MARYROSE02

I Googled "OA" thanks. I watched my first Korean show on Netflix - "Extraordinary Attorney Woo" which was so good it inspired me to start learning Korean. My brother enjoyed it too and he's watching another Korean show called I think "The Agency" whilst I'm onto "The Glory" also Korean. The second series of "From" is out on Stan which I've started but gone back to the Korean shows.

Someone, still usually the person identifying as a guy, has to make the first move, whether on line or on the dance floor?!

Acquaintances may stay acquaintances or they may become friends. It's the same wherever you may live. You start at "A" and perhaps you end at "A" but then you might get all the way to "Z". Crossing the road to the Surf Club tonight I noticed a guy wearing an Arsenal shirt sitting on the verandah and I said, "Good luck against Newcastle" then I said, "Of course I want Arsenal to lose every game they play" and he laughed seeing my Spurs cap. His footy shirt gave me a reason to talk to him. He could have been wearing an AFL shirt or and NRL shirt and I might have said something. He was an Aussie but had he been a Pommie I might have talking to his girlfriend and asked him what part of England he was from. I don't care where people are from. Just doing some mental arithmetic. 36 years in England and 33 in Australia with two stints in each.

I keep a little in touch with one or two of my oldest friends via FB or email, plus some of the people I worked with at Royal Mail during my second stint in England, oh and my former next door neighbour from that second stint. I remember it took a long while to feel like that second village was "home." At first I was travelling to my first village on some evenings, feeling alien in both villages. I remember one of my brothers who rarely went back, going there after 17 years away and feeling angry because he could not relate to anything. I think he felt that he grew up there, went to school there, but nothing felt familiar any more. Then there are the various FB groups for villages that I'm familiar with and there is a lot of nostalgia to dip into whether you've lived there all your life or moved away. I'm in other FB groups for jobs I did in Sydney. There's one group that does old photos of Southampton and another for old photos of Sydney. It must be wonderful, wherever you come from, to go back after how ever many years, and feel like you belong.

There's a couple I know who regularly go the cafe where I go. I know them pretty well now, enough to sit down at their table, although I usually chat then sit at my own table. I don't socialise with them outside of the cafe but if I bump into them in the street I'll stop for a chat. I was thinking of inviting them to dinner. I think of them as my friends now. Last week in the Surf Club I had first conversations with three members of the staff. Perhaps I'll become friends with one or other of them outside of the Surf Club, perhaps we'll just be friends "just" in the club. I am friends with some of the staff outside the club, but who knows how things will develop. It's like with the bloke I mentioned whom I met in the Strawberry Hills hotel. I might never have seen him again but, as it happens, we were both "locals" in that pub. He introduced me to his friends and I did the same. The point is, you have to start somewhere, take the first step, say "hello". I remember when my Mum came out to Oz once, and the lady next door baked her a cake with "Welcome Mary" on top.

"Just talking to people" is the first step, surely, wherever you are in the world. At some point I started talking to a young bloke in the Surf Club last year, gradually became friends, then he introduced me to his Dad, who in turn invited me to watch the Gold Coast Super Cars from their balcony, then invited me for Xmas Day lunch. I'm still touched when one of the blokes says to me, "Don't sit on your own, Dave, come and join us," or, as happened this week, "We're going to play pool at Finn's if you want to come along." Sometimes, "just talking to people" is as far as it goes, but it's still nice to go in a place where people know your name, like the lady in the chemist today when I went to pick up my prescriptions. She didn't ask my name and just pulled out my meds. One of my friends is on his way to London for the Coronation. I first met him in a pub in Surry Hills, discussing an AFL game on the TV. That was a decade ago. I'm talking about Australia but I could be taking about my village in England where I lived for 12 years when I went back to England - a different village to the one where I grew up. The snooker club there became my local. I didn't know anyone when I started going but gradually I got to know everyone.

I noticed from both the AFL in Adelaide and NRL in Sydney it was bucketing down, but not a drop in Surfers.

If it's the same one I did, I got the first and last letter plus a "floating" letter and it took me hours to figure out what was ultimately an easy word. Two months ago I could not get "naive" in a similar situation. That was my last fail. In Quordle I regularly fail - 25 to 30 percent.

After working my way thru the alphabet from A to Z then Z to A, I've started using whichever word comes out today as tomorrow's starting word. Of course I'll never get it in one using that method unless they use the same word two days running. But then I have never got out in one go anyway - 5 times in 2 though. I always do Quordle after Wordle and occasionally Octordle or Sedecordle.(4, 8 and 16 games with, 9, 13 and 21 "goes". I find Quordle is the hardest.

I decided to try to use every letter in the alphabet apart from the ones I've already used in my current diary, so, ictal, joker, kauri. I didn't think I'd get an X word but there are plenty. Eg XYRIS. (A flower?) I never use my xword app to cheat in Wordle but it's good to look for words to use, eg X????. When I start my new diary in a couple of days I'm thinking of using the word that comes out as the one for the next day.

I watched episode one of The Midwich Cuckoos on Stan last night, Pommie show, not bad. I'll probably watch the next episode.

Ditto. Got it after a number of rejections then the right word came up and I thought "!?!?!?!?"

Drugs ie "illegal" drugs are a fact of life wherever you live. When I worked for Royal Mail in England the guys who tipped the mail bags were issued gloves and warned about the dangers of "sharps" ie syringes dumped in mail boxes. I imagine Australia Post is much the same Here, many public toilets and in pubs have boxes for disposal of needles. You can get marijuana on prescription from a doctor here in QLD. The Rugby League World Cup is being held in England whilst the T20 Cricket World Cup is on here in Oz. England v Pakistan, the former colonial master versus one of its former colonies. That's the real face of British colonialism no matter what the activists say. Being here in Surfers, sitting in the shade in on the seafront I can't access my diary for 1978. God, I was naive and inexperienced, living in hostels, scrabbling for jobs I would never try to do now. I had a great little job in England too, operating a weighbridge, keeping records and a pleasant life at home with my parents and brothers in a village. What on Earth made me tear it all up?!

44 years ago this week I was in Perth after arriving on 3rd November, 1978, in Fremantle. I liked Perth but I couldn't get a job and I ended up in Sydney which I had never envisaged. My two brothers followed in 1979. I used to go back to England regularly, eventually going back for 12 years. Now, I've been here for 14 years on my second stint and I've not been back. This year I've been in Surfers Paradise which I think I prefer to Sydney with its milder winters. As the editor of the Gold Coast Bulletin said, "You either live on the Gold Coast or you want to live there! (?)"

That's why I moved from Narrabeen to Surry Hills and if others assume it's because I'm an aging ex yuppie hipster, so much the better. As I was saying elsewhere about Newtown, Surry Hills has its drawbacks but you can live without a car because it has excellent public transport and you can walk to most places. If I'd had a job in Narrabeen I'd probably have stayed there.