Pantsless, Touching Myself In An Inappropriate Manner. -(1/3)-

I'll do the where-I'm-at-and-where-I'm-going-next
thing at the start, for those not likely to make it
through to the end.
I'm in Bunbury, Western Australia, doing the yearly
family stay. But on Monday I'm flying back to Scotland
to spend another year there and around Europe. So if
you're in the area, hey, let's catch up.

Ok, let's see. Things that happened five months ago.
It seems like when I first started writing these
things five years agi I'd send one out every couple of
weeks. Now I'm on like two a year. Mind you they are
so horrendously long that they need to be done in
episodes, so I guess it works out about the same.

I was in Wellington. We were shooting a film, a short
film, which was also a music video. It was fun. And
also a little stressful, as my time of departure was
getting closer and people started dropping out.
Let me be clear: without a lot of people doing a hell
of a lot of work, for free, the filming could never
have been done. I'm actually aware now how kind of
naive I was, thinking I could ever actually do it,
because surely dozens of people wouldn't just leap
forward and gladly donate their time and energy for no
obvious reason? They did.
But still, towards the end it started getting a little
tricky keeping everyone involved (more cast than crew,
my crew were hardcore), and I found I was spending
more and more energy just holding the whole thing
together, which meant less to actually do it. Also I
was doing more of it; when we started I was just the
writer, director, location scout, choreographer,
editor and animator – by the end I was also assistant
director, production manager and in just about every
shot.

The location scouting was the best part. I have a bit
of a thing for getting into where I'm not supposed to
be and this was the perfect excuse to do so. I think
it's fair to say I've now scouted just about every bit
of downtown Wellington. Especially parking buildings,
there where a lot of parking buildings for some
reason.
Wellington is a surprisingly good city for it. The
Ministry of Defense (never been so efficiently shown a
door), the Wellington High Court (enclosed courtyard,
found via Google Earth), I was scouting an area
between three high-rises and looking up realised I was
sneaking past the vehicle entrance for the regional
headquarters of Chubb Security (I can't say that name
without laughing: Chubb. teehee).
Getting one shot required me and a cameraman scaling
the side of a building, sneaking across its front
deck, and dropping down onto the roof of the New
Zealand Post headquarters on the far side. We did it
on a Sunday in the assumption that being government
buildings both would be deserted. Which luckily they
were.
The shot came out pretty good, you can see it at
http://www.sugarandfat.info/previews.htm
It's the one with the sling. It was a bit of work
stabilizing though, it was filmed from a skateboard
we'd lugged up with us and ridden across their roof.
We only got fully bounced once, picking up a quick
shot in a parking building towards the end. This was
the same building we'd spent four hours in a couple of
weeks earlier, filming from the back of a truck and
running down the 'No Pedestrians Beyond This Point'
out ramp. (Again, Sunday. Wellington really shuts down
on a weekend.) We did have a few other close calls
tho. If it had been anywhere other than New Zealand,
statistically speaking at least one of us would've
been shot and the rest deported.

The last day of filming was the day before I had to
leave. I picked up a few shots just of myself, up in a
rooftop scrubland I stumbled across while exploring
earlier. I was wading through gorse, whimsically
running my hands through it and pretending not to be
really really hurting myself. (My trousers are still
peppered with a hundred thorn holes.) I was on my own
so had to devise a system of slinging the camera, on
the tripod, over my shoulder and filming myself trying
not to slip down the grassy slope; thereby making my
last act in Wellington the smashing of a very
expensive and prized piece of video equipment.


Wellington Airport
“Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.”

The day before I flew out all departures had been
canceled due to fog, so between that and actually
surviving the flight I was pretty lucky. (I've had
landings at that airport where, seriously; ok, one
landing gear is down, but should the tip of the wing
be closer to the ground than the other two wheels? And
this is in a 747 (For which the runway is technically
too short.))
I'd spent the previous night at Dale&Emily's, with
Bonne&Eugene, having a meal and being shown off. Emily
dropped me at the Airport very early the next morning
and I boarded the little twin propeller trying
desperately to remember all the things I'd forgotten
to do, which were now somehow going to completely
destroy the last three months of work. It was a great
flight though; I've never flown into Nelson before and
because it's such a short distance there's no reason
to take the plane to any kind of altitude. So I could
make out every wave on Cook's Straight, the banks of
cloud sweeping down over the fjords to the coast.
Loverly.

