Global Walking: The Northern Lights

Daniel thought it was strange that we travelled so far to view the Northern Lights. Surely we live closer to the Southern lights. They are called Aurora Australis after all. Good point, I guess. Apparently parts of Tasmania and New Zealand can glimpse the Southern Lights. I tend to think Antarctica may be more ideal. Daniel was surprised we couldn't just nip down there on a budget airline and check-in to a hotel. Dude! 

So out of dumb curiosity I Googled ‘Hotels in Antarctica’ and it just says ‘Dude!’. There are no hotels in Antartica. But it might be fun attempting a room service order from an Arctic research station. If penguins could give humans the finger, they would. I think that’s where they were originally going with Happy Feet.

There are a number of Northern Lights tours in Tromso. How were we to decide? So we set off as human lammingtons in the fairy style blizzard to locate the Visitor Centre. Rikki typed it into the maps app, 

“It’s a 25 day walk”.

I took three steps forward and there on the left was Tromso’s quaint Visitor Centre. Well, well then. Where would we be without Google Maps? Probably just where we are, where the blue dot is. And yet, maybe we transcended time and the 25 day walk was all figurative. My pint glass from the night before had a map on it. Where was that now? Ah, I’ll Google maps it.

Talking to the tourist information lady was like a session with a fraudulent fortune teller. She couldn’t really recommend any Northern Lights Chases or tell us where they went. Instead, she took the brochure we already had and just reread it to us like a bedtime story. How wonderful, Nanny McPhee. How about I ask a chunk of snow if it knows the way to San Jose?

So we used our intuition and went for the Northern Lights Flexi Tour. A Scandinavian ex violist called Daniel, picked us up in his station wagon. Let the tour commence. Or was this an Uber ride?

Driving through the snow felt like an old-timey Atari game, well, as opposed to a new-timey Atari game. After leaving the city lights we eventually pulled up in a random location where clouds were dearly parting. Daniel opened the boot. Damn that I saw ‘Nocturnal Animals’ before this trip. Anyway he handed us some snow suits. It was like getting changed into a couch, although I didn’t find any hidden tv remotes. Were we dressing for an audition for some alien virus biohazard film? Is it a good time for a vaccinate debate? Nah, debating makes me anxious, that’s why I can’t watch ‘Q and A’.

So with my mum and my sister starring as the frumpy Beastie Boys, we headed out in the snow. I couldn't feel my feet anymore so Daniel lay out some reindeer skins and a yoga mat. At least I think it was a yoga mat, otherwise that reindeer had a horrible skin condition. I also discovered that the ‘Cobra’ pose was the best  position for Northern Lights viewing. 

The sky opened up to reveal large green bands which stretched between the vast dark. The stars looked different here, still identifiable as stars though. Daniel used the lights as a backdrop to photograph us. 

“Just stand still for 8 seconds. I make fast light”.

He waved a light in front of the camera and Click, a portrait of the intergalactic Teletubbies. 

As the cloud curtains drew on the mild skylit show, Daniel decided to take us over the mountain. It was quite difficult to remove Rikki from the deer skin, a female deer skin. Ray.

We stopped in a village Daniel didn’t like, but he needed phone reception for the weather conditions. Suddenly, an elongated pipe of light formed above us. Then it became a skinny fish and shape shifted, dancing green shimmers with purple edges. It was alive. But I’m more of a feelings person. Let’s see, everything stopped, the vastness engulfed the observer and participant. Silence and oneness. This is what beamed over our ancient Arctic ancestors, like smoke signals of light from heaven. This is not the scientific description for Wiki friends.

Daniel totally flipped out and wanted to use the pictures for his website. I thought it would be cool if he photoshopped some unicorn heads on us for maximum radness yo. Then put them on Tindr.

We had reached the pinnacle of the tour. It wasn’t going to get any better unless Daniel himself, morphed into a wise reindeer and produced a 6 pack of Arctic beers. Fingers crossed. Instead, he heated the car seats, cranked the classical tunes and presented us with home made chicken wraps, Danish pastry and berry tea. Dude! Aw Daniel.

We tried to keep our liquid intake down due to freezing outdoors toilet options. Daniel was like, “It’s nature”.

Ok, nature is not wearing a Grimace costume in a body bag. Nature goes through it’s own fur. I also recall my Grandad telling me about weeing in the freezing and his urine froze so he had to chop it with an axe. And yes, children will remember those stories and carry them through.

