passport please

Nothing could be easier than going to Oz, you can buy tickets with out ever talking to anyone, print them on your home printer, turn up at the airport and VIOLA you're going on holiday.

That is until you line up in the 300 person line for check in, glance down at your departure card and read: "Name" yep, know that one. "Passport number"
WHAT? HOw the HELL am I supposed to REMEMBER my passport number?
Are they serious? I don't memorise these things!
Hang on maybe I CAN remember it.. D... L

Oh. OH wait a second. Oh god.

I furtively glance around me to see if anyone's got their passports in hand. Sure enough, most do.
I feel my body temperature rise slightly, and my skin prickle. To avoid anyone hearing this conversation I leave my suitcase holding my place in line and walk out the front door to call dad.
Dad, guess what, I forgot my passport.

Though I told dad i'd be fine and not to park, I am not fine, and he did park.
And calm as a sleeping chook he says, okay, i'm still here, go ask someone if you need it.

This might sound silly to most, but it NEVER crossed my mind even one time to take my passport. Everything seemed so easy, so simple, pair of togs and a printed itinerary...
And dad, lives in his own very practical world where anything is possible until proven otherwise.
So I have to go back to the line, and in my VERY quietest voice (which you will all be surprised I own) ask a lady there: ah, this might seem like a bad question, (on so many levels) but do we need our passport to go to oz?
She doesn't laugh, I think maybe from shock, and just says, yes, you do.

To the CAR!!!! and step on it james!
We start out driving 88kph away from the airport, I"m clawing at the seats, dad is stuck behind a taxi, the slowest moving vehicles on the road.
Dad says "Damn 80k signs!"
and i'm like, oh Jesus dad, NOT NOW, you do NOT Have to go 80! (remarkable his law abiding-ness isn't it!), there are no people, no cops, and they won't even fine you til 110 now GET out from behind this taxi and step on it!

And god bless my father, he DOES. We are in a Prius, those bubble shaped cars that run on water, or air, or something, we call it the stealth mobile because it has no engine noise, it is not ergnomically designed for speed racing, infact it is specifically designed for modest, mature drivers. BUt tonight it gets it's first big night on the town.

We take a corner quite fast (empty streets don't worry) and the wheels screeeeeech and dad says calmly (whilst travelling 100kph) you know they say these cars don't handle well on the open road, but I don't think that's true.

Perhaps dad was just waiting for a good excuse to burn the rubber.
I growl and wave dad through an orange light, and he does me proud. Home and back to the airport in 32 minutes, a NWR (New World REcord).

I am the last in the queue, cleverly I have avoiding queing for an hour, the glance at my passport and say: you are the last, they're all waiting for you, go straight to the escalator and board.

I am in my very own episode of airport. Dads still there and we run run run up two flights, dodging people and through the doors to the boarding tunnel.
If only i'd known that was going to be the most fun i'd have for four hours.

Not so sure about travelling on thee cheapest flights on thee cheapest airline with all thee poorest of the cattle class. Ha, i just say that for effect.

Anyway I'm here. I have a new stamp in my passport. Got sniffed on the bum by a sniffer dog (who moved on swiftly thank YOU very much! No quarantine up there! haha)

And what I can say in brief about the Gold coast is that it is warm in the day, hot in the sun, and cool at night. Everything is bigger, brasher and noisier, in a good way. There are bats.
We are on the second story, sitting on the balcony of a tropicana paradiso building, one street from the beach, long whitey yellow sand and the real sea smell of salt and open spaces.
Surfers up and at it, working their guts out for 1.5ft of white caps. God blessem.

Coffee, eggs, holiday. :)

you say potatoes

Keep diaries.
All of you, keep a diary.
Because you will FORGET. You will forget the good stuff, it's richness, the exact words.
You will forget you FELT that way.
And you forget, oh how you forget, the bad stuff.
They say don't sweat the small stuff? Sweat it, and don't forget it.
Small stuff ends up being a big pile of Big Stuff.
Do you leave and leave your dust? And what happens? Big Dust.
I wrote in my diary last night, it's a bi monthly occurrence. The biggest things seem to happen to me once every two months. They are: Breaking up; And: Getting Back Together.

It's easy to think, when you're breaking up (like a phone line to the other side of the earth where loneliness resides) that this is the ONLY break up in the history of your life. It is VERY easy to question yourself. All day you swing (I swing) from certain to uncertain, from confidence to despairing.
What you need to do, is read back through your diary, and hear yourself tell yourself
how bad it has all been.
just how god aweful bad it has been, for so, so long.

There she is (you) waiting, falling off lines in scribbly handwriting, in your diary
waiting to tell you something urgent
from the other side of the earth
"It's not been good, Leave him"

And then you can close the book.