the season

Glittering white globes hang above Oxford Street like they're suspended from the invisible stars. Light pulses from inside shops and from the twinkling decorations on the storefronts. In the fading daylight the vicious press of shoppers glows. It's only four o'clock but darkness has almost fallen. The population of London is frantic. This is the two nights before Christmas, and I'll be damned if every person in the city isn't stirring, right here on Oxford Street. 

 There's a short time between when the last of the golden leaves fall and when the festive season begins. The brief glum slump only makes the lights brighter when they're strung. Christmas transforms London. The naked trees are covered with twinkling coats. People in the streets begin to ditch the London black-on-black-on-grey look for festive beanies and other excellent themed knitwear. Markets grow in the streets. Thousands of Santas chuckle their way through department store December. Ice skating rinks shine like polished metal. Despite the conspicuous lack of wildly white weather I'd been assured was on its way this year, this Christmas was different to any I've known. 

Every year I fetch my loosest, most sleeveless dress for Christmas day. We sit outside wherever we are and eat salads and cold meats. After lunch last year I took a nap under a tree in my brother's hammock. So I guess the cold doesn't feel like Christmas, to me. But at the same time it's so familiar. I've been drenched with images of Christmas from the northern hemisphere, and in a strange way the scarfed, hurrying crowds almost felt more real than the sweaty, lazy day I've grown up with. We wanted to make it a chilly Christmas, intentionally different.

Sometimes you have to make the best of a bad situation, and I think this year was one of those times. We were supposed to be in Germany, frolicking in the snowfall, but work didn't give us our time off. Then we were supposed to be volunteering, but the public transport stops on Christmas and we weren't near a center. Then we were supposed to sit in our own living room and just eat ourselves silly, but we don't have a living room. And to be honest we didn't really have a plan D. Poor sooks.

On Christmas eve we packed our bags and got on the tube. Some kind friends helped us disguise our homelessness as 'house-sitting' by going on holiday and leaving us the keys. That night, in need of cheer, we doubled our cardigans and ventured to Hampstead in search of a warm pub. The Garden Gate boasts a beautiful beer garden, quite solidly deserted, as I suspect it is for much of winter. A lighted tree shimmered in the window below the swinging sign, like in the windows of every pub on every street corner in London. There were vats on the counter of hot mulled cider and wine. Ella and I spent the evening discovering nice things, like we aren't really sad to be away from home, on a grand and un-glamorous adventure, and that we've spent five months in each other's company and still have plenty to laugh about. It wasn't so bad, really.

We made the day different. We may be homeless, but we still managed the presents, and we had a tree. I baked gingerbread. We skyped our families in the morning as they were finishing their dinner, then we made our lunch. I drank wine in the kitchen because I was afraid I'd spill it on the carpet. The same friends who had so patiently hosted us for two months called us to say their tandem bicycle trip had gone slightly awry (copious amounts of tape later, they made it home). They were just in time for lunch. I managed to totally eschew the true meaning of Christmas and win monopoly in power-crazed house-buying frenzy. A solid alternative version of Christmas day.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that Christmas means different things to different people. But I discovered this year that the meaning isn't set just because it's what I've always known. (Sap alert.) I thought it was about family, and gift-giving, and eating, and celebrating good people like, you know, Jesus. And it is about those things. But now it's also about other things, like growth, and resilience, and loving the family we choose as well as the one we're given. Also maybe a bit about ruthlessly taking over all properties in London and forcing your dearest friends to bankruptcy. 

I missed out on my white Christmas. But there's always hope for a white Australia Day.

Happy Christmas folks.

dear men! no thank you

In Indonesia, I am often referred to as Lady Gaga. Stall vendors call out to me by this name from behind their street-side collections of fake Gucci and racks of Ray Bans. The first time it happened, I commended myself for obviously looking like a superstar, before realising that The Honorable Ga is pretty much famous for looking exquisitely ridiculous, then checking myself carefully for shoulder pads. After the first few times, my reaction weakened to feeling a little like a spectacle, and has settled since then into a vague acceptance of my self-inflicted blondeness. 

If I walk with two female friends through Kuta, regardless of our combined hair colours, skin colour, height, weight, or general sexiness, we are fondly addressed as Charlie's Angels. I don't mind this either, as it makes me feel kick-arse. Basically, when this stuff happens in a country where I clearly have a two month visa in my passport, it feels harmless, like an acknowledgement that we are different but we share some understanding of the world, me and this street vendor. We both understand why he's calling us the Angels, and we all know it's just for fun. No one says it with a sneer or preceded by the kind of throat noise that makes me cringe. 

Today I walked through Camden Town to the Camden Lock. It's a wonderful part of north London, populated mostly by people dressed in genuine retro denim and fake Doc Martins. I lost myself in mazes of trinket stalls and shoe stores and rickety street food carts. I bought a soy milkshake then spoke with a delightful young musician from Dublin trying to make his way in the big city, offering samples of margarita flavoured fudge. Oh, London. And on the way back to the train station a man growled and hissed at me from an alley like an animal. Frankly, he ruined my afternoon.