Mum started getting hot flushes in her snow suit. I was used to not feeling my feet anymore. Rikki and I persisted with the skylight gazing then resorted to our true selves, being dickheads in the snow. Instead of snow angels, Rikki did ‘trust falls’ into piled up dirty roadside snow and made Daniel take pictures of her. It turns out, you can count on piled up road snow. 

This was an awesome tour. Very untoury. Tripadvisor: submit.

Accommo Chameleon

Growing up, my family holidayed at caravan parks, the friendly ghettos of the holiday world. Every caravan park has the same characters; the woman in the sarong who's always putting out washing, the shirtless alpha beer belly who knows everyone loudly, the always sunburnt guy with the huge protruding adam’s apple, and the annoying children who take your fishing spot. Instant holiday nemesis.

A hierarchy would establish itself among the caravan kids. My sister and I started a drug ring from up the fig tree, trading sherbet on the black market. How is ‘Wizz Fizz’ not cocaine for children? 

In between business hours we’d swim in the motel pool next door and catch crabs with sticks or twist for pippies. No one ever messed with us.

When you stay at a caravan park you get a special key. With it, you are able to access the bathroom block, a dim dungeon set out like a horse stable. In fact, you can probably converse with with a horse over the partitions in the showers. Her name is Kim Kardashian. 

Our Mum used to make us wear thongs so we wouldn’t get warts on out feet. No matter the size of the shower cubicle or the number of towel racks, somehow all of your belongings would still end up wet. An unpredictable shower nozzle responded as though you were trying to put out a fire on the ceiling. How else does so much water splash entirely outside the shower area? Did Poseidon use the shower before me?

Collective hair strands would swirl around the sinkhole like seaweed in a strong current. It was a new ecosystem. As I left the facilities I was never sure if I was cleaner or just wetter. There’s a difference.

The toilet blocks were usually cleaned between 10 and 11am, because no one ever needs to go to the bathroom then. Basically, an apocalyptic disinfectant storm would sweep through the general area. So fresh and so clean clean. And so very wet, even the toilet paper. You'd have to go through half a soggy roll before reaching remotely dry sheets. You could make a replica paper mache toilet in the mean time. 

So yes, you need a key for all that, a special key. Not just any member of the public can access those fine facilities. 

Hotels and Hostels are different. There’s an ’S’ which separates. The ’S’ stands for Sex, Snoring and Strangers, which means hostels are for people who wish to have sex with a stranger whilst snoring. I’ve never been able to sleep in a hostel, and not because I’ve been having sex with a stranger whilst snoring. I’m a light sleeper, which means I need no light, particularly of the fluorescent variety. And I guess I’ve just never found frat parties in a rabbit warren that relaxing. Are the parents ever coming home?

A hotel room is all about the minibar. I never take anything, just looking thanks. It’s like window grocery shopping. The overpriced minibar items often end up sharing with tallies from the convenience store. You guys get along now. (Slam)

Then there’s the bathroom. What is it we’re looking for, here? It’s not as though the toilet is a ‘jack-in-the-box’ and the shower a fire hydrant. But we do want the toilet roll to be folded into a delicate triangle. It makes us feel special. As do the pretty prepackaged toiletries, but what is in them? Ah well, what does it matter if you wash your hair with possum semen? It’s in a cute canister. 

Then there’s the shower cap you’re more likely to use as a condom, and a hair dryer louder than a dated Boeing, with the effectiveness of an old lady breathing on your scalp. 

My usual dilemma is switching the lever from bath to shower, like I’m steering a heavy steam train. 

Once I stayed in a budget hotel in San Francisco. The water only poured through the bath tap. There was no plug so we used a sock. It turns out that I just couldn’t find the right lever for the shower head. Time for new socks.

Staying in an Air BnB is like visiting your childhood pen pal friend but they’re not there, and I don’t think they ever existed. Who were you writing to all those years ago? Your Air BnB host wants you to feel really comfortable and have everything you need and more, but you’re also being judged and rated so don’t fk it up. Do the dishes, damn it.

Three out of Four Air BnBs we stayed at in USA and Canada required toilet maintenance. Was it something we ate? At home, you just flush and it’s done. In the US, it repeatedly swirls around and swells up like evidence in a murder case. Guilty or innocent? It’s judge, jury and excretioner.

2016 Horror Scopes

With Jupiter in your house of skipping youtube ads for a living, you realise you’ve only used that Nurti-Bullet once but it was a good investment for dust gathering and fruit flies. You may be able to get the juices flowing again by posting a Tinder profile picture of your full moon direct.  

Mercury in retrograde leaves you wondering why the miming boom has ended. No one mentioned it. When it comes to work, your attention to deer tails is staggering. If you decide to take up adult colouring-in it is best to wait until they are asleep. Stay between the wrinkles. 

