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Below are the 25 most recent journal entries.

	2006.03.28  12.00 The Year Of Saying No I pronounce this the year of saying No. I shall not be dragged into the grinding machinery of the Mudgee Performing Arts Society, crushed between its combative cogs and trapped at lighting boards for repeated viewings of plays that I would be loath to see once. I learned my lesson in Rome. Withdraw BEFORE you reach the pain threshold. My supporters would have been proud to see the new Fool-me-twice-can't-get-fooled-again Sam on the stairway up to Sacre Couer, where Senegalese men approach tourists as though hey buddy hey buddy buddy the tourists might just do them a favour by providing their finger for strings in Jamaican colours to be wrapped around to make a bracelet. I happily chatted with these men as they spun their red, green, and yellow webs ('You know Bob Marley? Bob Marley? No Woman No Cry?') and then said NO I would not buy a bracelet. One man even wrapped his bracelet round my wrist and had to unknot it as I clung to my refusal. Thus begins the year of saying No.

	2006.03.27  09.21 Mudgee, one week on A change of situation comes as quite a jolt for me. When I leave a room, I find it hard to believe I was ever inside. When I leave a job, I find it hard to believe people ever tolerate employment. When I return from Paris, Rome, London to Mudgee, from a trip that seemed to have become all I could remember, where I couldn’t believe that I had ever lived anywhere but a tiny room with an odd smell in Earls Court, I slip immediately into my old routine and abroad becomes a half-remembered dream. The trouble with Mudgee, of course, is that everything outside seems irrelevant and ethereal, and everything inside seems too tawdry to be worth a damn. One week on from my return, I can provide the following summary of my activities since: A friend with a fledgling art business has me designing stationery, which he will take to a large paper company in the hope that they will accept several designs and make us fabulously wealthy. The company produces paper with balloons and flowers and things around the edges, for those who feel that the exciting nature of their invitations or correspondence is not best served by a dull white background. I'm working on a series of Australiana designs, for those whose invitations or correspondence requires an authenticating antipodean touch. The closest I've come to any of the writing I intended to do in Mudgee is a re-examination and editing of a half-hour expressionistic theatrical version of the Psyche and Cupid story that I wrote to possibly pitch for the university's short play show. I won't be pitching it now, because I clearly won't be in Sydney during the rehearsal period. If anyone else wants an expressionistic adaptation of this sterling Greek myth, just let me know. After agreeing to do the lighting for a few rehearsals of the Mudgee Performing Arts Society's next show, I came to Clean-the-Theatre-Saturday so a technically-minded young bloke could show me how to use the lighting board and a sonically-minded old fellow could explain the sound equipment. So I attempted to appear impressed by the cost of microphones and light bulbs and absorbed the locations of various 'On' buttons. I ended up staying at the theatre to help clean up, because the thought of three people finishing the entire filthy and overdue job was more pathetic than I could bear. A few more arrived, ranging from perfectly nice actors/cleaners to infuriating middle-aged women who store paint tins on windowsills because it's more secure than putting them on the shelves out the back. The Performing Arts Society looks as though it will have a recurring role during my next few months in Mudgee, as I will be playing the Prince in the July pantomime. A letter awaited me on my arrival at my parents' home, saying that the Humanities department at Macquarie University was awarding me the Marjorie Someone-or-other Award for Creative Writing, which was a very pleasant surprise. Also, my family have started a strict though appetising diet, which necessitated the purchase of a more accurate set of scales than our old 'give or take five kilograms' model. I'm pleased to report that I have gained 0.1 of a kilogram since my return, which is not a bad start.

	2006.03.18  19.09 Return to Oz After returning from Rome, I was so full of Catholic imagery that when I discovered that the Queensland girl, Heidi, and the Israeli girl, Danielle, had decreed it painting day, I ended up painting a large icon of the Virgin Mary on the piece of board Ian found me (he was also continually popping out of the breakfast room to the stairs where we were painting, carrying new art supplies that he had forgotten had built up over the years). After returning from Paris, I napped the night again at Luton landside, because when booking my bus back to London, I chose an early morning bus over a late night train, knowing I wouldn't want to organise my way back and into a bed at midnight. I only slept a few hours, one on my left side, one on my right, and two with my face pressed into my luggage at the metal cafe tables where I slept last time. I dreamed that the elder brother of my friend Ahmad from high school, years ago (where is Ahmad? Why did I think of him that night at Luton), had kindly picked me up from the airport, and while I napped atop a double bunk outside their family home in London, Ahmad's brothers repacked my luggage for me, taking out my notebook and putting it aside for further inspection, which concerned me, because my notebook is full of important scribblings from abroad - notes on locales, a dot point summary of an entire book about Joyce McKinney, a few quotes for a short play that has been resting half-unfinished for a long time and which on this trip I finally figured out, notes made on the train to Norwich and on the bench near Keats' grave for a proposed play set during the crusades - in short, many things that I don't want to lose. Ahmad's brother turned out to be a cartoon character, probably something by Dreamworks, with a hint of Robin Williams' Disney genie, and started to tell me about how he really wanted to talk to me, but there's someone else around here with whom he is on a heirarchical ladder at work, and I understood, but he wanted me to understand, and I woke up and he turned out to be one of two anglo-Indians sitting behind me, who soon proved to be so full of that kind of talk that I unearthed vmy notebook from my red bag and spent an hour and a half, or two hours and a half, taking notes on the conversation instead of getting the sleep I needed. If you thought The Muse was unpleasant, wait until you see 'How Sonny and Shaun missed their plane and whose fault was it and are we even friends anyway'. It will be brilliant if I can find an ending and a way to make it less unpleasant without falling back on the old Muse-ical 'Unlikeable character reveals his/her inner hurt' cliche (another page in my notebook, written to discipline myself while working on my way to Norwich, is headed 'Bad Habits' and includes techniques that lazily pop up in every single thing I write, like: Beginning with an argument, the loved character leaving and returning, the final binary choice that the central character must make, ending with a touching silent action, and so on). When I got back to London, I visited the tower, as my final essential London experience, and ate all I could eat at Pizza Hut, because I was starving. My flight to France several nights before had been postponed and postponed and then cancelled, due to, if the man I overheard on his mobileb phone is an authority, snow in Scotland, and I had to stay overnight at the nearby Holiday bInn, an expense for which Easyjet promises to compensate me when I send them my receipt, but an expense that cost one hundred pounds, which was more money than I even had any more. I called my parents for more money, but until the transfer went through I was penniless. I couldn't eat. I made the most of the four in the morning cereal buffet at the Holiday Inn (continejntal breakfast began half an hour after my flight left), but starved a little on my first day, willingly gave the second day over to the Louvre rather than to feasting, and although I ate happily on the third day when I was just starting to get the feel of the city as I had to leave (This flash touring does not suit me. Even nine days in Rome was just enough. I loved Rome, by the way.), a sleepless night in Luton did little for my health. I had been seeing Pizza Hut buffet ads throughout my trip and planned to eat one before I left, as I lament the loss of the all-you-can-eat Pizza Hut in Australia, which was for me a fond late-night driving home from Sydney eat until you're sick then gorge yourself on dessert childhood memory (I've been reading Nabokov's Ada on aeroplanes over the last two months - it is an incestuous family chronicle told in a tone of longing and golden reminiscence, and my thoughts of Australia (as well as the wordswork of this chronicle of travels with my notebook) are filtered through Van Veen's luxurious childhood, so that they feature with unusual prominence childhood Sundays spent playing croquet on my grandmothers lawn where peacocks wandered unrestrained, topiary somewhere, somewhere, one of our neighbours had topiary birds). I left my buffet too late really, by the time I left the Tower and strode up Fleet Street to the nearest, still distant, Pizza Hut, so that it ceased to be an experience of aesthetic gluttony and became a hurried stuffing before I returned to the Olde Cock Tavern, where Pepys drank and which I now use as a walk-in-wardrobe, to pick up the luggage I had left there while visiting the continent, and said goodbye to Jessie. My cousin Jessie has been invaluable to me in London, although I didn't see her often in the second half of my visit, when I had found my feet. I plan to send out thank you letters, and hers must be the first. I am always racing for planes and trains. Leaving Norwich, I thought my train left at eleven thirty, and only realised on the bus that it left at eleven. Loz, accompanying me to the station, became stressed and concerned, we cheered the bus driver as he raced through a red light and booed him as we realised he only did it so he could quickly finish his shift and leave us parked in the gutter awaiting our next driver. I was early and first to check in for Paris, and the budget European flight companies don't allot seats, so the earlier you check in, the earlier you board, the more likely you are to get a window seat, although travelling alone I've managed to find a window seat whether I'm first on or last. Easyjet, instead of printing the neutral sequence number on their tickets, uses the more qualitatively meaningful priority number, so I was very pleased to be number one priority for Paris, although after the Scotland snow fiasco, five bowls of cereal at four in the morning at the Holiday Inn, and my customary race against time to get on board, my game of snakes and ladders saw me slip down to priority 111. Still, I haven't missed a flight yet, and I didn't miss the post-pizza trip to Tokyo. Once finally onboard, wearing three coats so I wouldn't have to stuff them in my suitcase, I read Nabokov, and slipped off my shoes, which I had admittedly been wearing for forty-eight hours of walking, because my feet hurt. When I put my shoes back on at Narita airport, I found my feet had swelled with some altitude-induced fluid. Fitting my toes back into those Cinderella boots was like stuffing my sleeping bag and bag of dirty clothes into the just-too-small box my kind check-in girl provided (not her fault - she gave me too options and I chose the smaller, knowing I could manage it and suffering innumerable gory papercuts in the process. When I first arrived in Rome, I started to walk from the airport to the city, walked round the airport's circumference, studied Itialian light, and got on the train for the hour ride to Roma Termini. Occasionally, I like to attempt the impossible, just to be sure it's still there.). I'm in Tokyo airport now, waiting for my flight to Sydney. It's very exciting. My check-in girl in London wangled me a window seat for this upcoming flight, although I was the last person to check in and she couldn't get me a good seat to Tokyo (I sat neither by aisle nor by window, read Nabokov, slept through the artificial night imposed by the cabin crew, and watched the Potter set tediously live out the cliches of pre-pubescent chivalry and a major Harry Potter character died, except that I had forgotten he was even in the other films and only realised this was the startling moment when I remember Linzie saying how quickly and shockingly it happened. Well done Gary Oldman for limiting your part to five minutes of CGI for which you didn't even need to come in, but probably recorded your role over the telephone. For the record, I quite liked the third film.). See you in Australia!

