I can knock a hundred dollars off that Trucoat!

New Kids On The Block were wrong. Step One was not, contrary to their toe-tapping super ballad, lots of fun. Step One was securing a rental property on Bribie Island by bullying my extended tribe into inspecting a slew of houses, apartments, units, granny flats and garden shed. Prices ranged from suspiciously low to spectacularly outrageous.
One agent actually tried to connect us with a nice old couple who had renovated the bottom floor of their Queenslander and turned it into a self-contained, one-bedroom unit. The agent told me over the phone that it came fully furnished, with all bills paid and Foxtel and broadband connections.
'Really?' I asked, impressed. 'There's actually cable and broadband included?'
'Oh yes!' trilled Martha* 'They have all the connections there, you just have to sign up with a provider and get it turned on and that's not included in the rent, but they have all the connections there!'
'So ... they have a phone line ... and the street has Foxtel cables ...'
'Yes!'
'Right. E. O. How much?'
'$300 per week!'
'Hmm. Thank you, Martha. Allow me to talk it over with the missus.'
*click*

Despite the general hilarity involved in renting a property via telephone and intermanet (why would they only include three angles of the same kitchen?), we are now the proud renters of a three bedroom house with a garden and gas cooking. The drawback will be having to walk the entire 200 metres all the way to the beach when we want a swim. Too, too trying, dahling.
Mwahahahaha!
Seriously though, do come visit. Three bedrooms = cheap Queensland accommodation 4 U! Ring now!

NKOTB had it a little closer to the mark with Step Two. There definitely is much we can do. However, I believe The Boys were talking about holding hands, necking and Levi-searing frottage sessions, whereas our activities have included looking for cars, inspecting cars and ... as of 3pm today buying a car.
Yessiree. I done gone and negotiated myself into a Toyota Camry station wagon. Central locking. Electrical mirrors. Red enough to deliver your mail. The first car I've ever owned that didn't need a choke. I took it for a test drive down to our Sainted Family Mechanic who pointed out oil leaks and bald tyres, then I called Dad (who has flogged the odd used car in his time).
'You don't want to come down?' I asked with the trepidation of a young warrior on his first hunt.
'You've haggled in China, it's just the same thing. But whatever you do, don't go in there and tell them that you liked the car. Tell them what's wrong with it and offer them a price less the cost of fixing it. And the rego.'
So I did. The British salesman brought me in, sat me down and I recited the faults and repair costs and need for new tyres. The good old used car salesman gave me his banter: they wouldn't cost that much to repair, their mechanic would fix that in-house, there were plenty of people interested, it's a great car, those are country miles, Toyotas are bullet-proof, a guy came to drive it this morning, Indian families love these Camrys (not sure how that was working on me), we sell 35 cars a month here and after all that - do you know what, my friends?
It was marvellous.
The used car salesman is a cultural institution. A character, a caricature, a legend and an experience all rolled into one, like cowboys and politicians. We all know what they're like, but to actually meet one in the flesh and talk to him, and have him talk to you! The marvellous things he says would come straight out of a book of clichés, were it not for the actual, factual, silk-tied, stripe-shirted being lounging there on the comfortable-for-Officeworks chairs, shuffling foxed manilla folders around and explaining proudly about how it is an Australian requirement that they sell a road-worthy vehicle. 'Lots of 'em do,' he answers when I ask about re-treaded tyres 'But not here. It's illegal to put re-treads on. We don't do that here.'
For a story-teller and a writer to hear this most beautiful brand of bullshit is quite a rare occasion. I'd rather spend a few hours negotiating for a used car than attend a poetry reading. What fan of Fargo hasn't wanted to spend more time with William H. Macy's Jerry Lundegaard?
I offered him my price.
He ummed and ahhed. He looked at me.
I looked at him.
'I'll have to ask the boss,' he said, and disappeared into a back office. Assuming he was probably doing the same thing, I picked my nose and looked outside at the sun for a few moments.
He returned and offered me just under halfway between my offer and the sale price.
I ummed and ahhed. I looked at him.
I asked about the warranty (nationwide, as it turns out) and said that I would call my Dad.
He offered me the private phone in his goldfish tank office and left me in peace.
Dad and I talked. We discussed. We opined. We picked our noses and looked outside at the weather. We took our time.
'Do you think that's okay?' asked Dad. 'It seems reasonable.'
'Yeah. I'm pretty happy with it. It's a good price.'
I said goodbye and went outside and found my modern cultural artefact directing a gormless teen in baggy pants to wipe down a bunch of cars with a sponge.
'What did your dad say?' he asked. 'I bet the old man's going to try and screw me down!'
I smiled on the inside and squinted regretfully on the outside.
I offered him a hundred dollars less.
We shook hands.

In the section on the sales contract where it calls for my details, I instructed him to put "Writer". He liked that. 'You've got it made, mate!'

I drive out on Monday the 19th.

***

GTH - I can't go past T.O.o. Sam for the points here. Along with a slew of excellent suggestions for slogans and what could be the beginning of a worldwide advertising campaign, he also got the jump on the current champion, River, by correctly identifying the painted gluteus maximi as everyone's phavourite physio first.

News and a half

We are moving to Queensland.