Busy people still need to nurture themselves. Use your time efficiently by doing yoga in a bubblebath whilst meditating as you receive remedial massage. Or you could just get drunk and play Twister. Single? Knit yourself a body bag whilst watching ‘Gogglebox’ reruns. 

Opportunities are gnocchi but a sauce-pot keeps you living in the pasta. If there is too much on your plate right now, try to avoid restaurants called, ‘Obese Wan Kanobese’. ‘Starve Wars’ may be a lighter sabing option for you right now. Haloumi, is it meat you’re looking for?

With Saturn moving through your house of Donald Trump mirkins, it may be time to open a joint bank account for your elbow. Start a program which involves training guide dogs for people who text whilst walking. Conversely, invest in developing an app with airbags.

Lately your workplace is a rollercoaster, and you feel like vomiting from all the jerks. Great opportunities exist for social not working. If you have a falling out with the girls on a night out, it may be time to purchase a more supportive bra. I’d recommend a firm one with a counselling diploma.

As the sun approaches your ozone of ‘climate change is pretty obvious’, it dawns on you that dog excretion bags cause more litter than plain old regular dog excretion. Focus on the bigger picture, there are plenty more fridges in the sea. But they are not cooling the sea levels. Refund!

If you are seeking renewal, head to IKEA simply to update your apps, refresh your newsfeed and leave immediately! Rather than take up the challenge of assembling flimsy furniture, use your time more wisely by throwing a rubix cube at a brick wall for 2 hours. You’ll have more chance of solving the puzzle without getting screwed.

You can’t please everyone, so why not start up a leaf blower in a study area or a place of worship. Unbeleafable! Saturn is in your house of aggressive text messages ending in smiley face lol. Why not take a selfie of someone else, then reverse the camera as they say ‘Cheese!’ Tourists will love you.

This month love is in the Airbnb until you develop severe allergies to the cat hair covered furniture. Count your blessings as you endure never-ending sneezing. One in the ham is worth two in the butcher, three to get ready, now go cat, go! A mange is as good as a holiday.

The sun shines through Uranus after an ego boosting anal bleaching in your black hole sector. Beauty is in the brown eye of the beer holder. Always consider the prostitutes and the con artists when considering a transaction. They are Paypal too. 

The planets have aligned to start a meth lab in your 10th little house on the prairie. With lusty Venus leading the way there is plenty of chemistry but it turns out that ‘teeth falling out’ dream was real. Excessive Netflix bingeing can lead to severely obese fingernails. Uber yourself from the lounge to your bedroom.

Good Grief

Today I acquired a new angel, Nancy Exton, my Granny. I have other angels, some I know by name, some I don't. Those ones are called Strangels (Stranger Angels of course)
Sitting beside her hospital bed yesterday I noticed that Granny was reading a giant font book entitled 'Entertaining Angels'. Well, here we are now, entertain us, Granny. She was only a quarter of the way through so I'm not sure how entertaining she'll be. I guess she held a decent audience in the material world.

I have farewelled palliative passengers before. But where do they go on these mystery flights? And more importantly do they have a light and a whistle for attracting attention? Let's assume so, just because they're fun and they may encounter a potential Rave or Disco situation on the way.

Grieving doesn't seem to get any easier but I think I am getting better at it. Whilst a part of me feels like an enormously selfish adult baby, I do understand that it is an necessary process I need to let happen. ie The non thyroid related throat lump must be released. And it's ok to be a giant adult baby for awhile. This process is part of my humaness. But I am also more especially aware of nature's glorious impermanence. Granny's passing through this life was indeed glorious, beautiful, graceful, just like a David Attenborough special. And I am super grateful I was around just as the credits rolled. Then I pictured her lovely face instead of the roaring MGM lion.

THE END

Yes, but where did she really go? Well, I think she went everywhere all at once. Which airline does that?

Love to my Granny, (NEVER negative) Nancy Exton xx

Nanna Naps (for real)

Have you ever woken up after a nanna nap as an actual nanna?

I have accepted and embraced bed hair as a part of my daily fashionable life. But recently I seem to be subject to the symptoms of ‘bed skin’.

Each morning I wake up from my bed battle with fresh linen scars. It’s hardly my beauty sleep when I have artificially aged overnight with bed wrinkles galore. I am not an animal!

When I say I have slept like a log it means that I have actually logged my sleep. Yes, my body has documented my slumber with bed sheet imprints and a fossilized face.