I expect what he meant, like the Balinese street vendors, was, I find your appearance to be notably different when compared to those around you, for whatever reason. He was clearly an asshole, fine. But I present to you a new angle: The Gutless Man.

What I want to know is, why is that okay? It made me cringe, and my guts were tighter than double knot shoe laces. I wanted to disappear. What bothered me -- bothers me -- is the way he felt safe to do it. He might have done it to a hundred girls today, and each probably reacted the same way I did, which was to pretend it hadn't happened. To slink away with insides tied up and curse him, silently.

I was too freaked out to respond. I'm not sure why, though. I wish wholeheartedly that I had turned around and growled back at this man, flashed my teeth, or else boldly hollered something like, Watch out, ladies, there's a disrespectful freak over here who is going to make you feel uncomfortable with the fact you are a woman, and then stared at him in the eyes. I'm almost certain he would have stuck his tail right between his legs and melted back into the damp brickwork. Because he knows he has no right to growl at me; he probably wouldn't stand and fight that point if I raised it with him. He does it quietly, so noone will hear, at my back so I can't get a look at him. He's a coward. 

(This bravery thing seems to be a recurring theme for me. Self-reflection required)

The boys on the tube escalators who titter and slap their mates' back and whistle, and the men who call hello from the scaffolding on rooftops, they're all equally gutless, but they're not so malicious. Maybe I'm desensitised or something, but objectification always has been, and always will be, a thing. Hell, I am an active participant (that thing with the kittens and the shirtless men?). But there ain't nothing good about catcalling. All this sneaky appreciation nonsense isn't going to help you. It's just embarrassing. Kindly locate your courage. Once, a boy stopped me in the street and said, I want to make you smile every day. That was nice. Anyway, he looked at me when he said it. Then we both walked away. It was, actually, like a compliment.

I told a guy I know about the growling man, and this was his response. 

 

It's surprisingly accurate. This game men play, of calling out, has that same pixelated video game quality of detachment. Like it's not in the world of real human people because it's just a flash, a moment, and then I'm gone and asshole is none the worse for it.

So here's a new angle. I want to help these poor, gutless men. I want to look at a man when he makes me feel uncomfortable. To tell him, you're being quite disgusting, if I can manage it. I'll hiss back, maybe, and say, You're going about telling me you've noticed me all wrong, mate. Maybe the more girls hiss back, the more these men will check themselves. And maybe I live in a magical land where people can be pleasant to each other all the time. That's okay too.

ode to bravery

I booked a one-way ticket for this trip. People are impressed by this. They raise their eyebrows and they tell me I'm brave. I'm wild and free. I have that hearty spirit of adventure that outwits reason. I'm participating in an incredible feat of courage and madness. Hear me roar.

I run with this. I am perfectly happy to feign feigning modesty and tell everyone, aw, shucks, nice of you to notice how incredibly brave and outrageous I am.

Unfortunately, I am neither of these things, really. 
Dear everyone, I was not being brave. I was being a bit of a flimsy wuss.

I am happy to leap over waterfalls. I enjoy scuba-diving and navigating uncharted bush. Being lost in foreign cities at night is a rush. But when confronted with the idea of committing to a return date, I hollered and found a dark corner to shiver in for a few hours. If you want to say I'm brave, don't look to my noodle-splattered plane ticket with no return. That was an act of fear and of defiance. To book a ticket for a set day, at a solidified time in the future? Don't try to tell me that isn't scary. 


But of course, people honestly don't think it is. It's a different kind of fear that people have now, and I think it's something like the fear of possibility.

There's a cliff that I'm always looking over, and down there below me is the long and painful fall to the realm of fully-fledged commitment issues, all spread out and rambling. There are people down there who commit to nothing, except doing whatever they feel at that very moment. They like it, though. They're just chillin'. And way back behind me in the tree line there are neat rows of those organised diary-keeping types, booked firmly into appointments ten months in advance. 

I'm not the only one wandering around. Here on the edge, teetering, it's rather comfortable. Sometimes I throw my arm out and the wind nearly catches me. That's for kicks. I find myself wandering further back, too. Doing mad things like committing each semester to complete my coursework or booking plane tickets more than a month in advance. But I always return to the edge and I look over. And I gain approval from neither party, because I'm not doing either lifestyle quite right. Advocates from each side try to help me. They both believe so firmly that they've got it figured, this life thing. Who am I to say, having never done either option properly, but I kind of think the people down the bottom have a better grip on what matters.

I read an article in one of those free newspapers they give out on the tube that leave ink on my hands. It was about how people in London all have diaries that are filled with business meetings and dentist dates and weekend trips and prescribed relaxation days at the spa, for months and months -- sometimes years -- into the future. I read it and think, you, my dear, darling people, run the risk of being miserably tied down. Spontaneity is thrilling; it's memorable; and, importantly, it's rarely disappointing, as the expectations have little time to build. I see, reading this article, how people see my ticket as an act of courage. But I still disagree. It is very courageous of you to book all that in and assume that nothing will go wrong, no illness befall you, no whim tickle your fancy. I am in awe of your commitment. I am in awe that you manage to have fun, when your fun is given a span of hours in which to sit each week. To me, you are much braver than my one-way trip was. Your diary is an ode to your bravery. But let it not hold you back from standing on the edge.

greece : corfu -> santorini -> athens

I create for myself a grand Grecian cliché and it's glorious and sun-drenched as I imagined. 

