Today I met Alf Stewart...

...And I honestly feel like a little chapter of my life is complete. As the rest of Sydney (or at least its pre-teen population) sobbed into their Hello Kitty tissues over the cancellation of a Justin Bieber-based day of media mingling and his concert/shameless public display of child abuse, one of my dreams came true.

Although I too may have obsessed over teenage heroes in my youth, specifically Joey from New Kids on the Block, it was Alf I raced home for every evening after school... Home and Away that was always there. It never cancelled on me. And if it did, it always had a bloody good excuse. None of this "Oooh I'm so sick, I just got mobbed by 7000 pre-pubescent girls waving crop tops and copies of Twilight at my ferry in Circular Quay" type shit. Grow some balls Bieber; you wanna take a leaf out of Alf Stewart's book. He's been on that show for 22 years AND he's done 17 pantomimes in the UK (so he told us). Did he ever moan about his schedule and hole himself up in a hotel away from his fans? NO. Alf is a man. Alf welcomed his fans. And he didn't need YouTube to help him get to the top either (although that would be cool - sing us a song about "babies", Alfie?)

Respect to the Stewart. We're best friends now, as you can see. And yes, he may look like he's standing there, rigid as a Robert Pattinson waxwork, thinking "Who the fuck is this freak draping herself about my person" but he's actually thinking how nice I am and how he's going to invite me over to his house for some tea.

Justin Bieber, eat your heart out. You could have come Home to Mama, but you chose to go Away (geddit?). Alf wins. You lose. CRY ABOUT IT.

I always thought I’d make a good paparazzi...

...but after today I know I was wrong. Very wrong. At one point, as I was standing on the deck watching Kim Kardashian step off a boat, a big man stood on my foot. Another knocked my pathetically small camera and another turned as he was zooming past me to shout: “If you wanna be a pap, you’ve got to run!!!”

Eff off, I thought. I don’t run for anyone. Patronizing bastard.

She was rather beautiful, in an overly made-up, orange way. Although I didn’t much like her dress. Or her 12 inch heels. Or her whinging American drawl when she asked her fleet of homosexual hottie men and female cling-ons where her sunglasses had gone. I stood behind her as the commotion commenced and took a picture of her ass, as I hear she’s had implants in her butt cheeks to give her more curves. It definitely looks like she has. Fucking stupid if you ask me… why doesn’t she just shove more cake down her face and get a job on a swivel chair like the rest of us? Oh…. right… because that would stop her making workout DVD’s, sex tapes with her boyfriend (the last one leaked and scored her a $5 million deal with with Vivid Entertainment – kerching!!) and trashy TV shows about her life, which basically consists of doing not much at all, really. Apart from looking hot.

I’ve considered the fact that maybe I’m jealous of Kim Kardashian. Hmmm. She does have nice hair I suppose. But seriously, I think I’d rather be anonymous with a modicum of talent and dignity than rich and famous for flashing my body parts. I mean… she’s gonna be old one day. Her bum implants will be somewhere round the base of her spine while her tits are round her knees and who wants to go out with a circus freak?

And what does she actually DO, anyway? I hardly care enough to Google her and find out. Oh, alright, I will…. Hmmm…

Ah right… OK, so according to Wikipedia, in July 2008, Kardashian announced on her blog that she was “working on her own perfume line to be released in 2009.” That’s nice. Bet she labored for hours in that laboratory, mixing all those chemicals, shoving her barnet into a hairnet and conversing with the “cool sciency people”.
“The perfume, Kim Kardashian, was released into stores in February of 2010.” Was it? Bloody hell, I must have missed that. Shit. I really want to smell like an it girl now… all leather handbags and chiwawa! But wait, there’s more.

