The washing machine in our new place lasted one rumbly week before it began barking out sputtering explosions whenever the spin cycle commenced. Thankfully, our landlord has weathered callouses on his thumbs from twiddling them for days on end, so ten days later we’re still without a working washing machine.
This made the decision to sit inside and slob around on my holidays quite easy indeed (just change your trackies whenever you spill too much beer on them, or when they can stand up of their own accord). For Adam, who is working, this became a little tricker. We ran out of clothes to wear a few days ago and had to plead with our landlord for him to reimburse us for a laundry service (there’s no way I’m paying for that out of my own pocket when it’s not our fault). All I’m left with at the moment is a pile of smoky jeans as faithful reminders from the gigs I’ve seen over the last week. (New South Wales smoking regulations, I miss you).
The most recent gig of which was the Funeral for a Friend gig at the Palace on Sunday. The only other previous Sunday gig I’ve ever attended was Team Sleep, which set a very high standard for Sunday gigs. In my eyes, it’s no longer a decent Sunday gig unless you meet the Team Sleep production values: non-sex scenes from seventies Italian S&M porno playing on a projector while you’re belting out your songs.
Really, I was only going to see the support act, Fightstar. I’ve become quite smitten with their debut album, and, well… I do have somewhat of a soft spot for Charlie Simpson. But as my mate who came along to the gig observed, he’s not really the kind of bloke either of us would usually go for – far from it. It’s just that by having a cool voice and playing in a pretty bloody good band, he gets 50 bonus points and therefore becomes hot. Funeral for a Friend were okay, but I think they’ve slightly overestimated their fanbase – you don’t have license to demand the crowd sing along to almost literally every single song if you’ve never even achieved rotation on Triple J, matey. In addition, I swear they’d muffled the sound on the support acts, which in my eyes is completely unforgivable.
After the gig, we had the good fortune to witness a terrified McDonalds manager trying to close his restaurant at the precise moment the gig ended. The sight of 100 angry and hungry hard rock fans pounding against the windows was inspirational, but still ended up in a McFoodless night, so we retreated to the nearest 7-11 for that great modern invention: the Traveller Pie (as, er, not pictured to the left).
The Traveller Pie is manufactured a long, sausage roll shape… bloody perfect for those hiccuping, drunken, stumbling home moments of hunger when you know you’re going to get a regular pie all over your shirt and splattering out on the ground. Strongly recommended. The only blog I found mentioning the Traveler’s Pie is the Empier’s blog, which I’ve fallen in love with. The world needs a laser-sharp blog focused on Australian pie news.
Speaking of synthetic convenience store product: Adam’s hysterically branded my childhood, Today Tonight red-rubber-stamp style, as deprived. He is of the firm belief that living a life at 26 years old, without ever having ingested Slurpee content into my body, is abhorrent. There was much poking until I attended our local 7-11 to purchase a Cola Slurpee and inhale it.
See, I didn’t need any extra shitty food to encourage me on my month off work. Now I’m fucking hooked on the things and hastily making up for my previous unslurping existence. At least I’ve only got one week left of bad food and sloth, then it’s time to instigate my New Daily Routine of hardcore gym and cooking dinner every night. Which, frankly, will be hilarious: I’ve already burnt four toasted sandwiches in the three weeks we’ve lived here, destroyed a baking pan by warping it in the oven, flooded the kitchen floor with scalding hot water from an overflowing pan, and dropped a saucepan on my bare feet.