Greetings from Down Under Poms!
It’s day time here and you’re still shrouded in darkness. MENTAL!
It’s been a topsy-turvy few days. We left Edinburgh at about 11pm on Sunday night towing the Poetry Take-Away behind us. It only fell off once, so that was good. We drove through the night, which was fucking horrible, with only about 90 minutes kip at Wetherby services and lots of frayed nerves and Relentless. I had about four hours at home, which were pretty fraught too, tears before nap time etc etc. At 4pm on Monday we (Tim Clare, me and Laura Stimson from Writers’ Centre Norwich) got a taxi to Heathrow. I ate crisps and drank more Relentless. At Heathrow we met up with Hannah Jane Walker and our little crew of intrepid antipodean adventurers was formed.
The first flight (12 hours to Hong Kong) was easy, we were so tired from the previous night we slept all the way there, with a brief break from the Zs to eat the plane food, which we have all developed a taste for. The second flight was a mere 8 hours. Between naps I watched bad James Bond films and ate more delicious, nutrias plane food. Hurrah!
We got to Melbourne on Wednesday morning and despite feeling pretty tired I am now at least fully on Australian time. Having said that, everyday feels like a week and I have the strange sensation of feeling like I’ve been here forever and also not really able to come to terms with the fact that I left Edinburgh almost a week ago.
On the work front, Tim and I did a gig to 180 teenagers yesterday which went really well, we were even asked to pose for photos and sign autographs. Feeling pretty full of ourselves we ate like kings at Nandos and went out for a few drinks last night. There was a free bar for festival (this is Melbourne Writers’ Festival) authors in a lovely bar in the north part of town. Tim and I had to slip away for an hour or two to do an interview on ABC Victoria at about 8m, which we enjoyed thoroughly. The presenter Derek was an old pro (I don’t mean prostitute) and made us feel very comfortable indeed. Back at the party we hooked up with Hannah and Laura, who was beating us on the wine, and quipped our way through to midnight and a taxi home.
In other news I got a five star review from Broadway Baby for the Edinburgh show. Not much good to me now, but nice nevertheless.
I’ve got nothing on today so I might go and visit Albert Park, where they race the F1 cars and eat now Nandos. Good-byes!