I am ill today. So much so that instead of performing ambitious acts of garden-weeding and laundry-folding, I am holed up in bed drinking tea and transcribing the paper journal I kept in Montenegro.

(It's long, so it's under the cut, but here's a preview:)

We're in the midst of potty training which has brought much of its own hilarity from Matei's insistence on peeing 'like a man' (standing up) to complex bouts of anatomical reasoning.
Me: Let's see if teddy bear wants to go pee on the potty.
Him: (examines bear, turns him back and front) Bear cannot pee. Doesn't have a penis.

( Read more... )

I have had a joyful reunion with my little camera that I took to Montenegro and then misplaced somewhere in Belgrade (I think it was spirited away by imps, because I looked all over and it was found by my mum a couple of weeks ago in a place that I could swear I had already searched).

Anyway, I uploaded pictures, which is what I prefer to do when faced with a presentation due tomorrow, and among them were pictures of one entire day that I had taken and meant to send to Z. (I also meant to send him a postcard but that didn't happen either).

In these photos Matei is well into his eigth month on earth; when we got back his daddy hadn't seen him for over a month and hardly recognised him. But he's changed even more since then because when I look at these pictures now I can't believe how much older he looks now, two months on.

So anyway, if you care, that's my day under there gratiutously documented for the internet, because that's what the internet is for.

x



( There are another 50 pictures under here )

Ridiculous Accidneal Self-Injury

Yesterday, when shutting the car boot I accidentally slammed it down onto parts of myself. Soft parts of myself (like my arm and my nose) which strongly objected to this and have turned all kinds of purple to teach me a lesson.


Saboteurs

This morning Matei slept-in until the unprecedented hour of 8:45am and so did Z and I. He was very chirpy but we were ridiculously late for everything.

Also the cat is preventing me from doing my coursework. He's all touch me, not the keyboard! I am soft! Here, let me headbutt your hands and walk all over the keyboard stepping on the delete key in the process just to show you the foolishness of attempting to do work when there are cats to be loved

I think he has interpreted the phrase 'Security Object' too literally

Since birth I have been attempting to ally my son to a variety of cuddly toys, soft blankets etc. in a shamelessly self-serving ploy to wean him off his preferred comfort routine (incessant, endless breastfeeding). And although he stopped nursing he still never showed an attachment to any one cuddly thing, in fact showed no preference for things at all until he laid his paws on a plastic hammer. Since then, he won't let it go. He eats with it, sleeps with it, sings to it, gesticulates wildly with it.

It is like living with a minature God of Thunder (although his hammer doesn't magically return to the owner when thrown; MAJOR DESIGN FLAW). Z and I live in fear of being smited, unrepetant sinner that we are.



Using Ur Fearz Against U Since Infancee

Although Matei becomes a helpless fan-boy at the sight of ducks, cats and squirrels, dogs largely revolt him and he is frightened of frogs.

Nowadays, when I don't want him to touch something I put a wooden frog on top of it.

Hello! Z and I and the baby are back from the Canaries where I have been burning up the last of my maternity leave with more gleefulness than I would have had I know that our airline would declare itself bankrupt and our tickets null and void and leave us stranded at the airport. What ensued is a rage and bitterness and terror filled tale for another time; what matters is that we all got back home in the end and happily after a certain point with financial trauma you reach a certain treshold where the pain stops as you float gently through the land of Disbelief.

1. ( The Maybe Zelda )

2. ( The Maybe Baby )

I have had no internet for well over a month, and attempting to catch up on your lives from friends list alone is clearly quite hopeless, so if you feel so inclined drop me a comment. Let me know what's new with you and if you feel so inclined point me towards any entries you want me to read.

xxxxx

Hello!

I have come back from Montenegro with my baby and 50% of my luggage. The other 50% is enjoying an extended holiday in Vienna. This would only be a relatively minor inconvenience were it not for the fact that I am travelling again tomorrow morning and have had to spend today doing various bits of frantic admin and running around trying to acquire new essential baby things (although on BA's money, hurray).

I have forgotten my camera in Belgrade so therefore I have no photographic proof to offer of my son's two brand new teeth, or his new hair, or the fact that he likes nothing better than engaging in various kinds of acrobatics and pulling himself up to stand. Also, as a small snapshot of the many ways in which looking after this fearless hellion gymnast/stuntman/avid explorer of a child has aged me I leave you with this:

*Age at which Matei learns to pull himself up to stand holding on to bars of his cot - 7.5 months.

