Finished.

Brighton, UK

Dear UK,

Four months after leaving your pebbly shores, I look back on you and remember sunny days, good people and amazing art. I miss the atmosphere of winter, where every inside space is warmly lit and cosy. Where Christmas with images of snowflakes really fits. I miss the Tate and all that great art and the member's room at the top with the view of St Paul's. I miss St Mary's, the comraderie of the other teachers there and my class of 30 hilarious five-year-olds.

UK, I know without question that you were tough. But somehow memory takes the edges off, and when the edges are worn enough that I only remember the good, it's time to move on.

Lauchlin took me out this morning for coffee and french toast. We imagined up some new dreams that are totally different.

It's time to move on. And it's time to finish writing here. Here's to new dreams.

Love,
Lex

where to go when it's 36 degrees and rising

Botanic Gardens, Melbourne. Taken with phone camera.

Permablitz

Last weekend Lauch and I joined in a Permablitz - basically we volunteered with a bunch of other people to help turn someone's garden into a permaculture garden. Thats me at 2:07 in the slideshow planting tomatoes! The people who owned the garden put on an amazing vegetarian lunch for us and their Greek mum showed us how to make dolmades. It was pretty cool putting the seedlings in. The smell of tomato plants is amazing.

Rain Like You Mean It

It's raining hard like the raindrops could pierce our corrugated iron roof. The bleached grey fence is now dark with water. Lightning just snapped as if it was above our house, specifically.

I only remember two thunder storms in the years I was in London. Still getting used to this place where most days pass in a hot fug and it rains like it really means it.

Like a Billabong

Lauch and I went to see what was outside of Melbourne yesterday. Found this place called Wonga Park... all the names here seem a bit odd after nearly three years of "Shoe Lane" and "Paddington" and "Cambridge." We walked for an hour and a bit along the Yarra. People were canoeing and swimming and some were just floating along in black rubber inner tyres. There were parts where the river widened, corners where people's shouts echoed and you could hear the stillness of the trees and the splashing of the river. So, so Australian.

It's Mango Season!

I thought when I left Thailand I'd never have mangoes that good again. But today we found mangoes, 3 for a fiver at the local farmer's market. Now all we need is some sticky rice.

Tuesday's Graffiti

Friday Night

I took this photo at St Kilda on Friday night, as the sun was going down. Those houses look out at the beach toward the horizon.

I love where I live right now.

Look Down

I was on the 39th floor today, looking down through floor-to-ceiling windows at floor-to-ceiling skyscrapers. I snuck this photo with my phone camera, eating a kool mint and filling out forms.

Transition

I woke up to the sound of rain on the roof and now the front porch is slick with water. Strangely, it all feels cozy and somehow right that it should be wet outside and the light falling through our kitchen window is filtered and dozy.

Lately, I've had this desire for soup with pearl barley and potato and celery in it, wanted to light candles in the evenings. Felt slightly odd that it's been humid and 27 degrees outside. I have this feeling of autumn, even though it's coming towards summer here, if I were in the UK now it would be autumn and frosty and beautiful leaves everywhere and soup would be just right, for now.

Funny that I went to the UK wanting to get under its skin, somehow to understand what it is to be English. And instead, it made me realise how truly Australian I am and crept its way under MY skin. Funny how things don't always happen in the way you would expect.

Cinque Terre

A cool evening with the breeze wandering through Biassa, sitting in a little local place eating thin thin pizza with just tomato, mozarella, basil and a beer. Hair still wet from swimming in the sea, sand between my toes. Looking out and down to the harbour. Walking home past a church and some Italians tending their gardens, windows open, the smell of vines in the air.

Sunday Morning

Vanilla soothing black tea; Silver stars in a whiskey sample bottle

Heat

Me at Saadien Tombs, Marrakesh, photo by Lauchlin

Marrakesh, height of summer.

You are surrounded by crisp dry heat just like when you've done your washing and hung it out on a particularly sunny summer's day. You bring the washing in and it's superdry all crispy in your arms. Heat-soaked all the way through.

Your clothes, before you put them on in the morning, they feel like that. Hot already, right to the core.

Clothes and walls and rooftops and roads. Wind.

All of it is hot.

Five Minutes, Friday

Near Flinders St, Melbourne

Midnight. I was standing, waiting for the tram. It was drizzling lightly, falling in whorls, in flakes like snow. Thinking about beer, tiny shoes, conversations with new people whose names are already blurring. About how strange it is that, with some friends, time stretches so almost-three-years feels like not-that-long-at-all.

