Better late than never

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Well its been a while coming but here is blog no.2. So much has happened since blog 1 I dont know where to start.

Ill start with the serious bit, sadly our friend Roxy had to go home about a month ago as her bro passed away, so if you read this Rox, were still all thinkin of you and hope to see you back soon.

So November & December flew by with a mixture of rain, wind and unbelievable heat. We ended up staying in that pit of a hostel for over a month! Was good crack in the place though, met quite a few people. Me and Charles were lucky enough to share a room with a couple of swedish girls for a week which im sure any man would appreciate. they were actually really cool but they didnt drink which was a bit of a downer. I tried to pretend i didnt drink much so i could get stuck in but it didnt last too long as i staggered in on more than one occasion steaming drunk at 3am singing at the top of my voice. well they left half way through december and i had to an even worse room than the first for a week. again 0 window, opposite the toilets so it stank, it was about 10ft by 12ft with 2 bunk beds in so totally crampt and only 1 light worked in the full room. i also got the pleasure of sharing with some psycho kiwi who didnt leave the room for 4 days solid so i only went in to kip.

we had some massive sessions in the place, 1 memorable night was a massive piss up in the hostel kitchen which ended in matty going to bed early. we went up to find him flat out on the bedroom floor surrounded by copious amounts of vomit mixed with foot long subway. I had the pleasure of cleaning it up, which wasnt to bad as i was steaming, there is a photo of my honorouable act knocking round somewhere. We found a class club round the corner from the hostel called world bar. its like an old school house over 4 storys with balconies and all sorts, its still done out like a house upstairs too with fireplaces, pictures on the walls and armchairs scattered about. plays some great music, big indie nights with some dance mixed in too. we went to a couple of class nights before leaving the hostel, was weird sweating my arse of singing to christmas tunes.

Anyway we were very nervous as christmas approached, there were 9 of us (by this time there was me, jc, matty, jimmy, jt, gob (liam), charles, dan and a ausy/dutch girl called heidi) looking for somewhere to stay and we couldnt find a house for love nor money and the prices at the hostel went up to $40 a night on the 18th dec. By early dec jamz decided to take the bull by the horns and snapped into action. after a week we had viewings all over the place and secured a 4 bedroom house in a place called glebe. 1 problem was outstanding which was the house wasnt available till the 19th. we all refused to pay $40 to stay in that pit so we cut our losses and moved out. i (luckly) met a girl who very kindly let me stay with her as her room mate had gone away for christmas, but the rest of us were scattered all over the place and the majority of the boys stayed in a less busy hostel. it was less busy as there were only certain clientel who stayed there. the decor was pink and yellow walls and there was a big carebear painted on the entrance wall which kind of indicates the kind of 'boys' who normally stayed there. still kenna made sure there was a masculine touch left by the geordies by sneaking the receptionist from cooee backpackers (we nicknamed her skelitor) into the room to help him stay warm through the night.

Anyway we moved into the house the next day, along with Heidi's boyfriend, jonno. from the outside the house looks nice but thats where it stops. ill attach some pics so you can make your own mind up about it but its no palace. We have told a couple of little white lies to get it, like saying there are only 6 of us staying there but the landlord doesnt seem bothered who is there as long as noone smokes inside and we dont smash the place up. Its a pretty big, wood flooring throughout 2 massive bedrooms and 2 smaller. At the minute we are using one of the bedrooms as a second living room. There is a another pretty big living room and a smaller breakfast room attached to the kitchen. The only down side is the lack of furniture (there are a couple of mattresses and an old settee and table) but the worst thing is it only has an outside netty, now i know what it was like when you were growing up lol. To be honest its not that bad, just rubbish through the night trying to avoid the cockroaches and spiders, but its warm all of the time so i wont have to worry about freezing my bot to the seat. Its so cheep between us though we arnt bothered whats there and who stays, its only costing $780 per week including bills. (the hostel with no windows was $126pppw). JC's bro, Dave and his mate, Rob have moved in on Christmas day (although Dave has gone AWOL today but ill come to that later) meaning its only $65 per person per week, unbelievable!!!! We have spent the last couple of weeks getting all the necessary bits and pieces, we arnt blowing the bank on sofas and things as we are only in there until 27th Feb but that is ideal for us as we are all looking to move on at the start of march anyway.

Its in a great place as well, there are a few pubs and supermarkets near by, there is actually a pub (the nags head) 3 doors down from where we live which is great, plus it does bottle takeouts which is good when we cant be bothered to go far on a night out. Also its only about 30 minutes walk from darling harbour which is like sydneys equivilent of the quayside, loads of bars and restraunts etc.