*Age at which Matei manages to vault himself over the side of his cot and flings himself headfirst towards earth - 1 week after that.

It is difficult for me to believe looking at him that my genes had any part in his creation. Each day I am becoming more and more convinced that it would have been far more just for him simply to have emerged fully formed from his father's head, like Athena.

So, although Z's genes have solidly thrashed mine in this battle I hope that mine will WIN THE WAR, because if I have another child this active I will hand in my resignation and go off to the Bahamas.

I have missed you all. x

The bags are packed and we are off to the seaside where there will be no internet, but all being well will be running water and electricity and a brisk sea breeze (although it being montenegro with the first two you never know).

xxx to all.

See you on the other side.

The day started out rather well. We woke up from a night of restful sleep among friends and the baby was being sweet and my allergies were not too fearsome so I was all prepared for a day of Sun and Nature so we packed up the car with lunch and the baby and the dog and my immediate family and set off for the countryside where an excellent time was had by all for many hours.

Behold the proof:



The dog found dog friends and ran around as part of a dog pack, and the child got passed from lap to lap like a baby equivalent of the Olympic Torch and at 4pm we set off for home with jaunty waves and armfuls of roses.

At the outskirts of Belgrade a spring rain began falling, and rapidly turned into large rain. Nobody was duly alarmed although I made allowances for the weather by rolling up the windows. As we were pulling into our street the Large Drops turned into Menacing Gangster Rain and as we were working out where to park and how to unload the child and stuff from the car in the most speedy was possible Menacing Rain suddenly became Tiny Hail. And just as we found an (illegal) spot to park our car in front of the home all the more easily to unload it Tiny Hail graduated to Satan's Popcorn and then from there leapt to become Huge Snarling Minority-Hating ASBO Hail of DOOOM.

Like this:

Hailstones the size of quails eggs and those gigantic olives you get at the deli. Hailstones that were not only large but numerous and they fell so fast and heavily and hard so that the windshield became blurred and the street beyond us turned into a river of white.

And as the sky continued to pelt us (ever harder) with its baby fists of ice we were effectively trapped because there was no way to drive the car somewhere safe (like the garage) and no possibility of grabbing the child and leaping the four feet to the safety of the doorway without sustaining some serious injury to my person.

And as the heavens unleashed their unseasonal and unexpected rage upon our heads I watched the dog teeter on the edge of Fully Losing Her Shit (she is terribly afraid of storms and being bombed by hail was close to her idea of Room 101) while various scenes from The Day After Tomorrow unreeled themselves before mine eyes.

I was still mostly fine, and was prepared to continue musing idly on the unpredictablity of nature and the subject of global warming when I observed that the hailstones (now the size of kiwis) were falling so fast and so furiously that they were bouncing off the ground the other cars and the hood of our car in order to hit the windows in viscious ricochets, and it occured to me to wonder "Goodness I wonder how much of this abuse the windows can withstand before they you know, SHATTER".

(Z, later on the phone:"Pah those windows need to get him by soemthing the size of bricks in order to break, and besides even if they had broken they would have splintered first instead of exploding " which is nice to know and I'll remember for next time, but in that moment I didn't have access to his Reassuring Engineer Knowledge only my Imagination and Fear which is a potent partnership at the best of times)

And as my Inner Tension suddenly leapt from Quite Low to Holding Shit Together For the Sake Of Appearances And The Mental Health of Dog And Child, the baby woke up, realised we were being bombed by the sky, whiffed The Fear being emanated and promptly began to wail. Except I couldn't pick him up to soothe him because I was thinking his sheltered car seat was the safest place for him to be in case of Window Breakage and as I prepared to valiantly throw my body across him to shield him I was still not completely at ease with the idea of fragments of a hypothetically broken window flying forwards to embed themselves in my back. (For starters my sweet white jacket would have been RUINED).

And as I was playing with various scenarios (eg. was it safer to just open the damn windows) the hail slowed and then stopped and the street looked like this:
>img src0"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2277/2502175237_7f1bf8fc27.jpg?v=0">
and my balcony looked like this:

but nobody was hurt except the plants.

How was your day?

Travelling through Belize.

Back soon with tales of incredible scenery/ amazing junge/ lovely people/ apalling toilet conditions.

x

Well, it's been a jet-setting couple of weeks for me, in which Z and I travelled on some free promotional holiday/trial honeymoon to Spain he got by virtue of being a lucky-bastard-Sagittarius and then I went off to Belgrade to spend time with my grandmother.