“In March of 2009 Kardashian launched an endorsement with Shoedazzle shopping…. Kardashian co-owns a clothing boutique called D-A-S-H with her sisters Kourtney and Khloe.” Ah that’s awesome, I guess. She must spend aaaaages behind that desk, sorting out the tills, dealing with the accounts and… oh wait, no, she doesn’t. She just gets on boats and planes and… her tits out… while everyone else flounders in the shadows of her awesome presence and watches as she takes the credit.
Nice Kim, love your work.

I have to say though, it was good to see life through a pap’s eyes. They’re the people behind the person behind the person who made someone else famous. They’re the bottom of the Hollywood food chain, the plankton in the ocean of fame. God… how depressing.

I guess I could do it as a hobby. You never know, I might get a hot-shot that’d propel me to the top. I might end up making a fortune!!! Or at least… enough to get an ass reduction.

I just woke up from the weirdest dream...

...which may or may not have been a result of eating half a chocolate rabbit for dinner, after getting back from work at 10pm, (it’s the dairy products, so I’m told). I can’t remember the start of it, but basically I was out with mum, dad and a younger version of my brother (back when he was 11 I reckon), when a giant tsunami struck. It swept us up… and instead of screaming for her life and demonstrating the ultimate motherly panic, my mum popped her head up from the frothy waves and said quite calmly: “We’d better swim towards Market Rasen”.

Now, for those who don’t know, Market Rasen is actually a town and civil parish within the West Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. And it’s shit. Why anyone would want to swim there having survived a giant tsunami in Australia is beyond me, but hey, that’s the logic of dreams… and maybe of my mum.

Anyway, so we get to Market Rasen, having been swept up in about three more tsunamis on the way, and there’s a little red house made of wooden planks, and an elderly man who beckons us inside. Only inside, it’s more like a youth club, complete with scruffy couches, Russell Brand and a chiwauwa. Yes, Russell Brand had also survived the tsunami, which started in Australia and swept us quite effortlessly into Market Rasen.

Well of course I was delighted. Russell’s my dream man, so should he be the only male survivor of a global tragedy eligible for mating with, God’s done a fine job of answering my prayers… albeit whilst ignoring absolutely everyone elses:
“Prevent global disasters, you say? Well how can I possibly be doing that? I have to make sure Becky Wicks ends up with Russell Brand!”
“Awww, thanks God, that’s really nice of you but…”
“Oh, no, no, don’t be silly Becky. You’re perfect for each other! Here’s a little tsunami to kill off all competition.”

The chiwauwa was so cute and even smaller than a regular chiwauwa, which are all pretty bloody small anyway. Towards the end of the dream, when our little red house had been struck with about 15 more tsunamis and a wall of fire which was actually a moving pier with a flaming fairground on it, the dog was all wet and dead in my arms… very sad. Everyone kept on surviving all these disasters until the very end, when we all spotted the biggest tsunami of all coming towards us. At this point, my friend Autumn, who miraculously appeared from nowhere as friends often do in dreams, put a spade next to me and said that if it sliced me in half when the wave struck, it would be better than drowning, which I thought was remarkably considerate of her.

They say that if you die in your dream, you actually die in real life. I’m not really sure who presented this theory, as surely anyone with proof would already be dead. But true to form, just as the wave was about to strike and the spade was about to hit me, I woke up, made myself some coffee and wrote it all down. What do you think it means? I’ll be damned if I know, but I won’t be eating any chocolate rabbits for dinner again tonight, that’s for sure.

This week I've been thinking...

...rather a lot about working on a farm. Everyone I’ve told this to so far has furrowed their brow and dipped their chin in the same disparaging fashion, but their cynicism is only making me want to do it more. Screw them all; I think I’d be a great farmer! Of course… I wouldn’t want to muck shit or milk cows, or wake up at 4.30am to harvest crops, or lug a hoe about. If anyone’s gonna lug a hoe about, it’ll be the hot farm boy who takes a shine to me and my well-disguised lust for rugged country men in checked shirts, dungarees and tattoos of roosters on their upper arms. Cock-a-doodle? Yes I do. I’d play it cool for a while, obviously, but he’d charm me eventually with a moonlit horse-ride, the squishing of a deadly spider and the words: “Care for a spin on my combine?” Imagine how romantic it would be!! Like Brokeback Mountain… only… not.