	2006.03.11  12.29 Hurried Summary Dragged bags thundering down the stairs like a landslide Sleep in silver seats at Luton Airport Landside Red wine drunk from yellow mugs Dry goodbyes without the hugs Sullen city sinks beneath the foam And with it goes my temporary home Let the sky explode Clouds grow dark on Regent's Park and shed their load I don't mind I may be soaked but I've located Abbey Road Let me settle down And try sleeping in a sleepy Sunday town Just in time For I am tired and I am tired of moving round The image of the sinking city is a cheat, being drawn from leaving Australia on a cloudy day. In fact, I couldn't see London from Luton and merely watched a sullen small town sink beneath clouds as wispy as reflections in the aeroplane's windows. The line about the sleepy Sunday town is less a steal than an appropriation and a reference to the song that surfaces regularly among Australians in London. It was played on my first night back in London, when a Queensland cleaner said she loved it but didn't know the words (which she proved by singing along with lyrics running roughly parrallel to the real ones). When I first returned to the UK, I greeted the familiar rain with something like pleasure. I caught a bus from Luton to Baker Street, by which time the sky was clearing and I decided it was an appropriate time to see Regent's Park and try to find Abbey Road, which had hitherto evaded me. The clouds regrouped as I wandered lonely as a soldier through the John's Wood area and failed to discover Abbey Road. I was just giving up and the rain was becoming more thorough in its efforts to eliminate humanity when I realised I had wandered onto Abbey Road. The deluge ensued, I snapped a photo and decided I didn't care about finding the right pedestrian crossing. I ran back to the station and returned to Earls Court. It is wonderful to have people happy to see you. I sat on the stairs and talked to the newest guests - a tough Queensland broad who does the cleaning for free rent, a lovely Israeli girl impressed by my gentility when I pulled out a handkerchief, and another Australian girl who embarks tomorrow on a Kontiki worldwind tour of Europe. Gradually, the people I knew arrived home from work and cried, 'Sam!' and commented on my beardedness and told me I should move into the hostel more permantly and forget about Australia for a while. A guy who manages a butchershop brought home mince and the Australian girls made spaghetti bolognaise for everyone who wanted it (Ian had already gone alone to an Indian restaurant on what he had planned as a hostel night out). Yesterday I crossed London taking photos by which to remember my trip, as rain drizzled on and off. At the end of the day it was pouring too thickly and I retreated to the portrait gallery, then met Andy at Westminster cathedral, initially for a coffee or beer until we both decided we just wanted to get home. I had planned to walk. He rode, and we met again an hour later on the hostel stairs. Most of the hostel went out, leaving the girls and me to be amused by Ian, as the girls weren't amused at being left behind. When everyone returned and Ian decided people weren't paying enough attention to the Princess Bride for it to be worth his while staying up and screening it, he threw us out of the breakfast room, and Andy and I sat in our old room and caught up on the last week and a half. Most moving sights in Rome: - The Pieta - Keats' grave Most monumental monument in Rome - The Victor Emmanuel II Monument Place to spend sunset in Rome, if you have only one sunset to give to the city - The Piazza Della Trinita dei Monti, above the Piazza Spagna, but don't let any of the street portraitists draw you. They have beautiful technique but not the slightest eye for portraiture. They specialise in graphite equivalent of magazine covers, Chanel ads, or Indian religious calendars One month calendar - March 19th: step onto Australian soil. - April 19th: turn twenty-two years old.

	2006.03.10  12.10 My online review of the Roman hostel Character 80% Security 100% Location 80% Staff 100% Fun 60% Cleanliness 100% Avg: 86% Comments: A great clean hostel, not quite in the centre of Rome, but near enough to walk down sunny Via Nomentana into the city each morning if you don't feel like catching the Metro. The staff were friendly and helpful. My only complaint is that during my stay they decided to abolish the kitchen sink and, indeed, the entire kitchen. I could cope with this, as the hotplates didn't work anyway and the microwave remained. Perhaps a new kitchen will arrive some day to fill the gap. I guarantee a pleasurable stay at this hostel.

	2006.03.05  12.14 Dorothy, go home, all is forgiven I want to eat until I can't eat any more, and then a little while later eat a whole tub of ice cream - I'm willing to share with whoever provides the spoons. I want to read the biography of Truman Capote that I keep seeing in Italian (After the recent film, Capoteis in the strange situation of having someone else's photograph on the cover of his biography). I want to read something about the Italian Civil War, about which I knew nothing until Sunday. I want to watch Saturday morning cartoons. I want to listen to the Phantom of the Opera and the Thomas the Tank Engine theme song. I want to see the coloured lights in my parents' back yard. There's a feeling that is the obverse of being on the verge of tears, when you think your head will crack open from being so happy. After the misery of Friday, Saturday was a wonderful sunny day. On my way home I bought an Amaretta gelatto, which is the best one euro fifty I ever spent. In completely unrelated news, I may be getting in touch with my inner manic depressive on this trip. Probably the last note on Bridget Jones - the Italian cover for the book, 'Bridget Jones' Diary' has an inappropriately sexy femme fatale on the front, and looks as though it should be subtitled, 'My wanton year'.

