and nationalism to be too thin. But removed to a country far from his home soil he took a slightly arrogant pride in his Englishness and the automatic respect he felt should be afforded it. He had hoisted the cross of St. George in the front lawn of his conscious. Whilst he knew not what history was taught in Asian schools some of his nation's glorious past must have been worth a mention. After all Britain had invaded some 90% of the world's countries which he felt was an impressive statistic however you feel about colonial (mis)adventure. Balram had certainly noticed this aloof attitude and had mockingly taken to calling Jonny 'your majesty'. In truth, at 30 years of age, working at a car wash did touch Jonny's pride somewhat. This fostered and ill-suppressed sense of superiority was a means of protecting his self-respect and in that respect he was no different to the rest of his co-workers though the parallel was lost on him. He believed he was better than everyone else precisely because deep down he worried he wasn't.

"You think you're too good for this job." Balram accused one day.
"I'd hope everyone here feels they are capable of more." Jonny answered with a diplomatic avoidance of the question.

He still bore the indelible psychological scars from a failed degree a decade ago and sought to prove his intellect, sometimes abrasively so, at every opportunity. But conversations with Balram were just monologues with margin notes. He never asked any employee a question that he showed the least interest in hearing the answer to, indeed he never really established eye contact with anyone but customers. If Jonny hadn't exactly struck up the warmest of relationships with his manager he had at least swiftly become friends with Mo. While dialogue with Mo also involved a great deal more listening than talking there was at least an affable entertainment value to his filibustering. Ideas and opinions sprayed from him at such a rate it was difficult to examine their veracity let alone form a response. He regularly despaired at the state of his home country and seemed to harbour a genuine wish that it was still under the Raj. He confounded this desire with a gratification at the influx of Indian immigrants to the UK and the damage he imagined they were doing there. He thought this reciprocal invasion justified in light of the fact that the British 'took everything from the Indian peoples'. Jonny soon realised there was nothing particularly to be gained by pointing out contradictions in Mo's soapbox sessions.

"Yo Jonny English! You read Mein Kampf?"
"Can't say I have mate"
"It's good, you should read"
"Bit fascist for me probably, besides..."
"Nah man, good ideas in it you know"
"You do realise what Hitler would have thought about Indian people don't you?"

Whether he did or not, whether he truly believed the ideas he so vigorously espoused was anybody's guess. Mo was an avid collector of both foreign coins and foreign languages. He plundered the French and Italian lexicons of Gasquet and Rocco for phrases whose sound amused him and used them incorrectly and heavily accented at every opportunity. Jonny also counted the tall Frenchman and the short Italian among his friends. He was glad of their urbanity and felt a rapport carried all the way from the old world. The three Europeans would sit smoking cigarettes during their breaks discussing football, the crumbling EU and, naturally, Rocco's porn career.

---

"I am a manager"
"Oh. Right. Well no-one tells me anything around here"

