Oz. August 25th – 27th: “And miles to go before we sleep…”

Our journey began at around a quarter past four in the afternoon, on my 29th birthday, August 25th, 2017.

Now this is not, one admits, the most arresting way to begin a tale. It lacks a real ‘hook’, it lacks controversy or chutzpah. Yet, young’un, it is the way we have chosen – And why? Because it provides a cast-iron, permanent starting place, back to which you can cast your mind once we [spoiler alert] finally make it down to Australia, on the morning of Sunday 27th August, 2017; and which you can, as I did, subtract from Sunday 27th August, 2017 to conclude, like me, that our voyage took a total of several million farkin’ years.

It is, my friends, a fair old poke down the antipodes, and I don’t mean maybe.

*

At this earliest point we were only two – The Eagle, companion of my youth and regular cast member within these narratives, and myself. We hustled together up the Northern Line to Leicester Square, where two rapidly became three, for there, upon the platform of the Piccadilly Line, was the noble figure of Chatham House Rules.

There was little time to chat and embrace however, as a packed tube arrived and we made ourselves instantly unpopular by bundling our large 3-week bags into the throng, wheels crushing feet and corners cracking shins.

Now, strange as it is to think, given that the journey, in its totality, took upwards of three million years, but this forty-five minute spell on the westbound Pic. Line to Heathrow Terminals 1,2&3 was probably the least pleasant of the whole lot. Thank goodness, then, that immediately upon our release from this dark blue hell we were rewarded with the beaming Welsh face of a Gay Arctic Monkey.

“Hello, Gay Arctic Monkey,” we hello-ed.

“Hello!” he replied warmly, much in the custom of the times.

The fifth and final member of our primary party – another Welshman by the name of The Associated Press – would simultaneously be leaving England after and arriving in Oz before us, so we strolled over to the check-in desk as a quartet and I prepared to work my magic.

“Four to Melbourne please…Charlotte,” I simpered, eyeing her name tag.

“It’s Charlene,” she snapped.

“Of course, but of course.”

“Passport.”

“Right here…now then…”

“What?”

“You will notice, I am sure, that today is in fact my birthday?”

“And?”

“And, I trust you are already, as they say, ‘upgrading’ me and me boys here to ‘birthday class’, yes?”

“…”

“Fine, fine, we are not proud, we shall accept business.”

“…”

“Premium econom-eeee?”

Her response was, one must relay, curt, cruel and brought shame upon herself and her noble profession. She then proceeded to place Chatham House Rules and myself in the very back row of the Boeing 777, and The Eagle and a Gay Arctic Monkey in another part of the vehicle altogether.

After this trial, having had my waxen wings melted by the heat of the Charlene sun, and as it was still very much my birthday, we went to grab a beer or two. Once ‘a-bar’, we were set upon by the least pleasant waiter yet manufactured, lowering our pre-flight spirits still further.

Fortunately, The Associated Press then manifested himself unexpectedly, and his kind, ebullient words brought some semblance of salve. Together we toasted the coming voyage and damned the eyes of airport staff everywhere.

Then it was time to bite the first bullet and take Plane #1 to Hong Kong: Eleven hours or, more accurately, two films, a snooze, then two more. The airline fare was not inedible, and the gods were good – rather than cursing Chatham HR and myself with a neighbour in our row of three, they gave us the bounty of a spare seat, onto which we stretched out our demesne with relish.

Hong Kong Airport is not the finest, yet it is far from the worst the world has to offer. I managed to get us wildly lost within its terminals, but eventually wiser heads (Chatham HR) found us a decent enough restaurant as well as a bar which sold eye-wateringly expensive Japanese beer. Outside there was, as they say, ‘a wee bit of weather around’, so we were a trifle delayed. Once finally aboard Plane #2 (to Melbourne) the captain casually informed us that as we were behind schedule we’d just chance it and fly over the, and I quote, “large typhoon currently hitting the Philippines.”

“Er…please don’t!” we replied, yet the pilot was not for turning, and a severely bumpy nine hours began.

The Eagle passed around some sleeping pills which proved ‘chocolate teapot’ levels of effective and I watched children’s movies in a steadily worsening mood. Chatham HR, playing electronic poker on his screen and forgetting the effectiveness of his noise-cancelling headphones, began to turn the air blue as his cards failed to please him, scandalising a group of nearby nuns and making adjacent infants cry – improving my humour no end…

*

Finally, with a bump, our wheels hit the golden soil of Australia. ‘Hala!’ as they say in the Levant. Hala, hala, hala!

There was a slight issue at the Aussie border as a passport official, being an unimaginative sort and noticing that Chatham House Rules was of Middle Eastern extraction, called him over for extra processing. Now our fine friend works, we believe, as some sort of James Bond/George Smiley kind of bod, and his papers are full of stamps from insalubrious places such as Syria, Iraq and Mordor. This could, we feared, ‘get bad’.

However, Chatham HR calmly whispered a choice something in the fellow’s ear – an ear affixed to a countenance which went instantly white. He handed back Chatham’s documents with shaking hands and a stammered, “Th…thank you, sir..” and we were on our way, off to face the much-vaunted ‘wrath’ of Australian custom controls. This would surely prove more taxing. These boys were infamous and tenacious, ferocious protectors of their nation’s fragile ecosystem.

“Nice one mate, straight through there, cobber, no worries!”

“Err…” This was not what I’d expected at all.

“No worries, lads, wander along!”

“Don’t you want to inspect our suitcases?”

“Yeah nah, mate, you’re alright.”

“How about a nice body cavity search on The Eagle here?”

“Oi!”

“Hahaha, I’d be so lucky mate! Now get on with yer!”

Standards, it seemed, had slipped.

In an airport coffee shop we found The Associated Press, looking exactly like a man who had endured his own vast and sleepless voyage, but without the company of old friends. His flight had gone via the Gulf rather than the Orient, and had not been delayed one jot.

“Greetings, The Associated Press!”

“Gree…tings…”

“Gosh, you look like arse.”

“Ha…arr…arse…yes…”

“Would you like to leave the airport?”

“Ye…yes, yes…yes please…I…I would like that quite…quite a lot…”

First things first, certain members of the group needed to replace the dangerously low levels of nicotine in their collective systems. Darts done, we were offered a mini-bus-cum-taxicab which spirited us to Collingwood, a ‘happening’ (read: hipster) part of town, renamed, famously, after the great Paul Collingwood MBE scored 206 in the second test of the 2006-7 Ashes Series.

It was still too early to access our AirBnb, so we wandered to a likely looking coffee joint called Twilight Terror or Terror Twilight or something alliterative like that. Here we met ‘Stephen’, a fabulously friendly, fabulously camp fellow covered head to toe in tattoos.

Now I am not, myself, a ‘coffee person’, but once the flat whites had appeared I could instantly tell from the faces of my companions that our new pal Stephen had provided them with the goods. We then broke a decent fast, wiped out another couple of rounds of hot drinks, then thoroughly outstayed our welcome as we waited for time to pass and accommodation to ready itself. Eventually our painted friend kicked us out with a final smile, and we went to drop off our bags and inspect at last our new abode.

A very fine place it was too, all light spaces, bright colours and big bedrooms. There was no time now to enjoy it properly, however, for the day was out there, very much awaiting us!

*

Bags thus dropped, we wandered the more fashionable streets down into town – noting, not for the first time, that Melbourne in August is undeniably ‘brass monkeys’. Chatham House Rules himself, who grew up in the rolling tundra of Toronto, noted that the temperatures on offer were markedly sub-optimal, and that he really should’ve packed a coat or three…

Being superbly massive lads, naturally we stopped off in a large, central park to look at the birds – sullen kookaburras and violent pink parakeets, mostly. Eventually we found our way to the 100,000 seater MCG, where we purchased tickets for the afternoon’s local AFL derby, Richmond Tigers (“Caarn you Tiges!”) versus the hapless St Kilda Saints.

We then rushed across to the Crafty Squire, a capacious city centre sports bar with thousands of TVs, to watch the surprisingly entertaining Mayweather/McGregor fight and drink unsurprisingly expensive, but very decent and very, very necessary beers.

The combination of a massive lack of sleep and our much-deserved pints tipped a few of our number into giggling insobriety, and after an ‘amusing’ cab ride back to the stadium we were relatively loud in our mockery of the curious game now playing out before us.

However, these ignorant critiques of ‘Aussie Rules’ (no relation to Chatham HR, of course) was forestalled by the arrival of a giant friend of The Associated Press – a vast, rangy fellow called Josh who, as chance would have it, I once played rugby with over a decade ago, and who was a devoted follower of the mighty ‘Tiges’. As he explained this significantly odd game to us we all got a mite more involved and enjoyment levels rose accordingly – levels not even abated by the watered-down and price-inflated ‘Carlton Draught’ available at Melbourne Cricket Ground.

