(365) Days of {Spring and} Summer

From my notepad the day after I arrived in Melbourne, 25/9/09.


INT. RUNDOWN HOSTEL LAUNDERETTE, MELBOURNE CBD

It’s cold and raining hard outside. A man sits on a bench, one leg perched atop a washing machine filled with his thoroughly journey-fragranced clothing. A country bumpkin from somewhere south of Bristol & a similarly gormless Northern Irish lass make basic chit-chat about the usual travel topics (“How long‘ve ya been/got left here?”, “Where ya headed next/Where‘ve you flown in from?” etc, etc), but it quickly seems clear to the man they’re too young and naïve to make non-tiresome conversation. The spin cycle sends sensual mechanical ripples through his body, and he’s suddenly the female protagonist in a Mills and Boon novella. He giggles but quickly snaps out of it to refocus on his musings. The young ‘uns were too much work for someone as jetlagged as he. He’s thankful when they leave. Almost instantly they’re replaced by a pony-tailed Italian man who drops some damp cycling shorts in a dryer. He soon exits too. Like a toilet-tag-teaming group of lads in a bar, seconds later some other anonymous bloke enters to collect his still damp, lint-covered bundle of clothes. He verbally abuses the machine and also leaves. Meanwhile the man - probably in his early 20’s - just sits there, scribbling into a notepad, wondering if there’d ever existed a script with such a lengthy, convoluted and amateurish scene-setting intro. But he wasn’t even an amateur - more complete beginner. In fact he’d never even attempted to write a movie script before and hated the third person. Especially if that third person was a [insert racial group of your choosing] man. Which he wasn’t, because of course it was he, himself. He had to try really hard to bust my way out of it. If it had worked on this cold, rainy day in Melbourne, I might have called it (365) Days of {Spring and} Summer. And the last 300 words have quite obviously just been a poor attempt to shoehorn in that non-joke/not-even-topical-anymore movie reference. My apologies. Anyway, the shitty weather is probably just my punishment for banging on about escaping the cold before I left. “Ha!” I said, “No winter for me!” Spring time down under come September! It’s my fault. Gutted.

Anyway, there’s seven minutes of my wash cycle remaining, so I’ve got a bit of time to say anything I want. So yeah…. Laundry! Only six days into my trip too. But you’d be amazed how many clean clothes you’ll get through in a hot, sticky and generally stinky place like Kuala Lumpur. That plus two long-haul flights. I stayed up AGAIN last night, getting to bed around 4am, which on KL time was 2am. I’m getting there. Gradually. Having never had a long distance journey heading west to east around the world, this jet-lag thing is a relatively new experience. Back from San Francisco to London in March doesn’t really count because I was home and straight to bed. I could completely relax and not care about anything besides turning over from Jeremy Kyle or losing at Call of Duty 5 on XBox Live. Now I’ve got to worry about seeing things, meeting people, ensuring my stuff isn’t pinched and doing bloody laundry. Well not too bloody - I’ve yet to commit my first travel murder, just give me a few months. We’ll see what happens when Dane Cook tours New Zealand.

Anyway, this piece just got more dreary than a dull, rainy, very early spring day in Melbourne, where there‘s nothing to do besides cleaning clothes and writing about the experience. So that‘s that. Or this is that. Or that’s this. Delete as appropriate.

My clothes ended up being very clean and I didn’t require another wash until my first day in Auckland