Mika and a Moroccan Detour
Or, how vague plans to get a job in December in Kazakhstan had me on a plane to London and Morocco in August.
June 2019
In the first week of June in 2019 I was sitting in a sunny corner of the garden of my flatshare in Canberra looking across the golf course. As a meter reader I used to visit lovely little estates where people lived in the middle of a golf course. I must have something loose in my head. I’d say to people – what a lovely idea. I’d love to live on a golf course.
But, wait – I did.
With the occasional thunk of golf balls hitting the gum trees or the netting, Mr Morgan sunning his ginger tabby stripes at the front fence, Solara her glossy black fur on the fence top where she could watch over Mr Morgan and the rest of the world – as cats do – I was settled with my book.
A young thin Mr Morgan, and Solara the ninja cat explaining why I have so few photos of her - where she is visible…
I had no particular plans, this particular Sunday – some vague notion of heading off to Kazakhstan (specifically Almaty in the south close to the border with Kyrgyzstan and its beautiful mountains, and close enough to the Silk road, something that has had me fascinated for many years).
Or the Gobi Desert – because it’s such a similar climate and landscape to Almaty.
The idea was to improve my situation by finding a teaching job sometime near the end of the year, somewhere different and interesting.
I came across this in a garden in southern Canberra. Now you know what happened to me - it’s been every bit as exciting as The Doctor said.
Because this story starts with me as a meter reader in Canberra’s leafy suburbs. I was walking up to 20 km a day reading anywhere between 50 and 1000 electricity, water and gas meters a day, taking in the smells of the Aussie bush, catching my breath over some amazing view across the hills, or being touched by some of my dog friends in their backyards.
A kangaroo I surprised in a front yard in a southern Canberra suburb
So how, you might ask, does someone who has 5 degrees including three separate teaching qualifications end up in an unskilled, minimum wage labour job as a meter reader?
As it turns out, meter reading is one of the best jobs I’ve ever had – the right thing at the right time. Outdoors, walking through the bush, enjoying conversations with many dogs and even some Canberrans, a pair of love-sick llamas (actually, only one love-sick llama. The other was a little more ambivalent), and the odd kangaroo – like the old man kangaroo in the southern suburbs. Even now as I check the map, the street names take on their individual characters in my mind. Each route which I revisited every three months had its own atmosphere and shape.
Hercules, the love-sick therapy llama just back from the hospice. He loves being hand fed grapes. And Mimosa. If only Mimosa loved him back as much.
And Mika song.
Relax, Take it Easy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVmG_d3HKBA&ab_channel=MIKAVEVO
There were the people who would remember me, even wait for me – the ex-Tokyo Olympics boxing champ with a hot brewed coffee in the winter, or the lady who insisted in summer on those 42 degree days that I wait in her air conditioning while she squeezed a fresh lemonade for me, which she served up with pieces of Lindt chocolate. The dogs who had the same conversation with me even though they remembered it from the last time. The rose bushes I learned to hate because of their thorns. The decorative artificial beehives and the artworks and the works of humour.
Another popular one said: The dog is ok - Beware of the wife.
And old man kangaroo was one of those shapes.
A newer suburb with gardens built up hillsides and held in place by brickwork, with the green grass stretching along their fronts. Every time I read that street, in the exact same place to within a few houses, there he would be - the big old red kangaroo grazing on the front lawns.
A good six feet tall, as soon as I came around the corner he would stop his grazing and sit up.
And watch me.
‘Don’t come too close.’
This was his patch of grass.
It was clear he was old, and had been through the wars. His lip had been torn at some point long ago, and one ear was slightly shredded from some other battle I’d imagine he had won. This fellow had been around for a very long time.
He reminded me very much of the fighting kangaroos I had watched from my bedroom window when I lived on a farm out on the northwestern slopes and plains of New South Wales. A pair of big red kangaroos had decided to have their showdown just over the back fence. Balanced up on their tails, each of them at least six or seven feet tall, they took it in turns to kick at each other with their hind legs, a resounding thump every time.
Like them, this old fellow had also been through the wars. But the days I saw him was a different story. Maybe he had earnt his place in peace over time. Because this was clearly his territory.
When I rounded the corner, he would stop his grazing and sit up. He watched me as I moved from house to house getting closer. He never moved from his spot. He had it secured. This was his plot of grass, and nobody else was invited to eat with him. He watched almost motionless my entire journey down the street until I had disappeared around the next corner. Maybe his confidence was that he knew - there was no way I had any intention of challenging his spot.
A collection of crows is a murder of crows. These are magpies - are they also a murder?
June is approaching mid-winter. My day started before dawn, driving through Canberra’s beautiful suburbs at first light, Mika blasting on the radio, a panorama of sunrises and fog filled valleys. I had favourite roads, favourite bridges, favourite interchanges… Different Mika songs still bring up images in my mind of the suburbs where I had been listening to the respective songs.