How freaking cool is it that after a hundred thousand
years of human evolution, we're born into the one
generation where the act of actual flight is as simple
as catching a bus.
We're pretty lucky for buses too, don't get me wrong,
but whenever someone says they don't like flying, or
worse just sits there reading a magazine rather than
looking out the window I just want to grab them by the
ears and scream AT WHAT POINT DID YOUR PASSION FOR
LIFE CRAWL AWAY AND DIE?!?!

But that's one sure-fire way of not having a
successful flight, so I restrain myself.
(Rather than have the flight crew do it for me.)

I love Google Earth. When I was in Melbourne about to
leave for New Zealand I knew that my flight would be
arriving after all the public transportation had
finished for the night, so, from space, went looking
for a spot near the airport where I'd be able to pitch
my tent.
In the end Rosie convinced me to just get a taxi.
Arriving at the Nelson airport (where I hadn't set
foot in nineteen years) I thought I'd sorted out, from
space, how to get to a decent hitching point to head
south.

Nope.
Completely cocked it up.

I'm not sure how, but I simply hadn't acknowledged the
entire town in between. Luckily though I was not too
far into it before getting picked up and driven to the
other side, it would've taken at least two hours to
walk.
And now I'm standing in a nice little spot, and the
hitching down to Christchurch to visit my friends and
sister, then through to the Southland to see my
father, begins.

I grew up in the Nelson area. We moved there when I
was like, half, and stayed until nine when we
relocated to Canterbury, further south. The Nelson
Bays are a great place, sunniest part of NZ, lots of
farms and hippies (mostly old Germans, for some
reason), artists and folks who generally take things
pretty easy. Good hitching.
So, then, can someone please fill me in as to why I
Waited For Two And A Half GodDamn Hours Without
Getting Picked Up!?

It was surreal, frankly. I was in a good spot, just
out of town, room to pull over, drivers could see me,
before a corner so not going to fast. Fine weather.
Then it rained a bit. Then it cleared up. Then rained
some more before turning nice (this is New Zealand
after all) but, What? What the hell? I never wait two
and a half hours. Never. More than an hour and it's
officially a very long wait, hour and a half happens
occasionally but only if there's no traffic or some
other mitigating circumstance (like it's pitch black,
raining, and every article of clothing I own is dark
blue), once or twice it's gone to two hours, but only
those times I experimented with actually hurling rocks
at the passing cars while pantsless, touching myself
in an inappropriate manner. But still not two and a
half. Not ever.

O well, must have either been a freak occurance, or
while I've been away Nelson's gone the way of
neighboring Blenheim, where I know of people who've
waited ten hours before giving up and catching a bus.
But eventually I did get picked up, by... someone.
(After a while they all just blur into each other,
this must be how prostitutes and retail workers see
their days). No wait, I do remember them, it was a
young couple and they took me all the way to
Christchurch. They were kewl.

In Chch I stayed with my good friend and ex-flatmate,
Lucy.
Lucy has, since last I saw her, reproduced.

Everyone _everyone_ asked me when I was back in NZ,
so, Daniel, When are you going to stop traveling and
settle down? Huh? When?
I don't know.
I don't really, to be completely honest a) see the
point of it, and b) fully understand the question.
Settle? The double meaning of the word says it all.
Why stay in one place when I can stay in whatever
place I choose for as long as it suits me? Why try to
make a go of it in the country I happen to have been
born in when I can go to the place which is going to
most help me do what I want to do? There is a whole
planet out there. I can be anywhere. I can do
anything.