	2006.03.03  12.00 The least photogenic day in Rome The following missive was found scribbled in an exercise book gripped in one rotting claw of an Australian corpse dredged up on the muddy banks of the Tiber. Because I will not repeat this shaming and unpleasant story, let me set it out with every embarrassing detail included. Today began with heavy cloud lending the sky a Londonish air. I thought it might rain, so to make the most of my time before the sky exploded, I caught the Metro into the city instead of walking (I live an hour's walk from what I consider Roma proper - the area within the ancient city walls - and I usually walk from Bologna to the forum in the morning, then walk around all day, dutifully following the instructions in my guidebook, which delivers thirteen proven techniques of starting at the Piazza Venezia and ending up totally lost, sometimes kilometres outside the city walls, as on this afternoon's trek, which led to the second-largest church in Rome (the largest outside the Vatican, which will be the climax of my trip), which, if it were not more or less in the centre of Christendom, one would describe as being in the middle of nowhere. I rode the Metro directly to the Circus Maximus, which was the first stop on my itinerary for today. I wandered around this historic site, which looks more like an unkempt field than anything else, as the actual arena involves no ruins (more impressive was the Curia, where the Senate met, which is intact and has been in almost continual use until it was relegated to ruinhood - imagine, history buffs, standing in the very room where the Senate met!). I have about five words of Italian (I didn't realise I had even that until I arrived), of which I use two. I am also able to decipher many signs (this comment, along with the conclusion of a postcard deprived of further explanation by collision with the stamp - 'I now understand the mysteries of Italian light' - suggest erroneously that I have ben intiated into some gnostic cult while in Rome, whereas I have in fact simply gained the knowledge to become a better painter), although I often realise only after I have walked away what the label actually meant. This is enough, however, to allow me to feel smugly self-satisfied when I overhear an American woman in the forum say, 'Temp-ee-owe dee Row-mow-low: Temple of Rome,' because I realised at some point that the Italians use an 'o' at the end of classical names where we insert a 'us', and that this was in fact a temple to Romulus. Translation is the enemy of alliteration, as 'Il Pantera Rosa', a remake of the Peter Sellers classic, can attest. 'Pride and Prejudice' is barely recognisable and certainly bears no resemblance to the homophocis intentions of the original title. (On the subject of Jane Austen, let me note a Harry Potter-related gripe: A certain type of girl with mild literary tendencies who would once have read Austen while music videos and perplexing but apparently hilarious Italian variety shows played here in the hostel dining room, now reads J. K. Rowling, and where my natural efforts to see what any given person on earth is reading would once have allowed me to feel a grudging respect tinged with disappointment at the reader's misplaced taste, I now experience only dismissive disappointment. I should mention also how nice it is to be once more in a city where people catch each other's eyes as they pass on the street, after the eye-averting pedestrian population of London.) Returning to our original subject, I can also figure out most of what people mean based on their tone and budy language, and I don't need to speak frequently. I directted someone to the Quirinale, and I passed an old lady a loaf of bread from a high shelf at the supermarket (she only realised that I wasn't Italian when she asked with a full sentence for another loaf and I used the signal I whip out whenever things get too complex (and plan to retain for use in everyday life in Australia): hands spread out in perplexity, accompanied by the words, 'Sorry, I'm English.' This was the context of half-comprehended co-operation ('Thank you for your collaboration,' reads the sign at my hostel asking residents to stay quiet at night) into which this morning's encounter at the Circus Maximus fit. As I walked alongside the road, a man in a car pulled up. He called something in Italian to me, and I spread my hands and said, 'Sorry, I'm English.' He said that was even better, he was French, his English was better than his Italian. 'You're English, you say?' he said. 'My wife's from Bristol.' I nodded, and hoped he wouldn't ask me to point out Bristol on a map. I wondered whether I should feign an English accent, and why he sounded Italian. He worked for Pierre Cardin, showed me his card - a large and unconvincing piece of laminated cardboard which he quickly restored to its position beneath the flip-down windscreen sunshield. He explained that he was trying to get to Vatican City and held up the map before him. I wasn't sure how I would assist, but I knew I could point out our current location and vaguely knew the position of the Vatican. He said he was thinking of following the river and crossing a bridge near the Vatican. I agreed that this seemed a very good plan. He thanked me, we traded names, and he said, 'You are English: how tall are you?' I thought he might have heard an odd rumour about the height of Englishmen, and I guessed at my height. 'And you have a mother?' Yes. 'How tall is she?' I guessed again. 'I will give you a free sample,' he said, and opened a bag on the passenger seat beside him, rubbing the fabric of a coat inside and pointing out that it was of the finest cashmere. What in the world does cashmere look like? After stressing that he was a very rich man, he said that he had only brought French cards with him (even then, as he flicked open and shut his wallet, I noticed that the cards were Visas and shouldn't have caused any problems; only now I realise that, post-EU, I can't see why French cards would be rejected in Italy). I chuckled my sympathy. He asked whether I could give him some petrol money. I am a sucker for being asked for money. It is a great strain for me to say no to charities, and I cannot refuse individuals. If a man at the colisseum wants to sell me a book in which acetate sheets laid over photos allow the reader to see Rome past and present, I can say no. If he had simply said, 'Give me one hundred euro and in exchange I will give you nothing at all,' I would have pulled out my wallet. I will pour money into the palm of any dirty old woman on Oxford Street (in Sydney; Oxford in London is rather ritzier and busier). Fortunately, Italian beggars simply hobble along with hands outstretched and are easier to avoid than their heckling Australian counterparts. Like a Gilbert and Sullivan hero, I am a genius in every area but one: if someone says in a civil manner, 'Give me money (please),' I cannot refuse. So I got out my wallet, saying I didn't have much, thinking that I certainly didn't have enough to cover someone's pterol, wishing that I wasn't doing this (I can see how I will mythologise this story even now - I will be handing out note after note, watching myself in mute horror). I gave him twenty euro, wishing for smaller notes so that I could have given him one and kept the rest. He saw that I had pounds and his eyes lit up with greed. It didn't make sense, but he didn't care and I couldn't think as I watched myself in horror (see?). I suppose the technique is to start out natural and get pushier. He told me to give him English money. I had a twenty pound note and a ten pound note. I have him the twenty (every time I think of the incident, and believe me, I have returned to it today more times than a tourist looping round to the Piazza Venezia to start a fresh itinerary, I find another moment to regret, another point at which I could have escaped or lessened the blow - here is another) and kept the ten. He pointed to it and asked for it. I said I needed it for my train ticket home. He was disappointed and asked what coins I had. I pulled out a couple of ten euro cent coins, and pushed back the full euros (go Sam you numbskull, you finally did something right and saved yourself seven euros). I offered the twenty euro cents, which he declined as he handed me my free samples of Pierre Cardin clothing and shook my hand. He drove away. I stepped back. I don't swear. I rarely have anything to swear about, and anger is only a philosophical breakdown. But I was so stricken by my own stupidity (and Italy has been something of a dazy dream, carried out mainly in silence, with little human interaction and no regard for time - I'm saving my mobile phone battery for the alarm on the morning I go home, so on every other day I wake whenever my eyes open and go to bed when I'm too exhausted to walk any further - so the exaggerated actions of dreams seem more natural than they would in waking life) that I staggered back, my hands to my head, muttering, 'What just happened? What the fuck just happened? What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?' This was the triple shock of losing all that money, having given it away, and having given it to a stranger. I was bewildered. As I stopped, I noticed a nun watching me (the city is full of clerical collars and the cloisters spill out into the streets; after this and the millions of churches I have visited, I shall return home more Catholic than the Catholics). I continued around the circumference of the Circus Maximus as the nun approached. She asked something in Italian, probably, 'Needest thou help/medication?' I said, 'Sorry, I'm English,' and stumbled onward. I stopped to look inside the bag. The stupid thing is that I picked up every clue telling me he was a phony, and still gave him the money, because he asked for it. He could have saved himself the trouble of buying the coats if he had known my weakness. Still, I believed - I ignored the clues because I couldn't quite believe that I couldn't quite believe, and I didn't quite have any time to think. But I wasn't surprised to peel the supercheap 'Pierre Cardin - high fashion' stickers away and find an unrecognisable brand named underneath. The nun was still following me, and I had to lose her, as she somehow prolonged the incedent by her minor involvement in it, so I hurried to the other side of the circus, where I had time to sit on the wall and stare blankly at a tree. Later, as I walked out of Rome along the Appian Way (eh, history buffs?) to the basilica of Saint Sebastian, featuring his tomb bearing a marble statue of his exhausted and punctured corpse (eh, kitsch buffs?), I had time to convert it into rent costs, which always makes me feel better, as I spend at least five times as much on rent as I do on anything else in an average week, and I realised that it was only three days rent and that I would have stayed in London an extra three days for no reason at all and thought nothing of it. Later, when I had walked back to the city walls and out again to the middle of nowhere, I noticed a mid-priced ladieswear shop (hand-lettered price tags, you know the type, that suggest some effort has been made, but not enough to actually buy a nice price-tag machine) and saw that I couldn't even have bought a cardigan and vest set there with the money I had lost, which made me feel better and wonder whether I had inadvertentlycost him more than he gained from me, which didn't make me feel better, because I didn't want my new tartan cashmere coat, nor did my mother want her plastic leather jacket. I eat a lot of fruit in Italy. There is no stove. For breakfast, I have muesli with hot water, which is surprisingly satisfying, like a rich porridge. I'm sleeping a lot, partly because I'm still fighting off disease, and partly because I'm just exhausted - sometimes, if I feel inclined to drive my body beyond endurance, I walk home to Bologna at night, after I've decided I'm too tired to walk round any more and it's too dark for sightseeing. By the end of the day, I almost approved. Imaginary petrol for a fake fashion guru: twenty euro and twenty pounds; the essential experience of being conned abroad: priceless. I was simply annoyed, finally, at my own gullibility. All I need right now is to be told that it's all right, that it could happen to anybody. This afternoon, as I came across a beautiful simple church built of recycled ruins and mismatched pillars, quiet and plain after the garish extravagances of churches housing Sebastian's tomb, Jesus' miraculous footprints, or Peter's chains (discovered after a back-alley pilgramage to find the church that housed Michelangelo's Moses, as well as the apostle's cuffs), I was reminded of how young I was, which I forget, but I am only twenty-one and will do anything an adult in a car tells me (presumably, hopefully, there are limits). Perhaps it could happen to anyone, perhaps it could not. Perhaps my readers are thinking that they would have been like Nathan Never, or Martin Hel, or Tex, the Italian comic-book heroes, and given the Italian Franc the old one-two. (Will I ever trust a pretend Frenchman again?) Perhaps it's not such a big deal anyway, but I'm annoyed with myself, and by writing it down I hope to close the episode and be done with my calculating brooding. PS Mama, I now have a gift for you when I return to Australia.

	2006.02.24  15.45 Last day in London Last night I dragged my suitcase with a thump thump thump down the stairs and out into the street. I've often looked down with pity at the people still dragging suitcases along Earls Court Road when night has arrived, but last night I lugged my own, larger than most, down the tube stairs (clunk clunk clunk), and then back up the stairs at Temple Station (cccthunk cccthunk cccthunk), and along Fleet Street to Ye Olde Cock Tavern, where I explained to a blank-faced barmaid that I had planned to leave my suitcase there. I spoke then to Mme. Thenardier, who phoned up to Lyle and sent me up to the pool room, through which I walked to the winding staircase in a narrow tube leading up through the building (badadunk badadunk badunkadabunk). I left my case there, spoke briefly to Lyle (Jessie was serving a private function one floor up from the pool room) and returned the opposite way along Fleet Street, dropping into Blackfriars Thameslink station to get my bearings for Tuesday's 4am ride to Luton airport, and continuing to St. Pauls station to return home. At midnight the night before, when my suitcase was packed and we had settled down with green tea on the stairs, reclining on the oily softness of the carpet, once blood-red, now clotted with the ash and filth of the ages, I told Bruno that the next night would be my last, and he resolved that we should have a party, with wine, as a concession to my refusal to drink beer. Soon after I first came home from work and was packing the last unnecessaries into my suitcase, Andy pulled his bike up the stairs and asked who had bought the wine. I told him nobody had done so yet, and that I was about to take my suitcase to the big departure lounge in the sky. Andy dispatched me with promises of revelry to come. I returned to find everyone - The Girls, Andy, Ian, Bruno, a new Greek girl, an Italian named Enrique - gathered in the breakfast room. Andy gave me a cheer, vacated the place of honour for me (the chest of drawers/breakfast table cushioned by a folded yoga mat), and seized a yellow mug from their hanging place above the refrigerator and below the television. He half-filled it with Jacob's Creek red wine, pointing out the Chilean and Spanish bottles to which we would proceed later. The ice-skating was on the television, Bruno was explaining that he had worked in the accounts office of an ice cream company in Brazil, not behind a wheelable ice cream freezer with an orange striped shirt and a little cap, as Jean appeared to have imagined when he told her earlier that he worked for an ice cream company (The Girls' names shift with dreamlike impermanence, as they were preceded by such gossip that they never had to introduce themselves to me, and Andy misheard or misrememberred a few of the names when he first named them for me, but has since realised that Jane was actually Jean, Nika in fact Anika, and has altered his discussion of them without drawing attention to the nomenclatural migration). 'How old are you, Sam?' asked Anika. Twenty-one. 'And you're in publishing!?' Well, I'm not really IN publishing; I'm not even paid - I'm (Andy's imitation later that night, in our room, in feminine falsetto with fluttering arm movements and much swivelling of the hips: 'How old are yooooou Saa-aaaam?' Because he considered the major obstacle between him and Jean to be the thirteen years that part them, and noted that, 'If you'd just moved in faster, Sam. You're the right age and the right look.' I don't know exactly what the right look means, but it must be complimentary.) Ian was halfway through producing a kind of pot-luck stew to be splattered over spaghetti, because someone had brought meat (at least one of the hostel's occupants is a butcher), and he announced that we were free now to go fill up our bowls. In the kitchen, we found very little spaghetti, so Andy poured the rest of the packet into the steaming pot and we filled our bowls, returned, ate it, and soon Andy was leading the drive for seconds. 'Look,' said Ian, 'look, there are four people who haven't eaten yet.' I pulled back, but Andy pressed on and took me with him. 'Ian loves his kittens,' Andy said. Anika hadn't eaten yet. Ian soon brought her a bowl. The girls are his first priority. He was a little put out after that, and threw us out promptly at ten, although he opens less promptly in the morning now that the girls' interest in early breakfasts has worn off. Enrique, an Italian photographer whom I met in the kitchen one night, offered to send me the email address of a friend he had in Rome, who would be proud to show me his beautiful city. When we were ejected from the breakfast room, Enrique assured me many times that he would email me the next day and that his friend would be very proud to show me his beautiful city. I thanked and farewelled him as he stood hooked around the top of the stairs and assured me a few last times that his friend would be very proud to show me around his beautiful city. Andy and Bruno and I were left sitting on the stairs again. Bruno began to compare the jobs he would have in Brazil and the jobs he would have in London, based on the earlier ice cream man discussion. We finished the wines. Andy put a stop to talk of Brazil, oddly arguing with Bruno that at twenty-four Bruno didn't know anything about the world. I left to have a shower so that my towel could be dry by the morning when I would have to take it to work with the remainder of my luggage. When I returned, everyone had disappeared. Andy and Bruno returned and Bruno wished me goodbye, said he would get my email from Andy, and that we would probably meet again in this small world. As Andy washed his work clothes, he asked whether there were any last things I wanted to know about him, so I led him through a full summary of his life story. That day, thinking he might like to be a carpenter some day, he had emailed the father of a schoolfriend who owned a construction company in Australia, and by coincidence - or not - he is in London for a week and arranged to have breakfast with Andy the next day. 'Everyone in this hostel,' said Andy, 'has been put here to test me.' I, he said, am not quite a test, but rather am just like Andy was when he was young. This morning I checked out while I ate breakfast and watched cartoons - Robin kept encountering a villain they thought had fallen into a volcano, but this masked villain was invisible to the rest of the Teen Titans. I had to leave before the denouement, to catch the tube with sleeping bag and red carry bag. We had a pizza each delivered for lunch at work, the gourmet kind of pizza with chunkier topping recognisable as real food, because drinks are planned tonight to commemorate Lisa's leaving, and nobody will be able to eat dinner. At eight-thirty tonight, if all goes well, and I have a slight feeling my timing and train-catching will be somewhat rough, I will be catching the train to Norwich. So long, gentle reader. It's hard to say when I will next have hours of unlimited internet time.