Where I used to spring out of bed like a super slinky, now I gradually flop onto the floor like an unused concertina. Every morning stretch produces a honky sounding chord. Enter McDuff from ‘Johnson and Friends’.

Upon closer inspection of my morning reflection I notice that my upper chest is actually a MAD magazine fold out. Woman of many cleavages. Sometimes the bed sheets cut so deep that it looks like my face is folding over and actually engulfing itself.

After an immensely deep sleep (the kind full of astro-travel adventures through every dimension in non human form) I briefly become unrecogniseable. It’s as though I have not fully re-entered my body from my soul vacation. On such occasions I actually change race and wake up Mongolian. As the day progresses my eyes slowly pries themselves open like dead pippy shells on a hot day.

Well, you snooze, you lose.

Till death do us Part Time Casual

One of my favourite things about myself is that I couldn’t get a job at McDonalds. 

Really, where do you go from there? I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that I would rather practice the piano than serve fries.

As a result the manager said I didn’t seem committed enough. I had visions of walking down the aisle toward Ronald McDonald. The groomsmen are out of control, The Hamburglar stealing all of the Holy bread and that Grimace doing those crazy Grimacey things like……. What does he do? What is he meant to be? An overweight personality-absent purple lump doesn’t make me want to order a McFeast. Apparently Grimace lost some weight recently and became Barney the Dinosaur. Perhaps there’s hope for me yet.

I had actually completely forgotten the McDonalds rejection until my sister recounted the event to her English friends.

“Peta couldn’t get a job at McDonalds!” Roars of laughter.

I suppose it is hilarious. I am just not McDonalds material.

Eventually I scored a job at a discount store called Bargain Mania. Yes, anything with ‘mania’ in the title has to be a winner. My boss, Ashok, always manned the till until he needed a toilet break.

“I’m going to convenience”.

It took me a long time to work out that ‘convenience’ was the toilet. For ages I thought he was relieving himself at a 7 Eleven convenience store.

After awhile Ashok started saving me some of his delicious home-made curries to eat out the back. I enjoyed the back of the shop. It was like having a break in the trenches before facing the Bargain Battleground out front. It was probably just as hygienic as a trench, dust puffs, balancing boxes, rejected reject shop items from a bygone era and a suspected mutant insect rodent creation lurking about. Once I was caught in a box avalanche and I was unconscious for an unknown amount of time. Ashok let me go home after I vomited in the sink.

Whenever a customer would ask for a particular crappy product I would say,

“I’ll check out the back”. Then I’d just stand out there for a while until they eventually left. If they remained I would always return with a completely bent candelabra covered in thick dust.

“Nope, can’t see any, but how about this thing?” We never did sell that.

Apart from displaying our quality Elvis themed rugs my favourite section was the ornaments. It was full of dolphin, butterfly, unicorn and wolf figurines, indeed a plethora of inspiration for large unemployed lady tattoos. The wolf figurines had two legs and three heads, and all of the unicorn horns had been snapped off. Ashok would make me superglue the heads back together and return them to the shelves. I decided to glue random bits together for my own amusement. My best creation was a Snow White head on a Bulldog body, a match made in heaven. (Pictured)

Discount stores attract a wonderful array of people. There were some regulars, lady who looked like she lived in a beehive and conversed loudly with no one, the man who looked like a pencil and never bought anything (not even an eraser), and the angry lady with the worst penciled on eyebrows I’ve ever seen. Maybe she wasn’t even angry but her fake eyebrows made it seem that way.

One day an old lady came in with a loose fingernail and wanted me to cut it off for her. I only had giant blunt craft scissors. Anyway, nailed it.

What dreams may come?

The night following Robin Williams’ death, my Dad popped in. He’s dead too, so when I say, ‘popped in’, I mean in the form of a dream. I knew he would. He was my Robin Williams. Whilst his humor touched us more than he knew, reaching across the boundaries of age and the father/daughter dynamic, he had a dark side. Who doesn’t? But sometimes the light doesn’t come back on. It flickers for a while and then it fades, completely. Back to black.

Recently a psychic confirmed that he intentionally caused his own death. We’d always suspected. My sister found him, photos scattered around his room, phone off the hook, furniture knocked over, small change scattered across the kitchen table. We eventually found over 40 empty bottles of whiskey hidden throughout the house, and downstairs a large box of empty Listerine bottles. Correct, he was an alcoholic, but one with fresh breath!

Why can’t we see our own light sometimes? It doesn’t go away, it dims. But it only dims to us, the dimees. Others see it, and they are touched, more than you know. Your aura shines forever. Don’t underestimate your light, please don’t. It’s not just your life. Nanoo Nanoo.