Jonny hadn't realised that the blue shirt worn by, among others, iPhone denoted another level in the hierarchy. He had increasingly been greeting the instructions from, among others but especially, iPhone with a reply of "do it yourself". It was true that Balram hadn't bothered divulging information such as the management structure, the pay rate & frequency or, as previously noted, his name thus Jonny had to pick up what he could from the other workers. But it was probably injudicious to be so disrespectful while still in his first week. Most of the blue shirts wore their authority over the red shirts fairly lightly but iPhone definitely saw himself as Balram's faithful lieutenant. Jonny, prompted by Mo, was beginning to see iPhone as Balram's faithful lapdog. Any slight deficiencies in the work done by the red shirts was swiftly reported to Balram and no-one likes a snitch. iPhone seemed to have a bit of a man-crush on Balram given the sycophantic way he behaved around him. The bespectacled second-in-command ran the 'polish' section of the car wash, the final stage before a car was done. A car first entered the vacuum section where the detritus of the customer's lives on the road was sucked from the carpets and seats of their car. Jonny had been dispatched here on his first day under the care of Mo for his training. The training took two hours though anyone who failed, in thirty minutes or less, to pick up the skills required to vacuum, wash and dry a car was surely too inept even for this place. Training was actually just a ruse to get two hours of unpaid labour out of each new worker. The cars of dog owners were bad, interiors coated with clinging hairs from the boot to the front. Jonny was slightly concerned at the amount of time dogs seemed to spend in the driver's seats of cars in Sydney. Outdoorsy types were worse, somehow managing to turn their car floor into a forest floor. Leaf litter, gravel and soil formed a new carpet on top of the existing one. It would have made a habitable environment for all manner of ground-dwelling insects had not The White Wash's industrial vacuums made short work. Children. Undisputed champions when it came to transforming a car interior into something unrecognisable from the spotless, movable lounge that you drove off the dealer's forecourt, still savouring that unique smell, were children. One child seat in the back portended destruction, two meant de-se-cration. It seems keeping your little angel(s) fed whilst on the road was a top priority given an average level of food debris that would have sustained a poor African family for a week. Vacuuming the mats was a Sisyphean task, each sweep of the nozzle stirred up a 'fresh' layer of particles from the substrata of the mat. After the vacuum stage came wash. The car was doused with water from the spray guns and then soaped up like a bed-ridden pensioner. There were several important things to remember when washing - 1, Not too much soap. Too much was anything much more than any. 2, Straight lines. Move the brush in smooth, lateral strokes along the bodywork. Mr. Miyagi's circular 'wax on, wax off' technique was not applicable. 3, Avoid white cars. Dirt clung to white cars like a limpit even after the usual spray, soap, rinse cycle. Now, every car would retain some sort of invisible mark that would require Balram to redo whatever task you had just completed but white ones were especially bad. White 4x4s were incredibly popular in Sydney. Post-wash came iPhone's fief, the aforementioned polish stage. Here the customer's car is dried with chamois, the windows wiped with a soft cloth and a paintbrush is used to gently disperse the dust from the dashboard. And not forgetting the application of liquid silicon to the tyres to make them shiny. The importance of shiny tyres cannot be overstated. All these varied disciplines Jonny learned in his first week. His first literal week for there was no 'working week' at The White Wash. Monday to Sunday, half six to half six, 364 days a year. Christmas it was closed but New Year was a half day because even as the clocks were turning to midnight and people's minds were turning to the hopes and resolutions of a fresh annum and its clean slate, somebody somewhere in Sydney was thinking 'my car is dirty'. Completing his first week had also left Jonny with two enhanced senses. The first was the sense that no matter where he was and no matter what he was doing somebody was about to rush up and berate him for doing it wrong. It was a feeling of uneasiness, of a wariness that sat at the back of his mind and kept him tensed whether sat eating breakfast in his hostel or browsing the aisles in the supermarket. Balram's irritability and impatience had claimed Jonny's waking hours as well as his working hours. The other enhanced sense was that Sydney Part Two was not going to resemble Sydney Part One nearly as closely as he had hoped. For he had been to and left this city before. The first time Jonny had acquired a good job, friends, a girl, a life, with astonishing rapidity. On this basis Australia seemed a fine country in which to live and Jonny, in order to secure a second year to his visa, had duly decamped to the other side of the country to complete the farm work required for this. Six months later he departed the isolated town nowhere near anywhere and returned to the bright lights and big city. It didn't seem to have noticed he was gone. His old job couldn't or wouldn't take him back, the employment agency he got it through were indifferent to his availability for redeployment and after sixty job applications and zero interviews his vivid picture of Sydney had turned grey and bleak. Hence the car wash. Six short months had seen his hands re-purposed from valued articulators of high technical knowledge to blunt instruments of basic motion. Where once his fingers danced over keyboards crafting elegant expressions of 21st century advancement on-screen now they formed a rictus grip around a vacuum nozzle or stiff-bristled brush. Jonny painted a romantic vision of himself as strength in adversity, as undergoing a trial until the world righted itself and remembered "who the fuck I am!" He'd only been doing the job a week. But that was a not entirely insignificant amount of time to work at The White Wash. In those seven days he'd seen others come and go with regularity. Staff turnover was a mildly vexing issue to Balram. "Backpackers come to the car wash and they, y'know, they can't handle it, they're unreliable." True, thought Jonny, they probably aren't used to being greeted on their first day at a new job one of two ways - with unfriendliness if Balram was in a good mood, with outright hostility if he wasn't. Despite having told these new guys to come he seemed to regard their subsequent presence as a nuisance unreasonable to have to endure. And despite the mandated two-hour training he thought every aspect of The White Wash's functioning to be simple and obvious. Any gaps in the haphazard training were therefore to be covered by your own 'common sense'. Should your common sense fail you Balram would fail to conceal his deep and abiding belief in your deep and abiding stupidity. All this Jonny had endured and his tongue was near bitten through but since begging was undesirable choosing was also not an option. Sunday came around again.