	2006.02.24  10.31 London Snow Yesterday I had my first experience of London snow as I walked from Arsenal station to work, tiny flecks of frozen sky floating down to land on my jacket, as though the vault of heaven were gradually crumbling, a windscreen shattering in slow-motion.

	2006.02.23  18.00 Goodbyes Last weekend was a real 'Last Weekend in London' kind of weekend. I ran around seeing all the last minute things I hadn't visited yet. First thing in the morning, I went to early morning communion at St. Pauls, but they were intent on closing everything off immediately afterwards, so I wasn't able to hang around as I intended and haven't yet taken the full tour. I caught the Tube (when the unlimited tube travel I have paid for runs out at the end of this month, I'll be direly disappointed; when I have to go the rest of my life without being able to jump on the nearest tube to go anywhere I like for free, I'll be utterly disillusioned. I love the tube; I love the fact that even if I, as I have done several times, absent-mindedly get on a tube going in the opposite direction to the one I intended, or even if I get on a tube for the completely wrong train line, the pick-up sticks nature of the tube map is such that I can get off at the very next stop and have always thus been able to catch a train on a different line that will take me to my destination with no further changes necessary.) to Embankment, needing breakfast and remembering having seen a sign in the little alley of shops there, saying that all sandwiches cost a pound. The sandwiches looked too cold, though, so I opted for a hot muffin and hot chocolate from Benjy's. The chocolate was good, because all I wanted from it was that it should be hot. I drank it sitting on a low wall outside the National Gallery, overlooking Trafalgar Square. The contents of the muffin were rubbery, but at least they were warm. I walked through St. James' Park, having messaged my family, telling them to tell me when they would be available for me to call. They messaged back as I was wandering among the crowds waiting for the changing of the guard outside Buckingham Palace, so I caught the nearest tube to Temple, because I wanted to go to the Temple Church that morning and had to check that I could call home and go to church. I couldn't do both, but I decided to call home and go to the church in the tourist time. My attempt to call home with the special cheap call phonecard I had bought was unsuccessful, and instead I went to Temple Church, a vaulted gothic church down a laneway off Fleet Street, where the choir sang beautifully and the vicar (I will call him a vicar because I find it very funny that all English ministers are referred to as vicars) delivered a very clever essay/sermon on the nature of Adam's reality. I enjoyed it a lot. I returned to the British Museum, which I had visited exactly a week earlier with Jessie and Lyle, when I had been impressed by mummies and medieval ivory carvings (I might take up carving - I like the effects it produces) and then had my shoes soaked as I got lost walking back to Jessie's pub in the rain on my own. Yesterday we had a huge lunch at work as a goodbye party for Lisa, who finishes, like me, this Friday. We ate sticnky cheeses from France, tarts, mackerel and potato salad, and a stomachful of other delicacies. I spent a large part of the morning out buying plates, glasses, and cutlery. That night I said goodbye forever to the first of my co-workers, Jenny, who doesn't work Thursdays or Fridays, and so the gradual process of farewells began. That night at the hostel, when I had finished packing everything into my suitcase so that I could leave it with Jessie at the pub and not cart it to Rome, Bruno and Andy and Coxy (a gentle tough guy from Australia) and I sat on the stairs and drank green tea and listened to the Big Chill festival ten-year anniversary CD that I got from work because years ago the Big Chill tenth anniversary book was published by Serpent's Tail. Because tonight will be my last night there - tomorrow night I leave for Norwich, to visit for the weekend an English girl who lived with me for a semester last year - Bruno suggested that we have some kind of party. Although I'm fending off sickness well, I'm not a huge fan of this party idea and I need sleep - I was up after midnight last night with Green tea and the Big Chill.

	2006.02.21  15.13 The Sick Tourist Linzie came back to work before she was entirely well again (fortunately, she didn't have the mumps, nor the bird flu), and this, combined with Andy's sickness, which has been doing the rounds of the hostel, has left me (and several others in the office) fighting off disease in my own body (others waged the war in the bodies that they had brought with them, rather than sharing mine). My throat began to get sore, and I soon developed a tickly cough. After a few days, I remembered that chemists like the one opposite my hostel often sold medicines designed for just such an occasion. I bought a bottle of syrupy aniseed-flavoured liquid and began medicating myself. It's holding it off, but I don't think it's curing me. Picture me crouching like an addict in the corner of the British Museum's main hall, sipping syrup from a spoon salvaged from a nearby McDonald's. I've cut down on my late-night wanderings along the Thames, which I recommend thoroughly but which my immune system cannot bear, and have tried to stay out of the rain. I was rained on very briefly the same day I visited the museum seeing the building on which Nineteen Eighty-Four's Ministry of Truth was based mattered more to me than remaining healthy, so I trotted through Russell Square in the increasing drizzle to gawk at Senate House, which is toweringly bleak and recognisably Orwellian. It was one of the tourist encounters that struck me with that feeling of 'Just tell yourself we have actually arrived', as Sophocles would say, that I was touching something beyond my impenetrable bubble of first-hand experience. In the British Museum, the Grecian Urns and the towering Egyptian colossi were the objects to inspire the justifiable awe of history's void between me and the objects I was visiting. Seeing Rodin's sculptures - The Kiss at Tate Modern, The Burghers of Calais in the park beside the Houses of Parliament, the several busts and a couple of beautiful figures in the Victoria and Albert Museum - would have been worth the trip just for themselves. And seeing dozens of Sargent's paintings at he Tate Britain and the Portrait Gallery has impressed me immensely. I first admired his work in a portrait of one of Radclyffe Hall's lovers, and now that I've been inundated by it, I consider him among my favourite painters. He blends the paint very little on the canvas, creating a faceted impression in the faces he paints, as though each person consists of planes rather than blunt curves. Aspects of the portraits' clothing and settings, taken alone, would border on abstract impressionism, but in context look like realistic sketches in paint. See Sargent. I recommend him. The first night I went to the Tate, I had a moment of literal homesickness - the 'home' part was literal, I mean, in that I longed for the abstract concept of a home more than for a particular building or location; the 'sickness' element at that time remained blissfully metaphorical - when, while walking past the Globe Theatre, I glanced through someone's lamplit window at bookshelves and maron walls, at paintings and enclosed spaces and wanted somewhere to be my home, to go to bed at night and not be able to predict when I would leave the room behind with no intention of returning. I gazed at the window for so long that a couple of tourists craned their necks beside me to ensure that they weren't missing a vital photo opportunity, that this wasn't Shakespeare's upstairs flat.

	2006.02.21  13.18 My Temporary Home continues interminably Bridge: Here the song sheds its pop-punk grunginess, you see, and settles into a jazz lounge tempo to describe the recent party. Andy did not actually eat with red chopsticks at the party, but he has become the proud owner of several pairs of red chopsticks taken from a catering service to whom he made a delivery - although unwilling to give him free food, they donated several chopsticks to the O'Callaghan's utensil tin. We tried to have a party but nobody came We persevered with our party games just the same Ian showed us magic tricks Andy ate with red chopsticks Vodka jellies slurped from spoons Finished up with old cartoons We were all in bed by ten o'clock My temporary home knows how to rock Chorus: I'm very proud of my chorus, written on the train ride home last night, after the sudden surprise of coming out of work to find the last of the day's sunlight still lingering in the Arsenal streets. I expressed my amazement as Linzie and I walked towards the tube station, and she gently explained that this was spring. It was still bitingly cold. Let the winter cling Despite this teasing twinkling inkling of the spring I don't care I have my friends and pens and ten free books to read Let me have no home Beyond this temporary home I've made my own That seems fair Because a temporary home is all I need

