Greetings from Brisbane

It’s my first full day in Australia and thanks to a mammoth sleep last night I am over the jetlag.

It’s great weather - normally it should be over 30 degrees and humid here in Brisbane at this time of year, but it’s unseasonally mild right now with forecasts of a cyclone, so unlike the locals I’m delighted with the cool breezes and occasional showers.

I’ve had a good time catching up with friends and doing some exploring. I was here two and a half years ago when doing the Aussie leg of the mullet search, and it’s nice to see both new and familiar places. It’s a lovely city - clean, green, laid back and (as you’d expect from any city outside the UK) it has excellent public transport. There’s a couple of photos in my emerging Australia set, to which more will be added in due course.

The Nelson Mail article worked, too, in that I have received emails from several helpful New Zealanders with useful information about the four mullets. More on all that later. It’s also been picked up by the NZ Herald in this somewhat cheeky piece.

Hogmanay tomorrow. Not that they call it that here. Happy New Year if I don’t blog before.

Bleurgh

I’m not entirely sure what time it is, or what day of the week it is for that matter.

“Singapore” is about the best I can do right now.

Thankfully, though. it’s not too long a stopover here, so not so much time to kill.  Hopefully, however, there will be enough time to find my onward flight.  As far as I can make out from the boards, there are two Brisbane flights, and neither of them seem to be mine…

Nelson Mail

Hello from Heathrow Airport, where I am killing time.  Four hours until check-in opens…

Did you read the Nelson Mail this morning?  Probably not.  I’m told I am front page news:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelsonmail/4337954a6007.html

More soon.

Merry Christmas!

After a stressful couple of days of getting ready for Christmas, doing some last-minute stuff for New Zealand, and tidying my flat, I am more or less sorted and am heading away this afternoon to spend Christmas with family.

Then on the 27th I have something of a gruelling journey - I fly before dawn’s crack to London, experiencing the joys of both Gatwick and Heathrow airports for the day, and then fly that night to Brisbane, with a change in Singapore.

So until I blog again through the bleary eyes of jetlag, have a lovely Christmas, dear reader.

I’ll leave you with Malcolm Middleton’s dour, nihilistic and yet perhaps also subtly optimistic Christmas offering:

A random night out in Inverness

As I’ve probably said before in these hallowed pages, I’m always delighted and intrigued by “small world” stories.

Just yesterday (Friday) lunchtime while braving the Christmas shopping hoardes, I bumped into a friend. He told me that a mutual friend of ours had recently and unexpectedly bumped into one of her former flatmates in - of all places - Antarctica.

As you do.

Then last night I was out with Donald in Blackfriar’s, a great little pub in the city centre, where a good friend had introduced us to what turned out to be none other than two people we know through Flickr (see photo above). The only Flickrists I know in real life are people I know anyway, and so these guys were the first Flickr contacts I’d met “in the wild”, so to speak.

We had a lovely chat about all sorts of things, not least the now legendary “Guess Where” thread in Flickr’s Scotland group.

Later on, in a telling picture of national character, Donald, myself and other friends found ourselves next to a table full of lively, friendly, and somewhat less than lucid personalities.

Their advanced states of stociousness were best illustrated by the fact that it took us some considerable effort and painstaking conversation to establish that they were in fact Scottish.

One of the key pillars of our protracted negotiations revolved around a ten pound note that one of our group found on the floor in the “no man’s land” between our tables. My friend insisted quite rightly that it had been lost by our excitable and haphazard neighbours. Our new friends (as far as our over-stretched powers of interpretation could ascertain) asserted to the contrary in a manner that would have made Mrs Doyle appear something of a selfish scrooge.

Eventually, and somehow, an impasse was reached whereby the said bank note lay between our two groups for some considerable time, untouched and unclaimed.

In the end, one of our neighbouring group picked it up, and we were relieved that they’d finally been decisive and correct in claiming ownership - only to be rewarded by the kind gentleman with a round of drinks for our group.

Which was nice.

Merry Christmas, Shanto George

Despite the fact that I am rubbish at sending Christmas cards, many people still very kindly persevere and send them to me.

