I check out of the posh hotel and move my stuff to a budget place nearby, which caters for travellers but affords the luxury of cheap single rooms for snobs like me.
It's got everything you would want from a hotel here - clean and modern rooms with tv, fridge, en suite and air con - combined with the standard communal kitchens, pool table, bottle shop (that's an off licence to you and me) and internet access.
Whoever predicted a hot and sunny 32 today has clearly been at the absinthe. It is 22, windy and overcast. I abandon plans to go to a beach, and instead decide to check out the centre of Sydney's shops. I musn't complain - it's still pleasant weather, although the combination of grey skies and familiar shops means it literally does just seem like I'm in England. This isn't a complaint, I am just struck by how similar everything is to home. I've come to the other side of the world, and yet it feels like home. In fact, the Victorian shopping centre, and the underground city rail stations that out do the tube for tradition, are more English than anything at home!
As I sit down for lunch at Wagamamas (!!), I read up in the Aussie press about our abject surrender in yesterday's cricket. I expected relentless gloating, I anticipated a nation that could never tire of taunting the Mother Country about how it had come Down Under as holders of the Ashes and had f***ed up in such style. The headline in the Saturday Daily Telegraph surprised me somewhat. A supplement inside printed a full page of Qantas return tickets to England with the message 'Go Home. Our message to a pathetic cricket team.'
The Aussies don't appear to be gloating now, at least judging from this coverage. They're seriously pissed off. One commentator said: "If they were Namibia or Kenya they might have an excuse. But they are England ... if not leading the world, they should at least be keeping pace with it. There is simply no excuse for being this bad."
England's tour here was eagerly anticipated. It was expected to be a fitting sequel to the gripping Ashes encounter of 2005. It hasn't even been a contest. The Aussies are bored with it all and, incredibly, seem to feel let down. To gloat now after yesterday's shambles would verge on the inhuman. It would be like teasing a spastic for being crap at maths.
It should not have been like this. One Aussie said to me that this was the worst English side to tour Australia, which it is if you look at the results. But it isn't. Talent wise this is the best to come here since we last won the Ashes on Australian soil 20 years ago. A combination of shocking management/captaincy and the abject inability of this 'team' to apply themselves to the task in hand - faced with a determined, driven and talented Australian side - is the reason for this. The England sides that came and lost here in the past had less talent, but the Atherton's, Hussain's and Stewart's had character. They had balls. This lot really should f*** off home.
As night falls, I fuel myself full of vodka in my hotel room (I've always been renowned for this classy streak) and then head off towards Oxford Street - Sydney's gay mecca.
I had probably already drunk too much when I stumbled across the first gay bar I saw. A bouncer on the door is glaring at me. Shit. I must be pissed. Walk straight. He's still glaring. Ah! I'm smoking, this is the 21st Century and Malrlboro Lights are the new Nazis, so I stamp my cigarette out on the floor as I approach the door. He's still glaring. Fuck.
"Got any ID, mate?"
"Eh?"
"I said, have you got any ID?"
Perplexed, I fumble around in my wallet for my driving licence. I hand it over, and he scans it carefully before a shocked look engulfs his face. He's seen my date of birth.
"Yup. I'm 30 this year."
"In ya go, mate."
Back of the net. I stay for one before heading off to Stonewall, Sydney's most famous gay club. I get in without being asked for any money, and discover it's not really a club - it's a late bar on three levels. Is THIS their G.A.Y? As I'm on my own, I do what anyone else would do in the circumstances - drink furiously. By the time it passes midnight I seriously forget what country I am in. It proves to be a good night though, and I meet some new friends (further details are censored as this is a family orientated web site).
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