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| Fish Kebabs At Sydney Fish Market. Sooooo Tastey! |
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| There's Something Fishy About This Palce. |
By 06.35am when we boarded the aircraft, the lack of alcohol was starting to tell. The skipper was looking edgy and the co-pilots were standing in a defensive circle around the drinks trolley as they welcomed us aboard the Jet Star Airbus.
The Australia's answer to Easy Jet is a cut above its counterpart as a result of simple comforts such as leather seats and pretty tanned stewardesses who smile a lot. The post-industrial wastelands, where Easy Jet recruit, breed a pale, thin lipped type prone to bad skin. They forgo a trowel to apply the makeup, opting instead for something approaching the toolkit of a cake decorator. And they don’t smile very much.
Then again, neither did we, having been woken from what fitful sleep we had managed, by a pre-recorded voice telling us not to allow our children to play on the escalators. Every twenty minutes, at three hundred decibels, all through the night.
I wouldn’t have minded that much but for the fact that I don’t have any children, and even if I did, everyone knows the runway is the best place for early learning.
Into the bargain, the fire alarm went off at 2am, requiring complete evacuation of the building for a further hour while the emergency services stood around in the early morning chill, waiting for the man in the little Chubb van to work out the cause of the problem.
On one hand, every country has a man in a little Chubb van and he is perfectly skilled at resetting alarms in bakeries and shops. On the other, most countries do not delegate to him, the safe operation of their major international airports, in the same way you just don't flick through Yellow Pages to find someone to service your nuclear warheads.
Batter mix disposed of, we lifted off into the New Zealand night bound for Sydney and a week with Nick and Ewa, who appeared from their Face Book posts, the be living the Life of Riley since emigrating from Bristol. Dawn arrived quickly once we reached cruising altitude and it was daylight before we crossed the west coast. After an uneventful flight, we were handed arrival cards which asked the fateful questions about whether luggage contained overseas purchases, food, medicine or articles of natural origin. Australia, I discovered, was hot on this type of thing.
Into the bargain, the fire alarm went off at 2am, requiring complete evacuation of the building for a further hour while the emergency services stood around in the early morning chill, waiting for the man in the little Chubb van to work out the cause of the problem.
On one hand, every country has a man in a little Chubb van and he is perfectly skilled at resetting alarms in bakeries and shops. On the other, most countries do not delegate to him, the safe operation of their major international airports, in the same way you just don't flick through Yellow Pages to find someone to service your nuclear warheads.
Batter mix disposed of, we lifted off into the New Zealand night bound for Sydney and a week with Nick and Ewa, who appeared from their Face Book posts, the be living the Life of Riley since emigrating from Bristol. Dawn arrived quickly once we reached cruising altitude and it was daylight before we crossed the west coast. After an uneventful flight, we were handed arrival cards which asked the fateful questions about whether luggage contained overseas purchases, food, medicine or articles of natural origin. Australia, I discovered, was hot on this type of thing.
Apart from everything we carried and everything wore, nothing fell into these categories and Clare frog-marched me toward the ‘Nothing to Declare’ aisle. Eye watering fines and jail time were threatened by signs on every pillar between touchdown and customs. I lost my nerve and wriggling free from the Half Nelson, blurted my tearful confession to the nearest person in uniform.
I was directed to a bench 10m away. Like any drive across New Zealand, to get there I had to walk 300m up and down the empty rows of Tensa-barriers, designed to marshal the unruly crowd into an orderly queue. Before long, an elderly but perfectly polite customs officer was rooting through my dirty underwear while I shifted uneasily from foot to foot, praying that I was not about to be exposed as an unwitting Drug Lama. In the narcotics lexicon, drug mules are restricted to the Northern Hemisphere. In keeping with New Zealand’s expansion into the Al Paca trade, adjustment was clearly needed to avoid confusion.
I was directed to a bench 10m away. Like any drive across New Zealand, to get there I had to walk 300m up and down the empty rows of Tensa-barriers, designed to marshal the unruly crowd into an orderly queue. Before long, an elderly but perfectly polite customs officer was rooting through my dirty underwear while I shifted uneasily from foot to foot, praying that I was not about to be exposed as an unwitting Drug Lama. In the narcotics lexicon, drug mules are restricted to the Northern Hemisphere. In keeping with New Zealand’s expansion into the Al Paca trade, adjustment was clearly needed to avoid confusion.
My prescription medicine didn’t warrant a glance. My pebble collection raised an eyebrow but nothing more. The four small sea shells I had picked up in 1989 in a car park in Dusseldorf, triggered mayhem. Heavy steel doors clanged shut. Alarms blared. Lights flashed. Men wearing black boiler suits and night vision goggles, slid silently down ropes from the ceiling. Once lock down was achieved, the erstwhile retiree snapped into a pair of latex gloves and reached for the lubricant while inviting me to adopt the position.
In reality, the shells were sprayed with alcohol, returned to me and I was sent on my way, feeling like a naughty child. Nick was finishing an 80km cycle ride and so Ewa watered us in their spectacular 4th floor apartment over-looking the leafy district of St Leonards before taking us to the Sydney Fish Market. After eating fish kebabs to die for, we wandered round what is openly accepted as the fiefdom of the Bagnato family. A large sign adorned with photos and a description of the exploits of the 8 current and founding members of the dynasty, takes pride of place at the water’s edge.
The Cosa Nostra it was not, but the absence of competition strongly suggested that the only new blood to have been introduced to this closed shop over the last 70 years, was probably spilled on the quay side.
The Cosa Nostra it was not, but the absence of competition strongly suggested that the only new blood to have been introduced to this closed shop over the last 70 years, was probably spilled on the quay side.
Nick had returned by the time we got back and soon we had opened beer and were catching up on the continental divide. After dinner of sword fish and burgers, we Scrabbled until the early hours by which time Clare and I were monosyllabic with tiredness and flopped, full and pleasantly inebriated into the first comfortable bed we had occupied since leaving the UK 30 days before.
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