The Automatic Car

In Australia when I told people that I could drive they would ask 'can you drive a manual?', and I'd look at them incredulously, even piteously, thinking 'well duh! I said I could drive!'

But automatic cars are the choice out there, and although as a 'manual driver' I felt my superiority keenly, when it came to driving my first automatic car I could understand their popularity; it was sooooo easy.

Me and my man friend were leant a relative's automatic car to explore the Victorian countryside (Victoria the state, not the era....).

All was going well; we were enjoying the sunshine, a few days off work, out of the city, away from the hostel, stunning lush countryside, coasting along, and then we spotted them: dozens of kangaroos.

Stopping in a teeny tiny country lane we jumped out, clambered through some bushes and watched the, rather intimidating, marsupials, completely engrossed.

Suddenly a great honking sound pierced the air.

A lorry, god knows what it was doing there, was trying to get past our car.

Shit!

We clambered back through the bushes, and emerged looking decidedly suspicious.

With an apologetic nod at the judgemental driver we jumped in the car. It would not start. Oh my god, it would not start. We tried everything. Nope. Not even a whirr. Shit. My man friend was now signalling to the lorry driver as if to suggest I'm just a dippy woman. I was panicking. I'm a nervous driver at the best of times. I was becoming fraught. Shit. My man friend was not helping.

Mr. lorry driver eventually jumps down and walks over to us. Getting out of his way I let him slide into the driver's seat. The car starts immediately, of course.

'You have to have your foot on the brake to start the car, love' .... 

Barcelona Part Two

When we left off last time, me and my bestest gal pal were sun-frazzled digging up our wallets in the sand, this adequately sets the tone for what was about to follow...

Later that day we decided to head to da club, and in the queue for da club we met some men from Switzerland.

We were drinking in the queue, as you do. But when we got to the front of the queue we were refused entry, apparently drinking in the queue is not the done thing in Barcelona.

Lamenting this refusal, we decided that the beach was the place to be; this fabled beach of vibrant nightlife, music, bars, fairy-lights, DJs till dawn.

But that is just what the beach was: a fable. Nothing really goes on at the beach.

Discovering this, the Swiss men decided we should all go skinny dipping. They were unswervable.

We decided that the easiest course of action was to pacify them, so we acquiesced and under the understanding that they must go in first and we would follow, they stripped and ran into the waters. As soon as a safe distance was reached, we legged it.

****

Later that night we met some guys from our local area and all headed to the beach to 'sup some beers in the sand.

All was going well, until, upon arrival at the beach, we were confronted by some angry semi-clothed Swiss men adamantly demanding that we return their wallets, or, at the very least their trousers...

It looked bad. We looked bad. But we hadn't stolen anything, although our swift exit upon their entry to the sea, of course looked suspicious...

We wormed our way out of it, although I'm sure the Swiss men didn't believe we hadn't done it, and we managed to 'sup our beers in peace.

This story perhaps doesn't paint us incredibly favourably, but maybe now, dear readers, you will understand why we had buried our own wallets in the first place …  

Barcelona Part One

Aged 19 me and my bestest gal pal spent the weekend in Barcelona. This was our only weekend off in a four month university summer dominated by low paid waitressing work, and we intended to make it count.

With four days in a city rich in culture, what did we do? We went to the beach. We only went to the beach; every single day from 10am till dusk.

Barcelona was experiencing a heatwave, and we had come from one of the wettest British summers on record (although I think they say that every year...). Regular tannoy announcements were being made warning tourists against the midday sun. Announcements in English, as tellingly only the English were mad enough to be out.

Unsurprisingly we both got sunstroke, and I got sunburn; I didn't realise how bad it was until two days after getting home, I had to leave work as my entire body had come out in blisters the size of pennies. I have permanent freckles as a lasting reminder of our stupidity.

Anyway, Barcelona is infamous as a pick-pocket hot-spot and we were nervous about this; we had heard that to keep your valuables safe at the beach you should bury them in the sand, so we did.