So what have we done since we moved into the place...... basically nothing but party 24/7. ill stick to the big nights. Christmas eve.... very drunken night, I couldnt speak english even before we went out but i wasnt the worst. we were all playing ring of fire and drinking beer, red goon, white goon, sherry and port which didnt mix too well. Gob was the worst of the lot of us. We went out clubbing and he didnt even make that. one of the lads found him upstairs on his hands and knees honking up half cooked beefburgers mixed with goon. there is an amazing picture, ill try and attach it. We got taxis to a place called bondi junction where there is another great club, i cant remeber what it was called but i had a really good night there, i can remember dancing round on a stage to 'all i want for christmas' by mariah carey. Anyway by about 2am we called it a day and got taxis back. i cant remember any of the following but i was in the taxi with jc and jimmy. they went off for food and i wondered back to the house. jonny came back to find me asleep on the doorstep pointing at the lock on the door, he picked me up and carried me a bedroom so i could strip of and go to bed, my next memory was waking up at 11am still fully clothed on the wooden floor beside the bed. heidi had the same problem but she had a slightly better idea, she climbed a tree and jumped over onto the upstairs balcony, clever girl. and jc, dont think your getting away without me telling this one. you see whilst looking for food jonny and jimmy split up. jonny was walking down a road when all of a sudden he got a massive urge for the toilet. he couldnt hold it in so he jumped in a bush, through down his shorts and released an almighty dump into a bush, he said a couple walked past and he was so close he could have touched them, if only there was a camera there. needless to say he was down a pair of socks and boxers the next day. talking of the next day, we passed where he had taken the dump to find he had been leaning on a war momorial whilst dropping the log, some kids have no respect!!!

The next couple of days were 100% alcohol fuelled, we just drank through christmas day, we were going to do a secret santa but decided to give it a miss and all just chucked in $50 for beer which got us enough to last until boxing day. we had a couple of quiet days until 28th when we went to see fery corsten at a huge club called home. it wasnt as much of an alcohol fuelled night so wasnt amazing, but it was a good set. This was when jim pulled out all of the stops to prove to himself he could actually drink, and boy, did he drink. he had 1 hours sleep over 48 hours and maintained at least 1 drink per hour, it was a pleasure to see, James Anderson..... legend.

The next big big night out for the rest of us was new year, which i have to say actually lived up to expectations. we sat all day discussing going to the harbour at 9pm to watch the fireworks then going to the club but we were having such a good time sitting in the garden we just watched them from the balcony (well we could see flashes in the distance). loads of people turned up to party with us, i think there were about 18 ppl knocking about before we left. We set off for the club about 10ish, walked all the way, got in fine and just started partying, the music was great, there were loads of great girls (i had a bit of crack on with about 10 stunners including a couple of persian girls who worked for emerates, they were absolutly amazing). We had an unbelievable view of the darling harbour fireworks at midnight, a big sing song and i even got bought couple of drinks (although 1 was a double vodka straight which rode a couple of times. We stayed there until 6am then made our way back on the monorail as dawn broke, was fantastic. we got back up at 11am to celebrate uk new year with a beer too but then we all made a quick retreat back to bed (i seem to remember sleeping on the kitchen floor for a while).