Grace Kelly. With a bit of Freddie Mercury.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaEPCsQ4608&ab_channel=MIKAVEVO
But why was it that with five separate degrees (three of them specifically vocational ones), I was doing this unskilled labour job?
I arrived in Canberra with nothing – no money, not much more than a bag of clothes and my car – after two weeks of living in the car because everything was closed for Christmas. Unemployment benefits were substandard, and ironically for a country as wealthy as Australia, not enough to live on.
I managed to get a tutoring job – walking a large part of the way to the interview café to save on the expensive parking fees in the inner city so I had enough to buy the anticipated coffee. By the time I had covered my rent, food and petrol each fortnight, the government payment left me with about $2 . Usually this went to more bread or milk.
I got the job – which I should have – considering I’d had many many years of experience and was completely qualified for the job. I swallowed my pride at being offered the same hourly payment given to twenty-year-old uni students without any teaching knowledge or experience - or even their first degree. So all I had to do was to get a police record check and a WWVP - Working with Vulnerable People certificate.
$40 and $80 respectively.
How was I supposed to pay for either of these with the $2 I had set aside for more milk mid-fortnight?
That, is how with my five degrees I ended up as a meter reader. They did the police record check. They provided the clothing and gear – a beautiful fluoro yellow polo neck shirt and blue-collar worker pants, and boots – oh my.
The boots.
My favourite part of the uniform. Proper, solid, working safety boots. When you spend the whole day walking, and climbing hills, the boots become a treasured feature.
So back to that day sunning myself in the garden (no - even working outdoors, I’ve never had enough sun) my reading is interrupted by a video chat with my daughter (at that time working in San Francisco). We had our usual discussion about Mika and our latest favourite songs, and were commenting that it had been a while since he had done a concert tour. I said that if he were to announce one I’d probably go to see him, wherever it was.
Mika, of Relax Take it Easy fame.
We are Golden - a bit of unabandoned youth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEhutIEUq8k&ab_channel=MIKAVEVO
He’s not so well known in Australia, better known in Europe. Lebanese born, he grew up in Paris, then London. His songs are mostly in English, with a growing number in French and now one in Italian – the two countries where he is best known from tv shows including “The Voice” talent show in France. Another story, but as a meter reader in Canberra I played non-stop Mika as I drove through the bushy suburbs at dawn to my work area for the day – All She Wants, I Only Love You When I’m Drunk, Big Girl you are beautiful – someone who just wants everyone to love.
Elle Me Dit - my favourite of his French songs with an awesome video clip. There’s an English version of this one - She Tells Me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiHWwKC8WjU&ab_channel=UniversalMusicFrance
A few days later my daughter called me again.
‘Muuuum.’
Yes. She wanted something. This was going to be an ask.
This Mika song is unabashed cheeky - Boum, Boum, Boum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MPtXUeUznY
‘Did you mean what you said?’
By the end of that week I had booked two concert tickets and a plane ticket.
When I say two concert tickets, I don’t mean one for each of us. I mean two concerts for each of us – the only one in London and the opening concert of the tour on the 10th of November 2019, and one in Paris 2 days before Christmas.
Domani - Mika’s one Italian song (so far). Also in English as Tomorrow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rOzRgUJ-uY&ab_channel=Risiat
And a flight for the end of October. The plan was to hang around for those two months then find work in Asia in January – in Almaty or the Gobi desert in northern China.
If you know anything about me, one of the constants in my travel plans is that they never go as planned.
In the same week, my daughter mentioned that she’d decided to move to London for a two year working holiday visa.
A few weeks later I needed to fix a small repair on my car – Alaine, a sweet little white Daihatsu Accent hatchback which had loved me and even housed me for two weeks (Christmas 2017). However, the small repair revealed that the next car reregistration (due in August) was going to cost me everything I could save between then and October.
Canberra airport the day I left - yes, those kangaroos are in the middle of the airport.
As I have many times in the past, I brought my departure plans forward. I sold my car, and packed up my gear ready for a flight in mid-August, just 2 days after the car registration expired.
I went to the best teaching option on this side of the globe – Morocco. After a delightful stay with a lovely lady at an Airbnb at the far less dazzling tourist spot on the Isle of Sheppey on the edge of the Thames, a catchup with a very old friend in London, then somewhere between booking a flight to Tangier and catching it two days later I had a job interview, and two days after that I had a job.
I’d say that the rest is history, except as you get to know me you will know that is never a safe bet.
One final Mika song - my favourite version of Platform Ballerinas, a new song, performed at the Tivoli in Brisbane in February 2020, with an impromptu extra with Sky Blue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtAyo9Qz6Zk&ab_channel=tibsu14