This worked perfectly when we both wanted to swim at the same time. It was less effective when we got to the bar to order lunch and my sun-frazzled friend realised she had left her wallet entombed.

We ran back to the beach. Abandoning our disgruntled waiter.

We found the patch we had been cooking ourselves on, but with an ever-shifting topography of people, everything had changed. Despair settled into my unfortunate friend's rosy face.

Suddenly, with a moment of clarity that to this day I cannot account for, I noticed a drink can, and I had noticed it before. Then, I observed a sweet wrapper, that I had I also seen before.

Walking between towels, uncomfortably encroaching people's personal space, I crouched down in the miniscule space between four separate groups. My friend stood behind me, staring in disbelief, and by disbelief I mean she didn't believe...neither did I, really.

My surrounding audience watched on, thinking 'surely she's not going to put her towel down here'

Then I started to dig, everyone stared on, cynicism and derision heavy in the air.

I prayed I was right.

And I was.

Three seconds later I produced my friend's wallet.

I was surprised. My friend was surprised. The onlookers were even more surprised. Was Barcelona a city paved with gold?? 

In the Desert

This was my first ever beach holiday. No family. Just me and two friends. I don't generally go in for the typical brits on holiday experience, but it just sort of happened. Before I knew it we were drinking questionably sweet shots, in a room full of sweaty scantily clad English teenagers, singing along to 'Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn'. No its actually worse than it sounds.

The first two weeks of my holiday can be summed up in four words: sun, sea, booze, hangover; with quasi-religious fervour we stayed within a hundred yard radius of our apartment. With two days left of our holiday, we suddenly decided we must do something different. We had to say we'd done something. So with very little money left we decided to go to the Black Beach.

First thing in the morning we headed to the taxi rank. We were stunned when the driver informed us it would cost a whopping 80 euros to get to there. We were hesitant, our usual resting spot was in sight, but we were motivated, we had our mission and we would not be so easily deterred.

Friend A had the idea that we could hire bikes and cycle there; we thought that this sounded like a great idea. We were wrong. The cycle-hire-man himself told us, in no uncertain terms, we would not make it in the midday heat. We were crestfallen.

But the cycle-hire-man did have a suggestion: the Bus.

The Bus. Why hadn't we thought of that? We know buses. We have buses at home. We ride buses all the time. We thought that we could handle the bus. We were wrong.

We got onto bus number 1, journeyed for twenty minutes and got off at the allocated changeover stop. No one else got off the bus. This was unsurprising really, as we had been dropped in the middle of the desert. I still do not understand why there was even a bus stop there at all.

Oh well, we think, the next bus is due in ten minutes. Wrong again. After checking the timetable we realise we actually have over an hour wait. Now I should say here that the only thing in sight, is a posh hotel, an unexpectedly posh hotel.

In the posh hotel, by an acerbic and disapproving receptionist (lets just say I've never been so aware of my attire) we were informed that we had disembarked at the wrong stop and need to be one stop over. This is not too bad, we think. We'll walk to the next stop, we think. It's fine. We are wrong.

We walk and walk and walk and walk and walk through the desert, following an empty motorway. All we can see is tumbleweed and that weird haze that appears when it's really hot, you know the kind you see in movies that makes it look like there is water on tarmac?

I should also mention here that we were hungover, and we had perhaps 100ml of water between us.

Things were getting dire.

Friend A and Friend B were bickering.

It was so hot.

Headlines flashed before my eyes 'three British tourists die in desert' …

'three die in freak heatwave idiocy'

Then, out of nowhere, just as we were about to give up hope and curl up and await death in a suitably overdramatic fashion, we happened upon a miracle. And no I do not think that is too grandiose a term given the circumstances.

We happened upon a ranch n the middle of the desert. A Ranch, with camels, horses, and most importantly a bar. A bemused bar tender, wondering where we had come from (presumably no one ever arrived here without a vehicle) served us cold drinks and ordered us a taxi.

