Thursday 27th November. The girls crashed in at around 6am, cackling and shushing each other. Bev then grabbed a carrier-bag and threw up in it, and then did it again in case the first garbled geyser hadn’t woken everyone up.
She was totally oblivious to the fact the bag had safety holes in the bottom, and that high-pressure vomit juice was now squirting out of both ends and spinning around the room. By the time she’d sprawled into her top bunk and was snoring, bag hanging limply from her finger, the toxic stream had dwindled to a gloopy dribble, each splat hanging in the horrified silence. It was no wonder that our German roommates decided to leg it, slamming their pebble-dashed clothes into cases and rushing off without so much as an “alfie design”. (I may have spelt that wrong.) They left a trail of scattered spewy footprints all the way through the common room and up to reception, and I barely had time to wipe them up before two new roomies had arrived.
Nancy and Steve, a Yorkshire couple in their early-twenties, both seem lovely but have come as a bit of a shock. How on Earth can people my age be teachers? It still feels like I should be out getting taught!
“Ee bah gum!” said Steve (I can’t do the accent), wrinkling up his nose as he entered the room. “Oo did the liquid yawn?”
At that exact moment, Bev’s vomit bag finally slipped off her bright-pink fake fingernail and the three of us watched it fall in slow motion. It slapped the floor and burst open, and the resulting mess demonstrated that it had worked as a pretty effective sieve.
The speed in which our roommates have been coming and going has made me even more determined to move on to another city, and so my morning was spent (after boil-washing all our clothes) finalising where we are off to next. We’re planning on leaving Melbourne next Wednesday, but I’ve no idea where to go next. The girls have left it all up to me as they’re extremely hung over, but this is probably just as well as we’d surely argue otherwise. I did briefly consider booking us a shitty room somewhere shittier just to watch them struggle, but decency won out in the end. Right after I realised I’d be staying there too. So I’ve booked us a couple of nights at a spa in the heart of the nation’s capital (which turns out to be Canberra – who knew?), where we can have a bit of a well-earned pamper after all this communal dossing. THAT is how Champagne Backpackers are supposed to live. And the detox can’t do us any harm. After that, who knows? I’ve made some tentative enquiries into an AMAZING penthouse flat on Sydney harbour that can be rented per month, but I’m not going to hold my breath. Can you imagine if it was free for December? We’d get to see in the New Year over-looking the Opera House, watching all the fireworks. Wow. Maybe I could persuade Hamish to join us too? For financial reasons, obviously. We could split the considerable rent four ways instead of three. Of course, there are only three bedrooms so he’d have to share one with me.
5am-ish
I my be little drunk.
We’ve been crawl-pubbing with our new roomies. Who knew teachers could be sooo much fun? Multiple shots downed in multiple bars. Revolver was my fave. Retro. Brick walls, leather sofas and a live-DJ on the dicks.
“Ooh, I love a bit of old-school vinyl!” I shouted.
“Vinyl?” Bev shouted back. “What, like carpet tiles?”
She’s such a knob!
After several rounds of fishbowl cocktails, which the two teachers used to explain the five times table to Bev, we ended up in Strikes. Wow, what a place! Ten-pin Bowling like you’ve never seen it. Pitch-black lanes, glow in the dark skittle-things and day-glo balls (not the ones in my trousers – ha ha!), plus an overhead laser-show and techno dance track to finish off a head-fuck of an atmosphere. The whole place was decked out with ultra-violet trimmings, which is cool and everything but also makes people wearing even a normal amount of makeup look a bit scabby. Rachel looked like Freddy Krueger with a fancy up-do. She spent a good twenty minutes trying to get a decent selfie under a UV bulb, sucking radioactive-pink cocktail from a fleurescent straw and dribbling it ‘seductively’ from her lips.
“This’ll look well hot,” she garbled, as neon liquid bubbled from her mouth.
I’m no expert, but I don’t think it did. She looked like a burns victim on day release.
Turns out I am a pretty decent bowler when I’m tiddled, but my vigorous attempts at dancing didn’t earn me as many points. According to Teacher Steve, ‘big fish, little fish, cardboard box’ went out with the last decade, as did ‘the cowgirl’ and ‘the supermarket-trolley’. It did, however, attract the attention of some boys in the next lane who had been GAGGING for an excuse to come over and talk to Bev, and it turns out I was it. Jump to half an hour later, and somehow we’re all squeezed into their front-room playing strip-poker.
When I say all, I do of course mean everyone but me. Even with a fish-tank of cocktail in my stomach I’d still refuse, and I ignored their pleas to “lighten up and join in”. This wasn’t the beach, NO WAY was I gonna sit in a crowded room of strangers and remove my clothes, which I would definitely have to do because I’m shit at poker (even ‘gay’ poker, where Queens are wild and straights don’t count). I’d be in my birthday suit before I’d even finished shuffling. Instead, I sat in the corner with a rum that could strip paint, and slowly disappeared into an under-stuffed beanbag.
Turns out my girls are proper crafty strip-poker players too. Nearly an hour in, and all they’d removed between them was a shoe, a handbag-from-around-the-neck and a toe-ring. Nancy forfeited the game almost as soon as Steve whipped his t-shirt off, dragging him into one of the student’s bedrooms for some uncomfortably noisy sex. And I don’t blame her either – he was ripped. The barely-muffled groans and gruntings had heightened the sexual tension dramatically, but unfortunately the poor local lads were out of luck. Soon all three of them were down to just their boxers, and with a horrified cry of “Oh man, I just saw your beans!” they finally called it quits.
