Melbourne

It was never on my radar to go to Australia, but you fall in love with an Australian and look what happens. I’d just quit my job after twelve years in publishing (more of which later) and flying to the other side of the planet seemed a good way to buffer some enormous life changes. We decide to go for 3 weeks and spend Christmas in Melbourne where my partner Oisin’s sister lives with her partner and their seven-month-old baby girl. While the plane waits on the tarmac, my own sister is in hospital awaiting the appearance of my new niece. The last shred of 3G before we are asked to switch off our phones carries a picture of little Penny Jean – healthy, pink and screaming blue-murder. A happy relief before we hit the skies.

Ten years ago my fear of large aeroplanes might have prohibited the trip. I’m much better now, but I admit my stomach flips when I first see the three rows of seats (three rows! THREE!? this thing is too big to fly, IT’S TOO BIG TO FLY!). My advice for flying east around the globe is to have a bad night’s sleep the night before you leave. I re-set my phone to Australia time the minute I get up, so despite having only been awake a few hours it’s time for bed when I get on the plane. With the help of over-the-counter sleeping pills I nod on and off through the first seven hour leg of the journey.

When I come to, I seem to be in the airport sequence from The Fifth Element, also known as Doha airport, Qatar. There’s just enough time to go to the bathroom and we’re back on a different plane where I now have to stay awake until we hit Australia. I find it impossible to read so my well-intended Hilary Mantel remains untouched while Oisín does the sensible thing and chortles through Despicable Me 2. Make no mistake, the thirteen hour leg of the flight is hard work. The trick is to make your world as small and comfortable as possible with blankets and music and movies. It is bedtime when we arrive in Australia. We go straight to bed and sleep well and wake up on Australia time.

First impressions of Melbourne, and specifically Melbourne in December: It is a huge metropolis made up of smaller neighbourhoods, each with its own character, train station and/or tram stop, and if you’re lucky, beach. It feels as if Irish and Asian people have come together to build a city in the sunshine. (Note: in Australia ‘Asian’ is most often used to refer to south-east and north-east Asia, rather than south Asia as it tends to mean in the UK). Christmas is optional and lightly festive, not aggressive and avaricious like back home. In a list where Canadian and Australian cities dominate, Melbourne was found to be the number one most liveable city while not quite ranking in the ten most expensive. These findings seem to ring true. Easy-to-use transport proliferates and there is healthy food (or unhealthy if you prefer) to fill you up all day for a few dollars.

Oisin’s family are, of course, extremely lovely and welcoming. They are Irish/Australian/Chinese/Norwegian, ­which is to say, Australian. They are warm, fun-loving, healthy, culturally savvy, and generous. These things strike me as very Melbournian. Their neighbourhood is Footscray, close to the city, on the cusp of regeneration (though hopefully not extreme gentrification), ethnically diverse, though predominantly home to a Vietnamese community.  Our first couple of days in the city are an exhilarating blend of world accents, Turkish sandwiches, Christmas lights, 28 degree picnics in the park, espresso, gyoza, laksa, grenita. Courtesy of lovely Michael, we head to a grand beach house at Sorrento while I gather up my further impressions: Melbourne feels like it’s growing and filled with potential, not rammed to capacity and panting over the side like London or New York. It feels as if your favourite bar might not have opened yet. Quality of life doesn’t feel hopelessly out of reach. There are too many KFC’s and Nando’s and McDonald’s and it needs fixing. There is more exciting vegetarian food here than you could hope to try. Jackson 5 and Cat Stevens are playing everywhere. We see two enormous poisonous tiger snakes and a dolphin at the wilds of Portsea. I feel extremely far from home and it feels brilliant.

Notable places that we eat or drink are Mamasita, Corte, Journal, Buckley’s Chance, The Plough, Short Round, Ombra, Shebeen, Spicy Fish, Boney, Izakaya Den and the rooftop bar at Curtin House. Rooftop bars are very Melbourne, originally intended to dull the effects of the smoking ban, they are now an essential part of a summery drink.