That being said, we still ‘did one’ a little way before the end (Richmond had it well in the bag and no longer required our assistance) and, bidding a fond, final adieu to a sublime stadium, headed for a dinner at ‘Chin Chin’. Despite our brains now being so much watery mashed potato, we managed to pick out some truly fantastic Thai dishes (with some assistance from a patient and sympathetic waitress). Eyelids were now drooping severely, but the taste sensations continued apace, each and every dish superior to that which came before it.

Finally the inevitable happened and we all, to a man, crashed and crashed hard. With our last strength we found a cab and poured ourselves in. “Collingwood…” croaked The Eagle, and we were away. Once home we drew lots for bedrooms and, for once, my luck held. I was granted the bed of all beds, onto which I collapsed and was gifted eight, nine hours of the finest slumber yet conceived.

I wake early, pre-dawn. The house is dark and quiet and cool, and I creep downstairs to our spacious new lounge, carrying parchment, candles and quill. Summoning the addled memories of a very, very long day past, slowly, then a mite more fluently, I begin to write…

 

Oz. August 28th – 29th: “Victorian values”

One by one my fellow voyagers gave Morpheus a decent boot to the castanets and rose to join me in the land of the wakeful. I sung the praises of our quarters’ shower – a mighty contraption of consistent heat and flow. Soon they had all washed, both individually and in pairs, and off we went, cleansed and rested, ready for a newly minted Victorian day. First stop was breakfast, in a nearby Smith Street joint called Alimentari.

As regular readers will know, I am not a fella given over to too much hyperbole – ‘there goes Mansfield’, they no doubt say, ‘stating things mildly and thoughtfully again’. So when I write that this establishment served up the greatest eggs I have ever eaten, you’ll know that this is not idle exaggeration. They were, I cannot stress this enough, dang good eggs.

A Gay Arctic Monkey then led The Associated Press and Chatham House Rules across to Carlton Park for a swift constitutional, while The Eagle an I returned to the abode, eager to catch up with our old buddy Jon Snow and gaze in rapt wonder at Lena Heady’s masterfully jutting chin.

At twelve noon the others returned and we were picked up by the cousin of Chatham HR, a fine fellow with a curious Iraqi-Canadian-Australian accent who had come to ferry us out to the far-flung Melbourne suburbs for a veritable House Rules reunion. En route we stopped at the largest offie I’ve yet seen, where this good gentleman insisted on purchasing half a hundredweight in Australian beer for the team, an act which placed him firmly in the best of our books.

Once at the bungalow of Chatham’s aged aunt and uncle we were thrown into a cacophony of Assyrian, Arabic and occasional Australian, and we were ushered onto comfy chairs and endless drinks were placed into well-shook hands.

Food came and the spread was a good one, cold mezes and hummus and a spectacularly tasty cheese/spinach/bread dip concoction which we very much enjoyed.

“Thank you all so much, that was just delightful!” I proclaimed munificently, to much laughter and general hilarity.

Chatham HR’s uncle, an old fella with an apparently infinite capacity for fine Scotch whisky, began to mock me with his nephew in chuckling Assyrian (I’m not much of a linguist, but I know when I’m being mocked in any number of languages, from Afrikaans to Zande). “What’s the jest, CHR?” I enquired.

“Hahaha, habibi, he says that they haven’t even begun!”

Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw it. I saw the horror. Out from the kitchen came sailing a petrifying series of the most gargantuan dishes imaginable, each more formidable than the last. Even The Eagle, a seasoned trencherman with hollow bones and a metabolism which power a medium-to-large nuclear reactor, visibly blanched.

“My word!” exclaimed The Associated Press, “and you eat like this every day do you?”

This foolishness received an even louder laugh, and I was the centroidal clown of proceedings no longer.

And then, in earnest, the eating began. We had been told by Chatham HR that his sainted aunt would be most insulted if we did not give a good showing; but also that she would not be satisfied, no matter how much we managed to consume. So-briefed, we culinary Sisyphuses tackled the piles of spiced chicken, rice, peas, lamb (minced and chopped), stuffed peppers, stuffed vines, more rice, more lamb and so on.

The more we ate, the larger the remainder became. Fear now entered our faces, sweat beading on brows. The fare was uniformly exquisite, but the portions were terrifying – it was too much, we were being summarily and incontrovertibly defeated by our lunch!

At that moment, the cavalry, thank goodness, arrived. News of Chatham’s arrival had spread, and expatriate Iraqi second cousin after expatriate Iraqi second cousin had arrived to pay homage. While each of them helped themselves to a perfectly normal plate of food, rather than the Texas-sized portions forced upon us, little by little we began to make progress. Finally, we felt that the dents made in the godly offerings were sufficient and that we could do no more. As one we dropped forks and knives and threw in the figurative and literal (paper) towel.

Our efforts had not gone unnoticed.

“She says you’ve barely eaten anything,” noted Chatham HR.

“Ah.” I looked around. The Associated Press was comforting a sobbing, Gay Arctic Monkey and The Eagle had passed out upon his plate. “Ah.” I repeated. There was little else to say.

“Also, we’ve got five minutes at most before dessert arrives.”

“Ah…dessert. Lordy be, should we make a run for it?”

“We can’t, I have more cousins coming.”

“More?!”

“Yep.”

“But what are we to do then?”

“Eat my aunt’s baklava, I’m guessing.”

“Oooooh! I like baklava!”

I took from my waist my stretched, protesting belt and lobbed it out a nearby, open window. “Let it begin!” I cried, as syrupy damnation descended. “We go again, my friends! Again, I say!”

*

That evening we were, as you might have already guessed, quite a sleepy bunch.
However, we had but two more nights in Melbourne and we had barely painted the town a soft peach, let alone the scarlets and reds for which we usually aimed. Thus, we forced ourselves up and out of the house and popped over to neighbouring Fitzroy and a swanky bar called ‘Naked on the Roof’ or ‘Naked for Satan’ or some rot like that.

The décor was questionable, but the night-time views over all of Melbourne were really rather wondrous. Together we gazed out at the city lights, nursing schooners of fancy beer and pretending that we did not secretly long for our beds. A nice enough spot, all-told, despite its silly name and ‘ambitious’ pricing strategy.

The next morning we woke a little later before wandering into town – via, of course, yet another ten out of ten coffee shop. A Gay Arctic Monkey – one of four GAMs, by the bye, who sprung to brief prominence in the city of Cardiff, several years back, through the performing of their “homosexually-inflected indie rock” (sic) – had found us that most dreadful and questionable of things: a free walking tour. It was to this cruel fate we trudged, coffees in hand, through the chilly streets of Victoria’s premier city.

After entertaining a sizable crowd outside the State Library of Victoria with some over-sized speed-chess (I lost to a GAM, as is my custom), we bit the bullet and joined the multicultural throng following a local lass in a lurid green t-shirt throughout the centre of ‘historic’ Melbourne. Yes, of course she had a septum piercing – I mean, you scarcely had to ask…

Overall, despite my cask-strength cynicism, it was pretty good – though my worst fears did look to be realised when the guide paused her tour after three minutes to point out a white van pulling a ‘hook turn’, whereby – hold the front page – the driver turned right from a left-hand lane.

“If this is the general standard of tour content, one can readily see why it’s free!” I quipped.

“Shut up, Mansfield,” suggested a GAM, and I did as bid, albeit temporarily.

As suggested above, things did indeed improve – almost to the extent that we continued on with the second half of the tour, off towards the ‘art laneways’ outside the city centre. However, we bid our farewells halfway through, tipped our guide generously (there is no such thing as a genuinely ‘free’ tour…unless you’re verging towards the ‘tight-fisted baaaarstard’ end of the ‘good bloke spectrum’) then retraced our steps one hundred yards or so.

Here we bundled into the ‘Empress of China’ (a well-recommended Chinese restaurant, not a fancy Han lady with expensive clothes). Chatham House Rules, you see, had had dumplings on his mighty mind for a good while now, and he simply would not be denied a moment longer.

The fare was cheap and delicious, and the fine waitress ladies were even good enough to permit our cracking open of a good few offie-purchased beers to wash it all down. Thus sated, we wandered our own way through the rest of town, up to Melbourne’s rather splendid botanical gardens.

The Eagle, a famously noble bird, found a kindred spirit in a large, friendly black swan, and Chatham HR fell asleep on a park bench with a level of nobility and class few others could hope to emulate. Even when one of Australia’s curious, colourful birds favoured his shoulder with a serviceable amount of crusty guano, he kept his poise and sanguinity, simply muttering that it augured good fortune to come.

Sadly, this was not the case – for a combination of sub-par tips and questionable map-reading meant that The Associated Press took us uphill and down Chapel Street for quite some time, our eventual reward being only a bog-standard Irish pub serving bog-standard Aussie lager.

A GAM, natural centurion that he is, then took matters into his own, Welsh hands. He had heard tell of a good Fitzroy bar which served $4 pizzas, and he wished to investigate. Hailing a cab, he marched us all in, throwing our previously laid plans and schemes from the moving taxi windows.

