When Melbourne was home

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One of the best qualities a city can possess is to take a pride in itself. When it gets this part right everything else just seems to fit in nicely; Melbourners just beam about the place. It is a city where sport is not just a mere pastime but a way of life. The competitve streak that runs through the core of the population like the writing through a stock of rock, leaves you in no doubt that, in the eyes of the people of Melbourne, their city is the outright victor in the endless debate as to which Australian city holds rank over the others. I received my introduction to Melbourne sitting a my desk in Maidenhead, England in the form of an email from my mate Joe who promised that if I stopped what I was doing immediately and booked a flight for the following day I would not be disappointed. It took slightly longer than that to get the wheels in motion but when I finally arrived in January, I thought back to that rainy afternoon in Berkshire and to my friend who hadn't let me down.

Forgive me for paraphrasing James Blunt, but my life is brilliant. Ok, I'm not a professional footballer, a Formula One driver or one of those Sultans that has 67 wives pandering to his every beckon call, but there's not a day that goes by when I don't think about how lucky I've been. In spite of this, I'll look back on my time In Melbourne as three of the best weeks of my life... that's how much craic I had there. But no matter how much you get from a particular city, it's the people you remember best and in Melbourne it was me and The Bull.

It was with a heavy heart that I left Kenny Mc and Dan behind in Sydney; their committments were to move on to New Zealand in search of work. But I still had 2 months left on my Australian Tourist Visa and I felt like I had only scratched the surface of what this great country had to offer. Venturing further west would mean that, for the first time in my life, I would truly be on my own - a ''single traveller'' to coin the commonly-used phrase which was just never intended for me. That was until McCarthy brought along his mate Stephen O'Connor to a game of golf on one of our last days in Sydney. I'm not sure how he got his nickname 'The Bull', but it fits him perfectly: a brute of a lad with the hybrid appearance of Ben Cohen and Desperate Dan. Ha, he'll love that! As much craic as Gerry Devenney on the drink, Steve shared Gerry's penchant of getting his banger out in the pub after half a dozen pints or so. In the firm belief that his bollocks were the raw materials with which to conjure his own contribution of the world of art, he would regale the ladies (I would've said girls but in fairness a couple were that old that I think they might've done the dishes at The Last Supper) with his drunken repertoire of genital contortions which included such delights as the hatching chicken, fly's eyes, the hamburger and even the Eiffel Tower. Steve is the only lad I know that has gone for a job interview in a Superman t-shirt, can't watch the TV with the volume on a odd-number and goes to the hospital when his phone breaks in the mistaken belief that it is an extension of his arm. All of the above granted, I couldn't have hand-picked a better lad to travel to Melbourne with and wouldn't swap my time there for anything... well almost.

Having missed his flight to New Zealand, McCarthy joined us for the road trip from Sydney and the first few days in St. Kilda. However, they were as blurry as looking at one of those hidden message pictures under water through Fergus McCann's glasses so not much I can say about them. We were sad to see the big man go when he eventually got himself sorted but it meant we could concentrate on digs and jobs an all those things that you'll never get done in a month of Sundays with a loonball like McCarthy prowling about. With both our initial experiences and reports from friends to go on, we decided that St. Kilda would be the place to settle for a few weeks. The pad we got was more basic than instinct, but with our own kitchen and living room, it was more than suitable for a lad that had been living out a backpack in shared accommodation for 3 months. The gaff was in the same complex as Matty Colgan who had shacked up with a Scottish girl he met travelling so it was all very tea and Timtams when our livers could take no more.

St Kilda itself was tailor-made for us. It had the bars and beaches as good as anywhere else we'd been spoiled or just about. The Vineyard on a Sunday in late summer for me eclipses The Mercantile in Sydney easily and the Beach Hotel in Byron by a fraction. St Kilda is the type of place that just screams 'livable'; only it doesn't scream, it gently coaxes you to hang around. An anecdote that paints the picture is that one Sunday with nothing particular on our minds we went out for a stroll and by the time we'd returned I'd taken part as a volunteer holding a rope for a street trapeeze act, we'd watched 4 deadly girls sweat it out over the beach volleyball court and we were invited salsa dancing by 2 equally-attractive kitesurfing burds. And that was without even trying...

Despite the fact I hadn't planned on working during my trip, (and, of course, it would be illegal for me to do so) I was in no hurry to leave this place where I was so happy. So with Steve working at least 14 different jobs a day, I decided to chance my luck and tarted up my C.V. with a view to securing a bar job. Veludo was your archetypical trendy / poncy bar, delete as appropriate. They were looking for an experienced cocktail bartender so, full in the knowledge that I'd have no problem knocking up the odd G&T, I convinced them I was the man for the job. The alarm bells should've started ringing as soon as I saw the conspicuous absence of bar-taps but I kept my air of confidence. First punter comes in, middle-aged dame dressed to the nines: "G'day. I'd like a Cosmo, a dry Martini and two Toblerones." And no, she wasn't looking for triangular Swiss chocolate. Oh bumphly. I can get out of this I thought. "Jason, how is it you make the Cosmos, dry Martinis and Toblerones in here? Just wanna make sure the lady gets the same as usual". The clock was ticking on my tenure from that moment on. I was finally rumbled when protesting that it wasn't a circus so why should they expect me to catch blocks of ice in a glass behind my back to which they replied 'That's fine, but can you not at least load two glasses simultaneously instead of one by one.' They had a point. And in a classic 'We'll Call You, Don't Call Us' scenario, my career as a cocktail bartender was over in 6 hours.

That experience somewhat dampened my enthusiasm for work, but I did find a few things to occupy my time. The Australian Open tennis was on and, Melbourne being of a heavy Greek-Cypriot population, I got caught up in Baghdatis fever. He certainly fared better than Murray or Henman whose 'blink-and-you'll-miss-it' tournaments I had the misfortune of attending. Hilariously, there was a Freddie Flintoff lookalike resplendent in the full England cricket regalia who kept the crowd entertained during the Henman match by merely standing up with a raised pint glass for photo opportunities. I guess you kinda had to be there... It was certainly more fun than the Neighbours tour I foolishly booked up for; we discovered after being carted off to Ramsay St in the trademark bus that the company had zero access rights and where we had expected to mingle with Harold Bishop and company we were told to keep for voices down from a distance of 300m in case we disturbed them. Flamin' mongrels.

We did have great craic however at The Big Out: the antipodean version of T In the Park, Oxegen etc. Lynchy and Rory had brought two lovely English girls Laura and Zoe down from Sydney with them. When I say lovely I mean it in a 2 olives short of a pizza kinda way. We had a scorcher of a day... and the weather was ok too. While the music was a wee bit too grungey for me, I ceased caring after my 8th can of JD and coke (yep, they can absolutely anything here), Franz Ferdinand came on and it was all singing and dancing from then on. Also, worth a mention was the silent disco where everyone is equipped with a pair of those massive radio D.J. headphones each belting different types of house music directly through folks' skulls as they dance about a vacated dodgem rink like lunatics. Some buzz, man.

Our very own closing ceremony was a night of 'buyer chooses' rounds in town with some of The Bull's egg-chasing mates that as usual ended up getting silly with brandy being added to every drink. Embarrassingly, there was an awful emotional fuss as we went our seperate ways but, alas, all good things have to come to an end.

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Comments

[Dad]

lostandgoneforever
is there any possibility of you coming out of this experience and returning to the............ boring,once-a-year-holiday snap,celtic watching,stranger-free,pint drinking,real job,fine drizzle,go ask yer dad,seeing family .....life...........unscathed!!!!??!!