I’m scaling a rock that juts out of the cliff and into the open ocean. I've swum around the side to get a foothold, so I can only see the horizon. The surface of the rock is dimpled and the edges cut my hands and bare feet like a defence. I focus everything I have not to slip back into the waves. The top is higher than I thought it'd be.

The beach curves away with its string of striped umbrellas. I can see the hostel. The day is clear blue but the wind makes me unstable. I watch the boys jump off one after another, backflip into the sea. Ella screams when she jumps.

I nearly slip lowering myself onto the edge. The cliff juts out below me. I aim for a place on the surface between the rocks and push off as hard as I can. My shout is involuntary, like it’s gravity shoving the air out the top of me.

Greece is a picture. In some parts it feels like it’s in limbo between the first world Europe I’ve come to know and something grittier. I like Greece -- the rawness and simplicity of the island life -- as soon as we’ve arrived. The country has complex issues at the moment but it bears them with a steadfast good humour and a willingness to go barefoot, and I respect that. When there's not a lot of money being thrown around, everyone stops to watch the waves.

Our hostel on Corfu is relaxed like only somewhere by the beach can be. We’re given breakfast at midday when we check in. Checking in basically involves telling someone what we want for breakfast. For the first time in months we aren't asked to pay in full on arrival. In fact, I don't think about money for the three days we're there. A roughed-up blue binder holds pencil notes of our drinks tabs. Breakfast and dinner are cooked for us, and lunch is forgotten in the hot elastic space of the afternoon. A few people are scattered over the deck in the sun so we eat omelette with peppers, looking down at the beach.

I spent the previous night awake on the ferry deck and I spend all day asleep on the beach, with others from the hostel scattered around me like fleshy coral on the sand. In the afternoon we smear salty clay all over ourselves because we found it in the other cove and because why wouldn't we? We watch the sun set over the water. The sunsets here are the special kind that constitute a nightly event. No one misses watching the sun set. 

At night I drink home made wine that’s poured from 20 litre plastic jugs like petrol. The nights are still warm in September so we sit in the huge open common room and play drinking games at the long dinner table. It’s the kind of place where everyone is friends and the nights get away from me. I sleep in until eleven and still get breakfast.

***

***

We go to Athens knowing there’s a few really good ancient things there, and not knowing much more than that. The acropolis is perfect, though in the tradition of my scaffolding curse it was undergoing repairs. The world monuments I have seen with a mask of scaffolding outnumber those I’ve seen without. I’ve come to expect it, really, and Ella has come to terms with adopting my curse for the duration of our trip.

The city puts on a good show. We’re there during the festival and entry to the monuments and museums is free. I eat litres of excellent yoghurt. Our airbnb apartment is down the road from Panourmou, lined with buzzing local bars and pubs that have good happy hour cocktails. We share a few brews with a friend from Corfu and I tell my skin to remember the steamy evening air. I know these are the last warm nights I’ll have for a while.

The economic strife in Greece shows here like an afternoon shadow. It’s easy to forget about, but easy to spot if you’re looking. There are a lot of stray dogs. Walking down the street we’re handed a glossy page advertising the ‘crisis menu’ of a nearby store, where the prices are slashed by a third.

 

***

 

The economic problems are more visible on the islands. The hills of Santorini are scattered with the skeletons of houses half constructed, more haunting than ruins. The curved archways let the wind through what should by now be someone’s bedroom, someone’s kitchen. It’s hard not to wonder where those people are, and whether the skeletons will be taken by new owners in the future or left to crumble back to the land.

If you’ve seen a picture of the Greek islands, you’ve seen a picture of Santorini. Villages cover the tops of cliffs like fresh snow. The port is busy with the ferry-load of people and we’re swirled into a tourist office to find a place to stay.

In the morning we wait in the white box of a bus stop then pack into the isles of a steamy local bus to get to the main town of Fira. The day is not at all like the blue I’d assumed it just had to be (it’s always sunny in Greece, right?). We’re buffeted along the cliff face under dark clouds. There’s a pre-storm tension in the air.

Oia is the northernmost village of Santorini, and considered the most beautiful. I’d have to agree with whoever said that; the white and blue cement all scattered with brilliant bougainvillea vines is what you’ve seen on your postcards. The town seems to carry it's own sunshine, too; while we’re being mashed on the bus, the clouds disappear and the violent air comes to a standstill. We're stopped on the narrow path as a donkey is loaded with black rubbish bags. The animals big, tired eyes make me cringe, but I like the fact they're the same as the big, tired donkey eyes that have been carting things up and down these paths for generations.