And look, I'm not having a go at anyone, I'm honestly
not being all like pff, you people are all losers and
your lives suck. Why stay in one place? = Lasting
relationships, community, because you happen to really
dig it, the opportunity to realise goals that take
longer than ten months and don't mean having to renew
your visa, a career, etc... I get all that. It's just
not for me. Chances are it will be at some distant
time, but, but... (but there's a whole world out
there... I just, I just have to see, ok? I just need
to see what's beyond this next stretch of open road. I
'm in love with the earth moving beneath my feet...
it's just not in me to stop yet. (there's a whole
world...)

And Lucy, whom I love dearly, has a child. And it
freaked me out.
Actually it turns out that three of the four women I
lived with in my last flat in New Zealand have since
sprogged. (I had nothing to do with it, don't even go
there). The fourth, Amy, I caught up with in
Wellington. She's a surgical nurse now and planning
her escape, but can't go back to the Uk just yet
because last time there she skipped on an eight
thousand Pound (that's Pound) credit card debt.
Respect.

And so, ok, at the start everyone was all with the
When you settlin' down? but then as I was leaving, and
I'd talk about the trip from Malaysia across land to
India, suddenly they were all I'm so jealous, wish I
could go, etc.

Well then... which is it?

I Do Not Want To See A Body Today. -(2/3)-

I only stayed in Christchurch for one night, I was
flying out from there two weeks later so left until I
got back the catching up with the few other people I
know who are still there. Caught a bus to my trusty
southwards hitching point in Burnham, just across from
the army camp, and started down to Otago.

I've gone that way a few times now, so the rides are
particularly indistinct, but from within the blur I
remember a young Indian farm manager who told me about
Sikhdom and that I must check out Punjab, and an old
man, desperately sad because he was old, needing to
tell someone, anyone, that he had lived.

That night I was dropped on the near side (why is it
always the near side? Arrg) of the not-small town of
Oamaru (famous for its sandstone, art deco
architecture, and boy racers) by a young guy who'd
recently been seen out of a town on the West Coast by
the police over some altercation with an ex-employer
and his shotgun. I pitched camp in a horse racing
track and headed into town on the assumption that
there must be, surely, a cinema close by.
Against all I odds I actually found one, though it
took over an hour to do so, and ended up watching
'Talladega Nights, The Ballard of Ricky Bobby' which
at first I thought was kind of stupid, but then ended
up really enjoying. On the way back I got KFC because
it was the only place still open.

Most of the people I met in Wellington I knew through
some connection to the documentary. Which meant that
most of them were activists, anarchists and vegans.
Now, I certainly consider myself an activist (though I
could stand to be more, y'know, active), and I am
technically an anarchist (self determination! Whoot!)
but I am not, nor have ever been, a vegan. Which is a
shame, because the world would be a better place if we
didn't have to farm, refrigerate, transport and
distribute all that meat and stuff. But, I don't know,
it's just so haaaaard... and I really love dairy...
and it seems to me that if you want to be the full
vegan it means you're going to be reading the back of
everything you ever buy again and cooking every meal
yourself from scratch. Which I'm fully down with and
quite enjoy when I'm in a flat, but when I'm traveling
basically anything I can find which isn't actually
toxic, is, well, dinner.

(The savvy reader will have noticed that I just
suggested KFC isn't actually toxic, a false impression
for which I apologize and unequivocally retract.)

There was one time when I was round at the
squat/flat/community centre/anarchist paramilitary
stronghold and we'd sent Tim off to the chippy for a
feed. It was only later that I realised I:
a) had ordered fish with my chips
b) was surrounded by militant vegans
c) had managed to, somehow, make at least four
unrelated references to either consuming meat or the
meat industry within half an hour while everyone was
eating, and:
d) just didn't click why they were all looking at me
like that.

It was really quite impressive.
I don't know if they actually liked me that much.
. Why must idealists and pragmatists be at such
odds? A while back my father stated that 'old
idealist' was a contradiction in terms, at which I
immediately got all indignant and insisted that, damn
it, I would not be one to sell out and forsake my
idealism.
Until I remembered that I am not, nor have ever been,
an idealist. I'm like the world's biggest pragmatist.
I've got pragmatism for Africa. But I dug that
Wellington crew, and I do like and appreciate
idealists, even if we never really see eye to eye.

