I love my cousins...
Because they are, in a word, mental. Here's an exchange between two of them:
note: they were, at the time of these posts, in the same house.
A very common question I keep getting asked is what Christmas is like in Australia. This means that my creative streak has been given a run. Stories can range from ‘Oh no, we do actually get snow. It’s 40 degrees in the day and then goes down to -10 at night and we usually get a blizzard on Christmas Eve. The Kangaroos hate it!’ to ‘Who’s this guy in red? At Christmas we sacrifice a platypus to appease the sun gods and then give each other a different platypus innard depending on how close the person is to you.’
It’s been fun.
What people seem to not realise is that in Australia, everything about Christmas is practically the same… just hotter. What’s struck me is how similar Christmas is here. Growing up in a country where the temperature regularly gets up to 40 on Christmas Day, yet the pervading imagery around the place is of furs and snow. It has always felt a little wrong.
Being in the cold feels right at Christmas. Especially because this year mother nature put on a show and made it snow a week ago. I’m currently sitting in a room with a real tree, surrounded by traditional Christmas decorations and when I look out the back window there’s a blanket of white across the garden. It’s slightly magical. And the fact that I’ve been accepted into Em’s family like I’m one of them is something that makes it even better (I was just given my first chore. Emptying the bin on to the compost heap. I think that means I’m one of them now.).
One thing is missing, though. The fact that my family and friends from the past 24 odd years are approximately 9000 miles from here. It’s funny though, because I don’t get homesick. Everyone tells me it will hit me soon, but it never has. I think it’s mostly because I’m still slightly in denial that I’m so far away and thanks to technology I am never that far away from family and friends. In fact, Facebook is a great way to say hello to someone, which I’m sure is not what it’s meant for. Since I’ve been in the UK, I’ve rarely used it to stalk and have actually used it to communicate with people! It’s especially fun when I’m sitting at my desk at 9 in the morning talking to my inebriated friends at 8 at night.
I’ve gone off on a tangent. Back to what I was talking about.
The first time I’ve been here and felt slightly homesick (or maybe just nostalgic) was this morning. I was standing on the platform at Twickenham Station, freezing my hands off (we’re polite here. Plus I was wearing thermals so we weren’t worried about that) listening to my ipod. I’d just downloaded Tim Minchin’s ‘White Wine in the Sun’ and it damn near made me tear up. Mostly because it’s true. (cue cheese) I know that wherever I am in the world at Christmas, my dad, my brother, my sisters, my aunts and my uncles, my cousins, my gran(s) and my mum will be waiting for me in the sun.
So here I am, writing a sappy Christmas post to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and to let the people in Australia know that I miss them. All of them. Except for the ones in Doonside. And most of Western Australia. And Tasmania. Nobody misses Tasmania.
Merry Christmas.
Well, I’m assuming it was a rather boring week. Upon skimming over my diary I had, apart from a London outing on Monday, two exciting entries. Sofa being delivered. Interview. Now that’s excitement. That being said, I think I had enough excitement on the Monday to last an entire month.*
I started the week with a rather full London outing. I, very ambitiously, decided that I would visit the “museums” near the London Eye, The Tate Modern, Soho and possibly squeeze in some time at a cafe to finish off a blog post, all by 6 o’clock. Well, I almost succeeded. I visited the “museums” near the London Eye and visited the Tate Modern, and did it all by approximately 6 o’clock. What I hadn’t expected was that the Tate Modern would take up so much of my time. So much, in fact, that I declared that I would be visiting again very soon (to nobody in particular) as soon as I hurried out of the building.
So, first the “museums” near the London Eye. Why do I keep putting quotation marks around “museums,” I hear you ask? Because I strongly believe that if you need to pay to get into a so-called museum in London, then chances are it’s not actually a museum, but a cleverly disguised rouse that will result in you walking through the door and being beaten by two large Albanians. Whilst this wasn’t entirely accurate, it wasn’t far off.