Both of these exeperiences exceeded my low expectations and for once left me feeling energised and refreshed and more ready to face such onery as cleaning house and going to work.

Due to some administrative error we ended up going to Costa del Sol in Spain (as opposed to Tenerife) but never being one to scoff at free holidays we didn't care. It turned out to be terrific anyway. Hot and beautiful and reminiscent of our childhoods and the lands we'd left behind. Predictably all my old post-traumatic neuroses came out but still I managed to go into the water without drowning and ride a horse without doing damage to my Central Nervous System, so success on all fronts.

For the first three days we just spent time by the sea, reading and playing cards and expanding my very poor grasp of Spanish, and then we rented a car, bought a map and set off to explore the backroads of Andalusia.

Previous holidays had highlighted distinct differences in temperament between Z and myself (in a nutshell: I wanted to eat and be lazy, he wanted to be active and explore shit) but this time we managed to maintain mutual respect and harmony (although it was touch and go for a while when meals got delayed). Overall it was wonderful, like an adventure.

We saw a village where they used donkeys as taxis, a museum of tiny things (including stuffed, dressed fleas, a town built on a cliffedge and a village in white stone that was so steep only scooters could negotiate the perils of its cobbled streets. The latter also had something like six massive churches which suprised us not in the least because only those heavily into the mortification of the flesh would have chosen to live, not to mention drag bricks uphill in that place. It was pretty though. We also saw a place of perfect sandy beaches and near constant wind (for a week afterwards I was leaving sand in my wake, like fairy dust)where we ate amazing fish for a few euros and fed the heads of prawns to an ugly little one eyed stray dog. Driving around we saw the rock of Gibraltar, and the coast of Africa and elderly Spanish ladies dancing to flamenco music in an empty square.

For most of it we hadn't encountered a great many people, that is until we went into a town called Fuenjirola on our last day and realised that it may be where all the British people come to die. For miles and miles and miles we were faced with dual visions of endless lines of bars on one side and endless lines of shuffling aged in bright swimwear on the other.

It was odd, our segment of Spain was like a time warp in which only music of the eighties was played and I saw several people who appeared to be sporting mullets of their own free will. And aside from hearing every song Julio Iglesias has ever made (over and over and over again) it was quite plaesant actually and allowed me to imagine that perhaps it was all just a time warp and that was perhaps why all the people were there, that maybe they had been shuffling their way to eternal preservation for the last twenty years.

( The Photographic Evidence, although sadly not of the mullets )

When I was checking in at Heathrow some two weeks back the guy kept the return segment of my ticket [Belgrade to London, 15th of Feb] and gave me back along with my boarding pass my outgoing ticket [London - Belgrade, 3rd of Feb], a fact which I discovered last night.

And so this morning I attempted to go to the British Airways agency in Belgrade to get it fixed before my flight today. On the way there, I thought the city was strangely quiet and when I arrived at British Airways I was even more mystified to learn it was closed.

"But Why?" cried I.
"Because it's a public holiday," said they.
"What holiday is that?"
"The Constitution Day," they replied. Which is especially rich if you consider that Serbia & Montenegro don't have a bloody constitution sorted out. We are still using the Consitution from Milosevic's time [with some democratic amendments] and the government that's been in power since his vacation to the Hague has been for six years or so rabbitting about needing to reform the constitution.

But that's OK. We'll have it as a public holiday anyway because luckily not everyone is a nitpicker like me. And foreign companies will earn brownie points by honouring our public holidays which translates to Not Doing Bloody Work. But you know, When in Serbia and all that, so I'm glad to see them fitting in so well.

However, I am thrilled that we are celebrating our constitution even though it is a twinkle in the eyes of our politicians, because the constitution is Important Innit, and now we all know that.

And not to leave you on this irritable note, I shall relate instead a story that an old gypsy woman told me some years ago which people not of Yugoslav origin may not find amusing.
( Don't say I didn't warn you )

I have done many interesting things last week, such as be ill and go to Paris for the weekend. Originally I considered myself too tired and too poor to do the latter, but Z put all his powers of persuasion to the test and caught me at tender moments when I was drowsy and benign from Lemsips and daytime telly.