"So, your majesty, you coming next week?"
"..."

Part 1 - The White Wash

Based on true stories.
Scene: The White Wash, a carwash/café in Sydney.

"Will! Will!"

Who was Will? It seems he was urgently needed.

"Fix Will!"

Will must be broken. The new guy had no idea how he might be fixed but a job at The White Wash was probably not the solution. Newly resplendent in red uniform his head spun in 360° of confusion as instructions in diverse accents issued from every direction. Judging by the frantic gesticulation that accompanied the order he was required to do something to the 'wheels' of the car in front of him, clean them perhaps. The impassioned voice was that of Balram Halwei, manager of The White Wash. Two days previously the same voice at the end of a phone had brusquely told the new guy to be at the carwash at 9AM on Sunday morning for training. Sunday morning had arrived and here he was yet it would be two further days until he actually learned the name of his immediate superior. Naming on the whole was a haphazard affair in his new place of work. Indeed the very name of the business was a misnomer in terms of the spectrum of nationalities represented by the workers. Real, invented or anglicised every employee had their given name bellowed across the forecourt at regular intervals. There was Sueño from Mexico, whose middle-aged hangdog expression betrayed a weariness at his lot and a general sense of defeat by life. His presence absorbed the greater part of Balram's daily ire and ensured a quieter life for the other employees. iPhone was from China (as iPhones are) and combined his mechanical engineering course at the local university with grindingly long hours at the carwash. He was also in charge of the microphone used to announce when customer's cars were ready for collection, Sueño's inability to distinguish between Honda and Hyundai, Mazda and Maserati ensured he was rarely given MC responsibility. Last of this group was Indra, an Indonesian, who despite being from the country with the world's largest Muslim population, was an incongruous christian. These three were all 'blue shirts', employees paid a set wage for stipulated hours. The true scullions were the 'red shirts' who were only paid when there were cars to wash, no money for a rainy day. And they were paid, curiously, two dollars less than the official minimum wage but no-one desperate enough to be a red shirt was really in a position to enquire about this discrepancy. Mohandas Narayanan Ramachandran or 'Mo' for short lead this motley crew. He professed to be from the Brahmin (priestly) caste in India, which gave an interesting dynamic to his relations with Balram given their origins on opposite ends of that country's social scale. Balram's surname 'Halwei' denotes the caste of sweet makers which falls within the larger shudra class at the bottom of the pile. Go back sixty years and Balram would be unquestionably serving Mo, Mo would be treating Balram with the scorn and prejudice that tradition dictated. As it was things were exactly the other way round and, in this instance at least, it would be hard to call it progress. Mo also claimed to be heir to a multi-million dollar fortune. Whether or not he meant rupees one still had to wonder at his motivations for working at the carwash. 'Bruce Lee' was so called because he was Chinese and no-one could understand anything he said including, presumably, his actual name. He didn't demonstrate any knowledge of martial arts so the resemblance ended there. The lofty Frenchman went by the name of Gasquet. He had a girlfriend in Sydney and thus was one of the few people at The White Wash that could genuinely claim to have something better to do. Charlie was Vietnamese and bore a constant look of abject misery and desolation. He was another who passed the day without holding a single intelligible conversation with any other employee. As far as anyone could tell he didn't surf. Angelo and Jesus were young South Americans haling from Brazil and Chile respectively. Jesus got that name due to his resemblance to the figure towering over Angelo's hometown of Rio de Janeiro. He shaved his beard after the first day which spoiled the reference but the name stuck regardless. Balram had probably imagined he could charge a premium to customers having their car washed by the son of God (or a look-a-like), 'The Holy Water Handwash, a baptism for your car' as, alas, it wouldn't be called. In reality the customer's options ran from the $55 'Spit Shine' all the way up to the $385 'bodywork by buffed by virgin's breasts' wash. The obscenity of spending nearly four hundred dollars in a time of worldwide financial crisis on your unnecessarily large, fuel-drinking, school-running, ozone-destroying 4x4 seemed lost on the population. In a country that continually reminded the occupants of its barren thirst, of its parched soil, the ecological irony of pouring thousands of gallons of water a week down the drain in the name of making things shiny also held no resonance. The business could only thrive in a culture of mechanical vanity. The final red shirt, Rocco, had recently arrived at The White Wash and the differences between this line of work and his previous career as the editor of porn movies in Italy were marked. They made for interesting conversation among the workers during the quiet periods.
So this is the story of the exploits of a close-knit, multiracial group of employees that commiserate at the status society has imposed on them, proud men forced to work at a meaningless job for meager pay. Enter the new guy, this tale is told through his eyes.

