roving round the royal regions

Look, its Zoe the eskimo girl! Altho Inuit is the preferred nomenclature, dude!
it's only been 1 month since leon last wrote anything here, but it seems like much much longer. since our arrival in London, we have had many debauched nights in hammertown with the hammer crew (jen & kate we love yr work!) and also had a few shennanigans with cath west over in little venice. we have visited zoe & james in dublin and drank guinness, and we ate haggis and black pud with lizzie & claire in scotland. Note the piccie of the FULL SCOTTISH BREAKFAST. That little black disk is BLACK PUDDING. It's a remedy for Bunyip breath. Or is it a cause..?
This is the sort of thing i came to the uk to enjoy. Good times. My birthday adventures will be reported in the next post, and it was all made even better, if that is actually possible, by a happy birthday phone call from the crew in briswegia, as organised by me old mates sal and angie. nice work girls!!!

By the way, I think the Beltane Festival in Edinburgh really deserved a blog entry all of it's own, but well who has time for blogging in these hectic modern times? Only reason I'm managing to do this now is because I've chucked a sickie!!! Ooh look, naked people! The RED DEVILS making merry before the coming of the MAY QUEEN!

And then of course there was the morning after (he he he, that was a good one. I crashed at 7:45am and woke up to get the train at 8:10) and the long sleep on the trainride home. Bless Lizzie and Claire and Sarah for supplying us with out Scottish EMERGENCY TRAIN SURVIVAL KIT! Scottish hospitality is unsurpassed! Cheers girls and we'll be seeing you soon...

karaoke in hackney

hey you mob!
we had a karaoke night at the new house on friday to celebrate our arrival and make it crystal clear to the rest of the household that we are ROCK & RAWL! our housemates were like "ooh yeah, great, i'm not singing...no not me...oh yeah cool, you go girl..." and you know what? all those shy flowers turned into KARAOKE CARNIVORES and were fighting for the mike, as ya do.
karaoke was a sleepover extravaganza, with mates rearranging the furniture so they could gently drift back down to earth in each other's fleshy embrace. aaaw. it was beautiful. bodies everywhere. english breakfast. kickn the ball in the park next day, ash finally breached the barrier and learnt to HEAD BUTT. yeah. feeling more english everyday...but not. know what i mean?
photos soon...
miss yez, love yez,
we love hackney. we are diggn the borough!

by the way, here is a shot of the cool stage curtain when we went to see the mighty boosh the other month...with jen and stu, it was rad

brief enter lewd

hi kids,
mucho apologies for the long delay; it's sometimes easy to forget folks are hanging on yr every word (i assume). Much has transpired - not near a net cafe, but- and so for a brief update:
We are now back in Hackney, in our new real non-short-term, we don't gotta carry all our shit on the train again residence. Hackney has a reputation about as nice as the word sounds if u inject it with a cockney, londoner, scouse or afro-carribean...see? But, despite everyone from the guy at customs on the way in wrinkling their collective nose, me n ash like this end of town.
we spent the previous 10 days in putney (also a charming moniker), living with 'saffos' (the delightful south african folks) and sucking up a little britain proper. this end of town, just south of hammersmith, earls court and those other 'antipodean' suburbs (gee, don't all this terminology make u puke?), is decidedly WHITE. very few of what our potential indian landlord disparagingly referred to as 'coloured people'. hey, go figure. actually putney is really boring and overpriced, but at least the folks can sleep safe knowing the beggars are all whitey.
enough of boring tedious london moving.
been feeling a little more up since i got a job (thank u to all those i harassed 4 references; these brit's will believe anything!). be feeling even better once i get paid. £7 an hour is not exactly what richard branson gets, i'll wager, but it's a start.

i'm crediting the suit with my success - i even got an op shop tie! god, metrosexual yuppie heaven is just a classic car reissue away!. ash is just about to get a break due to kiddies holidays, so lucky i'm earning or we'd be well poor, instead of just common poor.

jen and kate have been ensuring our lowbrow australian cultural fixes are being taken care of (no, don't interpret that, we got fotos!).

i've drunk more foster's in the last month than in my entire life previous, i reckon. this is only cos it's the cheapest thing to buy most places, i swear.

rach and her, ah, 'friend' (i dunno, ask her), have been keeping our broader london cultural experience alive, despite the shoestring.

anyways, we'll get a proper good update and email and skype and shit going reel soon, i promise.
talk 2 y'all soon, kiddies. don't forget us...
oh, and happy birthday to micko, dan and salbo.
xxxx leon

jean-claude van damme nice place u got here

hey kiddies,
jus about 2 leave brussels 4 the big bad massive of london.
our short stay in brussels has reintroduced us 2 first world costs (actually the euro makes the aussie $ feel pretty scummy), and reminded us that sunny days (literally only, in shallah) are over.
our hostel, from within which i now pen these words (sorry, i'm reading "the fatal shore"), was a jump of 1500% on our dahab lodgings and for a moment panic set in. it's very nice tho...


