The personal disquiet of

Mark Boulton

April 13th, 2006

Wedding nerves by proxy, by ‘The Wife’

This is ‘The Wife’ guest author­ing today as Mark is oth­er­wise engaged (doing noth­ing actu­ally). We’ve spent around an hour try­ing to find a cafe with wifi in the centre of Perth (avoid­ing McDon­alds ‘cos it smells of fat food) and when we finally found some­where, they charged us $14 for an hour. Nice. We’ve got 14 mins left, so I’ll try and be brief des­pite the fact that I’m Welsh and we tell LONG stories. 

Well, Mark and I arrived in Perth on Sunday around 2pm local time after the longest flight in the world — well it wasn’t really but you for­get how bor­ing these types of jour­neys are when you haven’t done one for a while. There were some inter­est­ing people on the plane which always passes the time for me. Mark made me sit in the middle so he could look out of the win­dow, so I was sit­ting next to a nice lady who was fly­ing to Sydney. We had a very nice chat which passed the time. Hope she got over her jetlag.

Our friends Emma and Clin­ton picked us up and we drove back to their house in the sub­urbs for a brew. Sev­eral brews later and a little tour of the local neigh­bour­hood and house, we went for a BBQ pic­nic at Heath­cote Park which is where the wed­ding cere­mony is going to be tomor­row. After return­ing to the house, we man­aged to stay awake until about 10.30 before passing out with extreme tired­ness and Melatonin that Clin­ton gave us.

Monday was spent being jet­lagged and find­ing our way around the local neigh­bour­hood. We went to the local Mall for a mooch and tried to find wifi for Mark to con­nect with his beloved inter­net but to no avail. He was already feel­ing cut off from the rest of the world after not going online for a whole day but this made it worse. God knows how he’d cope if he ever went to Alaska or some­thing. We bought some great Bar­ra­mundi in the fish shop and cooked our hosts a nice meal before going out for a few beers in a pub in South Perth. We met up with someone I went to school with and her boy­friend. They work in the min­ing industry here in WA which was pretty inter­est­ing to hear about.

Tues­day was another jet­lag day. We went into the city in the after­noon with Emma and had some GREAT sushi before sep­ar­at­ing. Mark went off to do his talk at the Mel­bourne Hotel with Port80 and I went to Kings Park and had din­ner with Emma and Clin­ton. Mark’s talk seemed to go well which is good.

The last two days have been spent help­ing out with wed­ding chores and get­ting wed­ding nerves by proxy. Chores have included: pick­ing up dresses, get­ting a man­i­cure (not Mark obvi­ously!), mov­ing chairs, tidy­ing up, mak­ing place set­tings, iron­ing hon­ey­moon clothes, drop­ping off stuff at the ven­ues etc etc. We’ve now left the bride and groom to pack for their hon­ey­moon whilst we do some tour­ist things in the city… and look for wifi access! Whilst Mark caught up with the world, I played my own spe­cial game of ‘Spot the Pom’. My total so far is 13. Pretty good going.

So, we’ve got the wed­ding tomor­row which will be fun (except for the fact we’re in the house with the bride and brides­maids all morn­ing which will be chaotic!) and then we’re off to Rottnest Island on Sat­urday for some snorkel­ing and cycling—yay!

So, to sum up our time here so far:

Three bad things about Perth:

  1. The brews are like milky water
  2. There’s too many ants
  3. There’s too many Poms

Three good things about Perth:

  1. It’s beau­ti­ful
  2. Pub­lic trans­port is cheap and plentiful
  3. Even the fish and chips seems healthy here!!

Next stop, Cairns on Sunday.

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14 Responses to “Wedding nerves by proxy, by ‘The Wife’”

  1. Phil said on: April 13th, 2006 at 10:18 am

    Hey Emm

    Glad to hear the pom-spotting is going well and that you’re both hav­ing fun. Is ween­ing Mark of the inter­net as dif­fi­cult as ween­ing him off tea?

  2. Tim Huegdon said on: April 13th, 2006 at 10:33 am

    My bet­ter half is Aus­tralian and half her fam­ily live in the sub­urbs of Perth. Was over there for Christmas. 

    If you can, get down to Fre­mantle Markets.

