“May you live in interesting times!” It’s a quote from a Terry Pratchett book, and it’s one of the worst curses you can hurl at another person. And some invisible agent, hiding among the shadows and moments of my life, has quietly hurled this sentence in my general direction. When I find them, be they animal, mineral or ethereal, they will know the full wrath of my philosophical confusion, and I will whinge until they bleed answers. For I am not - as hemispheres go - in Europe. I am not - for the time being - in Mamma Mia. I am not - if I check the currency in my wallet - on an international tour. Indeed, I am in Australia, using Australian dollars, and my life is far too interesting.
It all began the day after the Rosenball. Which was fabulous, and I deliberately use the ‘f’ word for all its camp implications. It was a ball. In a palace. In Vienna. And it was fab. No-one was in a ball gown, unless they were male. And no-one was in a tux, unless they were female. And everyone else looked like they had been multi-poked by Frank‘N’Furter on Facebook. (Or Fakebook as it should be named. Because no-one is having that much fun. Just once I’d like to read Heidi is LOVING Amsterdam but also wondering why her downstairs herpes keeps presenting with such unexpected frequency. Tag that, Heidi. But back to the ball…) Some people were dressed as cavemen and some in the style of Marie Antoinette just as she was about to bite into that Tarte à la Euphemism, and there was an impressive buffet of epochs in between. There were masks and make-up and enough hair gel to feed a whole kindergarten. (They say it’s the new Perkins Paste.) There was a bar in every room, a DJ in most, a couple of hookahs in one of them, an amazingly old tapestry in another (in London it would have been pissed and vomited on well before midnight at which point Tracy Emin would have brazenly claimed it as one of her installations), and in the end we were sitting over a marble floor and under a Barcadi Tree, which was a real tree with real little bottles of Barcadi tied to it. It wasn’t just that you could reach out mid-conversation and grab a petite bottle of booze to stay afloat, it was the fact that you could do it nonchalantly. Which is just how I was throwing my paw up some obliging person’s kilt at that point on that evening under that tree. I love a kilt. Or is it the open-plan living/dining room aspect that provokes my affection? If it was just the tartan, I think I’d own more picnic blankets.
The next afternoon, I am asleep in my hotel bed. I have been clever enough to remove my silver mask with pointed tips and wipe off my glittering turquoise eye make-up which doubled as glittering turquoise lipstick and which exactly matched my turquoise stovepipe trousers which I had found for only ten euros in a very nice Viennese shop. Clearly, they were marked down - way down - because no-one else had thought to team them with eye make-up doubling as lipstick to wear out to a ball. Seriously, what are they teaching in the schools? Anywayz, less chips, more steak…
The phone next to the bed rings. It’s my company manager. After we’ve established that, yes, he has woken me up, and after we’re both satisfied with the lie “no no I was bored with comfortable unconsciousness”, and after we’re both a bit disappointed with the truth “no no it’s just me here”, and after I say “um…me, Kashti, Ewan, Dale, Cordy, Niki, Andy, Carli, Kelly, Jordan, Sam, Bonser, Leigh, Gary, Hannah, Jess, and two girls from one of our all-time favourite 70’s disco groups Sheik … I can’t remember who else was there”… … … he finally says two words: “Your visa”. This is the exact moment my life begins to get interesting.
The details are not interesting or fabulous, but to satisfy a few F-FAQs, I shall admit to tripping over that old obstacle that we all know and hug, and that would be The Stone of All Assuming that lies in the middle of The Path Of But-I-Thought… . The crux of this strange matter finally forced me onto a very large plane (the 380; not unlike a cinema with wings; the John Goodman of airplanes) to land in my home country, where I have since applied for a new UK Ancestry Visa and for which I wait with baited passport. My wonderful employer has given me a few weeks leave-of-absence and flown in an English actor who has done the same role at some point. No doubt he was just sitting down to watch an omnibus edition of Eastenders when his agent rang and made him spill his baked-beans-on-kipper. He is covering me for five weeks and going to bars with my friends and eating the local cuisine with my per diems and possibly wearing my silver platforms. The horror. I do not know if he is a gayer, and can therefore offer no opinion as to his encroachment upon those Italian men that had my name on them like some D&G branding across an expensive pair of undies. And I was so looking forward to the rise and fall of a few personal empires. As you may have surmised, the Mamma Mia caravan is now parked in Italy. Specifically, Milan. Very specifically: buggerbumshitweepoo. Microsoft Works doesn’t seem to know that last word and is underlining it for all it’s worth. F*ck you, Microsoft Works.