I’ve looked into various options, but the one I like the sound of the most is one called WWOOF. Sounds a bit like a dog with a stutter, but it actually stands for ‘World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms’. The concept is that you pay $60 for a book which lists all the organic farms in your chosen country. This automatically makes you a member, and you’re free to pack your rucksack (or in my case, bright pink wheely bag, darling), find a nice piece of hay to chew on and hitch a ride on out to whichever participating farm sounds most appealing.

I’ve heard there’s one lady out in the bush in Victoria, who needs help looking after injured baby kangaroos. There’s another which encourages daily yoga practice and one that helps the women learn to cook with all the organic stuff they produce! I think this last one sounds most appealing. I can barely open a can of ravioli, so cooking up a treat around a giant wooden table, wearing a gingham apron, having flour flights with the cowboys before feeding them my warm, apple pie sounds right up my alley. (And no, that wasn’t a metaphor. Filth-wizards!!)

I’m aware I may be romanticising farm life just a little, but in all honesty, I romanticise everything, so I’m used to dealing with regular reality checks by now. I think I can handle it. Farm life sounds like fun. I stayed on a sheep farm once, in New Zealand. It was run by this zany woman from Alaska who wrote books about herbs and grew marijuana in a plot behind the parsley. Her husband was a Kiwi who built airplanes in his shed – just little ones mind – but he had dreams of flying that stayed with him, even when he wasn’t high. I remember looking at that couple as we all sat round the dining table at night, thinking, one day, I want to live like you do. And why should I wait until I’m 60?

Oh feet, how you itch!! How you shuffle under that desk, and oh head, how you dream. These voices, they’ll be the death of me. But then, maybe Sydney will. Or… maybe Sydney guys will. They’re all a little self-centred in my experience. If I work on a farm, I will get to spend lots of time with Australia’s “real” people, who are not, as I’m quickly beginning to realise, ego-crazed radio presenters and pretentious fashionista posers, hanging out in overpriced bars. Real Australians work on the land and drink beer from the can, and wear hats with those funny corks hanging off the rims, to ward off flies. Real Australians hunt crocodiles and dive with stingrays and call each other Sheila. They live in tribes, in towns of three or four people, with only one satellite dish between them. They make pies from road-kill. They murder big, scary bush-beasts with their bare hands… even the girls.

Can a city girl survive in the outback? Can a spoilt princess, changed immeasurably by Dubai’s glitz and glamour swap it all for some rubber gloves and a cow’s ass? Probably not… but something’s making me really want to see. You don’t actually have to pay for anything on the WWOOF scheme, except the journey there, so there’s really very little risk if I do it... aside from the fact that if I do give up my glamorous media job in the city and wind up sunburnt, knee deep in possum shit and organising the nightly hoe-down for a bunch of middle-aged gay farmers with beer-guts and gumboots every day, I might not be allowed to get it back. But that’s a small risk, isn’t it? I mean… there will always be other jobs…. won’t there?

Electrifying encounters…

So here I am, drinking my coffee, checking up on Perez Hilton, when I get an early morning text message from The Electrician. It’s kind of taken me by surprise… I mean, I never thought I’d hear from him again. It’s been a whole week. But the text reads: “Are we cool? I kind of thought you’d call.”

I’m angry. I’m really quite angry that he’d say this, because this is a guy who just last Sunday, accused me of being a double-dating slapper and I swore I’d never speak to him again. He didn’t come right out and say it of course, but he texted it, so it was just as insulting.