however yesterday we discovered that you can pay for a good meal in brussels and actually get what u pay 4. gastronomes rock!

also, u can actually drink belgian beer in the multiplicity of quaint pubs aropund here 4 less than u would in that overpriced belgian joint in bris city. oooh, now i feel sleepy.

catch y'all on the other side of the channel.
love, leon n ash

this one goes out to the ones we love

Hey you mob. Even ıf your pıc doesnt appear here, you know who you are. Im sick with chic flu. Its the flu only girls get which is why Leon is so sickeningly healthy. Thıs flu is making me homesick. So here are some photos of all the folks we know and love so well. You are all so damn good looking! And so youve got something to read along with these pretty pictures I may as well update you. Today I tried for the last time to get a cheque in pounds sterling so I could pay for my registration as a teacher ın Scotland. No bank here, including HSBC, wants to take my money. So it will have to wait until we reach UK. After that, Leon & I went and sat in a park. I tried to sleep & he tried to read. I desperately needed somewhere to be ill & sleepy and didnt want to impose on our friends by sneezing, coughing, wheezing & being generally completely fucking miserable and bad company in their home. I also didnt want to offend our friends who have welcomed us to stay in what little space they have by choosing to get a room in a hostel instead. So we went to the park where I tried to chill out & relax. This plan backfired dramatically when I ended up balling my eyes out because I felt so sick and so homeless. Leon came to my rescue, got me a cup of tea and a simit (Turkish bread snacks - excellent!) and then he went & found Deniz at her offıce. She escorted us straıght back to her house, gave me some paracetamol (on top of all the Nurofen+ Ive been munching) and some pseudoefodrıne (whateva) and put me to bed. Thankyou very much Deniz! I hope one day I can look after her as well as she has looked after me, twice now, in health and ın sıckness. Leon is now in the kitchen cooking up a big feed of spag bol, all these guys think he is a legend (& as we all know, he is). Burak (Denizs boyfrıend) walked ın the door from work and offered to take me to hospıtal. Im about 100% sure he was takıng the pıss. Maybe he wıll catch my flu and then I can offer to take hım to hospıtal.

ah-hah!

gotcha. we love u mıcko.

apologies for the posting cavity...

this computer sucks arse for uploading photos (and it's a bummer for skype also; pentium II? what IS that?) so hold tight for attempt no. 2 tomorrow, when attempts will be made 2 rectify this situation. i don't want 2 sound anal, but i demand the latest cheap and nasty technology.
oh, and for yr information: Unlike our recent dead sea canadian friend and a certain well known ABC journo, neither leon or ashley were invited to participate in any cavity work by the (in)security dental arsistants associated with the israeli national airline. in shallah indeed.

Back in The 'Bul

It's been a while. Sorry to all our dear readers, but we have been snowed under here in Sultanahmet. Snow is so pretty.

Although the last rambling post (the one that goes on about moses or summat) covers our last days in Dahab, it doesn't cover the football, the last supper at Seabride, our farewell to the boys (waaaaaahhhhhhh!!!), our lift back from the border to Tel Aviv, or our last days in Tel Aviv (phew). So we will have to backtrack yet again, and the story will be told, albeit jumbled and out of order. Really, how else could it be? When the camera has batteries and no helpful friendly people are hovering around distracting us or wanting to use the computer, we will put up photos etc. Probably in the next few days when we are hanging out with Deniz.

True to her name, the Recidivist has quit again. Yes, Ashley has been a non-smoker now for a whole week. Look'n good, and pulling it off with only the very occasional complaint or homicidal moodswing. What a woman. She has been enjoying the odd glass of red wine, having found 1ltr bottles available at the supermarket for a very reasonable 8YL (that's 8 yeni lira, or new lira, for the uninitiated. They came up with some new money when they heard Ash was coming back with her old lira). Ash is reading a ginormous Beatles bio that makes her wrists ache.

Leon, you ask? Well, Leon is living large in a very swish new winter coat that makes him look just like Kemal Attaturk. Women swoon in the streets as he walks past, waggling his cigar [thats no cigar- Ed.]. Seriously, it is a very nice coat. Ash too has purchased a new long black cardi with a hood, and a hot pink trackie jacket with a hood, and a hood...it was only 1C the other day and snowing hard, so we felt the need to build up our wardrobes a bit.

