Come and Find Me – Sydney, Australia – [02/11/2014]

There comes a time when you just can’t take any more falling down walls, or people muttering heaven knows what to you in Polish, there comes a point where you just have to GET OUT ~ Under the Tuscan Sun

When I wrote to Garnet a few weeks ago letting her and her hubby know that I would be in Sydney this week and would they like to meet up, I hadn’t really thought about how desperate I would be by that point to just get away.  Because honestly, in every job, no matter how much you love it – there hits a point when you just need to get away, because you feel like if you take one more itty bitty thing, your brain is simply going to snap in two beyond repair.

So needless to say I was very very happy to see friendly, understanding faces when I made my way to our agreed upon meeting spot. Which was a bookstore, which is dangerous, because well …me and books…which was made even more dangerous by the fact that Australia? Is apparently obsessed with cooking, and this place had a huge cookbook section, with an equally huge section of speciality baking cookbooks…freya do I ever miss baking. I was good though, I didn’t buy anything. Not even one of the ones that was all chocolate based recipes that I’m certain I could have had way too much fun with.

Instead, we made our way to a little back alley Korean restaurant which we had practically to ourselves since it was still early in the evening, and spent a relaxed hour or so trading stories of life since we had last met a year ago. Turns out emotionally that Garnet and I have swapped places, when we last met up she was just about to go into her final exams at Uni and I was on the upswing of a really good season, so she was drained flat and I was perky, this time it was the other way around. But these guys and I have known each other for over ten years, we’re way past the point where they’re going to judge me on not being little miss smiley all the time.

Having made no real plans and since I had nothing in mind except being as far away from work as possible, we ambled several blocks after dinner in search of an incredibly illusive speak-easy style whiskey bar, which turned out to be so elusive that when we did find it, it wasn’t there. Well, it was there, but it was closed, and since the door to the stairway that leads to it looks remarkably like the door to an electrical locker you could have sworn that there wasn’t a bar there at all. At first we thought were had taken a wrong turn somewhere (“are we in the right dodgy back alley?”) but then at least twenty other people, all dressed for a sophisticated evening out, turned the corner over the course of the next ten minutes and stared confusedly at the same locked metal door. I swear there should have been a hidden camera. The secret bar that it so secret that no one can find it.

Since the speak-easy was apparently not in the cards, we just kept walking, and ended up at a tiny, dimly lit pub-style bar…which, from the moment I walked in, felt familiar. Not because I frequent bars, I really don’t, but because of what this particular bar offers every Tuesday night.

Y’see, all Swing Dancing clubs have the same feel…this one? Was no different.

Garnet and I met at the local Swing Dance scene years ago, so whenever I’m meeting up with her anywhere in the world, I pack my dance shoes into my carry bag. She’d hunted this place out online specifically because I had mentioned the possibility of wanting to go dancing, what she hadn’t mentioned – because at the time she didn’t know – was the band.

They had a band. A real band.

While we were ordering our drinks and slipping on our dance shoes we were watching the band start to set up…

What do you think? These guys gonna be any good?

Dunno, only been here once and they weren’t playing that night. Looks like they’ve got some brass players though, we’ll just have to see…

And then the set kicked off, and the band screamed into In The Mood, and suddenly I was transported back to being 21 years old, listening to my father play on New Year’s Eve…and it didn’t matter that Australian customs had tossed my room during their random inspection earlier that day, it didn’t matter that I missed home and my family and my friends, that I didn’t have a valentine, that the internet was still slightly broken…none of it mattered. For just one shiney shiney, I was home, and my crazy upside-down world was turned right-side up again…

So…may I have this dance?

Hells yes…

Sometimes? You just …need….to….get…out.