Working Man

The Service Industry

Right now I am tired. Dog tired. I am an early to bed, early to rise kind of boy, which makes me incompatable with the "hospitality" lifestyle that I am currently leading. There is a big shortage of full-time bar staff at The Inn, which means that I am doing 60-70 hours a week. We usually finish close down of the bar at around midnight, then all the staff sit around the bar and have a chat and unwind after the days work... so I get to bed around 1 every morning. The sun is up and the birds are singing by the time I open my eyes and remove my earplugs in the morning.

That combined with having to share a room with Alex has lead to my rather sleepy state right now. He is simply impossible for any reasonable person to live with. Jamie and I put our foot down last week and demanded that Alex be moved from our room, and despite being promised that he would be gone within a week, he is still there. We do get some small, petty comfort from the fact that Alex seems to enjoy living with us as much as we enjoy his company.

"you know the film Aliens? Those two are like that, they keep the room so cold, it is killing me."
That might have something to do with the fuse that we removed from the heater so that he couldn't close the windows, turn the heater onto max and turn the room into a smouldering dutch oven by smoking half a pack of cigarettes.
"Hey Alex, you were complaining about the cold, so I showed you how to turn the heater on, but if you really must smoke in the room, you have to keep the windows open."

English Countryside

The weather has been absolutely fantastic ever since I got to Godalming. Every day the sun is shining, and the air has crisp freshness about it that reminds me of spring days in Stanthorpe. In the last couple of weeks I have watched the woods go from dormant brown and grey to all shades of green as the trees come out of their winter hibernation.

The English countryside is completely different to what I am used to in Australia. Here it feels "lived in". The rivers have been dug out, had their banks straigteened and their levels controlled by lochs. There is always the touch of human hand present in the landscape, and people talk about "untouched forest" with reverence. Back home one quickly finds themselves battling with the bush, insects and heat the moment they leave the beaten path... if there was a beaten path in the first place. Here the countryside feels like and extention of the living room. While I miss the wildness and isolation of the Australian bush, I am enjoying the comfort of the English equivilent.

The country is criss-crossed with public footpaths that lead through private properties and along waterways. I can happily get myself lost for hours on end meandering along randomly chosen paths. I was lent a book, 50 walks in Surrey, by a girl at work. Jamie and I picked one walk, from Guildford to Godalming for one of our days off. It was around 8 kilometers long, and followed the side of a "river" that runs between the two towns. We stopped along the way to sit on top of an old pillbox from the second world war.... and at a couple of the numerous pubs that littered the side of the path. Yesterday I went for a picnic with Tina, a German bartender from work, and we had cheese and bread with a bottle of Australian chardonnay on top of the same pillbox.

Athens Ahoy

I have been enjoying being able to watch my football games at reasonable hours of the day. It still feels odd going to the pub at three in the afternoon to catch a live game. And the pubs are full of other fans who are well into their game. I was watching Chelsea-Liverpool the other day when the room with all of the Liverpool fans spontaniously burst into song. Great.

Jamie and I got the night off for the second leg of the Champions Leage semi-final between Liverpool and Chelsea on Tuesday. The game was played at Anfield, and the sound coming from the crowd was amazing, even though we were just getting the TV version. Liverpool went on to win a very tense and exciting game on penalties. I went on to get spectacularly drunk. I had just been commenting on the fact that I have not been really drunk for a couple of years. The next morning I realised that not getting that drunk is a very good idea.

Happy Snaps

I had a chat with the propieter of the local Happy Snaps photolab, and got a good bulk deal on development of my holiday photos. They have been dropped off this morning, and I will have them tomorrow. Tina has photoshop on her laptop, so we should start to see some holiday photos within the next couple of weeks.