Z: Come see me in Paris, for the weekend.
N: I am ill and tired.
Z: It will be okay. I will be gentle. I won't force you to exercise. We will take taxis and stay still and drink lots of tea and I'll carry you around if I have to.
N: It's expensive.
Z: I'll pay for your ticket.
N: I should stay put and take care of the kitten.
Z: He will be fine for a couple of days with the neighbour feeding him.
N: I don't know honey. I would really love to come but it's not sensible. You know it's not sensible and it's mean of you to tempt me.
Z: But it's Paris! It will be so romantic! We'll have fun!
N: Oh all right. But if I die, it will be all YOUR FAULT.

And so despite the fact that I was exhausted and fluey I hauled myself off to Paris for the weekend and I am glad that I did because it was indeed very lovely and fun and I didn't die. We ate lots, walked around Montmartre and the Latin Quarter, visited the Montparnasse Cemetery [very pretty, lots of graves of dead famous people]and the Catacombs [bones of six million 18th Century Parisians arranged in a decorative way].

It was very lovely, and pictures will be upcoming next week when Z returns from France.

*******************************************

However, impulse holiday did not detract much from knowing that things at work are kind of awkward and tense right now, and so busy that I feel like most days my head is ringing and I can't remember the last time I actually had a lunch hour or even a 15 minute break during my workday and by the time I get home I feel braindead.

********************************************

Z's boiler carked it, and yesterday morning a British Gas eeingeneer mysteriously showed up to fix it even though neither Z or I had made an appointment for him to do so. I was in equal measures pleased and astonished considering that I'd been meaning to call British Gas for days but always got to the phone too late or was too exhausted and I am at a loss for explanations other than that I am nowadays making coherent phonecalls in my sleep [which is more than I can say for my waking life I can tell you].

Although much as I am pleased to believe in miracles and telepathy, when a young, fit male shows up on your threshold [unexpectedly and uninvitedly] while you're hopping around wrapped in towels trying to get ready for work, one may also treat this as a sinister occurence. I was inclined to suspect him of being a con-artist/maniac/rapist/burglar except that he did actually fix the boiler. My paranoia and dark bend of mind probably mean that I am ungrateful and don't deserve Gift British Gas men and I should request that they be forwarded on to scarletdemon.

And in kittening news...

It rained last night. I know this because intermittently during the hours of darkness a sopping wet kitten would come bounding into the room and into bed demanding instant human love in a chirpy mewl.

Its new favourite place to sleep is on one of the handy contours of my anatomy - such as the hillock of my hip or the valley between my shoulderblades.

I am discovering all the anxieties and pride of parenting: the baby seems to have gone off his tinned Whiskas nosh but thankfully Whiskas KatMilk is like crack to cats so I know he won't starve. And today I feel like we've crossed an important milestone because - my baby answered to the sound of his name!

This is not nearly as simple as you might think considering that the kitten has gone through three homes and four baptisms in its short life. Since at first it was believed to be a girl and lived with Portugese people it was Gatinya - then it was Tinkerbell(!) and finally Milica. Except that when we discovered that
Milica is a boy, Z wanted to call him Milo [a male moniker, and the name of the Montenegran president]. However, I wasn't keen on it since a) I think it's ugly b) I don't want the baby to have a corrupt oaf for a namesake c) it's hardly likely that kitten would have a sufficient awareness of Balkan culture and gender to have being called a girly name matter and d) so what if it ends up gay.

Z and I had a furtive battle for the kitten's soul, or at least its sense of identity with each of us addressing the poor mite by our preferred version of his name. I'm sure it could all have led to a lot of confusion but the kitten resolved this by not responding to anything beyond the call of the opening fridge door.

However since then it's become clear that the one who spends the most time communing with the baby gets to warp his sense of identity. Yesterday I was afraid that the kitten had run away through the front door [which the British Gas man had left open] so I was out in the back garden calling him, and was truly chuffed to hear my cries of "Milica!" answered with a Miaow! and to see a furry little creature scrambling over the edge of the fence like a living dead clawing his way out of a crypt.

Wheeee! My baby answers to his name! And he comes to me when called because he loves me and he hopes I'll feed him!

Today's other milestone was having the kitten puke on the carpet for the first time ever, but I'm slightly less chuffed about that.

Alas my holiday is no more and I've returned to work which has celebrated my arrival with people getting killed or married all over the place and I feel like I've spent so much time on the phone to Social Services that my lover ought to suspect that I'm having an affair.

However! all is not dire and my sejour in France was very very very nice indeed despite the fact that Easyjet lost Z's luggage [but they coughed it up the next day and he bought a very nice shirt with my loving guidance, so in fact in an oblique way I’m grateful].