Up and across town in ‘the Bimbo Deluxe’ (please don’t blame me, dear reader, I don’t create these ‘zany’ names), where the beer was clearly priced to subsidise the frankly absurd value of the pizza, an epic and spectacularly low-quality series of pool commenced. As a quintet, our group has many a talent: one of us holds a PhD from Cambridge; one speaks numerous, complex tongues with fluency; and one has been on television, both network and cable, on multiple occasions*. Pool, however, and bar games in general, simply ain’t amongst them.

[*Yes, yes, these are all Chatham HR – but the point still stands…]

That being said, when a couple of locals came to challenge us for control of the table, The Eagle and The Associated Press rose to the occasion manfully and veritably smashed them off the felt, missing nary a ball. When you comes at the kings, as they say, you’d best not miss.

Josh the Giant, he of the MCG and the mighty Tiges, then joined us and furnished the group with further pitchers of the good stuff. I, by this point however, was starting to feel ‘the pace’. Noticing upstairs by the bathrooms that there was a quieter little snug, replete with soft sofas, I thought it best to sit down and attempt to clear my foggy head.

My eyes snapped back open perhaps an hour later. “Damn,” I damned. “Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!”

‘The boys,’ I thought, ‘will make mock of me. They will assume I had spent the past hour on the porcelain and that my blameless digestive tract is actually that of an African bull elephant, and not a well one neither!’

However, when I returned to the now teeming downstairs area of the bar, my companions were nowhere to be seen.

‘I can’t blame them,’ I reflected. ‘Not really – the ‘no man left behind’ rule can surely be waived when a fellow has seemingly been fifty plus minutes atop the Iron Throne.’

I staggered outside and was immediately heralded by a GAM, standing outside a cocktail bar, not twenty yards from the (sigh) Bimbo Deluxe.

“There you are, yer pissed idiot!” he yelled. “You got lost trying to sneak off home early didn’t you?”

“Er…yes?”

“It’s that way,” noted The Eagle, adding in a few expletives at my expense which demeaned him and his ancient house.

“I say, The Eagle old man…”

Just then The Associated Press emerged, his eyes wide in panic, his white knuckles grasping a tray of what I am reliably informed were ‘expresso martinis’.

“Wow. How much did that set you back, The AP?” asked Chatham HR.

“I… I…” he stammered, a freshly broken man.

The others, cruel and callous when knee-deep in their cups, turned their scorn upon him, and I slunk away into the night, towards Collingwood, home and bed.
In short, my friends, the scores had come in. They read, ‘Melbourne 1 – a jetlagged Mansfield 0’.

 

Oz. August 30th – September 1st: “Melbourne pales to New South Wales”

Our last morning in Melbourne is a lazy one – chiefly checking out of the accomo. and organising ourselves a taxi. A Gay Arctic Monkey, being one of those commonplace fellows who feel the need to arrive at airports etc. umpteen hours early, went and booked us a ride amusingly prematurely, ‘just to be sure’.

This decision was to be proved wildly overcautious, given the teeny-tiny dimensions and utterly deserted nature of Melbourne Avalon airport – yet it was very nearly proven sagacious, due to the actions of perhaps the single most directionless taxi driver in all of Christendom:

This lady, one must say, was as friendly as could be – and disarmingly apologetic each and every time she a.) went in entirely the wrong direction, b.) almost got us killed/maimed, or c.) both. Eventually, a Gay Arctic Monkey had to take navigation into his own hands, politely bellowing at her to “change lanes!”, to “take the right, the RIGHT!” and “Christ, look the f**k out!”

Eventually, by the grace of God alone, we made it to our Avalon, where, after cursing our driver’s name and damning her eyes sufficiently, we found – rather than a bustling, sprawling Camelot which might take hours to navigate – a small shed next to a short runway. Check-in and security took a matter of seconds, giving us ample time to sit and wait (and wait and wait) for our Sydney-bound plane, reflecting all the while on the phenomenal breakfasts which we might be guzzling, back in glorious Collingwood. We all looked daggers, knives and broadswords at a GAM. A GAM, for his part, pretended not to notice.

*

The flight to Sydney, NSW, was short and sweet, even passing over the harbour and favouring a fellow with top-drawer views over that rather fancy bridge/opera house combo they’ve got here. Once grounded, we were immediately kidnapped by a Russian with a minivan and an ‘old school’ taste in western popular music. Not taking, ‘Actually I think we’ll just take the train, mate’ for an answer, he raced us across to our new home, over in fashionable Surry (sic.) Hills.

The second Airbnb of the trip was fine and dandy, though not quite as palatial as our Melbourne abode. However, it quickly became clear that, in nearly every other respect, Sydney has the easy beating of Victoria’s own state capital. The sun was warmer, the scale a wee bit grander and the people more pleasing on the eye.

Chatham House Rules, as is his wont, demanded we stop in Chinatown for another dumpling luncheon, and even the fare from our randomly-chosen Chinese eatery was superior to that from the much recommended ‘Empress of China’ back in Melbs.

Post-lunch we wandered around the harbour, drinking in the sights. The opera house is, credit to them, quite impressive, and the harbour bridge, over which we wandered to the northern part of the city, is not insubstantial. Once this span was defeated, along with the hundreds of stairs up to it and down from it, we felt we were very much deserving of beer. Fortunately enough, we had agreed to meet up with The World’s Worst Groom and The World’s Best Bride in the nearby Killibilli Hotel.

[They call their pubs ‘hotels’ here, for some reason, which hardly lends credence to the classic publican’s maxim: ‘We don’t care where you go, but ya can’t stay here!’]

The WWG and The WBB – or, to be most exact, The WWG-to-be and the WBB-to-be, as they had yet to wed – were the key catalysts for the entire Australia trip. Their upcoming Sydney nuptials had obliged us to board a succession of flights, three million years in duration, so they were understandably delighted to see us, and us them.

Our party was joined by many of their long-time Sydney cohort, including The World’s Worst Best Man, who had booked us all onto the venue’s weekly quiz – a quiz which we inevitably won, the opposition, of course, being Australian. We had drunk a great deal of beer and, as luck would have it, the first prize was a great deal more beer, so a good, albeit still slightly sleepy, time was had by all and sundry.

*

The next day I, veritably dripping with Protestant work ethic as I am, walked across to the University of New South Wales to put in a day’s-worth of honest toil. To get there I wandered through Moore and Centennial Parks, which were large and lovely and well catered for in terms of warming morning sunlight. In my absence, the group, under the tyrannical rule of a Gay Arctic Monkey, went on Sydney’s own ‘free walking tour’ – which, in all fairness, sounded like rather a good’un, a number of the tour-guide’s suggestions fated to spice up the next couple of Sydney days quite nicely.

Once released from work I braved the buses of Sydney and just about made it to the tailors in time for a suit-fitting with The World’s Worst Groom, having gotten lost only three occasions and having had to run up five steep flights of stairs. Lamentably, due to recent ‘high living’, my wedding suit needed to be taken out a fair whack, much to the amusement of The WWG.

Before we continue on, a word on the suit in question. Now it is said that sometimes a bride, feeling somewhat perturbed that she will be outshone on her Big Day by the beauty of her bridesmaids, will pick out the least flattering and most obscenely coloured dresses for her unfortunate ‘besties’, ensuring that she and only she might shine the brightest. The WWG, I believe, has clearly aped this underhanded custom, for I can think of no other reason that he would place his faithful, blameless groomsmen into tan suits.

Tan.

Tan, my friends. I looked, truly, like a slightly out-of-shape Bond villain, awaiting my violent death midway through Act Two.

Anyhow, as the suit was irrevocably tan in nature, shiny new brown shoes had to be purchased – and they were…eventually, not without a great deal of effort and very much despite the best attempts of various Sydney shoe salesmen, who did their utmost to stop me completing my quest.

Thus waylaid, we had to hasten apace across town to re-join the boys – and had time only to skull an ice-cold schooner in the Shakespeare Hotel before meeting The WWG’s long-suffering parents, The WBB and her old friend Woodward & Bernstein at the fantastic ‘Porteno’ restaurant. Had you asked me on Sunday 27th, post-dinner, if Melbourne’s Chin Chin could be beaten I’d have labelled it highly unlikely, but Porteno’s next-level tapas-style offerings were absolutely stunning. The wine and conversation were also of the highest quality and by the time did fly.

Next stop, sadly sans both the parentals and the ladies, was a tequila bar called Tio’s, which was very good indeed, then a dive called the Strawberry Hills Hotel, which was not. However, at this latter spot, despite our mounting insobriety we reigned supreme once again on the pool table, The Eagle in particular imperious in his play. Heavy-set locals would rise up against him, but would be swiftly and perfunctorily put away. Truly in this, as in all things, we British (and Canadian-Iraqis) are as gods.

*

A momentous morning – I effect to ‘lie in’, my first of the holiday, rising post-ten like a champion sleeper. Leaving The Eagle in his nest (he suffers from hangovers that could slay a Kodiak bear), we went for a coffee and a ‘breakfast wrap’ – both served by the friendliest chap one might ever hope to meet; so friendly, in fact, that it made The Associated Press and Chatham House Rules a little nervous. They have clearly been in London too long – I feel that continued exposure to Australians will do them the power of good.