	2006.02.17  17.38 Party!!!!! The strongest moment of pathos in my time at O'Callaghan's was a party held exactly a week ago tonight. All week, a piece of A4 paper had been hanging in the hallway, advertising a face-painting party to farewell Justin, a long-term guest at the hostel. At some point, the date was changed from Friday to Sunday, and the day before the party, it changed back again. That night, many of us sat on the stairs as we ate dinner. One of The Girls took a pen and traced around the difficult to read white on orange letters of the piece of paper. Andy asked why the date had been changed, noting that people were too exhausted to party on a Friday and he would have preferred Sunday night, when he had his lightest day of work afterwards. The night of the party arrived. I came home from work and made dinner in the stony silence of the hostel. I ate it in the breakfast room, where Ian, watching TV, glanced up at the clock and said the party would begin in half an hour. A few people arrived home from work one at a time and were told that the party would get started in fifteen minutes, in ten. Ian had chicken nuggets and sausage rolls heating in the oven/microwave. The Girls arrived and Ian said the party would be starting about now. Andy arrived and the six of us sat in the breakfast room, passing the box of face paints around - it had been Andy's suggestion, when the party was first proposed, that we should have a face-painting party. Eventually Ian went upstairs and said the party was starting now. Why he chose to have it a floor higher I cannot explain. When Britain's Funniest Videos came on the television, I decided to join him, and we were soon joined by Andy and the girls. Ian had a tray of runny red vodka jellies. When I first came upstairs, a few other guys were sitting around nibbling Ian's nibblies, but he himself was nowhere to be seen. He soon entered from the bathroom, having painted his face elaborately and carefully to resemble a tiger. Later, when the question of face-painting was raised again, I agreed to be painted, because I wanted face-painting to happen, and I felt sorrry for Ian as he sat and asked why no one was getting into the spirit and letting people paint their faces. One of the girls, Aniki, painted me as a sort of blue-faced symbolist Ariel, while the others looked on. It was the last of the face painting. Andy volunteered, but pulled back, saying he needed to choose carefully, because he planned to leave it on until the next day, when he would be going around to see the French girl (update: she has the letter. Andy's father is willing to support him a while if he goes back to real estate. Andy, in between being pleased that he isn't thinking about her any more, wonders what she thinks of the letter and what she'll think when he's a suited executive). Andy ate the second half of the food Ian had prepared. Justin, for whom the paarty was being held, dropped by briefly. The riotous New Zealanders, the life-of-the-party types, had gone pubbing. Before they left, they invited everyone else. Those of us who were to stay for the party declined due to a mixture of loyalty, a sense that this party would, in its own small way, be better than the pub, and horror at the prospect of going out on the town with the New Zealanders. They weren't at all impressed with Ian's promises of a better party at the hostel, and hardly seemed to notice what he was telling them. Ian had prepared a quiz, and had a sack of prizes. He divided us into teams, and began to intone his questions, all of which I answered, leaving a longer gap each time before buzzing in as I realised that I was being too quick, and that no one else knew the answers. Poor Ian. He gave up after three questions and handed prizes to everybody. I had moved onto the floor to simulate and stimulate excitement as Ian wished someone would pay attention to his quiz, and from there I passed vodka jellies up to Aniki and watched Ian's card tricks that everyone else was ignoring, being selfishly caught up in their own conversations. I went to the bathroom to clean the mix of oil and jelly from my hands, and when I returned the party had dissolved. I joined The Girls to watch the end of South Park, then washed the paint off my face. (There is now a picture of my painted visage among the photos on the breakfast room wall.) Ian closed the door to the breakfast room at ten, perhaps a little more promptly than usual, and before long we were all in our beds. Andy and I wondered what was to be done about Ian, and Andy pinned him perfectly by saying that Ian always felt he had to play the host, to amuse us. He is young and foolish and campily heterosexual (the red of his blood perhaps has a few sequins in it) and stuck playing mother hen to us.

	2006.02.17  17.00 People of London People I have encountered in my travels: The Singing Handyman The singing handyman drives around the middle of London in a little old car that shoots bubbles from a machine attached beneath it. His website is named on the side of the van. He sings the croonier tunes of Dr. Hook into a microphone, pulls up for a few seconds on each block, then drives away again, spreading bubbles and song where'er he goes. The Smug Orton Fan He stood smiling, with his mouth pressed up towards his nose, his chest pressed up towards his chin, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a wine glass, the stem between his middle fingers and the - what's the word? flower? bulb? the bit the drink goes in - resting in his palm, a glass-holding technique I detest - practically, because it warms the glass and thus the wine; and aesthetically just because. He nodded all the way through the LGBT history month founder's speech, nodded constantly and smugly, as though it was a credit to him that he was familiar with every word being used. Other People At Work I Haven't Summarised Alastair (cyclist, Lisa once described him as "posh", prone to unexpected vicious rudeness) Pete (quietly eccentric, founder of Serpent's Tail, absent-minded) Ruthie (Canadian, politely harsh, works in editorial)

	2006.02.16  17.38 How to visit me Every morning I'm asked, 'Is it a bluebird day?' Every night we philosophise in the hallway Bottle shop beneath my feet Burger King across the street When I'm lost, the rain seeps through my shoes Buy postcards from the man who sells the news How to get to my house: You will have arrived from Heathrow, because the only people I ever seem to meet are Australians. Catch the tube on the Picadilly line (choose an empty carriage near the front and watch it fill as you penetrate the city, like a stop motion film in which people appear from nowhere two or three at a time and children learn to count through this surreal and stilted illustration) and jump out at Earls Court station. Take the stairs up towards the surface; the elevator is currently out of order. The stairs will take you to a higher platform, and more stairs will take you almost to ground level. A tentative chill dawdles in the air - the real coldness won't hit you until you get out. In one direction, glowing letters spelling EARLS COURT on the exhibition building peer over the station walls. In the opposite direction, Earls Court Road lies upstairs beyond the ticket machines. Outside, the cold air will blast you, and under the thunder of the unending stream of cars, someone will ask whether they can have your ticket. Ignore it. Walk along the road to your right, but don't go further than the fruit stall just past Burger King. If you see a gap in the cars, race through it. The Red Sea has nothing on Earls Court Road. Let's assume you haven't been crushed by the walls of water falling before you've leaped onto the gutter. You will now be on the other side of the road. Between the Subway sandwich shop, closed indefinitely because of a leakage, and the bottle shop, where an employee sits always on the threshold taking a cigarette break, is a small red door near a sandwich board saying "O'Callaghan's" and giving nightly and weekly rates. Stick your key in the door, or, if you don't have a key because you've just arrived from Heathrow, press the buzzer. Ian will say "Hello?" He will sound as though he has a bizarre foreign accent. This is either unconscious or a deliberate design to keep away unwanted visitors (I've seen him tell people the hostel is full because he thinks they look too much like freaks). Walk down the long hallway, admire the hideously sentimental black and white prints of Victorian girls with puppies and kittens, and leap up the steep steps. There may be a slight scent of Dettol. The first door on your left is a toilet, the second a kitchen. If you can squeeze through the small crowd probably gathered at the foot of the next flight of stairs, the breakfast room will be down a two-metre-long hallway to your left and you will be facing my room. Take a deep breath and walk in. Wait there. The short version: Leave Earls Court station on the Earls Court Road side. Walk one hundred metres to your right. Cross the road. Look up. That's it.

	2006.02.15  17.48 Valentine's Day The night before Valentine's Day, Andy read me his De Profundis, his two-volume epistle to the French girl of his dreams. It was fascinating and intimate and revealing and wrapped around a packet of Kit Kats. He headed to the internet cafe that night and printed the letter from his laptop. I sat in the breakfast room and watched a Bobby Darin biopic while everyone else milled in and out. Bruno had bought chocolates for The Girls, who had apparently been dropping hints that they hoped to have something separate Valentine's Day from any other day. I hadn't seen them that day; I had been to the National Theatre after work because they had advertised a free jazz performance in the lobby. I didn't see much of it by the time I reached the Soth bank from Finsbury Park, but it was pleasant and relaxing. The next morning, Andy got up at the same time that I did, to allow himself time to ride to her house with his gift before starting his day as a courier. I left for work, reading Kathy Acker's book of essays, newly reprinted by Serpent's Tail, as the tube tunnelled its way across London. Linzie (Scottish work-experience girl, short, forwards amusing emails around the office) had called in sick on Monday and hasn't been to work since. The latest update is that she might have the mumps. So I've had a greater number of amusing jobs to occupy my time than has been customary in recent weeks. I posted books out, I cleaned Jenny's (Sales manager, one minute ago realised that she was beginning to see herself as a mother hen in the company, sings in a choir) desk, I did other things that I can't remember but need to write on my log sheet. I've had two nights out with work people recently. The first was supposed to be on a larger scale, but turned into Linzie and Martin (Publishing assistant, funny and friendly, surprisingly good singer) and me at the nearby Mexican restaurant and then on to the nearby T-Bird bar and Worlds End bar. I was concerned about the way my pocket leaked pounds that night, and Linzie had a minute of silent consternation after realising that she paid twice as much rent as me. On Valentine's night, I went to the opening of a Joe Orton exhibition at nearby Islington library, from which, in his early career, he stole and defaced library books by collaging the covers and adding hilarious and obscene blurbs. This was part of LGBT history month, and Martin had been sent an invitation because we are a nearby business and we might even be tempted to hold vents in the library foyer. When the exhibition had first been mentioned in the office, I pricked up my ears, so when Martin lamented the day before that he had no one to accompany him, Lisa (Publicity manager, pretty, chatty, short brown hair) noted that I had been interested and I ended up riding a big red bus down to the library, where we looked at some of the defaced books and copies of others and read a few boards of Joe Orton's biography. The exhibition was not large, but by eating a lot of the food on offer and looking aat the nearest bookshelves, we occupied ourselves until the founder of LGBT history month gave a speech (beginning, 'I keep having to pinch myself;' 'So do I,' said the rarely inflamed Orton-esque part of my brain, 'I can't get anybody else here to pinch me') and pointed out Joe Orton's sister standing in the corner looking pleased and ordinary. I got home that night to watch a film with Ian and eat the remains of an enormous batch of cous-cous he had made for The Girls because they are broke. I continue to reap the leftover benefits of their presence in the hostel. Andy arrived, having been at the Hare Krishnas all evening, and, after documenting his signs of sickness over the last two days ('last night I tasted my phlegm, just then I coughed and could feel it move in my throat' - a moment considering the hostel's well-being - 'Sam needs to move to another room'), described the coincidence that had made him get lost on his way to his belle's house, miss the bridge, need a map, approach from another direction, and run into her on the street where he was able to speak five disjointed words as she rushed away, late for work, with Kit-Kats (he calls her Kit-Kat) and his letter. That night he also let The Girls read his letter. They were literally speechless. I received two instant messages last night and one this morning, all informing me that I don't have enough money to make a phone call. This may mean that people are trying to contact me, and I don't have enough money to receive a phone call. Whatever it means, it is mildly sad but not enough to make me bother to top up my phone. I'm happy to be uncontactable in London.