Z has taken a million zillion pictures [including a very unattractive one of me with my stomach all bloated] for which there shall be revenge, and I've posted a number of them behind the cut and in the album. On the same note, I think I need to find some alternate cheap or free photo hosting – does anyone have any recommendations?

The trip was good. Much food was eaten and wine drunk and sun sat in. I liked Z's friends [Jelica, Ljupka and Branko], and Z and I got on beautifully except for that time when he made my hair wet in the sea [a breakupable offence in anyone's book], so I tried to avenge myself by drowning him in the sea [an enterprise which he resisted with all his heart and superior upper body strength], and then when I succeeded pulled me down with him in a most unsporting way [bastard].

We spent the first two days in central Cannes which contained a lot of thin, brown, stylish people, a lot of yachts, and about a towel's worth of free public beach, so Z and I sunned ourselves lizard-like on the rocks. Cannes was a pretty laid-back, snotty town and there wasn't much to do except walk around and see people and be seen. However, we found a number of delightful things there such as: a very reasonably priced set menu in a very swanky fish restaurant, a Russian ballet troupe performing folk dances, a Serbian street and waiters who let Z try to order beers in French.

Afterwards we decamped for a different accomodation in the outskirts of Cannes, next to a railway track and miles and miles and miles of perfect near-empty sandy beach. We were staying in some behemoth holiday resort made up of many many many apartments and immesurable amounts of teenage Croats who were deposited there daily by the busloads [Z: I have travelled so far, for this?]. Cannes-The-Outskirts was delightful and distinguished by an abundance of cheap, beautiful food and a local Bistro with leopard print seats which sold 3 Euro cocktails and let us play card games at our table.

And because I was teamed up with freaks who thought it was amusing to get up early and Do Stuff, we made several day trips to local towns. We went to Antibes [beautiful] and Cagnes-sur-Mer [peopled by xenophobic pensioners, but has a lovely Medieval Old Town]. We then rented a Renault Megane for a day and erronously put Unleaded Petrol into a Diesel engine almost immediately after. However, we realised our mistake soon enough [and before the engine exploded or some such excitement] and by chance ended up five minutes from a local Renault garage which fixed the problem in only four hours [thanks to the two hour French lunchbreak]. The original plan had been to drive into The Var and see some France off the beaten tourist track, but my lover decided to make up the five hours of daylight time that we had lost by driving as fast as possible down tiny French country roads and flinging the car cheerfully into the hairpin bends. It was a very fortunate thing for him that he was the only person in that car with a driving license because that was the only thing that stood between him and Grevious Bodily Harm since the three people in the back of the car [self included] were getting jostled around like cows in a cattle truck and baying for his blood.

We saw some lovely scenery going by very fast [since Z was on his quest to make up lost time] and some little towns that looked beautiful [and probably would have been fabulous had we been allowed to stop in them], we saw hills and forests and vineyards and horses grazing peacefully all of which I’d have been thrilled to show you but by the time I’d got the camera working focused on something pretty we’d be about 5km away. So! As a consolation prize here is the picture of some French biker chicks wearing very short skirts and rather high heels.Those wacky French, what will they think up next!

Having given up on my wimpy assertions that I can’t take pictures if he doesn’t slow down, Z disproved the suggestion that men can’t multi-task by driving with one hand and using the other hand to alternatively try and take pictures, smoke a cigarette and answer his mobile phone while cheerfully continuing with his previous policy concerning bends. All sorts of other remarkable things happened, we came across a pretty lake, some kind of vengeful cross between a dog and a werewolf, and I was even wrong! Twice!

But we survived, and by evening I had sufficiently recovered to deign to get in the car again and we drove to a small pretty coastal place called Juan-les-Pins where we strolled around and then later sat in bars on the beach and drank more coctails and listened to each other and the sea.

The next day Z and I parted company with the others and went to Nice, and walked around so much that my feet near fell off but the old town was great and I was doubly rewarded for physical exertions by being taken to a lovely dinner and finding that the hotel was much closer than we’d thought.

After that we went to Monaco, to see nanji and all the pretty funky places, and as a bonus we spotted Triathlon athletes [sprinting uphill in midday heat], lots of plastic cows and red carpet leading down to the beach.