Next was some art: firstly the Brett Whitely Studios – markedly impressive; and then White Rabbit – a quite superb collection of contemporary Chinese art which is really worth a visit, should you find yourself in the Chippendale/Surry Hills area.
Following this we meet up with The World’s Worst Groom (and, eventually, The Eagle) at the Courthouse Hotel for multiple beers and vast amounts of unhealthy food in the sunshine. Alongside The WWG was a fine fellow called Dave, my fellow groomsman-elect.

Now, you will remember back in Melbourne that I described The AP’s pal Josh as ‘a giant’. Here I fell into the classic journalistic error of using up my superlatives early doors, leaving me with precious few places to go, should matters escalate further. Dave, you see, is bigger than Josh. He is, in fact, bigger than perhaps everyone I’ve met in my life. Andthesea? Smaller, slighter. The Big Man himself? Still falling short.

Big Dave and I discussed the aforementioned ‘tan suit issue’ and found common-ground regarding our sentiments thereof – common-ground which was immediately pillaged and salted by a furious argument about the hierarchy of potato dishes. Eventually, only after a fair number of gallons of beer had been consumed, we all went our separate ways in peace.

A much needed nap-cum-food coma was taken back at the house, before yet more food – this time with The World’s Best Bride (& The WWG) and a couple of fellow Europe-to-Oz voyagers – at Emad’s, a Lebanese restaurant in Surry Hills. There was an eerie similarity between the spread offered within Emad’s carpeted walls and the vast meal at Chatham HR’s relations’ place, and we all suffered a certain level of PTSD. We shook it off, however, for it was the first Friday night of the trip, and now was the time for a BNO.

The first stop was Shady Pines, a top quality American-style saloon bar with great music and tasty drinks. The second was ‘Ching-a-lings’, also a great deal of fun. The WWG – not ‘out out’ that evening due to his ‘buck’s do’ being scheduled for the following day (and the resultant necessity of preparatory meditation, sleep and prayer) – had suggested both places and was very much batting two from two.

His third and final suggestion was the Oxford Art Factory – yet at this point we were persuaded off his well-chosen path by some fellow revellers who assured us that ‘Palm’ was where we needed to be. They were, sadly, quite wrong. The area around Oxford Street is, it turns out, quite a centre for our homosexual brothers and sisters, and we had hoped that his Palm place might be one of those splendidly swanky gay clubs with fabulous drinks and ‘top tunes’. What it is, in actuality, is akin to a mid-80’s Wetherspoon’s packed to the rafters with shirtless lads. Not quite our scene, we beat a hasty retreat after just a round or two.

Those sons of extra-marital union they call bouncers at the Oxford Art Factory then refused to unbar the doors to us, having applied Sydney’s draconian ‘1.30 lockout rule’ some 15/20 minutes early, curse them. We therefore took a punt in the dark and bundled into a nearby club called ‘The Cliff Dive’ shortly before the government-mandated ‘fun window’ slammed shut. As it happened, there was a lesbian grime night on, which was an experience – though I find that after you’ve heard one ‘grime’ track you’ve a good idea what’s coming in the next one.

We wander home victorious at 2.30am, our jetlag defeated, our body clocks now ‘full antipodean’, and a fun-filled Friday night successfully negotiated. As our good friend Chatham would say, ‘Halla!’

 

Oz. September 2nd – 4th: “A most manly stag and a Manly aftermath”

The day started much like any other – a sluggish enough start, a little bit of necessary admin, quite a lot of unnecessary brunch…little did we know that this day would go down amongst the darkest of our lives, let alone the trip.

Well…one says, “little did we know” – actually we had a pretty damn good idea what we might be facing that afternoon and evening – it was to be an Aussie ‘buck’s party’ after all, and one ‘organised’ by The World’s Worst Best Man at that. Deep down, I feel, we always knew what was in store. Hence, perhaps, the slow pace of proceedings that morning – as if through base procrastination we might put off the inevitable pain and suffering which was later to come.

Firstly, we had more accommodation to book. Not only had we yet to find somewhere serviceable in Hong Kong for the stopover on our return voyage, we also had the exceptionally pressing issue of avoiding (at all costs) having to ‘crash’ in the homestead of The WWBM, post-bucks. Who knows what might befall there? Would we even get out alive?

We cried out to the internet, ‘take this cup away from us!’

And lo, the internet doth reply, ‘here’s a studio room near Manly Beach for a notably affordable sum. Book away, my children, book away.’

All praise to the internet! Hail the good god of wifi!

The Manly apartment was booked post-haste and Chatham House Rules, The Eagle and I could finally relax. (A Gay Arctic Monkey and The Associated Press were to fly to Brisbane early Sunday morning, so had not suffered with us our pangs of worry.)

Futures thus secured, we went over to Crown Street, where we enjoyed reportedly ‘the best brunch in Surry Hills’ (though not, in my opinion, the best in Australia – that is still to be found in Melbourne, VIC) and an ice cream at the repeatedly recommended Gelato Messina, which very much lived up to its top-billing.
And then, for there was really nothing else for it, we took a taxi across town to meet our fates in the crucible of the bucks.

Now, the eternal rules of stag parties everywhere mean that one can only hint at that which took place. Let us just say that it started off innocently enough, with beers and sports in the sunshine, and The World’s Worst Groom dressed amusing coquettishly.

However, as the sun lowered in the sky, matters took a turn. There was, in no particular order and with no particular punctuation, a good deal of the following:

Laws broken (moral and actual) and unpleasant male and female nudity and shirtless Greco-Roman wrestling and violence and cruel laughter and a show, a bad show, and a very cold girl and victories and losses with cups and bats and balls and little food and too much of everything else and things seen by fathers and fathers-in-law-to-be as well as all and sundry which should really not have been seen but which were and were bad and horrid and there were bouncers both friendly and unfriendly and house music, such deep house music and arguments and other clubs and venues and people far too young and fevered conversations and fear and sweat and mockery and then long cold journeys home with muddied palms and souls and then the black, the silence, all else as nothing.

Quite good fun, to be honest, if you like that kind of thing.

*

We had a really rather early checkout the next morning. Of course we did.
Spirits were simultaneously low and high – low because we were plunged into cruel movement, action, and the realisation that a Gay Arctic Monkey and The Associated Press had (comfortably) missed their flight up to Queensland; high because we were still, to a man, absolutely slippered.

Gingerly, oh-so-gingerly, we packed and left the house. A GAM and The AP found a cab and rebooked their Brisbane flights; Chatham House Rules, The Eagle and I found a café and attempted to converse with a fellow human being, with limited success. Eventually, the kind and pleasant German waitress took pity on us and brought us a random selection of hot drinks and cold water, steeling us for our upcoming train/ferry trip across the bay to Manly and Manly Beach.

We did not, my friends, feel manly, or womanly, or any positive -ly word one might care to mention, yet through unexpected reserves of something or other, we made it across town, found the correct boat and then watched central Sydney slip away behind us, bridges and opera houses and strippers and all.

Once in Manly we were struck by how much ‘fuller’ and crowded it seemed than even the most popular parts of Sydney. That it was full of and crowded with the most beautiful girls imaginable did not really help matters – following ‘instances’ witnessed the previous night, all three of us were now avowed celibates, monastic in sentiment and garb.

We found our studio flat – pokey enough and quite noisy, but perfectly suited to our humble needs – and threw on some beachwear. With our final mental and bodily strength we wandered the fifty yards or so to the main beach, found a likely looking spot of sand, then collapsed senseless upon it.

We are joined there in our sandy stupor a little later by Agent Cooper, heiress to the Coopers beer fortune and old friend of Chatham HR from Cambridge. She is a lawyer by trade, not a doctor – yet she is quick in her medical diagnosis: “You lot need bloody marys,” she states, authoritatively, “and quickly.”

In her wake we wander, across to the rather swanky Papi Chulo on the wharf, where the drinks mentioned – ‘bacon tequila’-based masterpieces of quite exceptional quality – are purchased and consumed. Both Chatham and The Eagle are instantly healed, ordering many subsequent schooners of Coopers Pale Ale in celebration and attempting (unsuccessfully) not to pay, due to our Coopery company.

I, however, am too far gone down the dark and choppy River Styx, and can barely manage to nibble upon my hubristically purchased king prawns, despite both their beauty and their flavour.

The party is then extended further by the arrival of Bernstein & Woodward, along with her sister and friend. Pleasant damsels all, and ill-deserving of such wretched company as I proffered. Fortunately The Eagle and Chatham were now back to approaching mid-season form and, as we went off to the nearby Manly Wharf Hotel, where we saluted the setting sun with more beers and prawn pizza (actually quite good), this fine and scholarly pair very much took up the conversational reins.

One by one, it being a school night after all, the good ladies bid their adieus, allowing us three, once alone in our masculinity, to hotfoot it back to the flat for an impressively early night. I fall asleep around eight, then again at nine, then at one thirty, then twice more at four and six. Chatham HR, you see, has a devil of a cold, and snores like a chainsawed giraffe.