Determined for this journey not to have been in vain we took the taxi to the Black Beach.

We made it, some six or seven hours later, we made it; although it still cost us 80 euros in the cab...  

The Bottle-O

It is surprisingly, even amazingly, hard to buy alcohol 'after hours' Down Under. Firstly, you can only buy 'grog' from liquor stores, also know as 'Bottle-Os', (and the occasional pub in the form of 'take aways'). Secondly, legislation tends to be followed a lot more strictly, and although it varies from state to state, by 11pm most places will be closed (in NSW service stops at 10pm!). This proved problematic for me a number of times, but none more so than on my birthday.

This year my birthday fell on the bank holiday weekend of Australia Day, and as you can imagine it turned into a four day escapade; more bottles of vodka were consumed per capita within our household than I wish to say. (It was at least 2 .... )

At midnight on the third day we became a totally dry house, needless to say we didn't need any more booze, but we were not ready to call it quits, not yet. Two of us were far more committed to the cause than the rest, and took it upon ourselves to undertake the quest for alcohol (not realising what this would entail). We also did not realise how totally steamingly wrecked we were at the time ....that penny didn't drop until the morning after.

We jumped in a cab and headed to the nearest pub still selling takeaways (these are far and few between at that hour), and leaving the meter running, jumped out to grab the goods and return instantly. Or so we thought. My comrade did not have ID.

Although I placatingly pointed out that it was unlikely that I would spend my 22nd birthday with an English 17 year old, and I even suggested my companion leave so that I could buy it alone, nothing was to come of it. I even reiterated that I was my birthday. I pleaded a little, I'll admit. But this power-hungry, jumped up 18 year old (although he looked about 12), was immovable; we were forced to leave empty-handed.

At this point we had left the cab for some fifteen minutes, and we had accidentally (no really it was an accident) left the pub through a different exit. In the throws of a moral dilemma, we came to the decision that, above all, we were unwilling to return empty handed after coming this far. Realising that we could not afford to pay the waiting time and buy more alcohol, we decided to hide and plan our next movements. I am not proud of this moment, but we were incredibly drunk, and although I have never done this before, it seemed like a golden opportunity.

Ducking behind a car we searched online for the nearest watering holes. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the taxi driver appears by our side, outraged and demanding payment. The first words that left my mouth were, feebly, 'We were looking for you....'; we were literally crouching behind a car when he found us. To make it worse we had no money; reliant on cash back from the pub to pay him with.

Things rapidly escalated, and after his attempting to steal my comrade's phone, and a verbal stand off, the situation resolved itself with the retreat of the angry driver, and us, very much shaken, sitting and formulating our next step. From here we could walk to the next nearest pub in twenty minutes. We arrived to find that the bottle shop had closed at one. Devastated I decided we should have, nay we needed, a drink.

We entered into what I can only describe as The Inbetweeners meets University Freshers Week; I have never, in my life, seen so much cringe, terrible music, orange faces, high heels, PDAs, the lot!It was awful. I suddenly felt very old and quiet, which was ironic considering I was standing at the bar doing shots, of what I can only describe as paint-stripper. And was made all the more ironic by the quest that we were on at the time.

After several shots, we decided to get a cab to the last place open this side of the city, reliably told to be open until three. Gripped by the overwhelming fear of hailing the same cab as before, we plucked up our courage and got a lift the next bottle-o. Success! With my comrade remaining in the car, I bought two bottles and we returned home, a mere two and a half hours, and 150 bucks, later.

After all of this, we returned to a much deflated crowd, and although we were coursing with adrenaline from our escapades, it was a mere twenty minutes after our triumphant return that we all crashed. Whatsmore I blame the last few drinks for the hangover from hell that I woke to the next day - although it wasn't too bad because we had another bottle and a half of hair of the dog ready to go in the morning ....