Our final day in Nice was lovely. I browsed happily for hours in the flea market, we had lush meals, listened to street musicians [my favourite was the pianist who’d lugged his piano to the middle of the square], sat on the steps of the Palais de Justice watching motorbikes drive through pedestrian zones in front of the law Courts and judges sneak out for smoke breaks. And then we wondered over to the seafront and sat on tall rocks leaning against each other and watching the sea and even though we were flying off that evening all I could think of was What a perfect day.



( Come Away With Me )

Currently mzdt, tjej and miss_newham are all walking around the streets of my town equipped with coats, hats, gloves and a Serbian phrasebook while I'm back home clad in M& S longjohns and wrapped in blankets, thawing.

Today we went sledging, or at the very least gave it an excellent try. We went up to the outskirts of town, to the wooded hills called Kosutnjak and sank into the snow up to our knees. The snow was too deep and too fluffy, and the slopes were not particularly steep, so we didn't get very far with the sledge initially.

Instead mzdt and I went on a big stomping expedition, where we tried to cut a path through the snow by stomping on it lots ( a bit like making wine, just with snow) until it grew all compacted, and then walking around and stomping on it lotsmore until eventually we made a pathway and then we could slide down hills.

mzdt took lots of pictures, and tjej and miss_newham made a tall pointy modern art thing snow tower and i pioneered by stomping trails through the snow and watched some dogs struggling to run.

Steering was a bit of a problem initially as there were several methods tried which mostly ended up with us ploughed into snowdrifts, but eventually the graceful skills of sliding down the hill while managing to avoid trees and other obstacles came back to me.

I haven't been sleding since I was a child, and then it's mostly blurry memories of my father's thick jacket which smelled of smoke and frost, and of glittering snow and night sky between the trees. My parents used to take me out sledging after their respective jobs, so in my memories it's very often dark, but I'm wearing a waterproof ski-suit the colour of milk and bone, and there's a feeling of speed and of delight as the wooden contraption on which we are perched responds to my dad's steering as obediently as a horse. And down the slopes we fly, racing between the trees. (And then up the slopes we trudge. I remember being much less enamoured of that part).

Meanwhile, back in present day at one point we all had enough winter delights on account of being very tired and cold, so we walked back towards the busstop sinking into the snow up to our knees, and caught the bus back to town and carried lots of snow in our boots and coats and trousers and ended up in a small restaurant for food and tea and mulled wine.

While Simon, Romany and Jo went off to look for postcards I headed off home to change out of my sopping, freezing clothes and return the sledge, all the while
investigating the town for snow-covered hilly areas and got approached by a stray dog the size of a small horse, who proceeded to develop an obsessive crush on me, leap on my person, playfully bite my coat and try and have sex with the sled. I am not usually frightened of dogs, especially not ones who seem so friendly although I admit when an animal is gaily leaping at me and tall enough to place its paws on my shoulders and display its impressive array of grinning canines, I find it a tad intimidating.

patting it on the head was a serious tactical error on my part, as the dog proceeded to interpret this as the sign of our true love, and followed me home, and sat in front of the building and wept piteously with its nose pressed against the glass entrance door when I refused to let it in.
I am still experiencing pangs of guilt, although they are not nearly as fierce as what I am convinced are the beginning stages of hypothermia.
I need brandy.*

*for purely medicinal purpose, y'understand.

In Belgrade there is snow on the ground and it is -16 degrees Celsius.
mzdt, tjej and miss_newham, you have been warned.

I suggest you bring all the warm clothes that you own, lest you return to Britain as alcoholics since most Yugoslavs substitute lack of central heating with plentitude of brandy.

Pregnancy test = negative, and I've never been so pleased to have stomach flu in my entire life.

Last night, Z and I celebrated not having babies by having wine and long baths instead, and it was a good thing for health and safety because I was so drunk had I been left to my own devices I would have probably passed out and drowned.

I washed my hair and the dye made the bathwater turn red, but thankfully neither Z nor I turned red despite marinating in it like a couple of Easter Eggs.

Between our respective vacations I won't see him for a month now, and I'd be all mournful except I'm so tired I can barely think. And I'm alone in the office, which means it's very hard not to be asleep.

The last time I was alone in the office and this tired I crawled under the desk for a nap, only to discover that although underfloor heating is very pleasant I had an allergy to the carpet which made my eyes swell shut. So I don't think I'll be trying any of that today.

This morning I got short-changed by a man in the shops which I only ascertained after I got back to the office, so I retrospectively hexed him with pox and haemorrhoids.

mzdt and his excellent photographic skills are to blame for feeding my addiction to photography and feeling the urge to re-surrect pictures.