The 42 degree heatwave dips and we spend Christmas Day on the beach with home-made sushi rolls and wine and friends and family. The sea is warm. We swim and stay until the sun sets.

(Here are some Melbourne photos.).

Tuscany

Tuscany... even the word is a kind of dreamy homophone for ‘dusk and honey’ – and honey is near enough a decent simile for the light too. There’s something about the way the sun meets the earth there that lets you see ‘the shape of the day', as our wonderful host Claudia put it. But the light… it's the light that my Aunt had told me she couldn’t describe, and here I am, not describing it for her…

But first, Rome…

On my previous trip to Rome, the tour guide delighted in telling us that we’d arrived on the rainiest weekend for fifty years.  Everything was sticky and grey, and even the Trevi Fountain couldn’t make itself heard above the torrent. There was a certain romance watching rain douse the sides of the Colosseum but mostly it was a false start for me and Rome.

This time though, the sun is out, and twenty four hours of hot Roman holiday await. Katie and Eddie meet me off the train, already looking like accomplished locals, all shiny and brunette. We are borrowing a beautiful apartment for the night which is stuffed with Proust in Italian translation and shelves of orchestral vinyl. Our street is just by the Michelangelo-designed Porta Pia, a sixteenth-century gate in the city walls that was commissioned by Pius IV. It is a very important gate in Rome because it leads you to the street where you encounter the best ice cream of your life. For me this was mascarpone and latte in one scoop, pistachio in the other, a topping of freshly whipped and sweetened cream that tasted of nougat, and all presented in a crisp, waffle-textured cone that was filled to halfway with warm, melted dark chocolate.

The Trevi at dusk works its magic this time, though the mass of people make it feel like the entrance to a particularly lovely stop on the Metropolitana. Al fresco pizza, red wine and an early night. We’re up bright and early to beat the crowds to the Colosseum. You have to imagine the roar of the throng as you walk through the stone entrance. Inside is both partially constructed and pleasingly derelict. The audio guide is a good way to go about things, especially if you’re adept at reading between the lines…

The history of the Colosseum is also the story of the Empire itself. Current affairs were acted out in the amphitheatre like dramatised newscasts. When a whale beached up on the coast, a wooden whale was hastily built to be paraded around the stage. Before the astonished crowds it opened its mouth and out tumbled dozens of live bears. The subsequent fortunes of the Colosseum mirrored the changing Rome and all manner of bloodshed and worship, theatrics and morality plays,  squatters and gay cruisers (not on the audio guide), found a home inside its walls over the centuries. Preservation and audio guides seem a tame future in comparison.

On the train to Arezzo I start reading A Room With A View. It’s my first (and so far only) Forster, downloaded in a hurry to the Kindle, but it could not have been better chosen. Almost immediately the sensation of being in this part of Italy is there on the page (or rather, on the screen). From the station we drive through lush country and into the hills that border Tuscany and the oddly English-sounding Umbria. The first view of the house is a thrill and I’m already drafting some or other novel about an impossibly spoiled girl and her Italian summer of self-discovery.

In the morning I open the shutters to a fug of lavender and a little hornet bouncing off the window. His buzz gives way to a guitar being tuned somewhere which mingles with the hum of farm machinery from across the valley. Everything is like this – musical and hypnotic. It’s hard to remember ever being tetchy and cross back home. I am very lucky to be here.

Forster fever peaks on a day trip to Florence. We pass the ‘View’ of the title and the probable location of the pensione. I have already learned that our hosts and friends once stayed in the room in Paris where Forster worked on the novel.  Not only that but they are also a family from Tunbridge Wells, as in the novel, though infinitely less prickly of course. The tourists move in packs of forty and fifty through Florence, it is a difficult town to negotiate, but there is more ice cream and coffee to be had, and all the greatest Italians are in the ground somewhere and in the atmosphere.

