Countdown to Australia

So, here I sit at my computer looking out at a wet, grey English morning somewhere in the East Midlands. After some 30 plus years in mostly warmer climes I am at ease with my new reality and indeed have embraced it. I'm happy now putting in a shift, taking the wife to and from work and helping my lad with his homework. But it's a suburban routine I refused to embrace while my pals from school, college and football found themselves saddled with mortgages and children I steered clear from commitment - hell, even though I was going to every Arsenal home game I didn't buy a season ticket!

I was born I guess with a desire to be somewhere else. By the time I was 10 I had lived in Tripoli, Hartlepool, Bielfeld, North London, Mons, Uckfield and Frimley so it seemed only natural as I considered my career options to look for something that would satisfy those itchy feet of mine. Unfortunately I never really got beyond the idea of going overseas and so after a couple of Inter Rail trips around Europe I declared to an apathetic audience my desire to go to Australia for a working holiday. I felt I needed to do this trip before I followed my mates down the same old path.

I ended up spending about three years in Australia in two spells, mostly in Sydney. Since leaving in 1991 I haven't returned but have often looked back wistfully on my time there - the bits I can remember at least. I have even had vivid dreams which have seen me walking the streets of Sydney and they were so lifelike, so real, even down to popping into the corner shop once run by Kiwi Christine in King's Cross and buying a can of Solo or running up the Wooloomooloo Steps to watch a new cartoon series called The Simpsons. But a return to Australia seemed just that - a distant dream.

Until I turned to writing and Bonita, through her company Fair Play Publishing, printed a couple of my books and eventually, after a Covid-ridden couple of years, invited me down to attend the Football Writer's Festival and wow! Between the granting of my visa and the scheduled departure of my flight I was counting the days, checking the football fixtures, looking up old watering holes I used to frequent and I was breathless with anticipation.

I loved my time in Australia. Loved the scenery, loved the beer, loved the football, loved the vibe. The weather weren't bad either. And now I'm returning. I'm not expecting 1980s Sydney though. I'm not going to relieve my old memories; rather I'm dead set keen on carving out some new experiences more appropriate for a semi retired old bugger and not some 20 something whose ambitions spread no further than watching the sun rise at Mansions Hotel.

This blog will, I hope, record my return. Yes, it will  be tinged with nostalgia. You can't return to a place you once knew so well only to ignore those memories but I'm hoping the present will add more layers to my own personal nostalgia and embrace a Sydney that will be mostly unfamiliar to me. I grew up with punk in England and it pissed me off how everyone in the media would harp on about the 1960s like it was some mythical, Arthurian era. Maybe it was for them but with that awareness tucked away in my back pocket I hope I don't make the same mistake as I return to my old haunts.