I ask myself what I might have done to deserve such torment. Then I remember the buck’s party, and all becomes clear.

*

The next morn is a kinder one and we feel almost human. Chatham House Rules and The Eagle pop out for another fine coffee; I stay in and do a wee spot of writing – there is plenty to jot down.

We then set out to tick a few things off the Manly list Bernstein & Woodward had kindly provided us. First we walked all around the brush-strewn and swamp-pocked North Head headland, enjoying some fantastic views right across the bay and exploring the abandoned military structures dotted about the place.

We stop for a fantastic lunch at the Bella Vista, well worth a visit for its ‘bella vistas’ back across to Sydney city alone. Then, replete, fine white wine, calamari and squid ink tagliatelle in our (expanding) bellies, we finish our sunny trek, finding a couple of quieter little coves and beaches, and scouting out a location for dinner [eating, as you may have gathered, has proved a pretty central part of our voyage to date.]

Strolling back into town, we indulge The Eagle’s proclivity towards souvenir t-shirts, then enjoy a couple of local beers at the Hotel Steyne (sic). Following a quick nap, shedding the last of our post-buck’s party weariness, we head to the ‘Manly 16ft Skiff Club’ – a key recommendation from B&W.

It is $10 Steak Night here and it seems like the whole town has sauntered on down, guzzling away surprisingly succulent and excellent fare, considering the price point. After a few somethings and tonics, we decide to head out and hit the town – but lamentably find no ‘town’ to hit, Monday nights being pretty darn dead here in sleepy Manly.

‘Perhaps this is for the best,’ we reflect, heading back to the flat. ‘We ain’t young men no more – a couple of nights a week off might do us the power of good.’
Hell, after Saturday’s ungodly antics, one might consider it a miracle that this inebriate trio made it to beautiful Manly at all…

 

Oz. September 5th – 8th: “Sydney days for work and play”

Leaving Chatham House Rules and The Eagle snoring away merrily, I pack up me troubles (and strewn possessions) in the old kit bag and catch the fast ferry back to Sydney proper. It’s another day at the coalface for ol’ Mansfield you see, imprisoned within UNSW for the heart of the Tuesday.

Chatham HR and The Eagle have a more leisurely time of it, breakfasting in Manly before taking the slow boat and bus to Darlinghurst and our vast and glorious new homestead, just off from Oxford Street. There they meet Sam Seaborn and Marcia Clark, new party members just in from NYC (via a couple of stopovers in that People’s Republic of China they’ve got now).

Once I (eventually) arrive at the house, our reunion is sweet indeed – I have not clapped eyes on my buddy Sammy S. since 2013, when we were young and foolish, back during our Varsity days. Together, we all head over to ‘Opera Bar’, right on the harbour, where we meet the World’s Worst Groom and the World’s Best Bride, along with the World’s Worst Best Man – looking surprisingly guiltless, considering the damage he had so recently wrought – and many other friends and wedding party folks.

Bubbles were bought and drunk, but the winds set in and the temperature falls – prompting a move to the oh-so-swanky ‘Hacienda’, indoors thank goodness, and then away to the basement of the Baxter Inn and its hundreds upon hundreds of fancy whiskies. Another old pal of Chatham’s, a local Aussie known only as ‘Hangry A’ rocked up, The Eagle accidentally purchased a hilariously and eye-wateringly expensive tot of scotch, and a very fine evening was had by all.

*

The next day was my last working stint in Oz, and I set at it manfully, only slightly depressed that I could neither take a boat to Taronga Zoo (with Chatham House Rules and The Eagle) or wander the Bondi trail down eastern Sydney (with Sam Seaborn and Marcia Clark). Stoically, heroically, I sat my desk, peppered periodically with phone-photos of koalas (Chatham HR’s holy, furry grail), of various sandy beaches, and of duck-billed platypuses (platypae?). The entire group, it seemed, were clearly having significantly more fun than poor old THM.
The tables turned that eve, however, as – due to my lofty status as groomsman extraordinaire – I was invited to the ‘wedding rehearsal dinner’ up on the roof terrace of the East Village Hotel.

The food was fabulous and the red wine superb. In attendance, along with the wider wedding party, was the unfortunate lady fated to be ‘my’ bridesmaid on the Big Day™ (or, to be much more accurate, I was to be ‘her’ groomsman). Known colloquially as ‘Frankie Blue Eyes’ I had, to my eternal shame, once set this lass’ hair on fire, in a drunken prank which had gone rather awry. Relations between us were, therefore, a little frosty. Fortunately the excellent red wine kept flowing, and I did my able best to avoid her icy glares.

Well in my cups by the end, I promise folks a sensationally awesome ‘after party’ back at our nearby mansion. My companions, I assumed, would be up and on it, and we could all quaff deep into the night. Yet, when I arrived with a half dozen would-be revellers, I found each and every one of my housemates sound asleep, the living room covered in takeout boxes and – after our visitors left disappointed – a Gay Arctic Monkey, freshly back from Brisbane, snoring in my bed.

Such things are sent to try us, my friends, and try us oh they do.

*

Red wine hangovers, as I’m sure you know, are cruel beasts indeed. Lamentably, given their embarrassingly early nights, my travel companions were up unconscionably early, rousing me mewling and sobbing for, quote-unquote, ‘activities’.

But what an activity is was: Captain Tom, a family friend of the World’s Worst Groom’s parents, had offered to take us all around the harbour and surrounding waters on his personal sailing yacht! (The life we lead, dear readers…)

The WWG, his mother and his father – who had, it seemed, survived Saturday night’s onslaught – introduced us to Captain Tom and Captain’s Tom’s Wife, and showed us around their beautiful hillside home. Two rowdy hounds barked at us from the other side of a set of glass sliding doors – more on these tempestuous canines later…

Once all were aboard, Captain Tom and the WWG’s father (the WWG himself having ‘wedding shite’ to take care of) took us out into deeper waters, and the sun came out and drinks were served. A Gay Arctic Monkey raided the galley for white wine, and promptly became a Gay, tipsy, Arctic Monkey. We all tried to persuade Chatham House Rules to take a dip in the water, and almost managed it, until someone spotted a half dozen jellyfish, just floating on by, looking for Canadian-Iraqis to sting.

Having taken in the Opera House at close quarters, sailed under the Harbour Bridge and explored the docks and coves all around the bay, we made our way back to Hunter’s Hill and the home of Captain Tom. As we reached this homestead, we noticed that the aforementioned hounds, previously gaoled, were now bounding around free.

Chatham HR, noted animal lover, leapt from the jetty and stooped down to embrace them, promptly taking the younger beast’s firm snout square between the eyes. He span away reeling, his nose a bloody, savaged mess. The guilty canine, for his part, turned tail and fled into the bushes, barking loud apologies.

“Well yer shouldn’t rile them up, should ya?” noted Captain Tom’s Wife, not overwhelmed with sympathy.

Chatham took it all with surprising grace – until, that is, The Eagle suggested that he may now be rabid, and accordingly have but hours left to live.

What better way then, to spend a man’s final, frothing moments on this earth, than to go for one last supper, on this occasion at Sydney’s premier curry spot, ‘Halabar’? Once in situ, feeling that severely spicy Indian food might ward off infection and save both himself and his freshly mauled nose at the very last, Chatham ordered from the nuclear end of the menu. This, amusingly, reduced a GAM into sweaty, tearful misery:

“This is the hottest thing I’ve ever eaten!” he wailed.

“That’s chutney, mate,” we replied.

“But it buuuuuurrrrns!” he concluded.

With Chatham permanently disfigured and probably dying of Australian rabies (the very worst kind of rabies around); with a GAM red-faced, combusting internally; and with The Eagle feeling increasingly rundown and flightless, we decided to call it a night, wandering back to our fabulous Airbnb, where Sam Seaborn and Marcia Clark, post-date night, where attempting to make head or tail of a televised AFL game.

“Aha!” we aha-ed, “fortunately for you, we’re now Aussie rules experts! Listen to us, dear friends, and you’ll get it in no time at all!”

They did not, of course, ever ‘get it’ – but you know these Americans, dear readers, so closed-minded when it comes to their sports. Not like us Brits (and rabid Canadian-Iraqis), no not like us at all…

*

Friday was officially ‘Blue Mountains Day’ for our team, and as such we started at dawn (well, dawn-ish), hustling down to Central Station where we met both Hangry A and the Von Trapps – good friends of the World’s Best Bride from Cambridge, with whom we had previously shared a lovely Lebanese meal and Captain Tom’s yacht trip.

The train up was a slow one, and seemed to stop at every conceivable opportunity en route to Katoomba, a pleasant enough mountain town, where we enjoyed a fine breakfast at a joint named ‘True for the Bean’.