And let it never again be said that I beat around the bush for the sake of a story build-up.
Not all the time, at least.

Those of you who know us personally will understand completely the reasons for moving. For those of you who only know the humbly-represented superhero versions of us depicted on this blog, I will give a brief explanation: health reasons.

I did say brief, didn't I?

I'll expand a little. Mele suffers from eczema, which is exacerbated by a dry climate. We live in Adelaide. Adelaide happens to be one of the two worst places in the world for sufferers of dry skin-related conditions (the other is Tucson, Arizona) - this is according to Mele's brilliant (and rather dashing) dermatologist. The pain caused by her dry skin is so great that moving states is actually a reasonable and sensible solution as opposed to the alternative of remaining here.
Eczema and dry skin dermatitis are common ailments. Until I met Mele, I never realised how common. Everyone has it. However, no one has it like Mele does, except for a nineteen-year-old fellow from Port Pirie. You might think you, or your mate, or your Mum, or whoever, gets it really badly, but those people can still go outside and don't need expensive drugs that require monthly check-ups in order to simply keep it at bay. Strong drugs and buckets of petroleum jelly are the only things that work for her. Others may find relief in natural remedies, olive oil, steroid cream, altered diets and any one of the thousands of off-the-shelf moisturisers containing everything from vitamin E to stem cells and piss. Not Mele. Moving to Queensland is one of the last options for relief on a much-shortened list.

So, in the spirit of turning lemons into lemonade and cow-shit into hypo-allergenic roses, this blog will become something of a travel diary. We don't plan to remain in Queensland forever,* just over the Adelaide winter until the dry, cold winds have blown themselves out and the Unbelievably Stifling Heat returns. (Those thinking along the lines of increased evaporation in summer vs increased precipitation in winter being better for dry skin can think again - Adelaide never gets so much rain that it actually becomes humid and the cold winter winds make a girl's skin seize up, whereas warm weather aids in movement).

The first step in the journey has been Moving Out Of The Tiny, Dark, Loud and Frequently Odorous Flat. It was nowhere near as traumatic a move as last year's was, complicated as it was by the multiple factors of:
1) Me being away for my week-long buck's show at the Byron Bay Bluesfest during the time in which I should have been packing, finding a new place, etc.
2) The mansion at Second Avenue dividing into two separate households in one day of moving with a truck.
3) Smallacombe Real Estate being arseholes
4) There being other things going on in our lives.

Trent and Ben turned up, dealt with the discouraging fact that the espresso coffee I had promised had already been packed away, like the granite-jawed hombres they are and swiftly set about the manly business of tossing heavy articles of furniture into the back of a cheaply-hired three-tonne truck. We didn't even smash anything expensive.

The furniture is at Nonna's farm (along with the possessions of at least three of her other grandchildren who are all in the process of either moving or building houses), the valuable gear and heirlooms are at a secret mountain location and the rest of the miscellaneous crap that I thought I wanted, but now can't remember why I kept it in the first place has travelled with us to the house I grew up in to join the rest of the miscellaneous crap that my mother and I have insisted on storing and saving throughout the years because you never know when you might need fourteen cloth bags from various sociology conferences or an envelope full of receipts from an overseas trip which show that you paid 15,000 lire for lunch! I did manage to eBay a few items to lighten the load. My old Garfield comic books were hilarious when I was eight, but are now sliding into Fred Basset territory and are interestingly becoming the target for increasingly creative post-modern critiques. I flogged them off for forty bucks and now I've started sizing up everything around the house, weighing it, making mental notes to check the average eBay price, wondering if my folks would really miss this or that. I can't find a reliable buyer for the fourteen conference bags, however.

The best part is that we're in. Step one to Queensland is the most pleasant. Living in a place with an actual garden and in which you can't hear Cantonese soap operas between 11pm and 7am is truly the meaning of happiness. Throw in a loving parent, adequate bench space and the thrilling access to more sunlight than a winter in north Finland and you have a heady combination. Mele and I traipse around the house in blissful ecstasy, skipping down the hallway and spinning around in the middle of rooms, arms outstretched crying to one another 'Look! I'm not touching anything!'

Ahead of us we have much to look forward to:

* Finding a place to live on Bribie Island which isn't either a temporary carpark or the rented-out cavity under a Queenslander.
* Acquiring transport which will fit more than one person and a second pair of undies (hopefully a station wagon).
* Continuing PhD research remotely and from the various as-yet-unsuspecting university libraries of Brisbane.
* Fishing.
* Finding some kind of employment up there that doesn't involve faeces.


Wish us luck and please join us on our travels. I promise more rambling anecdotes, run-on sentences, pleading for charity, self-indulgent photos, videos of questionable taste and value and a slightly-embellished account of what happens when two writers embark upon a journey north to a place where almost everybody is retired, although, let's hope, not retiring.

*Not a guarantee.

***
GTH - The winner is the largely brilliant, yet puzzlingly scoreless, Brocky, not for guessing that the header was a picture of me as a child used to symbolise the assumed age of most of those who enjoy the comic arts, but for linking the brilliant xkcd in one of its many well-timed, perfectly-weighted, nerd-alert pieces. Before T.O.o. Sam did. Brocky, welcome to The Board.