I am not without mercy however, so I've used Lj-cuts with handy titles to help group pictures from various travels.

Foreshadowing: Montenegro




( The Streets and Seasons of My Birth Town )

For any feeling curious, previous photography of Belgrade can be found here


( Prague )


( Bedouins, Israel )

OOOh. Fly away for a day and　LJ is all confusing and different.Although possibly easier to use in the long run.

We were both highly gratified to discover that although Lynne:s baggage appears to have grown lighter by three kilos and mine gained weight while we were in Australia, even including the two didgeridoos (which are nearly as tall as we are) we were still within weight allowances. Wooo Hoooo.

We:re in Japan again where I am being foiled by the strange keyboards and had been intending to use my remnant yen to dutifully email my mother and let her know I:m alive (as she worries pathologically and I:m getting kinder about it of late) but found that the net was loath to access any web based mail programs and that I could guiltlessly update on LJ instead.

Japan is pretty surreal (even though we:ve seen little beyond the hotel that Japanese Airlines was kind enough to put all thier passangers in when they have a night between their connecting flights). I have been freakishly taking pictures of everything because it fascinates me and you seem to need a degree in order to work out how to get the kettle to boil, the bath plug resembles a miniature wrecking ball and the toilet looks like something out of Star Trek.

Lynne and I were both shattered and pathetically grateful for the opportunities to shower and spend a night horizontal. We did not venture into Tokyo proper on account of the fact that we were knackered and it would have cost more money than I was prepared to spend in order to do so. Instead we took turns soaking i a bath made for small people and watching Japanese television which was one of the most surreal and thrilling experiences of my life.

First there was a show in which already to my untrained eye, thin Japanese women resolved to lose more weight andget super-skinny, and then conversely there was a show in which what looked like obese American children sumo-wrestled each other, and then (in what i assume is some kind of tele-sales thing) a man peeled pineapples and hazelnuts using an electric chainsaw , then teenage girls dressed like cheerleaders sang karaoke and then in yet another show people got painted with glow-in the dark paint to look like various animals (this was actually very cool and I took lots of pictures).

And then we slept, and it was blissful.

*sniffle*
Last entry from Oz I think, as tomorrow we leave.

Spent the day very pleasantly being driven around Blue Mountains (so called on account of the bluish haze that forest of Eucalyptus trees produce) and looking at various cliffs and rock formations and people patiently bearing with me taking pictures of every tree, and soaked in a hot tub thingie and then we had some Japanese food and went to a dyke night at some pub in NewTown.

NewTown is for me scarily reminscent of Old Belgrade in its architecture and streets (well aside from being cleaner and not derelict or homophobic). I've been noticing this about Australia lately - how much chunks of it remind me of Yug. For instance, Port Stephens was for me very similar to Montenegro (well aside from also being cleaner and with helpful people), and the hostel where we are staying right now (Sydney Railway Square) is next to a railway station which seems the spitting image of the one in Belgrade. From our bedroom window we can see the trains and I (at best equipped with only the vaguest sense of direction and plan) can't shake off the feeling that I'm meant to be somewhere else, going to an important destination I've all but forgotten about.

It's been great being here. We've done lots of intersting things and had the most fabulous food - we have been living in this food court which sells Asian food, working our way slowly around the menus (I've never had that much octopus in my life as in the two weeks here).

It seems a wonderful country, and pacing its streets I kept being reminded of the various aspects of it that people on my flist would appreciate.
For instance:
twistedserious you'd like Australia, it is overrun by the Japanese, and verlaine I think you'd appreciate Australia too, for a variety of reasons, such as the fact that they are doing a giant re-run of Dr. Who on telly, showing it from beginning to end.

There are lots of things I will miss, although I am not sure how I feel about the isolation of Australia - the inescapable fact that it is soooo far away from everywhere and everyone else. In some aspects it is nice, pleasant almost - and in others I think if I lived here a long time I would start very much to miss Europe and the idea that all sorts of people I care about are just a train, or an EasyJet ride away.

I'm still getting the leaving syndrome though - this idea that there are always all sorts of things left undone and that if I just had one more day, or a couple of days then I would somehow accomplish more. It hasn't happened yet. There is never enough time for anything, or anyone you fall in love with.

I love Australia.
I adore it.
I am absolutely thrilled by it.