	2006.02.13  17.53 Itinerary January 20th - February 24: Work at Serpent's Tail. February 25th - February 27th: Possible trip to Norwich. Do I hear a voice ask, why Norwich? I know I do, because it's my own perplexed voice. I used to live with a girl from Norwich who invited me to visit. I'm considering. Februry 28th - March 9th: A holiday in Rome. March 10th - March 11th: A holiday in London. March 12th - March 15th: A holiday in Paris, where I will stay in Montmartre. March 16th: A day off in London. March 17th - March 18th: Sitting on an aeroplane en route to Australia. March 25th: An exhibition of Michelangelo's drawings opens at the British Museum and I miss it because I am thousands of miles away.

	2006.02.10  16.04 My Temporary Home, verse three, plus commentary Ten o'clock's the hour for late night discount shopping Traffic warms the air and the chill wind is dropping Back inside, behind my doors Glam rock from a laptop pours A cigarette has burned into the mat My temporary home is where it's at This little ditty in installments is an experiment in the style of Richie Cuthbert, whose lyics I really enjoy, although I don't think I've thoroughly explained that to him. He is a lyrical impressionist. The connections between lines aren't always clear, and each line generally refers to something not quite identifiable from the context, but linked mysteriously to everything else in the song. I like it a lot, but have never before done it myself. I apologise for the gratuitous drug reference in the very first line written a week ago, which might have been cause for concern for some of our readers, but it came to me while washing the dishes and staring at someone's abandoned joint behind the sink, and it was the only reason for these lyrics' existence.

	2006.02.09  17.30 Girls No one will understand this, but the title is a reference to a book published by Serpent's Tail, the publishing company at which I am gainlessly employed. It is also a word in the English language. The main event to have indirectly affected me this week is the arrival last weekend of three Australian girls in my hostel. I learned of their approach on Saturday morning, when I was told that I would have to move out of my room to make way for them. From a three-bed room all to myself, I carried my things downstairs to a double room that I would thenceforth share with Andy. The day I moved into O'Callaghan's Hostel (this afternoon, with nothing to swallow my time at work, I researched O'Callaghan's on the internet and found that visitors either loved it - found it friendly, cosy, and well-placed - or hated it - found it dirty, loud, and riddled with bed bugs. I've had no trouble with bed bugs, can cope with the cigarette burns in the hall carpet and the unplaceable air of griminess in the bathrooms, and have experienced only occasional troubles with noise, which bothered me less than it bothered other visitors because I happen to be accustomed to the rowdy Australians who cause such troubles.) I met Andy from Australia, a bicycle courier who came to London to live with a French girl. He had to move out when he told her he couldn't live with her unless they were romantically involved. He is in the process of wooing her, which involves visiting the glass box in Leicester Square from which she dispenses advice to tourists (he saw her there this week, and smiled so hard that after a day in the wind of biking across the city, his lip split open and blood poured from his mouth - he attempts to convince people that this was romantic. I believed him. Others did not.) and regularly phoning and emailing her. The room has a definite smell, to which I am becoming accustomed: sinal signals that once meant 'leave this room immediately' now mean home. Andy's previous roommate left a table covered in small change. He handwashes his work clothes each evening and hangs them in the corner to dry, while I throw my things onto the top of my wardrobe from my bunk. Andy likes to live with someone, and while I recognise now that perhaps twenty-five percent of my original enjoyment of O'Callaghan's came from having a room to myself (you can't imagine what a pleasure it is to come home after a day of work to an empty home, with no one to greet you, to sleep alone in a cold and solitary bed - no, I really do enjoy those luxuries), I agreed with Andy that it was sometimes nice to have someone still to talk with in the place - your own bedroom - where you are most alone. Andy believes we get on well because neither of us are part of the rowdy Australian stereotype that fill the hostel above the second floor. Andy has taken up chanting while riding his bike, to bring his spiritual life up to the level of his personal successes at work and home, before, as he fears, his ego takes over. He is working towards becoming a wealthy and successful real estate agent to impress the French girl. Andy and I now live in the same room, next to the front office/breakfast room. Our morning ritual: my alarm alarms me out of sleep, I turn it off and drift, like a nervous job applicant in the doorway of a major real estate firm, in and out of the doors of consciousness. Eventually, I rise, grab my towel, toiletries, and trousers, and go to the bathroom. When I return, Andy is stirring, asks me how the weather looks, and takes advantage of my early morning activity to rouse himself and make early mornings another step on his path to spiritual enlightenment. When my shoes are on, I have brushed my teeth and am fully dressed, I wait for the breakfast room/front office/landlord's bedroom to open. The day the Girls moved in I was having a tete a Tate day, wandering Tate Modern, seeing Rodin's Kiss and trawling through mountains of Picassos and even a couple of Dali's - most excitingly for me, his Narcisssus painting, Narcissus being an inspirational archetype of mine in my teenage years, which was much smaller and thus more intricate than I had imagined. Very fine paintbrushes are the latest and lone objects on my wish list. The night before, I had been at the Tate Britain until late, and the next day I returned to Tate Britain to take on the more modern half of the building, including Lucian Freud's pieces, which are surprisingly tortured-looking when seen up close (not that they don't look tortured from afar, but up close even the paint looks pained), and the Tate's massive collection of J. M. W. Turner's paintings, which they made into an asset after Turner left his entire collection of his own work to the state. By the end of the weekend, my taste for Tate was satiated, and I returned home to sit in the breakfast room/television room/gossip hall and hear the hype about the three girls, who were raised to epic heights of interest because they possessed the rare quality of BEING GIRLS. I met them briefly as I passed my dirty post-dinner dishes through to the kitchen, which is already very crowded with three small girls in it, so allowed no possibility of my washing my plate. A few nights later, I came out of the kitchen with my plate of stir fry and pasta (my cooking is, by necessity, hot plate-based, because although the microwave functions also as an oven (as explained to me by a stripper who stays here when she's working in London), I don't want to hog it for twenty-five minutes to cook food I can't even store in the refrigerator, which is smaller than the one we had at Macquarie University Village. If anyone has any more hot plate and microwave cooking ideas, let me know, before stir fry and pasta sauce will grow tiresome.) and found the girls sitting on the stairs while Bruno the Brazilian (who is hilarious, partly because of his just-off-accurate English, and who forms the third part of a minor triumvirate of late night stair-sitters with Andy and me), Ian the English landlord (who doesn't own the place, probably became landlord after staying here, talks like an unfunny sitcom, and is a sound engineer by trade), and Andy worshipped from the foot of the stairs. The breakfast room/walk-in-wardrobe/corner is not large enough to contain a full social event. The brunette of the girls mentioned that she had come down at eight that morning, when the breakfast room should have opened, but found it still locked and had to go to work without lunch, as I could attest, because I had been down there waiting at the same time. Thus the girls affected my life again, as Ian henceforth opened the breakfast room perfectly on time and allowed me to be more punctual at work than ever before. Ian decided to have a jam session with himself and pulled out his guitar. Andy dressed as a girl. Bruno gave the girls a jumper he had bought for the English girl who broke up with him just before he came to London to live with her (recurring themes, anyone?). Ian's conversation became more like a bad sitcom than ever ('But I think it's more hack than saw by now' 'WHAT?'). What small Australian girl could help but be impressed?

	2006.02.07  17.30 My Temporary Home (the song) Half-smoked joint on an upturned cup in the kitchen Supermen and sitcoms on the television Bare bulb sheds a clean white light Constant cars pass through the night Roommates come and go like B-grade stars I've found my temporary home at last I'm eccentric because I wash up the dishes Toast and cereal are hurried but delicious Posters watching over me Like a host's supposed to be Though the tube's a long and bumpy ride My temporary home is warm inside

	2006.02.04  16.19 My temporary home I took a long time to adjust to living in Sydney, but I knew that I had started to consider Sydney, rather than Mudgee, home when I stopped taking my stereo to Mudgee with me during the University holidays. There are things one will stand when away on a break, but which one would not put up with at home. For me, having a stereo is one of those things. When I stopped needing to have my stereo with me in Mudgee, I knew that Mudgee had become my break from real life in Sydney, rather than the other way around. Last night I paid the rent for another week in my current hostel, a sign of how much I'm enjoying it. I sleep in a three-bed room, although I'm the only person in it. For two nights I shared with an effeminate, vaguely American-sounding guy who went to bed early each night, probably jetlagged, and woke up late, and so to whom I spoke little, expecting that at some point in the future we might get to know each other. He disappeared after two nights. He also possibly took with him my cousin's guidebook of London, which I can't find anywhere. The next night, I came home to find someone asleep in the bed, and realised it wasn't the same person. This was an Englishman on his way to Australia, who had missed his flight because he thought he had an e-ticket but the travel agent had changed it to paper tickets. He was just sleeping a few hours, eating, and catching the last train back to the airport to wait six hours and catch the next plane. Apart from that, the room has been mine. I sleep atop a double bunk by the window, and I can lift the sheet from the window and look down on the glowing Burger King and the fruit stall and the stray people wandering on the street three storeys below. I can watch the cars drift by and pretend that the rumbling that provides the soundtrack to the night is the noise of a deliberate additional sightseeing opportunity. And, in the small kitchen downstairs, I can cook meals, and have been doing so, something I never bothered to do in the Nevern. There I subsisted on sandwiches, thought, 'Ah well, it's only a couple of days,' and sometimes decided that three meals a day was gluttonous by anyone's standards. This is the kind of thing one will withstand on a holiday, but now that I'm home, sleeping beneath the glaring image of Leonardo Dicaprio in a poster that I assume was taken for free from a video shop (it guarantees that I can rent the aviator for two nights now or see it for free next time), I need meals and I have them. Ian, the friendly giant in charge of the hostel says that it is a welcome, though surprising and strikingly individual, change to be able to tell when I've been using the kitchen because I actually use hot water in the sink. Staying at the Nevern has made me appreciate staying at O'Callaghans. * Last night I went to the Tate Britain, which is open late on the first Friday of every month. I planned to return this afternoon to finish the tour, but time is getting late, and I don't know whether I'll make it. I spent much of this morning at the British Library, after a breakfast of cereal, hot cross buns, crumpets, and toast with the other inhabitants of O'Callaghan's (many of whom then left on a pub crawl round the Circle Line to celebrate the day, according to one New Zealander who New Zealously explained the occasion, the Maoris killed all the British then signed a treaty to create New Zealand - a lot of work for one day, particularly when I can't even manage to visit both the Tate and the library in twenty-four hours). At the library, I finished my research into the case of Joyce McKinney, on whom I plan to base a play when I return to Australia (the pull of my steadily multiplying projects is among my major sources of homesickness). On Wednesday and Thursday night, after work, I've come down and made copious notes from the sensational piece of investigative journalism (or the investigative piece of sensationalist journalism, whichever you prefer) that the Mirror published about her in the late seventies. I'm relieved never again to have to face the British Library staff as they hand over the book with the picture of Ms. McKinney posing nude on the front and back covers. The Tate night was religiously themed, and a Salvation Army brass band performed some jazz and classical pieces while a passionate pentecostal was as funny for the Tate crowds as John the Baptist in Herod's Court with his roared announcements that any homosexuals or people who engaged in premarital sex present were going to Hell. He followed this with an interpretive dance and a song, and repeated the whole performance many times throughout the night. I don't know to what extent he was serious.