Mistletoe & wine

<p>Day 400 - Sydney</p>
My list of favorite cities reads like the signage above an international fashion store or perfumery - London, Paris, New York...um...Sydney. So the latter is somewhat incongruous but here I was carried back across the country on the wings of fond remembrance and affection. I was on a high, in my mind (a fertile, febrile place) returning like a conquering hero. Flushed with western success life seemed a simpler game or if not simpler then one at which I was now more adept. I'd taken a room in Coogee for a couple of weeks and its streets (street) and bars (bar) held happy memories. Amy and Laura were my temporary flatmates, Jeanette, being away for Christmas, was the other resident whose room I had taken. I went directly from the airport to CBH not even stopping to dump my bags. Amy and Jayne were back from their tomato farming and familiar faces were there in force. Christmas is an understated affair in Australia, they don't go in for the cold, dark days broken by warm light seeping from shop windows and twinkling off decorations that I missed from my chocolate box memories of home. And home is where the period would have been spent had I the financial wherewithal. As it was it would be my second consecutive Christmas out of the old country, hopefully there won't be a third. Life In Sydney was much the same as before and yet also tragically different. Me and the girls had the eve in an Irish pub with an obligatory nightcap at CBH. Christmas morning, a little gift giving and receiving (more the latter on my part) at Kirsty and Ferris' flat in which the girls were staying and then I went back to mine for a collective dinner with Amy, Laura and friends. The climate had made a decent effort to allay any homesickness and steadily threw down rain all day. My new flatmates would not be deterred from Christmas on the beach though and headed down with umbrellas and festive bikinis. I rejoined with A&J for a cup of mulled wine in the afternoon. Actually if I recall correctly it wasn't mulled wine, it was gallons of beer. Having said that the memory of much escapes me but we ended up at Morooka (home of several friends in Coogee) for more drinks and dancing before finally making it to the beach for a early hours swim in our underwear, a heady sight to be sure. As the sun rose on boxing day the girls pushed me home in a shopping trolley, my wallet, sadly, stayed on the beach. The messiness of festivities over I knuckled down to finding work, reasoning that my prior success would stand me in good stead. There was no anticipation of the difficulties that lay in this endeavour. I was also shortly to be homeless due to Jeanette's return. Handily Laura would soon be away for 2 weeks herself opening up a vacancy in her room but there was a few days gap between the coming and going. Rather than a hostel I opted to crash with Amy and Jayne who were now living up in Bondi Junction. Their flatmates had disappeared just before Christmas to where we knew not and were back we knew not when. The door opened one evening just before New Year and they entered with two friends and a notable disinclination to speak to us. Seven barely acquainted people crammed into a 2 bed flat made for an awkward few days! Sydney is a city famed for the way they see in the New Year with their spectacular fireworks launched from the harbour bridge, it would be a good bucket list tick. A few of us setup in a park in Balmain to ensure a good view. And spectacular they were, probably the best display I've ever seen. But my night was barely begun with the gong of midnight. Emily was in Sydney and had urged me to book tickets to a boat trip around the harbour to begin at 4am New Year's day. Without understanding what exactly it entailed but in need of some sort of firm NY plan (this was a couple of weeks previously) I had duly booked. I'd kept a steady hand on my alcohol intake over the evening so had few difficulties making it to Darling Harbour for launch. The next 6 hours passed in a mildly euphoric sway, the dance music suitably ambient and the party in muted pleasure. Everyone stepped blinking off the boat at 10am glazed with sweat from the first sunrise of 2013 but in a happy daze.