The next morning I was faced with a very long and
unpleasant slog through the town, but before I'd gone
more than a few hundred meters a woman asked me out of
the blue if I wanted a ride. She was only going into
the town centre, but it would spare me an hour's walk.
She had her young son and daughter in the back (super,
super cool kids. Her too.) and on the way I got a
little tour of the art deco downtown and some local
history. All I remember is that it all in some way
revolved around whiskey. Lots of whiskey.

I waited for quite a while on the other side of
Oamaru. Not 'Nelson' long (my new way of saying 'Why
Won't You Fuckers Just Pick Me Up?' long) but long
enough that I decided to walk a bit further out. I
waited a while there, too. Then I saw my first ever
serious traffic accident.

On the way the road had passed under a little rail
bridge. I was around a slight bend from there and
couldn't see it. But I heard the sound, like a bucket
full of sand being dropped, and looked over to see a
little cloud of dust rising into the air. Then traffic
started to back up, and a few people got out of their
cars. I crossed the road to get a better angle and at
first thought a truck had either blown a tire or
wedged under the bridge. But in fact it was a car, a
new sedan, with its front end completely smashed in.

I sprinted back to my pack, grabbed the little
first-aid kit I'd bought for the trip, and started
running back down the road. The car was very badly
crumpled, and I was thinking, 'I really don't want to
see a body today, I Really Really don't want to see a
body today.' I needn't have worried. When I got there
the driver, middle aged guy, was standing in the road,
looking a little dazed but otherwise ok. Some people
were talking to him, he was mostly concerned with the
fact he'd just written off what turned out to be a new
car. I was full of adrenalin and nerves at this point,
so a little twitchy myself, but eventually got him to
sit down by the side of the road while I cracked the
medikit.
There was a big campaign on the tv and radio at the
time about Hepatitis C, so I was very shakily trying
to find cotton buds or something in the kit to apply
the antiseptic, of which there were none. Finally I
just dabbed some on his finger and got him to rub it
into the cut on his nose and forehead, then applied a
bandaid.
Air bags really are wonderful things.
He was pretty pissed off about the car, I was just
like, dude, I am not currently trying to locate your
_head_, so maybe things could've been worse. Then the
ambulance turned up and I passed him over to them.
On the way back along the road a lot of traffic had
backed up so I got to tell everyone about the
accident. Most people were more concerned about the
driver's wellbeing than the delay. Most.

Then I took a deep breath, found somewhere to wash my
hands, and was back on my way.

A Rumble Of Wet Indifference. (3/3)

Don't eat mutton pies. That's all I'm going to say
about the town of Palmerston.

Second to last town, and I use the term loosely,
before Alexandra where my father lives, could be
accurately and affectionately referred to as butt-fuck
nowhere. For that matter Alexandra could also be
described the same way, and Alexandra is considerably
larger than this place. But I'm in no rush and the sun
is still shining (through the massive plume of smoke
from a farmer's burnoff which, owing to the presence
of more than one helicopter, I would guess was now
seriously out of control) so I was happy to wait. But
before long an old guy with two kids in the back pulls
over and picks me up.
I'd actually had to turn down two rides before that,
which I don't often do, from 4x4s full of giggling
teenagers who where only going ten kays to the next
town.
Half an hour into the ride the guy gets round to
asking me what I'm up to in Alexandra and I say I'm
there to visit my father. He asks who my father is;
Alan. Oh yeah, Alan who? Gotlieb. Alan Gotlieb? Are
you Daniel?
Turns out this was the owner of the farm on which my
father lives, and his only neighbor for twenty
kilometers. That spun him out. He thought that was
great.
I got the full local history on the way, which is
always interesting, and was dropped at the door.

So I hang out with my father for a couple of days in
his little stone cottage in the middle of a deer farm,
watch Groundhog Day again (love that film), have a few
shots with the air rifle.

