Daaaan Saaaaaaf

I’ve only been in Perth for 6 days, but already I’ve covered more miles than that pesky crow who flies everywhere measuring distances. And he gets around.

Last Thursday I gratefully accepted the offer of a lift down to the south coast and back, where Murch who I’m staying with had to go on business. To be honest,  I was mildy confused at first when he asked if I wanted to go to Denmark. Although I’m keen on travelling the world,  given that I had just arrived in Australia, a trip to Scandinavia seemed a little counter productive. Google soon allayed any concerns I had and reliably informed me that Denmark was in fact a town in the Great Southern region of Oz. Better yet, we’d be going back via Margaret River, a stunning area in the south west that I hadn’t had a chance to visit last time I was here.

With kangeroos and poisonous black snakes putting Australia way ahead in the road kill stakes, and emus dawdling by the side of the road, the scenery went from thick rural bush to deep forest as we clocked up some serious miles.

To stop this post running into the essay it would become if I recounted every step, I’ll just choose one. And that is the evening I met a prospector.

For those of you reading who are unemployed, or perhaps just looking for a change of scene; a break from the 9-5 grind, can I suggest prospecting? The rules are simple. Each year, you spend some time doing a good lot of research. Then you pick up your metal detector, swag and oh, maybe your dog too for that rustic effect, and head into the middle of absolute nowhere. Now, get ready to spend the next 3 or 4 months roaming around Western Australia’s predominantly untouched earth, swinging your metal detector and waiting for the ‘beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeeep’ which signifies one thing: jackpot.

Five years ago, John from Denmark hit the jackpot. He found $100,000 of gold buried under the ground in Western Australia, and brings in a haul worth thousands each year. On Thursday night, he put some examples on the dinner table for me to look at; each pure gold nugget is worth hundreds of dollars.

This place is a wealth.

Sod the writing career, I’m off  for a dig.

She arrives!

I have arrived in Perth, Western Australia, via Singapore, via duty free, via the land of no sleep and fat ankles. On the upside, I think I pretty much lynched the record for most films watched in a 24 hour period. First was Disney Pixar’s ‘Up’, next I went for ‘500 Days of Summer’, then err…’The Never Ending Story’ (what?!), followed by ‘The Usual Suspects’ and then ‘Julie & Julia’. The latter is about blogging, and I’d like to take this opportunity to say how much films about blogging irritate me, or rather the bloggers in films irritate me. Of course, they might not irritate me at all. It could be down to the fact I had about..ooh…see, I want to say 2 hours sleep but I think that’s an exagerration. So we’ll stick with a safe 1.5.

I’m staying in Claremont, a little town on the outskirts of Perth with a family who I stayed with last time I was here in 2003. I was picked up by Jamie, their youngest son, and immediately whisked to Cottesloe beach. Although overcast and a little cloudy, it was still a reminder that I’m somewhere warm enough to step onto a seafront wearing less than full ski gear.

“Cottesloe beach…isn’t this the one where all the shark attacks are?” I ventured, looking at the crystal blue waves. “Yeah…they’ve got a lot more common recently as well.” Came the response. Funnily enough, I decided to stay on the beach while Jamie went in for a dip, only to see him return less than 2 minutes later. He blamed the cold, but, well…you know.

Today the sun is most definitely out and so is my suncream. With a little help from a bottle of St Tropez and factor 30, I’m aiming for a hint of brown.

*Jaws theme tune, fade to close*

 

LONDON, you disappoint me

In 5 days time, I’ll be heading straight into 30 degree Australian heat. This poses a problem for me and my British wardrobe, which is currently epitomised by this year’s summer must have; a rain mac.

Happily, I gave myself 2 weeks to kit myself out appropriately. However it seems that shopping, my unemployment activity du jour, has turned into the biggest let down since Horne and Corden tried to be funny in front of an audience. Seriously, who knew that trying to find holiday gear in Autumn would be such a chore? This is London, and the world’s greatest shopping street is on my door step. Yet aside from £100 Dior bikini tops in the cruise section of Selfridges, there isn’t a viable piece of swimwear to be found from one end to the other. Believe me, I’ve looked. I’ve scoured. I’ve lost the will to live.

Shops are currently – unsurprisingly - stacked full to the brim with an array of winter ensembles; boots, scarves, gloves and (vom) Uggs. Topshop currently houses more knitwear than an old peoples’ home, and don’t even get me started on French Connection. My corneas are still recovering from the glare of a thousand sequin covered dresses currently adorning their shop fronts. Give me strength. Give me sunglasses. Oh, no…wait, I can’t find those, either. 