Fuelled and ready, we walk down to Echo Point, where we finally realise what all this Blue Mountains hype is ‘about’. The views from up there are nothing short of majestic – endless trees and craggy prominences and the rising blue haze which gives this wonderful part of the world its name. We then wandered down to the Three Sisters, a trio of famous, jutting rock stacks, popping out of a particularly craggy escarpment to say ‘G’day’ to the valley below. From there we took the Giant Stairway – eight to nine hundred steps, cut into the rock over a century ago – all the way down to the forest floor.

A very clement hike for one, maybe two hours then led us to the embarkation point for the Katoomba ‘Scenic Railway’ – reportedly the steepest railway in the whole wide world, and certainly the only one that I’ve ever travelled by which plays the ‘Raider’s March’ by John Williams on repeat.

[N.B. $21 for a two minute, one-way trip?! I’d call that pretty bloody ‘steep’, mate! Aha ahaha ahahaha…cough.]

We then had another one-stop train trip, this one notably flatter, across to nearby Leura, where we enjoyed well-deserved beers and humungous burgers at the Alexandra Hotel. Hangry A, having talked a big ‘food consumption’ game, failed to finish hers, uttering excuses most pitiful to hear. I, for the record, finished mine in four minutes flat. The poor thing never even stood a chance, gawd bless it.

And then we faced the long return leg back to distant Darlinghurst, down from the lofty mountains tall, a slow train back to civilisation (or as close as Australians can approximate to it). Once home, I lobbied unsuccessfully for us all to go out on the town, the team preferring to stay in, order some Pad Thai and listen to records – much, in fact, in the style of Upper-Eastside hipsters in their mid-to-late forties.
Appalled and saddened by their behaviour, I wandered the streets alone, just around the corner towards Surry Hills, where I met with a few fine Aussies who would be attending the next day’s wedding festivities.

Yes indeed, my friends, the ‘Wedding of Pane’ was now upon us – but a few hours away, by my watch. All signs pointed to it being, as they say, ‘a big’un’. We therefore sunk a good few preparatory G&Ts, as it really doesn’t do to go into these things without a good and proper warm up. A fellow could pull a muscle, after all…

 

Oz. September 9th – 10th: “The Wedding of Pane”

And lo, my friends, the Big Day™ had finally arrived – the key fulcrum of the trip, the incontrovertible catalyst of our whole Australian voyage was upon us: The Sydney Swans were playing Essendon in the AFL playoffs!

Sadly, despite the size and heft of the mighty SCG, we were unable to source any tickets, so instead we had to make do with attending one of the great Australian weddings. Kylie and Jason? Forget it. Toadfish Rebecchi and Dee Bliss? Pales, pales I say, in comparison. No, no, dear reader – today was the day of the ‘Wedding of Pane’, and it was, all jesting aside, quite magnificent.

*

The day started for we groomsmen across the city in Glebe, by the harbour, where we wrestled ourselves and the World’s Worst Groom into wedding attire – him into a fabulous navy two-piece; ourselves into the tan suits of which we do not speak.

The four chosen horsemen of the tanocalypse were as follows: The World’s Worst Best Man, who had, true to form, shaved his head and grown out a real ‘Pablo Escobar’ of a moustache for the occasion; Big Dave, still enormous, still using Aussie slang from the very top drawer (such as, for example, ‘cackle berries’ – trans. eggs); der Kaiser, an old pal from Cambridge who had been in attendance on Captain Tom’s boat and the ‘Opera Bar’ night, but for whom I’ve only just thought of a nickname which might do some semblance of justice to his Bavarian majesty; and myself.

Together with the WWG, we feasted on bacon and ‘cackle berries’, all the while fussed over by the proud parents of the WWG and photographed extensively by a lady photographer who quickly became my bane and my nemesis. (I don’t enjoy having my picture taken, no siree, Bob.)

Garbed and washed, fed and ready, we knights in camel armour boarded a pair of London black cabs and made our way across town to the venue: the Old Darlinghurst Gaol within the National Arts School.

[A fitting place for a wedding hahaha, because…because ahaha, marriage is…is a bit like a prison ahahaha…grief, this blog has gone off the rails…]

The place looked simply fantastic, the ceremony itself taking place in a leafy, sun-dappled courtyard, just beside the Cell Block Theatre where a riotous reception was later to be held. It being more of a humanist, state ceremony kinda thing, obviously the marriage itself would be null and void in the eyes of both God and this blog, but I only saw fit to tell the WWG this truth a couple of times or so.

Guests began to roll on in around two-ish, including so many of our old friends – The Eagle, a Gay Arctic Monkey, Chatham House Rules, Sam Seaborn and Marcia Clark, the Von Trapps and one hundred and eighty others, all looking infinitely pleased to be there, and to share in the coming moments…

For then…for just then the World’s Best Bride arrived – looking, it scarcely needs to be said, every inch the movie star. The vows were both amusing and touching, the bridesmaids radiant, and the WWBM managed to convey the rings across without arsing it up – a miracle on a par with the Sydney weather, which was simply perfect. There was even a bit of politics splashed in to boot – both in the readings (albeit more from the Platonic guff about moon children than the rather sweet Dr. Seuss nonsense about the adventure of life) and also in the fact that we all blew on paper kazoos when the government-mandated ‘between a man and a woman’ nastiness was recited.

And après ça, wouldn’t yer just know it, but Paul (WWG) and Jane (WBB) became ‘Pane’. There was a kiss (tasteful, only slightly French), rapturous applause and then it was done. Drinks were served and we groomsmen went towards them like dromedaries in the desert spying an oasis. However, hauled back so we were by the accursed bridesmaids and photographers. It was time, apparently, for photos…oh so many photos…

*

Seemingly hours later, dazed and parched, we tan monstrosities were released. We hustled into the Cell Block Theatre, where food was beginning to be served and the reception was accelerating in our absence towards ‘attack speed’.

Now the following hours were as much fun as one might conceivably have without being arrested and sent down for two weeks without the option – so, accordingly, the coming account will perhaps be a little lacking in structure and exact details. That being said, there was, in no particular order and with no particular punctuation, a great deal of the following:

Wines drunk both fizzy and flat, red and white and pink and speeches long and speeches shorter with great gags and touching accounts and fine foods, Mediterranean inflected, and more wine and beers, finally beers, and the best groom’s speech yet seen and an even better bride’s speech, pre-recorded, magnificently done, and a ten out of ten band and American Pie and dancing wildly and bridal karaoke and more speeches and scatological stories of true romance and revelations detrimental to Australian national security and beauties and ogres and more wine and much more dancing and ripped trousers mourned and well-insulted suits and romances old and new and stolen bottles and inebriation triumphing over inhibition and wine flowing and shapes throwing and good friends made and old friends held and drinks and stars and fire and purloined sunglasses and entrances poorly choreographed and gossip and intrigue and police interventions and wines and dancing and so, so much fun had by all.

Eventually, finally, we were kicked out of the prison, our most enjoyable sentences now at an end, with ‘Pane’ ferried off to their fancy post-nuptial hotel.

[God willing, we had by this stage poured enough wine down Paul’s throat that he was unable to perform any ‘acts’ in the marriage bed we all might later regret – post-marital sex being a leading cause of so many of the world’s ills, as we and St. Augustine know so well.]

The time had now come, of course, for an after-party. As such a significant percentage of us were at this stage several hundred sheets to the wind, we needed to go somewhere pretty darn trashy – hence us trekking over to ‘the Sheaf’, which was even more Wetherspoonsy than a Wetherspoons, save the fact that no genuine Wetherspoons would ever have the abject temerity to charge a fellow $10 for a schooner-full of lager.

After this trial, half a dozen or so of us found ourselves at an after-after-party, which left a little to be desired, so The Eagle and I made our way home, only to find Chatham House Rules and a Gay Arctic Monkey eating pork sandwiches, feeling a little aggrieved that they had, respectively, been kicked out of/never even allowed into the Sheaf.

Next-level splendid as the day had undoubtedly been, it was, we all concluded – even a GAM, so deep in his cups that only the top tress of his tousled barnet could now be seen – time to head to Bedfordshire.

*

Another hangover, another unfeasibly early checkout. Joy of joys, my brothers and sisters, joy of hell-damned joys.

Bags packed, heads clouded, we all stumbled down the road to ‘the Commons’ for yet another fine breakfast, which went a little way towards restoring our tissues. Sam Seaborn and Marcia Clark went off to ditch their suitcases – they’re off to the Great Barrier Reef and then to the Outback, lucky buggers – while we inebriates four went direct (sort of…buses are difficult beasts) to the handsome home of the World’s Best Bride’s parents.

Here there was a fond reunion indeed for many of the wedding’s (and this blog’s) major players. A lovely spread was spread out before us, stories were swapped and a thousand laughs were laughed. One by one, however, as the afternoon drew itself out, sad goodbyes had to be exchanged. Some (Sammy S and Marcia C) were off to Cairns, others to Melbourne, others to who knows where? All good and great things must end, my friends, and it did indeed seem like this sensational spell was drawing to a characteristically pleasant conclusion.