On my morning run next day I meet a deer that rattles its antlers on the tree when it sees me. When I dive into the pool back at the house to cool off, there is a tiny frog doing lengths. I write the first draft of this piece on the terrace at the back of the house, looking down past the swimming pool and over the fields to the town of Montherci. There is a very precise little lizard poised inside my discarded sandal and the cicada that lives in the tree above has started its mechanical chirrup for the evening. When it goes dark we can see a firefly in the foliage, lonesome and hovering. It is the same colour as Venus, the brightest thing in the sky.

Soho, Streatham, Southwark

I took a little writing sojourn to London recently, a long weekend in the wilds of Streatham Hill to live with a cat named Trevor. I spent a day in central London first though, visiting various places I’d been meaning to go to for ages. Saint Paul’s Church, Covent Garden – otherwise known as ‘the Actor’s Church’ – is where many a famous thespian is remembered. I got teary-eyed before I even made it inside, as each of the benches in the churchyard carries a commemoration, from Beryl Reid (‘So much love…’) to a long-serving head librarian at the RADA. The church itself was officially closed but I snuck inside by holding open the door for a man carrying a set of bongo drums. Inside is a lovely modest sort of church with plaques everywhere for the great and good of British stage and screen. That’s one reason I wanted to go, another is that legend has it that the first of London’s plague victims is buried here, one Margaret Ponteous, 1665. And yet another is that Henrietta Street, which runs alongside Saint Paul’s, was home to the Hell Club, an early New Romantic hangout, before they were called New Romantics and before they took over the Blitz. Steve Strange tells an amazing story of how everyone was on acid one night in Hell and the club was so hot they all spilled out into the graveyard and danced around there, tripping their noodles off in their outrageous costumes. Isn’t that an amazing image? I liked it so much I've drafted an entire novel plot around the idea. 

Having soaked up these lovely pagan vibes, I emerged into the decidedly more Christmassy environs of Covent Garden looking for coffee, which I found in a state of near perfection at New Row Coffee. The coffee is incredible, go there. They’re lovely folk too. Revived, I then walked to Soho to have a nosey at the Soho Hotel where one of the scenes begins in the novel I’m working on. There’s not much to see, Dean Street turns into a little mews with a red brick and quite Mancunian-looking structure piled up the end, which is the hotel. There’s a large shiny black Buddha cat in the foyer. From there it’s a short walk to Soho Square. I make a little pilgrimage here from time to time, especially when it’s cold, to sit on a bench and play ‘Soho Square’ by Kirsty MacColl, whom I adore and miss terribly... ‘… kiss me quick, in case I die before my birthday…’

Next stop is Southwark and I decide to take a Boris bike. Opposite the bike park at Soho Square, Will Young is waiting for a cab, holding a bunch of flowers. My mother wants me to marry Will Young so I wait at least until eye contact is established, but it’s brief. I guess the flowers are not meant for me. Will gets in his cab with barely a glance and I hop up on my bike. I love Boris bikes. It only costs a pound – and almost my life at Piccadilly Circus – but before I know it I’m sailing past the Thames, over Blackfriars’s Bridge, and into deepest Southwark. (When is somebody going to put something interesting where that old sandwich shop is at the bottom of the Blackfriars’s Bridge by the way…?)

Southwark is my very favourite bit of London, even more so now that I’ve been to the Cross Bones Graveyard, which you can read about here, and also because I discovered yesterday that Stock, Aitken & Waterman’s Hit Factory was round here too, on Vine Yard. I love Borough Market of course, and Tooley Street, and I’m even coming round to the idea of The Shard. Maybe. Yes, Southwark is the place for me.

From London Bridge I catch the train to Streatham Hill, deep in the South London suburbs. Angela Carter country. I arrive in the dark, meet Trevor the enormous handsome cat, do some writing, and go to sleep early. In the morning I leap out of bed and go for a jog in the dazzling autumn sunshine. I plough into the school run for the primary school a few doors down and from there I run to Brockwell Park, run right around it, and home. It’s downhill all the way and uphill all the way back. My legs are still in considerable pain four days later. It is the last jog I am even able to do for the rest of the trip. None of this bodes well for the sponsored 10K I am meant to run in May.