	2006.02.02  13.41 Quotations Quotation One: Freedom and Happiness in a Berlin flat This is a device used briefly and to great effect in Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers, but until recently I had never seen it in real life. Over the shoulder of a Japanese girl riding the tube beside me, I read an English-German phrasebook, teaching an English-speaker how to search for accomodation in Germany, how to translate into German comments like, ‘The kitchen and bathroom are very little,’ or, ‘My children are still small, and of course they also make a noise’ (the second one is a direct quote). Each line in English was preceded by its equivalent in German, but as I was surreptitiously transcribing while attempting not to intrude, I couldn’t write down all the German before the young student turned the page (The first line was ‘Jetzt bin ich sehr gluclick’). I couldn’t help laughing aloud as I read the following excerpt to my cousin, who thought I should find a way to fit it into a play. The series of necessary quotations to carry on a conversation with one’s German landlady reads beautifully like poetry to be read over student experimental theatre – picture young people in black tights moving in slow motion with suitably profound expressions on their faces as a voice announces: Now I am very happy Happy Free Now I want to live my own life Life I don’t want to live at (my parents’) home any more No more Quotation Two: Virginia Woolf introduces my theory of writing “Words, English words, are full of choes, memories, associations, naturally. They’ve been out and about on people’s lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries.” – Virginia Woolf on the BBC in 1937 In the British Library, one may listen to recordings of famous actors reading famous works – Olivier playing Hamlet; Alan Bennett, if I remember correctly, reading Alice in Wonderland – and authors such as Joyce and Woolf reading from their own work. Woolf was delivering one of a series of talks she gave on the BBC about ‘Craftsmanship’, and had the above to say about the English language and the way that every words drags behind it a sack of connotations because of its previous uses and contexts. My theory of writing in my years of University, developed mainly through needing to make words work harder so that I could downsize my essays into the word limit, has been that a word should be chosen for its aura of meanings, that reading involves opening a series of Pandora’s boxes, often so quickly that one doesn’t notice the clouds of spirits rising out of them and mingling in the air to create the impression of some kind of communication beneath the words.

	2006.01.30  16.02 Bits/Pieces SARS MASKS: These were a noticeable fashion accessory in Japan. One old Westerner on my aeroplane wore one on his way in, as a polite way of saying, ‘You can lead me to Tokyo but you can’t make me breathe the air.’ One woman walking along the road wore one. The girl who gave me my boarding pass on the way out wore one, and I couldn’t help being offended. I imagine the feeling is parallel to those experienced by a woman whose date, when faced with the several condom options available in the Burger King bathroom, tossed gentlemanliness aside and chose ‘Extra-Safe’ which I would consider very bad manners. ARSENAL: Arsenal is one of two tube stations very near to my work (tube stations are so close to each other that I can operate like the New Guinean missionaries who avoid crashing their plane by only flying as long as they can see the next airstrip. If they can’t see the next one, because of fog or the encroaching night, they land and stay till morning. If I don’t want to get lost, I can stop walking when the map in the nearest tube station doesn’t point out the next tube station.) and so I’m able to view the very pleasant mural on the hallway walls, a collage of children’s drawings of soccer players blown up to near life-size. Arsenal stadium pokes out above the buildings as though some luxury open-topped spaceship had crash-landed in the middle of the block. Where modern stadiums plonk themselves down in the middles of open fields, Arsenal has its sides disguised to look like buildings and is surrounded by houses. The Arsenal shop sells Arsenal wallpaper for the truly committed football fanatic/home decorator. COCKFOSTERS: The last stop on my train line is called Cockfosters. A helpful electronic scrolling sign inside, to let you know you’re going in the right direction, says ‘This train is for Cockfosters’. The first time I saw it, I assumed that a mad computer hacker had broken into the British Rail computers and inserted this bizarre offensive comment. I couldn’t even imagine what it was supposed to say. PEN CHECK: Only pencils are allowed in the reading rooms of the British Library, because defacement by pen is too permanent a form of graffiti. The man who gave me my library card informed me of this, and suggested that I check my pens in the cloak room. The cloak room attendants stared at me, dumbfounded, and suggested that it was somewhat ridiculous to check two pens. I agreed. In the end, they put them on a desk near their little gate so that I wouldn’t have to queue to retrieve my two pens. SHAKESPEARE’S MOUSTACHE: As Shakespeare’s portrait in the front of his first folio, on display in the British Library, reveals, Shakespeare had quite a weedy little moustache. MY ACCENT: When I first started University, I visited my grandfather’s nursing home one day and he said that I had started to sound slightly American. I was traumatised by this, but my housemates assured me it wasn’t so. The accountant here told me last week, when I explained that I was Australian, that I didn’t sound Australian. The publisher at Heinemann asked where my accent was from, that he could detect a little bit of American, a little bit of…?

