Sunday, 16 August 2009

I spent most of this week indoors, working on papers with a few hours each day to walk in the sunshine. Friday I went to a houseparty given by Stesha’s friend Sean, a 21-year-old teetotaler who is applying for ADFA (the Aussie Defence Force Academy—West Point, Annapolis, and Air Force all rolled into one). He’s also a Canadian-cum-Australian, which means he has a permanent crippling Propensity for Niceness. He fed us steaks on the Barbie and Doritos, which in this country come in two flavors, Cheddar Cheese and Plain. Sean also invited over two nice fellows he’d met recently in a club, who in the course of two hours drank a bottle of rum between them and then, fortunately, passed out on the furniture. Stesha and Sean and I, however, had a fabulous time playing card games until past two in the morning.

I woke up at Stesha’s place in Maroubra on Saturday. The day was so lovely that I took the bus for only a few blocks before I jumped off at the shops in Coogee and strolled in tank top and skirt along the boardwalk, past young men balancing on their bare toes on a wire strung between two trees, very young mothers texting in one hand and pushing their baby strollers in the other, a gentleman painting a vista of the headlands, dozens of runners and children on scooters and dogs and Japanese tourists. I returned to my own beach, Clovelly, with a chocolate croissant and my own cup of coffee and passed out on my back in the grass, surrounded by picnickers and young lovers, and waking in a flurry of startled pigeons—one of them had actually been between my elbow and my body, nibbling bits of croissant.

Later I took the bus into the city and met Simon’s friend David, a lawyer in Bondi, and we boarded a train to Olympic Stadium (a soaring geometrical experiment, remnant of the 2000 Sydney Olympics). David began to explain the finer points of Australian Rules Football, and soon half the train car, clad in red scarves and beanies and jerseys and red and white striped kneesocks, chimed in with friendly banter against the Sydney Swans’ rival, the Geelong Cats. A win would be Sydney’s last hope of getting into the Finals.

The game was utterly fantastic. The two most important rules are as follows: no one wears padding, and the clock never stops. I cannot understand why this exuberant celebration of sheer strength and speed and brute physical and mental effort has not caught on in other countries, except that perhaps only Australians—in particular the legendary Aboriginal players—have the physical stamina to keep it up. A player will only leave the field if he is actively bleeding—and then, only if he wants to. If a player deliberately breaks another player’s leg, he will be removed from play as well—but only after the game. AFL is not for the fainthearted. “Come on the Swanees!”

It was “a cracker of a match,” as David declared, but Sydney lost by a narrow margin and the train home was subdued except for a few singing, swilling blue-striped Cats supporters. David and I went for ice cream and spent until the wee hours of the morning, in a spirit of friendly competition, comparing Oz and the States. Davo spent two years in the US, and he insulted American cheeses and praised American peanut butter while I insulted Aussie cheeses and praised Aussie bakeries.

It is supposed to be 28 degrees today, a degree of achievement that the Australian radio attributes grimly to climate change. All the windows in my apartment are open and my Clovelly neighbors are out and about in their two hundred dollar black skinny jeans and four hundred dollar high heeled boots, clutching coffees and pushing strollers. Yes, I’ve started saying I live in Clovelly instead of Randwick…yes, this is a status thing. To say you live in Clovelly (think: West Hartford) is to admit that you commute into North Sydney every day, wear big sunglasses and gourmet sausages, and don’t believe in public transport—oh, and you would be living in Vaucluse (think: Greenwich) except for the fact that the parents just moved down the coast and you didn’t want to be too far from them. Anyway, since it is already noon, my plan for a lazy Sunday includes laundry, beach, and dinner tonight with a friend of Craig’s named Darryl, a photographer-journalist who surfs three days a week and has promised to teach me, come summer.