Is it so much to ask that Roxy keeps a small corner of their Regent Street store stocked with more surf than snow? Is it inconceivable that Topshop, the biggest fashion shop in Europe, could devote more than one measly rail (preferably in more than two colours) to swimwear? And where have all the O’Neill shops gone, anyway?

I know what you’ll say. Buy it out there, get it online. But you’re missing the point. This is London and I shouldn’t have to.

 FACT.

The latest brain wave

Back in August, I had a brain wave. It came as a result of getting thoroughly bored with the prospect of spending the year fruitlessly filling out application forms for jobs. I’d spent months going from secretarial job to secretarial job, to work experience, to underpaid media work, to secretarial job…to unemployment and back again. I was fed up. I was single. I was probably standing in the rain in central London having just handed over £46.50 for a week of delays courtesy of Transport for London at the time, wondering where it all went wrong. So I decided I would do what any single, self respecting, career minded, ambitious girl would do in the same situation: book an 8 month jaunt around the world to take my mind off it all.

As luck would have it, the next week I bumped into my good friend Sods Law. Lovely chap, he is. We always seem to meet each other at the strangest of times. Sods law cropped up and found me a job that I had to turn down because I was now exiting the country, and introduced me to a nice bloke who I’d have to reluctantly leave come November. Good that, isn’t it?

Sods Law aside, I’m off on the 9th November to Perth, which I’ll be using as a base to explore the West coast of Australia before heading over to Adelaide, Melbourne and ending up in Sydney in time for New Year. The plan is to make  some friends along the way to prevent me spending Christmas and New Year huddled under the harbour bridge with a can of VB and a possum called Fred, but we’ll see how that goes.

From there, I’ll be going over to Auckland in New Zealand where I hope to throw myself out of a plane, demolish some white water rapids and do all that other extreme stuff you’re meant to do when you’re in New Zealand, man. More likely, I’ll be perfecting the art of fake tanning to hide the fact that after 4 months away from home, my legs still resemble a couple of Pritt Sticks.

From New Zealand, it’s onto Fiji for a week of island hopping, then over to Los Angeles. Then comes the fun bit, getting from LA to New York without missing my flight home and still maintaining enough funds to enable me to blitz Bloomingdales. I’m packing heels for that bit.

So instead of boring you with those bulk emails that every traveller does and everyone else hates, add this blog to your favourites,  subscribe via RSS, or get it delivered to your inbox.  I promise to keep sunset, beach and general photos involving the sun, to a minimum.

Cinema sessions

Three time I went to the cinema last week. Three times. Mmmm.

I have a guilty secret though. One of the films was The Godfather, it was showing at the Prince Charles round the back of (vom) Leicester Square. I’ve never seen it. Like Scarface, it’s one of those films you really should have seen, and you pretend you’ve seen, and you smile and nod and act as though you’ve seen…but probably haven’t. You’re supposed to love it, too. It’s a classic.

So as we snuggled down into the double seats (or ‘lovers chairs’ if you want to give them the seedy name) at the back, my companion whispered in my ear. “I’m warning you. It’s a bit…slow”. Now slow I can deal with. Slow is good. Slow can be beautiful and interesting and revealing. Slow is not my issue with the Godfather; but I don’t know what the issue is. Perhaps it’s that I thought I’d like it, but I just didn’t. Well, I didn’t mind it, I just didn’t come away thinking ‘WAOOWWWW’, like I did with Scarface or err, The Never Ending Story. Juries out. I got a bit confused with who was who, then it ended, then we left. And that’s what I think about that.

Before that was a late night trip to (vom) Leicester Square again on Friday night for the premiere of Zombieland, starring Woody Harrelson and a load of others I’ve never heard of. You might have seen this advertised around, it’s seemingly everywhere at the moment. Even the No. 27 bus from Camden. I’d love to offer a really comprehensive review, but in truth, I’d been drinking since 5:30pm. By the time 11pm rocked up, I couldn’t tell if I was laughing at the Odeon curtains or the plentiful gags. But it was free, and Bill Murray’s cameo definitely was funny;  it wasn’t just the tequila laughing. Promise.