Spain

I'm taking a break from writing endless job applications to daydream, as usual, about being somewhere else, somewhere with windy coastline and amazing old palaces.

This is what I remember: long dry dusty roads, strangely lush olive groves, wind farms looking small and then looming huge from below. Weird signs on the roadside from a long ago iconic ad campaign.


The road near Cartejima

Rounding a corner to see a white-washed, tiny village hugging the hillside with barely room for cars. Ducking my head to fit through a doorway squashed by several hundred years. Eating cherries marinated in some kind of spirit, five would tip you into silliness.


Cartejima


Window at the Alhambra

Dusty hot hot day at the Alhambra, walking slow, looking and looking at tiles and carvings and patterns on patterns.

I put a slideshow here if you want to swoop through Spain for a bit - the photos are in chronological order so it's a bit like a little tour.

Sunday

I took the slow tram to st kilda
had a chai latte with josie & dooley
can't stop loving the height and incredible blueness of this sky.

Crossing

I'm curled up in an "ocean-view recliner" with a yellow blanket snuggled over my jeans, reading Burning Chrome. Half-listening to the man wheezing as he crosses the room to sit near me. "I suppose you'll never get old," he says, when he catches his breath. He smiles when I tell him "Probably." Tells me he's 84. I'm watching the night get deeper, feeling the thump of distance as the sea disappears beneath us. Wondering if my generation will be able to choose to live forever.

Addicted to New

On the one hand it's hard, all this beginning again. Making another home. Building a reputation within my chosen career again. I'm back in Australia, house hunting and job hunting and wearing my only two pairs of trousers because it's cold and everything else is still in shipping. I wouldn't have to wear the same jumper all the time if I had settled down somewhere, if everything in my life was in its place and just how I like it.


The street we stayed in, Bodrum, Turkey

On the other hand, all this change, it's great. It feels like I'm still travelling - not looking at things with bored eyes but with the eyes of a foreigner. Noticing Art Deco details on buildings, amazing graffiti, a stylish Melbournian wearing a waist-tied camel coat with elbow-length sleeves over a grey stripey top.


Tower of a mosque, Bodrum, Turkey

I think I might finally understand why people can become travellers permanently. Maybe it's about feeling constantly inspired. Addicted to newness.


Tiles from Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, Turkey

Turkishly Delightful

Istanbul is cool. Not London black-skinny-jeans-attitude-with-punkish-haircut cool. But cool in the style of a Uni student with funky clothes and bouncy enthusiasm. The place has a non-stop energy about it that we felt the minute we stepped off the hydrofoil from Greece. Totally different from the slow island pace of Greece.

I loved the shopping here. The Grand Bazaar is totally touristy but the men (and yes, it is almost entirely the men being shopkeepers) are particularly charming about it. I heard so many lines today, most of them beginning with "Hey lady!" My favourite was "This scarf will change your life." Lauchlin says they are silvery-tongued but I think it's genuine. I think these people, although they are of course trying to sell stuff, are just being... nice.




Other highlights of Istanbul for me have been: the pastries (SO GOOD), the apple tea and the tiles at the Topkapi Palace. Photo of one of said tiles above. My already rampant tile obsession (specific to Moorish tiles and Turkish Iznik tiles) has had fuel added to its fire.

On our way back to the hostel tonight we passed lit up mosques and sizzling grilled fish. We went back to the turkish delight specialist we went to last night. The man recognised us and greeted us effusively (helpfully informing Lauchlin that turkish delight is an aphrodisiac) and we spent the last of our Turkish lira on turkish delight. I couldn't think of anything I'd rather spend my last lira on, on my last night in Europe.

Sea-Dog (Salty)

I didn't want to say anything... but I've been worried about Lauchlin lately. The longer we stay on the sea, the more his personality seems to change.
At first I thought it was just me. But then I noticed other people looking at him slightly strangely too. It began with a tendency to call people 'Matey.' Then exotic talking birds started to flock around him, sometimes landing and perching on his shoulder. His usual bushwalker's gait turned into more of a swagger. And even for an Australian, his language became saltier than usual.

Finally, today I saw it. The gleam of gold and adventure in his eye.

Now I know what it is.

He's turned into a pirate.

I always knew that beard was up to no good.


Arrrrrrrrgh, me hearties.