It is soooo wonderful to be back in Istanbul. I love it here, and happily Leon is also enamoured of the place and suggested we come live here for a while after our exit from UK. This long-term forward-thinking is unprecedented and called for a bottle of wine post-haste. Things have gone up a little in price (like, some things have actually tripled!) since I was here last, but my 5 Turkish phrases are standing me in good stead, and slowly growing. It is truly excellent to see Deniz again, she is giving us the royal treatment, arranging free tours for us to all the must-see things in Sultanahmet (Aya Sofia, Topkapi) and we are going to spend the weekend with her family, then the plan is to stay with her in Kadikoy for our last week here.

The Sultan Hostel has been very comfortable since we upgraded out of the dorm room to avoid the pervy man who was masturbating [no, not me - Ed.] and causing all the bunk beds to rattle against each other. Pervy also had a penchant for collecting people's email addresses and phone numbers. Yuck. Thankfully Pervy checked out, and soon so will we. Stay tuned.

moses was a poser

so with only two more nights of the joyously laid-back dahab to endure, the decision was made by ashley, micko and leon (dave having roots manuva-d 2 rastas-electric boogaloo; i dunno the real name, ask dave) to climb a mountain; in the dark, wee hours of the early morning; for a laugh.
after nana-naps and the best pizza in egypt were taken care of, we boarded the van at 11pm, keen for the 2 hour hoik up 2 sinai. enroute everyone else in the darkened, speeding van looked like they were getting at least the most primitive forms of sleep except me (relegated to cushion duty), but micko assures me he got none so i feel better.
after a near escape of the 50% "baksheesh" (tip) the driver was asking just 2 walk 5 metres and buy our tickets 4 us, we entered via st catherines monastery.
walking through at night, surrounded by (a fuckload of) tourist types (ooh, ain't we so superior) the consensus was to sans the monastery and head straight up the the large rock form that carries the name of the tour.
the first 100 metres of the walk was well eerie. imagine a stretch of very dark, rocky terrain(i believe the partly full moon was blotted by the big hill) silent but for the gentle breeze, with large white boulders piled along either side of the walkway. now imagine that, as yr eyes accustomise it gradually dawns on u that the huge white boulders stretching out 10 across on either side and off ahead into darkness are all enormous, dead silent...afghan camels (two humps, dahlings)! holy shit! anyone seen "the birds" here? well lemme tell u, seagulls got nothing on ships of the desert! (is a lot of camels an armada?) the bedouin, not having realised we're part of the oncoming horde, haven't given the game away with rapid fire chants of "camel ride?! camel ride?!", so we got the full benefit of their surprise tactics. in retrospect, in can't believe we couldn't SMELL that mass of camels, but we were still a little sleepy, i guess.
to save u the boredom of a blow by blow retelling of the ascent (and cos i just realised micko's stolen my thunder and added it to his last blog entry), lemme just say that climbing up a mountain in the dark with a few friends is less easy and more enjoyable than climbing down a mountain in the early daylight surrounded by mongoloid tourists (no offense to genghis and co). those big rocks sure are pretty tho...

it was definitely the highest, and the coldest i've ever been up on top (that xmas-style red nose aın't from 2 much eggnog). we got there before the hordes and paid a bedouin too much for very neccesary mattress and blanket action. the great globby mass of the milky way was splayedacross the heavens for our teeth-chattering enjoyment. then we settled in to wait for sunrise, killing time by relating stories each of us knew about u, gentle reader; how u were our favourite and always managed 2 work such magic through yr evryday life...ahhh.

by the time sunrise came the three of us were well fucking chilled and suddenly surrounded by a seething mass of goof. a small body of lunatics off to our right suddenly burst forth with the speaking-in-tongues thing that is so much a hallmark of their illness. an angular, goateed white man (u know the type - look! there he is in the hood!) burst into semi-operatic singing in a language unknown 2 me (other than the occasional hallelujah). ash shushed me several times when i tried to add my own barney gumble style version of "modern major general" to the mix. not to be outdone, a japanese man surrounded by his countryfolk up on the outlook took up the amateur-pavarotti gauntlet with his own soliloquoy. for the 20 mins previous this fella had been making regular gruff, bruce-lee-movie type grunts that seemed (to my expert eyes) to be directed towards making the sun come up beyond the horizon. the rest of us were all very grateful for his moses-like (mosaic?) effort because, sure enough, the cute little pink ball u can see in micko's previous post began its adorable ascent.
i guess when u go somewhere that most other peoplego to because of who was (supposedly) there rather than what is now there u have to expect a little divergence of philosophies. ash, micko and i were philisophically entwined in our agreement that our fingers and toes had passed on, it was too cold and crowded and time to go.
the lazy saunter back down (after we'd put some distance up and got a little blood back into yon extremities) was very akin to the pleasantly washed out feeling of having mixed intoxicants adeptly the previous evening and stayed up til dawn with charming company. pleasant.
and now home 2 bed please driver...