And before that was Wednesday. I’m all about Orange Wednesdays at the moment, the little text message of wonder and delight that gives you 2 for 1 cinema tickets on a (would you believe it) Wednesday. Essex drama Fish Tank is a new British offering which is well deserving of the critical applause it’s currently receiving. The main actress  (Katie Jarvis) is excellent; it’s funny, sad and poignant. In short, go see it. And have a little rave to Original Nutta near the end (or maybe that’s just me).

For more of my sparkling, brief and slightly useless opinions, you can see my IMDB film list & ratings on http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=43299769.

FYI: Ode to Leicester Square

Leicester Square is by far my least favourite part of central London. Forget the hoards that fill Oxford Street, dash the arrogance of the City aside like an oily rag… Leicester Square on a Saturday night is awful. I hate the promoters who work for night clubs where the only condition of entry is that you vaguely resemble a human, or used to before you drenched yourself in Oompa Loompa orange and a bottle of bleach.

I hate the generic bars and horrendously overpriced nightspots. I hate the crowds. I hate the restaurants which cramp you into corners and serve you something that probably was Italian food, once, before it got eaten and vomited back onto your plate. I hate the groups of 18-20 something men who have come all this way just to drink in a Yates pub. I hate the sleazy, tight trousered foreigners who leer at the lycra clad, barely legal to drink girls; all of them there because they don’t know, or can’t think of anywhere else to go.

I hate it and I’m not going back.

Not even if there’s a really good film on at the Odeon, and the tickets are free and they were giving away 10 free shots of free jagermeister to make the whole experience more bearable.

I love London.

I hate Leicester Square.

That is all.

The Rex

I’m becoming a cinema snob. Actually, scratch that – I am a cinema snob. We’ve been over this before; I don’t want to sit in a room with the great unwashed trying to watch a film while everyone around me eats food that looks and smells like a regurgitated onion. Not that I’ve always been so intolerant of the cinema experience. In fact, I had no problem with joining the heaving masses for a bit of Blair Witch back in the day, mostly because it didn’t cost the equivalent of a small European country to do so. Book online these days and the Warner Brothers happy-slap on a booking fee to rival Third World Debt. All that money and in return, you have to share an armrest while watching Matthew McConaughay fart out 90 minutes of hiwaaaarious Hollywood high-jinks. It’s just not happening.

So I’m branching out to pastures new, or, should I say old. The Rex is a 1930s cinema in Berkhamsted, just a short 40 minute trip up the A41 from London. Or 25 minutes if you’ve spent all afternoon lazing about watching The Inbetweeners and suddenly realise ‘Shiiiit, we’re going to be late.” There was an urgency you see, because this place is nice and as a result, it’s queue-round-the-block popular. Your tickets are held for 20 minutes after the film start time, after which they’re re-released. Plus, these weren’t just ordinary seats. I mean, you can book ordinary seats up in the circle if you want. But why would you, when for £10 you can sit in a comfortable swivelly armchair downstairs, with your own table and a bar that serves drinks throughout the film?

Then ahh, the film. We went to see Scarface, the Al Pacino classic that I’ve been smiling and nodding about for years. (You know, when you actually don’t have a clue what someone’s on about but you’re like yeaaah, suuure, I know that one har-har). There’s nothing quite like watching an old film the way it’s meant to be seen, on a huge screen that crackles with old skool authenticity. I was glued to the action for nearly 3 hours, and there wasn’t a numb bum in the place. Better still, I actually loved the film. Which is a bit of a relief really, as there’s nothing worse than finally watching a film you’ve been told is the best thing like, ever, oh my god why haven’t you seen it it’s a classic and thinking it’s a load of cat-vom.

So it’s safe to say I’ll be back. I don’t have a choice. Now I’ve been there, I can’t go anywhere else.

X Factor returns with live audience. Hurrah.

Oh good. Another series of X Factor is upon us and as if my magic, my urge to write a whinging, whining TV review has returned. My normally inactive social calendar experienced a rare blip on Saturday night and I was summoned to Cloud 23 in the Hilton in Manchester, so I missed the first show. Or so I thought. Luckily for me, the first of many unnecessary repeats was already underway on ITV when we got in at 2am. It seems that the age old defence of ‘Er, no, I didn’t watch X Factor, I have a life’ no longer stands. There truly is no escaping the Cowell Machine when the X Factor’s in town.

Due to these obsessive repeats that will blight your TV schedule for the next few months, there’s no need for me to recap on who did what and when. You’ll see it whether you like it or not. That’s another way of saying ‘I was a bit drunk and don’t remember’, although some details stand out more than others.