So as 2008 comenced, we started as we had left off and made our way to coogee to have some pints with the lads mate from school called adam who live in perth now and some of his mates. this is when things again got patchy. started off well when at about 4pm Dave got chucked out of a bar for being mortal, then him and charles got thrown off the beach for startelling the children. we ended up in a big bar and had a good bit of crack on. people started sliding off about 10ish, i left about 10:30, by myself, at this point my sydney epic adventure began. I got a bus quite easily to bondi junction, from the junction you have to get a train back to sydney city centre which takes about 15 minutes then its a little walk back to the house. i got to the station at bondi juntion, ran down and jumped on a fairly busy train. the station info screen said the train was going to depart in 12 minutes so i got comfortable and closed my eyes for 40 winks. i was awoken a couple of minutes later by the conductor poking me to ask if this was my stop. in a semi drunken, sleepy state is stumbled off the now empty train with him onto the platform. looked around and anounced 'i think ive missed my stop'. he asked where i wanted to be and i said sydney city centre. he (thankfully) held back from laughing and said 'son your a fair distance from the city'. after a couple of profanaties i asked what train i needed to get back, he responded with, 'there are no trains until 6am', following further profanaties i asked if there was a bus or if i could walk, he then laughed and said it would probably take me a day to walk back. So i then asked how he would suggest i get home. he said the only way was to get a taxi, i was not a happy bunny but i held in my anger cos he was such a nice bloke and he went and booked me a taxi. he came back a couple of minutes later and said the taxi would be about half an hour so i just sat on a chair with my head in my hands boiling up. i didnt want to kick off though so i decided to occupy myself. i noticed there were some rail maps so i decided to see where i actually was. i picked one up and wondered down the platform to look for a station sign, it took me a while to find one (the platform was huge) and i found the place was called Waterfall. i started looking on the map, following the stations from sydeny down, and down, and down until i eventually found it. there was no scale on the map but it was about 30 stations away from where i wanted to be. it then dawned on me that i hadnt been on the train for 2 minutes, i looked up at the station clock to see 00:10, i had slept for about an hour and a half!!!!! anyway the conductor came back out and said i should wait on the road for the taxi, so i followed the platform up to litterally find this place had a station, a motorway and a couple of dumped cars and that was the town of Waterfall. I plonked my arse on the motorway crash barrier and looked down as a coal train went underneith me. i did for a second consider jumping onto the back of the train but then sanity provailed and i sat tight for about 12:45 the taxi arrived. i jumped in and asked how much back to glebe, the huge sloth taxi driver turned back, laughed and said about $120. i went to get out and he said he could take me to a place where i could get an all night bus for about $40. I was convinced, what else was i going to do, so i began another epic journey for about 45 minutes. luckily i had my card on me as i only had $5 in my wallet. the taxi had a card machine in it and he said i woud probably need about $10 for the bus so i got cashback which in all cost about $60. he dumped me out on a desolate road with small shanty houses, a couple of bars, a massive target (a shop like primark) and a bus stop. i paid him and he pointed out the bus stop as well as where a hotel was and then he sped off so i sauntered over to the Cronulla bus stop. i looked at the bus times to discover the next bus wasnt until 6am. at this point i went totally ballistic for about 5 minutes. i then calmed down and realised a little asian guy was sitting on the curb looking terrified about 10 meters away from me. i didnt want to talk to him incase he thought i was going to chin him but knowing someone else was there made me think there might be a bus so i sat down and waited. after about 15 minutes i saw my salvation. stopping at a crossroads down the road was a bus. is sprinted down, knocked on the door and asked if there was actually a bus, he said he was the circualar and he would pick me up in about 10 minutes. he drove off as i danced with drunken joy back to the bus stop. he did come back, i hopped on, it was, suprisingly only $5.70. I took a seat and mulled over my journey for the 2 hours it took to get back home and started to get wound up again. i eventually got in at 3am and told my story to jt who was still sitting up. he then informed me that rob had fallen through the dinning room window and had to go to hospital with a badly cut arm in a booze related fall. luckily he is fine and the cut wasnt as bad as it first looked, it did kind of bring things into perspective and calm me down. Ive just googled it and i had a tasty 70 mile round trip. the irony of it all is i would have caught an earlier train at bondi junction but i was being a tight arse by trying to get a $2 student ticket instead of paying the normal $3, ended up costing me 60 bucks lol.

Sooooo we are nealy at the end of this post, as im sure most of you know it was my birthday yesterday, thanks very much for all the birthday texts and e-mails. I got pretty plastered, amongst the beers i had a jagerbomb, a suicide tequila (snort salt, down tequila, lemon in the eye) a couple of licked eyeballs and a brandy contest, we also got stopped by the police for seeing who could jump highest and touch shop signs, 26 years old eh.

Oh nearly forgot about the dave awol thing, when we got in last night we were talking about eating contests. him and rob had a bread eating contest, dave spewed twice but finished before rob, but rob held his and finished about a second later. a massive argument ensued about who won and dave ended up packing his bags and leaving. he has just facebooked kenna saying he slept on a bench outside of a hostel last night and is VERY hung over today. we were pissing ourselves watching it, leaving over a bread eating competition, great stuff!

Well im off, as i said last time, facebook me or drop me an e-mail if you have any news from home. hope you all had a great christmas and new year and ill try and update this a bit sooner next time.

See you all later

Love

Jamie x

p.s. dont mention jobs

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Comments

[Duncan Jennings]

Loving the stories
Hi Mate, Sounds like you are having a wicked time.. love the thought of you trying to pretend to stay sober for the scandan girls. Try not to die in a horrific alcohol fuelled accident and look forward to catching up for beers when you're back. D. P.S. London is fucking miserable and I'm tempted to hop on a plane.