    It’s like Cam­den Lock only with Australians!

  3. Brad Wright said on: April 13th, 2006 at 10:43 am

    I can recom­mend the Little Creatures brew­ery in Fre­mantle if you’re after some “non-milky” local brews. Also the wine from Mar­garet River is some of the world’s best, par­tic­u­larly cabernet/shiraz blends and semillon/sauvignon blanc blends.

  4. James said on: April 13th, 2006 at 12:03 pm

    Brad is right, Little Creatures is fant­astic. The rest of the local beer does have a lot to be desired! Did you notice the lack of Fosters on tap? 

    Pub­lic trans­port is cheap and plen­ti­ful as long as it’s not a Sunday, then you’re stuck! 

    And as for the ants, lucky you’re not there for the depths of sum­mer, the cock­roaches and flies are far worse!

  5. Ian Lloyd said on: April 13th, 2006 at 1:12 pm

    Please tell me you’re going to try to get across to Rottnest Island or, at the very least, wander around Fremantle.

  6. Graham Sanders said on: April 13th, 2006 at 11:28 pm

    I’ve got to hand it to Marky boy, he’s becom­ing a CSS super­star these days, can’t look at a CSS web­site without hear­ing the Boulton name. Well done mate, how did the talk go down at Port 80 btw?, I saw a few pho­tos includ­ing expec­ted soft? bever­ages at:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/markboulton/

    By the way Katie’s leav­ing http://www.6721.co.uk and I sent an invite, I’m guess you and ‘The Wife’ won’t be able to make next Friday :) 

    Hope you’re hav­ing a great time and if you should meet a 50 year old by chance in Cairns called Majorie Thorpe, say hello as she’s my Great Aunt. You never know.

  7. Nick Cowie said on: April 14th, 2006 at 3:59 pm

    To get free inter­net access in Perth all you needed to do was cross over the rail­way line and visit the state lib­rary, free inter­net access though some sites, includ­ing some web­mail sites are blocked. 

    The other bad news is it is in the lib­rary so you have to use their PCs, no food, no noise and no upload­ing, but it is free and you could of left Mark there and gone into the Art Gal­lery across the plaza (on vice a versa) 

    wi-fi access in Aus­tralia, par­tic­u­larly Perth is not easy to find or cheap. 

    beer — little creatures and the mat­ilda bay brew­ery product line (rooftop red, bees knees etc.) are not milkly and can be found in a num­ber of pubs, but not all. 

    Enjoyed Mark’s present­a­tion on Tuesday.

  8. Matt Didcoe said on: April 15th, 2006 at 6:01 am

    Wish I could have made it to the talk Mark. Look­ing for­ward to the pod­cast when it becomes available. 

    Glad you enjoyed Perth! Wi-Fi access is a rar­ity around here. 

    Can’t com­ment on the beer but will agree with James in regards to the flies. 

    Come back soon eh?

  9. Ryan said on: April 16th, 2006 at 4:55 am

    Fosters on tap? There’s nary a per­son in Aus­tralia that a) drinks the stuff, or 2) has even seen it. 

    It’s def­in­itely not an Aus­tralian beer to Australians! 

    But, do beware the boot.

  10. john Allsopp said on: April 16th, 2006 at 8:24 am

    Sorry I didn’t meet “the wife” when I spoke with Mark in Perth early­ier in the week. 

    I’ll second the sen­ti­ment re wifi in Aus­tralia — it is a total dis­grace — over­priced and hard to find.

    Hope to see you in Sydney in a couple of weeks 

    john

  11. Mark Boulton said on: April 16th, 2006 at 3:04 pm

    To clear up one point, watery milky brews are North­ern speak for gross cups of tea!!

  12. Alistair said on: April 16th, 2006 at 3:27 pm

    If you hap­pen to be some­where that has a Hogs Breath, I strongly sug­gest you take up the oppor­tun­ity for some fine steak (if you’re into that kind of thing!).

    Al.

  13. phil said on: April 16th, 2006 at 7:32 pm

    There’s noth­ing wrong with a good, north­ern cup of milky, gross brew!

  14. The Wife said on: April 21st, 2006 at 3:50 am

    Believe me Phil, the tea here is mostly BAD except for the teabags we brought with us from home! ;0)

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