Between that phone call and this moment (sitting in my mother’s lounge room, looking over the eucalypts towards Woy Woy and wondering if that gecko is still in my bedroom), I will not pretend the journey has been without appeal. A train through the snow-thwumped Austrian mountains finally slid down to sea-level to thread me through the eye of a tunnel and out into Italy, where its terminus was Venice. Amazing, beautiful, sinking Venice. I had walked through an indoor fake casino version only weeks ago in Macau. Suddenly it was the real thing. I’m sure it’s the same as watching an X-Men movie and then actually meeting Hugh Jackman. A bit wonderful. A bit unreal. A bit hairier. At that time, we were still hoping some Italian lawyers could sort out a temporary visa for the Milan leg of the tour and that all will be bene. So I’m on the water, on a waterbus, the clichéd Venetian scenery sliding past, when my mobile rings. It’s Marie, one of the tour managers. It’s bad news. I have to leave the tour and renew my UK visa. I tell her, as best I can for I am on ‘Stun’, that I’m on a vaporetto in amazing, beautiful, sinking Venice and that I’ll ring her back. It was the best of times, it was the shittiest of times. It’s as if Hugh Jackman asked me out just as my penis fell off.
I see my stop approaching. There are hundreds and hundreds of people on the wide water-side path but it’s winter and I was expecting a nice, quiet, low-key Venice. Not this. Not crowds. I’m not in the mood for crowds. I want them all beamed to Tonga and interrogated. “Why were you in Venice in the off season? WHY?! Answer me, You, who should be looking at package deals to Egypt at this time of year!!! It’s quite pleasant right now!!!!!!!!” When I finally make it to my (very cute, very old) hotel, quietly nesting within this strange labyrinth of a city, my hotelier exclaims “Ah…you are here for Carnevale!” My eyes wander up and to the left, as I recall the last fifteen minutes. “That would explain all those people in elaborate masks and costumes and particularly that man dressed as a butterfly,” I respond. I’m still in shock apropos the sudden disappearance of my job, and I had seriously not registered that the whole city was having a party. Personally, when I’m not smiling, I want the whole world to not smile with me. The Carnevale affirmation did not, as my hotelier expected, brighten my mood.
The next day, I train it to Milan and stay with my cousin Mary, who is married to an Italian with whom she has two sons. Having some family to stay with is stupendo. We drink wine and talk about positive thinking. This segues into a new theory: Positive Believing. You can’t just think it. To bring about positive change, you must believe it. And after several vinos, we believe this is a great concept.
But let’s wrap this up. I book a 9.15pm flight home two days hence. Mary takes me to the appropriate train station to get to Malpensa Airport. We check my computer print-out to ratify that I am indeed leaving from Malpensa and not Linate. Which is when we simultaneously read that “your tickets must be collected and paid for before 6.30pm.” It’s 6.10pm and I haven’t paid for my ticket. And the journey to the airport is forty minutes. It is 6.11 when I say the ‘f’ word in front of my cousin for the first time. And then the second time. And the third. Ad nauseum… I get on the train anyway. I leave Mary on the platform trying (and failing) to get through to the desk at the Airport. It doesn’t help that her ‘r’s sound a little like ‘w’s when she’s asking directories for the number of Arab Emirates. I should not be writing this snippet down as she was brilliantly brilliant to me … but it brought about a wry smile even then. So I’m on the accelerating train. I cannot sit down for nervous energy. I am pacing near the doors like a caged kelpie in the middle of a five-day speed trip who hasn’t herded a thing in weeks. And I ask myself why? Why has my twirling, mirror-ball life suddenly dropped to the floor and exploded into a thousand shards of cheap Perspex? Why???
I stop. I look into the small window in the door. I look into my reflected eyes. I breathe. I speak out loud. “Everything is going to work out. Everything is going to be fine. I believe that everything is going to be fine. My ticket will be there. I will arrive in Sydney on Saturday. And I believe everything will be fine.” My phone rings. It’s Mary. “I got through. Your ticket’s still there. They’re expecting you.”
I believe I’m now in Australia. I believe I posted my new visa application to Canberra a week ago. I believe my clean, new visa will slide into Mum’s letterbox next week. I believe I will be continuing this blog somewhere in eastern Europe. I believe I will be making a habit of reading more of life’s fine print.
And I really, sincerely, deeply hope your life is not too interesting.
Hasta Manana ‘til we meet again.