You don't have to mentally unstable to live here, but it helps...

Day 380 - Margaret River

It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair.

It was a Tuesday, it was like any other. Me and the Cornish lads had slogged through another day on the vineyard and were driving home. I switched on my phone to check messages, my housemate Emily had text

"All our stuff's on the street. Martina showdown."

It had been building to this but with 3 days left before we left Margaret River she'd actually done it. Perhaps I should recap?

The housing situation at Tunbridge Street had been deteriorating since, well, since I moved in really. I'd have to say that this was in spite of rather than because of my presence. I hadn't met the landlady before I took the room so my first contact with Martina was after work one day. Walking down the drive, she was stood on the roof of the house with a hosepipe.

"You must be Ben?"
"Yes, hi."
"You're better looking than the Irish boys."
"Er, ok, bye!"

I'd been warned she was mildly quirky but this was just the tip of an eccentric iceberg. Martina was on the property a lot, always unannounced, always eager to disparage my housemates to me, 'the only one [of us] she could talk to.' There were a couple of ongoing disputes I had walked into about damage to the property and the need for professional cleaners to come in, I steered clear of these subjects as much as possible and when I couldn't I attempted to mollify and cajole her into reason. I thought I was fighting a winning battle or at least promoting a civil peace that would hold until we vacated. But her general annoyance was twisting into a burning indignation at our 'behavior', it was fomenting into a bilious outrage at our occupation of her house. Most of all she was affronted by the general wantonness of our collective character and our propensity to 'lie' and 'steal'. One sunny day a notice was posted on the door outlining the many and varied ways we had broken the adjacently affixed contract and informing us the 2 month lease (crudely amended from 3) on said contract meant we would have to leave the place immediately, and preferably sooner. Given that there was still 3 weeks until we departing having to find new accommodation now would be an inconvenience none of us needed. James, Rob and Tash presciently chose not long after this point at which to continue their lives on the east coast of Oz leaving myself, Emily, Bryan and Tully with the wicked witch of the west. Another departure was that of Frodo the sheep. He had been removed to pastures new owing to the fact we had attempted to extinguish a cigarette on him. None of us recalled doing this (or made a habit of torturing animals) but Martina was adamant. As I was the only resident she deigned to communicate with it fell on me to negotiate our stay and the admission of new occupants to cover the rent of those leaving. She ranted, she raved, she slandered. With tongue clamped firmly between teeth I nodded and attempted to explain the merits of our continued rental. And...amazingly, she assented to all my wishes (barring the unstated on to have herself sectioned under the mental health act).

"no wonder europe is in a crisis. the future doesn't look good for it either if all it's occupants are like you lot."

The peace accord had lasted a week. We had politely cited contract law and declined to pay extra rent for the remainder of our time there.

"stop acting the bully boy with your crim mate who you boogie with coz she gets you the jobs."

The 'crim mate' referred to was Emily whom Martina was convinced had tried to steal our rent. The 'jobs' were vineyard work that Emily apparently booked for me despite the complication of us being at different agencies. The slightly unhinged missive was from a woman (Martina) who claimed to be a qualified lawyer. This same woman also claimed to be a Buddhist, indeed when Bryan was rushed to hospital with a serious heart condition she attributed it to karma, well he did owe her $20 in rent I suppose. By this time we had persuaded 2 new people to move in. Wayne was a South African and Oliver was from Montreal in Canada. Perhaps we should have given them more warning about the acid-tinged miasma into which they were entering? Well Wayne had met Martina, Oli was Wayne's friend and we needed the money, my conscience is fairly clear. Indeed, who were we to deny them special memories to put in the 'you'll-look-back-and-laugh' category or madcap stories without the slightest need for embellishment. It wasn't long before I had lost my role as mediator by taking Emily's side in another of Martina's accusatory rants joining the rest of the "selfish", "bothersome", "unruly", "immature", "renegging" [sic], "dishonest", "disrespectful", "stupid", "druggie" residents of Tunbridge Street. There would be no talking her round now.