I decided to walk down past the Dali museum, the Movie Museum (affectionately [sic: stupidly] called ‘The Movieum’), the aquarium and a few other tourist traps mostly because it was next to the London Eye. I’m sure that everyone knows what the London Eye is, but for those who don’t, it’s a rather large Ferris Wheel that takes about an hour to go the full way round, and robs you of about three thousand quid when you try and buy a ticket.** I wanted to see what the fuss was about, and I probably will fork out exorbitant amounts of money to stand on an observation deck for an hour seeing the parts of London I already have seen, but not today. Instead, I wandered down towards Westminster to see what I could find before heading up to the Tate Modern. When a rather cheery young lady handed me a flyer and promised me cheaper tickets to the Movie Museum, I couldn’t really resist. What could be better than a museum about movies? Not much.
After forking over a tenner for entry (thanks to another stroke of charity from the lady at the door), I entered into what was promising to be an extremely exciting experience. I was even allowed to photograph the exhibitions! In a nutshell, The Movieum is a collection of props and costumes that nobody particularly wants (or wants to see) anymore. I may be being a little too harsh, but the only thing that mildly interested me was some Harry Potter costumes, along with some original wands from the film, and that was only because I am a very very sad person (pathetic, not depressed). What irked me about the entire exhibition was not that these things were on display, but that they actually charged people to see them. And a lot of the time you weren’t even looking at artefacts from the main characters. Prime example: ‘a head from a zombie from Shaun of the Dead’. Thanks.
I decided to forgo the other prize museums (Dali Experience, London Aquarium, some haunted horror thing) and head off towards the Tate Modern. Along the way I stumbled across the previously mentioned National Theatre Shop. I’ve already commented on the shop, so let me comment on the National Theatre itself. While the National Theatre seems to produce quality show after quality show, the building in which it is contained is a bloody eyesore. It reminds of Macquarie University with all of it’s cement and bad 70s architecture. However, I do have to say that at night the time-honoured stage tradition of making something awful look much better through effective lighting comes into play. It’s kind of like an art installation where the artist is vomiting blue paint: it’s repulsive, but boy, the colours are pretty.
I headed onwards towards the Tate Modern, another slightly unattractive building that at least has history. I had decided to make a trip to the Tate Modern to see the PopLife exhibition, as I fancy myself a pop art liker (it’s not quite love). When glancing over the other exhibition I decided to part with even more money and make a day of the Tate Modern. I’m glad I did at least. The other exhibition is John Baldessari’s ‘Pure Beauty’, and having never heard of the artist, I ventured in unknowingly.
John Baldessari is a cheeky, cheeky man. I felt that he is an absurdist at heart, and has gone through so many changes that to look at three pieces from the 60s, the 80s and now, you wouldn’t recognise it as the same artist. I absolutely love his early work.
Here are some examples of his early work:
Basically, he was taking the piss. I like that.
His later work is a bit meh, and I found myself not really appreciating it. I sped up, out, fed and drank then continued on to PopLife.
PopLife is a celebration of late Pop Art (post late 80s). it includes Jeff Koons, late Andy Warhol, Takashi Murakami and Keith Haring, amongst others. There was some absolute gems throughout the exhibition, as well as absolute bollocks. Personally, my favourite of the bollocks variety was a rather tasteful film of a lady artist and a male art dealer having sex for 60 minutes. It was her comment on how art dealers screw the artists. Apparently she paid the art dealer US$10,000 to partake.
After PopLife i stumbled through the rest of the galleries not really noticing anything. The two exhibitions that I had seen made me think and made me want to create something. I promptly emptied my wallet in the shop, buying things that would ‘inspire me’. They have yet to do so, but are doing a grand job of cluttering the study desk.
To end the day I took a stroll across Millennium Bridge. Yes, the Millennium Bridge that is destroyed in Harry Potter 6. I felt like I was walking across a celebrity. Not only were my feet touching someone(thing) famous, but I was treated to the beautiful sight of St Paul’s at night. Unfortunately photos just don’t do it justice, so after about 15 minutes of attempting to take a photo, I aimlessly wandered towards (where I thought there was) a tube station. I think I ended up near Brighton.
The rest of the week was fairly uninteresting. Sofa got delivered, Sofa got assembled. Job interview had, third job interview secured (give or take a week or two).
It’s Christmas in two days. I’ve got a week off so hopefully I can write and (almost) get this blog up to date. Either that or I’ll drink far too much mulled wine, eat too many mince pies and end up passed out on Em’s parents couch. Either way sounds pretty good to me.
*slight exaggeration
**another slight exaggeration
