lucky just to keep afloat

Brisbane - For my birthday, I get hail. When Nick Tee and I leave his apartment it is the end of a breezy, sunny day, and by the time we get to The Alibi Room all we can do is sit in his car and wait until big marbles of ice have stopped smacking against the roof before making a break for it. From the safety of the bar, we watch people wading through a flooded intersection, failed traffic lights blinking orange. Once, when the rain abates for a moment, we see the unmistakable shape of an inch-long cockroach crawling along the footpath. I'm 24, and the end is nigh.


Auckland - At the old bookshop I buy a great stack to add to the stack I amassed from working there five years ago. The stack is unread, neverending. Karel and I have coffee behind the counter and incidentally a few people buy books.

Rotorua - Thursday night in Auckland. Deb and I stock up on energy drinks and cold & flu tablets, then leave the city at midnight. During the four-hour drive south, we see a house being moved, in two parts; numerous potential serial killers; a cemetery on a hillside sparkling with tiny lights which people have placed on the graves, in lieu of candles?; some people having sex in a parked car. When we arrive at our destination we get changed in the car, wrap our towels around us and creep into the roadside bushes by the light of Deb's mobile. We grope around for footholds in the dark and ease ourselves into the thermal pool. We make friends with some fellow wallowers - a New Zealander, two Americans and a South African, whose voices we become familiar with first, before their faces take shape in the early morning light. Birds start to sing. When it's light enough, we can see tiny waxeyes hopping about in the branches above the pool. Steam rises.


On the drive back we see the New Zealand countryside at the very beginning of its day. It's been a really long time since I've done this. The fields and sheds and grazing animals are as monotonous as ever, but I'm seeing them with tourist eyes now, and I'm glad that this is a place I can always come back to.


Brisbane - I'm recovering from a potent night of beer and chips, crème brulée, pinot gris, whisky, tequila, something called a Bohemian Mojito (lychees) and another something called the Elixir of Love. After Alibi Room Viv led us for a laugh to Emporium, a Clockwork-Orange-set-cum-frequent-flyers-lounge of Venetian glass, birds of paradise, casino carpet and one ludicrous chandelier. We concluded our Brisbane-by-night tour at the Bowery. My lasting memory of this venue is of Nick Tee in his natty Peter Sellers specs, impersonating the red-sheathed blonde in the corner who was collapsing all over her Pat-Bateman boyf. 'Tsell me,' slurred Nick, 'tsell me more... about... property development.'