Well I really miss not being able to just go out into the garden and pick raspberries (or blackberries, currants, blueberries, strawberries, elderberries etc). They’re $10 per punnet, and a punnet just doesn’t last very long.
I miss the car, particularly on cloudless days when you see everyone else with convertibles with the roof up! And just occasionally, after an intense shift I do miss the midnight blast up the A14 / A1, music loud to relax. (although I don’t miss the traffic jams trying to get to Cambridge, playing silly games to amuse myself like “which lorry would I hijack?” – usually a combination of the lorries carrying “French” bread from Sheffield, Greene King Ale and Davidstow cheese. That’d be me sorted. Don’t need expensive electronics.)
I miss shops like Fat Face and White Stuff and knowing which shops are likely to have clothes that fit and/or that I like. The two are mutually exclusive. If it's not fashionable or slightly different, it's not easy to find.
There’s a sort of superficiality about the culture, and I think a very wide streak of conformism here. (Although I admit I have been to the opera and the theatre to see a Tom Stoppard – “The Real Thing” which, apart from some v creaky English / Scottish accents, was excellent. So there’s more “high” culture than Peterborough.)
I think many people are very comfortable, and quite self-centred (I do not mean selfish) as a massively sweeping generalisation. Maybe because most people are recent émigrés and have found the lifestyle they like, and so that is what is expected. For example there’s a big outcry over house prices here. But when young couples are interviewed on the TV about not being able to get a first house, they all seem to be expecting to move straight into a detached 3 bed, 3 verandahed suburban house. And it is a good lifestyle, but of course that will come at a cost, which maybe Australia is now waking up to, because they haven’t been paying so far.
“The summers are getting hotter” (hottest Nov for years) – turn up the AC.
“There’s no water” (but MY grass will still be watered) – build a desalination plant. But goodness knows where the energy will come from, and we couldn’t possibly think of reusing run-off.
Petrol is now $1-45 per litre - “but I’ve Got to have a Ute or a 4x4, and I have to drive.”
Of course what I haven’t mentioned is the election last Saturday. Apart from being glad that it is over – every other ad on TV was one party sniping at another.
But anyway, from a very right-wing govt / PM (who has actually lost his seat too, it was announced on Sat) to a middle-of-centre one. If Rudd acts, then they will sign up to Kyoto and take action on the Health Service (did I ever say that things are v similar to the UK 6 or 7 yrs ago in that respect?).
But when that threatens comfort, how popular will he be?
So I could see him very much as a Blair-like figure, already talking about targets and such. And when business is threatened (for example, much of the Murray-Darling river basin problem is that while level are so low that ferries are shutting and small farms having to bulldoze their trees, big businesses are stockpiling water), how far will changes go?
Blimey that was a bit serious. And I haven’t been to Sydney or Melbourne which, I am told, are much more cosmopolitan. Adelaide is very insular, and quite local. There is good stuff going on, you just have to look for it. And I’ve had the same conversation twice recently, once with Doug, and then shortly after with an Aussie bloke, who didn’t disagree.
Anyway, have been working lots recently and I now have two whole days stretching in front of me. Annoyingly, because I was on call last night, I didn’t sleep particularly well. So I might just potter into town today.
Four of us went up to Morialta yesterday. Jo was on night shifts, so they didn’t phone me until 130 yesterday afternoon. The weather wasn’t good for the beach, else we’d have been going there. No snakes at the beach (Jo got bitten by a stick last Saturday that reared up and bit her as she cycled past, and spent an unplanned night in the dept – she’s pretty lucky. Of course if she’d come out to dinner last Sat as she’d been planning on doing, then it would have been different. And ideal first aid for snake bite is immobilisation – not cycling home).
Anyway, we agreed to meet in half an hour (it’s only 15 min drive from here). And I thought I was doing so well when I pulled the door closed early, carrying my rucksack, car keys, boots, car stereo, iPod. In fact everything except my house keys. And as I realised, the door latched. Thankfully next door came home and I managed to get hold of a locksmith to let me in. That’s $95 I didn’t really need.
I made it for 2:30 – it was the others who got lost and were late. How long have Seb and Jo lived here? We got walking eventually – it was quite obvious I’ve not been up a hill for a while.
And how different is it? The waterfalls have dried up, leaving just stagnant puddles. The lush green is now grey and instead of a garden of flowers, there are only a few dried looking daisies. (Apart from a few scabious by the road in all shades of purple).
But no snakes.
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