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.