• Gone... From KingCoultas in (503 days old)

  Fifty-oneFive weeks after arriving back in Britain I turned around as I climbed the steps up to the Boeing 747 and I took one last look. After all, I didn’t plan on coming back for a while. I to… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (504 days old)

  FiftyWhile I was in London I went to see one of Jade’s friends. His nickname’s Multi on account of the fact that he once misplaced his car in a multi-storey car park for over four hours. H… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (506 days old)

  Forty-nineYou know, so many people turned up at my mum's funeral it humbled me. I think my mum would have appreciated it very much and I think she would have liked to have been there in person. I just… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (507 days old)

  Forty-eightWhat also soon became clear to me was that I’d got more relaxed living in Australia. In England it goes like this: one day, there I was driving along the M40 and as it comes up toward… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (510 days old)

  Forty-sevenIn some ways it’s easy to see why London has become like this, why there is this simmering anger. Take the buses. I did before I got myself a hire car and I tell you, they are hell on… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (511 days old)

  Forty-sixWhile I was in London people told me not to toot my horn at anyone if I drove through Brixton. I wondered what they were talking about. They said I could get shot. Only five years before I us… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (512 days old)

  Forty-fiveI spent most of the interminable flight to Britain composing a letter to Amnesty International asking if there was anything they could do about the barbarity of long-distance airline travel,… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (513 days old)

  Forty-four...And then, all of a sudden I had to go home. We’d been living in Australia for five years. Five years! The time just flies on by when you’re busy reinventing yourself. Still, I… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (514 days old)

  Forty-threeAs often seems to happen, one door closes and another one opens. Trouble was, The Dipper was on the other side of this particular wood veneered entranceway, and he was beckoning me in like … more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (517 days old)

  Forty-twoAnd what a bunch they’d hired. There was the American girl who’d never worked for a real company in her life. She’d come out of some Ivy-League university and then gone to w… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (518 days old)

  Forty-one Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. This bloke I used to work for called me up. Jade and I were driving along in the car down to Jervis Bay for a holiday and it was Christ… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (519 days old)

  FortyI’d started working for this small publishing company and they had an office in a big old block of offices. This particular office didn’t have any windows and when I turned up on my f… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (521 days old)

  Thirty-nineThe big bust-up in Lesbo land came early that bleary Sunday morning as the car reversed at high speed out the driveway. The actual moving-out took place a week or so after that. This was an… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (522 days old)

  Thirty-eightThe idiots upstairs, next door to Doris, were drug dealers. These were possibly the most stupid people I've ever met. He was English, she was an Aussie girl and between them they had barel… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (524 days old)

  Thirty-sevenAs I've said, The garbos weren't the only nutters we shared a plot of land with...One bright Sunday morning I staggered out of bed, woken by fiendish screams and shouts, coupled with the b… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (526 days old)

  Thirty-sixNow, we’d been in Australia for a while and we decided that we needed to find somewhere more permanent to live. We could afford it because I was working and besides, Dare was driving u… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (527 days old)

  Thirty-fiveDon also worked at the publishing company. He arrived in Australia 11 years ago. In London he was a gas fitter in Ponders End. In Australia he’s a magazine designer and fancies himsel… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (531 days old)

  Thirty-four"What you want to do skip, is you go with your missus. You go in and have a few drinks and then you say you’re off and you get given two of them computer software packs as a pres… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (532 days old)

  Thirty-threeI was lying on the bed one day reading a book. In fact it was a mattress on the floor. It was hot outside but in the room it was cool and I was off work for the day. Probably I’d had… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (533 days old)

  Thirty-twoEvery name is shortened in Australia. People’s names, organizations’ names, even the names of objects. So, the Fire Brigade are called Fire-ies, the Ambulance people are Amboes, … more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (534 days old)

  Thirty-one“Excuse me sir. Would you like a woman?”I looked at the young girl and smiled just like I did every evening and I said, “No thanks, I’ve already got one.” and c… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (535 days old)

  Thirty So here’s the thing, why did we travel to the other side of the world on Olympic Airways? Well, it was cheap. And we soon found out why... As we took off from Heathrow the emergency… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (540 days old)

  Twenty-nine Later, we ate fish and chips and had a hot dog each and walked along the promenade and decided to stay the night. There was no soap in the room and we got sand in the bed. But we didn… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (541 days old)

  Twenty-eightDuring the next few months I settled into a routine of teaching black kids journalism, going out with Jade in secret and writing chapters about cars for Clarence’s motoring encyclopa… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (542 days old)

  Twenty-sevenEvery morning before class I’d pop into Andy’s Cafe and have tea and a bacon and egg. Andy’s didn’t look much from the outside, just a great big plate glass window … more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (545 days old)

  Twenty-sixI stood listening to the roar of traffic, clutching my coat tight to me as I shivered in the evening cold of a car park whose floodlights stained the world yellow. In the daytime this acre a… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (546 days old)

  Twenty-fiveJust when you think it can’t get any worse, well, sometimes it just gets better. Of course it had to, my life couldn’t keep going downhill faster than a truck without brakes - i… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (556 days old)

  Twenty-fourI knew this bloke Adam. Back when I was training to be a journalist, so that would have been when I was 17. Adam was a fellow trainee and his dad was Foreign Correspondent for one of the bi… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (560 days old)

  Twenty-threeThe General lived out Crawley way in a big modern house. After he’d left the car magazine he got a job as Editor of a fishing magazine called Fly. This is the thing most people don&r… more

• Gone... From KingCoultas in (561 days old)

  Twenty-twoMoney was the thing. I’d run out of it, and Mr Henry never would. Well, not unless people stopped drinking beer. Living with Henry and Clarissa, I felt a bit like that bloke who went t… more

| Next page>>