Three things about myself that disturb me. (Please
don't think less of me for any of this):

1. I am somewhat criminally minded. Often my first
inclination when faced with a large exploitable system
is how to exploit it. Not pathologically, but if
there's some way I can get something for free and no
one else is any the worse off, then, well... yeah.
(One word for those who know me well: InterRail.)
I'll say no more.

2. I'm a surprisingly good liar, considering I never
practice. My last year in NZ I made an insurance claim
which may not have been 100% legit (my printer broke,
and was insured, just not for what broke it), and they
sent round an investigator. I had to spend forty-five
minutes with this woman, whose job it is to detect
untruth, sitting down with her, telling her nothing
but pure unadulterated lies.
It was possibly the most nerve racking experience of
my life. Because if I twitch, if I say one word out of
place, if my eyes don't at all times, for forty-five
minutes! express nothing but sweet innocence, this
woman is going to nail me to a wall.
It felt just like an experience I had years before at
an Australian surf beach called Yallingup; I went body
surfing in a two meter swell. But no one who objects
to the sound of bones splintering actually body surfs
in those conditions, so I just bobbed around a bit. If
you haven't been out in two meter waves (six to seven
feet) it's pretty huge. Especially when your head is
at sea level. (Uuuuuuuuppppp up up up up .......
Dooooooowwwn down down down .......
UUUUuuuuuppppppp)
Then a three meter set came in. If I'd gone over the
lip of one of those things I would've been killed.
Literally killed. So I just tread water and watch them
come, trying not to get pulled back into the drop. But
I was paying so much attention to that I failed to
notice I'd been swept a hundred meters away from
shore.
And that was the feeling. Like; I just don't want to
be here now. Please, don't make me be here now. But
you just have to accept that you are, and you may well
be fucked, but that's the truth of it and you're not
bargaining your way out.
And so, in Yallingup, I managed to swim back in,
waited for a smaller two meter set to come in, and
took the drop. Got completely pummeled, made a dash
for the beach, got sucked back into another wave (I
think there were actually, if breifly, long fingernail
tracks left in the wet sand; a single despairing wail
(NNnnnoooooo-) cut suddenly short by a rumble of wet
indifference) and pummeled again, eventually figured
out which way was up (it's away from the rocks being
ground into my scalp) made another dash for the shore
(a man trying to dash through water is the most
desperate sight you will ever see), literally
draaaaaagged myself out of the surf and collapsed into
a little sobbing puddle on the beach. After a while a
guy came over and asked if I was ok, I managed to
raise one trembling thumb into the air, and he went
away.
And so, in Christchurch I lied my arse off to an
insurance investigator, and got away with it. Maybe
she sussed me and just didn't care because the claim
was so small, I don't know.
Let me stress this: I never lie. I don't live the sort
of life where I have to mislead the people I know. But
occasionally I do have to save my arse from
organisations, corporations, and government bodies.
As, I'm sure, do we all.

3. I'm a disturbingly good shot. I've never fired a
real gun and don't want to, but with an air rifle or
paintball gun, watch out.

My father dropped me off at the Cromwell bridge, a
Maori rastafarian picked me up, swapped me over to a
ski patrolman, and I was back in Christchurch.

Caught up with my sister Nico, who isn't reading this
because she doesn't like email. Hung out with my
Canadian friend Sarah, who, bizarrely, had met up with
some French friends of mine when they toured NZ
recently (I realised this when I saw photos of them on
her wall), and is also plotting her escape.
Flew out for Asia to meet up with Rosie.

And a lot of what happened over there was pretty
insane.

But that will have to wait a while. Like I said, back
off to my beloved Edinburgh this Monday (via Saudi
Arabia, should be fun) and I don't think I'll have
time to write again before I go. This year should be
an interesting one; looking forward to getting some
animation work in the film industry, maybe doing
another Beltane, seeing Iceland, Eastern Europe, the
far north of Scandinavia. If you're over that way give
me a holler, we should definitely spend some time.

much love

Daniel.