Arriving in Sydney

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A plane leaves San Francisco at 22.30 on Wednesday night and arrives fourteen hours later in Sydney at 8.30 on Friday morning. What is the time difference between San Francisco and Sydney?

It sounds like a GCSE maths question that I would have got horrible wrong or something Douglas Adams might have written. At the time of writing this it is now 16.45 in Sydney, 21.45 in San Francisco and I am sat in bed having spent a night watching a Coen brothers movie, never the best if you wish to feel normal, Mickey Rourke in 'The Wrestler', a documentary on Richard Dawkins attempting to find a theory of everything and half of a Sub tittled French movie called 'The Grocers Son'. In between watching this visual fair on a six inch monitor placed thirty centimetres from my face I slept crunched between arm rest, leg cramping foot space and hundreds of other passengers in various contortious states of semi consciousness. The Qantas flight staff kept me well fed and provided a hot towel to wipe away my slumber but despite their best efforts I do not feel normal.

So I'm showered and shaved when Brett and Jo return from work. I iron a shirt and drink a couple of beers which seem to stabilise my body and a mind that is unsure what time, day or where it is. We head out to a lovely little vegetarian restaurant which is just around the corner from where our hosts live in Balmain.I eat goats cheese wrapped in red pepper for starter and a delicious lasagna for my main. Desert is something else! I eat a hot sticky fig pudding sent down from the heavens to bless my pallet. We manage a bottle of champaign and two bottles of white wine before moving on to a pub called Dicks. It is a short while after we have sat down with our drinks when about six police enter the pub with a dog. The dog handler takes the dog around the tables coaxing it to sniff at every ones bag. It seems a little intrusive into our pleasant evening and we are not the only ones to feel that it's a strange and heavy handed police tactic. There was a very mellow friendly atmosphere in the pub before the police came with no hint of any drug use or pending problems, Now people frown and mutter looking at each other in disbelief. They take a man outside to search him. A grey haired gentle man asks one of the police men what is going on and gets a curt reply about them just doing their job. There is a brief conversation at the end of which the police man tells the gentleman that he is too intoxicated and can either leave the pub or be taken out and given a fine of $550. I do not think that these particular officers have been trained very well in community liason. We have done nothing wrong but feel uncomfortable. We move on down the road to another pub called The Welcome and are enjoying a drink, a chat and a bit of a dance to the music. It is not long before the police enter the pub with their dog and sweep the pub once again intruding into our pleasant evening. We finish our drinks and leave to go home where Brett mixes some Long Island Ice teas and we play tennis, baseball and boxing on the Wii, dance a bit and enjoy a bit of good natured banter.

I wake hot, sweaty and sneezing with a predictable hangover at around eight thirty. I am sure that I have not had enough sleep but cannot stay in bed to stew in my own juices. I have an attack of the sneezes and think that I might have woken everyone up as one by one they all emerge in various bedraggled and wounded states. We eat a light breakfast and wonder down to Darling Harbour where we eat delicious tapas. Patas Bravas, Stuffed Vine leaves, grilled Halloumi and Baba ganoush washed down with a few glasses of red wine. We take a slow walk around the harbour buy a fruit smoothie then visit Loft bar for cocktails. It is busy with about eight hen do's going on simultainiously packing the place with giggling women in various states of drunkeness and dress. Jo has a cocktail that tastes like a cold cup of coffee, Lou opts for a creamy, sweet chocolate drink and I sip on a Cuba Blazer, Havana club 7 anos flamed with cigar tobacco leaves, creme de cacao and a hint of cinnamon served in a heated brandy balloon. Oh yeah that's the good stuff.

We return to Jo and Brett's house sink a few beers and go back out onto Darling High Street to Nood, an unpretentious, simple budget Thai restaurant. I eat half a chicken Satay for starter which is horrible and vow to only eat chicken at quality establishments from now on and follow with a spicy hot stir fry, the chillies are so hot I get instant hick ups as soon as I eat one. I try drinking a glass of water backwards but it seems only time will cease the hick ups. A bottle of wine or too later we retire to bed agreeing on a healthy alcohol free day on Sunday.

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