By and large all the acts were awful, I remember that much. Yes, even the “good” ones. You’ll know they’re meant to be good because Cowell will act all couldn’t-care-less before they perform. The format’s changed you see, so now nearly everyone sings along to a backing track reminiscent of the Greensleeves demo on a Fisher Price keyboard. Everyone, even those primed with a faux intro of bland questions before allegedly blowing the socks off the judges, emit the depressing aura of a well practised karaoke singer.

What’s more, the auditions now take place in front of a live audience. This means X Factor has joined the ranks of other programmes soundtracked by the mindless roar of easily pleased ITV viewers. Later, they’ll join the legions of armchair audiences in discussing each contestant and judge reaction as if it’s CCTV evidence after a crime or a factual report. It’s neither of these things. X Factor is a contrived, multi-million pound pantomime for thickies on a Saturday and those too hungover to know better the next day. Cameras pan over row upon row of bleating idiots as they cast their votes by way of cheers and jeers. Oh, hang on – not jeers, sorry. It turns out X Factor isn’t just Britains Got Talent without the dancing dogs after all, as insiders report that during the warm-up the audience are told that booing will not be tolerated. Cheers all round, then. The upshot is that the audience don’t even have to distinguish between good or bad any more. I wish they’d just shut up altogether.

So, we’ve got a live audience flapping their arms around like performing seals, cheesey backing tracks…what next? Ah, yes – the sob stories, the ‘this means everything to me’ speeches and usual selection of fat, ugly and tone-deaf contestants who don’t stand a chance. Wonderful. All of this is knotted together by the clever folks at the Join the Dots school of editing. Meaning those on screen are constantly cut off mid sentence and pasted next to a suitably fitting reaction, whether it actually happened that way or not. It’s meant to tell the audience exactly what they should be thinking, but this quick fire editing is clunky, disjointed and very, very American (aka, irritating).

It’s safe to assume that I won’t be tuning in next Saturday night. I’ve got a life, you see. That means I’ll be watching the second repeat on Sunday afternoon, before moaning about it again on Monday morning when my sensibilities have returned.

See you then.

Writing Away: Weekend Engineering Works

I’ve been a busy bee this month and have started writing for the Speaker’s Corner section on The London Word. My first post covers that weekly event that every Londoner knows and loves…Weekend Engineering Works on the tube. Mmm.

If you love TFL as much as I do, you can read it here.

Gracias.

Oh, how I love The Wire.

For months, it was all I read. Endless critical reviews going all gooey eyed over this series The Wire.Charlie Brooker, cynical bastard, didn’t stop gushing about it; expelling dribble all over his free promotional Boxsets.

The Wire is – and I keep saying this because it’s TRUE – the best TV show of the last 20 years. If you get into it, I can guarantee you’ll look at TV in a whole new light, marvelling at the heights it’s capable of achieving, and shaking your head with fresh horror at the lows it generally opts for. (link)

And that was back in 2007 for gods sake. In true Jo style, I’m late to the party, catching on two years later. But now I’ve got the complete collection, filmed, done, and discounted; I’m not paying an arm and a leg for each series (borrowed season 1, a friend had already watched it, bought season 2 for £12 off Amazon). Not for me this waiting around each week for the next installment. Quite frankly, I can’t imagine having to wait a week for the next episode of The Wire. It’s so good, I want it NOW. All of it. I watched three episodes on the trot last night alone. It’s turning me into a social recluse, I now live vicariously through the mean streets of Baltimore.

Yes, the lingo, the interweaving plots and characters, all that does take a bit of getting used to. I liked Brooker’s suggestion of putting subtitles on to help clear up the confusion. Even a couple of series in, you find yourself getting slightly lost and confused at who’s who and what’s where – but the main characters are all bang on and utterly believable.

McNulty, Stringer Bell, Avon Barksdale, Lester, Daniels…if you’ve never watched The Wire you won’t give a rats arse about any of these names. If you do, you will know why I am quivering with fear at only having one more episode of Season 2 left to go. Then I’m temporarily Wire-less. McNulty-no more. I’ll have to watch normal, terrestrial TV with mundane dramas set on Essex council estates. I might even have to watch (gulp) ITV until Amazon delivers Season 3 to my door.

No, actually…I’ll be desperate, but I won’t be ITV desperate.

In fact, the only bad thing about The Wire is that once you’ve watched it, everything else you try and watch becomes really, really rubbish.

Except for every programme shown on ITV, of course, because that was all rubbish in the first place.