All that was left to us was an exceptionally indulgent Uber ride all the way to the far south of the city and our group’s final lodgings – in the sleepy beach suburb of Maroubra.

Our evening there was, quite understandably, a chilled one, with yet more takeout Thai food, a pattern beginning to emerge here. As for the night, it was the first for a good long while that I had had a bed to myself, free from Gay Arctic Monkeys and snoring Canadian-Iraqis. I slept long and I slept well, dreaming of weddings and of good friends and of the very best of times.

 

Oz. September 11th – 13th: “‘Bra boys on the beaches”

Early doors we tear ourselves away from our new apartment’s fabulous views and wander along the clifftops to Maroubra Beach. Here the local surf toughs, the ‘Bra boys, are taking to the waves, the fashionable brassieres and lingerie which give them their name shining brightly above their wetsuits in the morning sun. They instantly take a liking to us, and accept us into their thuggish but friendly fraternity.

“‘Bra recognises brah, bro,” notes a Gay Arctic Monkey, rather sagely.

Maroubra, overall, was found a little wanting, so we grabbed a quick breakfast-to-go and wandered back in the direction of home. And who did we meet on the path back to the flat but one Agent Cooper?

Chatham House Rules had, it seemed, invited her down to our new beach-side dominion, but, distracted by our new ‘Bra friends, had forgotten to furnish her with proper directions – hence her aimless wandering and our serendipitous clifftop rendezvous.

Chatham HR, a GAM and Agent Cooper then strolled across to the nearby (and superior) Coogee Beach. The Eagle and I stayed back at the flat for a wee while longer – myself as I had a spot o’ writing to do; The Eagle because he required additional slumber. The poor, glabrous soul had been stuck in a room with Chatham the previous night, and our learned friend had, snoring-wise, composed his latest masterpiece.

However, once rested, written up and – after a lovely walk along the rugged coastline to Coogee – reunited, the six of us all enjoyed fish ‘n’ chips and (contractually obligated) Coopers Pale Ale. Yes indeed, readers, six – we were now a round half dozen, for the Associated Press had returned (albeit briefly) to the fold, having been up seeing old friends in Newcastle (NSW).

This lovely scene of companionable felicity was only slightly dampened, pun very much intended, when The Eagle, idiot bird that he is, decided to pour an entire ice cold schooner of Coopers directly onto my testicles. Such was the sub-Kelvin temperature of the beer and such was the paper thin fabric of my ‘board shorts’, my reaction was far from muted – sending The Eagle flapping away apace.

Eventually, we managed to coax him down from a nearby tree, and we are able to wander back homewards. As nice as it would’ve been to stay and periodically dowse ourselves with freezing Australian beer, Chatham had a Skype talk thingy with yet another group of his followers and fans, and Agent Cooper had to go see a man about a barrel.

Now this august September day happened to be the 30th Anniversary of Frankie Blue Eyes’ birth, so that evening we schlepped on over to the Palisade Hotel in…hee hee hee…’Barangaroo’. The views out over the harbour were magnificent and the company uniformly excellent, and a good few sad goodbyes were exchanged at the evening’s conclusion – including with the World’s Worst Best Man, both the best and worst of blokes, right to the end.

Hangry A was also in attendance, and once last orders had come and gone we went together on an unsuccessful quest for that great Australian delicacy, the ‘meat pie’. Once defeated, we had to content ourselves with a final Opera House ‘selfie’, then a long bus ride back south with empty bellies.

*

The next day was to be a big walking day – much to the chagrin of Chatham House Rules, he being a man who has a.) a dodgy ankle and b.) a tendency to order Uber Deluxes at the drop of a chapeau.

The first leg was back to Coogee, where The Eagle and Chatham HR enjoy a couple of nice breakfasts and where I (finally) source myself a ‘meat pie’. It was, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, middling.

We then strolled along a patch of beauteous coastline to Bronte, where a Gay Arctic Monkey and I very much enjoyed some top rate seafood and chips – suggested to me the previous evening, rather forcibly, by a markedly tipsy Frankie Blue Eyes.

Everyone now fuelled, we mosey along, all the way to the famous Bondi Beach. Here we finally brave the frosty Pacific Ocean, mucking about in the waves for an impressive five minutes, before the cold becomes too much to bear, and our collective manhoods shrivel up into nothingness.

Continuing to go ‘full tourist’, we then purchased a selection of unnecessary Bondi souvenirs for our nearest and dearest, before thinking, ‘bugger it’, and walking all the way back to Coogee Beach, very much enjoying the play of twilight and sunset on this truly lovely part of the world.

At Coogee we ate kangaroo, as you do, at a joint called Barzura – it tastes a little like venison on the turn, but not exclusively in a bad way – and drank plenty of cheap red wine. Hangry A joined us one final time, and together we all adjourned to the beach-side Airbnb for more wine and some of the mountain of cheese we’d purloined from the Wedding of Pane. We could scarcely afford, as they say, ‘a heavy one’, for the taxi was booked for seven in the am the next morning – the taxi to the airport, my friends…our Australian days were very nearly numbered…

*

The driver was talkative…too talkative…but he at least knew the way to the airport and never came close to getting us killed, so he beat his Melbourne counterpart hands down, in my opinion.

Our final Australian hours were pretty melancholy, to be honest, a sleepy slog through check-in and security, and one last Oz coffee stop. It is, it must be said, a pretty fabulous country, and we all had the most sensational time, so it was unsurprising we felt a wee bit down about leaving.

However, our moods were instantly brightened when we bumped into a Puck Bunny, a very old friend of the World’s Worst Groom and a Wedding of Pane MC-extraordinaire. We were, as chance would have it, on the very same flight up to Hong Kong – her en route to distant, numinous Europe, us for a fresh, mini-adventure in the buzzing Cantonese metropolis. It promised to be an exciting, fun-packed, dumpling-filled few days…and who knows, perhaps we might post about it…should anything particularly noteworthy take place…

But all this, my friends, was in the future. It was now time to board the plane, to bid a fond ‘yeah bye mate’ to one heck of a place, and draw a final line under a hell of an Aussie trip. ‘Australians all let us rejoice’ indeed.

 

Bonus Oz blog. September 13th – 16th: “Honkers, baby”

It’s a solid nine hour flight from Sydney to Hong Kong – proof, if it were needed, that Australia is just a comedically long way away.

While I personally was able to grab a wee bit of kip (between some films of very variable quality), sleep simply would not come to Chatham House Rules, or to The Eagle, or even to a Gay Arctic Monkey. This airborne insomnia, in combination with the intellect-sapping heat and humidity we found in ‘Honkers’, might go some way to explain just how difficult we found it to navigate from the airport to our hotel.

Buses were missed or not even found and incorrect train tickets were sourced and a general hash was made of most everything. Eventually, stressed and flushed, we bundled ourselves tightly into the first of many a bright red HK taxi and, bags spilling about everywhere, finally made it across to our final place of rest – the Kowloon Harbourfront Hotel.

This hotel is an interesting mix of the average and the ever so slightly above average – a typically Chinese phenomenon where lofty ambitions sit side by side with clear, easily remedied failings. However, Chatham HR, he of the silver tongue, managed to talk us into an upgraded room with a fine view over the city’s central waterway, meaning that, just about, on a split points decision, the hotel came out triumphant.

Once showered and unpacked, we braved the heat and the wide river’s unspeakable odour and wandered across Kowloon to the Spring Deer – a restaurant which came highly recommended from a good buddy of mine back home. Oh, and what a recommendation! Perfect Peking duck, wonderful ‘shredded beef’ and, of course, plentiful dumplings made for a very, very satisfactory first Hong Kong meal, washed down with round upon round of Tsingtao (in my experience the only Chinese beer worth drinking).

We then grabbed a tube over to Wan Chai for a splendidly trashy Wednesday night session. The crowd out and about were young and very western, and as we hopped from bar to bar we felt increasingly old and jaded. Eventually, around one-ish, during a particularly strange gig with a squat Chinese fellow doing a poor Bon Jovi impression and a long-haired bassist who would wander out into the street mid-riff, the boys’ fuel gauges dipped into the red. It was time, we concluded, to knock this one hard on the head.

*

Post- an impressively average hotel breakfast, we found ourselves a taxi driver looking for a chunky fare and drove all the way southeast to the Shek O peninsula.

Here we walked up and down the Dragon’s Back Trail, a hot and rather challenging little hike which afforded sensational views, all across the surrounding forests and seas. Chatham House Rules, not a natural hill-walker at the best of times, complained relatively constantly about his ankle, and was only placated by the promise of Shek O Beach at the end of our saunter, where we could ‘chill’ in the sun with some drinks, and maybe even some attractive womenfolk, should the stars align.

However, once reached the beach proved itself a little lacking – certainly nowhere near Sydney standard – with dirty-looking water, litter-strewn sands and UV which could happily microwave a store-bought dinner for one. A prolonged stay was therefore promptly vetoed by myself, The Eagle and a Gay Arctic Monkey – which in turn prompted a now familiar barrage of curses, in a heady mix of Arabic, Assyrian and Canadian, against faithless ‘white boys’ who ‘can’t handle a little sun’.

