No Tour: Naarm Day 1

Soundtrack: “Under the Clocks”, Weddings Parties Anything / “Reward” Teardrop Explodes

Not really a tour, just a couple of days in Naarm/Melbourne to wander, shop, and celebrate old pals turning older.

The day started in Perth, way too early, as I was on the 6am flight. As per usual I slept badly, but these days I have a monitoring bracelet/smart watch to give me a second opinion on this: it scored me a 57 “needs attention”. I’m taking that as it saying my sleeping needs to be better, rather than it being otherwise really shady. I’m likely to catch enough shade from the old friends, I don’t need a portable microchip with aspirations of being the next Joan Rivers hanging on my arm.

For whatever reason, my brain decided that I to loop “Reward” by Teardrop Explodes as it’s way of crossing fingers that I’d score a win on my upgrade bid. Or celebrating that I’d packed enough socks, one or the other. So while I woke up to the mental strains of Julian Cope, sadly my email was tuned to Beck’s “Loser”. Cattle class it was to be.

I made it to the airport fine, even with a stop for petrol as I’d neglected to do that last time I was in my car. At least, according to the official figures, the price of fuel is slowly decreasing, though Wednesday has never been a cheap fuel day. If only 4am wasn’t so early, as the roads had minimal traffic and I could do the speed limit the whole way. Long term parking was even easy, maybe there’s some sort of mining downturn going on, like Gina Rinehart has set up concentration camps in the Pilbara for cheap labour so fewer folks are doing the fly-in thing, I’m just guessing, but I’ve never managed to get parking so close to the shuttle bus stop, ever. There are still some folks doing the hi-vis dance, as I had to squeeze into a seat on the bus next to Peter the manspreader from BHP. I took some pleasure in using the opportunity to read some online news about how BHP have basically figured on abandoning environmental targets so they can suck $600 million (AUD) of taxpayers cash in fuel rebates instead. Dear manspreading Peter, your bosses are arseholes.

I grabbed an overpriced breakfast of toast and coffee, as well as some freddo frogs that might as well have been gold plated (for the aircrew, on the home trip I could get Haigh’s chocolate frogs and they’d be cheaper), along with the recently published Judy Blume biography (was hoping to get Melissa Auf Der Maur’s but was sadly out of luck there). Nibbled and read some online stuff about the background to the biography, how Judy Blume was first very accommodating but then after reading the first draft stepped away. From what I could read (a bunch was paywalled) the biographer, Mark Oppenheimer, seemed okay about this, various interview responses were less shady than my watch. It’ll be interesting to read, from the viewpoint of it being only semi-authorised.

Part of the plan for the trip was to test out a new and slightly pricey neck pillow, something that might give me a little extra support. It’s a swanky one that can be fixed to the seat headrest, is flat at the back so as not to push my head too far forward, and has a front chin strap for extra support. At least it has red highlights. (I’m not identifying the model, not because of any ethical principle of no plugging stuff, afterall I’ve plugged bars and distilleries and all sorts here, but because I can’t remember it and can’t be bothered looking it up, it’s made by cabeau, I can see the carrier bag and it has that in big white print.) The result from the first flight is mixed: fixng the headrest does make me slouch less, but I’m still working out the fit as the sides are fairly tall, would suit a Cham or any other tribe that does neck extending things. if adjusting it I knocked out one of my ear buds, which then spent the rest of the flight lost (found it once we landed). So it’s a work in progress.

Naarm, Melbourne. It was a fine drizzly grey day. As I was too early to check in, I stopped for lunch at a mostly Italian themed food market. On a previous weekend visit the place was packed, just about standing room only, but for this Wednesday lunch there were seats aplenty and half the stores seemed closed. I felt like pasta so went for the basics, a simple pomodoro with stracciatella cheese. And coffee. It was decent, good balanced tomato flavours, pasta done right, no complaints. My eating was briefly distracted when incredibly, “Reward” by Teardrop Explodes started playing over the market’s sound system. Weird. Some things just can’t be made up.

The wonderful hotel people let me check in a little early, with a slight room upgrade, so I’ll be spending the next couple of days looking down from the 24th floor. I’ve stayed here a few times, and don’t think I’ve been this high, normally my room looks across the laneway right into the highrise across the lane, but this time I can see over it (I’ll still be closing the blinds, just in case).

Did a bit of wandering, Melbourne looks pretty much the same as it has the last few visits. I did spy Dame Edna Lane, not sure I’ve seen that one before. Chinatown seems to be less Chinese these days, instead Korean seems close to the dominant cuisine, with a scattering of Thai and Vietnamese. I found a place with cheap and cheerful beef and noodles, and a delightful spicy onion oil, which set me back just over $10 including a random canned herbal drink (very sweet but okay).

After some shopping the final stop was for a good old HSP at one of the three that are in close proximity to my hotel. It’s a tradition now — this time I went for the nearest, that is usually staffed by an old European gut, but tonight it was two younger folks. It was still pretty good, quite heavy on the garlic sauce.

Tomorrow is aiming to go big: breakfast at a usual haunt, then train down to a gaming shop (public transport is currently free in Melbourne), hopefully a second hand CD store, then dinner with pals. Easy enough, surely.