Long Relationships

By Mr. JM

There’s an old joke about how to confuse an Irishman. You put him in a igloo and tell him to piss in the corner. (Aussies tell jokes about everyone so don’t bother getting upset about racist jokes or whatever PC kick you have – we tell jokes about Politically Correct people as well.)

How to confuse JM. Start with an idea for a holiday that involves a re-visit to a place she fell in love with and where she began to find out who lives inside her skin. Let her run with the idea then suggest it can be other places, like somewhere (Tasmania) she hasn’t yet been.

Next day, from work, forward an email from www.bestflights.com that has a range of packages out into the Pacific Ocean that are around the same amount of money we’ve been talking about, such as Norfolk Island.

Then suggest possibly a package within Australia, one where the continent is reachable and we can see things like Kakadu National Park. We could fly somewhere & then explore around – she’s always wanted to go see Perth.

Then, over drinks in the local pub, talk about how we could get a camper-van or Winnebago and go touring around – with the leave I have built up, we could go for three weeks & see the red centre (Alice Springs, come down through the Nullabor and past Lake Eyre, then across to Perth and maybe up to Monkey Mia to pat dolphins).

Of course, (in casual off-hand manner) we could try maybe doing one of the resort island holidays up in Queensland, like Hayman or Hamilton Islands, where we could laze around for a week or so, rolling out of bed to a perfect blue-sky day, having breakfast in the pool (seriously, they have stools and a bar in the middle), snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef, and more.

What is a girl to do? (I will leave that for her to tell you…)

By Mr. JM

Tonight I watched poor JM go through sheer hell. And it was SOOO much fun.

It probably isn’t what you think – we’ve been casually talking about some travel. Life has thrown us a couple of curve balls and we’ve been contemplating some changes – new job for me, re-locating to another state etc. Unlike in the US, another State isn’t just an hour or so away – where the current jobs of interest are is the Gold Coast – almost 2000kms from here.

A couple of days back I mentioned that we could return to New Zealand (they pronounce it Nu Zilland) and spend some time touring around. We visited there when JM was here on a tourist visa so we could extend the time she could stay in Australia, but we didn’t stay long.

New Zealand is a beautiful country, lush green land alternating with dramatic mountains ranges. Peaceful farm scenes beside fumaroles and geysers, and caves with tiny worms that look, after your eyes have adjusted to the dark of a cave, like constellations of stars on the ceiling.

But we are looking at a bit of a holiday a few months off in the future, trying to take advantage of the off season.

Another possibility was a visit to Tasmania, a large island just south of here, lovely place, nice people, (if a little inbred – us mainlanders like to poke a little bit of hillbilly humour at them) with a ferry ride across Bass Strait with our car etc.

So why would this be sheer hell?

It has to do with choices, with the variety being offered to someone who has had few times in her life when she could make a decision involving pleasure. It has to do with a steadily increasing level of expectation of anticipated pleasure. It has to do with me being pleasantly cruel.