Basically, what happened was, I met The Electrician late on Friday the week before, for a drink in a cocktail bar, conveniently located just a 15 minute walk from my house (my rule is that if the other person has a car, I’m not bussing/cabbing/training it to any first date… the man can come to me). So we actually had a really nice night. He showed up a little late but I forgave him when he walked in because he was hot. Being hot always adds a few points back onto the chart if you’ve fucked up, of course.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by this down-to-earth, humble English guy, who’s lived in Sydney for the last ten years and makes an honest living as an electrician, drives about in a huge van with his company name on the side, and in his spare time… wait for it… hosts game fishing expeditions in far out places for the rich and famous. Thrilling or what?! He even rides with them in helicopters! I was hooked. Leaning over my Bundaberg I was already imagining the awesome trek we’d take through the Russian wilderness in search of the rumoured Mutant Milligan Spike fish… only visible to human eyes between August and September, on a full moon.

We had a great night getting to know each other, the game-fishing electrician and I… and before I knew it, I realised I actually quite fancied him. There was no little voice in my head screaming his faults, even though he had a bit of a wonky smile and his shoes were quite possibly a little too shiny… it was all blocked out thanks to the fact that he was calm, intelligent and sexy in a rugged, tradie, fisherman sort of way. He even insisted on buying all the drinks… something I’ve noticed Aussie men just don’t do. We ended up making out in a jazz bar and I agreed to a second date.

We went to Bondi Beach for date two. Ate Italian whilst watching the wind pick up a storm over the sea and then he drove me home in his clapped out van, which he calls ‘the Titanic’ because it’s so fucking huge he can never park it anywhere. Adorable, right? We’d had another night of chatting during which he asked me if I was dating anyone else, to which I answered no. Well, I wasn’t. In all honesty, I was totally wrapped up in him; the fisherman-electrician and our sparks.

Date three, he came to meet me from work and drove me to a gig I was supposed to be photographing. He didn’t come in though. He went home and then came all the way back to fetch me afterwards, took me out for a cup of tea before driving me home again and promising to take me to Palm Beach the next Sunday. I could feel a beautiful romance budding… something fun for once, someone slightly mysterious who I couldn’t quite read, who liked me and wanted me exclusively already. I was mentally packing for the fishing trip – though I’d have to buy a new hat in Russia, obviously. I think you know the kind I mean.

So, Sunday morning rolled around and I hadn’t heard from him… bar one text the day before, asking what time I wanted him to collect me in honour of our beach trek. It had graduated to a picnic and he was, apparently, planning an entire day for us in his head. Only, I woke up with a mouth tasting like I’d spent all night licking carpet. Having met some old friends from NYC down in the Rocks the night before, we’d got a little pissed on red wine. I asked if we could go a little later when I got his text. He’d sent it at 8am on a Sunday… I mean for Christ’s sake, only God and joggers are up at that hour on a Sunday. Our textual exchange went something like this:
Him: It’s OK if you wanna make it another day.
Me: Ugh. If it’s really OK, that might be gd. How bout easter fri?
Him: Thanks
Me: ?
Him: I spent lots of money on food n wine and didn’t go up the coast with my mates, I feel like a fool. Plus u probably met someone else and stayed over at his and ur still with him now n that’s why u can’t go.

I know!!! Of course, that last text was enough to make the voices start screaming again “NEXT, DELETE, ERROR”, but I was hungover and angry, so I replied:

“I was out with my friends and I said sorry. You’re being a bit harsh accusing me of things like that. Take someone else to the beach.”

And bar one text saying how much I’d “hurt” him (ugh!) I never heard back. Until now. And he’s asking if we’re cool! AND he’s saying he hoped I might have called. What. Ever, Mr Fisherman.

I just wrote back and said to be honest, anyone who says its fine to change a plan and then insinuates I’m some sort of double-dating hussy and acts like a needy princess after one week of meeting me, is not driving me to an idyllic beach in a car that looks like the fucking Titanic. I told him I had a jealous, possessive boyfriend once and I wasn’t about to go down that path again.

Shame as I really liked The Electrician. And now I really do want to go game-fishing in Russia with a helicopter full of celebrities. There must be another way…