One card, however, has intrigued me. It’s from India (judging by the postage stamps and “Jawahar Cards” who made it), and is addressed to “Shanto George”, at my precise address (exact postcode too).

I’m almost certain there’s not been anyone of that name here for years, even during my 18 months of renting the flat out while in Glasgow. Nor, I am fairly sure, is there anyone in my block with that name.

Inside, the card has a handwritten message:

To Jervis

from

Appoopam and Ammoma

Now I have no idea if “Jervis” is Shanto George’s familiar name, nor do I have a clue who Appoopam and Ammoma are, though I am sure they are lovely people.

I’ve googled “Shanto George”, and one of the first results is for an Indian guy - according to his profile he is a Christian (and therefore a likely recipient of a Christmas card in a mostly Hindu country), but very much not living in Inverness as far as I can make out. No other googling of the other key words involved have unearthed anything useful either.

It’s most mysterious. I could understand if Appoopam and Ammoma might have sent it to him and got the wrong address in India… but to get a wrong (yet so precise) address in a country on the other side of the world seems unlikely. Yet as I say - nobody of that name has lived here to the best of my knowledge.

Ah well. Unless I can think of any other way of solving this mystery, I guess there’s nothing I can do except put the card on the mantlepiece and assume that if I ever met Appoopam and Ammoma, they’d be the sort of lovely people who’d want to send me a Christmas card.

If you’re Appoopam and Ammoma, drop me a line and let me know why you thought Jervis/Shanto lived here.

If you’re Jervis/Shanto and have arrived here after googling yourself in a fit of boredom, perhaps you could tell me your correct address and I will happily forward your card.

And if you, dear reader, have any suggestions as to solving this mystery, let’s hear them.

Oh, and one last thing - Justin: please don’t email me pretending to be Shanto.

Hurrah

Today was the last day of work, and I went to the pub with a friend to celebrate.

On telly was the Aberdeen game, and it was great to see them have a bit of European success, 25 years after winning a European trophy. Copenhagen played terribly, but no doubt the Dons will not be fussed about how they won it.

On my way back I took a couple of photos - the one above, and the same in colour.

Cripes

It’s dawned on me that I finish work tomorrow, fly off down under a week tomorrow, and land back in Inverness a month today.

There’s so much to do before I go…

Lost Horizons

I’ve decided, in a fit of pretentiousness, to give my blog a name: “Lost Horizons”.

For some time, I’ve been wondering about what neat phrase, quote or concept could sum up my blog.

Perhaps something that is a little more creative and thoughtful than simply “Simon Varwell’s blog”, which is admittedly very Ronseal but ultimately somewhat bland.

Because I wanted to go for something travel-related, I considered going for “Rambin’ Man“, the name of a wonderful Lemon Jelly song that sums up everything about wanderlust and the diversity of this world of ours. However, I didn’t want people to think that “ramblin’” referred to my style of writing.

Instead, I’ve gone for “Lost Horizons”, the name of the album that “Ramblin’ Man” comes from. It’s a great album. Lemon Jelly are British purveyors of gentle, quirky and catchy electronica, and the tracks on “Lost Horizons” evoke ideas of exploration, discovery, and searching for new things - such as, I suppose, lost horizons.

I’ve always very much thought it to be in the background of my music collection, but when I recently lent it to a friend who absolutely loved it, I realised firstly how good it is and secondly how much I do actually listen to it myself.

And the phrase “Lost Horizons” strikes a cord with me. It sums up those places or things that are possibly just beyond reach - whether that’s deep spiritual issues, a quiet and peaceful evening, the next mullet to visit, or what might lie ahead for me after the mission is finished…or perhaps even the impending next series of the greatest TV show of the decade. All things that I often touch on in here.

Lost horizons suggest to me a world that is too big to be seen completely, too vast to be understood fully.  But that needn’t stop us trying.

I guess time will tell as to whether I feel that the name suits the blog.

My 1,000th photo in Flickr

A geeky milestone, but a milestone nevertheless.

Not that I’ve improved or anything - I still prefer my very first contribution to Flickr to this latest one.