Fragments from the Australia Diaries 2000 (part 6) - Manly

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MANLY AND INFLATABLE FURNITURE

How ya goin? (Aussie speak for 'How's it going')

We went to Manly today, it’s a ferry ride away from Sydney Harbour. Very nice, but...
cold. In my opinion, Manly is to Sydney what Malahide is to Dublin and what Brighton is to London...not that far away, all about the sea-side, and the people who live there think they are a little bit cooler. There is a famous walk you can do in Manly to the Spit Bridge and back, everyone says it's a 'must do', buuuut it takes 6 hours, so we did a smidgen of it (like half and hour) and plan to return early one day and nail it before breakfast.

We sat beside this old man on the ferry, he started chatting away to us and seemed very much Australian (wild beard, hat with corks, kangaroo under one arm, koala hanging off his eyebrow, that kinda thing) but would you believe he was originally from Dublin's ultimate seaside town, Dun Laoghaire, and had moved out here when he was seventeen. He had only been back twice in the 1970s, so he had a host of questions...Was Gay Byrne still on the Late Late Show? Has anyone worked out how Jacob's put the fig in the fig rolls? annnnd Who said Mass?. Fair play to him, remarkably he could list off all the shops on Grafton St (circa 1970)! Didn't want to break his heart with the truth that they've all been swallowed up by British chain stores.

Last week I bought a mobile phone that was as big as a shoe, why, because it was cheap. In keeping with that mentality we purchased a lovely inflatable blue chair for our flat to match our inflatable pink poof. I am so into this garish kitsch thing, our flat was born in the 1970s, died in the 1970s, and has been kept 'lying in state' since the 1970s, it is just begging to be camped up. I bought a large luminous orange martini glass to match our orange chairs and cooker. I don’t think Sharon liked it but hey some people are just born with class (by that I mean me, obviously).

PS: You gotta ask Sharon who her new best friend is...

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