"Pls vk8 property asap. Thrz 2 much damage dun. M."

She repeatedly asked us to leave, we stubbornly stayed and as our final week approached everything had gone quiet, ominously so. Did we assume she had finally accepted our ongoing presence? Did we think reason had prevailed and Martina had decided it wasn't worth the fight given our impending departure? Did we truly believe we had won the battle of wills? Folly! Like a whispered curse uttered by maddened tongue a shadow fell over the house...

Saturday, 6 days to go, the lights went out.
Calls, texts and emails to our suddenly absent landlady went answered, our pleas to fix the electricity unheeded. As the sun's illumination was swallowed by the horizon we ate steak by candlelight and wearily laughed at our plight in a show of blitz spirit.

Sunday, 5 days to endure, the gas stopped working.
At least as we stumbled around in the darkness we could locate each other by our unshowered odour (gas boiler) and the rumbling of stomachs empty of cooked food (gas oven).

Monday, 4 dark days remain, a response.

"whr r th circuit breakers n fuses frm meter box? M."

Despite repeated investigations of the box we hadn't clocked the absence of these vital components. Martina naturally attributed their loss to us or one of our unsavoury friends, which is logical...if you're Martina. No further action seemed forthcoming on her part so it looked like we'd see out our time in Margaret River in these debased conditions.

Tuesday afternoon, 3 days to basic amenities, back to the start of the tale.
Our possessions dumped unceremoniously in the verge, the house locked (we never had keys), Martina had gone nuclear. If there was one element of fortune in the situation it was that Emily was employed by Vinepower (a regional work agency) and her colleagues had kindly helped pack our stuff into various vehicles and transported it to the office. Mel, who would shortly be replacing Emily, was extraordinarily generous in offering to house myself, Em, Oli and his girlfriend Jenn who had unfortunately chosen this day to arrive in Margaret River. Without all this assistance our position would have been, to say the least, bad. Mel fed us, watered us, gave us a most comfortable port in a tumultuous storm. Once assorted belongings in assorted bags had been sifted through we found ourselves short a couple of laptops and a camera. A message arrived from our erstwhile landlady advising that these items had been kept as 'collateral' but could be retrieved with a payment of $800. Her actions to this point had fallen into the grey area of the law but this was outright theft and the police swiftly persuaded her of the wisdom in returning the items. She did, however, in the name of reciprocity demand we give back the plastic sheet she had kindly used to cover the ejected materials of our life. We kept it, ha! As if to cap these crazy days Martina also told Oli that it was her that had taken the fuses from the electricity box, words just fail me at this point.
And that, to the best of my memory, was that. Friday came and myself, Emily and Matt struck north for Perth, Oli and Jenn east to places unknown, Wayne was already in Bali and Bryan and Tully were staying in Margaret River a little longer. I never got to say goodbye to half the people I intended to but I certainly won't forget them. Nor, I commit, my time in Margs for those four and a half short months. That life lived between July 27th and December 14th 2013. I like to imagine it still going on there as if nothing had changed and we'd never left. As if I had a ribboned box, a grand doll's house I could peek into now and then and see all of us going about our day to day in the little town, our loves and adventures and minor tribulations, all carried along on wispy clouds as if nothing really mattered. It is fated, in time, to seem ever more a product of my imagination but I know at the instant of recollection my heart will throb a little and the reality of then will still sneak a nostalgic smile onto my face now. It was the best of times.

365+88=?

