Quaint ramblings and occasional reflections of a journeying Aussie musician...

03 December 2006

...the plot thickens!...

...so when I did my three gigs at Park Lane Sheraton, currently a stop on the Polonium Tour of Central London, I just remembered when recounting the whole thing to someone the other day that I was subbing for a Russian guy who runs the gig, who doesn't live here! I got a 3pm call for the 9pm gig from my man NK because the Russian lawyer guy who actually runs the gig got stuck in Moscow thanks to a grounded flight! Bloody hell, I'm closer than I thought....and this bodgy Russian MP3 site that I joined won't accept my credit card payments anymore....what's going on over there, seriously......

Been feeling it a bit lately, the old 'saudage' as the Brazilians say, the longing, for the homeland....whenever I flick through anyone's Myspace page from Australia, the photos always look so colourful...round ere, with all those pallid stone grey buildings in town set under a sunless sky, it seems like all the colour got rained out of this place and washed into the Thames years ago.

From my fellow Australians, I also miss the humour, and the directness, in speech....I've been in conversation with Brits and Continentals on numerous occasions, and I don't know if they even realise it, but they'll launch into an opinion about something and all the passion and articulation will be there but they'll get to the end of it and they won't have actually SAID anything. I've sometimes listened for 20 minutes, half an hour, and they keep cycling around the same things and I have to hold back from saying, "Yeah, but you haven't actually SAID ANYTHING!"

Aussies don't have time in their lives for any Old World rhetoric...it's probably another Irish inheritance...whenever I talk to anyone back home, you can feel it there, the immediacy of communication, and the funny thing is that they may not even realise what they're doing either. I was talking to my mum not long ago on the phone and she said something and I can't even remember what it was, but most importantly, it was straight up, and it was so refreshing to hear....and all of a sudden I got a flash of the sun on those endless fields, and Jugiong Road, and then, a sigh....

.....coming up to Christmas as well, this one rapidly encroaching will be my third in a row away from family.....we've got an Aussie orphans meet up happening in Paris again which'll be fun....

....it's looking like I might be able to stay here as well....I met a guy today who's helped out others in my situation in the past, and he gave my application the nod....I won't breathe easy until that stamp is in the passport, but it's looking promising....as the grimness of the winter sets in.....

1 comment:

Sherd said...

I'm always of two minds about the orphan's Christmas. I spend 364 days of the year not really caring if I spend it with the family or not. But inevitably, usually just after the phonecall home on Christmas day, I have to take a couple of minutes to have a bit of a moment about distance and family and yearning.

Good luck with the visa, sir. I am brewing plans to make it over there next year sometime, so I'm hoping it all works - purely selfishly of course.