We met Megan and her boyfriend last night which was great fun, They were both utterly charming individuals and there will be photographic evidence of this event at some point.

Lynne and I think that Oz combines pretty much the best of things both British and American, on top of being beautifully civilised and well-behaved as a country. Not to mention the fact that the weather is nice.

Of course, I realise that it's not perfect. For one thing water doesn't go down the pipes the wron way. And then it's extremely terribly isolated and cut off from the world (whereas Europe seems nestled in this lovely hub of activity where most people I need are just a couple of hours away).

Then in Sydney at least, there are the weird traffic lights which stay green a very very very short time causing me to have to spring across streets (to more melodious cries of Ouch Shit Motherfucker, as my knee protests vociferously). And the cabs look like police cars and I keep getting unerved by the amount of police presence in the streets before I realise that they are just taxis.

But aside from that, it's just lovely.
It's got the vast open spaces and friendly people of America but they seem to have the civility, politeness and the very fine wit of the British. On the other hand they aren't steeped in the Brit jaded cynicism and are unfailingly obliging and kind.

Years ago a very witty Yug man wrote a very witty Yug book called National Park Serbia about post-war Serbia as this isolated reserve in which all sorts of new species have sprung up and old species have taken a turn for the worse. And he documents all these species and lists them with their *latin* name: eg. The Savage Civil Servant out for your blood and liver, or the Hard Done by Citizen (Thirteenus Piggus) or the Unscrupulous Profiteering Prophetess (Nostradama Profiteria ).

Thus far in Australia we have encountered:

The Friendly Hostel Keeper Hostus Splendidus

The Very Helpful Bus Driver Charioteerus Compassionatus

The Arrogant Italian Dolurus in the Buttus (and thankfully not a native species)

The Born Again Christian Christianus Renaissansus

as well as naturally The Friendly Local and The Crushingly Good Didgeridoo Player.

And it is with a sense of real regret that I face the thought of coming back to the UK on Friday (amplified by the dread of the long flight on a plane that seemed to have been designed for tiny Japanese people).

However, we still have one more full day here and we aim to spend it in the Blue Mountains.

We're back in Sydney again, and aside from my knee which is worse for wear and the intermittent mozzie bites, we are in one piece and alive and well, and were having a wonderful time. We fell so deeply in love with the place we were staying that we stayed there much longer than intended (which involved phonecalls to cancel the other hostel we were at, and change bus times- the univesal response to all this upheaval was *no worries* - I love love love Australia).

The Aussie accent is contagious too- I can feel it sneaking up on me and almost irresistibly coaxing my I's into Oi and E into Eeees and Ehs. Not to mention the fact that I keep finding myself wanting to address everyone as mate and wish them a G'day.

And although my days in the rural Australia were truly wonderful they were internetless so I'm afraid my dears that I am terribly behind on LJ and haven't a clue of waht's gone on in your lives, so it may take me a while to catch up.

( Lynne and Nina's Adventures in the Bush )

And then the day after that we caught the bus back to Sydney. And that believe it or not is the short version of events because I'm running out of computer time and the rest of the adventures will be saved off for another day.

Heading out to Port Stephens very shortly- and my knees have been having arthritic thing for days so am NOTNOTNOT looking forward to the bus trip.

I AM looking forward to dolphins and didgeridoo playing - Lynne and I ended up at a free didge show yesterve and I *oooh*'d and *aaaaaaaah*'d even more than I had at Tharanie's tour. Spent some time chatting to a very nice man called Jeremy who makes didgeridoos and has proposed to sell us some simple unpainted ones for $150.

I've met quite a few people who are of part-Aboriginal descent (including some quite eccentric combinations, such as one guy who is a mix of Aborigine and Swedish) and it's fascinating to chat and pick their brains about their dual heritage (especially fascinating as most of them only encountered Aborigine culture in thier late adolescent-adult lives). There's an excellent movie about Aborigines in Australia in the early part of the 20th Century called Rabbit Proof Fence which among other things explains why there are so many people of mixed descent.

I learned all sorts of interesting things about didges, such as they are made from eucalyptus trees which are hollow inside because the termites have eaten their way through the soft centre but not the hard outer layers which are filled with tannin and that to make the didgeridoo one whittles down the hard outer layer.

I'm finally getting used to Aus, no longer feel so dizzy or disorinted even though the money still startles me because it has the queen's head on it but the two dollar coins are the smallest while the 20 cent ones are huge.

I think when I come back to England it's going to seem like an Ice age.