Day 365 - Margaret River

A couple of notable milestones had passed. The first was the completion of my 88 days of regional work. This was a cause for relief and elation given the slender margins of time I had to get it done. Despite the sheer monotony of each working day the weeks had zipped by at an acceptable pace. Despite the specified 3 months seeming to stretch endlessly into the distance on that frigid first morning in the vineyard I could now thumb my nose at Labour Solution's exploitative employ and return to the cosmopolitan splendor of Sydney. Except I couldn't. Whilst I would consider it an appropriate gesture for the Australian government to buy you a plane ticket back to civilisation at the completion of your regional work this doesn't appear to be official policy. So, though I calculated that I had pruned, wrapped, pulled, thinned, constrained and otherwise manhandled in excess of 21,000 vines up to this point I would need a few more to return east. The other notable milestone? 365 days on the road. In truth I didn't even notice it pass. This blog is the only means by which I register the accumulation of days and I was so woefully behind in my writing in Margaret River that the anniversary of the trip's beginning elicited only an 'oh' when I did realise a week later. But...a year on the road. It feels like words are needed, a weighty treatment or microcosmic summary. And the question hangs in the air like a fresh piñada....why? What is it to travel? What is it to move? What does it give us? More to love or more to hate? More to pity or more to envy? Does it place us in the world or does it break us from our bonds and cast us adrift? Am I running from the inevitable or chasing the impossible? Neither I hope. Perhaps the roads and rails and waterways of the world are my bloodstream. Is this the imperative vitality of perpetual motion? I've noticed that It is hard to define oneself during a trip such as this. Where I'm from, what I do - these markers fade in significance. My goals become amorphous and scattered by the wind, the fragments land in England and India, Asia and Australia. They fall down the cracks between rocks and hard places. How you judge your success at this life is hard to know, there isn't an easily applicable template for the wanderer. I hope I'll know it when I see it but I'm a long way from home.
My final weeks in the little town in a quiet corner of Western Australia were nothing if not dramatic, I recall feeling at the time as if my life had been set on fire. Set on fire partly by events beyond my control, partly by events...not beyond my control. I met some great people, I said goodbye to some great people saddened by the probable finality of it. I made dubious decisions in the name of chivalry, I played diplomat and cuckold on the stage of the world. I strengthened then scuppered relations with Italy while Germany warmed. I left the 'entente cordiale' a shunned shadow, I uneuphemistically drove a tractor. Interspersed with the flames of diminished responsibility were some more genteel highlights. There was sea fishing from the rocks at Conto beach as the sun went down. There was the night we had Japanese friends round to create fantastically fresh sushi, my stomach still growls at the memory. There were some enjoyably rudimentary barbis in the back garden and tear-drenched laughter at the musical stylings of Rappy McRapperson and his track 'Fishsticks' (Spotify, you won't/will regret it). There was the day 5 of us piled into 3 inflatable dinghies and paddled up the eponymous river, hot sun in the sky and cold cider in the hand. It was Matt's idea to recreate the 'River of Golden Dreams' from his time in Canada. He and I both bagged a dinghie and decided the tallest member of our group (Emily) should pile in with the smallest (Oli), thankfully the craft's rated carrying capacity wasn't too strict. We didn't get very far upstream despite, oddly, being assisted by the current. After about half an hour of paddling we spotted something worthy of investigation. A ruined mansion sat ominously on the riverbank, devoid of roof and window and certain to be stalked by ghosts and apparitions, we moored up. The grounds surrounding the building were immaculately cared for, as if the long gone occupants had forgotten to give the gardener his notice. The flowers in the border were tended, the grass precision mowed and yet not a soul (or ghoul) in sight as we trepidatiously explored. The property would be worth millions, just the land thousands, why did it lie in crumbled waste? Perhaps a victim of the bushfires that tore through the area a year past? Suddenly we heard voices and aware that our trespasses might not be forgiven (based on the 'no trespassing' sign) scuttled back to our boats. Scuttled was an operative word as mine had seemingly sprung a puncture in the landing and now lay disappointingly deflated. So 4 went into 2 and we swiftly paddled away to the safety of open water.
All these things were very pleasant, in stark contrast to the drama shortly to unfold as my time in Margaret River drew to a close...