	2006.01.28  13.46 Life in London 16th January 2006 - The use-by date on the bread being served for breakfast at the Nevern Hotel on the morning I left. The South African with whom I stayed at the Nevern, when he learned that I was working at a publishing house, explained that he was interested in photography and wanted to publish a book of artistic nude photographs. He was sure nothing like this existed. It's very embarrassing when somebody has a special area of expertise that I don't know much about and I still know more about it than them. He asserted that the best and most common way to become a professional photographer was to begin by publishing a book. I gently told him that I didn't think this was so, but told him also, to his relief, that no reputable publishing house would make him pay to publish the book. Clearly the FHM pictures on the wall and on his laptop screensaver are actually research. The Frenchman has been at war with the South African, because the South African allegedly did something I didn't understand that meant only he could access the hotel's wireless internet network. He talked to me for a long time about how he knew psychology and so would win this war, especially if he had my support. I said I wasn't particularly interested, and the Frenchman explained that this was why Australia had a very pleasant history and South Africans had apartheid. I had nothing left to say. The night before I left, the Frenchman and I watched a DVD called Deer Hunter on his laptop. The South African had borrowed the DVD from someone else in the hotel, and when the Frenchman said that this someone else had said it was fine for him to sub-borrow it, the South African fetched this someone else, who said it wasn't so, and so on and so on. I was interested in watching this DVD because on Sunday night it had been mentioned at a baked dinner at Jessie's pub on Fleet Street, after a day of chilly sightseeing with Jessie and Lyle that began with a walk to see them changing guards at Buckingham Palace (a kind policeman told me to get down off the base of the fence where I was standing, 'only because it sets off the alarm' - even though I've seen people photographing themselves with the beefeaters, people are no longer allowed beyond the outer fence, presumably in case we went down with malice), anticlimaxed with an attempt to see 10 Downing Street (the entire street is actually fenced off, which led Jessie to ponder the inaccuracy of a certain television show and ask the guard, 'Is Little Britain filmed here? You know, the scenes on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street?' The guard didn't think so.) and concluded with a walk past the Tower of London and some roasted chestnuts from a street vendor. The baked dinner was to farewell a Canadian who had worked at the bar alongside Jessie and lived there, in a room Jessie and Lyle will now take over. I accidentally ingratiated myself with the wifely half of the married couple who run the place (probably because I actually listened to her conversation), and had a long and increasingly serious conversation with her while everyone else played Monopoly and we watched King Kong (watched enough to know that I didn't need to see any more, and that Peter Jackson is not perhaps a filmic genius - repeatedly flipping back and forwards between two people's faces as they look at each other in silence achieves an effect that could simply be achieved by one carefully acted shot of each, even where one is a giant ape). We discussed the pleasant nature of Londoners, the difference between London and Sydney, the experience of not having children, and finally the fact that King Kong has a sad ending, which seemed to convince nobody else in the room, who laughed uproariously at her. (I've been thinking recently about the death of tragedy, the fact that in a world where everyone is supposed to have free will and the ability to control their own destinies, the inevitability and fated aspect of tragedy are impossible, which is why John Carroll argues that Hamlet is not a tragedy, but a melodrama. Movie remakes, however, are a kind of rebirth of tragedy, as we are waiting, waiting, for the ape to fall and for someone, anyone, to say that beauty killed the beast.) She began to tell me about another work of sorrowful Hollywood genius, Deer Hunter, and took me upstairs to play me the song that is its theme and that will make anyone cry. Eventually her husband came and saved us from each other, as we discussed the Iraq wars. The night dissolved into drinking games, the Canadian farewellee advised me to check out International Student House by Regents Park for cheap accomodation, and I taught everyone a few games from Dramac that involved standing in circles and clapping and chanting, which is just the kind of primal conclusion such a night needs. Jessie and I caught the last tube train home. Deer Hunter had its good points, but its very much a deep film for shallow people. Three quarters of the dialogue in the first half consists of the clunky erection of symbols on which the rest of the film might later draw, to prove that Al Pacino is a good man etc. An early scene at a wedding involves the bride and groom drinking from a double cup, rather like a candelabra, and being told that if they don't spill a drop they will have good luck forever. The crowd at the wedding don't notice, but the audience does (because we are watching a close-up of the bride's white dress) when two red drops fall straight down from an impossible direction to soil the lace and their future. I moved, with great relief, to the International Student House at Regent's Park. I had to take my luggage with me to work, because check out time at the Nevern and check in time at ISH did not correspond closely. Work, by the way, is going swimmingly. I spend eight hours, mainly photocopying, in a building with only four other very friendly people. My mother's fears that I wouldn't be well-dressed enough for them turn out to have been unfounded, and I do my photocopying and envelope stuffing surrounded by smiling books, which is my idea of a perfect environment. On the night I moved, we had a book launch in conjunction with Heinemann, for Serpents Tail author Kate Pullinger and Heinemann author Camilla Gibb. It was at Canada House, on Trafalgar Square, under glittering chandeliers. Afterwards, we ate at a restaurant in Chinatown, and I discussed publishing and, unrelatedly, Australia (without remembering that it was Australia Day) with Ravi Mirchandani, who sat next to me and, I learned later, is something of a celebrity in the British publishing world. His very monotone understated introduction for his author at the reading was apparently due to criticisms of a more elaborate introduction he had given last time. I only stayed at International Student House for two nights, and I lost my shampoo there, by leaving it in the bathroom. It is a very nice place, but impersonal because it is so nice. In a more personal place, nobody would have taken my shampoo when I forgot to take it with me. This is my first major setback on the trip, if you don't count living in Nevern House (as I was leaving the morning I checked out of Nevern, a girl complained about having mice in her room, only to be told that they do like to come in out of the cold this time of year) and waking up with a nosebleed one morning. My short stay at ISH was partly due to my discovery that the cost would be identical to Nevern, although the place was much much nicer. This morning I returned to Earls Court and moved into a small, cheap, laid-back backpackers hostel where the people are all friendly and apparently all Australian, there are only about twenty-four beds, and everything looks very nice. I'll be able to cook for myself as well, which was not available at ISH. A small community centre a few blocks from Earls Court station offers free internet access, which I am using now. In spite of actually having a nice place to stay, the last two nights have been my latest nights in London. The first was Chinese dinner after the launch (what an Australia Day - Canada House and Chinese food, at a launch for a book about Ethiopians), and the second was my walk last night, where I decided to see London by night (which lovers love, apparently). I started from the tube station at Picadilly Circus, ruled over by the great glowing Coca Cola sign that scribbles its colours in all the windows of the much older buildings that surround it. I ate like a king there - a Burger King, that is - and wandered through the theatre district and then to Trafalgar Square, of which I have become a fan. I studied the scenery in several directions from there, walked back towards Buckingham Palace, and then towards Big Ben. I was looking over the fence at the Westminster Abbey church as Big Ben struck twelve, then headed through backalleys until I found the Thames and decided I was exhausted enough to go home after a night of meandering. The tubes, however, were all closed, which is my first and only complaint about the London train station, which is ordinarily superb. So after my point of exhaustion I had to walk for forty minutes, retracing my steps through early morning London (I feel quite safe in London, and the area near the Thames is absolutely dead on a Friday night/Saturday morning anyway), including the difficult patch between Regents Park and Picadilly Circus, which I had traversed with the tube on my way out. Collapsed into bed. Woke the next morning to find I had left my shampoo in the showers the previous day and had lost it. Yes, I went to lost and found. Someone else was moving out at the same time as me, and left their suitcase in the hall as they went back for the rest of their stuff. 'Is this yours?' the Russian cleaner asked me. I told her I thought it belonged to the guy coming behind me. He then arrived and admitted it was his. 'Ah,' she said, relieved, 'I thought it was ze bomb, you know?' On my lunch break at work, instead of chatting with Serpents Tail's founder, as I usually do, I researched cheap flights to Europe. I'm looking at flying from Gatwick to Rome, then back, and am still looking for the best (cheapest) way to get a few days in Paris.

	2006.01.21  09.28 London (Something more about Tokyo before I move on: I forgot to mention the helpful 'How not to catch AIDS' cartoon showing at the airport. Advice: Don't have sex with someone with AIDS, but if an AIDS sufferer chooses to sneeze blue cartoon droplets of mucus all over your face, just smile and politely wipe it away.) I arrived in London on Wednesday afternoon, and proceeded to be terrified and interrogated by the customs man, and rightly so, because when I left him I realised that nothing I had said was actually true: that I did not have two thousand dollars (although I expect to reach that fiscal altitude with tax refunds and returned rental bonds at some point), that I was not staying with my cousin in Earls Court (because her landlady has recently turned evil and will not allow overnight visitors in her lair), and that I wasn't here to visit my cousin (it seemed ridiculously complicated to explain and difficult to believe that I would be working for free at a publishing company). 'Don't you be working at the bar,' he warned as I left, relieved, 'I'll be checking up on you.' I rode the famous tube (very well organised; it has my complete admiration. I was very fortunate in my timing, as the government's efforts to encourage people to use Oyster cards for their travel means that prices have dropped dramatically for Oyster card users, including me.) through tall brick buildings and grey London skies to Earls Court, where I called my cousin's boyfriend and waited for him to arrive at the station, watching for anyone looking dirty and wearing a green shirt (the two attributes for which he had warned me to watch out). When he arrived, we walked around the station and had a pint at the local pub, my usual polite 'I've just met you and because of that and only that I will drink the beer you bought me' method of forcing down this disgusting drink tempered with my sense that in London one ought to have a pint sometimes. Today I'm in an internet cafe in Earls Court. The theme from Bridget Jones is playing on the radio above our heads, adding to the Bridget Jones leitmotif running through my trip. The first thing I searched for on altavista was free internet access in London. I can't afford to regularly update if I have to pay a pound every time. On of my minor hobbies here is performing inconclusive sums in my head to learn whether I can afford to live. We walked from the bar to the room where Jessie and Lyle are staying, a very nice single room bedsit, with a high ceiling and charming old furniture. This will be the setting for the play that I am realising will not be started in London, because I don't think I'll have the time alone to work on it. We caught the train to Big Ben, and then walked along the Thames, admiring all the sights glowing in the night. The weather was charming and tolerable, particularly after I had steeled myself for unbearable cold. 'Weather eminently bearable' I messaged my parents the next day. I stayed at the bedsit, did not encounter the monstrous landlady of myth and legend, and was crushed into sleep under the weight of tiredness my jet lag had built up. Day two in London: Jessie and Lyle each went to work, and I signed up at the Nevern Hotel in Nevern Place, thinking it looked quite nice, breakfast was included, and the pinboard was covered in friendly notes saying, 'I will never forget my time at the Nevern'. If I wanted to stay for a week, only group rooms were available, so I agreed to a group room and left. I walked through Kensignton Gardens and Hyde Park. The cold is like homesickness; it only gets to you when you sit still too long. The wind swept through the park and brushed the serpentine into rippling scales. The Albert Memorial is the most impressive thing I've seen yet, a monument to mourning, baroque in sentiment and execution. I admired the war memorial, went to Grosvener Square because I recalled its mention in The School for Scandal (it was bombed in WWII and is now London's tribute to America, including a statue of Roosevelt and an eagle standing at either end of the park), and finally made my way to Buckingham Palace, which I didn't recognise. For some reason, I expected it to be crimson. On my way home I visited Harrods, because Lyle had told me that it was a sight worth seeing, with its luxury washrooms and Egyptian-style escalator rooms. I returned to Jessie and Lyle's house, where my luggage still waited, and while Jessie was at work watched an obnoxious rcreated documentary about Tony Blair's youthful efforts to become a rock and roll singer. For the first time, I was a Blair sympathiser as the clownish recreations completely ignored his friends' descriptions of his kindness and charisma in favour of fumbling goofiness and an impression of his accent. By the time it was over, I was exhausted and took my bags down to the Nevern Hotel, where I met the first of my roommates, a South African who has lived there a few months looking for work in IT. He looks like Vinnie Jones with false teeth. He has false teeth. He advised me not to use my sleeping bag, in case bed bugs got in, and explained snooker to me. My other roommate, a Frenchman, advised me to get out of the Nevern as soon as I could, and said that he thought I was a good man. The walls are neatly decorated with photographic portraits of naked women. The smell is musty and male. The next day, I went to work, catching the tube to Arsenal station, where I admired the stadium and walked through the omnipresent and unseen drizzle to eventually find Blackstock Mews and my place of work. It was great. I am actually eager to go to work and in dread of the time I have to spend at home (Nevernland). I spent the day putting together review kits, chatting with various people at the Publishing House, and flicking throuhg the books surrounding me. Regardless of Feng Shui's opinion on the matter, I love being surrounded by books. It's like having a big pile of mail to be opened whenever I like. Lisa, in charge of publicity, for whom I was folding, stapling, franking, and enveloping the review kits, mentioned that one pound flights to various places in Europe were available through the cheap travel agents (I just looked them up, and unfortunately would have to book the first ones Isaw THIS WEEKEND, which I'm not quite ready to do. Maybe tomorrow.), and inadvertently convinced me to go to Rome. I'm just realising how much free time I'll have when my working period is over. After my official workday was over, I jumped on a computer to look at the various accomodation websites my co-workers had told me about. I emailed two guys who live in East London and have a room to fill for a month or so, which would be ideal. That night I bought ingredients for food, found that I had no chance of getting access to the Nevern Hotel kitchen at dinnertime, so instead thought I would have a nap and slept through the night. My roommates came in as I was drifting off, and one defended me against having the light turned on by the South African. French: How would you like it if we turned on the light at six in the morning while you are sleeping in until nine and not going to work? South African: Eight. French: And why did you punch me this morning? South African: Did I punch you? French: Yes, when I woke you, you punched me. South African: It's what I do when people interrupt my sleep. I didn't even know I'd done it. I woke up and you were on the floor. French: Is it a reflex, or deliberate? I would hate to see your wife. Two front teeth missing, ha ha ha, black eye, ha ha ha.