It's 32 degrees! This pleases me greatly - provided I can find shade when I need it (and sun screen factor 30+!), I'm as happy as can be in hot weather.
Yesterday was one of those kinds on this trip when I had nowhere to be and no-one to see. Also it was a public holiday in Melbourne, so while the B&B guys went to see the Grace Kelly exhibition (!) in Bedingo, I stayed here, washed a large amount of rather toxic laundry, and then sat writing on the balcony. The occasional excursion for coffee apart, I pretty much sat all day in the shadey heat, bent over my laptop. Must say it was rather lovely. Spent quite a bit of time researching international monetary policy since 1944 - Bretton Woods anyone? - and must say I've learnt a thing or two about post-war financial and commercial reconstruction. Don't worry, there is a point to it all, I promise!
During the afternoon, I got a call from my friend who lives here in Melbourne. I last saw her in Sydney in 1992, and we first met when I was an extremely 'green' 18 year old in Shropshire. As she is currently house-sitting for friends, she suggested a barbecue dinner and came by to collect me. Variations on a recurrent theme on this trip - how do you catch up after 20 years, during the course of one evening? Conversation threads twist and ravel up. Unimaginable, life changing events only glimpsed as the talk take its own, excited, random path, glancing upon the many milestones that two decades have offered up - "and then this happened, and then that...". Sitting out on a deck belonging to an elegant, open-spaced house in a rather wealthy part of Melbourne, gazing out over the downtown Melbourne skyline, yet again I look through a window into my past as I skim through a summary of 20 years of life. It's a very particular feeling, as things I had completely forgotten come back into focus. Listening to her tell of certain, awful moments during past-times, I felt quite bereft - the end of her 26 year marriage some 13 years ago, the death of her 28 year old son in a car accident in 2004, the huge changes that occurred as a result. I hadn't known about these things, and can remember her son as a mischievious six year old, then an awkward 16 year old. Nothing prepares for these dreadful events, and I realise yet again that grief never really goes away, it just becomes more familiar as time passes, and therefore, hopefully more manageable. Yet still, we laughed about how we were then, who we are now, what we want for the future. We swapped stories about love, contentment, ambition, and watched the sun settle and vanish behind the skyscrapers, seeing each one light up for the night-time. The light in Australia is breath-taking, especially as the shadows lengthen, and while she cooked, I tried to capture something of this with my iPhone camera.
All too soon it was time to depart, and with hear-felt pledges to not let another 20 years go by, I was in a taxi and heading back to the B&B, to finish watching a film of the Australian Volvo Team's recce of the Marathon route from Sydney to London, and then of the Marathon itself, with more colour images I hadn't previously seen - having watched Bob Holden drive his Volvo from Sydney to London to scout the route in reverse, it was especially poignant to then see his smashed Marathon Volvo and both him and his co-driver bed-bound in an Indian hospital. They had crashed headlong into a stray Indian Army truck and were out of the event, Bob needing reconstructive surgery on his face and nose. It's a huge shame that I missed Bob on this trip, as he was in Melbourne when I was in NSW, and now vice-versa, but am hopeful we will be able to converse by email in the coming months.
My first 'interview' today - another Ford Australia crew-member, Graham Hoinville, and another top-ten finisher (the Aussie Ford Falcons won the Team prize).
How lucky am I?
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