After a day of writing I catch the train back to Southwark. London is steeped in a marvellous silver fog by now. I walk over Tower Bridge, which is every bit as exciting as Brooklyn Bridge tonight. I walk down Park Street which is magical and Dickensian. We are looking for The Rose Theatre, London’s oldest surviving theatre, and the very first to open on Bankside. Tonight they are performing The Winter’s Tale on a small fenced stage above the excavation site of the ancient theatre. The Rose preceded even The Globe just along the river, opening in 1587. Shakespeare performed here as an actor and staged two of his own plays here too. The layout of the theatre, the outside wall and jutting stage, is described in red lights so you can see where the building once sat. It’s thrilling. I can feel old voices and ghosts coming up through the ground. Musicians play over in the far corner of the excavation site, lit by candles. The performance is lovely too; enticing and fun and heart-breaking. Francesca De Sica’s Hermione is wonderful. I am given a flower (at last!) by guitar-playing troublemaker Autolycus, but even he reclaims it at the end of the play. I take it as a good omen though. I fall for The Rose, and they have just this week heard they will be getting a Heritage Lottery Grant to complete the excavation. If/when The Shakespeare Girl is published I want to have my launch party there. Some fine ale follows in The George, off Borough High Street. There has been a pub on this site since at least 1543 and the current building dates to the mid-seventeenth century. Yes, Southwark is the place for me.

I am then firmly holed up for the next couple of days, churning out thousands of new words and feeling the spirit of what I first planned to write all those months ago. Twenty-three thousand words in, The Shakespeare Girl is coming to life. Missing social events and getting used to solitude gets easier the longer you write. Having a terrifyingly close deadline also works wonders. Angela Carter’s last novel, Wise Children, was a large part of the original inspiration behind the story. Streatham Hill is next to Balham, where Carter grew up, and I find out her old school is not far away so I take a walk there. It proves impossible to find mention of the house she grew up in though. I expect the present tenants would like to avoid legions of bespectacled girls in maxi skirts, and me, leaving flowers at the gate. Anyway, she’s in the leafy air down there somewhere and I go home and write a scene about a famous actor who goes out into the Soho night in drag, and I think she would approve.

Angela Carter's old school.

Travel Diary: To London …

I’m packing on a stressful Wednesday night when I realise with perturbation that this will be the longest period of time that I’ve ever been off work. Ever. Packing for two and a bit weeks – four cities, one seaside town – is harder than you might think, especially as everything has to go into one rucksack so that I don’t have to pay any baggage charges when I eventually fly. I decide that the essentials are these: passport, credit card, contact lens solution, dancing shoes. And we’re off…

It’s hot hot hot when I hit London, especially in our tiny student room at the LSE. But it costs half a crown a night and is just a hop from Goodge Street so who’s complaining? We retire to the basement cosiness of the New Bloomsbury Set for Vedettes and on the walk home bump into the eminent Richard Dyer. What a gentleman, and such a perfect Bloomsbury encounter. I sleep hotly but soundly in the comforting hum of central London.

Next morning the sky is cloudy but the BT Tower soars over the breakfast terrace. Down on the street London is branded all to hell for the Olympics. The opening ceremony is this evening and the city is palpably excited, but oddly quiet, almost deserted in parts. On more than one street corner Olympic volunteers outnumber regular civilians. 

First port of call is the V&A exhibition, ‘British Design, 1948–2012’. Really beautiful and beautifully staged, if a little oddly chosen in parts (I suspect the interior of Damien Hirst’s ‘Pharmacy’ boozer doesn’t seem that important to many people outside London). Hats, furniture, platform games and Concorde all seem perfectly fresh and exciting in a new context, though the typography on the Festival Of Britain stuff is as perfectly executed as anything that came in the fifty years after.

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