“I’m solar powered!” lamented Chatham HR. “I need the sun to live!”

“Yeah but this is pretty rubbish, let’s walk somewhere better.”

“Aye, somewhere more shady and all.”

“$*&%£!!” swore Chatham, with some feeling.

[The figurative translation of this particular curse, we later learned, was ‘I disrespect your family’. The literal translation, however, one regrets to relay, was ‘I shit upon your lands’.]

We found a likely looking bus which took us back to civilisation, and then a westbound train to Central/Hong Kong Station. Here we found a famed dumpling joint which placated even the tempestuous young Chatham: Tin Ho Wan, cheap, popular and, would you believe it, Michelin-starred.

Now previously in this very blog I have suggested to you all that we had previously enjoyed dumplings. We believed it, I believed it, and therefore I conveyed this belief to you. This late lunch on Thursday 14th September, 2017, disabused us of this flawed notion. These were dumplings, my friends. Dang good dumplings.

Accordingly, we ate a great deal of them – proving quite incorrect the sceptical waitress who snorted (snorted, I say!) in derision at the sheer scale of our most manful ordering.

Replete, happy and corpulent, we waddled victorious from the restaurant and went over to Mong Kok (oo-er, vicar), apparently the most populated place on the planet, to check out some tat-filled markets. It was then back to the hotel, where all save Chatham splashed about in the establishment’s superbly malodorous outdoor swimming pool, cooling down properly for the first time in a sticky, humid day.

A particularly overpriced Asahi in the hotel bar later, we were all ready for another stroll and another Michelin starred meal. Over to western Kowloon we trekked, up to the third floor of an off-the-rack Chinese shopping centre, and into a celebrated branch of the world-famous Taiwanese restaurant, Din Tai Fun.

Considering the quality of opposition it faced, it was marked how easily our dinner here claimed the title of ‘Undisputed Champion of all Hong Kong Meals’. It was, quite simply, sublime from first dish to last. Special mention goes to the spicy wonton dumplings – as good and tasty a morsel as one has ever placed into one’s mouth (oo-er, vicar, once again).

Lan Kwai Fong, Honkers’ premier boozing locale, then called out our names on the wind. It was time, for the second occasion in so many nights, for some trashy expat libations.

Opting to begin in an uncharacteristically fancy manner, we began with a cocktail at ‘The Boudoir’, where we were kept company by a couple of taciturn Chinese lasses, a young Cantonese gigolo on the make and his sixty-something British ‘john’. Quite the party, I’m sure you’d agree.

From here, needing a wee change of pace, a Gay Arctic Monkey and I got well stuck into ‘Club 7/11’, the best value and most amusing of all the LKF joints. From this comely HQ, we would strike out into various different ‘hot spots’, dominating dance floors and generally running amok. Chatham and The Eagle were less impressed by these gilt-edged drinking tactics, but they came around in time, dear reader…oh they all come around in time.

*

Friday’s was a sluggish start, our quartet regularly waylaid by lost eagles, by breakfasts glacial and poor, and by disappearing taxis. Eventually, we made it way out west, to the Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car which took us all the way up to the top of Lantau Island, over rolling hills and a wide and shining bay. Up here one finds a very large bronze Buddha, apparently the largest around, and a rather fake, commercialised monastery.

Now, here we had been promised by a friend of a Gay Arctic Monkey, delicious, monk-made vegetarian dumplings. What we received was different. Chatham House Rules still refuses to talk about it. Suffice to say, we thought a lot about Tim Ho Wan during the, quote-unquote, ‘meal’ we endured there. There is, on reflection, a good chance we went to the wrong place. Either way, the fare was ‘proper bobbins’.

The walk up to the Tian Tan Buddha himself was sweaty but manageable, and the vistas from the summit almost matched the fabulous views from the epic cable car up, in terms of scale and magnificence. Hong Kong does give a good view, no matter what one’s tastes might be.

Ngong Ping village proved fertile ground for souvenir shopping, and many a HK dollar was dropped on items not necessarily necessary. Then all that was left was a breathless cable car ride back to the city and a swift tube/cab combo back to the Harbourfront. We had every cause to rush – The Old Man had just checked in, and was eager to see his firstborn, that is to say, yours truly.

Now a famous five, we headed to Elgin Street near ‘Mid Levels’. Here, after a couple of drinks and then a couple of restaurant misfires, we found a decent place which would take us in on a busy Friday night – a delicious steak joint named, imaginatively, ‘Craftsteak’. The Old Man, you see, was on a strict vegetarian diet up in Shanghai, and was keen as mustard (and horseradish, and pepper sauce) to get himself outside a decent slab of cow and a bottle or two of Malbec that eve.

The sheer amount of meat consumed went a good way to writing off the remainder of the night, but we made sure to take The Old Man to a particularly happening branch of Club 7/11 for a few quality ‘street beers’. Then, meat drunk (and a wee bit drunk drunk), we hailed a couple of cabs and beat a lazy retreat.

*

Sad but true to say, the final day of our rather spectacular trip had, creeping up like a stalking panther, pounced hard and fatally upon us. Thusly mauled, we packed up and stashed our kit (bags now bulging with various souvenirs, ‘Tim Tams’ and bulky camel suits) in the foyer of the hotel.

We then choked down the stalest of all stale Harbourfront Hotel breakfasts and wandered through the oppressive heat to the Star Ferry terminal. A swift, old-timey riverboat then took us across the city’s central waterway to Hong Kong’s central ferry-port, where a second, larger craft was found which might take us over to Cheung Chau Island.

We had it on good authority that the seafood on this little island was tippity-top-notch and, having found seemingly the most popular place (an unpretentious joint called, with a charming lack of subtly, ‘Delicious Seafood Restaurant’), we told the waiting staff therein to ‘give us hell’.

Once again, the conservative reservations and general lack of ambition shown by the waitresses whose paths we were fated to cross was proven ill-conceived. Yes, we may have ordered enough scallops and crabs and prawns and grouper and the rest to feed a moderately hungry battalion of strong fighting men, but we put away said scallops and crabs and prawns and grouper and the rest with a verve and gusto that was, we felt, highly impressive to see. In short, no regrets were had, none whatsoever.

As good a mood as the food engendered within us, the island’s rising heat and humidity soon put paid to it. The temperature, an unforgiving bastard of a thing, was now in the high thirties, far too hot for we Brits – and almost too hot for Canadian-Iraqis to boot.

Extensive tours of the more beauteous parts of the island were now out of the question – we had to content ourselves with seeking out the better air-conditioned shops, pretending to want their wares while we cooled down to a mere swelter. One serviceable place was a wildly overpriced tea shop, where The Old Man whiled away some time indulging in his favourite pursuit – haggling Chinese women into a blazing fury over goods he neither wants nor needs. It really is quite the spectacle – if ever you find yourself over in Shanghai you simply must check it out.

Putting a pin in this overheated island nonsense, we caught the ferry back to the mainland, enjoying the endless skyscrapers and (in my case) extended catnaps in the sun. We then wandered a little aimlessly around central Hong Kong for a mite too long for my liking, finding a fancy shopping centre, part of a park, a Catholic church and then, at long last, gods and heavens be praised, some bars.

Beers purchased and defeated, the four of us then bid a fond farewell to The Old Man, whose late cameo in our trip I, for one, had very much enjoyed. Following this, we went to retrieve our loot before, a little glumly, a little wearily, we sloped over to Hong Kong International Airport.

The flickering flame of the voyage had, at last, choked out. We quietly ate a final portion of dumplings (better than the monastery’s, but barely in the same ballpark/giant Aussie Rules stadium as the divine stuff from Tim Ho Wan or Din Tai Fun) before, now utterly spent and utterly penniless, collapsing into our seats for the long flight home.

One by one my companions drifted off into well-deserved sleep and happy, spiralling dreams: Chatham House Rules, his incomparable snoring for once but a quiet rumble, dreamt of koalas and dumplings, sunshine and taxis; a Gay Arctic Monkey, ‘new music’ still blaring from his headphones, was visited by visions of split trousers, roast ducks and dancing, prancing fools; and The Eagle, flat-cap pulled down low over his eyes, endured nightmares most cruel, filled with a lass called ‘Hunter’ and The World’s Worst Groom.

Only I remained wakeful, albeit not for long: I had one final thing to do, before calling time on this trip of trips and sleeping my way back to London.

Ignoring the muted snarls from the well-built Chinese girl on my right, I switched on my reading light and pulled out my pen and notepad, now full almost to bursting.

“Hmm…how to begin?” I pondered.

“$*&%£!!” suggested my neighbour, a little unhelpfully, due to the rustiness of my Cantonese.

“No…no that won’t work…hmm…oh yes, how about a wee bit of this..?”

Pen met page. Slowly, steadily, practically illegibly, I began to write:

It’s a solid nine hour flight from Sydney to Hong Kong – proof, if it were needed, that Australia is just a comedically long way away…